Dropped Names (31 page)

“Shall I turn out the lights?”

“You're going?”

“Yes.”

“Will you kiss me good night?”

Her face was turned away from mine. As she began to move it toward me, I leaned over and kissed her cheek.

“Good night.”

“Oh baby, I left my slippers downstairs. Would you get them for me please?” I did, lingered for a while, then climbed the stairs and placed them by her bed. When I leaned over and said good night again, she turned her face fully to me and looked up.

“Will you call me tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“But not in the morning, baby. I don't see a lot of mornings.”

I kissed her forehead, smoothed her hair off her face, pulled the covers up over her, and left her to sleep. Then I said good night to a bodyguard standing in the driveway and drove home.

Round 5—Frank.

I
did not call her the next day. If for no other reason than I was up and out long before she would reach consciousness and because I knew that a relationship with Elizabeth Taylor was quicksand. And there wasn't going to be anybody standing by with a tree branch to pull me out. I determined that I would not be seduced and commanded. I was going to throw in the towel and step out of the ring.

Our mutual friend called a few days later.

“Why haven't you called Elizabeth? She's hurt.”

“I will. I'm working.”

“Well, call her. Just to say hello. She's lonely. But not before one p.m.”

I did. We connected on the phone. She was sweet, saucy, and shrewd.

“Did you get a good deal on your movie?”

“We're still apart on the money.”

“How much?”

“A hundred thousand.”

“Tell them you want a present.”

“I don't wear diamonds.”

“Pick out a painting. Let them buy it for you. You pay no commission and it grows in value.”

“When are you going to work again?” I asked.

“Oh baby, it's too hard for me now.”

“Well, I'm going to send you something. It's called
Sorry, Wrong Number
. It's the old Barbara Stanwyck vehicle about a woman who's an invalid and trapped in bed, alone in her house, when she hears a voice downstairs. It's someone coming to kill her sent by her husband. It's a great part for you.”

“All my husbands wanted to kill me, baby. Would you bring me a copy and we can watch it together?”

“I'll send it over by messenger. Watch it and tell me what you think.”

“Oh baby, let's watch it together. I want to hear what
you
think. Nobody is offering me anything good and you have such great taste.”

“Sure.”

Round 6—Elizabeth.

B
arbara Stanwyck never came out of her wrapper. It didn't get watched the night I brought it over and was never referred to again. We had a light supper and talked in the living room. She was the best pal a man could want. Warm, funny, and completely committed to whatever the subject. Her maid, happy her boss had a beau, hovered nearby, cleared the dishes, excused herself, and said good night.

The same ritual.

Up the stairs.

Past the bathroom.

To the bed.

Water. Two pills.

“Stay with me.” Curling up close spoon fashion, I wrapped my arms around her and looked at the room I had found myself in. A woman's bedroom. So inviting. So frightening. When she fell asleep I picked up her caftan, put it on the chair, and left.

As I passed her bodyguard again at the top of the driveway, he said:

“Miss Taylor is a wonderful lady. So kind to me and my family. But she's very lonely.”

Once down from the hills and back to my small hotel, I decided it was enough. We had had innumerable phone conversations, a dinner out, and two evenings at her house. I had resisted her suggestion that we go out to another restaurant or an event.

“Hardly anybody asks me to their house, honey. Everybody thinks I'm busy.”

And for the next several weeks, that's what I was—busy.

Round 7—Frank.

T
hen began a bizarre series of phone calls with messages left to “my little angel . . .”

As I left my hotel, the desk clerk would say:

“Mr. Langella, Miss Taylor needs to speak with you.”

“Take a message.”

Coming in at night.

“Mr. Langella, Miss Taylor has left several messages and asked me to have you call whenever you get in.”

Friends were calling:

“Elizabeth says you're dating.”

“Why aren't you returning Elizabeth's calls? She's hurt.”

“Hi, Elizabeth. It's Frank.”

Round 8—Elizabeth.

I
would be leaving L.A. in about ten days and decided to meet with her one last time, but on my own turf.

“How would you like to come over to my hotel? It's a small private one. I have a suite with a full kitchen. I'll make us some pasta, crunchy bread, and a fattening dessert.”

“You're on.”

“You're not going to be late!”

“Me?”

We picked a date and about two hours before her scheduled arrival, the phone rang.

“Miss Taylor wants to know if she should bring some Red Bull.”

“No, I bought her some.”

One hour prior:

“Miss Taylor would like to know if she can bring Sugar [her dog].”

“No!”

Miss Taylor arrived for our eight o'clock date at precisely eight o'clock, sans Sugar.

Round 9—Frank.

A
nd there in my hotel suite, in my jeans and T-shirt, cooking Elizabeth dinner with her curled up on my couch in slacks and a blouse, watching me, I had one of the most wonderful evenings I have ever spent with a woman. She was full of questions about me and listening to my answers with rapt attention. No man could possibly have asked for better. Wearing very little makeup, her hair soft and easy, her voice low and soothing, she opened up about Richard, Mike, Larry, and the gang.

Were they stories she'd told before? Of course, but you would have never thought so. They were told with practiced skill and sincerity and even a slight wonderment, as if she were discovering something new and profound about herself right along with you.

“Larry wanted seven million. When I got sick, he came to the hospital and took my hand. ‘I don't want the money,' he said. ‘Good, baby,' I told him ‘'cause I don't have it.' ”

O
f Mike Todd:

“I would love to wait till he had a room full of guys downstairs. Then I'd call out, ‘Mike, could you come up here for a minute?' He was a bull. Never said no.”

O
f Eddie Fisher:

“The schmuck! But he brought Debbie and me back together.”

O
f Monty Clift:

“I got him together with Roddy [McDowall].”

O
f John Warner:

“A nice man. But a mistake. I got so fat. We're friends now.”

O
f Richard Burton:

“Richard loved me.”

A
nd then:

“I almost died. I was on the table. I left my body. It was all white light and I saw Mike. He said, ‘Elizabeth, it's not time. You have to go back. You have more to do.' ” Sincere and committed as she seemed, I had the sense it was not me she was talking to but a room full of ghosts.

W
e sat at my little dining table and ate a meal of mozzarella and tomato, penne with garlic, broccoli, and olive oil and crunchy bread. The pasta was somewhat dry because I had forgotten to pour the marinara sauce on it but she ate it happily without comment. I followed it up with blueberries and vanilla ice cream for dessert, which she ate with equal enthusiasm.

I did make one reference to her work:

“That scene in
Suddenly, Last Summer
where you're pleading with Monty to save you is one of your best,” I said.

“Monty was so sweet with me. And George too. We shot pool at the table between takes.” She was referring, of course, to
A Place in the Sun
.

After dinner, I cleaned up and she returned to the couch where I joined her. It was there she delivered her knockout punch.

“I want to leave here,” she said, reaching for my hand. “I want to find a place that's normal. Like a farm or a country house. Animals. No more of this shit. I'm finished. Let's go east and look for something.”

She was fragile, tender, and extremely vulnerable as she moved in close to me. A small, sweet woman who wanted a man to be with her, protect her, and fill a void as deep as the deepest ocean. No man could possibly stay afloat in it. I knew that when I leaned in to kiss her, but still I kissed her.

At 4 a.m., when I closed my hotel room door and turned in the hall to take her downstairs to the garage, she pulled off her pashmina scarf and threw it over the top of my head, tossing one half over my shoulder.

Quietly, she said, “Keep it for me, baby, I'll pick it up next time I come over.”

I did not respond. Like the true and valiant fighter she was, she took a step back, looked at me hard and clear, then turned and moved toward the elevator.

When we got down to the subbasement, I said:

“The car is up one level. You stay here and I'll bring it down. I don't want you walking up a ramp unnecessarily.”

I found it, got in, started to pull down, but stopped and looked at her, standing and holding on to an iron railing, staring straight ahead, waiting to be transported by someone, anyone, somewhere, anywhere.

On the way home she sat silently, her hand on my thigh. I got lost in the Hills and she could not help me find the house she had lived in for over thirty years. When at last I recognized the gates and pulled in, she squeezed my hand tightly but said nothing.

I turned off the engine and we sat in silence for a long while. Then she said:

“It's not going to work with us, is it, baby?”

“No!”

“Why not?”

“You'd have me for lunch!”

She laughed.

“Keep the scarf,” she said. “I've only worn it once.”

I got out and came around the car, but her bodyguard had already opened the door on her side and was helping her out. He asked for my keys.

“I'll be glad to turn it around for you, sir,” he said.

The front door opened. Sugar came scampering out to greet her mistress as Elizabeth's maid hovered in the doorway.

I picked up the dog, put her in Elizabeth's arms, leaned down to kiss her good night, then turned and stepped out of the ring, abandoning our insignificant bout; leaving no discernable winner. The gates opened and I drove away inhaling the pungent odor of her scarf on the seat next to me.

A decade later Elizabeth's magnificent violet eyes would close forever. Eyes set into a face so ravishing at birth, the rest of us could barely look away from them. Is it any wonder those eyes could not find a way of looking inward? Most everything she had amassed in a lifetime of excess would be greedily picked over, auctioned off, resold, and displayed. Had she elected, while still alive, to pitch a tent, throw open the flaps, and begin the circus herself, it would have made her richer than ever. But not rich enough. The woman who had often said, “I can't remember a day when I wasn't famous,” had died fame's inexorable victim.

The movie queen I left standing in her driveway with a maid, a bodyguard, and a lapdog, the gates closing in front of her, was going to climb the stairs, drop her clothes on the floor, take two pills, and get into bed. It would be light soon. Her eyes growing heavy, drifting off to sleep, she would again miss the coming dawn. But no more than she would miss the pashmina scarf she had draped over my shoulders. No more than she would miss me. She would awake that afternoon continuing her indiscriminate search for the one thing she could never and would never have: Enough!

RACHEL “BUNNY” MELLON

“I
t is the blacks who have real soul. The blacks who understand what love is. All the pain they have suffered, all the indignities, has given them nobility and grace. Since I was a little girl I always looked to them for strength and warmth. I want to die in their arms on the farm in Virginia.”

Bunny Mellon will turn 102 in 2012; and this singular woman will most likely, in the not too distant future, be granted her wish. Although she is not yet residing among the subjects of this book, I would like to share a few of my memories of her with you, and she has graciously given me permission to do so.

S
he was born Rachel Lambert on August 9, 1909, to the head of the Warner/Lambert Pharmaceutical Company; one of his three children. In 1943 she married Stacy Lloyd. They divorced in 1946. Two years later she married banking heir Paul Mellon, taking her two small children, Eliza and Stacy, with her.

Bunny's life is privileged beyond the imagination of most people. The wealth enormous and the perks extraordinary. But despite that, she lives by this simple maxim:

“Nothing should be noticed.”

That this very private woman should have found herself world-famous for fifteen minutes as she approached her one-hundredth birthday is so at odds with her nature that the absurdity of it was certainly not lost, even on her.

She had been paid a visit by an ambitious politician named John Edwards, who had been introduced to her by the decorator Ryan Huffman. Senator Edwards and his wife were anxious to be the next President and First Lady. “He came to see me when he was running. And I decided to contribute to his campaign. I thought he was very real and very bright. What's all the fuss about?”

She was, of course, referring to the firestorm that ensued over John Edwards's sex life, illegitimate child, ultimate separation from his wife, and four-hundred-dollar haircuts. Her financial support of Senator Edwards dragged her into the limelight in a way she had rarely experienced.

“Well, I suppose it's my own damn fault,” she told me, “he was so attractive. White shirt, white pants, sleeves rolled up. And you know I'm weak on good looks.”

There is not much else Bunny Mellon is weak on; and her greatest strength, her most profound gift, is loyalty. I have counted on it unconditionally throughout my adult life.

Just as I have counted on the fact that when I visited her, she would always leave a book at my bedside table she thought might interest me or send me a handmade quilt from Nantucket or a scarf from Paris. Easy for the rich to do such things. See it. Buy it. Write a note. A driver delivers it or an assistant mails it. But Bunny
meant
it.

Raised to have impeccable manners and treat all human beings with respect and consideration, she is a model of decency, kindness, forbearance, and compassion, but by no means a pushover or a head-in-the-sand socialite. Selective in her close friendships, clever in her dealings with the press, brilliant during her fifty-year marriage to Paul, and flawless in her discretion during her friendship with Jackie Kennedy; she is a woman who, it seems to me, has done just about everything right.

I
t was a hot sunny afternoon in the summer of 1961 when I first met her behind the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, Massachusetts. I was apprenticing at this legendary theater, learning to build sets, shop for props, and anything else assigned to me while taking acting workshops and playing roles in afternoon children's theater. At night, I worked backstage for the touring productions passing through with stars of the era.

I was stenciling a flat in a fleur-de-lis pattern in the back parking lot, sweating profusely and covered in paint, when a female voice said: “Excuse me, I wonder if you could help me, I'm looking for my daughter, Eliza?”

“I think she's in the costume shop,” I said, not looking up.

“Am I allowed to go inside the theater?”

“I don't know. But I'll go get her if you'd like.”

“Oh thank you, that's very kind of you.”

I put down my paintbrush, looked up and my twenty-three-year-old eyes saw a woman the likes of whom I'd never encountered before. She was dressed in a deep blue, heavy linen skirt, white boatneck pullover, with a blue sailor hat on her head and espadrilles on her feet, and she appeared to me a visitor from another planet. Face free of makeup, hair soft and easy, with a picnic basket in her hand, she gave the impression of having just been sketched on an artist's pad and brought to life for a summer's afternoon; tall, elegant, and extraordinarily soft-spoken. Not a beauty, but a woman with the power to make you feel she was.

Liza came bounding out of the costume shop. Not yet twenty, awkward and shy, she was the antithesis of her mother; a tomboy with a great horse laugh and a devilish sense of humor.

“Hi Mummy. You've met my friend Frank.”

“Yes, he's a painter.”

Came the guffaw and Liza said, looking at me: “Oh sure he is, and I'm Madame Chanel, didn't you know?!”

“Liza, you've got to go and wash your hands.”

“Be right back,” she said breezily and took off for the slop sink.

For the next ten minutes, Bunny asked me where I was born, did I have brothers or sisters, did I want to be an actor, and wove a seductive web in which I willingly became entangled. A woman beautifully schooled in the art of direct and specific interest in another at first meeting.

Liza returned and off they went to have a picnic nearby; no doubt under a tree in the shade with cloth napkins and chilled white wine.

I
n the summer of 1961 Eliza Lloyd was a vibrant, fragile young girl and I a high-strung, sensitive young man. We instantly formed a strong bond. It was through my initial relationship with her and my subsequent friendship with Bunny that I found myself sleeping in the beds of their staggering residences in Virginia, Antigua in the British West Indies, Cape Cod, Paris, Washington, D.C, New York, and Nantucket. I entered their lives with very little life experience of my own; if not exactly wet behind the ears then certainly very, very damp. Bunny chose to adopt me. And she had a willing pupil, anxious to better himself, learn the world, and understand how to behave in it. I was invited to their Cape house often that first summer and was dubbed “Liza's friend from the playhouse” for the rest of it. Bunny reached out her hand to me, took mine, and vastly improved my gait. And she did it mostly by example.

One afternoon, sitting down by the dock with a group of Liza's young friends from school, Bunny asked me to read aloud a couple of paragraphs in a book of philosophy. When I came to the name of the French philosopher René Descartes, totally unfamiliar to me, I spoke it as I saw it. Dess-Cart-Tees. My pronunciation was greeted with derisive laughter and dismissive comments. I wasn't sure why, but continued reading and later, as the afternoon wore on with swimming and sailing, which I watched from the shore because I was neither a good swimmer nor a good sailor, Bunny said, “Frank, would you read me that passage again? It was so interesting, particularly the part that refers to Descartes.” And she pronounced it properly as in: Daycart.

She had found a way to correct my ignorance and preserve my dignity as casually as if she were opening a packet of sugar. What she had done, of course, was open my mind. And into it, she began to pour generous granules of knowledge in all the arenas I needed it most.

When I asked her how to handle myself at a cocktail party with people I didn't know, she said: “It's very simple. Just repeat the last few words of whatever has just been said to you in the form of a question and you'll have no trouble. For instance, if someone says to you ‘I just went to an art show and saw the most fascinating painting' you then say: ‘Oh really, the most fascinating painting?' And you'll be off and running.” And this:

“Be careful of people who come toward you with their arms flung wide to embrace you. It's a trap.”

N
ot that I ever found her to be trapped by anyone for long. She has chosen her friends carefully throughout her life and sometimes they reward her loyalty in the most astonishing ways. Perhaps the most astonishing to me came from the French clothing designer Hubert de Givenchy.

At a small birthday lunch for Bunny one summer; just me, Jackie O., and Eliza, the doorbell rang at the Cape house precisely the moment we sat down to lunch. Buds, the family butler, told Bunny that a gentleman had arrived from Msr. Givenchy and needed to deliver a package directly to her. Bunny clasped her hands in delight and in came a man in a dark suit and tie, holding a small, beautifully ribboned box. He placed it before Bunny and said,
“De la part de Monsieur Givenchy,”
and stepped back. “Oh how
pritty
,” Bunny said as she undid the ribbon and lifted the top of the box. Inside was a small glass case and inside that was a pound of sweet butter.

“Hubert knows how much I love this butter,” she said matter-of-factly. “It's from his cows on his farm.” The man smiled and left.

“Do you suppose he flew all the way from France, got a car, and drove all the way out here?” I said.

“Sure,” Jackie said. “It's Bunny's birthday.”

And we ate what I calculated to be an approximately $20,000 bar of butter.

Not much compared to a little bauble given to her by her good friend, the Tiffany jeweler Johnny Schlumberger on another birthday. We were sitting on her Syrie Maugham couch in the Cape house when she felt something buried in its cushions.

“Oh that's where that went,” she said, pulling out an enormous brooch worth somewhere in the neighborhood of a quarter million dollars, “I thought I'd lost it.”

O
n New Year's Eve of 1968 I was spending the holiday and my birthday, as usual during that period, with Eliza and the family. After everyone had gone to bed Bunny put on some music for herself and began to dance around the small pond in the open garden of the Antigua house. Being a bit more than just tipsy, she fell backward over a potted plant and broke her ankle. I was summoned to her room at 3 a.m. to find her lying on her bed, leg up on a pillow, and her ankle bound tightly with a Balenciaga scarf. Paul was sitting on a chair beside the bed looking extremely relieved to see me come in. He instantly got up and said:

“Bun, I'm going to bed. Frank will keep you company.”

“Gosh, Paul, it hurts very badly.”

“Well you brought it on yourself, dear.”

So I got a blanket, and spent that particular New Year's Eve asleep on the floor next to the bed; waking every few hours to give her painkillers until they ran out.

The next morning we were accompanied to the Mellon plane, which would take us to New York, by the local doctor, who bound her leg tightly in some sheet-like material, put large pieces of white tape over it, strapped it to the inside wall of the plane, and left. Shortly after we were airborne, Bunny turned to me and said: “Frank, would you please go to the back and find me a wide short glass of some kind?”

“Do you want something to drink?” I asked.

“No, just the glass.”

I got one, returned with it, and sat down.

“I wonder if you'd mind leaving me alone for just a few moments?”

I did and in a short while, her voice rang out in the most charming, lilting manner: “You can come back now.” When I returned, she had draped the Balenciaga scarf over the glass, handed it to me and asked if I would be good enough to empty it into the toilet in the rear of the plane. I carried the glass, the scarf, and its warm contents there as I was asked, returned to my seat, and handed her back the scarf.

“Thank you,” she said. “I suppose now we can consider ourselves very good friends.”

I knew she was in great pain, had no strong medication left, and was enduring the bumpy ride home with some difficulty but she never for a moment looked as if she were anywhere but at a lovely soothing concert in Carnegie Hall.

The next morning her broken ankle was repaired, and after her operation, I walked home from the hospital, passed by my agent's office, and went in as a surprise. “What are you doing in town?” he said.

“Oh a friend of mine broke her ankle and we had to come back to get her an operation, so I'm back a week early.”

“Well Frank and Eleanor Perry are looking for someone to play the third lead in their new movie. Here's the script, sit here and read it and I'll call over to see if they'll meet you.”

I did. It was a great part and I wanted to play it. The next morning I went in, read, and got it. Had Bunny not broken her ankle two nights earlier I would have still been in Antigua, swimming in the Caribbean, unemployed and nearly broke. Happenstance had intervened. The film,
The Diary of a Mad Housewife
, was an enormous success in 1970 and launched my movie career.

L
iza and I moved on to other partners, marriages, and divorces, but retained our friendship. Tragically she was hit by a truck in Greenwich Village in 2000, and sent into a coma. Bunny set up a room for her at Oak Spring Farms, in Upperville, Virginia, the Mellon home base. It sits among 4,000 magnificent acres with its own private one-mile airstrip and personal jet.