Judy & Liza & Robert & Freddie & David & Sue & Me...

by Stevie Phillips

  *

  There was a lot about David I despised, but just as much that intrigued me. I was enamored of his intellect. He was a voracious reader who often had a nonfiction book in hand (he loved biographies of great historical figures), lest he find himself at the barber without some worthwhile reading. He was up on all the good movies and capable of discussing everything from the motives hidden in the plot to the work of the cinematographer. He was a newshound who took strong political positions. I admired this. It was the start of a political awakening for me. And he was articulate in everything he discussed, commanding a large vocabulary—in fact sometimes using words I needed to look up. (“Concomitant” comes to mind.) And I remember how he praised me when one day, unself-consciously, I correctly used the word “keening” in a sentence. He was delighted.

  I was the sexual aggressor here. I knew I was sending subtle signals—smiling when I might have looked away, lowering my eyes in an apparent come-on. I wanted to know what Judy knew. Yes, a part of my decision had more to do with Judy than simply giving myself permission to fuck him because she wasn’t doing it at that precise moment. I wanted to be in bed with the man Judy slept with and raved about. I was sexually curious about him. I wanted a taste of what the shouting was about. I wanted to sleep with the man the great Judy Garland was in love with—from time to time. I wanted to feel her equal in that way.

  With crazy logic I managed to persuade myself that as long as he was not fucking Judy, it was okay to have this affair even though he was very married. This is the dumbest thinking I was ever guilty of, and I regret to this day that I decided, in spite of knowing what a snake he was, to have my turn with him.

  As to my affair with David, it’s not worth much space. I’m sorry to disappoint you. Trust me, no one was more disappointed than I was. My mother used to say that you never knew anyone until you were either in business or in bed with him. That should have served as warning enough for me, as I knew full well who I was in business with, and although my powers of observation may have been slightly underdeveloped, they weren’t totally useless.

  The affair itself was anything but romantic. No candlelit dinners, no walks through Paris in the rain. It was about sex, plain and simple, and he was far from a great lover. The excitement for him seemed to be about where he could fuck me. On his office desk, in a ladies’ room of the Pierre, in the first-class bathroom on an American Airlines red-eye from LA to New York—making us members, he said, of the “Mile High Club.” My apartment was less exciting, although closer to a telephone. While “doing” me, David was also doing deals on the telephone. I was not amused.

  If ever there was a sex object, I was it. I had no identity, and if I had eagerness for the act itself, I had no opportunity to demonstrate. His penis was present. The rest of him was somewhere else. Of course I wondered if he pulled the same ugly shtick with Judy, but I knew I would never be able to ask either the question. My husband was a gentle, tender, caring lover. David was none of the above. “Revolting” is the only appropriate word to describe sex with David.

  I don’t know whether Freddie knew about my affair with his partner. I took it for granted he did. I went about learning the TV business and looking for clients to add to my roster of one (for I had now signed Liza, and I was pursuing the rising actresses Joan Hackett and Jill Haworth) as if nothing was different, and I didn’t discuss my personal life with anyone. I suspect David told everyone that had any interest in listening. I was noticeably with David all the time. He took me to meetings—ostensibly so I could take notes—and we traveled together for business. He didn’t need me along, but he was interested in finding new places where we could “do it” while risking being caught, which was his thing. And his hypocritical in crowd, the Rudins, the Rosemonts, and the new guys at the firm, Marty Kummer and Danny Welkes, welcomed me as an insider in spite of the fact that they were friendly with Lee.

  The longer I allowed the affair to go on, the more I hated him—and myself. I had to figure out a way to get him out of my personal life while keeping my job. He made it easy: He asked me to marry him. “No” came out of my mouth a bit too quickly, as I recall. And then I backtracked and spoke in clichés—about how flattered I was, and how special “we” were.

  But we were not special at all, and I knew that and he did, too. He had proposed to Judy because she had implied early and often that they would be married. Talk of marriage was probably part of his stock ammunition. But after six months of doing David, the thought of being married to him was nauseating. My escape “pitch” came out of thinking about the dismal prospect of such a marriage. What I told him was no lie: that I couldn’t go on knowing that his wife was sitting at home waiting for him. A month into the affair I was hugely uncomfortable being with a married man, and the feeling continued to grow until I couldn’t handle it. “Guilt” was a word that he knew well and shied away from. I wasn’t urging him to divorce her. Not at all! That’s what he instantly thought, and he said he would get rid of Lee as quickly as possible. I was nothing if not sanctimonious when I advised him to repair his wreck. “No, don’t worry, Stevie. I’m going to end this travesty,” he assured me. It was lip service. “I hope I’ll still be working for the company when you do,” I told him with a smile on my face.

  Since we both knew his divorce wasn’t happening, I was careful not to let it sound like I was judging him. Thank goodness he couldn’t afford a divorce! I told him we would remain friends, and we actually shook hands on it. Once I felt secure again, I asked myself some questions I’d been avoiding. Did fucking David improve my professional prospects? Was I trying to make it to the top on my back? I hated these questions, and disliked the answers even more, but when I finally had the breathing room to examine whether or not I thought the affair had helped my career, I knew the answer: You betcha! David felt he owed me.

  Guilt was the currency David traded in. I got promoted instead of married. If I had been some complete dummy without any potential, I doubt the affair would have gotten me as much as a free pass to Radio City Music Hall. But because I was dumb only about inconsequential personal things, the affair gave me a leg up—so to speak.

  However, once it was over and done with, he didn’t delay (nor has any man I have ever known, for that matter) securing the next body for his bed. He moved on immediately. That sums up for me how much I had mattered. First he went a few more rounds with Judy, and when that was finally over after the London episode, he settled on the wife of his best friend, the real-estate magnate Lew Rudin.

  *

  I don’t find it strange that all three of David’s wives died of cancer, especially if there’s any truth to the mind-body-connection theories. David brought misery to all the lives that he touched in a personal way, most notably Judy’s. I escaped that, more than likely because Judy’s exposure to him toughened me. I already knew who he was. He became my experiment rather than the other way around, and rejecting him let me know I was on the way to becoming the independent woman I wanted to be. I was pleased I did it with kindness. Having said that, I’m ashamed of having had an affair with a married man. It wasn’t for me. I’m sorry I did it then, and I never did it again.

  Nor is it at all strange to me that he committed suicide. And why? Because he brought misery as well to most of the lives he touched in a professional way, and it cost him. He lost most of his friends. He could send three, four, or more studio executives to bed believing they had a deal with him only to find out the next morning that not only didn’t they have a deal, the deal they thought they were negotiating was no more than a figment of David’s imagination. He persuaded himself that people didn’t talk to one another, and he could say whatever he pleased. But people did talk to one another.

  In a town like Hollywood where a rumor is old news within minutes, this wasn’t good for the reputation of the company he was working for—be it FFA, CMA, or Columbia Pictures, nor was it good for agents in general. The executives in New York and LA knew he was a scoundrel, but
he was their scoundrel. For a long time they closed ranks around him because of the important stars he represented (like Newman and Streisand), even when he put their backs up against the wall by making deals that were too tough—because when he finally did make a deal, he went for the kill. It wasn’t necessary. The stars knew he was a bastard, but he was their bastard. So they, too, put up with him until they couldn’t, until they caught him in lies or broken promises.

  In the end everyone knew he was a louse, and the day he needed friends—well after he had left the agency business, and Columbia—they were gone. His debts finally caught up with him.

  When he borrowed from Peter to pay Paul, instead of paying back people he already owed, he opened new accounts to support his grand unearned existence. He knew this would catch up with him. He would be punished. He needed that. It felt as if he intentionally drew a net of despair around himself so tight that he and everybody in the higher echelons of showbiz knew he was going down in disgrace. No longer his friends or admirers, the people he owed were coming at him from all sides. It would not be long before he was facing bankruptcy and, more than likely, jail. Thirty-two years after he was my bed partner, he ended his life alone in a bed at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles.

  I have never again in my life run into anyone whose considerable charm and great intelligence, coupled with such ugly instincts, produced so much unhappiness. David was one of a kind, thank goodness. He was never able to put so much as one single toe on high moral ground, the only real estate that matters. Freddie and I talked about it from time to time. Freddie thought that one day David would slit his wrists in a warm tub. I disagreed. I thought when that fateful day came, he would blow his brains out. And so he did. His suicide was exquisitely planned and flawlessly executed. Just like every other awful thing he did. I did not shed a tear.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  A Very Sad Day

  The day Liza married Peter Allen ended the Judy Garland chapter in my life. It was March 3, 1967. I had now been representing twenty-one-year-old Liza for five and a half successful years. I am jumping ahead to include you in Li’s wedding because I feel I can’t move on until I put a period at the end of my involvement with Judy.

  Mark Herron, a tall, thin, attractive gay man, became Judy’s husband in 1965. They were traveling together when they discovered Peter and his friend Chris Bell, billed together as the Allen Brothers, performing in Hong Kong. Judy was impressed. She brought the two young singers to London, where they became her opening act, and she introduced Peter to Liza.

  With Judy’s blessing, Peter and Liza got engaged quickly. I never understood it, except to say that since the introduction came from Judy, it was paramount to Liza, who forever sought Judy’s approval. However, like Mark, Peter was also gay, but perhaps not quite ready yet to own it. Still, Liza must have known. Even though very young, Liza was out there sexually. Way out there! One would have to say promiscuous. She was a healthy, strapping, beautiful (though not in the classic sense) young woman. She and Peter seemed blissfully happy in each other’s company. They were inseparable; they ran all over town together. I found it hard to find her when I needed to. Were they in love? Was sex a part of it? I don’t have the answers.

  Both Judy and Liza each married gay men. I can understand why Judy Garland married the brilliant Vincente Minnelli, who is reputed to have shown up in Hollywood wearing purple eye shadow. Vincente made Judy feel beautiful, and he made her exquisite in every film he directed. Liza was their love child. There’s that, at least, but that’s all I can account for. There is no point in my dwelling on what I thought were weird mismatches. I asked my beloved gay friend Albert Poland, a great general manager in theater who started the original Judy Garland Fan Club, what this kind of marriage was about, and he couldn’t come up with an answer either. (And, by the way, Albert knows many more details about Judy’s life than I do.)

  No one in Liza’s immediate or extended family stood up and said they would give Liza her wedding. Judy couldn’t afford it, and Vincente was not heard from. And no word from anyone on Peter’s side of the aisle. I watched and waited, but there was only a shattering silence. I was heartbroken for Liza, and so I decided I would do it. Li agreed that my apartment—now a lavishly furnished pad on fashionable Park Avenue that my second husband’s corrupt music money helped pay for—would be a suitable setting. Liza designed the dress she wanted to wear, she and Peter chose the man who would perform the ceremony, and I took care of everything else.

  The day came, the guests arrived, and Liza never looked more beautiful. When all were assembled, Judy arrived. I opened the door, looked at her, and wanted to cry. The toll her life had taken on her was enormous. I had seen her last at CBS in 1964. Here it was only three years later, and she, at forty-five—in the prime of life—looked twenty-five years older. More. Fifty years. I don’t exaggerate. Healthy women of eighty look much better than she did that day. She was wrinkled and pale and so wasted that I momentarily lost the ability to speak, to graciously welcome her into my home. Her elegant outfit could not hide how emaciated she was. I doubt she could have weighed more than ninety pounds. Drugs have to have been the reason she was this suddenly ancient-looking casualty. Her face was overly made up, the makeup accentuating the skeletal holes in her cheeks, just barely covered with skin. She was macabre, and had to be supported by Mark Herron, her husband, as she walked. I took her bony hand in mine, and she smiled as I led her into my living room. I imagined she was in pain.

  The old familiar chill seized my body, turning my hands to ice. I took a bathroom break to run my hands under hot water and cry into a towel. Regardless of all she and I had been through together, it was devastating to see her in this reduced state. I blanked on the wedding. Fear and loathing and pity and despair all got mixed up together, and for the rest of the afternoon I operated on automatic pilot. It was an event fraught with so much emotion it blocks out my memory.

  I do, however, remember trying to make myself see another Judy, willing myself to see Esther Smith, the girl next door whom I adored. I wanted her once again to be young and beautiful and back in Technicolor St. Louis falling in love with her handsome neighbor, John Truett, while I, a little girl of eight, was falling in love with her. That was a sustainable love that endured throughout my childhood and then some. And now, for the balance of that afternoon, I wanted the dream and not the reality. It had to be Esther who was here in my living room to honor her little girl; I needed to push away everything that was wrong with the world. I try not to think of Judy looking as ghastly as she did at Li’s wedding. If I conjure that up, it still hurts.

  If I once believed that I’d developed immunity to feeling anything at all about Judy because of what we’d been through together, I knew that afternoon that I was wrong. If I believed that the business had turned me into a hard-hearted Hannah, I was mistaken. Nor had David wrenched away the remains of some tender feelings I had for Judy. I found out that March day between the hours of three and five that I wasn’t nearly as tough as I thought. And why was I grateful to know I still cared? Because it made me aware all over again of how important she’d been to me. She was the one—more so than anyone—who had made me aware of my life—what it should and should not be.

  I was grateful that my chores as a hostess kept me wholly busy. But I also refrained from conversing with Judy because I feared she harbored residual bad feelings toward me. That was ridiculous, and I’m sorry I wasted my opportunity to be kind to her. At the end of the afternoon I again took her bony, damp hand into mine to congratulate her. Judy Garland, on the last day that I would ever see her in person, broke my heart.

  *

  Judy died not long after. Her funeral was held one city block away from where I live. I couldn’t make myself go. I went downstairs in the course of my daily routine, and for two days saw a line that extended up Madison Avenue, turned the corner, and went all the way to Fifth. The line kept moving, but it never got shorter. What a tribute! How wonderful
that all these people loved her and wanted to honor her. I thought back and was appreciative of her greatness, but that appreciation was larded with the memories of bad times.

  I crossed Fifth Avenue at one point and watched the line from a bench just outside Central Park and pondered the same things I had wondered about so many times in the past—mostly when I was watching her perform. How would that audience feel if they knew what I knew? Would they then still be sympathetic? Why could I not mourn her now when I mourned her the day Li married, and she was then still alive? Would I always be stuck with this conflict raging inside me: loving her one day, hating her the next? Had I allowed Judy to make me feel this way?’ Who did I care about anymore? Could one, I wondered, be in showbiz, be hard nosed, hard boiled, pushy, and pushed around and still care about the people who did the pushing? I don’t know. But those are generic questions, and Judy was a special case. For good or bad, there was only ever one Judy Garland.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Sometimes

  Allow me to take a moment here to indulge myself and simply consider how I feel about Judy at this moment.

  As I said at the start, Judy Garland remains the lens through which I have seen, lived, and dealt with my life. But as I’ve gained distance and experience, I now view our relationship without the same emotional involvement. However, it’s difficult to separate the person from the performances, which makes it hard to love Judy as I did when I was a child. My reaction today varies depending on the mood I’m in. The word “sometimes” is one that I can’t be without when I describe how I feel.