Full Service (11 page)

Everyone who was anyone in Hollywood at the time got an invitation to Hearst Castle. If you were asked over for a weekend it meant that you had made it. It was the dream of every star, every producer, every writer, and every wannabe to be invited there. You would arrive at about midmorning on Saturday, spend the night, and then leave after tea on Sunday afternoon. Hearst himself welcomed us in the library an hour or two after we arrived and then got us settled into our guest bedrooms. He was polite but pretty lukewarm to me, mainly, I guess, because I was still a kid. There were far more important people around for him to fuss over. But his girlfriend, Marion Davies, was charming and welcoming, and she and I struck up a friendship that weekend that would endure for many years.

Hearst’s vast, sprawling complex overlooking the Pacific near San Simeon on the Central Coast of California was the inspiration for Xanadu, the fabulous house in Orson Welles’s immortal
Citizen Kane.
Not in my wildest imagination did I ever dream that a place like that existed. I was truly out of my depths. My head still swirls when I think back on that incredible weekend. The guest list consisted of Hollywood royalty and there were more movie stars in attendance than I could count. The luxurious bedrooms, the wood paneling, the Italian marble, the imported European fixtures, the paintings, the tapestries, the Roman pool, the extravagant meals with the bewildering array of glassware and cutlery at each place setting, the cavalcade of butlers, waiters, and maids, the fancy food and wine, the stunning fashions, the dancing, the music, the libraries, the private zoo, the beautiful movie theater, the gardens, the lawns, the private airfield, the flashy automobiles, Mr. Hearst’s magnificent personal yacht moored at his personal jetty at his personal beach. It is all still a magnificent montage of breathtaking wonders, even now, decades later. The memories I have of it are from a lost era, of another time, of a place relegated to a glorious and irretrievable past.

One Saturday afternoon on another weekend away from camp I was strolling down one of the main arteries through Hollywood when a guy who was out cruising stopped and picked me up. He introduced himself as Frank Horn. We went over to his place, where we spent the weekend together. He was movie actor Cary Grant’s private secretary and apparently he was responsible for coercing Grant to leave the East Coast and come to California, where he became one of the most successful and sought-after male romantic stars of all time. Horn was originally a stage manager. He had met Grant when Grant was a sixteen-year-old singer in a variety show in New York. At that time Grant still used his real name, Archie Leach. He had been sent over to Broadway from his native England to perform in the show and Horn had taken him under his wing. Horn was a sassy old queen with a naughty sense of humor. He told me that he often liked to walk his dog around the neighborhood wearing nothing but an overcoat. Whenever he passed a cute young guy or someone he knew he’d flash them and roar with laughter at their horrified reaction. He wanted to know whether I would like to meet Cary Grant and, of course, I agreed, so a couple of weekends later I was back in town and he took me over to Grant’s beach house near Malibu.

Cary Grant was as suave in real life as he was on the screen. He was the quintessential Mr. Smooth. He was forty years old when I met him and everything he did was executed in precise, dapper, and debonair style. Perhaps the most well-known films that he had starred in by then were
Gunga Din
and
The Philadelphia Story
. He would walk into the room and the ambience would change immediately. You instinctively felt a presence, an indefinable sense of classiness, whenever he appeared. He was married to Barbara Hutton at the time, although she wasn’t around when I met him. That did not surprise me. The day I was introduced to him he was actually sharing the house with another actor, Randolph Scott. Need I say more?

Randy Scott took an instant liking to me. He was a ruggedly handsome man of forty-six who, well over six feet tall, towered over me. He had carved a very successful career for himself primarily in Westerns, with more than fifty films to his credit. He was a big guy but as sweet as can be. He was married to Patricia Stillman, who was also not around that day, and it was patently clear to me that he and Cary Grant were more than mere friends. The proof arrived that first weekend that I spent with them. The three of us got into a lot of sexual mischief together. Aside from the usual sucking—neither of them were into fucking, at least not fucking guys, or at least not me—what I remember most about that first encounter was that Scott really liked to cuddle, and talk, and was very gentle. Grant was nice as well, though Scott was even more of a gentleman. He even drove me back down the coast to Camp Elliott in San Diego on Sunday evening—a four-hour drive each way, undertaken during the difficulties of wartime gas rationing.

I really liked those two men, and they were obviously very good for one another. In future years I would be seeing a lot of them. Theirs was a relationship that would last a long time, with the two of them eventually sharing a home together behind the famed Chateau Marmont Hotel in Hollywood as well as the Malibu beach house. I don’t know if their wives ever knew what was going on between them. I never asked.

On another local weekend pass I was on my way to pick up a pretty sixteen-year-old girl I had met in the nearby town of El Cajon, near San Diego. I really had the hots for her and planned on taking her downtown, where I intended to rent a room at a once plush hotel on Broadway called the San Diego. We duly met and went there, both of us eager to hop into the sack. As we walked through the door I was surprised to see my fellow Marine, movie idol Tyrone Power, in the lobby. Ty was in the Marine Air Wing as a trainee pilot. He was a major box-office star and a heartthrob for millions worldwide. My girlfriend was utterly speechless when she saw him. He was already very famous for his roles in films such as
Jesse James
and
A Yank in the R.A.F.
but his real claim to fame was as a swashbuckling hero in historic movies such as
The Mark of Zorro
and
Blood and Sand
. Power was a dark and strikingly handsome man. His brilliant smile could knock you off your feet. The ladies worshipped him and he had a huge international bevy of fans, both male and female. Every woman on the planet wanted to bed him and every man wanted to look exactly like him. Yet here he was, in a joint notorious for renting rooms by the hour.

With my girl clinging to my arm in awestruck wonder, Power and I planned our strategy. We went up to my rented room for a series of exciting ménage à trois sexcapades. Ty Power was married at the time but I had heard rumors that the relationship was on the rocks, mainly because of meddling from the studio bosses at Twentieth Century Fox, where he was on contract. As we romped around that rather grimy little hotel room that night it was patently clear to me that Ty had a healthy and inventive sexual appetite, but one that was infinitely more focused on me than it was on my girlfriend. I felt truly sorry for the poor guy. It must have been very tough for him to have to perpetually hide who he really was. We would get to know one another very well after the war but, at that time, there was still a great battle to be fought.

B
ACK AT CAMP ELLIOTT
, as my pal Bill Nall’s and my own departure for the Pacific approached, we grew impatient. In between training we spent hours in camp drumming our fingers and tapping our feet, nervously awaiting our call to duty. Fortunately, on weekends, a lot of the guys would still get passes. On Monday mornings we always had the awkward task of covering for buddies who hadn’t made it back in time. At roll call the sergeant would call out names, one at a time. As he did so he’d hear a loud, “Here!,” “Here!,” “Here!”

When he was finished the sergeant would look around, squint at us suspiciously, and then yell, “You little bastards! I called out sixty names and all of them answered! But look around you! There are only twenty of you bozos on parade! Get down and gimme twenty.” And down we would go and do twenty push-ups. Some form of additional disciplinary action would follow, such as cleaning out the latrines and showers, or peeling potatoes, but it was all taken in good spirit. There was no time for unnecessary or excessive punishment. This wasn’t a movie; this was the real thing. There was a war on.

In June 1942, we shipped out on the transporter USS
Rochambeau,
bound for Hawaii. Finally, my role in World War II was about to begin.

O
ur first port of call was Hawaii, where the ship took on more Marines. Adrenaline was building now that we knew we were going into combat. Some of the guys yearned for a little fun and games during the voyage, but any form of sexual hanky-panky was strictly ruled out. And God help anyone in the U.S. Marine Corps who was ever found out to be a homosexual or, in more vulgar lingo, a “queer,” “homo,” “pervert,” “faggot,” “fag,” or “fairy.” Anyone found eyeing up, let alone making a sexual overture toward another man would pay severely for his transgression. He would be beaten to a pulp by his fellow Marines, then subjected to severe military discipline. There was such a stigma against it that heaven help any guy who developed a hard-on while showering with his colleagues. He would be immediately branded a fag and subjected to ridicule and torment. Nevertheless, there were exceptions to this archaic state of affairs. The medical group in the Marine Corps came directly from the Navy. They were known as Navy Corpsmen. As has been the case in navies for centuries, quite a few of them happened to be gay. We called them “pill pushers” or “chancre mechanics.” Chancre was the medical term for the ulcerated lesions guys developed during the early stage of syphilis. Some degree of gay behavior among Corpsmen would be tolerated and overlooked by the top brass but they still had to be careful. I was very good at fitting in and fell into line. As some queens say about being with a bunch of straight people, you have to be careful not to tip your hat.

After Hawaii we headed southwest to American Samoa, where we picked up another large contingent of Marines. After that we went to Fiji, where we underwent extensive training by practicing landing on the beaches. By day and by night, carrying a whopping seventy pounds of gear, we ran up the beach from the surf, dove into whatever natural cover we could find, and then dug foxholes. It was tortuous and exhausting, but it was valuable training. From Fiji we boarded a naval vessel carrying Higgins amphibious landing craft. These were thirty-six-feet-long shallow draft vessels made of plywood, with metal shielding on the sides to protect the men inside from enemy fire. They had a flat metal drop-down ramp in front to allow quick access to the beach. Our ship headed for our next destination, the island of New Caledonia. This was a noncombat zone and an important U.S. staging and supply center. It was there that we were told we were being prepared for a big offensive against the Japanese-held island of Guadalcanal. Although we Paratroopers had been trained for deployment from the sky, because of a lack of nearby airfields, the only way we were going to be able to invade the Pacific Islands was from the sea.

The invasion began in the predawn hours. As silently as we could, thousands of us from the First Marine Division prepared to storm the beaches. There wasn’t enough time to think too much about anything before the Higgins boats were launched from our transport ship. With their motors growling they swiftly pulled up alongside the ship and we were ordered to scamper down netted ladders that had been thrown over the sides of the transport ship. It was agony trying to climb down those things with our heavy kits and rifles. The ladders swung out as the ship listed, then banged against the side of the gray hull. If you weren’t slammed to your death you could easily be crushed between the ship and the Higgins boat. It was a nightmare. Once we were huddled inside the landing craft the engine screamed to full revs and we lurched toward the island. The invasion of Guadalcanal had begun, and there was no turning back.

When the boat reached shore, the front ramp was dropped down and we were ordered to storm the beach. Splashing through the surf, surrounded by a hail of machine gun fire, we ran for our lives. I can hardly remember the details of what happened. It is all a haze now. But somehow or another most of us made it, scampering into the foliage and digging ourselves in. How we survived I still don’t know. There were many brutal close encounters with the Japanese all over the island during the weeks that followed. After some gruesome fighting the First Marine Division was withdrawn from Guadalcanal in December 1942. By then, the island was firmly held by units of the U.S. Army. As we shipped out we tallied our casualties. In our division 650 had been killed, 1,278 wounded, 31 were missing in action, and over 8,000 were suffering from malaria. We Marines shared a camaraderie that is unique in America’s fighting forces. We went through so much together that watertight bonds were formed. We thought of each other as brothers, and those deaths affected us all on a very personal level. On December 18, I leaned over the railings of our naval transport ship watching the island slip beneath the horizon as we made our way toward Australia. I was fortunate to still be alive and unhurt. I was one of the lucky ones.

A
FTER BEING BRIEFLY STATIONED
in New Caledonia I joined the Third Division and, for whatever reason, we spent a month back on Guadalcanal where all hostilities had now ceased. We didn’t mind the interlude but I still have no idea why we spent so much time there. Surprisingly, the forest and undergrowth had already covered most of the signs that a fierce battle had been fought there. In March 1943 we sailed for the island of Vella Lavella in the Solomon Islands group. By now I had received the exciting news from home that my brother Donald had also joined the Marines. I was really pleased to hear this and hoped that we would not only meet up again soon but see some combat action together. In that same letter I also learned that Momma and Phyllis were both doing well. They had given up the apartment in Chicago and moved back to Ottawa with my stepdad. It made better economic sense for them to be in a small town rather than in the big city. They were renting a small house, not too far from where Grandma Boltman lived. I don’t know whether Momma ever saw her anymore now that she and Dad were divorced, and I never ventured to ask. I missed Momma so much, but I knew that she would remain comfortable on the money that was coming in from my Marines pay, augmented by whatever my stepdad was earning