Through a series of mergers and leveraged buyouts, Aaron Spelling Productions came to be owned by Viacom. They put Aaron’s company on the market, but when it didn’t get the kind of bids Viacom was hoping for, they began all their corporate restructuring and consolidation of the different divisions.
On his website, Head Butler, author Jesse Kornbluth describes Dominick Dunne as “a professional hater, a scourge of the rich and criminal, a judge with a pen.” Apparently, Dominick also didn’t keep up with the financial papers.
All kidding aside, it was awful to read what Dominick wrote about Aaron because for more than forty years, Aaron had been had been so loyal to Dominick. When most of Hollywood had turned their backs on Dominick and he was persona non grata, Aaron stood by him and helped him earn a living by hiring him to write a couple of television movies.
According to his Vanity Fair article, Dominick, who had never been to The Manor, said Aaron “had become a deeply unhappy man, living sick and isolated in the biggest house in town, cut off from nearly everybody, estranged even from his daughter, and fearful that he was being betrayed.”
Aside from the fact that the columns written by Cindy Adams and Dominick Dunne were so humiliating to Aaron and hurtful to me personally, they were also insensitive to the millions of individuals afflicted with Alzheimer’s, not to mention their families. Alzheimer’s is a cruel disease. Just because he was Aaron Spelling, my husband was not spared the horrible, undignified symptoms of Alzheimer’s.
I was very concerned with protecting his privacy and preserving his dignity. He was a public figure, and I didn’t want him ridiculed. I knew from Nancy Reagan’s experiences with Ronnie that this was my job—to protect my husband. Aaron was bedridden but he was never alone. He had nurses around the clock. I was there and Randy was there.
Aaron had the erratic mood swings common with Alzheimer’s. He hallucinated and became paranoid as his health further declined. Here is a description from the Alzheimer’s Association website, alz.org, about the type of hallucinations Aaron had as he declined:
“These false perceptions are caused by changes within the brain that result from Alzheimer’s, usually in the later stages of the disease. The person may see the face of a former friend in a curtain or may see insects crawling on his or her hand. In other cases, a person may hear someone talking and may even engage in conversation with the imagined person.”
Aaron’s paranoia was something we lived with every day. The Alzheimer’s Association summarizes this symptom very succinctly:
“A person with Alzheimer’s may become suspicious of those around them, even accusing others of theft, infidelity or other improper behavior. While accusations can be hurtful, remember that the disease is causing these behaviors and try not to take offense.”
It was hard not to take what was being written personally. What could have been a platform to create awareness about Alzheimer’s disease and support for the families ended up being a media assault on our marriage. I never have figured out why it was so hard for the public to accept that I was named executor of Aaron’s will because I was the one he most trusted to manage our estate. We weren’t Anna Nicole Smith and her eighty-six-year-old sugar daddy. This was my husband of thirty-eight years.
With time, I’ve come to understand it better. Tori really is so much like her father. She is very talented and has the ability to capture the attention and imagination of the American public with her storytelling. Much like Aaron, she really has her finger on the pulse of pop culture tastes, and she was able to take our normal family dysfunction and turn it into years of record-breaking ratings in reality television.
It used to be that shows like The Brady Bunch, Family Ties, and The Cosby Show were the big ratings winners. Nowadays there is an awareness that most families are dysfunctional in some way, and shows that reflect this are more typical than the Norman Rockwell tableau created by so many of the scripted shows. We are flawed human beings, and life is complex. I think this is why so many of the reality shows like Keeping Up with the Kardashians and my daughter’s show, Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood, are so popular.
During the year that we were estranged, it was excruciating not hearing from Tori and not being able to get ahold of her. This was especially true at the Emmy Awards tribute to Aaron.
I can’t begin to describe the emptiness I felt inside when Aaron was honored at the 2006 Emmy Awards. It was two months after Aaron passed away. Randy was my date that night. I could see the cameras pan across to us sitting in the audience as we watched the highlights of Aaron’s career on the big screen. I don’t think there was a moment that I didn’t have my handkerchief in my hand. I kept blotting my eyes and blowing my nose. I knew that I was on camera, but I couldn’t help sobbing. I didn’t even care that my mascara was running down my face on HDTV.
Aaron was at his best in the footage, and he was larger than life in that room at the Shrine Auditorium. The original stars of Charlie’s Angels made the tribute to him, and when Kate Jackson said she could still smell the cologne Aaron wore, I could too. Looking back on his life and all of his accomplishments was incredibly emotional for me, but it wasn’t the only reason I was crying. I was also sad because I knew that Tori was somewhere in the audience, and I wished so badly that we could have all sat together and shared that special moment.
One day women started approaching me on the street to share their own challenges as parents and their stories of estrangement from their children. It was right around that time that the tone of e-mails I received began changing from offensive to empathic. Women from all over the world were suddenly commiserating with me.
We have never discussed that painful period in our lives when we didn’t speak. We just tried carefully to move past it. I like to think it was her pregnancy that paved the way for us to resolve our issues. I think it was when she went into labor with her first child, Liam, that we both really let bygones be bygones and skirted right past the elephant in the room.
Tori was in the hospital in labor when the doctor came in and turned off the monitor. Something was wrong: the baby was not in the proper position, so Tori would need a C-section. When she called me, all I remember hearing was “Mommy.” I could hear the fear in her voice, so I dropped everything and went straight to the hospital to be with her. I had given birth to Tori a month early, and Randy was almost three months premature, so I remember vividly that terrifying feeling of the baby being at risk.
It was incredible to be there for the birth of my first grandchild. He was such a gorgeous newborn and brought so much joy and peace to our family. It was a wonderful time. That year we celebrated Christmas together at The Manor.
27
Crisis Management
I’ve always been an expert in compartmentalizing. They say men are usually better at disconnecting thought from feeling, but I’d probably give most of them a run for their money. In my family children didn’t speak unless spoken to, and emotions were labeled as something negative, so I learned at a young age to stuff everything down.
We also had a lot of secrets in my family. The big skeleton in the closet was of course my maternal grandfather leaving my maternal grandmother, Helen, for my paternal grandmother, Ada. But we also had a lot of everyday secrets that hung in the air. There were our shaky family finances and the fact that my father was what was known then as a flimflam man. He was a trickster who made at least part of his living by defrauding people. There were also my father’s infidelities. The letter I had found in my mother’s jewelry drawer as a teenager pointed only to one indiscretion, but even at that age, my instincts told me there had been more.
My mother’s depression and unhappiness were also secrets and more important, a topic I never would have thought to discuss with anyone. Probably the most confusing part for me was that I was expected to be so perfect for both of my parents. I had to look the part and act the part. Ironically, the standard was set very low for my brother, Tony, who ended up in military school.
Any good psychologist will tell you that putting all these conflicting viewpoints into separate compartments isn’t healthy, and as a solution works only short-term. When Aaron became ill and Tori disappeared, I had limited emotional and mental energy to deal with these crises. I handled each one the best way I knew how—by continuing to stuff all of my feelings down—and I also chose never to discuss either situation with anyone but my therapist.
I didn’t have a lot of girlfriends when Aaron was still around. There wasn’t any particular reason for this except that I was a wife and a mother, and I just didn’t have time for girlfriends. I also didn’t like those luncheons where I had to get all dressed up in the middle of the day and make small talk. As we say in Yiddish, I didn’t like being fartootst, meaning discombobulated.
On the heels of Aaron’s throat cancer, my friend Nancy insisted I get a hobby. I was hesitant to leave Aaron, but Nancy was determined and managed to convince me that I needed an outlet. Nancy and I have been friends since kindergarten, and it was Nancy who decided for me that I would start playing Mahjong.
Mahjong is an ancient card game of Chinese origin. It is similar to American gin rummy and is usually played with four players, and instead of cards, it’s played with tiles. Nancy led the charge and assembled our Mahjong group that includes my longtime friend Willy Erlicht, whom I met when her husband was Vice President in Charge of Movies of the Week for ABC. Since ABC was Aaron’s network, we ended up going on quite a few retreats together, and we became fast friends. Her husband didn’t make friends as easily as Aaron did, so that was another perk of our friendship.
Fabienne Guerin became my neighbor in Holmby Hills when we moved into The Manor. Fabienne and her husband lived right across the street from us. After we met, I discovered that Fabienne had been one of the original “Lava Lava” girls from Fantasy Island. It seems we were destined to be friends, and when we moved into the neighborhood, she invited us to a party to welcome us. When the invitation arrived, she was quick to call us to make it very clear that the Irmases and the Butlers were not invited, so we didn’t have to worry about anybody alerting the media and then throwing one of our gift baskets in the trash on camera.
Fabienne happened to be the president of the Beverly Hills Women’s Club at the time, so that’s where we all started taking lessons. Once we all learned, we started meeting every week to play. Usually we played at someone’s home, but there were times when we would meet either at Hillcrest Country Club or the Los Angeles Country Club.
As comfortable as I felt with “the girls,” I didn’t discuss Aaron’s illness when I was out with them. Even after Aaron died and I was being slapped left and right by the media, I chose not to discuss what was going on. It was good to get away from my troubles for a while, but more than that, I was compartmentalizing, and my feelings about Aaron and Tori did not belong in my “Mahjong compartment.”
I don’t think it was a trust issue as much as it was that I didn’t want to create a lasting impression. What I was going through was without a doubt the big elephant at the Mahjong table, but it never occurred to me to discuss either situation with my friends. The Mahjong was a diversion, and I suppose I wanted to keep it that way.
I learned pretty quickly that there is only so much emotion you can keep stuffing down before it starts to destroy you. One day I was out to lunch with my friend Denise, who works for Range Rover, and her boss, Mike O’Driscoll. I honestly can’t remember what was going on at the time, but there were stories in the press making a fool of me yet again, and for some reason this time, the dam burst and I couldn’t stop crying at the restaurant. Denise and Mike were so amazing and compassionate. I knew Denise had her own children and understood my pain.
Later that afternoon Mike called me. I was surprised to hear from him, and I was more surprised that he wanted to talk about the public flogging I was allowing myself to take. These were private family matters, and I believed I was taking the high road by not speaking to the press about my daughter. It didn’t matter how many awful photographs they printed of me, I had no intention of addressing my personal issues with my daughter with the press. I also thought anything I said would be taken out of context and used for a sound bite or headline, so I chose not to speak at all. I kept hoping some other really big news would break, but the spotlight continued to stay on me.
Mike was absolutely right. I was at my breaking point. He strongly suggested I get a crisis publicist to handle all the public ridicule, but I wasn’t entirely convinced. Aaron had a publicist, and Tori had a publicist, but I didn’t know what a publicist could do for me. It seemed like anything I said would just sound like I was on the defensive, so I saw no point to that. But despite my reservations, Mike was persistent. He had someone very specific in mind and told me she had created Johnny Carson’s character Carnac the Magnificent. I wondered if this woman who had created Carson’s “mystic of the East” could make all of this drama disappear. I was nervous about making the call, but then again, anything had to be better than the way I was living.
I don’t know what I thought Linda Dozoretz would be like. I guess I thought she would be some tough broad. She was all business as they say, but she was very genteel. She was the originator of the signature thick black glasses later made cool by Tina Fey, and she was always dressed in grays and blacks. There was something about Linda that was very striking. I’m not sure how to describe it except to say I just knew I could trust her.
Linda took me on despite the fact that she was ill and hadn’t been looking for new clients. Her mother had taken the drug DES when she was pregnant with her, and as a result, Linda was plagued by very serious health issues. DES was known as a synthetic estrogen that was widely prescribed to women who were at risk of miscarriage. The drug was taken off the market in 1971 when doctors realized the risk it posed to unborn fetuses.
After our first meeting, Linda outlined a plan for me. I was no longer going to be anyone’s punching bag. She helped focus attention on my charity work and my civic work as Commissioner for the Department of Recreation and Parks for the City of Los Angeles. She also encouraged me to write about causes and issues that were important to me. It was because of her that I became a columnist for The Huffington Post and TMZ and a contributing writer for LA Confidential.
Under her guidance I was elected to the Board of Directors of L.A. Inc., the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau. I am a native Angeleno and love this eclectic city of ours, so it was a perfect fit for me. I am also one of the few women members of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, which is dedicated to bringing influential and visionary leaders in international affairs to speak at events in Los Angeles. Margaret Thatcher, Martin Luther King Jr., Henry Kissinger, and David Petraeus are just a few of the individuals who have spoken at their events.
There is no doubt that Linda was a brilliant woman. She was also kind and caring, and she was always there to listen. We became very close friends and spoke every night on the phone, even when we didn’t have business to discuss. In refocusing the media’s attention on who I really was and not the role I was written into, Linda also reminded me of my own worth.
Linda lost a thirty-year battle with cancer in November 2010. She was only sixty-two years old. She was incredibly brave until the very end. I learned a lot from the courage she demonstrated. She taught me to stick up for myself and not to take anything lying down.
She was the orchestrator of many savvy media strategies for the biggest names in film, television, and sports. She was also on the board of the Doris Day Foundation and got them to donate a beautiful shade and bench to the Laurel Canyon Dog Park up on Mulholland Drive. Then she persuaded me to donate some trees. It gets very warm up there in the spring and summer, so those trees were a nice addition to the park.
Out of all of Linda’s masterful strategies, I think she was most proud of that one.
28
My Story with Tori (and Dean), Part II
My father was a newlywed
with a younger wife when we were building The Manor. Appropriately enough, they had both been working as extras on The Love Boat when they met. It’s not easy making a living as a television extra, so Aaron and I were helping them out financially. We decided it would be better to give my father a real job so that he could feel good about himself. I didn’t entirely trust our contractor, so I thought it would be ideal to have my father act as our controller. It would be his responsibility to read the contracts, make payments to vendors, and keep track of the man hours and inventory. I mean, who could be more trustworthy than my own father?
The first sign that I was wrong in my assumption was the pricey Mercedes two-seater my father purchased for his wife. The second was the European vacation they took. Instead of waiting for the next shoe to drop, I did some forensic accounting on my own and found an entire list of financial indiscretions. I never dreamed that my own father would end up taking kickbacks from vendors and misappropriating funds. Not even in my wildest dreams did I think this was possible. After this my relationship with my father was strained, and it remained that way until he passed away.
I have learned a lot about money over the years. My father is a good example of a situation in which I thought I could help solve someone’s problems with money. I thought my father’s problem was a financial one, but my father obviously couldn’t manage his money. He was a terrible overspender. But his core problem was his entitlement issue.
Candy at Last Page 16
