I sent a copy of the magazine with a short note to Louella Parsons, saying that I hoped she’d be able to understand the spirit in which the article was written and not just its title. She wrote me back a sweet note saying that since she’d known me practically all my life, she was indeed aware of the intentions of the article and wished me all success in my career. Louella was an elderly lady by that time, but she still held control over a powerful column. She decided to help me in whatever way she could and started writing things in the column about me, my blossoming career and finally about the article I’d sent her with the note. There was a lot of publicity that was a direct result of her column and almost inevitably, a job offer.
The majority of my life I’d tried to be someone on my own. I’d tried to get work without using mother or her name, though I never changed my own as she had asked me to do. This time, I was determined to do whatever the hype, which was not of my own making, demanded. I would give the interviews and do the talk shows and take the work that came as a result. This was a classic case of the hype working through publicity campaigns that began to have their own momentum, but which had originated with Louella Parsons’ column. From there, lots of others jumped on the bandwagon and tried to get in on the act.
Not long afterwards, I received a wire from Jerry Wald, offering me a part in new next picture starring Elvis Presley. I went to the 20th Century Fox offices in New York. I knew the Skouras family who still ran Fox in those days from my work with Boys Towns of Italy. They liked me and Spiros Skouras had me into his office for a brief interview. I was then offered a long-term contract with Fox, but I’d have to go out to the Coast for a screen test. It was just like all the stories you’ve ever read in movie magazines. I tried to remain calm through the whole uproar, but it was getting impossible. I was getting progressively more scared as each day rolled by. They gave me a first class, round trip ticket and told me to plan on staying in Los Angeles two weeks.
I had to borrow money for the first few days in California and the trip to the airport. Seems as though I always had to borrow money just to get out of town! The studio agreed to pay a per diem and pick up my hotel bill, but I wouldn’t go on salary until the picture started.
Saying goodbye to my friends in New York was a mixed blessing. I was very sad to leave, scared to death about returning to Los Angeles and so excited about how well all this was going that I couldn’t stand it.
I was very nervous during my screen test. It was all so formal, so many people scurrying around the big sound stage and so quiet when the work began and the cameras rolled. I’d been on sound stages all my life. I knew the entire routine. But, I’d never been there on my own. The film we did in Florida was primarily on locations, it was a low budget movie and we were all very informal. This was the “big time”, for real. The next five years of my life depended on just one day, just one screen test.
When I saw the test, I didn’t like it very much. There were a multitude of things I would have done differently the next time. But it was good enough to get me the part in Jerry Wald’s picture and the studio signed my long term contract renewable at their option.
I went to see my Uncle Jerry in his office to thank him for this wonderful opportunity. He was just exactly as I remembered him from the years he visited the Brentwood house: a round man with a moon-like face and a heart of gold. He was also a very good producer. We reminisced a while about the “old days” and I felt it was time to leave. He gave me a big hug and told me he was glad things had worked out so well.
Every time something had appeared in her column about me, I’d written Aunt Louella to thank her. Unfortunately, by the time I actually arrived in Los Angeles, she was too ill to have visitors. So I left messages and wrote her notes on my progress, thanking her again for helping to make it all possible.
November 5, 1960
Christina dear,
I saw your test, and I thought you were just lovely. I am glad you had the loving care of Jerry Wald, Bill Mellor, Perry Lieber, Don Prince and Phillip Dunne.
I am sure you will have great success, and nobody wishes it for you more than your -
“Mommie”
I was embarrassed to realize that she’d been on the studio lot the same time I had been there and I’d been manipulated so skillfully that I didn’t bump into her or even know she was there seeing my screen test. It wasn’t just embarrassing, it was downright creepy.
Almost every day I was at the studio doing wardrobe fittings, hair and makeup tests, publicity photos and having lunches at the commissary with the publicity department for interviews they’d arranged. I was now one of the stable of contract players on the lot and I just simply didn’t ask questions. I gave interviews on the theme “I’m glad my mother disciplined me because if I’m to succeed in this business, I’ll need it.” I tried to turn the thrust of the questions into a positive image for myself. I tried to gloss over the years of estrangement, which were still going on and only emphasize my early, happy childhood years with mother. It seemed like every time I turned around, I was meeting someone who said: “I’II bet you don’t remember me, but I met you when you were …” I began to think that half the known world must have passed through the gates of our Brentwood house before I was seven years old. I didn’t remember most of the people, but I tried to be polite about it. How could I be expected to remember someone I met only once at three years old? But, by God, they remembered me! I listened to their stories with that fixed, polite smile on my face so many times it’s a wonder I didn’t forget myself and curtsey at the end of them.
In my free time I contacted Sister Benigna and visited her at Flintridge. I called Nicki and she drove up to Hollywood to see me. I saw some of my schoolmates from Chadwick, most of whom were married now. I visited with Mrs. Chadwick and she told me the sad news of Commander’s death. I even saw Walter again. He was very successful already and directly in line to take over the family business. He was wonderful to me as always, despite the years that had passed and all the changes we’d both been through. The only truly magnanimous gesture of my life was not allowing myself to marry Walter. He would have given me the world if he could and all I would have given him in return would have been total misery. Not because I intended to, but at that time of my life, I wasn’t really capable of much better. It was because I loved him and cared about him that I had to stop seeing him, not because he wasn’t important to me. There are just some people you cannot allow yourself to screw up with, and that’s how I felt about Walter. He deserved better.
There was something about all of this that was like ghosts on parade for me. It was a weird homecoming. I felt uneasy.
In the midst of the notoriety that was beginning to surround me, I was nearly broke. After my test was over, I couldn’t afford the hotel and I had to stay with a series of friends. I’m afraid I always overstayed my welcome, since I was an intrusion into their ordinary, everyday lives. I didn’t have a car nor did I have a California driver’s license. Getting from one place to another was an incredible hassle. I began to realize that I was doing something wrong, that I just couldn’t seem to hold it all together.
When the picture finally started shooting, I was told that I’d only have two weeks work on it. The two weeks dwindled down to one week with some night shooting on overtime. It was a very small part with billing far beyond what the part itself required. It was the hype again, only this time I did recognize it happening. I was just being used in every way possible and in return I was getting one week’s work. It was starting to make me feel very crazy. I was beginning to realize that I was no match for the experts. Certainly, they’d turned this hype around on me and gotten by far the better deal out of it.
I was going out with one of Elvis Presley’s companion-bodyguards, who was very nice to me and invited me to a lot of the parties given at the Bel Air mansion Elvis occupied.
Before the small part I had in the picture was even finished shooting, I received word that Jerry Wald wanted to
see me in his office. I didn’t think much about it, since I’d been to see Jerry a number of times since my arrival.
Jerry had a habit of stuttering slightly whenever he was excited or agitated. As he greeted me, I realized that he was stuttering today. He motioned me to a chair in front of his desk and didn’t get up to give me a hug as usual. I sat quietly, waiting for what he had to say.
He was clearly an uncomfortable man during these next moments. He didn’t look at me directly, but at the floor, the ceiling and his desk. He told me he wanted to talk to me about something that had just happened that was very disturbing to him and which he hoped I would be able to clarify.
He then related to me the following story: Apparently, after my mother had finished the cameo role in his film The Best of Everything last year, he and mother had talked about her appearing in his next film, after the Elvis movie, which was Return to Peyton Place. Mother had asked to see the script, as usual, and then agreed to do the film for him. They’d gotten so far that they’d worked out all the details right up to actually signing contracts, which was supposed to have occurred just about now. Jerry paused at this point, looking directly at me for the first time.
“Your mother has just informed me that she is unable to do the picture.” He almost had tears in his eyes. He went on to say that she said she was very sorry, but other commitments prevented her from doing his film. He looked at me and said: “It was all set! What do you think could have happened?”
I honestly didn’t know, since I had not seen mother here at the studio. I hadn’t seen anything except the back of her hat in the Westchester Court House for well over a year.
Jerry was extremely agitated now, and was pacing up and down behind his desk. He said that he got the impression that the reason she wouldn’t do his next film, which had been all set, was that I was doing his current film. He had the distinct impression that she was angry with him for hiring and helping me! He looked directly at me again. I didn’t know what to say. I just sat there like a big bump.
He repeated his impression differently. In other words, he said, if he hired me he wasn’t going to be able to get her. But since he’d already hired me and since I’d nearly finished shooting my small part in the movie, there was nothing he could do about it.
“Are you and mother on good terms?” he asked directly.
“No, we’re not,” I answered back just as directly.
“That’s it,” he mumbled, more to himself than to me. “I hired you and now she won’t work for me.”
“I’m sorry, Uncle Jerry. I didn’t know anything like this would happen to anybody.” I felt terrible, both for myself and for him. There was nothing I could do about it either. She was punishing him where it really hurt. She was showing him and the rest of the industry that she could give out hard lessons too. Once word got around, as I knew it would, that if you hired me, don’t expect mother to work for you. She was in the process of giving everyone a graphic lesson in what to expect. I don’t think she realized that Jerry would tell me what had happened, or give me enough information to know why. It was innuendo and intimidation at its very best. It was the old hype at work full time … full steam ahead.
I finished my part in the picture. With the salary I’d been getting, I finally managed to get an apartment on Franklin Avenue in Hollywood, but it was unfurnished. I sent for my few things from New York and let the apartment there go. My things had not yet arrived, so I was practically sleeping on the floor.
Thanksgiving was spent with my friend who had visited grandmother. But as the holiday season approached, there were invitations to a lot of parties. No one yet knew what a small part I’d had in the Presley movie. All they knew was what a lot of publicity I’d been getting, courtesy of the studio interviews. I received invitations to a lot of parties that were given mainly for their own publicity value. It was sort of a circle. If your name was in the papers, you had ample opportunities to get your name in the paper over and over again.
I was invited to a holiday party at Presley’s house as well. There were lots of people delighted to attend, since Elvis rarely went out and it was something of a status symbol to be invited to his house. Midway through the party, Elvis and I were seated side by side on the couch in the living room filled with people. What started out as just a joke involving his big cigar and my drink turned into an unfortunate scuffle. The contents of my glass were dripping all over his shirt.
Needless to say, I left immediately thereafter and had to apologize profusely to him before my faux pas was forgiven.
It was sort of all in keeping with the rest that was happening in my life. Just one screw up after another. A couple of days before, I received word that the studio was not picking up their option on my contract. I was to get my things out of the dressing room as soon as possible. When I arrived at the front gate to retrieve my few belongings, not two weeks after finishing the picture, I found out I no longer had a pass and was ushered through the reception office having to get special permission even to enter the lot. It was again, just like you read about in movie magazines, only now it was the flip side of the coin and it was happening to me. The official reason the studio gave was general cutback due to the cost of Cleopatra which was way over budget. While that may well have been true, I don’t think the story Jerry Wald told me exactly helped my chances for continued success.
So, there I was in Los Angeles. I’d let my New York apartment go, I’d sent for my belongings which were midway across the country. I’d been counting on a steady salary when I signed the lease on my Franklin Avenue apartment and … now I had nothing.
My last paycheck just got me through the first of the new year. Then I had to move in with friends. There had been so much publicity about my being under contract to Fox, that it was difficult to explain why I was out looking for work. Ironically, the time lag was such that publicity stories were continuing to appear in print long after my contract was canceled. So, to the world at large, it appeared that I was continuing to do extremely well for myself, though in fact, I was again penniless and having to move out of my apartment in the middle of the night.
I’d made contact with Phillip Terry again. He took me out to dinner several times and filled me in on the story of his divorce from mother. It was only then that I learned about the agreement he made with her at that time. It came as a shock to him when he heard that Chris had never received any trust fund or college education money, both of which were stipulated in the divorce agreement in return for her getting sole custody of the child he thought they had adopted together. In addition, he told me that after the divorce he had been unable to get a job anywhere in the business. He’d gone into real estate and done quite well. I told him I was really sorry about the way she’d treated him and the stories about her vendetta against her own brother, Hal. Then I told him about my talk with Jerry Wald and Phillip only replied that it didn’t surprise him.
He was going to Mexico on a fishing trip and offered me the use of his apartment while he was away. Of course, I accepted gratefully and moved in the day he left. In fact, I drove him down to meet his friends in Newport Beach and also had the use of his car. The final irony was that his car was a turquoise blue 1957 Thunderbird, identical to the one given to me on my 18th birthday. I had some weird feelings about that too. The whole thing was like history repeating itself in almost spooky ways that were beyond my comprehension.
During the month of his vacation, my agents sent me on numerous appointments. I didn’t get any of the jobs. I was out of money. I spent the last of my small reserve paying the shipping charges on my belongings from New York. When Phillip returned, I went to live with a man I’d met on the picture. I continued to try to get work for another six months. I never landed one of the jobs and finally even the appointments stopped.
Several people made veiled reference to the reason no one wanted to even see me for an audition, never mind hire me for a job. I had it hinted to me on different occasions that I’d somehow be
en “blacklisted” but there was no way to prove it. No one would admit anything outright. Hollywood is an exciting industry, but it is a town run on fear.
Everyone wants to be on the winning bandwagon and no one wants to even come close to anything that smells of trouble or fear they’ll be next in line for the invisible axe.
One lady columnist had the kindness and the courage to lend me $200 with which to buy a used car, but she made me promise not to tell anyone, not even her husband! I paid back the money in full, eventually, as I had always repaid my debts.
It was too much for me to handle after about a year. I just dropped out of sight completely. I paid my union dues but let the agents go, which wasn’t a hard decision for either of us. I ceased trying to get work as an actress and when all the money ran out, I went to work incognito. I took a job in the mailroom of a savings and loan in Hollywood and worked there for two years. The rest of my time I spent in my garden on a hillside in Laurel Canyon. I was very poor during those years, but I put myself back together again as a human being.
I’m forever grateful to the man who stood by me, who supported me, who helped me find some reality. My life was a total shambles when I met him. He was my first real love, he was my first real man. He was my first glimpse into another way of life. I guess we were living like “hippies” long before there ever was such a word. We grew most of our own food and we fished out at Paradise Cove. We loved each other and we loved our friends.
Mommie Dearest Page 45
