Watch Me: A Memoir (14 page)

“With good reason,” I replied. “He scares me, too.”

Suddenly, everyone was wearing fur and movie stars were ubiquitous, flying in for Christmas holidays, building mansions better suited to the South of France or Beverly Hills. You’d see Diana Ross without makeup on her way to the deli, and Goldie Hawn and her kids at the supermarket. Big movie stars behaving like ordinary people. This was before there was a gossip columnist at the
Aspen Times
, when the locals were still running the few restaurants and operating the ski lifts. Then all at once, the early freedoms disappeared. Oil-rich Texans took over for a brief moment. There was the short tenure of Marvin Davis at Aspen Mountain, and the creation of a Four Seasons Hotel, replete with gift shops, at its foot. The restaurants multiplied; Chanel, Prada, and Louis Vuitton opened boutiques. The airport was filled to capacity with Learjets. After the Texans came the Arab oligarchs and then the Russians. The runway was a great platform from which to view the changing dynasties.

In the eighties, the locals could no longer sustain in Aspen, and they moved down-valley to Basalt and Carbondale and Glenwood Springs. Those who once owned the town became its working class, serving the mega-rich on and off the slopes, until a new working class was imported to serve in the new hotels. They came from Guatemala, Mexico, and El Salvador.
To undermine the jobs and create another round of problems, crime and gangs proliferated, hitherto unseen in the Rockies.

One New Year’s Eve at Abetone’s, everyone kissed dangerously at midnight. There were whole uneaten, naked Cornish game hens illuminated by the low-hanging lamps on each table. Hunter Thompson was taking potshots at the lightbulbs with quarters and a rubber band.

On a subsequent New Year’s, there was a scene involving an arson fire that was set after Jack and I left a party at a Tuscan villa in Woody Creek, where some girls who had stayed over had to leap from the balcony, nude under their fur coats, into a snowdrift. Things could get hardcore quite swiftly. There were always various stories going on in Aspen—dramatic stuff, like James Bond combined with
Tales from the Vienna Woods
.

But still there was the country itself—the clarity of the light that burnished the mountains to red-gold at sunset, the high lakes, the little streams that babbled in the summertime, the slopes thick with ferns and berries, happy days at the summer music festival, partying till the wee hours. One July 4, I rode horseback through town in the Aspen parade. Aspen was simultaneously healthy and hedonistic. There was also a dark streak to the place, given that it was heaven on earth to prospectors and outlaws. There wasn’t a lot of conversation about what people did for a living, and we never complained that we were bored—there was always something going on; life was lived on the edge.

*  *  *

In April 1981, a call came out of the blue, as they will. It was Dad. “I’d like for you to come to me in New York,” he said.
“Gladys has died.” He sounded terrible, like he had been kicked in the stomach. He had been working with her on the script of
Annie.

When I went up to his suite at the Essex House, Maricela and Tony were with him. Dad just lay on the couch with his face to the wall and wept. I had never seen him so bereaved. It was not meant for Gladys to go before him. They’d had a date for dinner, and she mentioned she was a little tired and went to have a lie-down. When he called her room, she didn’t answer the phone. Eventually the hotel staff opened her door, and found her in bed. She had died in her sleep.

Maricela and I went to the Frank Campbell Funeral Home on Madison Avenue to say our final farewell to Gladys. They showed us to a gray room with artificial flowers and a box of Kleenex on the table and an open coffin in which Gladys lay, looking very much unlike herself. Her pale hair swept back from her forehead onto the pillow in an unfamiliar cascading wave.

CHAPTER 14

I
received a letter from Dad’s agent, Paul Kohner, suggesting that I agree to be represented by his agency. I said I felt that it was probably best to be in a different stable. Dad offered to call Sue Mengers for me. I was quite intimidated by her, having gone with Jack on several occasions to parties at her house in Bel Air. She was a “broad” in the old sense, as round and pale as porcelain, with a mane of ash-blond hair that fell forward over one eye. She spoke slowly and deliberately, with an emphasis on consonants, and rich with heavy pauses to accentuate her often surprisingly candid thoughts about life, gossip, the British royal family, and the sex lives of her favorite movie stars.

Sue’s houses—the first one, in Bel Air, which she shared with her husband, Jean-Claude Tramont; the second, at the base of Coldwater Canyon, on Lexington Road—had the same color scheme, pale pink and blue-gray. Sofas and chairs in pastel silk, the long regency windows looking out on an oval balustraded swimming pool. The rooms were filled with French antiques, a Chinese ceramic given to her by Lorne Michaels, a Japanese calligraphy scroll that batted on the wall behind her head in a soft breeze. Sue, wreathed in pot smoke, would hold court, her guests settled around her, to the right and left, as she introduced topics that ranged from provocative to saucy to borderline outrageous.

She loved getting a bunch of women together for lunch, wherein she would extol our husbands or boyfriends and tell us how lucky we were and what a miracle it was that we might have such wonderful men in our lives. Sue blamed women for most things. Men could do no wrong, particularly after the death of Jean-Claude, whom she worshipped.

When I ran off with her client Ryan O’Neal, Sue was embarrassed and subsequently was photographed out a few times on Jack’s arm. I flattered her by saying I suspected they were having a love affair. I said this in full knowledge that as much as Jack adored her, she was not someone who could be remotely described physically as his “type.” But Sue loved this idea, and whenever I’d go over to her house for lunch with the most powerful women in Hollywood, she would be sure to rehash the story of how I suspected her of having sex with Jack. At the same time, Sue always said to me, “Jack is the best there is. You are a fool not to close the deal.”

Sue represented just about every actor of consequence in the Hollywood firmament, and Barbra Streisand was her star client. She turned down Dad’s request on my behalf without a moment’s hesitation, replying that I was too similar to another actress she already represented, Ali MacGraw, who had starred in
Love Story.

Sue, however, remained a mentor to me always, and although it was sometimes hard to take, I could rely on her to tell me the truth—an invaluable commodity in Hollywood. Through the years, I overcame my natural fear of Sue, and toward the end of her life, she and I had become good friends.

Despite the fact that Sue did not take me on as a client, this was a time in my life when roles began to come my way.

*  *  *

In December, Penny Marshall offered me a guest appearance on her show,
Laverne & Shirley.
I was to play a jealous wife who catches her husband cheating with Laverne over dinner in a seafood restaurant. The episode was shot in front of a live audience and culminated with Laverne diving into a lobster tank and getting attacked by a giant clam. It was a great lesson in comedy, watching Penny at work with eyes wide, holding her breath underwater, her thigh in the vise grip of the huge crustacean, scrawling the word “help” on the glass in red lipstick and at the same time winning hearts by just being herself. I was speechless with admiration. I was to work on the show again the following year, that time as a fashion model teetering down a runway with an Eiffel Tower on my head.

Penny Marshall and Carrie Fisher were best friends. Following Carrie’s separation from Paul Simon and her return to California, she and Penny would team up and throw themselves an annual birthday party. Carrie had a regiment of fabulous black women cooking in her kitchen, and they always served soul food. Her houses were playground haciendas, full of whimsy and humor. Penny’s collections of lamps, hook rugs, sports memorabilia, and antiques were extensive. The parties were always brimming with interest; everyone went—artists, musicians, directors, writers, actors, moguls.

This was a time before sponsored events, which, along with red-carpet madness, changed the face of celebrity in the eighties. Although I am grateful for the attention I have enjoyed throughout the years, I don’t believe that the level of interest ever merits a personal invasion.

It was at one such interesting and well-attended party at Penny’s that I first encountered the screenwriter Mitch Glazer. I had met his dearest friend and writing partner,
Michael O’Donoghue, some time before, and we had become good friends—never in a carnal way, although I thought he had a crush on me. I adored him, and he was an eternal source of sharp-witted black humor. Michael was an original writer on Lorne Michaels’s
Saturday Night Live
and was responsible for the creation of the character Mr. Bill. He had told me about Mitch, but I was unprepared for how handsome he was.

At the time, Mitch was married to Wendie Malick, a tall, pretty, slender actress working in television. Once when I was in New York over Halloween, I got caught in a gay parade on my way to their house on Tenth Street and was almost run over by a giant latex penis. Mitch and I have remained close since those early days. After he and Wendy broke up, he married Kelly Lynch, the great-looking blonde whom we first saw shake up the screen in
Drugstore Cowboy.

*  *  *

I was asked by a young director, Lyndon Chubbuck, to play the lead in a short film adaptation of a William Faulkner story, “A Rose for Emily.” In its small way, it was a professional breakthrough, and I was flattered to have been chosen for no reason other than that he felt I was right for the part. The movie was low-budget—we shot at a group of preserved Victorian homes off the 10 Freeway. The traffic made it very difficult for sound, but it was a worthy effort.

John Randolph played my father, Mr. Grierson. John Carradine, Sr., played Colonel Sartoris, and although he was aged and delicate, he was still game and a marvelous actor. Jared Martin played the lover I poison in the film; he likewise was a pleasure to work with. It made all the difference to have had the security of years spent in Peggy Feury’s class. For the first time in my life, I had acquired some authority, had developed an
overview and a plan for my character. And I was the teacher’s pet. This feeling of confidence was new for me. I was excited to have been given the chance to prove myself to people who were not personally invested, like my father or my boyfriend.

*  *  *

On March 3, 1983, the American Film Institute dedicated an evening to Dad and his work, a big televised event at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles. Lauren Bacall was the host, and I had been asked to do a segment introducing various luminaries who had worked with Dad through the years, each of whom would have an opportunity to speak about him. It was a most beautiful night. The room was filled to capacity with people in Dad’s life, past and present.

Ava Gardner, in a rare appearance, had come in from London. I was bowled over by how radiant she was, even next to the lovely Nastassja Kinski. Ava’s beauty just jumped out at you; her eyes glittered and her skin glowed. She was wrapped in white fur, seated next to Dad like a snow leopard in a diamond necklace.

When Dad walked in at the opening of the show, I could tell he was holding his breath, having to move fast to get to his seat beside Ava, where his oxygen tank was concealed under the table. People stopped him as he moved through the crowd to congratulate him and shake his hand, and when he arrived at the table, he was gasping for air.

Lauren Bacall, the widow of Dad’s beloved Bogie, was onstage, greeting the room. When it was my turn to get up, I was so nervous that I bungled my assignment and sped through the roster of famous names without pausing to allow any of them to speak. Only when I came to Zsa Zsa Gabor and saw the astonished look on her face did I realize my mistake.
Thank God it was not live television. I had to go back to the beginning, which was humiliating, but the staff pretended graciously that it was a technical difficulty, and although I was still red in the face, I asked Dad from the stage if he would ever consider working with me again. The film that we had made together when I was sixteen,
A Walk with Love and Death
, had been a personal, commercial, and professional disappointment and I wanted a second chance. John Foreman was in the audience, and he decided he would do something about that, as I learned several months later.

At the end of the evening, on our way out of the ballroom, Jack and I joined Ava for the walk down the red carpet. She had been living in Europe for a long time, and the local press was overjoyed to see her. The flashbulbs were popping and the paparazzi were shouting her name exuberantly. Ava just glided between us with that million-dollar smile, uttering a stream of profanities.

*  *  *

Rob Reiner was planning an improvisational movie,
This Is Spinal Tap
, with a handful of brilliant people like Harry Shearer and Christopher Guest. I was asked to read for the snobbish British girlfriend and, as I recall, gave a passable audition with an authentic Notting Hill accent. But the part went to June Chadwick. As a consolation, Rob gave me the part of Polly Deutsch, the production designer who delivers an eighteen-inch Stonehenge to the band for their concert. Even though it was a tiny role, I was very proud to be a part of the comedy, which became a cult classic.

*  *  *

I auditioned for a Tommy Tune musical in New York, and I guess they liked my reading. I was unaware that I would be
expected to sing. The part was oratorical, and I did it with an English accent. The producers asked if I’d come back and sing a song titled “My Love Is a Married Man.” It was one of those Broadway auditions in front of about twenty people. Although I had hired an accompanist who had attempted to teach me the song, it was daunting. In the audition I not only changed octaves, I changed voices. Even though I destroyed the song, they all burst into applause. However, I knew very definitely that I hadn’t gotten the part. They obviously found it audacious of me to even try. As I walked out onto Broadway, confused about whether to laugh or cry, I thought maybe I should hook up with a voice coach.