Little House in the Hollywood Hills
Page 21
Of course not everyone can be a lovely person. We rented space to Shirley MacLaine who didn’t seem to like anything about the place and not just predictable things such as carpet color or the style of furniture but, among other things, made it clear that she hated having a window in her second-floor office. What she had in mind was to take out the glass completely and simply have a rectangular hole in her wall open to the noise of traffic, wind, rain, and the elements. Okay. Our crew promptly and efficiently responded to this peculiar demand and removed the windowpane. For our efforts there was no hint of appreciation. There were never any of the little touches of humanity that we gave and got with other people in the building. Even so, when she complained of suffering from some kind of allergy issue I went down to the nearest Rite-Aid and bought three or four different over-the-counter allergy medications, thinking one of them might help. When I offered them to her she practically threw them back at me. “I wouldn’t take any of that crap,” she said.
She never had a nice thing to say. None of us ever heard a “please” or a “thank you” or anything other than demands. Fortunately the majority of our clients were exactly the opposite.
We were a great crew at Lantana and we’ve all stayed in touch. Maggi remains one of my dearest friends. Arlene Sellers and I had an odd relationship though. Every Friday at closing time for years she’d swing through the main office and wish everyone a happy weekend and then she’d walk past my desk and say over her shoulder on the way out the door. “Charlotte, we won’t be needing you next week.”
The first dozen or so times this happened I looked over to Maggi with a sinking heart and Maggi would silently shake her head as if to say “Don’t pay any attention to that.”
I would show up again on Monday and everything was fine.
Even so, for reasons I still don’t understand, Arlene fired me every Friday for a long, long time.
In terms of my acting career, just like everything else it felt like starting over. Could I still act? Could I handle an audition, the pressures of shooting, or decompressing at home alone without alcohol?
Any career capital I’d built since the early 1960s was gone. It didn’t matter that I’d been on Bonanza or had acted with Jimmy Stewart in Cheyenne Social Club or that I’d been in Eraserhead one of the most successful midnight movies ever or even that I’d been part of the blockbuster that Little House on the Prairie had eventually become. Professionally speaking, I was no one. I wasn’t the freckled blonde of the 1960s or the straight haired, sexually charged flower child of the ‘70s. This was the ‘80s, the Reagan-era and I was 43. Single. Had barely a penny to my name. I was starting again. At the bottom.
Well, a girl’s gotta work. Through a friend I became acquainted with Sally Sussman, who was the head writer for the daytime soap The Young and The Restless. Out of nothing more than sheer kindness, she decided to write a role for me on the show. I would play Tamara Logan, a psychic who was the only person who had any information about the kidnapping of one of the show’s leading ladies.
That first morning of shooting I was driving down the 405 to CBS and dying inside, totally filled with anxiety.
I’d learned a lot in my recovery group sessions about strategies for handling negative emotions so I started a conversation with myself. I knew my lines, knew where I was going, had my wardrobe with me, knew I’d be on time for make-up. And I decided that this emotional energy wasn’t anxiety, it was anticipation.
It felt exactly the same inside of me but calling it anticipation began to make me feel a bit better.
When I was actually in make-up, I realized I still hadn’t really transformed this anxiety into something more productive. That’s when I noticed a young actor sitting in the chair next to me, who seemed more nervous than I was. I don’t remember his name but it was his first gig and he was bubbling over with apprehension, reminding me of Beau Bridges the first time I shot My Three Sons. He was playing a waiter and he only had a couple of lines like, “What will you be having tonight?” and “For the lady?” So I told myself that I was going to take all my bundled up nervous energy and I was going to steer it toward helping this young guy.
“Do you want run your lines with me?” I asked him.
“Really?”
“Sure. It’s no problem. We can go over to the set,” I said, meaning the set for the restaurant.
“It’s okay if we do that?”
“Sure, it’s just sitting there. We won’t bother a soul.”
We went over to the set and he ran his lines and burned through some of his worry and by focusing on someone else, I was able to let go of mine.
I have to be honest, I hated shooting a soap. They didn’t do re-takes, they shot each scene using two enormous tape cameras, and the worst part were the cue cards — which drove me crazy. No matter what kind of project it is, I show up knowing my lines and there is nothing more distracting than a guy holding up giant cue cards just to the left or right of the camera.
Because I hated it, I don’t think I was very good and in good old soap opera fashion they took care of it by giving me a tragic accident.
Yes, Tamara Logan was hit by a car.
My role now was to lie in convincing semi-consciousness in a hospital bed only able to communicate by blinking my eyes — once for yes, twice for no. President Gerald Ford’s son, the actor Steven Ford, was on the show at the time — a very sweet, funny guy — and he gave me the nickname “Blinky.”
I spent weeks lying in that hospital bed blinking my heart out as the investigation heated up. The truth is it was the best possible acting job I could have gotten at the time in order to get back in the game. I will always be so grateful to Sally.
I was fortunate that my reentry into acting was so gentle as it prepped me for something more stressful just around the corner.
My agent called to tell me that Michael Landon’s production company was interested in having me play the role of a nurse at a summer camp in two-part episode of Highway to Heaven.
Like on Little House Mike played multiple roles on this show — executive producer, writer, director, and star. The premise was that he was an angel sent from heaven to do good works on earth and that Victor French was his human friend and partner. Nearly all of the crew from Little House had moved with Michael to Highway to Heaven. Whitey Snider was doing make-up, Kent McCray was a producer, Bill Claxton would direct various episodes, etc., so I knew what I was in for.
I liked Mike a lot but he could, on the right day, be a tough guy to work with. I knew that on Little House one of the adult cast members had quit drinking, gone into recovery, and never mentioned it. Ever. The reason being there was quite a bit of drinking on the Little House set among Mike and the crew. The culture was one of boyish pranks, put-downs, and smack-talk. If Mike knew this cast member had quit drinking, it would be like a weakness exposed and Mike would likely have unloaded with some teasing and smart-assery. I don’t think for a moment that he saw it as hurtful — it was all part of the fun in his mind.
As it turned out, all of my scenes were with Mike, who was also directing, and I was very nervous. He was his usual easy-breezy self and tried to joke and make conversation in between takes and I wasn’t any good at banter at that point. I needed to really stay focused on my role and my lines and honestly I was more than a little scared that I was going to blow it. Afraid I might expose some personal, fragile part of myself and have it jovially and amiably dropkicked in front of the crew.
Fortunately we made it through and all was well. I was certainly grateful to Mike for the work. And of course it was a pleasure to see Victor again.
Ultimately filming that episode was a healthy challenge that allowed me to start taking risks and regaining my confidence.
Soon after that I was working more frequently. I had a ball playing a well-meaning but slightly dingy activist on a couple episodes of Matlock, playing opposite Andy Griffith, who was a real pro and just as warm and great to work with as you’d expect.
One night our hanging out led to being in bed together. This may well have been the first time that I’d ever had sex sober. I certainly hadn’t been sober on that first historic occasion at the Heartbreak Hotel back in Pasadena. And I can’t think of any other sexual experience I’d ever had that didn’t go hand-in-hand with feeling that roller coaster of alcohol and/or cocaine in my head.
It didn’t feel right. I didn’t have the aggression for it that came with being drunk. I wasn’t game and ready to go. I felt self-conscious, awkward, and uncomfortable. Completely the opposite of how sex should feel or ever had felt.
I ended the relationship after that. I hadn’t found my footing.
The new me wasn’t ready.
Chapter 12
Henry and Mary X, Part 3
In April of 1986 I got a phone call from Jack Nance’s brother saying, “Did you hear about Jack?”
Oh God. My stomach knotted. I’d been expecting this call about Jack Nance for a long time. The next words I knew I would hear was, “He’s dead.”
“He’s in a half-way house in the Valley,” he said.
Wait. What?
I had never allowed myself to hope I’d hear this kind of news. It would be like wishing a donkey could turn into a duck. Jack was far too stubborn, too grouchy, too in-his-own-world, too entrenched in being Jack to ever submit to a recovery program.
I was almost too shocked to feel happy. I knew what a tricky thing sobriety can be and I couldn’t picture how it would look for Jack.
I tracked down the number to this place. It was a respected live-in drug and alcohol recovery center for men.
When my call was answered I asked for Jack Nance. I had to wait a long time before the receiver rattled a bit and heard a dry, gruff, “Hello?”
“Hey Jack,” is all I said.
There was a pause and he said, “I knew you’d find me.”
He then told me the unlikely story of how he found himself in recovery. David Lynch had cast him in Blue Velvet, as one of the psycho-henchmen buddies of Frank Booth, played by Dennis Hopper.
The shoot ran February to April 1986, with the entire production in Wilmington, North Carolina. Throughout filming, Jack was drinking as heavily, if not worse, than ever and was suicidal. He talked about wanting to jump off the roof of the hotel in which the cast was staying. This got Dennis Hopper’s attention. Between shooting Human Highway and Blue Velvet, Dennis had gone into alcohol recovery, which turned his life around. When Dennis believed in something, he didn’t keep it to himself, which was fortunate for Jack.
Dennis arranged Jack’s flight home so they could sit together. He talked about alcohol recovery, while feeding Jack a lot of drinks on the flight to soften up Jack’s resistance. When the plane landed at LAX, Dennis packed Jack into his car and drove him from the airport directly to the live-in recovery program, where he left him to dry out and, hopefully, get sober.
A few days later Jack drove over to Lantana to meet me for lunch. Already he looked so much better than the last time I’d seen him — his eyes were clear and he seemed much more together. He was still in the very early stages of recovery but like so many people, at least for now, the idea of living without alcohol seemed like a relief to him.
I knew that he’d need to change everything in his life once he got out of the rehab program, so I asked him if he wanted to move into my house in Sherman Oaks.
By this time Jeanne had moved out as she’d gotten together with John Binder, whom she been friends with since even before the days of hanging out at Elliot Roberts’s office across from Electra Records. John was a filmmaker who’d originally been part of that group of East Coast hippies involved with the Woodstock documentary. Having seen Jeanne in those dark days after splitting up with Stephen Peck, I was so happy for her.
Jack accepted the offer, appreciative in his non-demonstrative way. Once he was out of the program he moved his stuff to the Sherman Oaks house and set himself up in the extra bedroom. He liked established patterns in his day and he found them pretty quickly. Every night he liked to sit and watch Wheel of Fortune. Mostly what he enjoyed was guessing the puzzles before the contestants and then heaping them with contempt, calling them idiots, morons, dumb-asses and goddamn fools. But nothing gave him more joy than when a contestant lost. He would howl with laughter.
He filled some of his time planting and then tending a garden in the back of the house — carrots and corn and a few other things. Two or three months later he and I were sitting in the backyard in lawn chairs admiring his creation and imagining how nice it would be when we could start harvesting some of what he’d planted.
As we were gazing at the garden though, we noticed one of the corn stalks wiggle. Then wiggle again. Then really thrash about and then — plunk — drop four or five inches in height.
“What the hell?” Jack murmured.
Then the stalk next to it did the same thing.
His garden had been invaded by gophers, which were feasting on the young roots of his vegetables. Jack immediately went to war on the gophers — in full Caddy Shack mode — and that occupied a lot of his time.
Inviting Jack to live with me in Sherman Oaks seemed like the right thing to do on a lot of levels. He was a friend trying to create a new life for himself and I wanted to support that in any way I could. Also, it was paying a debt I felt I owed to karma. Jack and I had seen each other at our worst, our darkest, our most addicted. In this odd circular subplot of my life with Mary X and Henry, we were together again and this time it was about friendship, helping each other, and discovering the joy on the other side of the darkness that was sobriety, enjoying the support and love we both found in the network of others in recovery.
Jack and I never had a romantic or sexual thing. I liked him, admired his work, and was part of a small circle of people who enjoyed the curmudgeon he was.
He was a guy ruled both by chaos and inflexible routines. His room was a fright fest. Clothes, books, magazines, you name it, strewn and unkempt. Just a disaster. Meanwhile, he liked things to stay the same. Change made him upset and uncomfortable.
One day when he was away, I decided to help him out by cleaning his room. It took a few hours but by the time I was finished, all the garbage was gone, all the books and magazines straightened, the bed was made. It looked great.
A few hours had passed when I heard Jack stump into the house and head for his room. A moment later I heard a cry of distress. He came charging out, shouting, “Call the police! We’ve been robbed!” Somehow his idea of a home invasion robbery included maid service.
He did make an effort at developing good roommate skills. When I was away once on a film project, Jack said he’d mow our nice big lawn. When I came back however, the grass was at least two feet tall and we were the shabbiest looking place on the block. Jack was apologetic, saying that he’d noticed the lawn needed attention so had purchased an electric lawn mower. But then he said, “I lost the power cord in the grass.”
While he was piecing things back together in his life, he picked up a couple of small but good roles in films such as Barfly with Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway (ironic as it was the first film he made sober) and Colors with Robert Duvall and Sean Penn.
David Lynch called him up to appear in a short film he was shooting up north of Los Angeles in the Lancaster area. The French Film Society had asked a number of directors, including David, to each shoot three-minute films, which I think would be shown on television in France — I’m not actually sure. Jack and I drove up together. I wasn’t in it but thought it’d be fun to hang out and watch. Surrounded by flat fields stretching off into infinity, David shot a bunch of actors, including Jack, sitting on a fence pulling things out of backpacks like croissants, berets, little Ei
ffel Towers. Then he shot Michael Horse (who later played Deputy Hawk on Twin Peaks) striding through one of the fields with beads on his beautiful bare chest. What any of this was about I have no clue. None. I remember meeting Isabella Rossellini, whom David had started dating, and who was as flawless and beautiful as she is in those Lancome ads that she did. She was sweet, normal, and kind of an Earth Mother, as she often comes across. She’d shot Blue Velvet earlier that year, had heard about Jack’s rehab and was very happy for him.
I heard later that rather than give the French Film Society the three-minute film they asked for, David gave them one that was 20-minutes long and they refused to show it.
On March 9, 1988, David Lynch came over to the Sherman Oaks house for dinner with Jack and me. It was great to see him away from a film set, to just relax, and have a nice evening together. David talked about some recent trips he’d taken to Washington State up near the Canadian border and how awe-inspiring the forests were up there, how moved he was by the landscape. He’d spent a lot of time as a boy in rural, woodsy places and, as I mentioned earlier, had even been an Eagle Scout. Thickly wooded mountains, remote lakes, quiet forest paths were, I think, very spiritual places for him. The stories of his recent travel turned into telling us about a new TV project he was putting together with a producing partner, Mark Frost. It would be called Northwest Passage, as it was set in a town in rural Washington State, similar in a lot of ways to the setting for Blue Velvet. It sounded like he had a pretty big ensemble cast in mind though clearly one of the stars would be Isabella Rossellini, who would play Josie, the owner of a large sawmill operation, which I could easily picture. Isabella was able to play a balance of toughness and vulnerability, which had been at the core of Blue Velvet’s success. Then because it was a David Lynch production he described some other aspects of the show that didn’t make any sense to me but by now David has outlined plenty of ideas that had sounded perfectly hare-brained that had worked out beautifully.