Peter Lawford

by James Spada

  The letters, long and chatty, detail his activities and ask about theirs. He tells Jack he wouldn’t like the Betty Ford Center because there was “not a pretty girl within miles.” He asks him if he has been elected president of anything — “you must be running something, knowing you.” He asks how Marilyn and Bobby are doing and asks Jack to give his best to Steve McQueen and Vic Morrow should he run into them.

  Peter’s letter to his father is extraordinary in its affectionate tone; he calls him “you marvelous rascal!” In his letter to Jack Kennedy, Peter admits that he is in the Betty Ford Center because of his drinking, but to his father he writes only that he has been having liver problems. He apologizes to Sir Sydney for not having been able to say good-bye to him when he went on his “trip” and tells him that they will talk soon. He closes the letter, “I adore you — Peter.”

  AN ALCOHOLIC OR DRUG ADDICT cannot be helped unless he truly wants to be, and Peter didn’t — as Patty soon learned. “Peter has a death wish,” she told one of the national tabloids. “There are days when I know he wants to destroy himself.”

  That Peter was slowly committing suicide became clear from his American Express bills, from which Patty learned to her shock that Peter had paid for a helicopter to fly cocaine into the vast desert area behind the Ford Center. He would take a long walk, meet the helicopter, do a few lines of coke, and return to the facility. Apparently, he was never found out.

  Peter did remain alcohol free for the five weeks he spent at the clinic, and Patty described him as “looking wonderful” when he returned home. Three days later Peter went out on an errand, and a few hours later Patty got a phone call. It was the bartender at a nearby restaurant; Peter was so drunk she would have to come and help him home.

  It was like this often during the last year of Peter’s life; his deterioration proceeded with awful speed. Although he continued to try to work, no one would hire him. After Gene Yusem sent him to a producer for a possible role in a television pilot, the man called Yusem and asked him, “Have you seen Peter Lawford lately?”

  Desperate, he took out a loan from the Motion Picture Relief Fund and sold the story of his treatment at the Betty Ford Center to a national tabloid for twelve thousand dollars. He set to work once again on his memoirs, this time on speculation. He worked with the freelance writer Wayne Warga, and Warga soon found himself frustrated by Peter’s inability to concentrate and his unwillingness to be frank about the Kennedys. “Jack was a wonderful person and a wonderful President,” Peter said later. “And I’m not going to blacken his name no matter how much I need the money.” As before, the project never got off the ground.

  In July, Peter complained of stomach pains; before long his abdomen became distended and he coughed up blood. Patty took him to UCLA Medical Center, where he was diagnosed with a severely bleeding ulcer. He underwent emergency surgery, during which thirty-five percent of his stomach was removed.

  While he was hospitalized, he wrote out a will in longhand, leaving “any and all belongings, possessions or assets owned and held by me” to “my common-law wife/companion Patricia Ann Seaton in the event of my demise.” The next day, he and Patty were married in his hospital room by a justice of the peace in a ceremony witnessed by a nurse, Peter’s lawyer, and the patient in the next bed, who vomited throughout the ceremony.

  Patty wore white, and Peter insisted on standing next to her in his hospital gown despite the fact that he could barely stand and had IV tubes stuck into his arms.

  Home again after the surgery, told never again to touch drugs or alcohol, Peter needed almost constant care. He had to be fed through a tube every ninety minutes around the clock, had to have his dressings changed every few hours and be helped with his bodily functions. There was no money to hire a nurse, and no one but Patty to take care of him. Finally, she spoke to Peter’s children about putting him into a home where he could be cared for by professionals around the clock. According to Patty, they didn’t feel that that was necessary.

  Peter’s condition worsened. When the doctors removed the gastric tube, he began to bleed uncontrollably; they discovered that his damaged liver had stopped secreting an enzyme necessary for optimal blood clotting. The bleeding was stemmed, but now he was suffering from coagulopathy, a potentially fatal blood clotting disorder. The next day, he bumped his arm and within minutes it swelled to twice its normal size. Three days later, blood came to the surface of the swollen arm as though it were perspiration; he spent another three weeks in the hospital.

  Peter made a slow but steady recovery, and by November, he was again well enough to join Elizabeth Taylor at her house for dinner. She had used her influence to get him a small, two-day role in a television movie she was about to begin, Malice in Wonderland, in which she would play Louella Parsons, and Jane Alexander would play rival gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. Peter was to play an agent, and Taylor warned him that she had gone out on a limb for him and she didn’t want him to “screw up.” He laughed and teased her about her highly publicized new sobriety. “You used to have a personality,” he told her. “You used to be interesting.”

  As the day approached for Peter to film his few scenes in the picture, he grew nervous. He didn’t want to let Elizabeth down, and he wasn’t at all certain that he wouldn’t. He started to drink heavily again and reestablished some of his drug connections to obtain marijuana and cocaine.

  Within a few days, he collapsed and was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. There, doctors used various treatments, including vitamin therapy, to cleanse his body of toxins and help his failing liver function. He rallied once again and was released from the hospital on the morning he was due to appear on the Malice in Wonderland set.

  The night before, Milt Ebbins had paid him a visit. “I brought him some éclairs, which he liked, and I was with him for about two hours. Pat Seaton wasn’t there. I sat with him and he said, ‘You want to go over some lines with me?’ I said, ‘Sure.’ He seemed to be in pretty good shape, pretty lucid.”

  Ebbins showed Peter his lines, and Peter said, “No, these are the wrong pages.” He turned to the pages he wanted to read, and after Ebbins told him that his character wasn’t even on them, he kept insisting they were the right sides. Finally Milt convinced him and they started reading, but Peter didn’t know where he was on the page. Ebbins thought to himself, He’s never gonna make it.

  They stopped reading and sat silently for a few minutes. Then Peter said, “Milt, I want you to do me a favor. Please talk to Patricia.” Ebbins hadn’t spoken to Patty for months but he promised he would try to make it up with her. As Ebbins was leaving, Peter walked with him out to the elevator bank. When they got there he patted Milt on the cheek and said, “Milt, you’re a good friend.” Ebbins responded, “Hey, we’ve always been friends and we’ll always be friends.”

  The next morning, Thursday, December 13, Patty went to the hospital to pick Peter up. When she got there she discovered that he had already been discharged. Worried, she began to look around the hospital grounds for him. Then she saw him walking down the street, “happy as could be.” He had gone to a convenience store and bought several one-ounce bottles of vodka.

  Milt Ebbins met Peter on the Malice in Wonderland set at eleven that morning. Next on the filming schedule was Peter’s first scene in the picture, in which his character was to introduce himself to Hedda Hopper, and the two men waited in his dressing room. Ebbins was concerned that Peter appeared so lethargic. “It seemed to me like he had taken some kind of drug. At lunch he lay down and I thought, This man is dying. Peter looked at me and saw the concern in my face and said, ‘I’ll be okay.’”

  Ebbins asked him if he wanted some lunch. “They’ve got lamb chops, roast beef,” he said. “Let me get you a plate of roast beef and mashed potatoes and some of that ice cream that you like. And I’ll get myself some, too.” He got the plates, but when he returned to the dressing room Peter’s eyes were closed, his face ashen. Ebbins didn’t want to disturb him, so he ate
his lunch on the set.

  About one o’clock, an assistant director knocked on the dressing room door and called out, “Mr. Lawford, we’re ready for you.” Peter replied, “Okay,” got up, and put on his blue suit jacket. He could barely walk. Milt helped him out to the set and he took his mark to begin the scene with Jane Alexander. The director yelled, “Action!” and the cameras began to roll. When the time came for Peter’s first line, he mumbled the words inaudibly. “The whole set could tell what was happening,” Ebbins recalled. “Jane was very concerned. She just looked at him.” Finally the director called out loudly, “Peter, please speak up a little. We can’t hear you.”

  He said his line again, but still no one could hear him. And again, the same thing. The director yelled, “Take five,” and began to huddle with some of the crew members. Then the assistant director came over to him and said, “Peter, I want you to lie down. We’ll do the scene later.” But Peter never did do the scene. He left the soundstage in midafternoon and went home.

  AROUND NOON ON THE following Sunday, Patty returned to the apartment after running an errand and found Peter on the kitchen floor, bleeding and nearly unconscious. She called 911, then decided to take Peter to the hospital herself to save time. As she was leaving, the telephone rang. It was the producer of Malice in Wonderland, Jay Benson, with the news that Peter would have to be discharged from the film.

  Peter was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in grave condition. His liver and kidneys were failing, and his coagulopathy made surgery extremely risky. The doctors put him on life support systems and once again tried to detoxify him, but it was clear that this time Peter’s chances of surviving were slim.

  As his kidneys failed, Peter’s skin turned yellow from the buildup of uremic toxins. Friends and relatives were notified that he was close to death. His children flew in to visit him, then left for Jamaica and a planned Christmas holiday. Elizabeth Taylor spent two hours holding Peter’s hand, then left to spend her Christmas in Switzerland. Some old friends came to visit; others, like Molly Dunne, couldn’t bring themselves to. “I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle seeing him like that,” she said.

  Patty remained at the hospital most of the time, sleeping in a room provided her. She read to Peter, tried to get some response from him. Jackie Gayle came in and did his stand-up comedy routine, trying to get Peter to laugh. Nothing worked to rally him. On December 19, he fell into a coma. He lingered in that condition for the next four days, and Arthur Natoli spent the night of December 23 with Patty at the hospital. She asked him to go out to a nearby store and bring back flowers and some champagne, which they drank together.

  At eight-fifty the following morning, Peter stirred for the first time in days. His muscles contracted and his upper body rose jerkily, involuntarily. Suddenly, blood spurted from his mouth, his nose, his ears. Then he fell back onto the mattress. He was dead.

  ON CHRISTMAS DAY, the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner ran a banner front-page headline, “Peter Lawford Dead at 61.” The secondary headline provided an epitaph that would have caused Peter, with his self-deprecating sense of humor, wry amusement: “Kennedy in-law was last to speak to Marilyn Monroe.”

  EPILOGUE

  Many people found themselves surprised by how affected they were by the news that Peter Lawford was dead. Still another symbol of the seemingly simpler, happier times epitomized by the MGM musical was gone, and for many the world was a poorer place because of it. Patty was amazed by the deluge of telegrams, cards, and letters that poured in “from every corner of the world.” President Reagan sent condolences, as did other heads of state. Patty remembered thinking, “It was as though the world had lost a beloved friend . . . even though his time as a star had long since passed.”

  Senator Edward Kennedy issued a tribute: “The death of Peter Lawford is a special loss to all of us in the Kennedy family, and my heart goes out to his children, Christopher, Sydney, Victoria, and Robin. We take comfort from the fact that we know he will also be missed by all of the people who enjoyed his many roles in films and on television. He was a dedicated and creative actor as well as a loving father and loyal friend to all of us, especially in the challenging days of the New Frontier.”

  Peter was cremated on Christmas Day, and the following evening a small group of family and friends attended a closely guarded funeral at Westwood Village Mortuary. In a cold, driving rain, Patty, Milt, the four Lawford children, Caroline Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Jr., Bill Asher, and several more of Peter’s longtime friends heard him eulogized by both a Catholic and an Episcopalian priest.

  After the thirty-minute service, which included the playing of John Lennon’s “Love,” Peter’s ashes were entombed in a double crypt fifty yards from Marilyn Monroe’s.

  EVEN IN DEATH THERE was little dignity for Peter Lawford. Newspapers reported that the probate of his estate revealed that he had died heavily in debt and without major assets. Claims against the estate, all of which went unpaid, included one from Hugh Hefner for ten thousand dollars that he had lent Peter in August 1982. It was to have been repaid with the proceeds from the sale of Peter’s projected memoirs. Hefner was the only one of Peter’s friends to make a claim on his estate for the repayment of a loan.

  In 1988, much news was made when it came to light that Peter’s funeral expenses had never been paid. Westwood Village Mortuary, under new management, had warned Patty that they might have to remove Peter’s ashes from his crypt unless the account was settled. Patty told the press that she had never had the money to pay the bills (which amounted to around seven thousand dollars), and that even when she told Peter’s children that their father’s ashes might be evicted from the memorial park, they had refused to pay the bills.

  Others tell a different story. As Patty’s attorney, Marcus Wasson, recalled: “I was under the impression that Patty did have the money to pay the funeral expenses after Peter died.” Indeed, within a few months of his death she had received a fifty-thousand-dollar lump-sum payment from his Screen Actors Guild pension. Still, the bills were not paid.

  When the story became public, Patty painted the Kennedys — and specifically Peter’s children — as the villains of the piece. She told reporters: “It’s terrible. Their father was always good to them.” The family issued a statement: “The children only recently learned of the existence of financial problems in connection with their father’s funeral expenses and they have taken care of all such obligations. The children’s primary concern has always been that their father’s remains rest in peace, and they loved him.”

  The children didn’t pay the expenses; before they would agree to do so they insisted that Patty relinquish control of the crypt. She decided that she “had had it with the Kennedy family,” and — although the mortuary had not pressed the issue — she told Peter’s children that she was proceeding with the removal of his ashes and planned to scatter them at sea. They assented to her wishes and agreed to pay the $430 fee for the disinterment (Victoria sent the mortuary a check).

  On May 25, 1988, cemetery workers pried open the front of crypt C-3, swept away the dust and cobwebs, and handed Patty the urn containing Peter’s ashes. She had made a deal with — as she put it — “my friends at the National Enquirer,” giving the tabloid exclusive picture rights in exchange for a limousine to take her to Marina del Rey, and a boat from which to scatter Peter’s ashes into the Pacific.

  Newspapers around the country told the story of Peter Lawfords last great indignity — his eviction from his final resting place. “I think it’s terrible,” the stories quoted Patty as saying. “I never wanted him to be removed, but the children took a walk. I was tired of all the nonsense. I didn’t care if the children cared or not. I was doing what had to be done — what was best for Peter and his memory.”

  The final paragraph of the report in the Los Angeles Times on the occasion reflected the assumption of many that the entire sorry episode was a publicity stunt: “Mrs. Lawford, 30, arrived at the cemetery in a black limousine
, accompanied by a professional photographer. She said her book on Lawford will be out this summer.”

  INTENSELY PRIVATE, Peter Lawford’s children have kept low profiles most of their lives. Only Christopher, fifty-five as of this writing, embarked on a career that put him in the public spotlight. He became an actor and had a solid if unspectacular career, appearing on the soap operas All My Children and General Hospital and a number of other TV shows and movies. He was arrested in 1980 for heroin possession, but was never prosecuted on the charge, and his battle with drugs was behind him two years after he graduated from Boston College Law School in 1983. He went on to gain a Master’s Degree in Clinical Psychology. He married his longtime girlfriend, Jeannie Olsson, a month before Peter’s death and had three children. The couple were divorced in 2000 and Chris remarried to Lana Antonava, from whom he is now also divorced.

  Sydney and Peter McKelvy now have four sons, Peter, born in 1985, Christopher, born in 1987, Patrick born in 1989 and Anthony, born in 1992. Victoria is a television coordinator for Very Special Arts, a nonprofit affiliate of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington that sponsors programs for the disabled. She was married in June 1987 to Robert Pender, an attorney with a Washington law firm. They have three daughters, Alexandra, born in 1988, Caroline, born in 1990, and Victoria, born in 1993.

  Robin Lawford, fifty, in 2011, is unmarried as of this writing. She has worked as a stage manager for Off-Broadway productions in New York and is now involved in the Kennedy family’s efforts on behalf of retarded children. She is also a marine biologist doing field work in New York.

  Patricia Kennedy Lawford died on September 17, 2006, at the age of eighty-two.

  PETER HAD SAT WITH Jean MacDonald on a seawall in Hawaii and sobbed, afraid that he had nothing to offer his children, that the Kennedys would overshadow him in their estimation at every turn. In many ways, of course, he was right. But no matter how much the Kennedys achieved, and no matter how badly his own life and career foundered, Peter would never lose the adulation of his children.