The Eternal Party

by Kristina Hagman

  To Dad, drunks were people who passed out on city streets; he couldn’t have a drinking problem, he reasoned, because he drank socially, on his penthouse balcony in Santa Monica, hanging out with friends while watching the sunset over the Pacific Ocean. Drunks did not live such charmed lives.

  * * *

  Dad’s drinking seldom caused him to have a temper, though sometimes he could be cuttingly sarcastic and stern. In most of my memories, he was a nurturing, reassuring, and loving father who patiently taught me how to whistle, how to ride a bike, and how to tie my shoes; he also taught me how to behave in the wilderness when we were out hunting. I had to stand perfectly silent and still as he aimed and then shot his prey; at other times, he would point in a direction, and I had to run like hell to get away from some hypothetical danger he had sighted to teach me survival skills and obedience.

  He taught me so much about the world; he took me everywhere with him, even places I did not really belong. In the 1960s, people did not bring their kids to cocktail parties, but that did not stop Dad. I am sure there were plenty of hosts who raised their eyebrows when the Hagmans marched into posh Beverly Hills parties like a pair of ducks with their ducklings in tow. Mom and Dad brought my brother and me along never thinking about whether it would be fun for us; his attitude was that we were a family, and families did things together. I remember studying the interiors of these grand Beverly Hills homes, looking at the way people dressed, and hearing the cadence of their conversation and the clinking of their glasses.

  On the other end of the spectrum, he took me to love-ins and peace rallies that were such a vital part of the LA scene when we arrived there in the ’60s. Joints would be passed from hand to hand, and the music was very loud. People in flowing dress danced around like earthbound rainbows. I remember going to a Jimi Hendrix concert at a very early age and feeling like it was just a lot of disturbing noise. I begged Dad to take me home, but he told me that music history was being made and insisted we stay. He also took me to Watts where he was teaching acting and putting on a George Bernard Shaw play called The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God. He let me watch rehearsals, and I was a part of his class, though I was much younger than most people in it.

  Later, in the early ’80s, when Dallas was the most popular show on television, I often visited him on location. This was during the country-western dance craze, and when Larry Hagman and Linda Gray showed up at a club accompanied by their entourages, everyone made way for us. I learned the Texas two-step and went riding on the mechanical bull. Later that year, with Dad having achieved worldwide status as the man people “loved to hate,” the whole family was invited to take a transatlantic trip on the ocean liner the QE II. We toured Europe, and on this trip, it seemed that all doors were opened to us. We were even invited to an elegant private tea with Princess Grace and her children at the royal palace in Monaco. Her Royal Highness made polite conversation, but the young prince and princess were more interested in a local soccer tournament than in meeting yet another famous person, and they were visibly bored. Three years later, after Princess Grace had died in a tragic car accident, we celebrated Prince Rainier’s birthday with him at the Rockefeller compound on the Hudson river. The day was chilly and gray, so some of us sat around the fire after the birthday luncheon. The small group was lethargic, having drunk so many congratulatory toasts, and the conversation became dull. Dad wanted to make sure the prince was not bored this time, so he started throwing cash into the fireplace and, with a huge chuckle, watched as some of the richest people in the world tried to salvage the burning bills.

  * * *

  People come up to me all the time to tell me stories of how he impacted their lives. For instance, there was a woman in Weatherford, Texas, the small town where his mother was born, who called Dad to tell him she was about to lose the lease on the building in which she had a shop where she sold hand-painted clothes. Dad told her to paint a shirt depicting his internal organs, highlighting the new liver he had just received in his transplant surgery. She was to send it to him as fast as she could and to wait and see what would happen next. No questions asked, she did just what he told her to. That week, he wore the painted T-shirt while being interviewed on a national TV program. Suddenly, the woman was receiving countless orders from people all over the country requesting their own custom-painted T-shirts. The woman not only stayed in her shop, she now owns the building that houses it.

  Throughout my life, I’ve met girls and women who would tell me my father had been like a father to them: from an early age, I knew full well I would never have exclusive rights to that feeling.

  Dad kept in touch with an amazing number of people, and he liked having lots of people around. He was generous and always outgoing and loved to see the amazed look on someone’s face when he quietly doled out some cash without expecting to get anything back.

  He was a grown man who would play, dance, sing, drink, and get high. He was always so much fun to be with. I could understand why, in the months after he passed, I got at least one call a day from someone who would tell me, “He was my best friend,” or “I had the best experience of my life with your dad,” or “Your home was the most welcoming place I have ever been in.”

  So many people loved my dad. But I don’t think any of them knew him any better than I did.

  He had a tremendous presence, and you always knew when he was in the room. It was as if he had his own energy field around him; he would be smiling and had a booming, infectious laugh. Justin Fonda, Peter’s son, called Dad the biggest man in the world, and few would disagree; though at six foot one he was not the tallest man, he made himself larger by entering a gathering wearing wild, colorful clothes, and visuals alone were not enough: often, he would interject some kind of tune, either playing music loudly on his stereo or, if that were not an option, he would play his flute or whistle or sing.

  In order to guarantee that every day was filled with fun activities, he always carried a big bag filled with all sorts of toys, among them a flute, a Frisbee, a Swiss Army knife with corkscrew attached, a kaleidoscope. He played Frisbee everywhere and said he once threw it around with people who had been waiting for hours in line to view Lenin’s tomb in Moscow’s Red Square as the severe-looking authorities watched. At least that is the story he told me when he returned, but then Dad loved a good story, so I don’t know for a fact that he actually did what he said he did; you could never be sure with Dad!

  I do know for a fact that, in addition to his fun props, he always carried his mini, portable, battery-powered fan and his bubble bear, which he employed whenever he was around someone smoking cigarettes; he would squeeze the bubble bear’s tummy so a wand would emerge, and then he’d blow bubbles at the smokers in his vicinity, in that way annoying them as much as their smoke was annoying him. Perhaps one of the more unusual things he insisted on carrying around each day was the string hammock that he stored at the bottom of his big bag. He kept it with him because he had once gotten stuck overnight in an airport, and he was determined that he would have a comfortable place to sleep if it ever happened again.

  * * *

  One of the things that made this forensic search for Dad so difficult was that he was such a good bullshitter. He was so good at making things up that I never knew what was real and true and what was not.

  For instance, we had countless discussions about the things he read; he was a voracious reader who subscribed to dozens of magazines.

  I loved these conversations, yet I could never be sure if what he was saying was something he’d learned or something he’d made up. He would go on about how nuclear reactors worked and about how, when crates of shoes fell off boats in the ocean, the currents brought only left shoes to the coastal beaches of California. When I repeated the “facts” I had learned from my father to other people, I often found that his information was more entertaining than valid, though there were also many times when his eccentric opinions proved to be astoundingly right on. I learn
ed to preface anything he said to me that I passed on to others with the following disclaimer: “According to Dad…”

  My father always seemed accessible and open, but that was a delusion. He kept so many of his feelings to himself; in the ways that matter most, he was elusive and, in addition, he was a chameleon who, when he was in Texas, would sound as Southern as Willie Nelson, just as he’d sound more British than Noël Coward after two days in London.

  Everyone who met him had their own particular view of him. Wealthy, conservative Texas oilmen felt he really was his character on Dallas and therefore was just like them, but environmentalists knew he was an ally in their fight against global warming. There is a photo that my mom took of Nancy Reagan sitting on my dad’s lap when he played J. R./Santa Claus at Ronald Reagan’s White House, wearing a red Santa suit and bright-red Stetson hat, but though he supported a Reagan on his knee, his political support was firmly and unapologetically with more radical groups like the Peace and Freedom Party. People who confused Dad with the character he famously played did not read the extensive interviews he gave that detailed his political views and constant drug use.

  Despite his many affairs, he never dreamed of divorcing my mother and always made a point of talking about his stable marriage. His successful marriage was one of the aspects of his life that he wanted to be known for; to him, it meant that—in his real life—he wasn’t like J. R.

  Dad presented different sides of himself to every person he encountered; he had a multifaceted personality. He also had an uncanny ability to sense exactly what a person wanted him to be, and he would find that person inside himself and then do his chameleon act by becoming his companion’s ideal fantasy of Larry Hagman, which ranged from cutthroat Texas businessman to peacenik hippie to, in one particular instance, a genuine Prince Charming. That happened when he met the matriarch of the Hormel meatpacking business at her mansion in Bel Air. Dad sized her up and found the perfect way to flatter her. She was tiny in stature, but despite her size, she had a commanding presence that demanded the respect of her many sons and their extended families. But Dad sensed a deep sadness in her and figured that her outward stance masked a desire to be feminine. He guessed that since her husband had died, no one had courted her and that the flirtatious young French girl she had once been was just below the surface, longing to be recognized. He had my mother search high and low for a pair of “glass slippers.” Mom always carried out his wishes, and she found a perfect size-five pair of Lucite pumps. The next time he was invited to Madame Hormel’s home, Dad arrived dressed in a suit. As soon as he entered the room where she was seated, he bent down next to her, and, though she pretended to protest, he took off her shoes and tickled her toes. He then produced two glass slippers from his pockets and slipped them onto her beautifully manicured feet. He asked her to walk around the room while wearing those glass slippers, and as she did so, he watched her intently, all the while exclaiming that she had great legs! As soon as she sat down, he was kneeling at her side again; he removed one of the shoes, poured champagne into it, and drank it and then declared that the drink had been transformed into the most divine ambrosia by her dainty foot.

  It seemed that everyone who knew him had their own precise notions of who he was: to his neighbors at the beach, he was the Mad Monk of Malibu who wore the distinctive “monk’s robes” Mom had designed and made for him to wear as he led flag parades at sunset along the water’s edge; to his stoner buddies, he was a student of life seeking to answer the big questions of existence by dropping acid; to his motorcycle gang, he was a loyal member who knew and adhered to all the secret protocols and codes of behavior while on group rides all over the country; to people who ran into him at the liquor store, he might be that weird guy dressed in a yellow chicken suit. He loved to surprise people, and he was always on the lookout for new costumes—some of them incredibly garish, like his chicken suit—and all of them designed to make sure he turned heads and attracted attention everywhere he went.

  While researching Dad, I came upon a story posted on Facebook by Oscar Hammerstein’s grandson, who was reminiscing publicly about going to an amusement park as a little kid with both our fathers. We were still living in New York at the time, and Palisades Park was the run-down amusement park near New York City that became famous as a place to go when you were high. I don’t remember it well, but according to Andy, when Dad took us to the park, he had dressed in overalls, without a shirt underneath, all the while chewing a piece of hay and pretending to be a country bumpkin on his first adventure in the big city, talking with a thick accent while scratching his head and saying, “Aw, gee whiz” at the end of every ride like the character Jethro from The Beverly Hillbillies. Dad had the discipline to stay in character for hours. His antics left a lasting impression on a young boy. Andy thought Dad was “really out there,” which I thought was telling coming from a guy who came from four generations of theater people and must have known a lot of wild actors.

  I lived with Dad’s shenanigans every day, so they were normal for me; it was only when I read about him from other people’s perspectives that I could see how kooky he appeared to many people. I read about one incident in a book by one of President Clinton’s assistants—Melinda Bates, who took Dad on a VIP tour of the White House. Dad appeared appropriately dressed for his role of Very Important Person, wearing a sedate and well-tailored Brooks Brothers’ suit. But as they stopped and leaned forward to look at a painting, she noticed something odd about his attire.

  “What an unusual tie,” she said. “I can’t quite make out the design.”

  Dad could not suppress a gleeful smile. “It’s ducks fucking,” he said.

  * * *

  My relationship to my dad was both warm and puzzling: Like the fictional character J. R., who lived under the same roof with his entire extended family, Dad often stated that “family comes first.” As his daughter, I was truly close to him, and we spent a lot of time together. We spoke on the phone regularly no matter where in the world either of us might be and always kept each other apprised about what was going on in our lives, yet there were many aspects of his life that made me uncomfortable. When I got to a certain age, I intentionally chose not to do certain things with him, like smoke pot or take hallucinogens or go to hippie festivals. I avoided him when he was drunk and when he was paying attention to the numerous women who sought him out. But after his tumultuous last hours, I felt that I had to look at all these aspects of his life because they might help me make sense of who he was and who I was to him.

  The frantic way he’d asked for forgiveness on his deathbed was so unlike anything I’d ever experienced him doing. Those words and his desperation haunted me; because I needed to understand what he had been trying to tell me, I would have to remember everything I could. Maybe if I could remember enough, I would find the clues that would help me understand why he had asked to be forgiven.

  3

  Pot and Friends to Share It

  I HARDLY EVER SAW my father when he wasn’t stoned or cruising on wine.

  I don’t think I ever knew him sober except for a brief period just before and just after his liver transplant, which had become necessary after he was diagnosed with alcohol-induced cirrhosis of the liver.

  Dad might have been even more of a drinker if he hadn’t met Jack Nicholson, who turned him onto pot, the substance he fell permanently in love with.

  The pot adventure began in a tropical paradise. The year was 1964, and I was just six years old. Dad had brought all of us on location with him in Acapulco, Mexico, where he was making a movie called Ensign Pulver. This was great for Mom, who had been working day and night making one-of-a-kind gowns for her very demanding clients. Dad had promised her some much-needed leisure time while we were in Mexico, and to make that possible, we brought our babysitter, Peggy, from New York. Peggy was amazed by this good fortune because she had not traveled much in her life except between Ireland, where she was raised, and the poor Irish neighborhood in New Y
ork City where she was living at the time.

  One of the best parts of this trip was that we were going to stay at the Hilton. We had heard a lot about Hilton Hotels from a good family friend who was a Hilton executive. We could hardly believe that we were going to get to stay in one of these beautiful modern places he had described. Peggy could not stop talking about the luxury of sleeping in the Hilton’s ice-blue sheets and having use of the big fluffy towels that a maid would change for her every day.

  The hotel pool was huge and had an island in the middle where fruity cocktails were made and then poured into coconut shells embellished with little umbrellas; you drank them as you swam. My baby brother and I spent our days at the pool with Peggy. During the heat of the day, Dad and everyone on the set were boiling in the sun, since they were filming on the deck of a naval ship, but when their workday was over, the pool quickly filled with the rowdy, playful men who made up the cast. Before you knew it, everyone was wildly drunk. We watched in amazement as one of the stuntmen climbed up the outside of the hotel from balcony to balcony until he got to the roof. The guys were a lot of fun, and a bunch of them taught me how to dive off the high-diving board. I vaguely remember Jack Nicholson, who played one of the leads in the film, but whenever I saw him, he seemed to smile all the time. Much later, when I was working as a young actress in Los Angeles, I met him and his then partner Angelica Huston several times at his home and out on the town at a roller disco place that he frequented in the early ’80s. But I did not know how much Dad’s fellow actor had changed his life until I read Dad’s autobiography, Hello Darlin’, in which Dad detailed his first encounter with marijuana. Jack decided it was time to introduce my dad to pot after seeing him get drunk one too many times at lunch. After a few tokes on the joint, Dad told Jack he’d rather have a martini because he didn’t feel anything and asked him when the pot would kick in. With his ever-present grin, Jack told my dad that he had asked that same question twelve times already. It must have been right about then that Dad developed a grin as ever present and bright as Jack’s. The smile looked different on my dad, but once he found it, he never lost it. I have boxes and boxes of photographs, and the smile is on his face in almost every single one. Dad looked like the happiest man in the world after that day in Mexico. He began to relax; he savored the substance he had taken in and recognized its ability to brighten his attitude and his life. And, on the day of his first high, he liked the feeling so much that he went right out of the room and found my mom so he could share it with her. They stayed high all day. In fact, my folks got so stoned that they did not even feel the 7.4-magnitude earthquake that rocked Acapulco.