Candy at Last

by Candy Spelling

  Michael was the kindest person. He was so gentle and such a wonderful father. We were all guests at a small dinner party at the Davises’ one night. Marvin’s wife, Barbara, had bought Prince and Paris little electric cars, and they were zipping around the entryway of the house. There were bowls of candy around and the children wanted some. I still remember Michael crouching down and in a whisper of a voice telling them they couldn’t have any candy until after dinner. It was magical the way his children listened to him. I felt like any other children at this age would have thrown a tantrum, but in this case, once again it was life imitating art. Paris and Prince understood, fell in line with their father’s wishes, and patiently waited to have candy after their dinner.

  10

  Ain’t That a Kick in the Head

  Socializing was as much a part of Aaron’s job as the writing was, and he loved every minute of it. I have this expression about people who can have an interesting conversation with anyone. I like to say, “He could talk to a bush.” Aaron was without question one of these people. We didn’t always go to star-studded parties or industry events. Sometimes we had cozy, low-key dinners with other couples. We also went to poker night at the home of Janet Leigh and her husband Bob Brandt. Janet was a sweet, down-to-earth woman. When I first met her, I couldn’t get the image from Psycho of her being stabbed to death so violently in the shower out of my mind.

  We were also invited to the home of actress Natalie Wood for dinner on more than one occasion. She was already divorced from Robert Wagner and was married to British producer Richard Gregson. She was a new mother and had stepped back from her career so she could raise her baby. Natalie had this innocence about her, and those amazing eyes of hers were even more incredible in person. She was taking her role as a stay-at-home mom very seriously. She was spending a lot of time in the kitchen and really did cook from the heart. Unfortunately, cooking was not her strongest suit, and I remember Aaron and me joking about what Natalie’s “mystery meat would be this time.”

  What fascinated me most about Natalie was that here she was, this glamorous, sexy, and iconic beauty. One of the biggest movie stars of all time. I mean West Side Story, Rebel Without a Cause, and who could forget her with Warren Beatty in Elia Kazan’s Splendor in the Grass? Despite all of this, she was as self-conscious as the rest of us women are, if not more. She always wore this big, chunky bracelet on her wrist to cover a bump she had on the joint from when she had broken it. It always amazed me that these stunningly beautiful women could have any insecurity at all.

  Another couple we had fun with were Dick and Dolly Martin. Dick was the co-host of the comedy sketch show Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. The show was so funny and so different for the time. After the show ended, Dick developed a career as a television director. At the time, he was directing episodes of The Bob Newhart Show. He would go on to become a sought-after director who worked on at least a dozen television series. Dick’s wife was a gorgeous Playboy Playmate appropriately named Dolly. Dolly had also been in Russ Meyer’s campy film Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Dick and Dolly used to host movie night at their in-home theater. This was a big deal in those days since not everybody had home theaters.

  It was at Dick and Dolly’s house that I first met Dean Martin and his new wife, Cathy. She was Dean’s third wife, and I just loved both of them from the moment I met them. It sounds funny to say, but since being married to Aaron, Dean and Cathy were the first friends I had made on my own. And Dean was the first celebrity I had befriended before Aaron did.

  In 1974, the six of us plus Bob Newhart and his wife Ginny took a trip to Las Vegas to see Frank Sinatra’s comeback performance at Caesar’s Palace. Even under serious peer pressure, Aaron refused to fly in the private jet that Dean had chartered. In fact, when he first heard about the trip and the private plane, he said, “Well, that’s it. We’re not going.” I was really upset and started to cry, which made Aaron reconsider. So while everyone else in our party traveled on the jet, we drove.

  The MGM Grand had just opened in 1973, and it was the first super luxury resort on the Las Vegas Strip. It had just over two thousand rooms and this decadent fountain that was lit up at night. The hotel was incredible, and, at the time, it was the place to stay in Sin City. When we all met up in the lobby of the brand-new MGM hotel, Dean said that they had waved to us as their plane flew over our car chugging along the desert road. At the registration desk, Dean requested a room lower than the fourth floor. It turned out he had a phobia of elevators. Sure enough, when Aaron heard that, he said he didn’t want a room above the fourth floor either. It didn’t happen often, but this was one of those times where I put my foot down.

  “Aaron, that’s Dean’s phobia, not yours! We can stay on a higher floor. You already have your own phobia.” I just couldn’t imagine if in addition to flying, Aaron also stopped taking elevators.

  The show at Caesar’s was really something else that night. Trying to get through the throngs of manic people to our VIP seats was a little frightening. Even with private security guards and Las Vegas police cordoning off the VIP area, fans of Dean were reaching, clawing, and doing anything they could to get his attention or talk to him. I thought I had seen it all at Hollywood premieres or nights out with Aaron where people, one after another, approached him. This was something else altogether. It was that evening that I realized the magnitude of the power these stars have over their fans.

  After Frank’s show we all headed for the casino to our own private blackjack table. Ironically, none of us were really gamblers. Dean jumped behind the table and assumed the role of dealer. Aaron and Dick partnered up but refused to play with their own money. It was funny to watch all these men who were creative geniuses and risk takers play cards. They were so hesitant and completely overthought everything.

  Dean, on the other hand, just went for it. He went bust every time. Cathy and I could see his cards and couldn’t understand why he hit when he already had twenty-one. We were finally able to persuade Aaron and Dick to take the plunge and gamble with their own money. Dick had been a bartender and referred to martinis as “see-throughs,” so I kept joking that he’d had a few too many “see-throughs.” Meanwhile, Dick was playing a big hand and all the while he kept saying that he didn’t gamble. He kept on that he was afraid he was going to lose all his money and have to go back to being a bartender. No such luck! Dick and Aaron ended up winning and winning big, but Dick was so drunk that Aaron and I had to escort him and all his chips to his room.

  In the morning, Dick came knocking on our door. He wanted to know where the pile of chips in his room had come from. We told him that he had won them playing blackjack.

  “You know I don’t gamble, Candy. Now really, tell me where all these chips came from.” Aaron couldn’t stop laughing, so Dick probably thought we were playing a joke on him. The conversation we were having was not unlike the sketches on Laugh-In when Dick always played the frustrated straight man. He remained adamant. It just wasn’t possible. He simply didn’t gamble.

  I explained one last time that he had been so drunk that Aaron and I had literally tucked him into bed. Dick was absolutely mortified. He obviously had had a few too many “see-throughs.”

  11

  The King of Cool

  Of all the friendships we developed over the years, our friendship with Dean Martin stands out as one of the most special. We met one night at one of Dick and Dolly’s movie nights. Sometimes the movies we watched were comedies, which I sometimes dreaded because of this problem I have when I laugh. I hate to admit it, but when I really get going, I mean a real belly laugh, I sound like a seal. Well, at one of those movie nights, we were watching something that was very funny, and it happened. My inner seal came out, and I was exposed in front of “The King of Cool.” Dean couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He literally looked away from the movie over at me, and now he was laughing his heart out too. It wasn’t mean-spirited, it was more like a big brother making fun of his sister. Aaron
got a big kick out of the whole thing and somehow, after that brief albeit ridiculous moment, we were all bonded.

  One of the biggest misconceptions about Dean was that he was an alcoholic who stumbled around all day. In his 1996 obituary, People magazine printed the headline, “Dean Martin perfected a 100-Proof Wink.” They added that Dean’s “image slowly evaporated like uncorked Scotch.” This just goes to show how little the media sometimes knows and how there usually is more to the story. As far as I could tell, the problem Dean had was that every night he would take one of his prescription sleeping pills, even if he’d had a few drinks. This, as you can imagine, did not produce good results. I saw this firsthand when Dean and Cathy would come out to stay with us at our beach house in Malibu.

  Dean was so much fun to have around. He had this adolescent sense of mischief about him that brought so much energy into the house. In the mornings, we would wake up to Dean driving a bucket of brand-new golf balls into the Pacific Ocean. Watching him out there hitting one ball after another out into the water made me realize that Dean really was a loner. When he chose to be with people, he was very present, not to mention big on teasing. For the longest time he couldn’t remember the name of Aaron’s Belgian shepherd, Adam. Dean always called him Bruno, probably because Adam was a very large, dark creature. I would always correct Dean, “It’s Adam!”

  One morning Aaron and I woke up and Dean was still groggy from his sleeping-pill cocktail from the night before. He apologized for stepping on Bruno. I had no idea what he was talking about, and then I remembered that Adam liked to sleep on the landing of the staircase that led to the second floor of the house.

  “It’s Adam!” I yelled.

  I looked over at Dean, and he had that sly, quiet smile of his on his face. He was just teasing me. He really had stepped on Adam, but fortunately Adam was large enough to handle it. At worst, Adam had probably just been startled by Dean. That particular morning Dean also apologized for eating all the cookies on the counter. Once again, I was baffled. Suddenly I realized Dean was referring to the freshly baked cinnamon rolls I had left out for us to have in the morning. They weren’t cookies, and Dean had eaten all four of them.

  Sadly, Dean and Cathy divorced a couple of years later. We didn’t see much of him after that. I think he must have felt like ours had been a couples thing and he wasn’t part of a couple anymore, so he was off on his own.

  It was almost a decade later that I drove out to the set of Hotel to visit Aaron. It was pouring rain, and they were shooting way out at Zuma Beach in Malibu. Wonderful actor Richard Kiley, who had worked with Aaron on The Mod Squad, was guest-starring in this episode of Hotel. Richard was also a stage actor and had won two Tony Awards, so I always found him interesting to talk to. He said something so poignant that afternoon as we sat there in the rain. He said that he wanted to hide behind the character he was playing at the time. This immediately made me think of Dean. I had seen him hide behind the drunken character he had created. He put on his “drunk act” for fans and for people he didn’t want to interact with. It was his defense mechanism that nobody would have ever thought to look beyond.

  A couple of years later, Dean’s oldest son, Dean Paul Martin, was killed in a plane crash. Ironically his plane crashed in the same area where a private charter carrying Frank Sinatra’s mother had crashed ten years earlier. I don’t think Dean was ever able to recover from this loss. We heard from friends that ran into him that he had become a recluse. On occasion other friends saw him alone at restaurants he had always frequented, looking like a ghost of himself.

  I will always remember Dean as the kind, talented, and generous person that he was. He was always taking care of everybody else. Aaron had to get used to the fact that Dean was always quick to reach for the check. He was quicker than even Aaron was, which was really something.

  I used to say that Dean was truly a Mensch. In Yiddish this means he was a person of goodness and integrity. He wasn’t Jewish, but I liked describing him that way anyway. And because he wasn’t Jewish, in some way it was even more of an honor.

  12

  The Mother Is Born

  I always wanted children. Not just because that’s what women from my generation did without even giving it a second thought, but because I really wanted to be a mother. Like most career-driven men, Aaron didn’t have children on the forefront of his mind. He was busy writing, shooting pilots, and selling shows. Children weren’t planned as meticulously as they are these days. I think we all just assumed it would happen naturally.

  After our “Staycation Honeymoon” at the Bel-Air hotel, it seemed like every time somebody congratulated us, it was followed by the question, “When are you having a baby?” I was still writing out thank-you cards for wedding gifts and getting settled into our home and into our new life together. As time went on, I wouldn’t exactly say I had baby fever, but I was definitely taken aback by the question and felt the pressure.

  Forty-one years ago there weren’t fertility specialists. I was only twenty-three years old and was counting on Mother Nature to do her part—but she didn’t. As time marched on, years even, I was so frustrated and felt badly about myself. Aaron wasn’t keen on adopting, but it seemed like our only viable option. He loved me and knew what having children meant to me. He made it clear that he was willing to adopt, even though the process wasn’t an easy one.

  We visited an adoption agency and subjected ourselves to all the rigors of the process. The next step was simple—you wait. We waited for what seemed like an eternity, and then finally our names had moved to the top of the list—and wouldn’t you know it, I found out I was pregnant! We were terribly excited.

  I was fortunate to have had a healthy pregnancy. I had cravings for salty foods like pickles and caviar, of all things. I also made more than a few trips to my high-school haunt, Dolores’s, for burgers and fries. A month before my due date, on May 16, 1973, I gave birth to a baby girl weighing in at 5 pounds, 2 ounces. It was a very special day. She was such a beauty.

  Aaron and I had already chosen her name: Victoria Davey Spelling. I’d had names floating around in my head for years. I gave it a lot of thought because when I was growing up, I knew kids with unfortunate names like Pepper Salters and Ginger Snap. I felt so badly for those kids. I don’t think anyone, least of all the kids, were charmed by those kitschy names. I knew if I had a girl, I wanted to name her Victoria. I always loved the name. It was so feminine, elegant, and regal. The middle name Davey came from Aaron’s father. I knew Victoria would be too long and too formal for people to use. It seemed inevitable that my daughter’s friends and teachers would call her by the nickname “Vicki,” which I really wanted to avoid.

  Barbara Stanwyck was a very close and dear friend of ours, so we asked her to be the baby’s godmother. She bought us this gorgeous, giant pram that we used for both of our children and lent to friends over the years. It was actually Barbara who suggested that we take control of the nickname situation by calling our baby girl “Tori” right from the start. It was such a brilliant idea. There was no way to abbreviate Tori, and this name ended up really suiting her. So really it’s Barbara whom Tori has to thank for all the different ways she’s been able to brand herself over the years: InvenTORI, EdiTORIial, sTORI telling, and CelebraTORI.

  Apparently my body was on a five-year cycle because in 1978, our son Randall Gene Spelling was born. Aaron and I both really liked the nickname Randy, so it was easy for us to pick the name this time. We gave him the middle name Gene after my mother and my grandfather. Randy was born on October 9, more than two months ahead of his due date. We were so thrilled again and felt so blessed. Because he was born at six and half months, he was this tiny little baby weighing just over two pounds. It was two and a half months before we could bring him home from the hospital.

  Motherhood was daunting but I happily settled into it. It was fascinating to see how fatherhood changed Aaron. When both kids were born, it was very difficult for him because they were su
ch fragile and helpless creatures. Fatherhood also made Aaron more sentimental. He loved those babies more than he ever could have imagined. As they grew up, his favorite thing was to be with them and do anything that would bring smiles to their faces.

  I always had a good sense of humor, and once I became a mother, I fully embraced it. I think it was also about this time that I became a fan of American humorist Erma Bombeck and her musings on the dangers of raising children and training husbands. In her May 12, 1974 Dayton Journal Herald column, “When God Created Mothers,” Bombeck wrote, “When the good Lord was creating mothers, he was into his sixth day of ‘overtime’ when the angel appeared and said. ‘You’re doing a lot of fiddling around on this one.’

  “The Lord said, ‘Have you read the specs on this order? She has to be completely washable, but not plastic; Have 180 moveable parts … all replaceable; Run on black coffee and leftovers; Have a lap that disappears when she stands up; A kiss that can cure anything from a broken leg to a disappointed love affair; And six pairs of hands.’”

  Like any other woman who entered into motherhood, my life was forever changed when I became one. The day that I gave birth to Tori, I promised myself that I would be the perfect mother. I think especially because I had had such an unhappy childhood, I wanted my children to have perfect childhoods. I imagine that all mothers make this promise to themselves. We are convinced that we’ll take all the good qualities that our own mothers passed down to us and use them in even better ways with our own children. Likewise, we promise to toss out all of the bad and do things for our children the way we wanted it done for ourselves when we were kids.