Madonna

by Andrew Morton

  It was an issue that clearly troubled Penn almost as much as it did his fiancée, as a friend notes: ‘The second abortion was traumatic for both of them, especially as their relationship had progressed so far. He looked on it as an opportunity to settle her down. She used to tell me, “Barefoot and naked in the kitchen,” that’s how he wanted her to be. But she definitely loved him. She always talked about him in a good light.’ Indeed, it can be argued that the issue of children was to be one of the main stumbling blocks in the forthcoming marriage. As Penn conceded in a later interview for Fame magazine, ‘I wanted to have a kid, she didn’t.’ The strain of the abortion could not have come at a worse time, for more trouble was just around the corner.

  To the casual eye, Ed Steinberg, Freddy DeMann and Seymour Stein were enjoying a boys’ night in at Steinberg’s Manhattan apartment, savoring balloon glasses of cognac and illegal cigars that their host had just brought back from a trip to Havana. As usual, however, business was not far from their minds, and tonight, like many other people in the world, they were discussing the effect that the publication of nude photographs of Madonna would have on her career.

  The photos in question were those taken in New York in 1978, when Madonna, desperate for money, had modeled nude for Bill Stone and Martin Schreiber. Now, they were about to be published simultaneously in Playboy and Penthouse magazines. There was little that anyone present in Steinberg’s apartment that night could do about it, for at the time when the pictures were taken, Madonna had signed the appropriate release forms in return for as little as $25 a session. All she and her team could do now was sit back and watch the furor, as those lucky enough to have taken nude shots of her cashed in their photographs for $100,000 a time, and the two magazines entered into a desperate race to be the first to publish.

  I am not ashamed of anything, was Madonna’s message to the world, delivered in a statement given out by her press agent, Liz Rosenberg. Yet when she performed before some ninety thousand fans at the Live Aid concert in Philadelphia that July, just as the magazines were hitting newsstands everywhere, she belted out her hits in a brocade coat in temperatures of over 90 degrees. In reply to Bette Midler’s introduction, ‘Here’s a woman who has pulled herself up by her bra straps and who has been known to let them down occasionally,’ Madonna yelled to the waiting fans, ‘I ain’t taking shit off today. You might hold it against me in ten years.’

  ‘Doesn’t all this upset you?’ Ed Steinberg asked Freddy DeMann. In response, Madonna’s manager looked at the video producer as if he were an imbecile. ‘Ed, don’t you get it?’ he replied. ‘What would it cost to get that kind of publicity? You can’t buy that kind of promotion.’ Thoughts of engineered publicity had occurred to others, too. Rolling Stone magazine, for instance, was skeptical that, even given the fierce competition between the publications, both Playboy and Penthouse had managed to uncover a cache of naked Madonna photographs at exactly the same time. ‘If it isn’t a fix then God clearly likes bad Catholic girls,’ was Rolling Stone’s view.

  While, in general, most people doubted that Madonna had been involved in ‘planting’ the photos, few saw her as a victim in the situation, and there was much media talk about her opportunism. Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione stirred the debate by announcing that he had offered Madonna a million dollars to pose naked for the magazine. Had she agreed, he would, he said, have withdrawn from publishing the earlier photographs, but she had turned him down.

  Nor had her past yet finished its sport with Madonna. In addition to the publication of the nude photographs, Stephen Lewicki had seen his chance to cash in on the star’s success by releasing video copies of A Certain Sacrifice, the low-budget underground movie he had made with her in 1979. He had offered distribution rights in the film to Ed Steinberg’s company, Rock America, seeking to sell video copies of the film, with its copious nudity, sex slaves, rape scene and human sacrifice, for $59.95 each. Steinberg now told Freddy DeMann that for a few thousand dollars he could secure an exclusive deal and effectively suppress the film, but the latter was certainly not interested. ‘Distribute it, go ahead,’ he told Steinberg. As far as DeMann was concerned, any publicity was good publicity. Lewicki distributed the videos and, it is said, made hundreds of thousands of dollars from his otherwise worthless film.

  For all her manager’s confidence, however, Madonna was not happy about the circumstances in which she now found herself. While her offer to Lewicki of $10,000 to withdraw A Certain Sacrifice, which he rejected, was always unlikely to have made him change his mind about distributing the film, and the half-hearted and ultimately unsuccessful lawsuit that followed only gained her more publicity, she found it difficult to cope with the fact that her fiance and her family – and in particular her maternal grandmother – were upset by the publication of the nude photos. She also genuinely resented that she was unable to intervene. ‘I think when I first found out about it, the thing that annoyed me most wasn’t so much that they were nude photographs but that I felt really out of control,’ she said.

  As Freddy DeMann had predicted, the publicity did Madonna no professional harm, although it certainly put a damper on her excitement about her wedding. With the announcement of her engagement, the media had gone crazy, and the couple were involved in high-speed chases through the streets of New York and elsewhere, pursued by photo-hungry paparazzi. Intensely private by nature, Penn had already got on the wrong side of the press when, while still in Nashville, he had attacked two British journalists with a rock. He was duly charged with two misdemeanor counts of assault and battery. He did not defend the charges, and received a short suspended sentence and a fine. Madonna, who usually co-operated with the media, saw his behavior as an example of his chivalry, insisting that he had been trying to protect her from unwanted attention. As she was soon to find out, it was not, perhaps, a good idea to get on the wrong side of the press.

  By now, the couple had decided to marry on her birthday, August 16, at a secret location in California, and Madonna turned her prodigious energies, her eye for detail, her desire for perfection and for control, upon her wedding. She wanted to make this a special day, one to be cherished by her family and friends, and spent hours each day on the phone making arrangements, from the guest list to the catering, the decoration to the dancing. Such was her concern that she would speak to her sister Paula, who was to be her maid of honor, at least half a dozen times a day.

  In keeping with the rags-to-riches history Madonna attaches to herself, she themed the wedding around the tale of Cinderella and Prince Charming. Gold Cinderella slippers formed the centerpiece for each table, and her wedding dress designer, Marlene Stewart, was instructed to create a fifties-style concoction fit for a princess, such as ‘Grace Kelly would have worn.’ Certainly, the world had proof, if it had needed any, that the girl from the Midwest had come a long way as she now planned the wedding of the year, with a guest list that included the Hollywood stars she had watched at the movies or on television as a young girl.

  The couple went to elaborate lengths, almost to the point of paranoia, to keep the media at bay. In a nod towards the rather unsavory public image they were now acquiring, they sent out witty, if cryptic, wedding invitations to 220 guests, poking fun at themselves as the ‘Poison Penns.’ The illustration on the card, drawn by Penn’s brother Michael, showed a demonic-looking Sean and Madonna, the latter wearing a ‘Sean Toy’ belt buckle. In the interests of privacy, however, details of the time and place of the big event were deliberately omitted. Yet despite these elaborate precautions – even staff at the Spago restaurant, who provided the catering, were not told the whereabouts of the reception until just hours before – the media discovered that the couple were to marry in an open-air ceremony at the Malibu home of the millionaire developer Kurt Unger, a long-time friend of the Penn family.

  Thanks to the media, Madonna’s fairytale wedding rapidly degenerated into a nightmarish farce. Unger’s cliff-top house was surrounded by journalists and photograp
hers, while the noise of low-flying helicopters, also full of press reporters and cameramen, made it impossible for anyone to hear the couple as they took their marriage vows before Judge John Merrick; indeed, before the ceremony, a furious Penn ran down to the beach and scrawled ‘FUCK OFF’ in giant letters in the sand, and even fired warning shots at the aircraft from a .45-caliber pistol. Madonna, who was in the middle of a photo session with Herb Ritts when Penn began shooting, broke away and stood at an upstairs window shouting at him to stop. But control had been snatched from her, and she could only watch helplessly as the day she had planned so carefully rapidly descended into chaos.

  Not only had the press taken over the airspace, but some had managed to infiltrate the wedding guests and had to be forcibly evicted. Meanwhile, the guests were not exactly mingling. The Hollywood crowd, which included Cher, Martin Sheen, Diane Keaton and Carrie Fisher, kept well away from Madonna’s New York friends, among them Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Debi Mazar and Steve Rubell. ‘A lot of shade was being thrown,’ recalls Erika Belle.

  Matters were not helped when the nightclub-owner Steve Rubell vomited into the swimming pool, or when the maid of honor burst into the powder room and declared to everyone within earshot, ‘This should be my wedding day, not hers.’ Utterly careless of what she was saying, Paula Ciccone went on to inform embarrassed guests, ‘I should be the famous one. This should be my career. All this attention should have been mine.’ Andy Warhol was heard to remark, ‘I can’t believe this,’ shaking his head in wonder at being present at such a bizarre event.

  The mood was hardly celebratory. Madonna’s friends disliked Penn, and his were convinced that he should not go through with the marriage. As the couple danced to the strains of Dinah Washington’s soulful rendition of ‘Mad About The Boy,’ many thought that ‘mad’ just about summed up the union. Now, however, it had been made official; Madonna had turned her back on the free-spirited New York girl. She was a Hollywood wife now.

  Chapter Nine

  Desperately Seeking Hollywood

  WITH THE CHAOS OF HER WEDDING DAY mercifully in the past, Madonna now had to adapt to life as Mrs Penn, and to get to know the man she had married. After the honeymoon at the exclusive Highlands Inn in Carmel, California, her marriage was at first a great adventure to her, a self-conscious exercise, both in public and in private, in how she should mold herself as a wife, and especially as the wife of a Hollywood bad boy. Yet although it was a role she enjoyed – and she continued to convince those close to her that she was a woman deeply in love – from the beginning she struggled with the limitations it imposed on her, not so much in the sense that she now had someone other than herself to consider, but rather more because she craved the more spontaneous lifestyle she had enjoyed in New York.

  It was not long before she had grown bored with the luxuries of Los Angeles. Whereas in New York anything and everything had seemed to be happening virtually on her doorstep, in LA the social life seemed to her to be too carefully planned and orchestrated to be fun. Like a creature newly taken from the wild, she chafed against the apparent limitations of her new life, even though they were largely self-imposed.

  To cheer herself up, she invited some of her New York friends for a weekend house party at the Malibu home she now shared with her husband. It was not a success. Her guests were guarded and on their best, and therefore least typical, behavior; nervous of Sean, no one really felt inclined to party in the old way in his company. ‘There was much less room to be impulsive,’ recalls Erika Belle. ‘Nor did it help that Sean barely tolerated us.’

  Her social life may not have been as stimulating as Madonna desired, but by the autumn of 1985 work on her third album was proceeding well. This time she had decided to co-produce the album, and she also co-wrote all but one of the nine tracks. She went on to name it True Blue – a favorite expression of Sean’s – and although only the title song is a direct tribute to her husband, the whole album is inspired by her feelings for him at this time. ‘She was very much in love,’ confirmed Steve Bray, who worked with her on the album. ‘If she’s in love she’ll write love songs. If she’s not in love she definitely won’t be writing love songs.’ She had learned her trade well, for although True Blue failed to win rave reviews from the music critics when it was released at the end of June 1986, it sold over five million copies in the United States alone and another twelve million worldwide, reaching the number-one slot in twenty-eight countries. Whatever else Madonna was trying to be at this time, the album’s success undoubtedly reinforced her status as the hottest new thing in pop.

  For the truth is that she did want to be something else, over and above what she had already achieved. She may have got the man she wanted and the success she craved, but Madonna also wanted to be a movie star. As she was to admit later, ‘Music was still very important to me, but I always had a great interest in films, and the thought that I could only make records for the rest of my life filled me with horror.’ Then, in 1985, a script for a comedy movie, Shanghai Surprise, was sent to her by the producer John Kohn, a long-time friend of the Penn family. Madonna was intrigued by the storyline about a female American missionary who goes to work in China in the 1930s, during the Sino-Japanese War, and who becomes involved with a handsome young racketeer. She found the idea of herself as the heroine and her husband as the gangster irresistible, and although Sean did not entirely share her enthusiasm, they agreed to meet Kohn to discuss the script.

  In fact, Sean had already worked with the producer on two other films, Racing With the Moon and Bad. Kohn met with the Penns in a Hollywood restaurant, partly in an attempt to persuade Sean to take the part, and a few minutes after they had sat down, his co-producer, the former Beatle George Harrison, who now ran the company behind the project, HandMade Films, turned up to greet the couple. ‘They nearly fell off their chairs with surprise,’ Kohn remembers. ‘He left after fifteen minutes and when he had gone Madonna said to me: “There goes a legend. In all my time I’ve never met a legend and he’s a real legend.”’

  The word seems to have received a considerable airing, for when he returned home, Kohn told his wife Barbara that he, too, had met a legend in the making. As he admits, speaking of Madonna, ‘I thought we had the next Judy Holliday on our hands. She reminded me also of Raquel Welch, whom I worked with. She knew all about makeup, publicity and costumes but didn’t know how to act. I thought though that she had the potential to be a terrific actress.’

  Sean finally agreed to take on the part of the racketeer, and contracts were drawn up and signed. At first, the auguries seemed good. John Kohn, the director, Jim Goddard, and the Penns got along well on the occasions when they met before shooting began in Hong Kong in January 1986, and thereafter the couple endeared themselves to the film crew when they eschewed their grand suite at the five-star Regent Hotel in Hong Kong in favor of the more modest establishment in which everyone else was living. For once, too, they managed to maintain virtual anonymity, able to walk through the streets of Hong Kong unrecognized.

  Sadly, the auguries proved wrong. Nine days into shooting the 16 million-dollar movie, the on-set producer knew that the film was not working. Above all, it was not developing into the charming and sensitive comedy it was supposed to be. There were problems of direction. As far as Penn was concerned, he knew better than Goddard, refusing to take instruction to the point where he would even argue about the framing of a shot. Every scene became a struggle, not helped by the fact that Penn either could not, or would not, abandon his dour demeanor and act the jaunty character he was supposed to be playing. The crisis point came when, during one scene, the severely tested Goddard walked off set, leaving Penn squinting through the camera lens, at which point Kohn intervened, telling him that unless he fell into line, he would be in breach of his contract.

  In complete contrast to her husband’s, Madonna’s behavior was extremely professional; always on time, always ready with her lines. She was, too, always happy with her first take – and
therein lay yet another problem for the harassed film-makers. As she was to show time and again in her acting career, she invariably believed that her first take was the best, and became unhappy when asked to shoot a scene again, or to play it differently. Furthermore, her lack of acting experience soon caused concern. It seemed that, while she liked the idea of herself in the role, she had not given any real thought as to how she should play the character of the missionary Gloria Tatlock. Cocky and difficult as ever, Sean was only too happy to offer his views on how he saw the part, but since these clashed with the director’s, they proved, for everyone concerned, more of a hindrance than a help.

  John Kohn has good cause to remember his leading lady’s failings, though he does so without bitterness. ‘Before a scene she would never ask questions about the character’s inner motivation or how she related to the other characters. So on set the minute the guy shouted “Action!” she didn’t have a clue what she was doing. She was only good in the love scenes with Sean because she really loved the guy. That was her, not the character. In the rest she was very wooden because she was so inexperienced. She would just walk through a scene and think she had given a fine performance when it was nothing of the sort. It was a very funny part but she didn’t carry it off.’

  Since that perceptive comment by a reviewer of Desperately Seeking Susan, the criticism that she cannot act unless she is playing herself is one that has very much haunted Madonna. While her on-stage concert performances can be mesmerizing, and she has won praise for her acting in some of her videos, and particularly in the 1986 Papa Don’t Preach video, in which, aged twenty-eight, she convincingly plays a pregnant teenager, she has not found it easy to transfer her skills to the big screen. As ever, the message was ambiguous. Some critics thought she was pro-life, others that she was encouraging teenage pregnancy.