Back at table, she received his congratulations on her number. “All my life I've wanted to be a singer. How about you?”
“All I wanted was to be a piano player,” he told her. “But other people had other ideas.”
Later, when Jane excused herself to go to the women's room, Roddy whispered in Merv's ear that he'd like to get together with him for a drink in Merv's hotel room. Merv eagerly invited him, suspecting how the night might go. Rumors of Roddy's fabulous endowment had already reached his ears.
He found Roddy handsome and sexually appealing but feared he wouldn't live up to Roddy's standards as a lover. After all, Roddy had seduced some of the biggest male stars in Hollywood. Only two years or so ago, as the rumor mill had it, Roddy had shared Peter Lawford with both Lana Turner and Elizabeth Taylor.
After Roddy had put Jane in a taxi to take her home, he accompanied Merv up to his hotel room at the Ambassador. Merv would remember that early morning as one of the most memorable experiences of his life.
He was eager to tell someone about it, but had no confidant he could trust until his friend from San Francisco, Johnny Riley, arrived in town the following week. Merv supplied Johnny with all the juicy details.
“Roddy was all over me the moment we got into my room,” Merv claimed. “As you well know, I'm pretty basic when it comes to sex. Roddy, on the other hand, is the world's greatest oral artist. He knows erotic zones on the human body I'd never even contemplated. Only problem is, he wants you to reciprocate. It was a bit much for me. I call him the jawbreaker. That damn thing of his looks halfway normal when it's soft, but it just grows and grows and grows.”
“We carried on so much Saturday night that it was all we could do to make it to Roddy's Sunday afternoon house party,” Merv claimed. “The host was almost late for his own party.”
Merv was so foolish and naïve in those days that he virtually confessed to Roddy that he'd fallen for him, all in one night. Roddy quickly realized he had a lovesick puppy on his hands. With great kindness, Roddy had to inform Merv that sex could only be a sometime thing between them.
“I was heartbroken and terribly disappointed,” Merv told Johnny. “I thought I'd found the man of my dreams, only to learn that Roddy had a constant string of boyfriends coming and going.”
“I wanted the relationship to be permanent,” Merv told Johnny. “But Roddy had other ideas. He was always after the next cute boy, and I wanted to settle down. Alas, my life. He would have been a great lover—and most amusing—to come home to.”
Roddy had such a great capacity for friendship that he managed to lower Merv down to earth gradually without tramping on his feelings too harshly. He was known in Hollywood for sustaining relationships, even with lovers he'd more or less discarded. Merv would be among them.
They became friends for life, standing by each other as their careers went on roller-coaster rides. Their relationship would continue even more deeply into the 1950s when Roddy left Hollywood, a town that had more or less abandoned him, to try his luck on the Broadway stage and in stock. Roddy's film career had more or less collapsed, and he stood by Merv when the same thing happened to him.
“Roddy was not only a supportive friend,” Merv later recalled to Johnny, “but he kept me supplied over the years with more boyfriends than I could handle. I once called him in New York and said, ‘Hey, pal, cool it with all those handsome hunks. Who do you take me for? The Whore of Babylon? On second thought, keep sending ‘em!’”
***
Merv arrived with Roddy at his house just as Ann Blyth was emerging from her car. After Roddy introduced them, he disappeared to get ready for the remaining guests. Merv agreed to serve as bartender, which wasn't difficult since all Roddy served were soft drinks.
At that point in her life, Ann had long grown tired of hearing compliments and comments about her role as Joan Crawford's bitch daughter, Veda, in the classic, Oscar-winning wallow, Mildred Pierce (1945). He had heard of how she'd suffered a broken back in a sledding accident at Lake Arrowhead and had to spend a long convalescence, more than a year and a half, in a back brace.
After inquiring about how she felt, Merv and Ann talked about what a wonderful woman Joan Crawford was, and about Ann's ambitions as a singer. By the time the next guest arrived, Merv and Ann had agreed to do a big oldfashioned film musical together.
That dream never came to be, of course. In one of the ironies of Hollywood, he eventually found himself costarring with Kathryn Grayson, Ann's chief rival at MGM. As the years passed, Merv watched the rise and fall of his fellow singer, even when Ann raised eyebrows at the 1954 Academy Awards. Despite the fact that she was seven months pregnant, she appeared before the world singing Doris Day's hit, “Secret Love,” from Calamity Jane.
Although the critics panned her, Merv loved her starring role in The Helen Morgan Story (1957), wherein she performed such hits as “Can't Help Lovin’ Dat Man.”
Ann was furious and humiliated when the studio decided to dub her own wonderful voice with that of another singer, the highly emotive Gogi Grant. To Merv, Ann's performance captured in perfect detail the kerchief-holding, liquor-swilling torch singer whose train wreck of a personal life seemed destined for celluloid.
It was with dismay that Merv in the 1970s watched Ann in TV commercials play the typical American housewife for Hostess in their Twinkie, cupcake, and fruit-pie commercials. “But,” as he noted, “in show business, a gig is a gig.”
That next guest at Roddy's party turned out to be a young actor, Darryl Hickman. Merv found him to be a captivating personality, although he would forever be confused with his better-known brother, Dwayne, who would one day achieve a cult following on TV for playing Dobie Gillis. Merv had seen both brothers emote in Captain Eddie (1945), in which Darryl had been cast as the aviator Eddie Rickenbacker as a boy.
Ann Blyth (left) playing
über-bitch
to Mommie Dearest
Joan (Mildred)
Crawford (Pierce)
Merv had first become aware of Darryl when he appeared in The Grapes of Wrath with Henry Fonda in 1940. Like Judy Garland, the performer had grown up in show business, having been discovered at the age of 13. Most recently Merv had seen the actor in Any Number Can Play, starring Clark Gable.
Merv didn't know if Darryl was gay or straight, but he later confessed to Roddy that he almost made a play for him to see what might happen.
“Like a bolt of lightning, and just as I was about to put the moves on him, he let go with a startling confession,” Merv told Roddy. “He said he was seriously considering abandoning acting to enter a monastery. Talk like that can really take the air out of a hard-on. Think Bette Davis in Winter Meeting.”
In 1951, Darryl lived up to his promise, and did indeed enter a monastery. It didn't surprise Merv at all. But he predicted that Darryl's stay among the monks wouldn't work out. “When you've appeared with such stars as Barbara Stanwyck, Gene Tierney, Alan Ladd, Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, and Shirley Temple, how can you settle for some stinking old monks who aren't even allowed to jerk off?” Merv said. Lasting only a year in the monastery, Darryl returned to Hollywood once again to find his place in the sun, only to find that that sun wasn't burning too brightly for him.
Elizabeth Taylor was the last to arrive at Roddy's bash, and she made the grandest entrance. All eyes turned on her. Roddy introduced her to Merv at once—the star knew all the other guests—but it was an hour before Merv was able to corner Elizabeth alone.
He finally captured his “prize” when he saw Darryl leave her side to answer a phone call. “Alone at last,” he said to Elizabeth.
“It's great to meet you,” Elizabeth said, flashing her violet-colored eyes at him. “A coincidence, really, I'm going to the Cocoanut Grove next week to hear you sing. Lana Turner told me you really know how to deliver a romantic ballad.”
“I'm surprised she noticed me with Frank Sinatra at her side,” Merv said.
&nb
sp; As Elizabeth talked to him, she would often tenderly take his hand. He looked directly into her eyes, which he considered the most enchanting he'd ever seen on the screen.
With those eyes, she seemed to take him into her confidence, as if allowing him to join her inner circle. But, for all he knew, she did that with everybody she met.
Top Tomato:
Elizabeth Taylor
Both of them looked across the patio at Roddy moving gracefully among clusters of his guests. “When I first met Roddy,” she said reflectively, “I felt he was my twin. That we'd been separated at birth. He conceals the loneliness of his childhood— something I know a lot about—with a spontaneous playfulness. He is Peter Pan.”
“Roddy told me that he's signed you up to our Sunday afternoon club,” she said, smiling at him.
He'd later tell Roddy, “I don't know if she knows it or not, or what you told her about us, but Elizabeth seems the least judgmental of any person I've ever met. She seems to recognize that all people have needs—and that love takes many forms.”
“Roddy might have grown into a man who loves women,” she said, “if not for his mother,Winifriede. She doted on him almost obsessively. For years she even dressed Roddy like his older sister, Virginia. She wanted to make dolls out of them, not living, breathing children. My mother did that to me too. I think she came to regard me as a beautiful porcelain doll, not a little girl trying desperately to grow up in the spotlight.”
“My mother regarded me as a fat, pudgy kid,” he said.
She reached for his hand again. “Don't ever get fat. Once you've established a romantic image, fat is out. I gathered you didn't have a domineering mother like Roddy and me. That's good. It's easier to break away when you don't have apron strings tied in knots around you. Both Roddy and I are trying to establish independent lives.” She looked across the patio once again at her friend. “What he's doing with these Sunday afternoon gatherings is trying to re-create a new family for himself. Welcome, kissin’ cousin.”
Without thinking of what he was saying, Merv blurted out, “Can I take you out some time? I mean … not like a real date. We could be friends.”
She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Of course, you can. Like a friend. Like the relationship I have with Roddy. We don't have to sleep together. We can find other people to perform that dirty deed.” She leaned over close to his ear. “Sometimes I need an escort when I can't be seen in public with the object of my desire.”
“You mean like when he's married or something?”
“Exactly. I'll tell you a secret. Don't tell anybody. You know who's picking me up three blocks from Roddy's house tonight? Robert Taylor.” She giggled like the sixteen-year-old she really was.
“Don't let Barbara Stanwyck find out,” he cautioned.
“That's not a real marriage,” she said, wanting to dismiss the subject. “They just live together. I've just played my first real grown-up role in The Conspirator with Bob. I'm an American debutante, and he's a Communist spy. Just imagine: Here I am playing love scenes with a man who's thirty-eight. When we shot our love scenes, he always stuck his tongue down my throat. The only thing he doesn't like about me is my legs. He's threatening to shave the hair off them himself.”
Merv rose to his feet as did she when they spotted Roddy coming across the patio to say something to them. “Louis B. Mayer told Roddy and me that both of us would be washed up by the time we turned seventeen,” she said. “He cited Shirley Temple as an example. Both Roddy and I are determined to prove Mayer wrong. Another shit, Hedda Hopper, warned me about the perils of having been a child star. ‘There is no second act for children in the movies,’ she told me. ‘What awaits a child star? A decline in fans. A dwindling bank account. Personal disasters in relationships. Booze. And, dare I say it, premature death. Most child stars can't adjust to life when the sound of applause no longer rings in their ears.’ Charmingly reassuring, that Hedda.”
A beaming Roddy appeared before them, looking fresh-faced and innocent, as if the past night with Merv had never happened. He kissed Elizabeth on the cheek, taking her arm. “Hot dogs are now being served. He turned to Merv. “I've got the most divine creature I want you to meet. You'll flip.”
“I've already flipped over you,” Merv said.
“By tomorrow morning, you will have forgotten all about me. Wait until you meet Richard Long. He should be arrested for being so handsome.”
“Oh, you guys,” Elizabeth said, leading the way across the patio.
***
Roddy flitted from lover to lover, breaking hearts along the way. But often he didn't leave his jilted lover completely deserted. He procured other loves for the young men he deserted. He never called it procuring, as some did, but preferred to say he hooked up former lovers with “new talent.”
Such was the case when he introduced Merv to Richard Long. The face of this young actor had already enthralled Merv when he'd seen him in The Egg and I, playing Tom Kettle, whose movie parents were Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride. Merv and Richard bonded over hot dogs. Merv learned that Richard feared he'd been trapped in the Ma and Pa Kettle hillbilly flicks since the studio was determined to make an ongoing series of them.
Working it Out: Rock Hudson (left)
with Richard Long.
In the background, keeping things
safely hetero, is a publicity pinup of
Yvonne de Carlo
As the sun set in the West and Roddy's party was winding down, Merv remained at Richard's side. As Merv would later tell Johnny Riley, “If any man in the world could cure me of a broken heart after my one-night stand with Roddy, it is Richard Long.”
Richard whispered to him as the other guests were leaving that Roddy had invited both of them to stay over for the night, using his guest room. Merv was thrilled at the prospect of getting to sleep with this good-looking and charming young man.
When Merv later met with Johnny, his friend was eager for all the details. “There's not a lot to tell,” Merv claimed. “Unlike Roddy, who is all over you, Dick is a gentleman in bed. He does it the old-fashioned way. It's all very satisfying. I think I've fallen madly in love with him.”
Merv was poised for another heartbreak. After only three sleepovers at Roddy's, Richard informed Merv of his decision. “I'm not a homosexual, and I don't care to be one. I've had some experiences in Hollywood with men, but I want to get back on the straight-and-narrow path. I plan to have a big career in Hollywood, and rumors of homosexuality would destroy that for me.”
“But we could keep on seeing each other in secret,” Merv protested.
“I'm sorry,” Richard said. “I've got to cut this off. I think you're someone I could really care for, and I just can't let that happen.”
To make matters worse, Richard even told Merv that he should start dating and being seen with attractive young women. “There's already been a lot of talk about you,” he said. “You've got to change that and get involved with a woman even if it's not in your heart.”
Richard was a man of his word. In 1954 Merv heard that he'd married Suzan Ball, a cousin of Lucille Ball. But she would die of cancer the following year at the age of 21. In 1957 Merv's former lover would marry the actress and model, Mara Corday, with whom he was living at the time of his early death of multiple heart attacks in 1974. Richard was only 47 at the time. Merv sent the largest wreath of flowers to the funeral but did not enclose a card identifying the source.
Merv thought seriously about Richard's warning about both of their careers. Even though he didn't want to start dating women, he knew it was a smart move. He didn't think Rock Hudson or Tab Hunter wanted to date women either, but it was what was expected of male heartthrobs. Dating a woman, he knew, didn't have to lead to the bedroom.
Richard had hardly exited from Roddy's front door before Elizabeth Taylor spotted Merv and beckoned him over. Standing beside her was a young woman.
“Merv,” Elizabeth said, “I want you to meet Judy Balaban.”
Merv later wrote that Judy, a bright, lovely young redhead, “was nineteen going on thirty-five.” That was true. He also claimed that “we fell madly in love,” and that was not true. He genuinely liked Judy and they began dating, but it was never a serious romance on his part.
Instead of “my one true love,” as he claimed to his friends, Judy became “my best gal pal ever.” She was smart, fun, amusing, a kindred soul, and she could make him laugh, which she did at every opportunity. Most of the time he spent with her they played practical jokes on their friends.
When Merv would take Judy home, he'd give her a quick kiss on the lips, and that was about it for heavy romance. He genuinely liked Judy and wanted to be with her as much as he could. As the days turned into weeks, she fell in love with Merv and wanted to go on the road with him and Freddy's band when their engagement at the Cocoanut Grove came to an end.
Normally, the bandleader didn't allow girlfriends or even wives to travel on the road with his musicians. For Merv, he made an exception, as he genuinely liked Judy.
Her father, Barney Balaban, was a powerful figure in the movie industry, operating out of offices in New York. Along with his five brothers from Chicago, he'd founded the Balaban and Katz Theatre Chain. In 1936, Barney had moved to New York where he became president of Paramount Pictures, a post he held until 1964.
He was eased out of Paramount as the studio came under the control of Gulf + Western. Before that, he was a man to be feared. He also was a deeply religious Jew and overly protective of his daughter, Judy.
Freddy Martin had not wanted to offend Barney by denying his daughter's request. It was only later that the bandleader learned that he'd made Barney furious by allowing his daughter to travel on the road with his band and a goy.
Merv Griffin- A Life in the Closet Page 9
