Judy & Liza & Robert & Freddie & David & Sue & Me... (15 page)

How would David solve this problem? Well, he could always sell drama to Judy. They both feasted on it. So it had to be David's suggestion to hire hit men, and given his Las Vegas experience, he knew exactly whom to call. Goons were hired to break down Sid's door and grab the children. They were very effective, and I hope they beat Sid up in the process and left him on the floor in as much pain as he had left me.

As Judy rushed from the hotel with the children and David in tow, she saw me in distress sitting in the phone booth. At the top of her lungs, and she had lungs aplenty, she screamed some of her favorite curse words at me, “You cunt, you cooze!” and everyone in the lobby looked not at her but at me.

The next day headlines of the
New York Post
screamed: “Judy Hires Goons!” and it told the story of the kidnapping without ever once mentioning my name. But it was clear to me that David had concocted a script that was scandalous, in which I had played some traitorous role. My guess is that he'd told Judy I had conspired with Sid, and that's the reason she exited calling me every awful name I'd ever heard, and some that I hadn't. I could just imagine David embroidering the narrative as he conveyed it. So like him to amuse himself in this way.

*   *   *

My husband picked up the pieces and took me home, where I rested in bed for the next three days, but three days was my limit. Bored and less sore than before, I went back to work amid his protests. I was so pill-averse at that point that neither he nor anyone else could get me to take so much as an aspirin. But I was young and strong, and fortunate not to have sustained a permanent injury. The idea of suing Sid Luft never crossed my mind, and had I decided to do that, I wouldn't have gotten any support from Judy because by the time I set foot back in the office, she and Sid were good buddies once more. All I could draw from that idiocy is that if someone was willing to fight with her, she could then conclude that they must care about her. Huh? Weird logic.

F&D were unwilling to judge Sid, at least not out loud. They never once put him down to Judy. From their standpoint Sid was a savior, willing to put up with the hard time with her that they were not, and as I was no longer in the picture full time, having a body in place for her was worth more than money. Sid, on the other hand, hated F&D and wanted to take them to court. He was sure that they had stolen Judy's money, and I'm not sure he was wrong. I saw David endorse Judy's name on the back of many concert checks. He did it right in front of me. It was clear he was copying her signature. What I did not know at the time was what account those checks went into. I still don't. They could have gone into Judy's account just as easily as his. I had no paper trail and did none of the company's bookkeeping. Many years later, however, when David, by then president of Columbia Pictures, was knee-deep in scandal, having been caught forging Cliff Robertson's name on a check he cashed for himself, I realized that it was not only possible that he had cashed Judy's money but most likely that he had. And it was a lot of money, much more than the ten thousand he was trying to steal from Cliff Robertson, perhaps more than a few hundred thousand.

My feeling now is that he stole from Judy to get the money he needed for his and Lee's very lavish lifestyle. It's also possible that he used that money to settle his gambling debts, debts that he would have created with money borrowed in casinos using Judy's name, and paid for with Judy's earnings, for no matter how much David made—and he has to have made millions over the long haul—he never had enough. He was always deeply in debt.

*   *   *

If I learned anything from Sid, it was that there are men who like to live off women. They don't do any of the heavy lifting; they simply set themselves up in a cozy corner and call themselves advisers. In my opinion Sid wasn't fit to shine Judy's shoes. He was neither as smart as David nor nearly as charming. But they had a lot in common. Both were gamblers, hustlers, and liars. Sid liked horses, David, who lived like a pasha, liked expensive homes, the best restaurants, pricey jewelry and clothing. And each bet the farm on being a winner while they were both such losers.

What I most loathed about David—his cheating, his lying, his taking advantage of anyone who allowed it, in other words, his cruelty—had to be as apparent to Freddie as it was to me. I don't know why he was willing to put up with it, except to imagine that he didn't want to go forward alone, and as awful as David was is also as skilled as he was. A year or two before Freddie died, I visited him and we talked about David. I told him I thought that David had stolen huge sums from Judy. I sensed he agreed with me, but he didn't give it up. “Why are you protecting him now?” I asked. Freddie didn't have an answer.

 

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Endings, Beginnings, and Endings

It was time to stop thinking about ending my marriage, and end it. It was so over for four years out of the five, and now I was becoming intolerant of the little things. I was sick of having to dine with my husband's parents once a week. They were refugees with one foot still in Germany, where they had lost many dear relatives to the Holocaust. They were sad, joyless people who doted on their only child, the light of their lives. I dishonored them by never being fully present at dinner. I desperately wanted to be alone. Immersed in self-delusion, I thought my dinners with Judy were more important. I could get Frank and Dean on the phone (for Judy). I was self-congratulatory because they knew my name. I traveled to places I never thought I'd see. Me at the pool of the Beverly Hills Hotel, me sitting at a blackjack table at the Sahara in Las Vegas, me at lunch in the Savoy Grill in London. Not me in a little German restaurant with bad food and a deaf waiter. I was so intolerant, so selfish. I thought I had earned the exciting life I was participating in. What was wrong with that? My perception was adolescent. My values the same. And the truth is that I was chasing after clients and hadn't yet accomplished anything to be proud of. My interaction with big stars came only because of Freddie and David.

Meanwhile, what I had at home was far better: the love of a good man. However, coming from my parents' home, I didn't know what a good man was. I had no role model. So without being able to see what really mattered, I ended the marriage and chose the fast-but-empty lane. In securing the divorce, I ran roughshod over my husband, which was easy to do because he was so patient and kind.

I've blocked out what I said to him. I do remember that he grew silent, made no protest. He didn't try to persuade me to stay. Tutored by his thrifty folks, he asked to keep all our money. The money didn't mean much to me, and I thought he was entitled for what he'd gone through. I agreed without once thinking how I would put down the security for an apartment of my own. I went to Mexico for a “quickie” in Ju
á
rez. The proceeding was conducted in Spanish, and I understood little, somehow an appropriate ending to a marriage I also didn't understand. The irony was complete. I hadn't heard the rabbi on the day I married, and I didn't understand the attorney on the day I divorced.

As well, I didn't realize I was developing a case of hardening of the emotional arteries. All I knew was that I had seen how the beautiful people lived, and I wanted all their trinkets: the houses, the cars, the jewels, and the clothes. When I think back on who I was then, it's hard for me to love that girl, but possible to forgive her. And I would have to forgive her a lot for what she did next.

*   *   *

I had an affair with David Begelman. I gave myself permission to do that because Judy was leaving to work at CBS. David would no longer have her in his backyard; nor would I. We both made it clear that we were staying in New York: he to run the East Coast office, I to take my place as an agent representing Liza. It was our excuse to shake free, if only temporarily. Judy, who had to have a man in her life, put Sid Luft back in place, and they moved into a new home in Brentwood.

With Judy gone, David's attention turned to me. I was flattered. He let me know—by the length of time he held my hand, by the way he appraised me, by his lingering and sometimes smoldering looks—that he was interested, but he didn't make a pass. I think he feared rejection. He was like the kid with his nose pressed against the candy store window. I thought about it a while before I let him know he could enter. And how did it happen? One day while at work I simply took the hand on my shoulder into mine as he stood behind me looking at a contract on my desk. He walked me into his office, locked the door, pressed the button to draw shut the mechanical drapes—signaling to his secretary that he didn't want to be disturbed—and undressed me. It was midday.

*   *   *

There was a lot about David I despised, but just as much that intrigued me. I was enamored of his intellect. He was a voracious reader who often had a nonfiction book in hand (he loved biographies of great historical figures), lest he find himself at the barber without some worthwhile reading. He was up on all the good movies and capable of discussing everything from the motives hidden in the plot to the work of the cinematographer. He was a newshound who took strong political positions. I admired this. It was the start of a political awakening for me. And he was articulate in everything he discussed, commanding a large vocabulary—in fact sometimes using words I needed to look up. (“Concomitant” comes to mind.) And I remember how he praised me when one day, unself-consciously, I correctly used the word “keening” in a sentence. He was delighted.

I was the sexual aggressor here. I knew I was sending subtle signals—smiling when I might have looked away, lowering my eyes in an apparent come-on. I wanted to know what Judy knew. Yes, a part of my decision had more to do with Judy than simply giving myself permission to fuck him because she wasn't doing it at that precise moment. I wanted to be in bed with the man Judy slept with and raved about. I was sexually curious about him. I wanted a taste of what the shouting was about. I wanted to sleep with the man the great Judy Garland was in love with—from time to time. I wanted to feel her equal in that way.

With crazy logic I managed to persuade myself that as long as he was not fucking Judy, it was okay to have this affair even though he was very married. This is the dumbest thinking I was ever guilty of, and I regret to this day that I decided, in spite of knowing what a snake he was, to have my turn with him.

As to my affair with David, it's not worth much space. I'm sorry to disappoint you. Trust me, no one was more disappointed than I was. My mother used to say that you never knew anyone until you were either in business or in bed with him. That should have served as warning enough for me, as I knew full well who I was in business with, and although my powers of observation may have been slightly underdeveloped, they weren't totally useless.

The affair itself was anything but romantic. No candlelit dinners, no walks through Paris in the rain. It was about sex, plain and simple, and he was far from a great lover. The excitement for him seemed to be about where he could fuck me. On his office desk, in a ladies' room of the Pierre, in the first-class bathroom on an American Airlines red-eye from LA to New York—making us members, he said, of the “Mile High Club.” My apartment was less exciting, although closer to a telephone. While “doing” me, David was also doing deals on the telephone. I was not amused.

If ever there was a sex object, I was it. I had no identity, and if I had eagerness for the act itself, I had no opportunity to demonstrate. His penis was present. The rest of him was somewhere else. Of course I wondered if he pulled the same ugly shtick with Judy, but I knew I would never be able to ask either the question. My husband was a gentle, tender, caring lover. David was none of the above. “Revolting” is the only appropriate word to describe sex with David.

I don't know whether Freddie knew about my affair with his partner. I took it for granted he did. I went about learning the TV business and looking for clients to add to my roster of one (for I had now signed Liza, and I was pursuing the rising actresses Joan Hackett and Jill Haworth) as if nothing was different, and I didn't discuss my personal life with anyone. I suspect David told everyone that had any interest in listening. I was noticeably with David all the time. He took me to meetings—ostensibly so I could take notes—and we traveled together for business. He didn't need me along, but he was interested in finding new places where we could “do it” while risking being caught, which was his thing. And his hypocritical in crowd, the Rudins, the Rosemonts, and the new guys at the firm, Marty Kummer and Danny Welkes, welcomed me as an insider in spite of the fact that they were friendly with Lee.

The longer I allowed the affair to go on, the more I hated him—and myself. I had to figure out a way to get him out of my personal life while keeping my job. He made it easy: He asked me to marry him. “No” came out of my mouth a bit too quickly, as I recall. And then I backtracked and spoke in clich
é
s—about how flattered I was, and how special “we” were.

But we were not special at all, and I knew that and he did, too. He had proposed to Judy because she had implied early and often that they would be married. Talk of marriage was probably part of his stock ammunition. But after six months of doing David, the thought of being married to him was nauseating. My escape “pitch” came out of thinking about the dismal prospect of such a marriage. What I told him was no lie: that I couldn't go on knowing that his wife was sitting at home waiting for him. A month into the affair I was hugely uncomfortable being with a married man, and the feeling continued to grow until I couldn't handle it. “Guilt” was a word that he knew well and shied away from. I wasn't urging him to divorce her. Not at all! That's what he instantly thought, and he said he would get rid of Lee as quickly as possible. I was nothing if not sanctimonious when I advised him to repair his wreck. “No, don't worry, Stevie. I'm going to end this travesty,” he assured me. It was lip service. “I hope I'll still be working for the company when you do,” I told him with a smile on my face.