Pieces of My Heart (11 page)

Paul Newman watches Jay Sebring give me a haircut on the set of
Harper.
The man with the beard is the great cinematographer Conrad Hall; on the right is director Jack Smight.
(© WARNER BROS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

On the set of
The Biggest Bundle of Them All.
You’d never know that both Vittorio de Sica and Edward G. Robinson were furious at Raquel Welch for her chronic tardiness.
(© TURNER ENTERTAINMENT CO. A WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

Roddy McDowall’s photo of my new family. Next to me are Peter Donen, Josh Donen, Marion, and Katie.
(PHOTOGRAPH BY RODDY MCDOWALL, COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR)

With Frank and Tina Sinatra in the south of France at the Colombe d’Or in St. Paul de Vence.
(COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR)

With Roddy McDowall on the set of
It Takes a Thief.
(COURTESY OF UNIVERSAL STUDIOS LICENSING LLP)

With Bette Davis in an episode of
It Takes a Thief,
the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
(COURTESY OF UNIVERSAL STUDIOS LICENSING LLP)

Natalie and me on the windswept day of our second marriage.
(COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR)

Spence and I flew to Europe together. Although Spence had gotten heavy in middle age, he still had considerable physical stamina. We got to France two weeks before we started shooting, and we had to get acclimated to the heights we would be working at. On our first full day there, he went on a three-mile hike; on the second day he upped it to eight miles, and on the third day he walked for ten miles.

S
pence’s alcoholism was a Hollywood urban legend even then, but I can truthfully say that I saw him drunk only once. But that one time gave me an insight into his very complicated character.

We were on location for
The Mountain,
and we were in a cable car, heading up to a mountaintop location at Chamonix, near Mont Blanc in the French Alps, where the weather changes constantly. It was a single cable, from top to bottom, and it was a brand-new installation. We were about halfway up when the car suddenly detached from the cable. The car was not moving, just perilously hanging from the protective iron covering over the wheel mechanism on the car, and we were swinging wildly in the wind. It was at that point that the front window of the cable car shattered, and I swear I thought we were about to drop thousands of feet to the ground.

I had been anxious about going up in this thing anyway, which was why Spence was in the car; he had gone up to reassure me that it would be okay, and now we were hanging there with our lives flashing in front of our eyes. They finally sent a work car down, and they somehow got our car back on the cable, and we continued up the mountain. It was the most physically frightening experience I’ve ever had in my life.

Now, what people don’t understand about the movie business is that there are times when it’s like working in a coal mine. It pays better, but it’s still labor. Despite our near-death experience, we had a movie to make, so we put in a full day’s work. The location on the mountain was very difficult work, dangerous for the crew as well as the actors.

While Eddie Dmytryk and I and the crew were working, Spence got back in that cable car and went down. When I returned to the hotel after shooting was done, he was in the bar, and he was completely drunk—gone! It was startling, because he had become an entirely different person. The bartender made some remark, or Spence thought he did, and Spence went after him. I held Spence back, then he picked up a glass and heaved it at the bartender. I put up my hand to stop the glass, but it shattered and sliced my hand very badly. Frank Westmore, my makeup man and dear friend, played doctor and stitched it up. It was a very ugly, violent scene, complete with blood on the floor—mine.

The next day Spence had no memory of any of it. He didn’t know he got into a fight with the bartender, and he didn’t know my hand had been slashed open by the glass that he’d thrown. “Jekyll and Hyde” is a conventional metaphor, but in this case it was absolutely true. Sober, Spence was Dr. Jekyll and a very dear man, but alcohol turned him into Mr. Hyde, complete with a hair-trigger temper. The strange thing is that on some level Spence was blocked from fully acknowledging his dual nature; when he had played
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,
it was one of his least successful performances because he couldn’t quite access Mr. Hyde—he was acting the character rather than being it. He had to be drunk before he could let the animal loose.

That one instance aside, Spence was always a wonderfully kind and generous man. I would name my first daughter after Kate Hepburn, and I was privileged to be a part of their relationship. She gave Katie two dolls that she had made, one of herself and one of Spence as he looked in
The Old Man and the Sea
. They also gave her a crib. I brought the baby to see them, and they just glowed as they looked at her.

Spence and Kate were like an old married couple in that they had a wonderful humor with each other; they played to each other. You could feel the affection and love they had. And she was so wonderful with him; they had a way of deferring to each other, but ultimately she would defer to him. She would say that he was like a big bear that would put his paw out and slap her down, but gently. Spence was the only person in her life who could tell her she was full of shit, and she loved that about him.

I realize now that the people I was drawn to in the movie business were all older. I respected them enormously because of their accomplishments, but it was more than that. I wanted their secrets.

Was I looking for surrogate fathers?

Absolutely.

I see a lot of my life as a search for the closeness and intimacy of family. Making movies gives you some of that feeling. (Barbara Stanwyck was the same way. Maybe that’s why we were so close.) At the beginning of a picture, everyone is so close. People become fast friends and swear undying loyalty. Sometimes they fall into bed. And then, eight or ten weeks later, it’s “Where did everybody go?” It goes from intensity to…nothing. It’s probably because of my particular emotional chemistry that I remember the offstage part, the relationships, more than I do the films. I remember the times we had.

At a premiere with Tony Curtis, Janet Leigh, and Jean Peters, just before Howard Hughes spirited Jean away. (
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
)