by Patty Duke
It was a great experience, palling around with Al and Cleavon. But Savannah, Al’s wife, was cold to me, which tainted Al’s attitude toward me and, of course, tainted mine toward him.
Work on the play was very difficult—it was a tough role, that of a hooker who picks up a black guy on a subway. We were not really ready on opening night, but we got through it, and when I came offstage I was exhilarated just to have accomplished that. I looked around for Al, and they told me he’d left. I thought that meant he’d gone to some restaurant where we were supposed to meet him, but no, he’d gotten on a plane with Savannah and left town. I guess he saw the first ten minutes of opening night and then took off. I could not believe my ears.
I started calling him in New York, even though I knew he couldn’t have arrived yet. I did that throughout the night until I reached him. I was hurt, enraged, appalled by what I considered a severe lack of professionalism in a director. When he got on the phone I screamed something like, “What the fuck is the matter with you? How could you do this?” He didn’t say much, and for whatever reason, it was clear that we could never recapture the spirit we’d shared on My Sweet Charlie. I was going to have to just bite the bullet and move on. I was beginning to learn to make the best of things, a lesson I would learn and forget often over the next few years.
TWENTY-FOUR
I remember how the whole thing started, with a television appearance and a phone call. It was March 1970. I’d been on The Merv Griffin Show, I’d lost weight, my hair was very full and very sexy, I looked quite good. A couple of days later I got a message from the switchboard at the Sierra Towers that Desi Arnaz, Jr., had called. I knew he was Lucille Ball’s son, but I’d never met him, I had no idea why he’d called, so I kind of ignored it.
A few days later there was another message, this one saying that Desi wanted to talk about my doing some recording. But when I returned the call the first thing he said was “We’ve never met but I saw you on The Merv Griffin Show and what can I tell you, you looked magnificent, you’re so pretty,” and so on and on. After I thanked him, he asked me if I’d recorded recently and said that now that he was producing as well as working with his group, he’d love to get together and talk with me about it. We agreed to meet Friday night, and I swear that’s what I thought it was about. I thought I was going to a strictly business dinner.
Friday night came and Desi showed up in his Astin-Martin, and I didn’t immediately think, “Wow, what a great-looking guy.” I was just waiting to talk records. I don’t know why I asked him this question, but at one point I said, “How old are you?” and he said, “Nineteen.” We drove to another house to meet a couple of his buddies, then on to dinner at La Scala, where Desi drank and there was a little talk about records but not much. When he drove me home he asked if he could see me to my door. I asked if he wanted a drink and he said, “Well, maybe I’ll have a little nightcap.” We sat around for a while, just chatting, and that was the first time it hit me that I was on a date. I’m a little slow about these things sometimes.
Desi called the next day and sounded different, much more personal. We agreed to have dinner Monday and it quickly became apparent that records were the furthest thing from his mind. I had to go to New York for a couple of days and he was very distressed about that. I arrived in the city on St. Patrick’s Day, and when I opened my hotel room door there were green flowers waiting for me and a note that called me his special little Irish leprechaun. I felt a little skip of the heart, and that was it. I called him immediately, and when I got back to L.A. we started going everywhere and doing everything together. It was the beginning of the romance. Though I’ve at times hesitated to say it, the truth is that I loved Desi Arnaz. I loved him very much.
Almost immediately, Desi and I became the media couple of the moment. Not only were we both young and attractive, but, having grown up in the public eye, we were both celebrities, lovers who needed no introduction. We hit all the right spots every evening, like a kiddie version of Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher: the fan magazines just couldn’t get enough of the story.
Desi was extremely bright, a very mature, gifted kid, and there was a lot of philosophical discussion and spiritual exploration going on between us. What I loved about him most, though, was his youthfulness. Zipping around in that unbelievable sports car, going to this house on the beach and that house in the mountains, always with an accelerated, living-on-the-edge energy—his was the kind of young and carefree existence I’d never experienced.
And though Desi did his share of drinking, overall his life was very healthy, full of tennis, touch football, bicycle riding, and water-skiing. At the time I wondered how he was able to throw back so many gin and tonics and smoke so many cigarettes and still be able to get up the next morning and handle all that activity. The secret was that while I was twenty-three, Desi was only seventeen.
I didn’t learn or even suspect Desi’s real age for quite a while. I’d seen him served liquor in restaurants, he always acted much more mature than his age, and, don’t forget, he’d straight out lied to me. People have said, “Oh, come on. He had one of the most publicized lives in Hollywood, his birth was the most famous goddamn thing that ever happened on television. You could have checked the year.” Who goes around checking years? If you’re in love with somebody, you believe him. I’d asked the guy how old he was, he’d told me, that was all that mattered to me.
Once I discovered how young Desi really was, I was shocked, but that was nothing compared to the reaction Lucille Ball, who was the source of that information, had when she found out we were seriously involved. I’ve raised kids who are now in their twenties, and if one of them had come home at age seventeen with a twenty-four-year-old divorcee and gone up to his room with her, I would have died too. So I hold no grudge against Lucy for that kind of initial reaction. I do, however, still feel bitterness for the sorrow that she caused me by steadfastly refusing to see that I had only the best intentions toward her son.
While Desi’s father, Desi, Sr., was always extremely gracious, Lucy was just the opposite. She bore no resemblance to the woman we all saw on TV, and I don’t just mean that she wasn’t putting the bowl of spaghetti on her head. For whatever reason—the age difference, my divorce, the rumors about my drug use—Lucy felt she was in a crisis situation, and her attitude was efficient and cold, with barely a veneer of politeness. While I can certainly sympathize to an extent, when she took out after me she had the wrong villain, because I was nothing but absolutely honorable and gracious and in love, not the rapacious fiend she seemed to think I was. Lucy from time to time tried to tolerate me, at least I think she did, because I was invited over for the occasional dinner or movie, but I honestly don’t believe she tried hard enough. And sometimes, in later years, I’d wonder if there weren’t moments when Lucy thought back and said, “Jeez, maybe Duke wasn’t so bad after all.”
The romantic intensity between Desi and me was very great, but we hadn’t been together for more than two or three months before it was broken up for the first time. Lucy accomplished that with a series of ultimatums. Either he stopped seeing me or he was out of the house, he was out of the will, they’d do something to me because I was screwing around with jailbait, whatever. Desi called me and said, “I can’t be there, I can’t get out of the house.” Then he said, “We’ve got to cool it. Maybe she’s right, maybe they’re all right.” He never said, “It’s over,” but it was apparent.
I was deeply crushed. I sort of went into hiding for a while, then I called Desi and, not surprisingly, cried a lot. He and his family were going to Hawaii and I begged to go, but he said no, I couldn’t. But I followed him there on my own, which absolutely enraged Lucy. I was feeling very similar to the way I’d felt about Harry, not thinking, just obsessed. But there was also anger in me; I didn’t like the way his mother was treating me, as if I were some kind of miscreant. But in my desperation to prove what a wonderful person I was, I did every wrong thing I could.
; Desi called me when he got back from Hawaii, he told me he was sorry for the way things were going, that he loved me and we’d work something out. We began getting together again, though not so much in public because we didn’t want his mother to get furious. But little by little he began to let her know that he was seeing me again.
The situation between Desi and me, however, never returned to the way it was before Lucy’s ultimatums, and one of the reasons had nothing at all to do with either of them. During my period of hiding after that initial break I’d met and had a brief secret affair with John Astin. He was separated from his wife and children but he was still married, and when he told me he was going back to his family, I thought that was the end of it. I didn’t know how much I really cared for John, and I certainly didn’t know that just before we’d split up I had conceived our son Sean.
TWENTY-FIVE
I hadn’t had any sort of contact with either John or Ethel Ross for almost five years. While I was at the Westwood, Harry had made a deal with them; he’d given them fifty thousand dollars cash and bought them off. It was “go away” money so that they wouldn’t pursue any contractual claims on me, and it worked. But now, in the spring of 1970, I was going through a period of soul-searching and I decided to write them a letter.
The basic thrust of the note was my desire to bury the hatchet. “All that’s happened is too complicated to go into,” I wrote, “but I’ve been thinking about you both and hoping that things are going better for you. Even though we can’t have the same relationship we had before, I want to reestablish contact and say that some things are clearer to me now, about where my mistakes were as well as yours.”
I showed this letter to my father figure of the moment, David Licht, my manager, the man who’d been so worried about the press when I took all those pills at Sandy’s house. He thought I had rocks in my head; he advised me that under no circumstances should that letter be sent. He didn’t give any reasons, but since I still tended to accept authority, I listened to him. And John Ross died within two weeks, on May 1 in Palm Springs. He was the second father I didn’t get to say good-bye to, and the pain of once again having to experience that lack of resolution was especially hard to bear.
The phone rang late one night and it was Joey Trent, another Ross protégé, whom I also hadn’t heard from in years. The conversation was extremely brief.
“Patty? It’s Joey.”
“Yes, I know.”
“You know what?”
“J.R. is dead.”
“Can I come over?”
“Yeah.”
No one had told me anything, my knowledge was intuitive. I don’t even remember having the thought, I just said, “I know.”
Joey came over to the apartment and told me that Ethel did not want me to call her, did not want me at the funeral, did not want any part of me anywhere. And I asked him to plead my case. I said, “If she really doesn’t, I’ll stay away, but I think John would have wanted me there. Maybe if you appeal to her on that basis, she’ll relent.” He did, and Ethel did relent. I had felt extraordinarily peaceful when I first heard about John’s death, as if he were up above, taking care of me, but the strength of Ethel’s anger and hatred for me was so unsettling that I went into a very insecure state that I would later learn to recognize as premanic I wasn’t able to calm down enough to eat or sleep.
Though Ethel finally allowed me to come down to Palm Springs for the funeral, the condition she set was that I couldn’t be with anyone, I had to do everything by myself. We embraced when I arrived, or I should say I was the one doing the embracing, because Ethel was just rigid. Her mood was subdued and efficient as she asked everyone else to go away. “Come with me,” she said. “He’s in here.” She opened the door of the chapel and waited there until I’d finished.
It was just a little chapel, the casket was open, and I stood there and looked at him. I was really torn up. I looked at his hands and at his rings; I remembered how proud he’d been of them. I remembered my own fear of dying, and John telling me, “We have to worry about that a lot sooner than you do.” I bent over and carefully placed a tiny note in the casket. It said, “I’m sorry. I love you.” I cried, but only a little, because she was there.
Afterward there was a reception at their house, to which I was not invited. I had a room at a local hotel, and Joey Trent came and visited with me there. I stayed up all night drinking coffee, talking with Joey, and trying to track down other Ross protégés by phone after he fell asleep.
Then came the funeral. I was allowed to go to the cemetery but, again, I had to be on my own. So I stayed way behind this little procession of cars. I sang “Danny Boy” to myself while I drove; that was his favorite song. I fell asleep before I got there and ran off the road; you can imagine how that woke me up. At the graveside I stayed with the crowd, all local people, not with the family. I felt very awkward. And then I left and that out-of-control treadmill inside me kicked in, I didn’t have a calm moment for the next three weeks. That brought me to June 7, the night of the Emmys.
My Sweet Charlie had been nominated for eight Emmys, including one for me for best actress. Desi and I were seeing each other again, his mother was obviously not thrilled, but nobody was threatening anybody, so I was on a high. I asked him if he’d go with me to the awards and he said absolutely. Feeling very up and filled with love for the world, I wanted to do something nice for my mother, whose birthday happened to be June 7 as well. She’d never been to an awards ceremony, and even if I didn’t win this time, it would be a nice party for her to go to. So I sent her a plane ticket and brought her out to L.A.
My mother came, but no matter what I did it wasn’t good enough, it wasn’t right. I’d take her shopping, she’d say she liked the clothes, and then after we got home she didn’t like them anymore. She just sat there stone-faced, I couldn’t even make her smile. And not helping my mood was the fact that even though I’d told no one, I was pretty sure I was pregnant. I assumed at first the baby was Desi’s, but when I became more clear-headed and carefully counted the days, I realized the timing was off, it had to be John’s. I did not tell him, though. He was married and to me that meant there was absolutely no hope of our getting together.
Came get-ready time on the evening of the Emmys and my mother began crying and she wouldn’t tell me why. I tried to get her dressed, but each piece of clothing involved a twenty-minute coaching job from me. When she was finally finished, she became even more distraught. She didn’t like the dress, she didn’t want to wear it, she didn’t even want to go. I was so hurt, so angry, I really felt like popping her one.
I did a lot of yelling and she did a lot of staring into space. I did a lot of begging, and she continued to stare into space. And then, finally, I said, “All right, goddamn it, here. You wear my dress”—which she’d said she liked—“and I’ll wear something else.” And while she was changing into my dress, it was as if something snapped in me, all I could hear in my head was a nonstop litany of “fuck-it fuck-it fuck-it fuck-it fuck-it fuck-it.”
I went to the closet and put together the most ridiculous-looking combination of stuff to wear, an evening dress topped by a crocheted long sweater and then tied around the waist with some red yarn. It was really bizarre. People began arriving, Desi, David Licht and his family, and though I tried to cover it up with party-party-party excitement, it must have been obvious that I was not behaving in a way that was familiar to anyone. We drank a bit of champagne in the stretch limo, but that was the only booze I had all night. I kept looking at my mother to see if she was getting a little excited. Maybe she was, maybe I just didn’t know her well enough to tell when she was excited.
By the time we arrived at the ceremony, I was very wired, there was some kind of momentum growing in me. It wasn’t excitement about the awards or anything like that; I didn’t understand what it was. First Al Freeman, who’d also been nominated, didn’t win as I felt he deserved to, and that flipped another switch inside me. And then I won.
I can’t exactly describe what happened between my sitting there, hearing my name read, and my acceptance speech, but any sense of the reality of what goes on at those events, of what your behavior is supposed to be like, just went away. John’s death and the whole Ross experience came back to me, the fact that I was pregnant and unmarried scared me, my mother had finally come to an awards ceremony where I’d won and she didn’t seem to care, all these thoughts were like a bunch of old-hag demons, pulling and tugging at me and calling my name. And I kept trying to hang on.
I’ve seen a tape of that acceptance speech and though I really wasn’t as nuts as people later talked about, it was obvious there was something wrong with me. I tried to talk in metaphor, and that didn’t work. I wanted to be gracious to the other women who’d been nominated, but it didn’t come out right, I talked about enthusiasm; John Ross had taught me that the word was derived from the Greek and meant “the god within.” I thought I had the ideas strung together right, but it sounded disjointed. And when I used my hands to sign a message to the deaf, the camera shot was so tight that my hands weren’t visible. To people watching on TV, it looked as if I was just blankly standing there.
When I got offstage, David Licht and a publicist for the network were waiting for me, looking very nervous, and I didn’t know what was the matter. Then all of a sudden I got very angry, I told someone to take the Emmy. They thought I meant them to hold it for a minute and I said, “No, no, take it back. I don’t want this. It doesn’t mean anything to me.” Partly I was upset because Al Freeman hadn’t won; I felt since the play was a two-character piece that giving an award to me and not to him was silly. Today I’d know how to make that kind of personal gesture to Al, but then, I was just this young, emotionally upset, crazy girl.
