But on this night he did just the opposite. He paid attention. Too much attention as far as Merv was concerned. Although his face was enigmatic, Frank seemed to be studying him intently, as he smoked a cigarette and occa- sionally belted down some Scotch from a glass.
To make Merv even more nervous, Frank's companion that night was Lana Turner, who'd made a spectacular entrance into the club, wearing ermine and a white satin gown cut low. Roddy had told him that Lana had turned to Frank to help her get over a broken heart after Tyrone Power had jilted her.
After his number, Merv went backstage. He didn't dare approach Frank's table in the way he'd done with so many other stars. At Merv's request, a waiter brought him a glass of Scotch and soda. Merv felt he needed a bolt of liquor before attempting to go on again. Freddy's band was playing dance music as Merv looked out surveying the club audience. Frank was dancing with Lana.
“What's a gal like Lana doing with a skinny little wop like Sinatra?” Merv asked the waiter. “She could have any handsome hunk in Hollywood she wants. I bet his dick is no more than four inches long at full mast.”
“Don't kid yourself,” the waiter said. “The showgals here at the club claim he's got the biggest dick in Hollywood.”
“Oh, shit! A great voice and a big dick to go with it. I can't stand the competition.”
To his surprise, Freddy's next music was the song, “I'll Never Smile Again.” At the mike, Freddy announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you a special surprise performance tonight. The one, the only Frank Sinatra.” The singer's appearance was met with thunderous applause.
Taking the microphone, Frank said, “Ladies and gentlemen, here's how ‘I'll Never Smile Again’ should be sung.”
Merv burst into tears. He later told Freddy, “It was the most humiliating moment I've ever had in show business. I don't think I can face an audience again. I think I hate that bastard for what he did to me.”
“You'll recover,” Freddy said. “Get ready for your next number.”
“I can't go on in front of Sinatra again,” Merv protested.
“Don't worry! He and Lana have already left the room. But you're not off the hook yet.”
“What do you mean?”
“I just got word. Judy Garland has entered the room. She's sitting up front with Peter Lawford and another guy waiting for you to go on.”
“Oh, my God. Will my humiliations never end?”
Merv
Unlike Frank, Judy Garland was one of the most gracious stars he'd ever met. After his performance she invited Merv to join Peter Lawford and her at her pri- vate table. There Merv met a handsome young actor from Brooklyn, Tom Drake, who he immediately recognized as Judy's screen boyfriend in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), one of Merv's all-time favorite films.
More than any other actor in Hollywood, Tom fit the description of “the boy next door.” Indeed, his lasting claim to fame was those very words sung to him by Judy in the St. Louis film.
The sweet, soft-spoken Tom was in direct contrast to the charismatic Peter Lawford, whom Merv considered one of the handsomest actors in films. Tonight he was drunk, as was Judy. Only Tom seemed sober. At one point in the evening, he whispered to Merv. “Someone has to drive these two home tonight.”
Merv knew that Peter and Judy had had an affair in the early 1940s, which didn't last long. From it, a friendship had emerged. The night he met her,Merv sensed that Judy's emotional state was fragile. He appreciated Peter's sensitivity to the star. “To say that Peter was handling her with kid gloves is an understatement,” Merv later told Freddy. Even though Peter was drunk, he sensed how emotionally troubled Judy was and tried to soothe her, as if expecting an emotional disturbance at any minute.
Filled with too much booze, Judy was one of the most direct women Merv had ever known. Sometimes her honesty could be brutal. She didn't seem to mind whether she shocked people or not.
After he'd been at her table for less than 30 minutes, the talk became embarrassingly personal for him. “Do you know why I took up with Peter?” she bluntly asked Merv while glaring at Peter almost defiantly. “My fucking husband at the time, David Rose, was repulsed by cunnilingus, which is one of my favorite things. Peter here prefers that form of sex and is the world's expert on it. He won me over at once by giving me what David didn't. But, frankly, I think Peter likes to suck cock more than eat pussy. Don't you Peter?”
“From what I hear, Merv sucks cock too. We can be frank with each other.
After all, we're family. Let's invite Merv to join our little group.”
“I'd think that after this introduction, Merv might run in the other direction,” Peter said.
Judy Garland with Peter Lawford
“Not at all,” Merv chimed in. “You people are the most fascinating I've met so far in Hollywood. I want to be a part of your group.”
“Okay, kid,” Peter said, “But you don't know what you're getting in for. Before the night ends, we'll give you our phone numbers.”
That night didn't end until dawn. By four o'clock Merv was holding a sobbing Tom Drake in his arms, trying to comfort him. The actor had confessed that he was madly in love with Peter, who betrayed him at every turn. “He's never faithful to me,” Tom said. “I wait by the phone for him to call. I never know where he is from night to night. One night he's in the bed of Robert Walker, the next night with Lana Turner. Imagine being in love with a man who can't decide on his sexual preference.”
“Been there, done that,” Merv said.
For the past hour and a half, Peter had been upstairs in Judy's bedroom. He finally emerged, and Merv saw him walking down the steps clad only in his underwear. Pouring himself another drink, he told Merv and Tom that Judy was threatening suicide, and he had to spend the rest of the night with her. He'd promised to drive her to her psychiatric session that morning. “She's upstairs unleashing all those pent-up emotions. Right now she's launched into an attack on Vincente Minnelli, not that that rotten bastard doesn't deserve it.”
“Can I be of help?” Merv asked.
“You sure can,” Peter said. “Go upstairs and look after Judy until daylight comes.” He walked over to the sofa where Tom sat. “Right now I've got to look after Tom.”
As Merv left the room and headed up the stairs, he looked back at Peter and Tom. Tom was unfastening Peter's underwear.
In Judy's bedroom, he found her sobbing and demanding more booze. When she became aware of him for the first time, she reached out her arms. “Peter, hold me,” she said. “I'm afraid. Really afraid. I fear everything's about to come crashing in on me.”
He joined her in bed, holding her as she pressed her body up against his. He realized that she didn't want sex but love and comfort.
Before she drifted off into a coma-like sleep, she said, “Dear Peter, you've always been there for me. Hold me tight. Never let me go.”
He was still in her arms when a maid knocked on the door and entered. It was ten o'clock. “Please wake up Miss Garland,” the maid said to a sleepy Merv. “Mr. Lawford is waiting downstairs to drive her to her psychiatrist. Mr. Drake is with him.”
“Okay, we're getting up,” Merv said. “I'll wake up Judy.”
“That's easier said than done,” the maid said before leaving the room.
That night and early morning marked the beginning of Merv's tortured involvement with Judy Garland. For reasons known only to himself, he would leave his thick chapter on Judy out of his memoirs, and would even mislead his fans about when he'd actually met her. Perhaps he wanted to keep the Judy part of his life private from his public.
Before that troubled night had ended, Judy had finally figured out that it was Merv, not Peter, holding her. It was the beginning of a friendship, even a love affair, that would last until the day she died.
He later told Peter Lawford, “It was like a wild race around a mulberry bush, a race that had no ending and one that went on day and night, especially in the wee, wee hours of the morning, a time of terror for J
udy.”
***
Merv wanted to call Rock Hudson for a date but was afraid of rejection. “Yet he gave me his phone number,” he told Johnny Riley in a phone call. “Why would he do that if he didn't want me to call?”
“Call him,” Johnny urged. “It'll probably be the thrill of your life.”
The problem was solved when Rock showed up stag at the Cocoanut Grove one Friday night, sending a note backstage to Merv to join him after the show.
When Merv went on that night, he was more nervous than ever, knowing that Rock was out front, watching him, judging him. He wished that he'd taken his diet a little more seriously for the past month.
When he joined Rock later at table, Merv was put at ease at once. Rock seemed the most easy-going person he'd ever met. He was without airs and pretensions, and he spoke honestly and with candor about his life when he invited Merv to go for a midnight drive in the Hollywood Hills.
To test the waters, Merv said, “I was surprised when you asked me out. I feared my competition was that effervescent blonde, Vera-Ellen.”
“Oh, please,” Rock said. “Let's get serious. My agent, Henry Willson, is deliberately trying to create a scandal. He knows that Vera is five years older than me, and Henry is hoping the scandal mags will pick up on my having an affair with an older woman. Actually, I'm not having an affair at all.”
“Why would he want to provoke a scandal anyway?” Merv innocently asked.
Rock Hudson
“Better an exposé of me with an ‘older’ woman than the fact I'm living with a hot young guy at the moment.”
“If he's so hot, why are you out with me?”
“It's my love of the chase,” Rock said. “It's good to have prime beef at home, but even more exciting to capture something outside on the hoof.”
“Thank God you chose me,” Merv said. “I think you're the biggest stud ever to land in Hollywood.”
“You flatter me.” He looked into his rear-view mirror. “I do look pretty good. Henry thinks I should be more discreet. He's always trying to fix me up with guys from his stable. I don't want that. I think the chase is more thrilling sometimes than the actual sex.” He paused. “Of course, both are great!”
Before the night ended, Rock had driven Merv to a lonely motel where they spent a total of three hours.
By the time Merv had kissed Rock good-bye and was delivered back to his hotel room, he placed an immediate call to Johnny Riley to tell him the news. “I got my man,” he practically shouted into the phone.
“You are one lucky queer fellow,” Johnny said.
Merv hesitated. “Well, half the night was great, but I don't know about the other part.”
“Exactly what does that mean?” Johnny asked.
“I loved the sucking part, although the guy is a bull,” Merv said. “But I'd never been penetrated before.”
“I bet you loved every inch of it,” Johnny said.
“Not at all,” Merv said. “It was very painful. I even bled. The more I urged him to stop, the more excited he became. I don't know why guys like to get fucked. All pain, no pleasure.”
“Does that mean you won't see Rock again?” Johnny asked.
“I've got a date with him tonight. He's a pain in the ass but the most exciting man I've ever been with in my life. Just to be with him, I'd go through torture.”
“Merv Griffin, you may be the only homo in America who doesn't like getting fucked by Rock Hudson. If only it could have been me.”
Details about the above-noted encounter between Merv and Rock were widely publicized in the late 1970s when Johnny Riley, after his breakup with Merv tried to shop a book proposal about his former friend to publishers in New York City. Merv had become a powerful figure in show business by that time, and each publisher who saw the material turned it down as too hot, and too potentially libelous, to handle.
Merv himself confirmed the details of his sexual and emotional encounter with Rock to show-biz agent Henry Willson when he and Merv became friends as a result of their mutual contact, Guy Madison, whom Merv had met during their appearance together in the 1953 film, The Charge at Feather River.
***
Merv had met Roddy McDowall at least six times at the Cocoanut Grove before their friendship turned into something more intimate. Roddy always showed up at the club with a female star on his arm, even though it was no secret that the British-born actor and former child star was “one of Hollywood's leading homos,” as gossip maven Hedda Hopper always claimed in private—never in print.
Merv had watched Roddy grow up on the screen, and had been captivated by him in such pictures as the 1943 Lassie Come Home and the 1944 The White Cliffs of Dover, in both of which he'd co-starred with Elizabeth Taylor, a child star Merv found mesmerizing.
Of all the male stars he'd met so far, Merv found Rock Hudson the handsomest and the sexiest. But for his tastes, Roddy was the most charming and charismatic. When Roddy talked, he brought you into his world and seemed to suck you into his orbit.
Even at that early stage in his career, Roddy seemed to know virtually everyone in Hollywood and was called “a friend to the stars.” At table at the Cocoanut Grove, Merv always admired Roddy's perfect diction and the way he spoke in clever lines. “I was a child thesp,” he once told Merv. “That's thespian with a T, my dear.” For the rest of his life, he would refer to Merv as “my dear.”
Roddy knew more about the secrets of Hollywood than any other star Merv had met—the covered-up scandals, the abortions, the furtive affairs, especially among married stars, the closeted homosexuals, the back alley deals, even the penis size of every popular male star, gay or straight. He worshipped the stars of the Golden Age—for example, tracking down Jean Arthur when she went into seclusion. He even kept in touch with the faded stars of the silent screen, including Louise Brooks and Alice Terry.
Roddy also told the most amusing stories, but never at the expense or embarrassment of anyone else.
“When I was appearing in How Green Was My Valley,” he said to Merv, “a studio publicist came to my dressing room. He'd been assigned to publicize me in the fan magazines. ‘What, little boy, would you like?’ he asked me. ‘A chocolate sundae with extra fudge?’”
“‘No,’ I almost shouted at him. ‘I want to meet Bette Davis!’”
Roddy McDowall
The publicist set up such a meeting, taking Roddy to the star's dressing room at Warner Brothers where she reigned as Queen. Ushered inside, Roddy met the great screen diva in person. Being worked over by a male hairdresser, Bette sat at her dressing room mirror, surveying her face. She looked Roddy up and down. “What do you want with me, young man?” she asked in that unmistakable voice of hers.
“When I grow up, I want to marry you,” he blurted out.
She burst into hysterical laughter before leaning over and giving him a big, sloppy, wet kiss on the mouth. “That, kid, is just a preview of the pleasures awaiting you. Now, go home and grow up! In the meantime, I've got to make up this tired old face of mine.”
Backstage at the Cocoanut Grove, Merv received a note delivered by a waiter. “Join us at table,” it said. “Love, Roddy.” Merv had finished his appearance for the night and eagerly entered the main floor of the club, wanting to know which star Roddy had brought to see him tonight. At table, Roddy introduced him to the bubbly, effervescent Jane Powell, whom Merv thought was “the cheeriest of the cinematic sopranos” on the screen.
It was the beginning of a long-lasting friendship between Merv and the star. Years later in recalling the beginning of their relationship, Merv said, “Dear, sweet Jane Powell belonged to a time when the world appreciated nice girls who lived next door with their rosy cheeks and birdlike voices. Those days are gone forever.”
Merv had seen Jane playing Walter Pidgeon's daughter in Holiday in Mexico, in which the character she played developed a crush on pianist José Iturbi, much to the chagrin of a young Roddy, playing her lovesick beau in the picture.
&nb
sp; Roddy and Jane had bonded during the making of that film, and the singing star had become a regular fixture at the famous Sunday afternoon gatherings at his house. Many of the young stars of Hollywood gathered at Roddy's Sunday afternoon bashes. These gatherings were considered one of the most coveted invitations in Hollywood.
The night Merv met Jane was the same night Roddy invited Merv to his bash the following afternoon. Although it was only Saturday night, Merv could hardly wait. He felt that his invitation to Roddy's house meant he'd been accepted into the inner circle of young Hollywood stars, even though he lacked the film credits of the other guests.
Roddy was popping up and down, constantly excusing himself to get up and greet other stars at table. This allowed Merv a chance to get to know Jane. Like all young stars of that time, she had only one thing on her mind—her career. “My great fear,” she confided, “is that Hollywood will grow tired of wholesome gals and will only cast femmes fatales in future roles, stars like Hedy Lamarr and Lana Turner. Elizabeth [Taylor] is a great friend of mine, but I think she's growing up too fast. She's appearing in her first adult film role with Robert Taylor. I predict she's going to turn sultry on the screen and dethrone Hedy herself.”
“Just keep on doing what you do best,” he told her. “The world will always love you for that. You and Judy Garland. I can't imagine Judy ever being a femme fatale.”
“Thanks, Merv,” Jane said, kissing him on the cheek. “Do you think Roddy is getting jealous having me sit here all alone talking to you?”
“Yeah, right,” Merv said. “Roddy is only jealous of you in the movies.”
She smiled that knowing smile of hers, and Merv sensed she wasn't as innocent about the dark alleys of Hollywood as she appeared.
That night at Freddy Martin's request, Jane agreed to perform what became one of her most famous musical numbers, “It's an Unusual Day,” from her latest film release, A Date With Judy. Merv was impressed with her delivery, a style she'd begun perfecting when she was only two years old. In spite of the sunny disposition she presented to the world, he suspected a lonely person lurking inside her. She seemed a bit lost in the confusing maze of Hollywood, and he knew of the enormous sacrifices she'd made to get as far in the business as she had.
Merv Griffin- A Life in the Closet Page 8
