Shattered Love

by Richard Chamberlain

  Every Saturday afternoon Ray and Dorothy lunched at their reserved table in the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel. Occasionally they’d invite me to join them. Along with their delightful conversation, the two invariables of these events were laughter and manhattans—lots of manhattans.

  At one of these well-oiled affairs, Ray told me about an exclusive club he and Dorothy and several Old Hollywood luminaries like Tyrone Power formed in the glory days of moviemaking. The club was called IGMFU, which was the acronym for “I got mine, fuck you!” This was of course a grand joke, but not entirely. I’ve always suspected that IGMFU expresses the very essence of political conservatism. It is the creed of the far Right.

  Also characteristic of Ray’s humor was the inscription carved in their living room fireplace mantel. It was a play on the pretentious MGM logo, Ars gratis artis, which loosely translates to “Art for art’s sake.” Ray’s version was Ars gratis pecuniae, “Art for money.”

  My friendship with the Masseys continued warmly, but intermittently after the Kildare show ended. In 1968, I flew off to England to acquire the acting training Sir Cedric had suggested I lacked. Unexpectedly I stayed abroad for four and a half years, happily working in television, the theater, and several feature films.

  Some time after my return I was invited by Connie Wald to a luncheon for the Masseys at her home. As I arrived, Ray and Dorothy were slowly making their way from their car to Connie’s front door—both using walkers! I suddenly and heartrendingly realized that age was having its cruel way with my treasured friends.

  Perhaps a year later Dorothy died. I’ve never seen a man so utterly bereft and distraught as Ray. It was as if he’d lost the dearest part of himself.

  Ray died not very long after Dorothy’s passing. I spoke at his funeral about our wonderful friendship, about his being a second father to me. Afterward Ray’s son Daniel (a splendid actor) told me how he envied my warm relationship with his father. As so often happens with fathers and their sons, Daniel and Ray had had stormy times.

  Along with grief, I was grateful that life had given me a second chance to enjoy Ray’s healing friendship. I had no idea at that time just how much more healing I would need, before I’d be able to “Get real!” as Jeff Corey had demanded.

  Work on the Kildare series began to feel repetitive during the final two years. I was in a running dispute with our producers—I wanted Kildare to mature and embody more authority, while the powers that be were reluctant to mess with a winner. Occasionally when a really good script would appear, or when we’d have a great guest star, the old excitement would return. But generally I was feeling stuck and bored. I was longing for a chance to play new characters in films and the theater. I wanted to stretch and learn.

  One of the highlights of our last year was the appearance of the queen of silent movies: Gloria Swanson. In her time Gloria Swanson was the most famous and the highest-paid actress in Hollywood and therefore in the world. When she traveled she’d reserve not a suite, but whole floors of the swankiest hotels. Decades later in her brilliant comeback film with William Holden, Sunset Boulevard, her spectacular performance seared her name once again in the gilded history books of cinema. She was big. Sunset Boulevard excepted, it was the pictures that got small.

  For her appearance on Kildare, Swanson played a great and totally self-centered film star (what else?) who enters Blair General with a reparable medical problem and proceeds to drive the hospital staff nuts with her grand and demanding manner.

  Even at her somewhat advanced age, Swanson’s dynamic persona proclaimed in bright, flashing lights “movie star.” She had a small, slim body and a great big exotic face with fierce, feline eyes and soaring brows. Her bright red mouth looked as if it might have indulged in a recent kill. Her trademark upturned nose should have been pixielike, but wasn’t. She favored leopard-spotted prints.

  Swanson was in great shape—she did a lot of yoga and loved to talk about all sorts of esoteric health enhancers. As fellow Aries, we liked each other right off and gabbed a lot between scenes. But I sure wouldn’t have crossed her.

  On her first morning’s work with us she was to play a long scene in her hospital bed, with me doing bedside manner acting. After the second rehearsal she startled us all by yelling in her suddenly very large voice, “Hilda, HILDA, where is my breakfast?” Her real-life maid rushed on set with a large tray full of ornate breakfast things piled high with steaming goodies and coffee, which Swanson proceeded to down with relish as we all stood by and watched flabbergasted. This sort of delay was unheard of in the high-speed, cut-rate assembly line of television, but no one dared to peep. Just as in her heyday, Miss Swanson continued to breakfast on the set every morning.

  In the course of our hospital story the character of Swanson’s selfish actress becomes acquainted with a much younger female patient and the two become friends. When the actress, fully recovered, is about to leave the hospital she drops by her young friend’s room to say good-bye and discovers the girl is dying. This was of course the climactic emotional scene in which Swanson realizes how much she cares for the girl, breaks down, and finally becomes a complete human being (such things happen in television).

  Because this scene was so difficult and important for Swanson’s character, we rehearsed it more than usual. On the final rehearsal Swanson indeed broke down and wept copious tears. We were all deeply moved, and I remember thinking with awe that if she could play the scene that fully in rehearsal she must have incredible reserves of emotion.

  The makeup man repaired her makeup and the director said, “Okay, let’s shoot it.” Swanson, still recovering, jerked around saying, “What do you mean, ‘Shoot it?’ We just shot it!” Thinking the final rehearsal was a take, she had given her all. We filmed the scene several times, but, try as she would, her playing was never as full again, and she knew it.

  I don’t know when I’ve felt so bad for a person. I knew this performance, coming near the end of her legendary career, was probably one of this great actress’s last. Only those of us lucky enough to be on set with her that morning would ever know how wonderfully well she’d played her final scene.

  SELF-IMAGE

  I’ve known actors and executives and just plain rich folks who, like Miss Swanson, expect everybody in every situation to know not only who they are but also how very important they are. And obviously I was indulging in some delusions of grandeur myself. Our mental images of ourselves can so easily slip into fiction, wishful thinking, or a safe, comfy rigidity. A contrived, inflexible, ego-serving self-image can stifle our relationships and diminish our aliveness.

  Self-image is a mixture of who we want to be, who we think we should be, and avoidance of who we’re afraid we might be. It is a product of our thinking, a complex of ideas strongly influenced by our culture’s values and mores. Most of our self-images resemble a character in a play more than the spontaneous, moment-to-moment reality of our being. Self-image is a product of the past that can obstruct the direct experiencing of our lives right now.

  I’ve observed that often when I meet a coworker, a friend, or even a loved one, it is a meeting of two self-images rather than an interaction of two open, unguarded, fully present beings. Habitually we subtly deceive each other, feigning interest, presenting attitudes and feelings that seem appropriate. I sometimes feel impelled to present myself as intelligent, kind, and caring when I’m feeling quite the opposite. And I’m so identified with my “improved” image that I don’t feel at all dishonest. Nor do I usually see beyond the image being presented to me.

  And our self-image overflows and makes demands on others. The executive expects to be obeyed, the guru expects to be worshiped, the beautiful expect to be pursued, the famous actor expects (needs) all sorts of recognition and favors and applause.

  But what happens when the executive is challenged, when the guru is blasphemed, when the beauty is ignored, when the actor goes unrecognized? We feel hurt, angry, depressed, and vengeful.

  A
fter the enormous international success of Kildare, I was filming The Madwoman of Chaillot in Nice with a staggering cast: Katharine Hepburn, Danny Kaye, Charles Boyer, Yul Brynner, Giulietta Masina, Margaret Leighton, Donald Pleasence, Dame Edith Evans. During shooting we were all invited by Prince Rainier and Princess Grace to a splendid formal party at the casino in Monte Carlo. We arrived to the blazing flashes of the press and paparazzi clamoring for photos and interviews. Clamoring, that is, until I walked in. Not a single camera or mike pointed in my direction. This crowd of celebrity-crazed journalists looked past me as if I weren’t even there.

  Those of us who are consciously or unconsciously addicted to being famous gauge the heat of our precarious notoriety by how vigorously we’re pursued by the press and paparazzi. I was shocked and bewildered—to be totally ignored by these dubious characters was to be deader than a doornail, quick-frozen, annihilated! All my years of clawing my way up the august ladder of “somebodyness,” the whole carefully built structure of my newly worthwhile self (validated by international adoration), seemed at that moment to be flushed right down the toilet of crushed vanity. I was suddenly nobody. I made a beeline for the bar and got smashed. Doubly smashed, my ego was in tatters. (I was unaware of the fact that almost none of my work, including Kildare, had been shown in France at that time. The press had no way of knowing anything about me.)

  An important question: What was smashed and who smashed it? The basic situation was this: We actors were simply a group of human beings walking into another group of human beings, all of whom were present to have a good time. From a spiritual point of view, if we were stripped of our contrived stories about ourselves, there was no hierarchical difference between any of us. We’re all just beings living and learning and hopefully loving and creating and playing as best we can in a pretty tough world.

  What thought process had formed in me the concept that I was a VIP who deserved (longed for) recognition, awe, and applause? Yes, I was a successful American actor whom my culture had deemed a “celebrity.” Yes, I had been greeted with excitement at many events in the United States and Britain previous to this Monte Carlo party. Still, a wise person wouldn’t have taken all this highly perishable adulation on as his identity. But I was too young to recognize the frailty and emptiness of a cultural value system that worships status. I ingested it whole hog. I needed to counterbalance the loneliness of my deeply ingrained self-dislike with grand illusions.

  My true, image-free self was not smashed by being ignored by the French press—I was just a human being walking through a door. My precarious self-image had been hurt. The press didn’t hurt me; I hurt me with an idea (my self-importance) based on two of my most cherished illusions: that public approbation would cure my ills, and that one person’s divinity can exceed another person’s divinity.

  A fascinating example of self-image gone mad is the great film actress Joan Crawford.

  JOAN CRAWFORD, SELF-IMAGE EXTRAORDINAIRE

  When Dr. Kildare was at the height of its popularity, I was sent to New York during a brief break in production for a very fancy publicity event at the fabulous ‘21’ Club. A lot of high-powered press attended along with several luminaries, the most luminous of whom was Joan Crawford. I’m not sure how they induced her to come, but there she was, radiant and slightly comic in a peculiarly Crawford getup: ankle-strap shoes and a purse made of the same fabric as her dress under clear plastic. Her dress was rather low cut for the afternoon and was designed to show off her still slim waist. To emphasize her monumentally sculptured face with its heroic, penciled brows she wore a big, sparkly necklace and topped it all off with a curiously shaped hat that might have come from the collection of Elizabeth II.

  I was introduced to this great lady and asked her if she’d like something to drink—water, juice? She said, “A bullshot.” A bullshot is a fairly mean concoction of vodka and beef bouillon. I ordered two, and we sat down for enough of a chat to discover that we liked each other.

  Joan sort of “took me up” during the following days of PR interviews and appearances. We had an extravagant lunch (many more bull-shots) at La Côte Basque where she spun out marvelous, sometimes ribald stories of Old Hollywood. Another day she invited me up to her incredible Fifth Avenue apartment (made infamous in Mommie Dearest) overlooking Central Park through the giant windows she’d had cut into the venerable building’s façade.

  Her teenage daughter Christina was there, behaving beautifully. Joan asked what I’d like to drink (water and juice weren’t mentioned) and I said a gin and tonic, please. Joan turned to Christina and with stark severity ordered her to make two gin and tonics. Christina flashed a brief look of terror, almost curtsied and said, “Yes, Mommie,” and expertly made our drinks. I had no prior knowledge of their relationship, but I couldn’t help noticing that something frightening, even psychologically brutal, was going on between them.

  Joan was immensely proud of her enormous apartment and showed me around with a kind of subdued glee. There was a lot of plastic. Some of her furniture and lampshades had plastic covers, and the fine wood of her dining room table was topped with a thick sheet of Lucite. Her dressing room was immense with several sets of ten-foot mirrored double doors that she flung open to reveal endless racks of dresses, coats, furs, ankle-strap shoes, and dozens of handbags, each specially made with the same fabric as a matching gown. Joan seemed to feel that her palace in the sky and these mountains of clothing were her crowning achievement, surpassing even her glittering career.

  The next day Joan invited me to the Booth Theatre for a matinee of A Shot in the Dark, starring her friend Julie Harris and Walter Matthau. Joan had seen the play several times before but wanted to have yet another look at Julie Harris, whom she adored, perhaps to the point of a bit of a crush.

  Joan’s limousine picked me up at my hotel, and then we picked her up and arrived at the theater just before curtain time (Joan liked to walk down the aisle just as the lights were dimming so that everyone in the audience would see her but not have the chance to approach her).

  Just before entering the theater, Joan stopped, turned toward her parked limo, and said, “Look,” in a voice filled with reverence. I looked, but saw nothing to revere. Noticing my lack of awe, Joan said in a slightly exasperated, but still reverent tone, “The license plate.” The personalized license said STEELE, the name of Joan’s recently departed husband.

  Sure enough, as we walked down the darkening aisle to our third-row seats all heads turned our way, people nudged each other, and there was an appreciative murmur.

  During the performance Joan, whose metabolism apparently cranked on at a very high rate, kept busy cooling herself by dabbing cologne on her wrists and fanning herself with a clever little Japanese fan she’d brought in her dress-matching purse. At intermission Joan instructed me to follow her up the aisle a moment prior to the curtain hitting the stage floor so that she could get to the lobby and back herself against a wall before the audience had a chance to mob her. Feeling secure with her back protected, she graciously signed autographs for the clamoring matinee ladies.

  This was my last outing with Joan—I never saw her again. Sure, she was a bit nuts, but I liked her a lot. She was spunky and tough, extremely talented, and, ultimately, touchingly sad.

  It seemed to me that she had devoted (quite successfully) her entire life, her total focus, to securing the grand edifice of the arduously crafted image of Joan Crawford. Like me in earlier days, she had become so helplessly ensnared in the loony values and fantasies of fame that her soul languished from inattention.

  Joan Crawford hit the exhilarating heights and stayed aloft for decades, but the inevitable skids took her by surprise and left her grounded, alone, and without alternatives. I wonder if Lucille LeSueur, the girl who became Joan Crawford, ever had a chance in life at all. Perhaps, ignored by her alter ego, she expired long before Joan Crawford finally faded away.

  Is it possible to experience the deep satisfaction of creativity, the abun
dant rewards of success, without losing one’s inner nobody? To achieve renown in one’s chosen field while remaining just a person among fellow persons? To cease comparison and even competition altogether? To discover one’s strength and wisdom without labeling oneself strong and wise? Is it possible just to be? I suspect that among angels, those beings of pure love, there is no self-congratulation at all. They radiate love simply because that’s what they are. Can we do that, too? Even for a moment?

  BEYOND KILDARE

  After five glorious years, the Dr. Kildare series ended. Our cast of regulars and our marvelous crew had become a close family during our years together, and our farewells were sad and tearful. I knew I’d remain friends with Raymond Massey who lived nearby, but crews scatter far and wide when a show ends and it was unlikely I’d see many of them ever again.

  Kildare had been an incredible break for me, and a grand, if grueling, rocket ride. Though I was considered more a heartthrob than a serious actor, it had put me on the map, and I’ll always be tremendously grateful for such a dazzling and educating experience. That said, it was time to move on—onward and upward I hoped.

  For about a month after we shut down I was deliriously happy to be free of the grind, free to explore new opportunities. On the thirty-second day I woke up with a start, jolted by the fact that I was now just another out-of-work actor. I crashed and burned for a time. I found that my happiness, my whole sense of self, was totally attached to and dependent upon being successfully employed and in demand. A brief holiday was one thing, being jobless was quite another. An actor without a job has no assurance that he’ll ever be employed again. I felt a dull panic not unlike imminent death. I put on a brave front and went about life with friends and art projects and movies and such, but I was getting scared.