Dear Cary: My Life With Cary Grant (3 page)

“What would you like to know?”

“Everything.”

“Everything?”

“How about anything . . . anything you're comfortable with?”

So I unscrolled a bit of biography: I was born Samille Diane Friesen in Tacoma, Washington (my parents expected a boy whom they were going to name after my maternal grandfather, so the name Sam was gelded into Samille). My courageous mother, Clara Portnoy, had escaped the pogroms in Russia and was a passionately observant Jew. We went to temple on high holidays, and we went to Hebrew school once a week. My father, Ben, was an insurance broker whose religious convictions could be summed up as “God who?” so my mother was free to raise us—my younger brother, David, and me—in the Jewish faith.

Mr. Grant followed this with interest. “That's lovely! I'm sure your father admired the Jewish code of moral discipline, even though he wasn't religious himself.”

“Well, that was before the—let's call it a plot twist.” This was getting awfully personal, but Mr. Grant was such an engaged listener that I let down my guard.

“Do tell.”

It was kind of a peculiar story. Dad came from a big family, and as the story goes, his brothers all found Jesus on the same day, though I never heard a clear explanation as to how that happened. But one day when I was about six, I came home to find Dad and his brothers in the living room on their knees. At first I thought they were playing jacks. Then Dad looked up at me and asked me to get on my knees and to pray with them. My devoutly atheist father had found religion.

I was a little shocked, and as young as I was, I knew this was not going to make things any easier for Mom.

“Did you get on your knees?” Mr. Grant asked.

“Yes, I did. I wanted to make my daddy happy, but I was afraid it would upset my mother. And it did.”

“How did things go from there?”

“There was a
lot
of conflict,” I said. “There was a big tug of war for our souls. Daddy drove us to temple every Sunday morning, singing ‘Jesus Loves Me, This I Know' in the car. Then I'd go into Hebrew school and sing it for the rabbi. That caused quite a stir.”

Mr. Grant laughed, and I went on. It was funny in hindsight, but my dad's conversion put a real strain on my family. Mom had married out of her faith because Dad agreed to let her raise the children as Jews. Then suddenly he was as passionate about Christianity as she was about Judaism.

“I can see how that could give you religious whiplash,” he said. “It's fascinating how people have so many different ways of searching for God.”

“It should be easier than all that,” I said.

“I've always been fascinated by religion.”

“Any particular religion?”

“No,” he said. “I'm just looking for answers.”

“Really? Me too!”

“Answers to what?” he asked me, point-blank.

“Just about everything, really. But especially about that thing called ‘God.' ”

“It's the only question that really interests me anymore,” he said.

“Really?”

“Yes. Because it's what all the other questions lead to anyway.”

I went on to tell him performing was in my blood. I was a five-year-old playwright, set designer, ticket seller, and director, and of course I played all the roles myself. Naturally, I was in all the school plays, and senior year one of my teachers prodded me to try out for Miss West Seattle, which was as quaintly geography-specific as its name suggests. Not surprisingly, my father loathed beauty pageants. He tried to discourage my acting, too, not because he disapproved, but because he knew it was a rough business and worried that I'd be disappointed.

“And have you been disappointed?” Mr. Grant asked.

“Oh, not at all!” I replied quickly. Then I met his gaze. “Have you?”

He laughed. “Go on,” he said. “This is wonderful.” But I noticed he didn't answer the question.

“My father wanted me to be a dietitian,” I said. “But he finally accepted that I had performing in my blood. What did your parents think of your career choice?” I asked.

Mr. Grant grinned. “I'm sure they figured there'd been a mix-up in the maternity ward,” he said lightly. “There was nothing in the gene pool to indicate their spawn would join the carnival, put on whiteface, and walk on stilts,” he said. “Have you ever walked on stilts, Dyan?”

“I don't believe I have.”

“You should. It gives you a very different view of the world.” He went on to talk about his lean, early years in New York, living in a small room at the National Vaudeville Artists Club, and his first big break, a role in
Blonde Venus,
opposite Marlene Dietrich. “I thought I'd finally made it,” he said, laughing, “but it was all downhill from there.”

Suddenly, he stood up, and offered his hand, and looked me in the eye. “I do hope I get to see you again,” he said softly. “And soon.”

“It was very nice meeting you, Mr. Grant,” I said. “I feel like I've been talking your ear off.”

“Not at all,” he said. “I can't wait to hear more.”

Hal had been waiting for me in the commissary, nursing his fourth or fifth cup of coffee. “How'd it go?” he asked.

“I'm not sure,” I said. The clock in the commissary caught me. It read twenty past six. “That clock can't be right,” I said.

Hal compared the wall clock to his watch. “Oh, it's right.”

I couldn't believe it. “That means I was in there . . . four hours?”

“Yep.”

I was stunned. It had seemed like maybe a half hour.

“I'm assuming it's safe to say you and Mr. Grant hit it off?”

“Yeah. But wait—I completely forgot about it while I was talking to him, but he never said anything about a part in a movie. Addie was certain it was about a part.”

“I'll be honest with you,” Hal said. We were making our way across the parking lot, toward his car. “Now I'm not sure there is a movie after all. I think Cary Grant is interested in
you
.”

“No way, Hal.” I shooed the suggestion away like a gnat. “No way!”

CHAPTER THREE

Lunch, Not Marriage

B
ut I was wrong.

“Good morning. Would you like to listen to the
Daily Word
with me?”

It was him. That
voice
. It was the very next morning at a quarter to
eight
. Addie was in the shower. There was a phone in the guest room where I slept, so I'd answered it.

“Who is this?” I knew.

“Why, this is Cary Grunt,” he replied.

“It's very early, Cary Grunt.”

“But is it
too
early?”

“No, I don't think so. I'm awake now.”

“Do you have a radio?”

“Yes. But to turn it on, first I'll have to get out of bed.”

“Would you mind?”

“Nope. Be right back.”

I happily sprang out of bed and turned on the radio, and found the station that aired the
Daily Word
. It was an inspirational program that I'd never heard before. “Do you have something to do with this program?” I asked.

“No, it just addresses a lot of the questions that interest me. I thought you might find something in it too, since religion was such a contentious issue in your family.”

“I hope I didn't give you the wrong impression about my parents,” I said. “They had their disputes about religion, but they're the kindest, most loving people you'll ever meet.”

“I don't have a single doubt about that,” he said. “It has to be obvious to anyone who meets you that you came from a very loving family.” (What a sweet thing to say!) “Anyway, I still think you might enjoy this program. It doesn't push a particular point of view. It's about basic goodness and right behavior.”

“I like that.”

After we devoted five or ten minutes of silent listening, Cary asked if I was free for lunch that day.

“I can't,” I lied. “I'm working.”

“What time do you finish?”

“I don't know.” Another lie.

“If I give you my phone numbers, will you call me when you finish work?”

“I'm sorry. I'm afraid I already have plans tonight.” Lie.

“Well then, would you mind if I tried you some other time?”

“Okay. Thanks. Thanks so much for calling.”

I don't know why I lied. Yes I do. I was scared. Overwhelmed. By him; by my response to him. What was this? What was going on? This wasn't a script from one of Cary Grant's movies. This was real life. It was really happening. And it was happening to me.

The next morning, the phone rang again. Same time: seven forty-five
sharp.
And it rang again the next day and the day after that. With friends like Cary Grant, who needed alarm clocks? Except this was one alarm clock that was music to my ears. I happily talked his ear off, and for every answer I gave, he had three more questions, but I never felt like I was being grilled. When someone is so full of questions, you usually feel either like they're trying to get something from you, or they're flattering you, or they're compensating for their lack of conversational skills by peppering you with inquiries. None of that applied to Mr. Grant. Oh,
Cary.
It still felt a little funny calling Cary Grant “Cary,” but that was wearing off quickly and in a way that unsettled me. Yes, he was becoming “Cary” to me.

Oh dear.

He didn't just inquire about my availability for lunch or dinner, either. With sincere interest, he would ask: “How's the family?” “How's your brother's music career going?” “How's Bangs?”

Or “What are you up to today?”

“Today? I'm auditioning for a part in a movie.”

“What movie?”

“I'm not sure. They haven't told me. I don't even know what to wear.”

“Something simple and elegant.”

“What if it's a comedy?”

“Still simple and elegant. That's how one should be in all things.”

“And how should I act?”

“Act?” he said. “Don't act. Just be yourself. You're already a star. If you try to be something else, it'll only be a lesser version of you.”

“How did you get so smart?” I asked.

“I've been around a long time.”

“What if I don't get the part?”

“If you don't get the part, it wasn't right for you.”

“I'll try to remember that.”

“You're not free for lunch, are you?”

Yes, I was. But I wasn't about to have lunch with Cary Grant. The more I talked to him, the more I liked him, and the more I liked him the more nervous he made me.

“Why have you been sitting home watching TV with
me
for the last few months when you could have been having dinner with
Cary Grant
?” Addie asked me one night, visibly frustrated.

“I don't know,” I said.

“I don't understand you.”

“How could you?
I
don't even understand me. Nice Jewish boys my own age—those I know how to handle. But a dashing, magnetic fifty-eight-year-old matinee idol with three ex-wives notched on his bedpost? I seem to have misplaced my instruction manual.”

“Stop playing hard to get!” Addie commanded. “He's just asking you to have lunch with him.”

But I
wasn't
playing hard to get. I was playing possum. Whenever I tried to make sense of the situation, my mind turned into a giant vat of spaghetti. How could I be sure he wasn't just playing with me? Even worse, what if he was
serious
?

He was getting harder to resist and it was making me crazy. It was making my friends crazy, too, but for different reasons. “What is
wrong
with you?” demanded Darlene, my gorgeous friend who was a top model. “The dreamiest man in the world calls you every day, and you refuse to go out with him. Give him my number!” Darlene pled, only half-joking. “
I'll
be happy to go out with him.”

My married friend Mary Gries, whom I'd met in acting class, was of a different opinion, though. “Dyan, always listen to yourself. If you don't feel comfortable going, there must be a reason.” Mary was a number of years older than me, and I always appreciated her big-sisterly advice. In her marriage, she had experienced many ups and downs. “But,” she added, “don't make too big a deal out of it.”

My male friends from acting class, however, were rabidly opposed. To listen to them talk, they apparently had confused Cary Grant with Jack the Ripper. “You cannot trust a man who's been married three times,” my friend Bobby asserted with such authority you'd think he'd written a sociology dissertation on the subject. “One time, maybe. Two,
possibly
. But
three
? I would say anybody who's been married three times suffers from deeply rooted intimacy issues.”

Skip Denning, a hunky fellow actor I'd met soon after I'd gotten to Los Angeles, was dead set against it too, though like Bobby he wasn't exactly a neutral bystander; his long-standing crush on me remained unrequited, and I imagined this was more a blow to his ego than his heart. “He'll try to get you hooked on LSD, Dyan! Do you want to wind up in a prison for the criminally insane, hallucinating about clowns with machetes? He'll use it to brainwash you! What if he's working for the Russians?”

Skip may have been an alarmist on the subject, but Cary's flirtation with mind-bending drugs was real enough. This I learned when Skip backed up his testimony by prejudicially giving me an article from
Look
magazine. In it, Cary admitted to taking LSD, but he was emphatic that it was for the absolutely serious purpose of gaining insight into his own psyche and that of others. This I believed. Cary was a seeker. I was beginning to understand that about him. It was probably the most important thing we had in common.

I told Skip that I found the article wonderfully informative, and I thanked him for sending it. “What about the age difference?” he demanded, practically snarling. “The guy is
sixty
years old! He's an
old man
!”

“Skip, he's fifty-eight and he's proposing
lunch,
not
marriage
.” I was getting the impression that Skip had drawn a comparison between Cary Grant and himself, and in Skip's mind, Cary came out second.

The fact is, the age difference didn't bother me. What bothered me was that I was starting to have feelings for Cary Grant. I didn't want to have feelings for Cary Grant. Feelings get hurt. No-feelings don't.

“Is lunch today a possibility?” Another day, another segment of the
Daily Word
.

“No, I'll be busy until seven, and then I've got dinner plans,” I said. (
TV dinner
plans—Addie and I would be heating up a Swanson's and watching
Gunsmoke.
)

The next day, undeterred, he called again, sounding mildly exasperated. “Dyan,” he said firmly, “I want you to have lunch with me today.”

“Oh, I have to run over to the Fox lot to do some looping.”

“On what film?” he asked. “I'll call over there and get it rescheduled.”

“No, wait!” I told him. Cornered. I was fresh out of excuses and worn out with lies. White lies, yes, but my good upbringing had almost completely crippled me when it came to lying. If you put me on a polygraph when I was trying to tell the most innocuous fib, the thing would probably blow up.

I rattled some magazine pages for effect. “I was wrong! I see from my
calendar
that it's not 'til tomorrow.”

“That's wonderful! I'll see you at the studio commissary at one. I'll leave a guest pass for you at the main gate.”

He hung up before I could change my mind. I riffled through my wardrobe. Nothing seemed right to wear to lunch with Cary Grant. I poked a shaky finger into the phone dial and called Addie at work to borrow an outfit from her. I knew just which one.

T
he commissary was bustling and bursting to the seams with important people. I felt like the little match girl walking into this pantheon of stars, but when I told the maître d' that I was there to have lunch with Cary Grant he bowed as if he were my personal valet who would get whipped if he didn't perform up to snuff. “This way, madam, I've been expecting you,” he said with a sweeping gesture. Our progress was interrupted by none other than the man who thought he was Cary Grant but wasn't: Skip Denning. Seeing me, he leapt out of his seat and barred our way like a nightclub bouncer.

“Dyan!” he called. “What are you doing here?”

“I'm having lunch with a friend.”

“Cary Grant?” he said with a smirk, clearly assuming that Cary had by now lost interest in me.

“As a matter of fact—”

“Dyan!” It was Cary, calling to me from the entrance to a private dining area. Skip's posture absolutely crumpled as I said good-bye and went to join Cary and his retinue. “Let me introduce you around!” he cried, as if I were visiting royalty.

I shook hands with Milton Greene, the renowned photographer (famous for his iconic images of Marilyn Monroe); Bob Arthur, the renowned movie producer; Delbert Mann, a well-known film director; and Gig Young, an immediately recognizable actor. They made room for me between Cary and Milton and plunged right back into their conversation—a scene-by-scene analysis of the movie they were just about to wrap,
That Touch of Mink,
starring Cary Grant, of course, and Doris Day.

It was a lot of shoptalk, very technical for my purposes, so I smiled and listened and nodded until my facial muscles stung. The conversation churned on right through dessert and coffee. As lunch drew to a close, Cary was summoned away to take a phone call. Before he left, he leaned close, looked at me with those big brown eyes, and whispered, “I have to leave for a moment. I hope you'll join us when I come back.”

He walked off, and I turned to find Milton smiling at me. He had overheard.

“What did he mean by that?” I asked, completely lost.

“I think he wants you to join the conversation,” Milton said.

But I felt like the newest member of an old club. Joining in would mean turning all of the attention onto myself, and I didn't want to do that. So I smiled some more, and nodded some more, and listened some more. I had a sharp sensation that I was under review. Well, what could you expect? Any woman introduced as Cary's lunch date was bound to be subjected to serious scrutiny. It was a little disconcerting, though.

Cary returned a few minutes later and, with lunch concluded, invited me to the set to watch him film a few scenes. “It'll be nice for you,” he said. “And I'll introduce you to Doris.”
Doris Day?
I felt like Dorothy in the Land of Oz. I was processing all this when he added, “And I really don't want to let you go.”

I really don't want to let you go.

Did he really say that? To me? Yes, he said that! What did he mean by that?

My mind was about to go into overdrive.

He drove us to the set in his silver Rolls-Royce. I petted the leather upholstery. I felt like the queen sitting next to the king.

Once in the soundstage, he seated me right behind the camera in the canvas-backed chair emblazoned with his name.

Have you ever walked on stilts, Dyan? . . . It gives you a very different view of the world.

I wasn't on stilts, but I was viewing the world from Cary Grant's chair.

They were about to shoot a bedroom scene. Delbert Mann, the director, adjusted the lighting, peered through the camera lens, and conferred briefly with the cinematographer. Then Doris Day appeared. A peppering of scarlet welts covered her face, making her look like she had buried her head in a mound of red army ants. That startled me for a second. Even though I had been on my share of film and TV sets, it was still a little jarring for me when reality and fantasy clashed like that. Doris crossed the room, tucked herself into bed, and smiled pleasantly. Cary joined her, sitting at the edge of the bed, and Delbert Mann yelled, “Action!”