Everything we need is within us, Sally, she always said to me.
I knew that I had left so much unspoken and unresolved with my father. “I can’t die,” my dad had said during one of my last hospital visits with him. “I have to see you kids grow up.” After his death I found those two beautiful letters, full of love and support, reminding me that I had talent. At the same time I couldn’t forget his anger and disapproval and how stern and critical he could be of everything from my language to my wardrobe. Every transgression of mine—or my mother’s—was worthy of the same level of anger. Neither of us had reached a point in our lives when we could talk about any of that.
Mom insisted that she stayed in the relationship because she loved my dad—a lot. As for me, I could never find a way to reconcile his good side with his bad side, his encouragement with his reprimands. But I had noticed some changes. “I’ve even learned to like Gloria,” he had written me the year before his death, referring to Diana’s partner. “I must be becoming modern.”
My dad was growing, just like the rest of us. He had worked very hard to accept Diana’s coming out and also to see the good in Rick.
I MYSELF WAS HAVING TROUBLE SEEING THE GOOD IN RICK. Things flared up in 1971 while I was in New York City, rehearsing for the film Last of the Red Hot Lovers with Alan Arkin. I was living at the Plaza Hotel, where we also rehearsed. I was loving the work. I had a fantastic part playing one of the women that a frustrated—and married—Alan Arkin gets involved with. Great parts are all about the writing, whether it’s a film or a voice-over gig, and this was a work by Neil Simon. You don’t get better writing than that. Last of the Red Hot Lovers remains one of my proudest accomplishments.
Unfortunately for me, every time Alan Arkin would do something during rehearsal, Neil Simon would start to laugh. But whenever I did anything, all I heard were crickets. At first it was just a little annoying, but then it really started to get distracting and was making me paranoid. Instead of becoming my character, I felt like I was trying to please Neil. So I had the director, Gene Saks, ask Neil if he would mind not sitting in on our rehearsals. Neil never said anything to me about it, but he did stop showing up when I was filming.
As our director, Gene was tenacious about getting what he wanted from his actors and crew. He always wanted me to play harder and tougher, displaying no vulnerability whatsoever. Gene was brilliant—and he was right. But when the film came out, reviewers tuned in to—you guessed it—my vulnerability. The harder I played it, the more you could see how vulnerable the character was. My character and I were similar in a lot of ways. The more I tried to show everyone how confident and together I was, the clearer it was to those close to me that I wasn’t. Not by a long shot.
What made the time in New York even more special was that my mother came to stay with me. After my father’s death she needed to get away, and she’d never been to New York. I was busy all day, but in her typical self-starter style, my mom got all the brochures and maps, familiarized herself with public transportation, and went out into the city every day, taking tours and visiting museums. At night, when she returned from her adventures and I was done with rehearsal, we would sit in our beautiful two-bedroom suite at the Plaza, eating clams on the half shell and sipping glasses of white wine. I loved having the chance to spoil her as she had spoiled me all my life.
Edith Kellerman was such an example of how to live and love. She always took care of herself, plump or thin, tired or raring to go, hassled by my dad or standing tall on the pedestal he had for her in his mind. I’d always thought of my parents as Victorian and repressed, the source of all my neuroses. But during our time in New York my mom confided in me that she and my father were having sex until they fell off the bed because the cancer had made him too weak. So what the hell did I know?
Having Mom around was both a comfort and a reality check. Here I was with a woman who never looked to a man to make her happy, who did not stop living her life because he was gone. And here I was in a marriage with an expiration date that I felt was fast approaching, wondering how—and if—I could make it on my own.
WHILE I WAS IN NEW YORK GRACE MIRABELLA, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF of Vogue, contacted me. Grace offered me a ten-page spread in her magazine, one that would include modeling some furs for my “cousin” David Bennett, who now had his own shop. It would have been wonderful exposure for me, great publicity for David, and a lot of fun. I loved being around Grace who, despite her prestigious job, was a warm, real, down-to-earth girl. She was one of fashion’s triumvirate of divas, succeeding Diana Vreeland at the magazine and preceding Anna Wintour. I sometimes thought that, if the acting went south, maybe I could work for her. Whenever I was in the Vogue office, there was someone buzzing around with belts for shoots, belts for advertisements. Someone always seemed to be looking for the right belt. Maybe I could be the belt person, I thought.
I called Rick to let him know that I wanted to extend my stay a few days in New York so I could do the Vogue shoot. He was furious.
“What about me?” he said. “You’ve been out there nineteen days. You need to come back.”
I was terrified of losing Rick. I didn’t want to upset him. But when I told my agent, the legendary—and notoriously somewhat prickly—Sue Mengers, that I was going to pass on Grace’s offer, she was beside herself. She was as furious with me about passing up the Vogue shoot as Rick was about me taking it. She knew very well that, after your Oscar exposure, a window of opportunity opens wide for you, but it doesn’t remain open long. What did I think, that Vogue was going to ring up and offer me another ten pages the following week or month . . . or ever, for that matter? They never have again, or at least not so far.
It was a horrendous choice, but ignoring everyone’s better judgment—including my own—I finally told Grace no. I’m sure I lost her respect and cost David a great opportunity to expand his business. But at that point I just couldn’t stand up to Rick.
Before leaving New York I did some interviews about Last of the Red Hot Lovers, a few other films I had in the works, and my budding music career. My first album would be out soon, and I was so excited. But was I insightful? Not very. I saw a quote of mine recently that was published in December 1971, a year after Rick and I got married:
“I am finally all put together,” I told a reporter. “I couldn’t be happier.”
Yep. I was an Academy Award nominated actress, all right. Happy? If they bought that, they would buy anything I was selling.
The problem was, I bought it too.
IT’S HARD TO POINT TO JUST ONE THING THAT FINALLY UNDOES a marriage. Although I was annoyed at Rick for helping sabotage my career—intentionally or not, but certainly with my acquiescence—probably the straw that finally broke my back was the issue of Claire, my sister Diana’s seven-year-old daughter. I wanted to play a bigger part in Claire’s life.
Claire was still living with Ian in Santa Monica. Diana was far away now. She and Gloria had decided to leave not only Los Angeles but the United States. They were living in the south of France, where Diana had lived before and where she and Gloria felt more comfortable. Furthermore, it would be some time before Claire reached eighteen, the age when, according to Ian and Diana’s agreement, she would be able to see her mother.
I knew that Ian was struggling—physically, emotionally—to take care of Claire. What had initially appeared to be some sort of depression—Ian was sleeping all the time, not working—was becoming much worse. What we did not know then was that he had Parkinson’s. Very little was understood about that disease at the time. I would run over to Ian’s place whenever I could to cook or take Claire out, but now that Rick and I were settled in a lovely rented house with a yard in the Hollywood Hills, I found myself longing to be with her more permanently. So I had Claire over often, but I must confess that those visits sometimes took a tragicomic turn.
I still hadn’t shaken the horror of the Manson murders. Every time I heard a car making its way down our sleepy little street
in the Hills when Claire and I were outside, I’d fly into a panic.
“DOWN CLAIRE!!!” I’d shout. For some reason I felt compelled to make sure that the approaching driver could not see that a child was playing behind our white picket fence. It didn’t matter to me what kind of neighborhood we lived in or how much money we had; there was still that residual fear that maybe there were some people from the Manson gang that they hadn’t yet found.
Then, not long after we began renting our house, a group of men moved next door. What’s going on over there? I wondered. What kind of group living situation is this? There weren’t any women around, and none of the men seemed to have jobs. They brought in very little furniture. The men just stayed indoors all day, and occasionally I heard loud music. I was convinced they were some sort of cult, part of the Manson gang. Whenever I was in the yard and I saw one of the men leave the house—to go to his car or take a walk—I’d grab Claire and shuttle her inside as fast as I could.
“Down, Claire! Get in the house, Claire!”
Poor girl. She was only seven or eight years old. I know I must have scared her to death. But I just wanted to keep her safe. Luckily, she had great spirit.
One day I was gardening with Claire. The weather was lovely, and I was enjoying the sun and the breeze and the flowers in our small yard. Suddenly I looked up. It was one of them! I whipped around and scanned the yard. Oh my God! Where was Claire?! I finally spotted her. I ran over, but the Dangerous Man was already on the move. He wasn’t going to his car. Oh God, Oh God, he was walking toward my house, toward us. Oh no, oh no . . . I was thinking. I tried, but I couldn’t grab Claire and make it back in the house in time.
“Excuse me . . .” the man said.
I turned around. He was still walking toward us.
“Excuse me . . .”
I froze.
“I just wanted to say hi,” he called out to me. “We’re going to be living next door for a while. We’re in a band called Bread.”
Ah yes. The murderous cult/soft-rock band that sang love songs like the number-one hit, “Make It with You.”
I introduced myself and blurted out my entire insane story. Thank God the man laughed. I’m surprised he didn’t start running into his house to hide from me.
Okay, so maybe my maternal instincts were a little off at times. But I loved Claire. I didn’t know how I could live without her.
More and more I hated her situation with her ailing father. She would call sometimes and say something like, “Aunt Sally, I have gum in my hair . . .”
“Sorry, Rick, I have to go see Claire,” I’d say. I’d hop in the car, drive over to the apartment she shared with Ian in Santa Monica, and by time I got there, she would have already lopped off a huge chunk of her lovely chestnut hair with a pair of scissors.
After the gum incident, while I was taking a walk in the neighborhood with Rick, I told him that I wanted to spend more than few days here and there with Claire.
“She needs me,” I said, biting my nails and fearing his reaction.
“If you want her, fight me for her,” Rick said.
“Okay, then I want her here on weekends.”
I started having Claire spend weekends with us, but the battle wasn’t over. Everything had to be a fight in our house. One fight I almost lost related to having Claire come for Christmas, which was two months off. Rick agreed to let Claire come, but her father, Ian, who was suffering from Parkinson’s, was not welcome. I would never have Claire spend Christmas apart from her father.
We then learned that we could no longer stay in the house. The lease was up, and the landlord didn’t want to renew. I hated the thought of losing that house. It was so lovely, so quiet, and having a yard meant everything to me. I was still a country girl from the orange groves of the Valley. I needed my grass. I needed my trees.
We had friends in the neighborhood who offered to put us up until we found a place that really suited us. But Rick wouldn’t have it; he was intent on finding a house that was big enough not only for us but also for his four daughters from his first marriage. They still lived back east in the Bronx. The house he found was enormous. I hated it—all house, no yard. No land whatsoever. But again, I didn’t stand up to him the way I should have. I didn’t say no.
Instead, I took it out on him. In my mind we lived precisely four days in that house before we split up. Maybe it was longer. Maybe not. We were already going in such different directions. I know that, even though Rick was the one who physically walked out of that house, I was making it as unpleasant as possible for him to stay—even if he had still wanted to.
Looking back, when Rick and I met, he was recovering from a marriage that had produced four children. I was on the rebound from a relationship that only existed in my mind. I don’t think either of us loved ourselves enough to have a relationship. When I was younger, I blamed Rick for everything. Today, I see clearly my part in it.
My marriage was over. It was for the best. And Claire and Ian came to Christmas and all was right in the world.
CHAPTER 9
Flirting with Politics
MY FIRST DATE AFTER SPLITTING FROM RICK? HENRY KISSINGER.
It was all Jennifer Jones’s doing.
At that point I was all over the map, so out of touch with myself. I was in the midst of my divorce, wondering why I had ever married Rick and why we’d bought this huge Spanish-style house with six bedrooms, six baths, and a living room the size of Dodger Stadium when we had no furniture to fill it. The house had been on the market for two years before we moved in. Now I was trying to turn around and sell it again. I was determined.
I did what I could to make it look attractive to anyone who might stop by. I hung scarves from the windows. I would come home from work and get the fireplace going, turn up the music, and sip a split of champagne. I did my best to make it feel homey, but I had never wanted to live there in the first place.
I was there alone, except for weekends, when I had Claire. Claire loved the house. With no furniture to get in the way, she could do all the cartwheels, headstands, and backbends she could dream of. But I couldn’t wait to get that white elephant of a house, with no yard and all those empty rooms full of unhappy memories, off my hands.
Meanwhile, I was keeping busy. I was working on the film Lost Horizon and had just finished shooting two other movies, Reflection of Fear with Robert Shaw and Slither with James Caan. Both men were rascals, each in his own distinct way. I loved them both dearly.
William Fraker, who had been the camera operator on Outer Limits and another love of mine, was the director on Reflection. On the first day of shooting I had to take a long walk across the lawn. It was my first shot.
The assistant director called, “Roll it!”
“Relax, Sally! It all depends on you!” Robert Shaw yelled out in the middle of the scene. “Everything is pointing right at you!”
Thanks, Robert. I thought. Now I don’t feel self-conscious at all.
Another day Robert came into the makeup trailer and said, “God! You look gorgeous!” In his enthusiasm he walked over, picked me up, threw me over his shoulder, and tromped me off to the set, with my hair blowing in the wind. I’d just spent forty-five minutes fixing my hair because I’m neurotic. But still, his caveman act was utterly endearing,
I’d have to say Robert Shaw was an alcoholic. He said, “I only drink when I’m acting. It’s so boring.” But he was also very funny and sweet. One night on the set he kept telling me, “You should have a glass of wine, Sally, to help you relax.” I kept saying no, and he kept insisting, “Don’t be silly.” So I had a glass of red wine. I guess I felt guilty. I ended up getting as drunk as he was, and Bill could have killed us. I have since only had a glass of wine on set one other time, with Harry Dean Stanton.
Slither was James Caan’s first film after The Godfather. I almost didn’t get the part. “You don’t have to hire me,” I had said to the director, Howard Zieff. “How about we take ten minutes and have a me
eting, just talk about things?”
I had initially been offered the film by MGM, turned it down, and soon after had a change of heart. Then one weekend I’d found myself on a picnic with friends. Howard Zieff was with us. I was wearing big, checkered pants and four-inch Candie’s high heels, looking like the Jolly Green Giant. Howard and I got to talking, and he told me about his brother, a land developer, who built much of the tract housing in the San Fernando Valley. I was not a fan of tract housing in my Valley and let him know. The next day I got a call from my agent.
“Sally, Howard is not sure if you’re right for the part . . .”
Can’t say I didn’t see that one coming. So I decided maybe I should call.
“Howard,” I said, “don’t be like your brother and ruin the Valley. How about we have a meeting first?”
He agreed. I wore tight jeans, a T-shirt, and flats. As we talked, I learned that James Caan was worried I was too tall to star with him. So I said, “Well, you want somebody good or somebody short?”
I finally went in to do the reading. When it was over, everyone in the room, including Jimmy, stood up as I was leaving. I looked around and said, “I don’t think Jimmy’s too short.”
I got the job. And in every production office, at all of our locations, my picture hung next to Jimmy’s on the wall—six inches higher.
Slither was a road movie, and my character, Kitty Kopetzky, was on the run with Jimmy. He had great charm and was so much fun; I loved him from the first day. Jimmy taught me to box; he practiced lassoing on me. He was irreverent and adorable.
For a while we were shooting near some cliffs that overlooked the Pacific Ocean. The location was invigorating. Jimmy was all brawn and machismo. I was free, unattached, as Rick and I were split up by that point. Maybe a little affair would be just the ticket, I thought.
Read My Lips Page 13
