Eight years later, I would write a second song with Clint, this time for Grace Is Gone, a film he was scoring but not directing. It was nominated for a Golden Globe in 2007, marking the ninth time I was nominated by the Hollywood Foreign Press. And it was with Clint, which made it doubly cool for me!
IN 2003, I DECIDED to accept an invitation to perform for a week at Feinstein’s, an intimate club at the Regency Hotel in New York. Performing once held a lot of fear for me, and I wanted to try to do it again, but this time, hopefully, with more grace.
Bob and I decided the best time would be in late November. New Yorkers would still be in town, not yet caught up in the pre-Christmas madness. Next was figuring out how I wanted to present myself on stage.
The person I knew who could best help me decide was Marvin Hamlisch. He was so adept at knowing exactly how to show the best of the performer and keep the audience engaged.
I called him.
“Marvin, hi, it’s Carole.”
“Ah, the Carole of oh so many names, mine not being one of them.”
We both laughed. When I told him about the upcoming show at the Regency, he said, “Fantastic,” not at all surprised that I’d be performing again after a break of more than twenty years. “Hold on while I get my calendar. When will you be in New York next?” He knew what I wanted before I even asked. “We should talk it through before we start to rehearse.”
Start to rehearse? “Marvin,” I said, “you are so amazing. I was hoping for a little help, but this is beyond. I’m so grateful.” When Marvin was your friend, he was your friend forever. At least that’s how he was for me.
“Why wouldn’t I help you? Hey, weren’t you the one who wrote ‘That’s What Friends Are For’?”
We picked a day we could meet in New York and brainstorm what I’d do on stage. Then he added, “I’m supposed to come out to LA in late September, so if I stayed a couple of days, I could rehearse with you and your band and help you pull it all together.”
We met at Marvin’s apartment a few weeks later when I was in New York. The place still looked the same as it did more than twenty years ago, minus me living there. I didn’t feel any nostalgia for my old life, but I did feel tremendous warmth for Marvin. It was like old times. He and I together, talking over each other, bursting with ideas.
In Los Angeles, Marvin kept his word, flying in to work with my musicians at a rehearsal hall in the Valley, six hours a day for three days. He spoke with each one of them, explaining what he needed from them, and to keep in mind that I didn’t have a big voice and not to overpower me with volume. All of the musicians were deeply respectful of Marvin and wanted to please him. Bob was genuinely impressed with the time and effort Marvin put in. It was nice to see them bond over their shared love of baseball.
The first night in New York was great. Marvin changed his schedule so he could play keyboards on opening night. It was the first time we’d performed together, but looking over at him made me feel instantly safe.
During that week, Hugh Jackman came by and sang with me after The Boy from Oz let out, as did Lucie Arnaz, who twenty years before had sung “me” in They’re Playing Our Song. I felt totally comfortable singing my songs for a roomful of friends and strangers. I felt a lot of love in the room.
Here’s the only problem. I was traveling first class with three background singers, a piano player, bass player, and a drummer. They were some of the best session musicians in LA and the same players who traveled with Barbra Streisand when she was on the road. Just one thing: they charged me the same amount of money they charged her, but she was playing major venues, and I was playing an intimate club that seated 150 people tops!
You can understand why Bob, after I completed what Feinstein’s said was their most successful week, said, “You have finally found the one profession that could bankrupt us if you do this full-time.”
For me, the best news was, I finally figured out that the remedy for stage fright is preparation. As a thank-you, I gave Marvin a Cartier watch because I treasured his time and brilliance. He was a gift.
It was worth every moment I put into it, because I got to experience myself as a fully alive, confident woman, able to talk and make jokes with the audience and have a good time. So different from the terrified, insecure performer of many years ago.
Forty-Seven
I HAD MINIMAL CONTINUITY with Michael Jackson. He would be in my life intensely for a time and then disappear. I hadn’t seen him since helping him with his 2001 album Invincible when the phone rang one day in 2006.
“Carole? It’s Barbara.”
Barbara Davis—a lovely, gracious, and generous person—has been a friend of mine since 1986, when Burt and I performed in Denver for her and her husband Marvin.
“Do you think you could come for dinner this week?” she asked me in her slightly singsong voice.
“Ummm . . .” I knew Bob wouldn’t be big on dinner at the Davises’, or dinner at anyone’s, for that matter.
“I really hope you’ll come because I have Michael Jackson coming, and I want him to be comfortable, and I know how much he likes you. It’s just us. Would you ask Bob, please?”
With a little coaxing from me—because I couldn’t find one reason not to want to go and spend an intimate evening with Michael—Bob said yes. At this time, the Davises were living at the Knoll, one of Beverly Hills’ most palatial estates. Entering the big gated doors to a large round marble entryway (the Rockettes had once danced down this swirling staircase and performed there), my attention was instantly captured by two young children who were driving around their huge foyer in child-sized replicas of a red Mercedes convertible and a yellow Ferrari like they were in the Grand Prix. I saw a blond boy and a dark-haired girl.
Barbara entered. “Hello!” she said. “Oh, I’m glad you’re here. Did you see Prince and Paris in their new cars?”
How could we miss them? They almost ran us over, speeding around right in front of us.
“Aren’t they cu-u-ute?” she asked. “They call me Grandma.” She smiled a big smile. “Michael said they could call me Grandma.” With a Mercedes and a Ferrari as an opening gift, who wouldn’t want this billionaire lady as their “Grandma”?
Sometimes I would have a moment of disbelief that I was actually leading this life. This was such a moment.
We were ushered inside to their smaller dining room, which was still very large. And there was Aaron Spelling (producer of, among dozens of other shows, Dynasty, one of my guilty pleasures) and his wife, Candy (lovely and overjeweled for a family night). And there was Michael.
He looked a little more fragile than when I’d last seen him and a little more surgically enhanced, not that there was much left to enhance. He had come to wearing a little plastic holder, almost invisible, on the tip of his nose that, I’d been told, was holding what little nose he had left onto his face. Can you imagine? Look what this poor man had done to himself.
I knew him when he was Michael, and then I knew him when he was the New and Improved Michael. And then I knew him when he was the Okay, Now I’m Beautiful in a Diana Ross Sort of Way Michael. And then, when he should have stopped right there, he kept going. And going.
“Oh, hi, honey,” I said. “Look at you.” What could I say after that? What did you do to yourself now? No, maybe a little less honest. You look great!
Once the table was seated, I had Prince on my right and Michael on my left. Next to him was Paris, and going around the round table, Candy, Marvin, Aaron, Barbara, and Bob. The adults engaged in the usual feigned interest in what everybody had been up to, though, of course, if they cared, they’d have known. Prince and I had our own conversation comparing our favorite foods. I couldn’t help thinking how crazy it was to have a six-year-old as my dinner partner. The light was bright, which was fine for the children, less so for the women at the table and Michael.
Aaron was famous among his friends for a distinctly peculiar trait. He hated to eat. This was a man who simply did no
t like food. Unimaginable, I know. He’d been ill for a while and now had zero appetite. I watched him as he continued to push one lone string bean around and around his plate as I sat salivating at mine.
I looked around the table and noticed that Marvin had fallen asleep. He literally had his head down and was breathing heavily, yet nobody said a word about it. Barbara was slowly eating a baked potato, but she was slumped over so you could have made the incorrect assumption that she, too, was dozing. Bob was giving me looks like, “How could you have done this to me?” When I turned to talk to Michael, I saw that he, too, was sound asleep. My instinct was to laugh hysterically, but I didn’t want to wake anyone. Was it in the water?
Eventually, something awakened Michael. He tapped me on my shoulder and said in a whisper, “Come with me. Over here.” He pointed to the billowing yellow satin drapery behind him. I got up and walked two feet to Michael which, somehow, made enough difference to him to feel he could speak privately. He whispered in my ear, “Do you think anyone saw that I was sleeping?”
Only if they happened to have their eyes open, I thought. What I said was, because let’s face it, he was the King of Pop, and as such, expected to be lied to and shielded from harsh truths, “No, I don’t think anybody was looking, honey. Don’t worry.”
“Good. I’m so tired,” he whispered slowly. “I just got back from the Middle East. I am so jet-lagged.” According to Kenny Edmonds, Michael had been home for three weeks and was on some heavy narcotics that caused him to slur his words, or worse, as I’d just witnessed, nod off. I worried about him on the ride back home. Bob felt bad for him, too, but there was nothing in the evening that he cared to ever experience again.
Forty-Eight
I WAS NOT EXPECTING American Idol to ask me to be a guest judge on their 2007 New York episode, but I said, “Yes, absolutely,” because I was a fan. I had my favorites each year and enjoyed the Simon-Paula-Randy panel and the seemingly substance-induced unpredictability of some of their—well, Paula’s—behavior.
It was odd sitting on the panel between Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul. I was so used to seeing them from a horizontal position. I certainly found how very popular the show was when over the next week I kept hearing, “Weren’t you just on American Idol?”
In what might have been a mistake, I had once signed up for Google Alerts, which does just that. It alerts you when something about you appears anywhere on the Internet. I clicked and read on, of all places, a website called Cooking Light the following comments on its community message board:
Guest judge on American Idol?
MaryMorph
01-25-2007, 10:01 AM
I missed the beginning of AI last night—who was that Joan Collins lookalike guest judge? We came up with all of the carols we knew, but couldn’t identify her!
01-25-2007, 11:11 AM
Miss_Liss
The consensus in my office is Elizabeth Taylor, but I guess that’s another dark-haired woman who obviously has a really close relationship with her plastic surgeon :D
01-25-2007, 12:38 PM
cocoa’s mom
Under what rock did they find that throwback from the 80’s Carole whatever? She looks like if she gets another facelift it will disappear all together. Why do they have this has-been from yesteryear on? Watching Paula Abdul is bad enough but at least the years have been kind to her.
01-25-2007, 12:49 PM
Gracie
Thank you for asking this. I meant to post this very same question this morning! DH and I were going nuts trying to decide. We both knew it couldn’t be Joan Collins but man she was a dead ringer for Joan.
I have no idea who Carol Bager Sayer is.
Loren
And then, this small reward the next morning, when I was considering not getting out of bed:
charley
01-26-2007, 07:08 PM
Back on topic—call me crazy but I think Carol Bayer Sager looked beautiful on American Idol the other night, and I loved her hair style.
EVERYONE WANTS TO LIVE a long life, but no one really wants to get old. That’s a bit of a conundrum. There are two choices as you age. Either you can do nothing, look completely natural, let your hair gray and your chins multiply and wear your age, or you can have a facelift and Botox and filler and look like you had a facelift, Botox, and filler, but look good to yourself.
I never debated which road I was going to take. I’m opting to look as good as I can for as long as I can, while believing if I jump the shark, someone I trust will tell me. And the fact that I haven’t heard that yet from David Geffen or Sandy Gallin—neither one of whom would hesitate for a second to say, “Carole, you’ve got to stop whatever you’re doing and leave yourself alone”—makes me trust I’m still on the safe side of the line.
Jennifer Aniston came up to me at a pre-Oscar party a few years ago and said, “God, you look great. You know my friends and I all want to look like you when we’re your age.” I can imagine that. A group of forty-something women terrified of being fifty-something sitting around making lists of who over sixty still looks good. I used to do it. I take it as a compliment of course, but always with a tiny bit of surprise that they know I’m old. I thought I hid it so well. A friend recently told me anyone who met me would take me for someone in her fifties, and I thought to myself, Fifties? I’ll take it.
Recently I watched, as perhaps you did, too, the two-hour American Idol finale. I found myself very emotional watching all the former idols and judges reunite for what was for me fifteen years of viewing history. I was completely surprised when Jessica Sanchez, now only twenty years old and long one of my personal faves, came out and performed “The Prayer” (which she had done in the past), but this time she knocked it out of the ballpark. The judges all stood, as did the audience, in the longest standing ovation of the night. It lit up Twitter and I’m hoping this performance reignites her career. Once again, the power of the right song coupled with a great performance equals magic.
THOUGH BOB AND NANCY were on speaking terms, particularly when it concerned their children, a lot of damage had been done during the three and a half years leading to their divorce: dueling lawyers, words spoken that should never have been voiced, hurt feelings, and a fractured family.
But when Nancy was taken ill in 2006, after Bob and I had been married for ten years, her diagnosis of pancreatic cancer was so devastating that it became clear to me almost immediately that we all needed to be a family. Nancy and her husband, Los Angeles mayor Dick Riordan, were legally separated in 2007. It was easy for me to reach out to Nancy and offer her my friendship, which she accepted with gratitude. Her children Linda, Bobby, and Brian were all grateful to have their father back caring for their mother, and it was such a large challenge to get through, we were all better getting through it together.
I have nothing but profound respect for the way Nancy handled her illness, and the way her children all rose to the occasion. Nancy’s lung had collapsed but she feared if she went into the hospital in New York, where she had traveled to meet “John of God,” a revered Brazilian healer, she would die there. She was very definite that she wanted to drive back to her “home,” California. Perhaps very much aware she might not survive the road trip, Bob organized an RV where her nurse and all of her children could be by her side. They were crossing the country in a trailer; they made it only as far as St. Louis when Nancy died on October 4, 2009. I always felt, somehow Nancy arranged that, because there was no one she loved more than her children. In the end, they were all together on their mother’s final journey home.
Forty-Nine
THIRD ACTS ARE OFTEN filled with loss, and loss is never funny. It doesn’t feel good not to be able to see or call loved ones who’ve carried your history with them. Third acts shoot bullet holes through the fabric of who we were, making us who we are today.
My mother was thankful for the extra years she had received after her stage-three cancer diagnosis, but it eventually returned and spread to h
er liver. When her treatment options in New York ran out, Bob suggested we bring her to LA to live with us, and that’s when I had an epiphany. I finally realized Mom wanted not just attention, as I’d always thought, but my attention. And the more I gave it to her, the less she needed it from everyone else.
In the months that followed, there was no appointment to which I did not drive her—no chemotherapy, no scans, no checkups. I was there for her whatever she required, and that made her happy.
But she was still Anita. Once, halfway through her battle, I was wheeling her through the halls of St. John’s Hospital for a blood transfusion when she said, “You know, all the years I sat at the desk at New York Hospital as a volunteer, directing people which way was which, most times sending them in the wrong direction, I would see a lot of people wheeling their mothers or fathers through the hospital. And I would think, That’s never going to be my Carole. She’ll send the money, which is very nice, but she’s not going to be wheeling me around. My God, I never thought I would see this.”
I was touched, but before I could speak, she added, “Now, before you kill me, would you please get me an attendant to wheel me who knows what he’s doing?!”
ALONG WITH THE METASTASIZED lung cancer, she had survived a quadruple bypass and gastric surgery. I made an agreement with myself to love her unconditionally in her final months.
One day her cardiologist came to the house to see her.
“Carole,” my mother said, a tiny figure that no longer loomed so large in the queen-size bed in her room, “I am a lucky woman to have such a young, handsome doctor.”
“Yes, you are,” I said.
“Look how he’s here in the evening with me,” she continued, “while he should be home with his lovely wife and their three little children.”
He smiled. “I wanted to check on you before I went home.”
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