by Mark Bailey
IF THEY WERE GOING to do this, they needed to do it right. Dennis Hopper and Nick Adams, both cast in Rebel Without a Cause, had just returned from the liquor store with several cases of champagne. Little more than kids, obsessed with emulating their Hollywood idols, they’d decided what they really needed to do this night was have an orgy, because that’s what John Garfield used to do. It would be the two of them and Natalie Wood. (Can you have an orgy with just three people? Isn’t that called something else?) Wood had said she was up for it, under one condition: she’d need to bathe in champagne first—like Jean Harlow.
One of the perks of being a young star, as Natalie Wood had been, is that you get away with things other kids can’t. The flipside, of course, is that you lose your childhood to Hollywood. At fifteen, Wood was sipping wine at Frank Sinatra’s house, her mother, Mud, having thrust the teenager on the thirty-eight-year-old. Soon Wood began to smoke and to drink heavily. At sixteen she was ordering drinks at Villa Capri and Ciro’s, passing out on Zombies at frat parties in the Hollywood Hills. By the time she hooked up with Hopper (he’d already been cast in Rebel, she had yet to be), she was more sophisticated than anyone she knew her age and in many ways more immature. Her friend Margaret O’Brien, similarly a former child star, described Wood’s affectations, her mink stoles and cigarette holders, as nothing more than “a feint, a look, an attitude.” A little girl playing dress-up.
Hopper, just two years older, was a newcomer to the movie industry, but already was displaying the insolent, self-destructive behavior that would make him its enfant terrible by the 1970s. Eager to impress Wood—some said it was genuine affection, others opportunism—he’d taken her out drinking one night in Los Angeles before shooting began on Rebel and wound up flipping his car somewhere in Laurel Canyon. Wood, thrown into the street and knocked out cold, had to be rushed to the hospital. Drifting in and out of consciousness, she kept telling the police to call Nicholas Ray (the director of Rebel and her secret lover) instead of her mother, Mud. Wood’s rebellious spirit, her desire to break away, impressed Ray greatly, who was at her bedside when she awoke. “They called me a goddamn juvenile delinquent,” she told the director, “Now do I get the part?” As for Mud, she would eventually find out about both affairs, but according to Hopper, always looking to advance her daughter’s career, complained to Warner Bros. only about him, not Ray. It would remain quite the circus, Wood sleeping with Ray and Hopper (and maybe Nick Adams), and Ray sleeping with Wood and, given his bisexuality, maybe Sal Mineo. While James Dean was left odd man out.
* * *
One of the perks of being a young star, as Natalie Wood had been, is that you get away with things other kids can’t. The flipside, of course, is that you lose your childhood to Hollywood.
* * *
Fast forward several months. Rebel was complete, and here were Wood and Hopper and Adams, living out their wildest movie-star fantasies at a cabin in the mountains northeast of Los Angeles. Eager to get the orgy underway, they poured bottle after bottle of champagne into the cabin’s bathtub. Wood dipped her toe in: this was glamour. In went the rest of her—but not for long. Because as soon as her most sensitive areas came in contact with the alcohol, she shrieked in pain. Her vagina, she screamed, was on fire! And thus was the orgy extinguished.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We collaborated with a great many smart and talented people in getting this book to print.
First and foremost our extraordinary editor Andra Miller. We were lucky to have someone so intelligent, supportive, and funny, too. Incredibly patient, Andra worked long and hard to bring out the best in our words and art. She was a gift. And Keven McAlester, who is credited as a consulting writer. Much more than that, Keven became a partner, really, in shaping the text, and the book is so much richer for it. We would like to thank Algonquin’s team. They seem to us the best team on the planet, and at every instance bent over backward to make decisions that worked for us. Anne Winslow was our remarkable creative director and Jean-Marc Troadec our truly gifted designer; it was their vision and style that wove the writing and illustrations together so beautifully. And a special thanks to Elisabeth Scharlatt, our publisher. Elisabeth never fails to put the book first, and told us early on that we could have as much time as we needed to get it right. Quite possibly she regrets having said that. Craig Popelars and Kelly Bowen in Algonquin’s marketing and publicity, for all they have done and are planning to do. Drew Jacobson of Luminosity was our lead bartender, with the help of his business partner Paul Keo. Drew’s terrific palate, deep knowledge, and cheerful perseverance (though really, who doesn’t like testing drinks?) resulted in some delicious cocktail recipes. Our wonderful agent David Kuhn who seems to do everything and more—this book was David’s idea. And our amazingly persistent researchers, all of them across the years: Tim Mackin and Emily Schlesinger, as well as Jordan Cohen, Joel Dando, Michelle Hovanetz, Aily Nash, and Georgia Stockwell. And of course, there are friends and family, too, who have so generously helped along the way—with ideas, advice, support: Madelyne Bailey, Paul Bailey, Edward Beason, Lyndie Benson, Minor Chavez, Chelsie Corbett, Gerlayn White Dreyfous, Karen Duffy, Eve Epstein, Joe Flanigan, Shannon and Drew Hayden, Taylor Johns, Sarah Johnson, Peter Kaplan, Andrew Karsch, Sheila and Chris Kennedy, Robert Kennedy Jr., Edward Klaris, John Lambros, Kim Lowe, Brendan McBreen, Joe McDougall, Derek Newman, Jeanine Pepler, Robin Pogrebin, Edward Saxon, Stephen Sherrill, Franco Simplicio and his terrific Malibu restaurant the Sunset, Brian Strange, and Shamra Tankersley—thank you.
MARK BAILEY: I would specifically like to thank my wife, Rory. It is not always easy living with a writer, and living with a drinking writer is harder still. But a drinking writer who is writing a book on drinking—that takes a special kind of woman, which you are. This book is for you, with love.
And my children—Georgia, Bridget, and Zachary. Unfortunately, you are not allowed to read this until you are at least twenty-one.
EDWARD HEMINGWAY: Special thanks go to my family—Valerie, Vanessa, Sean, and Brendan Hemingway, for all having a terrific sense of humor, but more importantly, for always being there.
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Below is a list of many wonderful books—biographies, autobiographies, memoirs, anthologies, urban histories, cultural histories, film histories, film analysis, celebrity interviews—as well as newspaper articles, magazine pieces, web posts, talk show appearances, and films.
We are greatly indebted to these very talented writers. We encourage interested readers to explore these sources. It is here that you will find the whole story.
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