by Sid Luft
37
DESPITE MY CRACKDOWN on the staff, someone was still supplying Judy with pills. I was in a quandary most of the time trying to figure out who it was. She turned my concern into a game: I was the “cop,” the “narc,” the “flatfoot.” On the road she could score from anyone—a chorus boy, a musician, a hairdresser, a friend—but at home the avenues were limited. I’d searched every nook and cranny and could find nothing. Infuriated, I blocked off the house. Nobody could come in or go out without my approval, as if I were a security guard at the White House.
One morning a package arrived from Saks Fifth Avenue. I took the liberty of opening it and found a spanking new white terry cloth robe, brightly lined with red-and-blue Tuinal capsules. A friend had bought the robe and sewed the Tuinal into the lining, returned it to Saks, and asked them to deliver it. Judy had unwittingly tipped me off by telling me she was expecting a package. That night Pobirs had knocked her out, and at four in the morning the two of us were on an Easter egg hunt looking for her hidden stash. We went through Judy’s closets, overturned the rugs, examined the drapes. And this time we scored. Pills were hidden in packages of cigarettes; her Jean Patou Joy bath powder was loaded with Seconals; the clothes hamper was filled with beer bottles and a vodka bottle, all empty.
In the past Vern Alves and I would wait for her to wake up from a bender so we could get down to business. With her tenacity, she would usually come out of it, asking for a steak, loving and warm as though nothing had happened. In this instance, she wasn’t coming out of it. I tried to figure out what was pulsating deep within her. I thought, people take pills, people drink, but they don’t always damage themselves. Her mind was swift, and her intelligence near genius—what was it that she couldn’t juggle, that weighed so heavily? I, the watchdog, pondered the one pill too many, the accumulation of multiple prescriptions. Something burned in her psyche, but it was still a mystery. Judy just didn’t momentarily get out of her skin; if she tipped the scale she was most likely to be in a life-and-death race. I’d been getting in her hair; I was the villain. “I can’t answer why I took that first pill,” she told me. “Hnn, I can’t sleep,” and she’d refer to me as “the foolish ass upstairs.” The hostility was snowballing.
Shortly after we moved into Mapleton, I had installed a safe in my bathroom behind the designer towel rack. Judy never mentioned it. Now, aware I’d won a big bet, she confronted me: “I want that combination. It’s half my money.” She wanted to get into that “goddamned safe,” she yelled. “I must have the combination. Hnnn, suppose you die?”
“I forgot it.”
“You did not.”
“It’s written down in the office.”
It was strange, as money had never been a subject that concerned her. I figured she wanted the money for more pills.
Two days later she’d forgotten about the safe and the money. Her attention was focused on how much she didn’t want to work in Brooklyn, at Maksik’s. We were embroiled in fierce arguments. I found myself threatening to walk out. I tried every trick in the book—I’d make myself scarce, then I’d attempt to reason with her. This was a tough wave, and I wasn’t rolling with it. Nothing was working, and her isolation was escalating. She’d ring Pobirs, “Come over here.” Fuck you and your family, just get here. And he’d come.
Even Pobirs was mad at Judy. One night on his way out he told me, “Goddam it, you’re kidding yourself if you think she’s going to be cured.” It was five in the morning and he was tired and disgusted. And I was kidding myself. But I liked to do that. Pobirs was a disgruntled uncle; he wasn’t going to abandon her either. He was as much of an enabler as I was.
I enjoyed drinking but I was not a drunk, and I respected sobriety. I knew how much Judy loved me, and it was that love I’d been betting on. She’d come out of it. She had been on uppers and was coming off barbiturates, and she had taken the unknown quantity plus a mystery drug. The mix had transformed her into a raging pixie. But these periods of irrational behavior were dangerous to her and to the family.
The children stayed in one wing of the house. Judy would pay them visits wearing her lounging outfit or a robe, and they’d sing and talk for a while. They wouldn’t realize she was stoned. If she was immobile, the children were told Mother wasn’t available, and as they were used to their mother rehearsing or reading in her rooms, her absence didn’t seem unnatural.
Rather recently Judy had packed up the kids and the nurse to go off to Ojai. It was her reaction to my pressuring her to sober up in time for Maksik’s. We were not arguing; we were very compatible, and close. In Ojai, she slept off what she’d ingested and came home. “Hi, darling, I’m back.” Her sobriety lasted twenty-four hours.
Now Judy had cut me off to such a degree that I thought I’d better shake her up. I decided to go through the charade of leaving the house, hoping to bring her around, wake her up. Not only was my action futile, but it triggered a new kind of desperate behavior on her part.
I told Judy she was giving me command performances, and I didn’t think I’d be up to it much longer. Time was running out. One night I packed two bags and walked into the master bedroom, where Judy was sitting in bed. I was overwrought. “I’m leaving,” I announced, hoping she’d sober up for a moment.
A look of recognition passed over her face. She stared at me. “You want to walk out on your children? Walk out, you son of a bitch.”
“Why can’t you stop?”
“None of your business.”
“OK, darling, this is what you want, I’m going.”
There was no reaching her, but she got out of bed, angry. She wanted to make contact by hitting me. She was spinning with Dexedrine, Seconal, and booze, unreasonable, obstinate. She came at me with hooded eyes and wagging tail, the way a caged animal who once licked a trainer’s hand in appreciation turns one day for no reason. As she came for me I caught her by the leg, taking her off balance. Gripping her by the leg and arm, I gracefully twirled her, like a figure skater with his partner. I tossed my bundle gently back onto our enormous bed. Judy, stunned, landed on her side, like a befuddled Raggedy Ann doll. I had to suppress a laugh. “You’ve just been thrown through the air, baby. You landed good and now I’m leaving.” There were tears in my eyes. I felt like Willy Loman with a suitcase.
She didn’t show any care and she didn’t say “Call me.” She said, “I don’t give a fuck. Get lost. I dare you to leave.”
I checked into a small hotel on Wilshire Boulevard, and the next morning I read in the newspapers that Judy and I were divorcing. She’d contacted Jerry Giesler, the famous criminal defense lawyer. Judy knew exactly where I was, and I stayed in touch with the staff at the house. I rang Giesler and explained Judy was dramatizing a family argument. She was on an extended bender and eventually she’d come around, she’d sober up. Meanwhile, Geisler hired Fred Otash, a private detective, to guard the house. I knew Otash rather well, so I went over to Mapleton with Clyde Duber, a friend who was also a private detective, to check. I told Otash to watch Judy, as she could do something naughty. She was smoking too many cigarettes. Otash assured me, “Don’t worry about it, Sid.” I was worried for her and the children.
Sure enough, there was a fire. Judy burned her elbow. Fire engines were clanging in and around Mapleton, which didn’t go over well with the neighbors.
I had a meeting with Giesler. I explained we’d had intense arguments about pills, which Judy liked to call “medicine”—no doubt a euphemism inherited from MGM. Her contacting Giesler was a new wrinkle: divorce was a word she’d never used. I considered her angle. She was trying “divorce” on for size. She’d asked Giesler to file papers—the reason: I’d “attempted to strangle her.” She’d also tell Giesler, “Sid poisoned the dog” or “Sid hit me” or “Sid threatened me,” all untruths. I knew she’d sober up—it was taking longer this time, but she’d sober up. I explained that this was the pattern when she was on a bender, only this time she tried on a new shoe. Giesler said, “Sid, here
’s an opportunity for you to get out of the marriage, to start another life.” He didn’t understand I was in love with Judy and had no intention of leaving her.
Judy left for New York without me, semisober. I followed her there and checked into the Warwick Hotel. It was nasty March weather, cold, gray, and dirty snow piling up everywhere. I knew Judy was sick. In Brooklyn, she was presenting herself as someone in need of a manager, and she was fucking up. The supportive peers were not driving out to Brooklyn. Maksik had notions of taking over as Judy’s manager. She was playing everyone against one another, furious that she had to perform in Brooklyn. Bobby Van, who worked as her opening act, called me daily at the hotel to tell me what was going on. Van’s most typical remark: “It ain’t good.”
I learned that Aly Khan had gone out to see her, the lone prince in the back of Ben Maksik’s Town and Country! There was one supportive peer who was loyal. Judy had the children with her, Lorna and Joey, and the nurse. She still wasn’t taking my calls, but I knew she’d contact me sooner or later.
I ran into Doug Ornstein as I was coming down in the hotel’s elevator. He had been my first flight instructor in my Clover Field days. We hit the lobby and stood looking at the newsstand, where the headlines for March 23, 1958, blasted, MIKE TODD DIES IN NEW MEXICO AIR CRASH! We turned to one another and both said, “That fucking dummy, he iced up and spun in.” Todd had recently produced the Academy Award winner Around the World in 80 Days and was married to Elizabeth Taylor. I was saddened for Mike and for Liz.
I had little time to meditate the consequences of Todd’s untimely death, as that night Judy walked off the stage at Maksik’s, refusing to perform. She rang me at the hotel: “Hi, darling, come and get us. I’m all packed.” Then she commanded me to call the police, saying Maksik had “attacked” her.
She’d worked ten days out of her three-week contract and couldn’t continue; she was really ill. I went out to Brooklyn in a limo, collected my family, and brought them back to the Drake Hotel. Judy, in one of her rare moments of communication, asked to go to a clinic to detox: “Take care of me, baby.” She was, at that moment, the reasonable little girl.
38
Extra Special
LANCASTER THEATER
Sunday and Monday, May 22–23
MR. and MRS. FRANK GUMM and DAUGHTERS will present a cycle of songs and dances between shows each evening at 9 o’clock and also at the Sunday Matinee.
Having purchased the theater, I am taking this method of introducing the family to the good people of Lancaster and Antelope Valley. It is my intention to continue presenting the high class picture program as given by Mr. Claman and I cordially ask the support of the public in keeping the entertainment up to the highest possible standard. Your cooperation will be appreciated.
Respectfully, FRANK A. GUMM —Antelope Valley Ledger Gazette, 1927
IN JULY 1958, I BOOKED Judy at the Cocoanut Grove, a haunt from our respective glorious pasts. I was intending to ignite some forgotten sparks, inspire enthusiasm. The Grove, situated in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, was an exotic environment of monkeys, parrots, and lush tropical palms. Impressive and costly shops lined the arcades. It was altogether a fantasy of superabundance, notoriety, and history: the young Norma Jeane Mortenson, a.k.a. Marilyn Monroe, hung out at the hotel’s swimming pool whenever she was in town, and later Robert Kennedy was to meet his death on the premises.
Judy played for two weeks to star-studded audiences—the “right” crowd, her supportive peers. She’d made a few appearances plus some recording dates before the Grove. She hadn’t thrown any command performances in the dressing room or walked offstage, nor was she rejecting me or isolating herself. In fact, she’d sloughed off her defiant, hostile stance with me since Pobirs prescribed a newer drug: Ritalin, a medication used primarily for hyperactive children. The effect of the pill was to render Judy zombie-like.
The Grove, however, was one of Judy’s “homes,” a place where she was relaxed and comfortable performing. Sinatra was there, Brando was there, and she’d schmooze with the audience: “A long time ago I came down to the Grove with my mother, and she talked the orchestra leader into letting me sing a song . . .”
Judy was bringing her mother into the act every night. She seemed to be in the grip of some kind of intense nostalgia, commenting on how she was shuttled from stage to stage as a child. And Judy had worked the Cocoanut Grove as early as 1932. I thought, She’ll talk about her mother to the audiences but she’ll hold back from me. And she wasn’t letting up on the subject. In a rare emotional recollection, Judy said:
We visited California, some of mother’s friends by the name of Devine. And then we came back to Grand Rapids. My parents decided to move to California, so my father sold the Rialto. We got in the car. The family had an awful time with me, because I got carsick. It was stopping every hour. I’d upchuck and we’d go on. It was such a bore, but we worked our way to California.
My mother and father went back to their original Vaudeville life—“Jack and Virginia Lee, Sweet Southern Singers” and they booked us as the “Gumm Sisters,” because two acts made more money than a family. We played funny little theaters all across the country. . . . We’d work one month, get some money, and then we’d travel a little more, and had some fun. We wanted to work again, Dad said no, we had enough money.
We would go up to a town we thought looked good and thought we’d enjoy and my dad would go to the manager of the theater and say, “Look, I’m a theater owner too.” We’d work in the stage show. And the three of us would go out and watch my mother and father.
We’d applaud my mother and father; then when we’d go on, they’d go out and applaud us. My mother used to sing a song that I’ve always wanted to record. She’d come out, play the piano, and sing, “I’ve Been Saving for a Rainy Day.” And she sang it so well. It was a very sad kind of song.
Every time I’d sit out in the audience and watch her, I’d just cry.
When she told this story to the audience, people would be wiping tears from their eyes by this point, and she hadn’t even sung “Rainbow” yet. She certainly caught me off guard with a catch in my throat. And then there’d come the audience’s requests to sing “I’ve Been Saving for a Rainy Day.” I’d think wistfully, Judy is sad, but there’s nothing I can do. Some nights she’d tell them, “You may not believe I was a little, little girl . . .” and she’d proceed to chat them up about how the family finally arrived in Los Angeles. Judy said:
We drove through Lancaster. My father did mention that it would be a good place for a theater, because there weren’t any around to buy. We lived around Glendale and we had a little turquoise stucco house. We were still very happy. And, for a while we lived not far from Melrose Avenue. Across the street from the Devines. We had a little bungalow. That’s where my sisters taught me to play jacks.
The audience would go wild. I always knew they’d be thrilled just to hear Judy talk. I’d personally given up on her confiding to me. I really wasn’t as focused on Judy’s withholding of feelings or thoughts anymore. Our marriage’s tantalizing passage had delivered us to a point in time where, for once, I was concerned about her weight. My femme fatale had been ballooning up, mysteriously filling with air, her eyes on the way to becoming slits. It would be some time before I’d come to understand that her physical condition was actually a sign of the cumulative effect of toxins in her system.
After the Grove, Judy gave a superb concert at Orchestra Hall in Chicago along with Nelson Riddle and his orchestra. She sang Jack Cathcart’s overture from the Palace Theatre, and she was in great voice. The program included such tunes as “When You’re Smiling,” “Day In, Day Out,” “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love,” “Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart,” and “Purple People Eater,” a song that was popular in the 1950s. Roger Edens did the vocal arrangement for “Purple”—it was funny, kind of a throwaway. Alan King joined her for the “Couple of Swells” number. At the end of her performance, the
Riddle Orchestra sang “Auld Lang Syne” to Judy. Orchestra Hall was a wonderful night.
We went immediately from there to the Sands Hotel in Vegas. It was an intimate room and she loved playing there. I’d booked Judy at Sinatra’s request. He’d told me Judy had promised him she’d work there, and I struck a deal with both Frank and the manager of the Sands, Jack Entratter. Judy and Frank and Dean performed to an audience of supportive peers and those lucky enough to have a table reserved. It was dynamite; the improvisation between them was a joy, almost a once-in-a-lifetime performance. Frank brought up his friends, nobody commented on Judy’s weight, and everybody had a ball. I began to acquaint myself with the ins and outs of Vegas, and this time I made friends. These connections were to serve me well in a few years’ time when I’d be persona non grata, an outsider in my own home.
The new helium-faced Judy hadn’t diminished in style, but something was terribly wrong with her body. By now I was certain she was suffering a toxic reaction to the Ritalin, which seemed to calm her down but left her without energy. I wondered how many she took daily.
After the Sands we went to Thousand Oaks in the Valley and stayed at the Come and See Us Ranch with the intention of helping Judy lose some weight. It was a rest for the entire family. Judy didn’t lose an ounce, although the diet was strictly celery and carrots and low-calorie dishes. Her face returned to normal, but not her body. I was happy to see her enticing, saucer eyes wide open again.
