When Penn returned from filming Casualties of War that August, he was not amused at the latest scandal his wife’s actions had generated. He disliked Sandra Bernhard as much as she disliked him, but Madonna managed to placate him enough for the two of them to call a truce and celebrate her thirtieth birthday.
In September, free of her commitment to Speed-the-Plow, Madonna returned to Los Angeles to begin work on her next album, which she hoped would unveil a new maturity in her work. Wanting to be near his wife, Penn accepted a role in the new hit play Hurly Burly, but only if it could open in Los Angeles. Although friends like Sandra Bernhard advised Madonna to leave the emotionally abusive Penn, Madonna confessed, “I still love Sean.” While they both worked on their respective projects, the couple had another shot at making the troubled marriage work: Sean moved back into the home he had shared with Madonna in Malibu. The reconciliation was, however, short-lived.
The author observed the two of them in action backstage at the Westwood Playhouse, where Penn was appearing in Hurly Burly. Madonna showed up with Sandra Bernhard, both women wearing matching black trouser suits with plunging necklines. “Eat your hearts out, ladies,” Madonna said to a couple of female fans who began snapping photographs. “This one’s mine,” she added, motioning to Sandra.
When Sean spotted Sandra, he went into a slow burn. “I see you brought your little girlfriend with you,” he told Madonna.
“Now, Sean, don’t get started,” Madonna said with a smile, trying her best to be sweet to him. “This is your night, after all. Be nice.” She blew a puff of smoke from her cigarette into the air and then struck a pose for one of the camera-wielding fans.
Madonna and Sean never allowed the presence of admirers, photographers, reporters or anyone else to stand in the way of a noisy, marital spat. “If it’s my night, then why’d you bring her with you?” he countered angrily, motioning toward Sandra, who stood in the background glaring at him and sipping a Diet Pepsi. The two eyed each other with disdain. Then, there was a sudden strong smell, suggesting that someone had just broken wind.
“Sean, that’s disgusting,” Madonna said.
“It wasn’t me,” he said, defensively. “It was her,” he added, pointing to a sheepish-looking Sandra.
“You know what your problem is?” Sean continued, turning his anger on Sandra. “You’re a little instigator. You like to start trouble, don’t you? You like to see me pissed off, huh? You like the drama.”
Sandra held up a silencing hand. She said nothing.
“And you never fail to give it to her, or to me, do you, Sean?” Madonna said, glowering at her husband. “Can’t we just have a nice time? Why are you trying to pick a fight with us?”
“What are you talking about? You’re the one who showed up here with your girlfriend,” he said, angrily.
“Oh, forget you, Sean,” Madonna countered, ignoring Sean’s truculence. She took a final drag on her cigarette, threw it to the ground and dug her heel into it. Perhaps she sensed a need for a tactful resolution to the public scene. “Sandra and I are going to Crayons [a bar in Westwood],” she said. “If you want to join us, you’re welcome to do so. If not, then I guess I’ll just see you in the morning.”
As his wife and his nemesis walked away, Sean Penn shook his head negatively and spat on the ground. “Women,” he said, annoyed. “Why couldn’t I have been born gay?”
Dinner with Warren
Despite her phenomenal success as a recording artist, Madonna still dreamed of critical respect as a film actress. She no doubt realized that her stint on Broadway had done little to make her more marketable as a Hollywood actress. Typically, she kept her eye on her goal and instructed her film agents to continue the search for properties in which she could appear, roles for which she might be suited. In the fall of 1988, a part came her way in a film she knew she couldn’t resist, a new Warren Beatty movie which was in the process of being cast. The film, Dick Tracy, was based on the popular comic strip character and had all the makings of a top-grossing film, something Madonna wanted in her career about as badly as she wanted anything at this point in her life. Her role as the sexy femme fatale, Breathless Mahoney, seemed tailor-made for her.
The problem was that the quality of Madonna’s acting work in past screen endeavors did little to warm Beatty to the idea of her playing opposite him as the film’s Mahoney. He favored Kathleen Turner, whose sultry voice had added steamy dimensions to the character of Jessica Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? The beautiful Kim Basinger had also been smashing in a similar fantasy movie, Batman, and Beatty thought she could contribute the same kind of sexual glow to the female lead in Dick Tracy.
When Warren Beatty wanted to go out with Madonna to discuss the movie, she put him off. “It took me weeks to get a date with her,” he once recalled.
In her book Sex, published in the 1990s, Madonna explained that, in her view, “The best way to seduce someone is by making yourself unavailable. You just have to be busy all the time and they’ll be craving to see you. Then, you don’t fuck them for the first five dates. Let them get closer and closer, but definitely don’t fuck them.”
When Madonna allowed Warren to take her out for dinner at the Ivy restaurant in Los Angeles, she finally turned on the charm in order to get him to see her in the role. Wearing a sleek, black leather jumpsuit — unzipped in a revealing manner — with a matching leather cap, she asked a lot of questions. She was clearly trying to find out new information about him, weaknesses, anything that could prove helpful. He did the same. According to Beatty’s later recollections to friends, Madonna said, “I know you’ve heard a lot of terrible things about me, and I’m here to tell you that they’re all true.” She laughed. “How about you?” she asked. “I’ve heard a lot about you. True?” Warren didn’t answer. “Just as I thought,” Madonna said. “All true.”
Warren later said he was instantly struck by Madonna’s humor. She was entertaining, and sexy — perfect for the role for which she was auditioning. He kissed her on the doorstep, after he dropped her off. “Houston,” he reportedly said, after kissing her, “we have lift-off.”
“He thought she was pretty great,” said a friend of Beatty’s. “He hired her on the spot.”
The truth is, however, that both Kathleen Turner and Kim Basinger were unavailable at this time. Beatty could have continued looking for his Breathless Mahoney or he could just hire Madonna. He clearly didn’t think she was worth much as an actress, though, because he asked that she essay the role for Screen Actor’s Guild scale wages of just $1,440 a week. So, in effect, Madonna’s participation lowered the film’s budget considerably since neither Turner nor Bassinger would ever work in a $60-million budget film for less than $2,000 a week — nor would any popular actress, except one smart enough to know that such a decision could be a brilliant career move. After all, Dick Tracy boasted top production values; and along with Beatty an all-star cast including Al Pacino, Gene Hackman and Mandy Patinkin, with cameos by Dick van Dyke, James Caan and Charles Durning. As a splashy summer-release Disney film, it was almost guaranteed to do big business. Madonna realized that if, by some fluke, the movie flopped, it could hardly be blamed on her since she was only one star in an ensemble piece. However, if it was a success, she would be credited with having had her first screen bonanza, and she could use it to demonstrate her box-office appeal. Also, Madonna’s deal had it that, in return for her small fee, she would receive a percentage of the film’s profits. For Madonna, therefore, Dick Tracy presented a win-win situation. She was savvy enough to see it just that way and eagerly accepted a contract that was viewed by some observers in the industry as an insult, especially considering her status in the entertainment field.
Malibu Nightmare
By Christmas 1988, Madonna’s marriage to Sean Penn was more than three years old. To say that the forty months since their August 16, 1985, union had been difficult would be an understatement of epic proportions. Penn’s drinking and his violent temper had b
een more than Madonna could handle, and by the end of 1988 the marriage was all but over. She said that it was as if she had married a child in a man’s body, someone who operated on the emotional level of a ten-year-old.
By this time, of course, Madonna fully understood that Sean Penn had a drinking problem, and that this made it impossible for him to focus on saving their marriage. His temper was more unpredictable than ever. For instance, after one bitter argument, he threatened to drown their dog, Hank. Somehow, Madonna managed to change his mind. The next day — at the suggestion of actor Robert Duvall — she personally drove Sean to Palm Springs to the Betty Ford Center where, she hoped, she could convince him to dry out. They signed in as Mr. and Mrs. Victor Cobb, but after speaking to counselors, they realized that the chances of keeping Sean’s presence there from the press were negligible. They weren’t even halfway back to Los Angeles on the two-hour drive home when calls began coming in on their car telephone from Madonna’s manager Freddy DeMann, telling them they had been recognized at the Betty Ford Center. “But how did anyone know?” Madonna remembered asking Freddy. “Someone must have told someone.”
“The press is psychic when it comes to you,” he told her.
Once back in Malibu, Madonna didn’t know what to do about Sean. “I have to help him, I know. But he doesn’t want any help,” Sandra Bernhard would later recall her saying. Sandra had flown to the West Coast to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with Madonna.
“I don’t know what to do,” Madonna continued. “His drinking is wrecking our marriage. He pushes me away. I’m miserable.”
“Let me ask you a simple question,” Sandra asked her. “Do you ever have fun?”
“What do you mean?”
“Fun, Madonna. Do you and Sean ever have fun?”
Madonna looked dispirited. She had answered her friend’s question, and without saying a single word.
“Then he’s got to go,” Sandra decided.
Madonna said she agreed, even though she and Sean had been thinking about having a baby to save their marriage. She had promised him that 1989 would be the year that they would start a family. She feared having Sean’s child, she said, because she didn’t want a baby to be raised in a broken home, “and we are nothing if not broken,” she added tearfully.
“You’re crazy if you bring a kid into this mess,” Sandra said. “I’m telling you, he’s got to go.”
After another fight, Madonna asked Sean to move out. He moved in with his father, director Leo Penn. A few days later, on the morning of December 26, Sean telephoned Madonna to discuss the state of their relationship. During the conversation, Madonna told Sean that she had decided not to have his baby. In signing a contract to appear in Dick Tracy, she explained, she would have to postpone a family for another year.
According to documents she would later file with the Los Angeles County Court House, Madonna said that Penn was “disgusted and pissed off” with her after that conversation, and they engaged in a heated argument.
“It’s over,” Madonna told Sean on the telephone, she later remembered. “I want a divorce. I need a divorce.”
When she hung up the telephone, she must have been shaking.
That afternoon, Madonna telephoned John Kennedy in New York. Recalls Stephen Styles, “By this time, John and Madonna had cooled their own romance, but she was still depending on him for emotional support. She asked him to fly to the West Coast and help her solve some problems related to her marriage.” According to Styles, Madonna further explained to Kennedy that she needed “moral support to get through this time in my life.”
John decided not to fly to California. “I think he didn’t want Madonna depending on him,” said Stephen Styles. “He was afraid that if he came to her rescue every time she called, they would end up back in a relationship — which would only upset his mother, and he didn’t want to do that. He felt badly about it, but he also felt he shouldn’t just drop everything and be at Madonna’s beck and call.
“Instead, what he did was track down Sean,” says Stephen Styles. “He had his cell phone number. Madonna had given it to him, earlier. And John called Sean and said, ‘If you lay one hand on her, I will come out there and pulverize you, you little punk.’ He actually threatened him with bodily harm. Penn was furious and told him he would call the cops on him. So, John backed off. He didn’t need that kind of attention.”
(Adds Stephen Styles, “John told me that he ran into Sean Penn at a party a couple years later. Penn wanted him to apologize for sleeping with his wife while she was a married woman. John told him to take a hike, and then left the party before a fight could break out. Madonna apparently found out what had happened because the next day, John received a funeral wreath at his home. The message on it read; ‘In Deepest Sympathy, from Madonna.’ He thought that was pretty funny.”)
Although Madonna was perceived by her public as strong and independent, at this point in time she was actually frightened and vulnerable, causing some of her friends to wonder what was really going on in her marriage. Doubtless, Sean Penn was angry that Madonna was engaging in what appeared to him to be an extramarital affair with Warren Beatty. “He would follow her at night and, always, they would end up at Warren’s,” says a friend of Penn’s. “He’d sit in his car in front of Beatty’s gate, waiting for her to leave. Often, she wouldn’t do so until the sun rose. This was driving Sean crazy, along with her decision to not start a family with him. It was all building up in him, a fury that was bound to explode.”
Madonna’s telephonic declaration of independence from her husband that December morning was her first step in regaining her identity. However, it wasn’t that simple. Nothing with Sean was ever simple.
In the late afternoon of December 28, 1988, Sean Penn allegedly scaled the wall surrounding the Malibu house and burst in, finding Madonna alone in the master bedroom. She had given the live-in help the night off to attend a holiday party. According to a police report later filed by Madonna with the Malibu Sheriff’s Office, the two began once again to quarrel over Madonna’s decision to divorce. When she told him that she was going to leave the house — at least, according to the official report — he tried to bind her hands with an electric lamp and cord. Madonna fled from the bedroom.
Sean chased her into the living room. Once there — again, according to the report — he tied her to an easy chair with heavy twine. Many other dreadful things occurred — at least according to published accounts of this incident, none of which was ever contested by Madonna — but, suffice it to say, it appears to have been a night of physical and emotional abuse.
As per the police report, Penn was “drinking liquor straight from the bottle,” and his abuse of her went on for several hours, during which time he allegedly smacked her and roughed her up. After a couple of hours, Penn went out to purchase more alcohol. Several hours later, he returned and — back to that police report — continued his attacks against her.
In desperation — again, according to official documents — Madonna finally persuaded Sean to untie her by telling him that she needed to go to the bathroom. Finally free, she ran out of the house. Sean stumbled while racing after her, which gave her an edge. She got into the coral-colored 1957 Thunderbird, which Penn had bought her on her twenty-eighth birthday. She locked herself inside the car.
While Sean pounded furiously on the automobile windows, Madonna called the police on her cell phone. When she had finished speaking to them, she threw the car into reverse, and sped away — headed for the Malibu Sheriff ’s Office on Pacific Coast Highway.
“When Madonna staggered into the station [fifteen minutes later], she was distraught, crying, with makeup smeared all over her face,” remembered Lieutenant Bill McSweeney. “I hardly recognized her as Madonna, the singer. She was weeping, her lip was bleeding and she was all marked up. She had obviously been struck. This was a woman in big trouble, no doubt about it.”
Police officers, stunned by details Madonna had provided of her nine-hour
ordeal, went to arrest her husband. Sean Penn was still inside the house when the officers pulled up outside. Remembered one officer, “We had to use our bullhorns. ‘Sean Penn, come out of the house with your hands in the air,’ we said. The suspect came out and we took him away in handcuffs.”
Divorce
In any incident of domestic violence, there are usually two sides to the story. Madonna charged Penn with inflicting “corporal injury and traumatic conditions” on her as well as committing “battery.” However, Sean Penn has a different version of the fracas that ensued in Malibu on that December day in 1988. He says that he never tied up his wife. He explains that, after a typical argument with him, Madonna stormed out of the house to cool off. He hollered after her that if she dared return, he would cut all of her hair off. He says that as a result of his threat, “she developed a concern that she would get a very severe haircut.” If Sean’s story is true, it’s understandable that the image of her infuriated husband coming at her with a pair of scissors would be a terrifying one to Madonna. “So, she took this concern to the local authorities, who came back up to the house,” Sean said. “She felt the responsible thing would be to inform them — since they were coming up there ostensibly to keep her from getting a haircut and to let her gather some additional personal effects — that there were firearms in the house.” He admits that, indeed, he did have weapons in his home. Sean was in the kitchen eating Rice Krispies cereal when the authorities arrived, brandishing bullhorns and handcuffs. Sean says that the police, fearing that he had a gun, “suggested I come out of the house. They did what they had to do, the way they had to do it. I was cool with that.”
After the Malibu incident, whatever its particulars — and Lieutenant Bill McSweeney of the Malibu Sheriff’s Office does insist, “We were called to investigate an assault” — Madonna instructed her attorneys to file divorce papers. Sandra Bernhard had convinced Madonna that she should not stay in the marriage another day. Later, as Madonna would tell it, Sandra could “see my pain.”
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