Judy & Liza & Robert & Freddie & David & Sue & Me... (28 page)

I went with Jim to Los Angeles to visit Liza, who was now in recovery and feeling more like her old self. She was resting and trying to find her Hollywood land legs again. She was sharing a house with a good friend and living a healthier lifestyle. I approached her with the series idea tucked under my arm. It was definitely self-serving, but the concept was strong, and if I could take it to market with Liza starring, it would put her back on her feet at a time when her career was still salvageable. By then, my having produced successfully on Broadway, my career was thriving, and I thought my success could serve her.

However, the world she was living in at that moment was far from any reality that I understood. She boasted in our meeting that she was working on four new films and that she was going to direct them all. What notable project had she ever directed? What film existed to display her work? It was nonsense. But it was also clear that she understood she had missed out on an important film career; however, the moment when she still could have grabbed on to a film life, and held on if she did any good work, had long since passed. Comebacks in film don't happen often. Judy was one of the lucky ones. Her daughter was not.

*   *   *

Although it took at least ten years, my denial of Liza's betrayal finally vanished. I had to deal with understanding that I'd been unceremoniously dumped by an actress who could not have cared less, by a performer who may have been too self-absorbed to understand, even to realize, that she had once left me out in the cold. In time my anger disappeared, and I realized that Liza was sadly stuck with the choices she'd made. She owns those decisions, and like Judy, she's made some really bad ones. She has hurt herself and her career more than anyone else ever could have.

I never told Liza any of the terrible episodes that I endured when I traveled with her mother. I would never have spoken of these things then. We had both been children. What did I, at twenty-four, understand about self-destruction? I was anxious to protect her from all that. And Liza never discussed with me anything that went on between her and her mother. My own experience informs me that bad stuff had to have been going on, but there was this code of silence that served neither of us. I gave it up long ago.

I finally heard—twenty years later—an explanation for my dismissal that rang true. A mutual friend of Liza's and mine told me that it was Desi's mother, the great Lucille Ball, the mother-in-law-to-be, who told Liza to dump me. She suggested to Li—firmly, I suspect—that if Liza was going to be part of the family, using the family representative, Mickey Rudin, was the way to go. If, after all, Rudin was good enough to call the shots for her and Frank Sinatra, he was good enough for Liza. Stevie who? is what I imagine Ms. Ball asked. Perhaps Liza simply got tongue-tied. Perhaps Liza agreed. To Ms. Ball I was nobody. But back then, I was somebody who cared. Of course most every story has a footnote: Both Lucille Ball and Frank Sinatra eventually fired Mickey Rudin.

*   *   *

There is a postscript to all this. In 2001 I was taking care of my mother's youngest brother, who was at the time ninety-six and failing. I'd made a sort of assisted-living arrangement for him with a woman he had a crush on; she'd been one of his caretakers while he was still able to live independently. (Uncle George was proof positive that the male “thing” is never over.) He continually spied on this woman having sex with a succession of lovers in her home until the day he slipped on one of her seven shih tzus' dog shit, and it was all downhill from there.

The love nest in West Palm Beach was not far from a house Liza was renting while recuperating from a bout of encephalitis. She called me in New York to say that she had to see me. “Please come, please!” It sounded dire. And I cautiously told her I would come on my next visit to West Palm. Would I have come if she had called from Seattle? I doubt it. I bundled Uncle George and his walker into my rented car and drove to Li's house, where a tall, casual-attired beefcake ushered us into the living room, where we all sat waiting for Li to appear. He and I stared at each other without anything to say. I had no idea if he was the boyfriend, the bodyguard, the friend, or the neighbor.

Finally Liza appeared, leaning heavily on her own walker. She dragged one foot, and her speech was slurred. She spoke slowly and worked hard to form words. It was easy to see she was suffering. “Look, Stevie, I can walk. And the doctor says I'm going to be fine. I'm going to go back on the stage before you know it.” I introduced her to Uncle George. He said hello, but she did not. “You will help me, won't you?” That was all that interested her.

“Li, honestly, honey, I haven't represented anyone for years. Truthfully I don't even know the buyers anymore. Do you have all the medical help you need?” She looked at me. It was finished. The interview was over. She said, “Excuse me, I can't stay any longer.” As she turned to leave, I noticed that some department store's plastic security tag was still attached to the printed chiffon blouse she wore. On the car ride back, Uncle George—who was of sound mind—said, “I can't believe that was her.” Neither could I.

It was Liza who finally taught me the lesson Freddie had tried to teach me years earlier. Loyalty in show business doesn't exist. I know people who would protest this statement, and perhaps a few might be right. But for most it's easy to believe one's partners are loyal when all is going well. It's when the sun goes down that one usually finds oneself standing alone in the dark.

 

Part 3

Maturity

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

A Different Kind of Whorehouse

What makes a comeback? Here's my theory: Hunger. Not for money but for the chance to show you've still got what it takes, that you can't be kept down, that you don't accept defeat. Confidence. Just forget about starting a business without it. You must have unwavering faith in your own ability. And eyes. Preferably those directly connected to your brain, so you can recognize an opportunity when it's put in front of you. I've watched a lot of people let such a moment blast right past them. Why don't they see it? Are they too comfortable in their misery—or too scared to grab life by the balls? When Judy opened the door to her flat in London in 1960 and saw Freddie standing there, she saw her chance and grabbed hold of it with both hands. It was a life lesson for me. It planted a seed that took root in a deep place. I saw my chance and threw caution to the wind.

It came by phone: a last-minute invite from Bill and Eileen Goldman, good friends, to join them at the Actors Studio to see a musical in progress being worked on by mutual friends. They feel sorry for me, and they're just being nice, was my first thought, which was probably correct. Unattached, underemployed, unappreciated, and feeling generally unloved, I had very little desire to go out that night, but no reason not to. Because they were such kind and caring friends, I got up off my butt, got dressed, and met them for dinner followed by a play at the Studio. I didn't know what I was going to see and didn't much care. But once the play started, everything changed. By its end I knew I wanted to produce it on Broadway. I'd never produced anything before.

After brief encounters with solar energy and social activism, the results of a little interlude I had with a guerrilla architect I'd met through Redford's consumer-advocate wife, Lola, I'd hurried back to show business, where sunshine radiates in the smiles of the few winners, and wind power is what comes out of the mouths of those who dole out the dollars on either coast. Ned Tannen, then president of Universal, was willing to pay me a small retainer to look around the company to determine if I could make a contribution somewhere. What he really wanted was for me to utilize my prior connections with big stars for the studio's benefit. He had reason to believe that I could attract Redford into a Universal film. But he wasn't quite that blunt. Instead he urged me to evaluate the possibilities for myself within Universal and then let him know what interested me.

I looked first at the television division. In California it was a male-dominated bastion with a lot of little fiefdoms, not one of which would I want to inhabit. I saw women sitting at all the secretarial desks not able to do more than answer the phone and deliver the coffee. No one, surely not the self-important feudal lord of this boob-tube kingdom, was going to give me an opportunity to show him squat. It could remain an all-boys' empire as far as I was concerned.

I looked next at the movie division. Movies, my drug of choice, were as wonderful to me then as they had been when I was a child, and as they are now: a wonderland of escapism, entertainment, and pure joy. But again, everyone in movies had their butts in a chair at 100 Universal City Plaza in LA, and I didn't think I could make packaging movies come to fruition from New York; at least not easily. Getting actors into movies didn't interest me nearly as much as putting movies together.

So, as I had imagined, my being appreciated at the studio came down to delivering the talent whose private telephone numbers I possessed (quite a few!). I was at the point of admitting that to myself. My retainer after a year was running out, and soon I would be out the door as well. And then the universe spoke. What I saw on the stage that night at the Actors Studio changed everything.

*   *   *

Peter Masterson was directing his gorgeous wife, Carlin Glynn (an excellent actress), in a musical about Texas that they had put together with two people I didn't know, Carol Hall (the composer) and Larry L. King (on whose
Playboy
article the show was based). Texans all. It was an endearing story about hypocrisy, not about prostitution, and what was so terrific about it was its authenticity. It looked and sounded like Texas. You could smell the barbecue.

I'd never seen a musical about Texas (
Oklahoma
was one state removed), and from the first delightful song I thought that this could hit. The book was charming and very funny. Without my having the slightest assurance that Tannen would step up to the plate, I went backstage afterward and offered to option it in Universal's name. You need two things to do that: a lot of balls and then a bathroom close by to throw up in.

I met with the authors and sold myself. (That confidence I never lacked.) I told them Universal would option it for twenty-five thousand immediately. Although there were a few other producers interested, the authors conferred quickly and went with me. I think they believed the show—if a big studio were to be involved—would really happen. They liked the instant cash, until much later when the show was a huge success and Universal exercised the option to make the movie.

I called Tannen and told him I'd finally found what I wanted to do and described what it was. He took a beat, and I held my breath. “Don't you want to get Bob Fosse or George Roy Hill to do it with you?” Ned asked, remembering the important director relationships I had. I've got the deal. Ned's going to do it! I knew it in that moment.

“Overkill,” I answered. “These guys are doing just fine, and they're the ones that made me love it.”

“But what the hell do you know about producing?”

“If you'll stake me, we'll soon find out.”

“How much?” he asked. In 1978 I thought we could do it off-Broadway for about $250,000, and he was agreeable—but only because that was so little compared to the telephone numbers he dealt with on a daily basis.

“Are you sitting down?” I asked him. “The title of the show is
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
Can you deal with that?” I didn't have to wait long for his answer.

“I like it; we'll go with it.” It was a title worth millions, and he knew it right away. Not every big exec I knew would've gone along. He asked me to send the script out to the studio lawyers to read. For the amount he was spending on it, it wasn't worth his taking any time to read it himself.

Before long I got a call from a lawyer in the business affairs department at the studio. He asked me the sixty-four-dollar question. “Are the characters in the play based on living people?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then please immediately send along the rights contracts you've got with them for us to look at.” My pregnant pause provoked a practiced response from the attorney. “No contracts, no production!” With that, Larry L. King, who was able to track down the real madam on whom the musical is based, and I were off to Dallas.

I'm not quite sure how Larry was able to dig up Edna Milton Davidson, because at the time she was hiding out from the IRS. But Larry, one of the “good ol' boys,” was well plugged in in the Lone Star State, and when we arrived in Dallas, there she was, my first madam. Believe me, she was unlike anything anyone would have expected. No makeup, nondescript wardrobe, and a so-so body … no one would ever pick her out of a crowd. She was plain. She'd come off a dirt farm in “nowheres” Oklahoma, where, as a young girl, she'd had her feet stepped on by so many cattle that she walked funny. We sat down to talk in the lobby of the hotel where we met, and I made her the $37,500 offer that Universal had authorized. She grabbed it as fast as she could say the letters IRS. It was her bailout; she knew it, and she wasn't about to argue the amount. I'd brought a contract with me, and she signed it immediately, no questions asked, no lawyers needed.

I told her we would also need such rights from the sheriff and asked if she could possibly help us. “You wait right here,” she said, and I saw her go into a phone booth not far from where we were seated, while Larry went to the bar. (Oops!) She was able to reach “the man,” and she made an appointment for us at 1:00 p.m. that very day at the Cottonwood Inn in La Grange, Texas, not far from where the Chicken Ranch whorehouse had once thrived. I got plane reservations to Austin (the nearest airport to La Grange), reserved a rental car, and we were on our way—until it started to snow. Snow in Dallas? Not likely and not often. A half hour later the ground was covered with the thinnest possible layer, and the airport closed. Traffic ground to a halt. But Miss Edna knew something good when she saw it, and she wasn't about to let it get away—or as Larry L. King so aptly phrased a similar moment in the musical: “She saw a bird's nest on the ground.” Edna surely wanted all the eggs in her basket. “I'll just go get my Buick,” she said, and before long we were on our way to Austin despite the bad conditions, which seemed not to bother Edna at all.