Larry Hagman - Hello Darlin'

by LARRY HAGMAN

  I directed several of the one-hour shows, plus one of Heat’s two-hour movies-of-the-week at the end of its run. In fact, as it would turn out, I was in Georgia in early 1992 directing Carroll when I first noticed my energy was kind of low. I didn’t think much of it until months later. Nor did Maj, who attributed my sluggishness to having put on a few extra pounds. So I instructed my personal trainer, Taylor Obre, my Princess of Pain, to work me out a little harder. By May I’d dropped a few pounds and felt better.

  But one day during my workout, Taylor and I got into a conversation about medicine and health-related topics.

  “Have you had a checkup recently?” she asked.

  “No, not for at least a year, and maybe longer.”

  Taylor shook her head disapprovingly and wrote down the name of her internist. Several days later I watched Dr. Paul Rudnick draw what looked like two gallons of blood from my arm. He also took a chest X ray, gave me an EKG, and prodded the middle regions of my body. It was the most thorough medical exam I’d had in my life. You would’ve thought he was looking for a loophole that would get me out of the draft all over again.

  On June 3, shortly before Maj and I sat down for dinner, Dr. Rudnick called. He said results from my blood workup were back and they showed a life-threatening situation. I had no idea what he was talking about. I’d worked out early that day. I felt great. But here he was, telling me I was sick. The test results indicated I had cirrhosis of the liver. He said, “If you keep drinking, I don’t think you’ll be around in six months. If you quit, you have a chance of living a normal life.”

  At the time of the call, I was holding a glass filled with vodka and orange juice. I usually had a few before dinner, then switched to wine.

  I immediately put the drink down the drain and checked my watch. It was 6:15 P.M., June 3, 1992.

  That was when I quit drinking.

  Despite a report in one of the tabloids that I was sick, I never felt ill. I wouldn’t even have gone to the doctor if it hadn’t been for Taylor. Though I’d averaged about four bottles of champagne a day for the past fifteen years, I never got drunk. I drank just enough to keep that click going, that soft, comforting high that playwright Tennessee Williams wrote about in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

  But I gave it up that moment without any problem. It was the same way I’d quit smoking thirty years earlier. I’m lucky. I seem to have the kind of self-control that allows me to stop without suffering withdrawals, DT shakes, falling-down episodes, headaches, or any of the other side effects of such a drastic change in lifestyle.

  A second, more thorough exam by Dr. John Vierling, medical director of the Liver Transplant Program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, confirmed my liver’s tissue was scarred and deteriorating. He described it as a textbook case of advanced cirrhosis, the eighth-leading cause of death from disease in the United States. According to Dr. Vierling, I fortunately wasn’t in need of a transplant, not yet anyway, but my blood required testing every three months to check for tumors, which commonly grew in diseased livers. Otherwise, I could do as I pleased.

  And I did. I went with Peter Fonda and Willie G. Davidson, the grandson of Harley Davidson, on our long-planned ride to Sturgis, South Dakota, the biggest motorcycle rally in the world. It meant missing a wedding in New York, which Maj and Linda Gray went to without me. Our Malibu neighbor Burgess Meredith was also invited. We happened to be on speaking terms at that time. Actually, he typically called Maj three times a day for advice. He called so often that he referred to her as his “rent-a-wife.”

  Anyway, Burgess was staying at the Ritz-Carlton, next door to our New York apartment. On the night before the wedding, they were all at a party at “21,” where Burgess gave the bride and groom his private stash of Petrus wine, which he conveniently stored at “21,” The next morning the bride and groom called up Maj and asked her to check in on Burgess, who they said had had an accident after the party. When Maj got there Burgess was sitting on his bed in his Skivvies, being checked out by paramedics who had been called by the hotel’s doctor. An ambulance was on its way. Burgess didn’t seem too upset. When he saw Maj, he nonchalantly said, “Oh hi, what are you doing here?”

  “Going to the hospital with you,” Maj said calmly.

  “Would you grab my address book and medicines?” he asked as he was being loaded on the gurney.

  The ambulance took them to the hospital. Several hours later, the doctor found Maj and asked how well she knew Mr. Meredith.

  “Thirty-five or forty years,” Maj said.

  The doctor was puzzled by the bruises he’d found on Burgess.

  “What do you think is wrong with him?” he asked Maj.

  There was a rumor going around that Sharon Stone had taken Burgess back to the hotel after the party and he’d made a pass at her and fallen down the stairs. But Maj didn’t tell that to the doctor. She simply said, “I think he suffered an attack of Petrus,” and let the doctor figure that out by himself.

  A few weeks later, Burgess came back to Malibu and thanked Maj for saving his life. He sent over a tree stump that had been painted with beautiful tulips by our mutual friend Margie Adleman. And Burgess regarded us as the best of friends again—at least for a while.

  * * *

  Over the next two years, I didn’t have any major complications or complaints. I kept up my workouts with Taylor and stayed in pretty good condition, except I noticed a steady loss of energy. I also had persistent nosebleeds, which I ignored, even though later on I’d learn they were signs of liver malfunction.

  The really big event in our lives was moving into our home in Ojai. It had taken five years to build. Maj had designed it and supervised every facet of construction. She made daily trips from Malibu to Ojai, 170 miles round trip, five days a week. Her attention to detail and decorating, which included importing hundred-year-old roof tiles from Provence, France, ensured that the home that materialized lived up to her vision, which it has and beyond.

  She earned my complete admiration. I don’t know how she did it without killing anyone. When the carpenter doesn’t show up, the electrician can’t do his job; when the electrician can’t do his job, the plumber can’t do his job; and when the plumber can’t do his job, the gardener can’t do his job, and so on. Maj stepped in when our first contractor didn’t work out, and she stood tall. Having heard remodeling or construction is a surefire way to break up a relationship if both partners are involved, I stayed out of the way and contented myself with earning the money and letting Maj indulge her remarkable talents.

  She’s made our home a showplace that we enjoy and use for fundraisers for politicians, be they Republican, Democrat, or independent, and causes we believe in. We also host charity events for the Ventura County Museum of History & Art, the Ojai Music Festival, Ventura’s Rubicon Theatre Company, among many others. We believe that when you live in a community, you have to support it, help it grow, and in the case of a unique little town like Ojai and the surrounding environs, protect the quality of life.

  We knew the site of our home was special. Not a day went by when I didn’t stop at the gate and admire the view of the house, to say nothing of what I saw when I stood on the terrace looking across the Oxnard plain to the ocean and the Channel Islands beyond. Our house is situated on an escarpment twenty-three hundred feet above sea level. About two hundred yards from the terrace, it drops almost a thousand feet straight down. When the sea breezes hit that, they’re pushed upward in a giant wave of air. In the afternoons, sometime after one, we can look out and see buzzards, hawks, crows, and occasionally, when we’re lucky, half a dozen condors all circling and playing some kind of game with the wind that only they know. It’s a magnificent sight.

  One day while Maj and I were watching this phenomenon, I asked her what we should name our home. I suggested Hagmans’ Hideaway and Hagmans’ Haven. After a long pause, mesmerized by the circling birds, Maj quietly whispered, “Why don’t we call it Heaven?”

  I thought about it for a
couple of minutes and said, “Maj, that’s a fantastic name. And I think it’s the closest I’m ever going to get.”

  So, Heaven it is. I’m Heaven’s keeper and Maj is the abbess.

  * * *

  Shortly after staking our claim to Heaven, we found ourselves fighting to preserve that and perhaps much more, including our lives. On the day before Thanksgiving, we awoke to find the National Weather Service pouring foundations for what we would come to know as the NEXRAD Doppler radar tower, part of what the Weather Service described as a new generation of detection systems that warned of storms, flash floods, and tornadoes. Less than a thousand yards from our property, the tower was ninety-six-feet tall and topped by a thirty-foot ball that loomed over the neighborhood like a science fiction monster. It was painted green to blend in with the trees. It towered about sixty feet above them.

  The Weather Service never informed anybody they were going to put it in. Nor did they tell us that it would pulse twenty-four hours a day, every day, emitting microwave radiation, which they maintained was safe even after I pointed out their board of review didn’t include a single medical professional. My neighbors and I formed a group called VCARE (Ventura Coalition Against Radiation Emissions) and commissioned a study, which found what all of us considered to be unacceptable levels of radiation. We were up in arms (“The federal government has come in and raped me,” David Hedman, an environmental engineer, claimed), and after living with it for a while we were downright scared.

  On March 3, 1994, we aired our concerns on The Montel Williams Show. One man told about his two pet parakeets, both born after the tower went up, that were unable to grow feathers. He also had two pigeons that were born with defects; one had a giant beak, the other was a dwarf. One of my dogs miscarried, then lost a lung for no apparent reason. Another dog died suddenly of another mysterious lung disease. Hedman’s children complained of headaches and earaches. And there was more that didn’t get on. One woman, too ill to attend the taping, developed three tumors in her ovaries. Then a woman who lived in the shadow of the tower gave birth to a child with a hyperthyroid condition.

  Then I joined the list. In early spring 1995, shortly after I finished playing a Texas millionaire in Oliver Stone’s movie Nixon, one of my blood tests came back irregular. I had an awful, sinking feeling as I received the news, but Dr. Vierling wasn’t alarmed. He ordered additional tests, including a CAT scan and MRI, and they indicated a slight growth.

  “It could be the liver rejuvenating itself,” he said.

  “That’s good news?”

  “Maybe. Sometimes the nodules revivify.”

  “What do we do about this?” I asked.

  “We watch it for now.”

  On June 22, I went back for another checkup. The growth had gotten a little bit larger. It wasn’t good news. Dr. Rudnick called in Dr. Leonard Makowka, Cedar-Sinai’s director of transplantation services. We already knew each other from when he’d operated on my mother five years earlier. He ordered his own battery of tests. I had CAT scans, PET scans, MRIs, ready-to-eat meals—everything the hospital could throw at me.

  I marveled at the machinery, the high-tech equipment that dissected my body without leaving so much as a scratch, and thanked my lucky stars I had the insurance to pay for it. Thank God for strong unions like the Screen Actors Guild and the Directors Guild. The tests revealed a small tumor. Dr. Makowka couldn’t tell me whether or not it was malignant without a biopsy, but he said it was situated next to a major vein in the liver, which wasn’t good.

  “This isn’t uncommon with a cirrhotic liver,” Makowka said. “They’re hotbeds for tumors. Like pearls in an oyster. They love to grow in there.”

  I entered Cedars on a Thursday afternoon through a back entrance and checked in under an assumed name while wearing a fake mustache, as my publicist was paranoid the tabloids would find out. Dr. Makowka did the procedure early Friday morning. At three o’clock that afternoon, less than twenty-four hours after I’d snuck in, Maj, her sister Bebe, and my publicist, Richard Grant, smuggled me back out—but only after Makowka’s chief coordinator, Michel Machuzsek, scouted the underground parking lot and reported back it was all clear.

  Despite all our precautions, the following day Richard got a call from a reporter from a London tabloid asking if it was true I had been in the hospital for chemo.

  “No,” Richard said.

  “Is J.R. dying?”

  “No, he’s not. That’s absolutely false.”

  We hadn’t even gotten the results.

  But the story came out anyway: CAN J.R. BE SAVED?

  It didn’t speak highly of the security at Cedars-Sinai. Richard was livid. I was anxious to know the results.

  Maj and I went to Santa Fe. Movement is always good, especially when waiting for test results. It gives you something to do. We didn’t have to wait long. The telephone rang on Monday morning, and it was Dr. Makowka. He told us the tumor was malignant.

  I put the phone down and looked at Maj, who up till this point had managed to keep her emotions in check. But this caused her to lose it. Not completely. But she cried and felt scared. Rightfully so. Hearing a doctor who specializes in treating terrible diseases say the words “malignant tumor” is terrifying. You’re allowed to lose it. We’d been married forty years. We were still having the time of our lives together. Maj suddenly realized that that time might be running out.

  We hugged for a long time.

  I reacted differently. I kind of stepped out of myself. Instead of panicking or worrying, I got very calm and asked, “What do we do about the situation?”

  We flew back to L.A. and discussed the options with Makowka, who explained the tumor was positioned against a vein. If the cancer got into the vein, it could get into my bloodstream and travel throughout my body, none of which was good. He recommended a liver transplant. I got a second opinion from Dr. Don Morton, the medical director and chief surgeon of the John Wayne Cancer Institute. He brought up another method, that of freezing the tumor, though both he and Makowka agreed it was too far along and too close to the vein to seriously consider this method.

  There was also a third option. I could do nothing and die.

  “We don’t want a remission,” Dr. Makowka explained. “We want a cure, and the only cure for a bad liver in your condition is to replace it with a better one.”

  One thing about liver disease: it makes you lethargic, and encephalopathy sets in—in other words, you just don’t think straight. I didn’t. I didn’t realize it, but it took me a long time to assimilate things. When Makowka and Vierling mentioned a liver transplant, I said, “Look, I’ve had sixty-four years of a fabulous life. I don’t want to walk around a cripple. I’ll bow out gracefully when it gets too painful or inconvenient. I’ll take a pill like I intended to give my dad and shuffle off this mortal coil.”

  Well, this didn’t set well with Maj. She called me a bunch of names and said she didn’t go along with that idea and that I was going to have a liver transplant if I could find a donor no matter what I thought about it. She has always had a way of persuading me to see the light. This time she just set her foot down and said, “No way, Jose.”

  That spurred my interest in a liver transplant. I had several more meetings with my doctors, and they persuaded me that if I got a donor liver and took a few pills every day I could lead a normal, happy existence—you know, if I was inclined toward happiness.

  When it was put like that, I said, “God knows I’ve always been a pretty happy person.”

  * * *

  On July 19, my name went on a nationwide list along with five thousand other people awaiting a new, healthy liver. The news got out and spread quickly. I got calls from friends. Baseball great Mickey Mantle had just undergone a liver transplant amid criticism that his notoriety had helped him, a lifelong alcoholic, receive a liver quicker than others. I looked up the statistics. The average wait was between thirty days and a year. Decisions on who got a liver were based on medical conditio
n, blood type, size, and proximity to the donor organ. I had no idea why Mantle got his. Nor did I know when or if I’d get mine.

  Richard sent out a press release. “In spite of this latest development, Mr. Hagman remains in excellent health and spirits and his prognosis for a full recovery and long life is excellent, according to his medical team.”

  I believed that was true. I had no reason not to.

  * * *

  Michel Machuzsek coordinated everything that had to go on between the patient and all the doctors. She called to ask how I was feeling, scheduled appointments, blood tests, MRIs, and all the other stuff that goes into preparing for a liver transplant. If Makowka, who performed the surgery, was God, she was the angel Gabriel tending the gates.

  One day she asked me if I still drank. I said no. She asked if I was in any support program. Again I said no, explaining that I didn’t feel I needed one. I’d been able to give up alcohol for the last two years and didn’t miss it at all. And if it wasn’t for the goddamn encephalopathy, I’d be thinking straighter than I had in forty years.

  Michel smiled as if to say, “Good for you,” and then said she’d like me to meet Dallas Taylor, the original drummer for Crosby, Stills and Nash. Makowka had performed a liver transplant on him a few years earlier. Now Dallas ran a men’s group of recovering alcoholics and drug addicts. I called him up and arranged to get together.

  We met at the Newsroom Cafe on Robertson Boulevard, a wonderful restaurant where you can get newspapers and magazines from around the world as well as delicious food. Dallas handed me a copy of his book, Prisoner of Woodstock, which would show me what a simple and naive life I’d led. Over lunch, he told me about his career, the gory depths to which his addiction had taken him, and how Makowka had saved his life with a transplant. He also told me about the Monday night meetings and invited me to come to the next one in Beverly Hills.