Larry Hagman - Hello Darlin'

by LARRY HAGMAN

  “Why don’t we get married?”

  She didn’t say anything. She says she was too shocked to respond.

  “I think it would be very hard to live without you,” I continued.

  She was still silent.

  “You know, if we got married, I’d get an off-base living allowance. And with your salary, we could have a great life.”

  Finally, she took a deep breath and said yes. It was the total reversal of what she’d planned on saying to me. We kissed and steamed up the windows celebrating. When the rain finally let up, I slogged across the field in mud up to my knees and stood by the road until I flagged down a farmer driving along on a big tractor. I explained that I’d just proposed and my girl had said yes, and he was only too happy to help launch us into the next stage of our life as a couple. But some help it turned out to be. He pulled the car out of the quagmire, yet in the process he ripped the Morgan’s bumper off, causing Maj to gasp.

  “Oh shit, now we’re in a jam,” Maj said, as if we weren’t before.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “The car’s borrowed.”

  Since Maj was a Swede living in England and I was now an airman first class in the U.S. Air Force, we had to wade through miles of red tape before we could get married. After the official papers were finally sent to USAFE headquarters in Wiesbaden, Germany, they were returned, refused. I was told enlisted men were prohibited from marrying officers. They thought “Maj” was an abbreviation for “major.” It took another month to straighten out that mess before we set our wedding date on December 8, 1955.

  A week before the wedding, I got in trouble with the WAF captain. In my four years of service, I did only two stints of guard duty. Ordinarily when you pulled guard duty at night, they let you sleep in till noon the next day. I thought that was standard operating procedure. So when I failed to report for duty until noon the next day, she nailed me. I was sent before the squadron commander, who was brand-new and did not know how to play the game, or at least my game. He restricted me to the base for a week—the only seven consecutive days I’d spent on the base in two years.

  It took me out of the wedding loop, forcing Maj to plan the whole thing by herself. Actually, we had two ceremonies. The first was a civil ceremony witnessed by my best man, Staff Sergeant Bill Bolmier, and his wife, Shirley, who have become our lifelong friends. The second was a religious service at London’s Swedish church. Henri Kleiman was my best man, and Maj’s younger sister, Berit (Bebe), and her father, Axel, attended. Mother gave us an Austin-Healey as a wedding present.

  Our honeymoon began the next day. We took a boat to Gothenburg, Sweden, unloaded the Healey, and drove to Eskilstuna, Maj’s hometown. It was time for me to meet the rest of her family, and there were a lot of them, including her sisters Lillemor and Eva. I visited with her grandfather, who was ailing, but I think he liked me, because after we talked, he told Maj, “You got yourself a sturdy one.”

  After Christmas, we said good-bye to her relatives and drove to Wiesbaden, Germany, where I celebrated New Year’s by nearly killing myself when I climbed down three balconies at our hotel—drunk, of course. We went skiing in Garmisch, in the Bavarian Alps, and then traveled to Salzburg, where I knew of a gorgeous resort. It turned out to be closed for the winter, but the owner, a former German U-boat captain, let us stay, provided we fed ourselves (I had several cans of baked beans in the car) and didn’t mind the lack of heat, and then he spent the night regaling us with stories about how he’d blown Allied ships out of the water during the war.

  Finally we ended up in Belgium, and with our last $10 we had what I think might be the greatest meal of my life, a steak with perfect french fries. We returned to our flat in London, at 82 Clifton Hill, St. Johns Wood, with nothing but coins, having had the time of our lives.

  We settled into married life as if it were a nonstop party. Our door was always open. We bought a player piano for five bucks. As I’d promised, my air force salary combined with the twenty-five pounds Maj earned each week by designing dresses made us feel rich by British standards. At that time, a top private secretary got five pounds a week, or $14. Lunch in those days would cost us a shilling and a half. We’d also go to parties at NCO clubs, and as the party began to wind down, Maj would position herself outside a window with a large bag and I’d shovel into the bag the hams and turkeys and other food that was going to be tossed. English friends who couldn’t get that kind of food waited for us to get home so they could feast.

  About six months after we were married, Mother was starring in a Theater Guild production of Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth. It also starred Helen Hayes, George Abbott, Lee Remick, and other luminaries. Mother said there were two walk-on parts available, and it would be an ideal opportunity to meet Maj. I took a two-week leave from the war effort, loaded our Austin-Healey on the ferry to France, and booked into what the American Express travel agent assured me was the cheapest hotel in central Paris. The Star Hotel, right off the Etoile, lived up to its billing. It cost a thousand francs, or about $2.80, a day—or an hour. But we had clean towels and hot water all the time.

  We’d timed our arrival to meet Mother, Richard, and Heller when they got off the plane from New York. Mother and Maj adored each other. Maj was slightly in awe, but she’d never seen Mother perform and didn’t understand the magic until the next day, when all of us were invited to the ambassador’s residence for lunch. When the musicians there spotted Mary, they began to play “Dites-Moi” from South Pacific and she walked up and sang. The whole place went gaga. At lunch, she sang more songs.

  As for the play, it was Maj’s debut and farewell performance in the theater. Opening night her knees were knocking so hard I literally had to push her onstage—just to walk across in the background. I was secretly relieved that Maj didn’t want to make the stage her career. Offstage, for the first time in my memory, both Richard and I were on good behavior. There were no contretemps between us.

  Those lovely two weeks included daily breakfasts at cafés on the Champs-Elysées with Peter Stone and Art Buchwald, who’d write his newspaper articles at the table while we talked. In fact, Art wrote one about Peter doing what he described as “the three-minute Louvre.” You’d leave a cab running, sprint into the Louvre, visit the Mona Lisa, Winged Victory, and Venus de Milo, and return to the cab. When Art asked Peter for his secret, Peter replied, “Sneakers.”

  I think his record still stands.

  * * *

  We spent our first anniversary dancing at the Savoy. Earlier that day, as Maj was getting herself prettied at the Dorchester, I barged into her treatment room in the beauty parlor, opened the curtain, and dropped a matching pair of .38 revolvers. As I said, “Happy anniversary, honey,” I thought the little girl tending to Maj was going to faint. Not even the London bobbies carried guns. “It’s all right, darlin’,” I said. “I’m from Texas.”

  In the summer of 1956, as my hitch came to an end, the WAF captain quite rightly still had it in for me for getting away with murder and she refused my promotion to staff sergeant. She felt if I wasn’t going to stay in the air force, which I wasn’t, there was no sense in promoting me, and she was quite right. However, that meant Maj and I would have to take a troop ship home rather than fly, which seemed like she would get the last revenge.

  Once we boarded the ship in Southampton, we were separated. Maj was put in a room upstairs with two women and a baby; she was miserable. I was down belowdecks, with six hundred enlisted servicemen, and just as miserable. We were permitted to see each other once a day; military rules. There wasn’t any alcohol allowed on board either; also military rules. But on the second day out at sea, there was an announcement on the ship’s PA asking if Mrs. Hagman could take tea with the ship’s captain. Everyone was curious.

  Maj was escorted to the captain’s private cabin, and it turned out he was Swedish and wanted some Swedish company. He poured her aquavit, not tea. Soon he had me up too, and appointed me the ship’s official ent
ertainment director. I staged a show the night before we docked. Getting that ready was a welcome diversion, as was the fact that every day at teatime the three of us got shit-faced, which made the eight-day voyage almost tolerable.

  We arrived in New York with mixed emotions. The U.S. dock-workers were on strike, delaying everything from being taken off the ship a full day. Then we discovered the battery of our Austin-Healey had run down. When I came back from looking for a new battery, I found Maj sitting in the driver’s seat of the disabled car, crying that she wanted to go back to England. I reached in my jacket pocket, pulled out a pint of gin the captain had slipped me, and I handed it to Maj, saying, “Here, honey, drink this. You’ll feel better.”

  We drove from Brooklyn to Times Square. By the time we were in the center of the lights, Maj was feeling no pain. In fact, she was pretty enthusiastic about the city, the taxis, the people, the excitement of the night, and she said, “Now this is more like it. One day I want to live here. Right here. In the middle of the hustle and bustle of New York.”

  * * *

  That would happen, but first I took Maj to Mom’s in Connecticut. Mom and Richard weren’t there. We were greeted by Richard’s sister, Didi, who was the opposite of him, warm and loving. She was a friend to us until the day she died. She helped us settle into the guest house, a darling place that Mother referred to as the Peter Pan House because it had been constructed as a present from producers after she spent a year in the role on Broadway and then starred in the classic 1955 TV special. According to Mother, Peter Pan is the most important thing she ever did in the theater. Never mind it was a hit or audiences smiled through the whole thing. For her it was a role that allowed her to play herself. Mother was someone who had dared to follow her dreams from Weatherford to stardom; she followed her heart; she refused to see any limitations. I figured that’s as close to flying as humans get. In spirit, she really was Peter Pan.

  Maj was also curious about my father. The opposite was also true. From the time he heard I came back to the States, he wanted to know when he was going to meet “the foreign bride.” His tone implied that he was not ready to accept her into the family the way he would have if she’d been a gal from Texas. No, first he had to check her out.

  Finally we arranged a visit. We flew down on one of those four-engine prop planes that took forever. It was 2 A.M. when we finally arrived at Amon Carter Field. My stepmother, Juanita, greeted us, explaining that my dad was in Jacksboro defending her cousin on a murder charge. About two hours later, my dad came through the front door talking about how he had driven all night to meet the foreign bride.

  “Where the hell is she?” he bellowed.

  First Juanita asked about the trial. Dad was happy to tell her, since he had saved her cousin’s skin from a death sentence.

  “I convinced the jury it was an accidental shooting,” he said. “They gave him seven years.”

  “Seven years!”

  “For godsakes, he shot a woman to death!”

  Dad was already at the liquor cabinet, reaching for a bottle of bourbon.

  “Where’s Larry’s foreign bride? I’d like to have a drink with her.”

  It was 4 A.M.—a perfect time to drink in Texas. Maj was all smiles as Dad poured shots with the look of a Roman emperor who had just ordered the games to begin. After half the bottle was gone, and before breakfast, Dad took her outside to throw bayonets into a wall. She had to make them stick; she did. Then they graduated to hatchets. And then my dad got out his shotgun, handed Maj a .22, and announced they were going out to shoot doves.

  “Dad,” I said.

  Maj gave me a dirty look.

  “Larry,” she said, grinning. “I’m going dove hunting!”

  We were in the middle of town when my dad spotted a dove. He pointed it out to Maj, then ordered her to “shoot that son of a bitch.”

  Maj turned out to be a crack shot, impressing my dad and surprising the hell out of me because I knew she’d never shot a gun before. She made it a bad morning for several doves. We had them for breakfast, finished the bourbon, and went to bed. After a nap, Dad wanted to show Maj what a real oil well was like. There was one outside of town ready to come in. Dad was on retainer to the company that was drilling and had a small piece of the action. It was one of the few oil wells he ever invested in. We had to drive about twenty miles to get to it. The temperature was well above one hundred, almost unbearable. Only my dad’s description of the excitement of watching a gusher come in and seeing people go bonkers over their newfound fortune distracted us from the discomfort of the heat. I listened with anticipation; Dad’s description was exciting. I remember him telling Maj that there was nothing like that taste of oil fresh out of the ground.

  Soon we were on the oil field. My dad watched as Maj put her tongue to a handful of dirt.

  “You taste the oil?” he asked.

  “No, it tastes like salt water,” she said.

  Dad was not happy with this news.

  We waited out there nearly all afternoon as the investors saw their hope of a gusher dry up faster than a speck of water on that hot plain. We could have spent six months there waiting for oil and never seen it. Like so many oil wells, the only thing in there was all the money that people poured in it. The hole was dry.

  There was a wonderful lake next to the well and we all jumped in. After a nice warm bath, we drove home and barbecued dinner. Dad toasted Maj’s official welcome to the family with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. He said he did not know what they put in the water back in Sweden but she had strength and spirit. She could also hold her liquor. He liked her. Hell, he loved her.

  We had terrible hangovers the next morning, but they were mild in comparison to what might have been if we had swum any longer the day before in the lake where we had decided to cool off. According to a story in the morning paper, just a few hours after we left the lake, a man who went swimming was bit by more than 150 poisonous cotton-mouth water moccasin snakes. His was an agonizing death.

  “Jesus Christ, it was exactly the same place we were,” I gasped.

  “That’s a sign, Larry,” Maj said. “I think it’s time to get out of Texas.”

  * * *

  We headed for Brazil, where Mother and Richard owned a ranch. A few years earlier, their dear friends Janet Gaynor and her husband, Adrian, had invited them to visit the Moorish-style home they had built on ranchlands in Anápolis, and they had been immediately hooked. After being swindled in their first attempt to purchase property, they finally bought about a thousand hectares with a pretty but rustic adobe house, and turned it into a first-rate ranch, where they could unwind, ride horses, and enjoy the solitude of rolling green valleys and hills in every direction.

  On a clear day, Mother would look out from the highest point on the property, a view that stretched for a hundred miles, and swear she could see where the earth began to curve.

  You had to be hearty to enjoy it there, as luxuries weren’t scarce, they were nonexistent. Life in Anápolis was the equivalent of America in the latter part of the nineteenth century—with dirt roads that were sometimes impassable in the rainy season, no telephone, and no electricity other than the power, about two hours’worth, from a crude little hydroelectric dam. We picked our coffee beans and roasted them in the morning. There was one little refrigerator, which ran on kerosene. Our food was cooked on a wood fire in the kitchen.

  Yet it was exactly what I’d been looking for. They had horses and ran some cattle on the land. They also had ten thousand chickens and were the biggest supplier for Brasília, the soon-to-be new capital of Brazil. I had a feel for the ranch; the unbelievable beauty really touched me. The dirt was red the way it was in Weatherford, Texas. Mother noticed the effect it had on me and said that if I liked it that much, I could take it over and run the place.

  The offer sounded good until my first blowout with Richard. Early on he and I got into one of our fights, and suddenly I was the guy in the old Hollywood Western who snarls,
“This town ain’t big enough for both of us.” Only I did not have to say it. As much as the ranch touched my soul, I knew it was no use. There was no changing Richard. No talking to him. He was just a pain in the ass—and that was when he was at his best. He was worse once the booze and the speed kicked in.

  After eleven o’clock in the morning, he was impossible. Later I found out one of the reasons Richard liked Brazil so much was that he could buy almost any medication over the counter, including amphetamines. After he died, Mother would find bags of speed stashed amongst his belongings; she never knew how bad his habit was; it explained a lot.

  * * *

  Maj and I took off for Rio, where we spent a month living a carefree bohemian life, drawing money occasionally from a few thousand dollars Nanny had left me and that Richard’s accountant had invested wisely. In those days, you could survive nicely on very little money. For $12, you got a first-rate hotel room on the Copacabana in Rio. For four bucks, you ate steak and lobster and drank wine. Behind the Copacabana, in a backstreet alley, we found a bookstore that had novels in English, and we got hooked on Gore Vidal. We read everything he had written. Later, he became a good friend.

  For a while, we considered staying in Brazil. The country was wide open and things were happening down there that made life look exciting. But I was eventually scared off by the wild fluctuations of the currency. One day you had $10, and the next day it was worth ten cents, without any apparent reason for the change. There was another factor that made me decide to leave: Maj got pregnant. I didn’t see us as pioneer types raising a family on the frontier. Unfortunately she miscarried on our way back to the States.

  Still, the few weeks she carried the baby had an effect on me. If it was time to start a family, it was also time to get serious about my career.

  Chapter Ten

  Back in New York, we rented a basement apartment in Greenwich Village. We fell in love with the place. The building, owned by Irving Marantz, an artist who had a wife and two great kids, overflowed with character. Supposedly it had been constructed by Aaron Burr, the former vice president of the United States and famous duelist who shot Alexander Hamilton. We had two rooms. One was the bedroom/living room/dining room, and the other was turned into Maj’s sewing room. She brought in good money designing costumes for entertainers.