Tales of a Hollywood Housewife

by Betty Marvin

  Right on, I thought. Everyone should have a home.

  32

  100 Butterfly Lane

  AFTER A YEAR of exploration, I was unwinding in a rented flat in London. The phone rang. It was Robert Walker calling from Santa Barbara, California.

  “Ready to come home, Betty?”

  We laughed. This was Robert’s usual opening line. But this time he wasn’t kidding.

  “I’m staying in a friend’s place in Montecito. I don’t think she’s coming back. She’s put her house on the market, and I can live here until it’s sold.”

  “What about your other three houses?” I asked him. Robert had always lived grandly.

  “Gone with the wind, honey. I’m quite at home here. Very close to the beach. Come live with me,” he said rather suddenly. “You know we’d make excellent roommates. You cook, and I eat.”

  I said I’d think about it. We went on to other things. But he’d hit a nerve. I was tired of being away from home, and reality had caught up with me. I either had to go back to the United States and deal with the IRS, or keep traveling and never go back. I had been notified by my CPA that the IRS was treating the foreclosure on the building I had bought and lost as a sale, declaring it a capital gain. I had to prove that it was indeed a capital loss. I called Robert the next day.

  “Oh, I’m so glad,” he said when I told him I’d be coming. “You’ll have your own suite and the rent’s cheap. You’ll love it. Lots of room.”

  There was lots of room, but almost all of it was crammed with Robert’s enormous antique collection. He had emptied all of three houses into the one house we now shared at 100 Butterfly Lane in Montecito, the posh neighborhood of Santa Barbara. Rugs lay on top of rugs, and every inch of wall space was taken up by so much furniture that I had to walk sideways from one room to another. Thank God everything I owned was in storage. I’d brought nothing but my one bag of clothes from my trip around the world. I moved into the front bedroom overlooking the front garden, which Robert had filled with lovely pieces, including a sleigh bed, a chaise lounge, and an antique desk.

  It was wonderful to be with Robert, who had put on a lot of weight since our last meeting, but was still his jolly self. We sat over dinner catching up.

  “Betty, I’m in trouble. I’m about to lose the agency.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The other agents in my company wanted to buy me out,” Robert confessed. “They threatened to take the clients, including my star actors, and leave if I didn’t sell. I told them it was my company and it was not for sale.”

  “So?”

  “So, I am still the proud owner of the famous Beverly Hills Century Artists Ltd.—with no artists. Now I can’t get into my own office.”

  “What?”

  “The IRS has put a padlock on the door. Is there more chicken?”

  “You ate it all. Robert, what are you going to do?”

  “Well, I really don’t know,” he said, suddenly turning toward the kitchen. “But let’s not ruin a beautiful dinner. What’s for dessert?”

  Robert’s world might have been collapsing, but for the most part he soldiered on, ignoring looming bankruptcy. He was always up with the sun, bright, cheerful, and enjoying his paper and coffee. It was fun to be living with my old friend after so much time, but I was concerned when he said he was in trouble.

  “Honey, we need to get serious here. Look at these bills!” I said to Robert one day.

  There was a stack of envelopes from collection agencies and lawyers on the sixteenth-century marble credenza in the foyer.

  “Don’t worry about it, sweetie. Just throw ’em in a box. God! What a beautiful day! Let’s go down to Tutti’s for lunch.”

  “We can’t afford to go out to lunch!”

  “Oh, don’t be such a killjoy. I’ve got to circulate, drum up some clients. C’mon, let’s walk.”

  Once at Tutti’s, Robert took a look through the window and instantly turned around, grabbing my arm. “Better keep going,” he whispered into my ear, laughing. “Tutti’s in there. He’s blocked my credit. Thought he wouldn’t be in till dinner. How about the Montecito Inn?”

  “Is your credit any better there?” I asked wryly.

  “I’ll let you treat me this one time.”

  Celebrating Christmas, 1994, with friends Martine and Robert

  Walking back to our house, we saw people in the driveway. Two men with a tow truck were about to drive off with Robert’s red Lexus coupe.

  “Wait a minute, guys!” Robert yelled, trotting slowly up to the car. “I’ve got to get some stuff out of there.”

  They lowered the car back to the ground. “Make it snappy.”

  “Sure, sure. Betty, could you run in and get me a trash bag?” I sprinted into the house, grabbed a bag, and hurried out.

  Robert had opened the trunk of the car. I stopped in my tracks. It was crammed with mail, all of it unopened bills from his office.

  A few minutes later Robert’s precious Lexus was towed away, and we were left there holding the bag.

  “Be a darling and fix one of your fabulous gourmet meals this evening. Tab Hunter’s coming to dinner. I’ve just signed him.”

  Robert was still wheeling and dealing, trying to conceal his financial crash from the industry. I’d never met Tab, the drop-dead gorgeous, top box office star at Warner Brothers in the fifties. I was happy to discover that, though he remained very handsome, he was not at all arrogant, a rare, wonderful quality for a successful actor. He was with his young partner, Allan, a producer. They had been together twenty-two years, longer than most Hollywood marriages last.

  I served rack of lamb, Robert’s favorite. The wine flowed as, between bites, Robert carried on about possible projects for Tab. But as soon as he finished his second serving of crème brûlée, he padded over to his favorite chair and, in moments, was snoring in front of the fire.

  Tab, Allan, and I started to laugh.

  “Let me get that for you,” Tab said as I was toting the meat platter to the sink.

  The three of us rolled up our sleeves and got to work cleaning up. Every few moments a loud snore would vibrate through the kitchen, and the three of us were lost in a fit of giggles. Finally, Robert settled into a snuffling sleep, and Tab, Allan, and I sat around the dining table.

  Tab turned to me with his engaging smile. “Robert tells me you were living in Rome in 1969. I was there at the same time.”

  “Funny, Robert mentioned to me you were at Warner Brothers in the 1950s when my ex-husband was shooting there.”

  “Robert loves to talk,” Tab smiled.

  “It’s odd we’ve never met before.”

  “Better late than never,” he said, his blue eyes sparkling.

  We stayed up all hours talking, a friendship forming as Robert slumbered on. Tab and I were attracted to each other even though we were very different, he being a gay, Catholic, Republican and I, a straight, nonreligious liberal. Perhaps it was because we were only three years apart in age and both Cancers, although he scoffed at taking seriously any of that “woo woo” science, as he called it. Tab teased me for being passionate about causes, yet I was to learn that he was always sweet, kind, and generous to everyone he met. Before long Tab, Allan and I became very close and spent much time together.

  Tab, myself and Allan in Venice, Italy, 1999

  “Jesus, Robert, what on earth!” I exclaimed. He’d pulled up into the driveway in a clunker of a car. The fender was deeply dented from a recent wreck, and a piece of cardboard had replaced the right rear window. Pieces of the car threatened to fall off at any moment.

  “Wheels, Betty! I have to have wheels! Obviously, this is just temporary. Anyway, come look at what I’ve found.” He opened the back door and beckoned me over. “Give me a hand. You will not believe the work on this mirror—Italian Baroque, absolutely gorgeous.”

  I helped him inch the mirror slowly out of the car. It weighed a ton.

  “Robert, where did
you get this?”

  “Estate sale. They were practically giving it away! We’ll come back for the rest after we get this inside.”

  Looking back at the car, I saw it was loaded down with more antiques—lamps, candlesticks, and God knows what. I couldn’t believe my eyes. When we got it all inside, I sat him down.

  “Robert, this is crazy.”

  “What is crazy?”

  “This,” I said, motioning around me. “All this stuff. You keep buying when you should be selling! You need money. Stop going to estate sales and have one of your own. Have ten!”

  Robert just laughed.

  “I’m not kidding. I want to help you, but you’ve got to cooperate. I’ll take out an ad in the paper and run the sale myself. Are you up for it?”

  “Okay, okay. Anything to stop your carrying on. I’m starving. What’s for dinner?”

  I took out an ad in the local paper and spent two days organizing and pricing the pieces for sale. By 7:00 AM the following Saturday, we had a line snaking around the block.

  “I told you people would come,” I said to him excitedly.

  “I’m not selling anything.”

  “Robert, come on. We’re going to make some real money here.”

  “All right, let me finish my coffee and we’ll open up the doors.”

  I picked up a bar stool that I knew would sell quickly, planning to place it up near the front. Putting it down, I saw the price on the leatherette seat. Robert had penned a 2 in front of my “50.00.

  “Two hundred and fifty! Robert, no one is going to pay two hundred and fifty dollars for this thing!”

  “Good. I don’t want to sell it anyway.”

  “Robert, you can’t have a sale unless you sell things.”

  In a panic, I started checking all of the price tags. Every single item had been marked up. As the sale started, I was still running around with a pen crossing off Robert’s ridiculous prices. People would come up to me in confusion, point out a piece, and whisper, “Is that really a thousand dollars?”

  “A hundred. Sorry, some of the tags were mixed up.”

  Deals closed quickly. Robert was oblivious, locked in conversation with an antiques dealer he knew. I suspected the guy would buy back a number of things Robert had bought from him—at a fraction of the price.

  At the end of the day, the house finally quiet, I sat in the kitchen and counted the cash. In spite of Robert’s attempted sabotage, I’d made $13,000. Thought it was a little more, I mused to myself as I went to find Robert and give him the tally. He was nowhere to be found.

  Dinner was in the oven and I was sipping a glass of wine when I heard the front door open.

  “Ow! Betty, I think I’m stuck.”

  I went to the door. Robert was trying to edge his bulky body and what appeared to be a child’s piano into the house at the same time.

  “Take a step backward and turn it the other way. What on earth is this?”

  “Wait! You’ll see!”

  Finally in the living room, we set his new purchase down. It was an antique miniature, gold-leafed spinet piano, so small one had to get down on the floor to play it.

  “For you,” Robert wheezed, still getting his breath. “It’s a thank-you gift.”

  “Robert, what am I going to do with this?”

  He was on his knees playing a tune. “I thought we could play duets. Isn’t it adorable?”

  I was right about having made more at the sale than $13,000. We’d made $15,000—$13,000 in cash and $2,000 in a spinet piano. Robert looked around at the living room. Not only had we made some money, but we were down to three armchairs where once there had been nine.

  “It’s really quite a big house, isn’t it?” Robert said very pleased, as if we’d just moved in. “Let’s rearrange the furniture.”

  33

  Settling In: Taking Inventory

  ROBERT AND I stayed together in Montecito for two years until the house was sold. It was time to move on. Robert rented an apartment in Santa Barbara, but I had trouble finding a rental that would accept dogs.

  I wasn’t convinced I would stay in Montecito. I’d made friends there, but the charm of that village had worn thin. It was too conservative, too proper, too “white bread and mayonnaise.” I hardly ever saw anyone who was not a well-to-do Caucasian, and I missed diversity, being accustomed to the rich array of odd characters in my old digs of Venice and travels throughout the world. I extended my housing search, not sure I would like living anywhere in Santa Barbara. But I had grown to appreciate the beauty, ease, and comfort of this town. I could drive down the coast to Los Angeles for a day or two and get all the stimulation I needed. It was a good base from which to travel. I began exploring the hills and foothills on the Santa Barbara Westside, the only area I could afford. Friends were concerned about the threat of Latino gangs in that area, but after living in Venice, I wasn’t so easily put off.

  Following an “open house” sign led me to a beautifully restored l905 Craftsman residence, with ten-foot ceilings, double-hung, leaded windows, and beautiful detailing throughout.

  I called Tab. “I think I’ve found the house. Come give me a second opinion?”

  He drove right over. I could see as he got out of his car the neighborhood didn’t impress him. No two small houses lining the street were alike, and some were in disrepair. Tab was used to the well-tended estates of Montecito. He’d driven off the beaten track and didn’t look too pleased.

  “Sweet house,” he murmured to me, looking around inside, “but you know what they say—location, location, location.”

  Still, by the time I’d walked through the house a second time, I knew I wanted it. There was something resonant of my childhood home, both inside and out. I fell for the green schoolyard across the street and the sight of people walking down the sidewalks. It would be good to be part of a real neighborhood again.

  My 1905 Craftsman residence

  The deal was done quickly. Before I knew it, I was buying a swing like the one on the old front porch of my grandparents’ home.

  I existed on three or four hours’ sleep a night the first week there, unpacking boxes containing treasures I hadn’t seen for seven years or more. Putting my Grandma’s Haviland china into the cabinets in the dining room was deeply satisfying. The antique furniture I had saved from the home I had shared with Lee complemented the dark paneling of each room. The ecru silk quilt embroidered with colorful birds by Grandma Ebeling in 1900 was hung on the wall at the head of my bed.

  Perhaps best of all was having a studio again. The two-car, detached garage lent itself easily to a space for making art. With canvasses, brushes, and paints in place, I moved on next to the garden, planting all the flowers I remembered from my childhood. A rose garden and my favorite trees—birch and jacaranda—were already there.

  After roaming around for years, it was good to feel the ground beneath my feet. I knew I’d come home.

  One Sunday morning I called Robert Walker to discuss his coming over for our regular Sunday evening dinner. There was no answer. That’s strange, I thought. He always spent Sunday morning in bed, reading the paper and talking on the phone. I was ready to drive over and check things out when I had a phone call from Robert’s brother, Jim.

  “I’m sorry to tell you, Betty, but Robert died this morning. Heart attack.”

  I was shocked. Grief-stricken, I hung up and had a long cry over the loss of my dear friend of more than fifty years.

  I joined “Project Food Chain,” an organization of local chefs who met every Wednesday to prepare gourmet meals for those in need in the community, primarily terminally ill AIDS patients. A few months later we chartered a bus to Chinatown in Los Angeles to feast on dim sum. I found myself seated next to Julia Child, and we began chatting about this and that. A mutual friend passed by.

  “I’m happy to see you two are getting acquainted. Julia, you know Betty was married to Lee Marvin.”

  “Who?” Julia said.

  “
You know, the movie star?”

  “Sorry,” Julia said. “I never heard of him.” She turned to me. “I hope you aren’t offended. I’m in the food business.”

  “Not at all,” I said smiling, relieved that she had no idea who Lee was. In meeting Julia, my identity was my own.

  We shared our love for Paris, including our favorite bistros and cafes, and began having regular dates for lunch, movies, and dinner out. Dining with Julia was fun, not in the least formal. She always went to the kitchen to give her compliments to the chef but was entirely candid in her private comments to me afterward. She never liked a restaurant that was too contrived, “studied” as she called it. She knew good food and hated pretense of any kind.

  The first time I invited Julia to dinner was intimidating. Cooking for Julia Child was a bit like singing for Frank Sinatra: one felt no hope of measuring up. As I shopped, I reminded myself how down-to-earth she was and how effortlessly our friendship had formed. That evening she found me in the kitchen stirring risotto to accompany osso buco.

  “What are you doing in here? Need any help?” Imagine: Julia Child, my sous-chef. She checked the risotto. “Not necessary to keep stirring once you’ve put in the first cup of boiling chicken broth. Just pour in the rest, stir it through, put on the lid, and come have a glass of wine.”

  “Delicious,” she announced at the end of the meal. “Betty, you’re a good cook.”

  The relief in my smile must have been palpable.

  Celebrating Julia Child’s ninetieth birthday in 2003