Read My Lips (31 page)

Sharing was never a problem for me. Neither was crying. I just put it all out there, adding a modicum of charm to the tears, laughing here and there as I told my story. After I finished pouring out my heart, I waited.

“Lady,” one of the group members said, “I don’t know you, but you’re so full of self-pity, I could’ve hit you.”

“I felt
exactly
the same way,” someone else chimed in.

Ouch.

Then a third guy spoke up, saying, “I thought she was charming.” Sadly, he never returned to the group. My only fan never came back for an encore performance. But that taught me, once and for all, that people really don’t love you for your tragic tales. I also came to see that people’s first days in the group were often the most revealing.

The members of our group were fascinating and included enough industry types that we could have seceded from Hollywood. Actors, painters, directors, landowners, and lawyers were drawn to Milton. Along with my darling Jennifer Jones, Milton’s
group welcomed Robert Loggia, Donna O’Neill (whose family owned half of Orange County), agent Ira Barmak, the spectacular architect Frank Gehry, Jean Coleman, and Joanne Linville along with a couple of civilians just to keep it real. Luana, Morgan, and my friend Anjanette Comer came for a little while. Director Blake Edwards offered Dudley Moore his famous role in
10
in the hall outside of one of our group sessions.

I began to see how much I got in my own way. For example, because I knew Blake had hired Dudley to be in
10
—and I was not yet the evolved woman I hoped to be—whenever Blake came into the room, I could feel myself sit up straight and fluff my hair, hoping I’d be the next group member chosen for a part in one of his films. I had originally met Blake in London years before. He had sent me the loveliest letter after I locked horns with Ross Hunter on the set of
Lost Horizon
and Ross expressed some not-so-nice opinions about me in the press. Blake wrote,

The trouble with you, Sally, is that you are just not Doris Day for all the Ross Hunters in the world and there is no chance you ever will be. But cheer up. There will always be some grubby, second-rate, noncommercial director like Bob Altman, Stanley Kubrick, Bertolucci, Visconti, Bogdanovich, Lean, Zinnemann, Bergman, Kurasawa, Godard, or Fellini, for a grubby, second-rate, very special lady named Kellerman.

I had no idea I had ever met Blake before group! I didn’t remember the letter! I only found it when I started working on the book. Think of it, I wouldn’t have had to be nervous around him if I knew he liked me that much. But in group therapy I felt nervous around Blake, conscious of trying to impress him. But because he wore thick, dark glasses, I could never tell what he was thinking.

We were in group, after all, so I had to be honest with Blake and everyone else. I confessed my uneasiness to the whole room.

“Don’t worry what I’m thinking of you,” Blake said. “I’m too busy worrying about what people are thinking of me.”

And Jennifer: Now the thing about my beautiful, adorable Jennifer was that she had her hair done every day of her life. The way that most of us would brush our teeth, Jennifer would have a set-and-style from her favorite hairdresser. One night Milton suggested to Jennifer that maybe, just maybe, if she were more relaxed about her appearance, she might have more opportunities for intimacy in her friendships. Well, Jennifer—the Jennifer of
Duel in the Sun
—did not like that idea one bit. Gesturing angrily to me, sitting on the floor in my ripped jeans with my legs spread and not a trace of makeup, she snapped, “Oh fine, then. I suppose you want me to look like Sally.” “You don’t have to look that bad,” I said, laughing. Ah, Jennifer, my second mom. She tickled me so.

Everyone was drawn to Milton in part because he was more than a therapist; the way he lived his own life was an inspiration. He was legally blind, and his eyesight grew worse over time. This meant that he couldn’t read or write, but that never stopped him from learning. When I would arrive at his office door for my appointment, I would hear audiotapes playing—literature, scientific studies, all sorts of stuff. He seemed to keep up with the latest developments in his field.

In 1974 Milton started the Hereditary Disease Foundation, which focuses on finding a cure for Huntington’s chorea, the degenerative brain disease. Milton’s ex-wife had three brothers with the disease, and when she herself developed it, Milton took care of her even though they were no longer married. Eventually his daughter Nancy would head up the foundation. Milton’s remarkable talent at leading groups like ours to psychological breakthroughs carried over to his foundation work, as he encouraged scientists researching Huntington’s to brainstorm together. Years later, when he died, the
Los Angeles Times
called Milton “a visionary who led the genetic revolution.”

And through all this—his blindness, the sickness in his family—he sought to help others.

“It’s all relative,” he would say to me when I talked about looks or image. “After fifty years old, character is all that matters.” Milton had character in spades.

We all overuse words like “genius” and “brilliant.” But I remember how my friend Frank Gehry put it: “I would never have been able to achieve what I did without Milton.”

The same was true for me. I always say that I’d met the Queen, but I didn’t have any insides until I met Milton. Without Milton I would not be in a marriage that has now lasted more than thirty years. In fact, without Milton I would never have met my husband.

W
HEN
J
ONATHAN
K
RANE JOINED OUR GROUP IN
A
UGUST
1978, I had already been working with Milton for about a year. He was a handsome twenty-six-year-old in tight Italian pants, seething with sexuality. I was forty. I was instantly attracted to him but thought, “Oh God, I hope he’s not too sick.” According to Jonathan’s memory, I was sitting on the floor—with my shirt open, braless—and I was crying but stopped the moment I saw him. His inner dialogue went “I got that chick.”

Milton always asked newcomers to share their first impressions of everyone else in the group. Jonathan said that he’d “never be afraid” of me. Sometimes I think I should have headed for the hills right then.

In December I was leaving for a month to work on a film. The day I said good-bye to the group I turned to Jonathan and said, “And don’t get married.” We hadn’t yet spent one minute alone together.

When I returned I was invited to a New Year’s Day party at Susan Spivak’s house. Jonathan was going to be there. I had since learned that he was an international tax lawyer who was instrumental in helping to develop the Wilshire Boulevard corridor. I wore my favorite high-heeled, wooden Candies and a green jumpsuit.

I brought Claire, then about fourteen years old, along as my date. When I saw Jonathan, I pointed him out to Claire. “That’s the guy I’ve been telling you about. I think he’s so cute.”

Claire took one look at Jonathan and said, “Mom, you don’t stand a chance.”

Later I encountered Jonathan in Susan’s cramped little kitchen, and that’s where we spent the rest of the party. We weren’t alone. The kitchen was crowded with people shuffling in and out for drinks and snacks. But there was something that kept us there. Maybe the proximity to the London broil on the cutting board—who knows? But I couldn’t tear myself away, and neither could he.

The day after the party I had to have one of the many dental operations I have endured throughout my life, the result of so many years of indulging in sugary treats. Whenever I had these procedures, my entire face would swell up. One of my diet gurus, Judy Mazel (of
The Beverly Hills Diet)
told me that yams with cayenne and butter would help me heal more quickly. Susan rang from her office, and Jonathan was with her. They were checking in on me to see how I was feeling. And the next night, as I sat, swollen from head to toe and eating yams, the doorbell rang. It was Jonathan. He was drunk.

“I like you better like this,” Jonathan said, looking at the bit of yam dangling from the corner of my swollen mouth. “Less threatening.”

That night, after he left, we both broke things off with the people we had been seeing and started dating each other exclusively. For the first couple weeks we took it slow, keeping the romance to just a little kissing. But then the big night arrived.

Jonathan said, “Alright, is this something you really want to do?”

“Yes!” I said. “Yes!”

“Are you sure?” Jonathan kept asking.

“Yes!”

Getting together was not so simple because we were still in
group together. We would have to go back and tell everyone that our relationship—and, therefore, the group dynamic—had changed. Jonathan wanted to be sure the group knew that deciding to take our affection to the next step had been a “shared responsibility,” as he put it. And it definitely was. Once we told the rest of the group, everyone was very supportive.

One of the more poignant things Milton said was that we should bring every little thing that bothered us into group and talk about it.

“You might not end up with a relationship,” he explained, “but you’ll learn a lot about yourself.”

That advice sometimes led to some roof-raising arguments in the group. One night Milton calmly said, “You two don’t want a relationship. You’d rather be right.”

We both jumped in, saying, “No, we don’t! We don’t have to be right!”

Another problem was that, being an actress to the core, I was still overly eager to share. At one point Jonathan said, “If she shares one more word about her old boyfriends, I’m going to throw her out the window.”

That first year Jonathan and I were together, we were absolutely crazy about each other. Still, the first time Jonathan said he loved me, all I could hear was Milton’s voice in my head:
Don’t tell anyone you love them until you’re married for a while and then think about it. Let somebody else do the giving.

And I had to admit that the more Jonathan liked and loved me, the more I wanted to bolt. That first year I tried to keep things as light as possible, working not to jump to love or marriage. If Jonathan ever said, “I love you,” I would say, “Oh, that’s great. Hey look! That Edith Piaf film is playing!”

He hated her, it was snowing, and we both had colds, but off we’d go to the show. Jonathan did everything I wanted. To this day Jonathan says that was the worst year of his life, and I say it was the best year of mine.

Jonathan is so different from anybody else I’ve known—so
smart, so supportive, so encouraging—not to mention drop-dead gorgeous. He has incredible confidence, and at the risk of sounding corny, he is the wind beneath my wings. He’s always believed in me, encouraged me, and had faith in my music when no one else did.

For example, I’ve been blessed with the best voice-over career anyone could ever ask for. But at certain points I’ve felt overly entitled. I remember once having a radio voice-over gig when it was pouring down rain.

“Oh! I don’t want to go,” I told Jonathan. “It’s only $500, and it’s raining so hard.”

He said, “Get your hat, get your coat, and get every dime, nickel, and penny you can until you’ve built yourself an annuity.”

That was wise advice. I’ve had another twenty-five years of fantastic voice-overs.

My mom used to say about me, “Darling, don’t you want someone in your corner? Your father was always in my corner.”

Jonathan is and always has been in my corner.

Maybe Milton was right, and my newfound, non-pot-smoking, therapy-loving discipline was paying off. I had six films coming out in 1980. And I had Jonathan.

I
N
1980 I
SHOT TWO PICTURES AT THE SAME TIME.
F
OXES
,
directed by Adrian Lyne, which also starred Jodie Foster, Cherie Currie, Randy Quaid, and Scott Baio, and
It Rained All Night the Day I Left,
in which I worked alongside Tony Curtis and Louis Gossett. I went from playing Diane Lane’s sophisticated mother in Paris to teenaged Jodie Foster’s widowed one in
Foxes,
a coming-of-age story set in the San Fernando Valley.
Rained
was about ambushed weapons dealers (Tony and Lou) in Africa and the conniving woman—me—who hires them. It was definitely worth flying across time zones to work with that pair, and I was nominated for a Genie for Best Performance by a Foreign Actress.