Authors: Candy Spelling
In 1965, Bette starred in a pilot for a TV sitcom that Aaron had written and produced. Even though she had won two Academy Awards, Bette was not above appearing on television. The show was called
The Decorator
. Bette played a cantankerous interior decorator who moves in with her clients so she can learn about their lifestyle and then decorate their homes. The show, which co-starred the scene-stealing Mary Wickes and Ed Begley, didn’t get picked up by a network, so it never aired. I know how devastated Aaron was. In his book
Dark Victory: The Life of Bette Davis,
author Ed Sikov wrote, “She was very disappointed
The Decorator
didn’t go. No, not disappointed—
hurt
. Very hurt.”
The failure of
The Decorator
to get picked up obviously didn’t hurt Bette’s or Aaron’s careers. All these years later, Aaron and Bette were still connected to one another. When Bette saw Aaron walk into the room, she rose up out of the chair and came over to embrace him. This made more than a few heads turn, including Michael Jackson, who was there that night with his bodyguard. Michael had been wanting to work with Aaron, but that night he had his eye set on making the acquaintance of Bette. Here he was, the biggest pop star in the world; he could have gone straight over to Bette and introduced himself. Instead he was so modest and such a gentleman that he waited for a proper introduction to her.
Aaron was doing his series
Hotel
at the time, and he had written parts for Bette and Elizabeth. Bette was originally going to play aristocrat Victoria Cabot, who ran the St. Gregory Hotel in the city of San Francisco where the show was set. He was very excited for the opportunity to work with both of them again. True to form, in Elizabeth’s contract Aaron was required to buy her character strands of diamonds-by-the-yard and in the proviso Elizabeth would get to keep them. Aaron never said a word. He knew Elizabeth’s standards and wanted to keep her happy. Unfortunately, Bette wasn’t well and had to drop out of the show, so Aaron got the idea to replace her with Anne Baxter. It was life imitating art because Anne had played the ingénue in
All About Eve.
In the 1950 film directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Anne’s character
maneuvers her way into the theater company and social circle of an aging stage actress played by Bette Davis. Before Anne would agree to take on the role in
Hotel
, she told Aaron that out of respect for Bette, she wanted to ask for her permission and her blessing first.
That evening led to Aaron and me getting to know Michael Jackson and his children, Paris and Prince, who were just little ones at the time. Aaron was working on a script for Michael. It was an idea based on the premise of the Pied Piper. Marvin Davis, who owned 20th Century Fox Studios, and George Lucas were also involved in the project. Like so many viable ideas, the project was shelved, but we did get to spend a lot of time with Michael.
Michael was the kindest person. He was so gentle and such a wonderful father. We were all guests at a small dinner party at the Davises’ one night. Marvin’s wife, Barbara, had bought Prince and Paris little electric cars, and they were zipping around the entryway of the house. There were bowls of candy around and the children wanted some. I still remember Michael crouching down and in a whisper of a voice telling them they couldn’t have any candy until after dinner. It was magical the way his children listened to him. I felt like any other children at this age would have thrown a tantrum, but in this case, once again it was life imitating art. Paris and Prince understood, fell in line with their father’s wishes, and patiently waited to have candy after their dinner.
10
Ain’t That a Kick in the Head
Socializing was as much a part of Aaron’s job as the writing was, and he loved every minute of it. I have this expression about people who can have an interesting conversation with anyone. I like to say, “He could talk to a bush.” Aaron was without question one of these people. We didn’t always go to star-studded parties or industry events. Sometimes we had cozy, low-key dinners with other couples. We also went to poker night at the home of Janet Leigh and her husband Bob Brandt. Janet was a sweet, down-to-earth woman. When I first met her, I couldn’t get the image from
Psycho
of her being stabbed to death so violently in the shower out of my mind.
We were also invited to the home of actress Natalie Wood for dinner on more than one occasion. She was already divorced from Robert Wagner and was married to British producer Richard Gregson. She was a new mother and had stepped back from her career so she could raise her baby. Natalie had this innocence about her, and those amazing eyes of hers were even more
incredible in person. She was taking her role as a stay-at-home mom very seriously. She was spending a lot of time in the kitchen and really did cook from the heart. Unfortunately, cooking was not her strongest suit, and I remember Aaron and me joking about what Natalie’s “mystery meat would be this time.”
What fascinated me most about Natalie was that here she was, this glamorous, sexy, and iconic beauty. One of the biggest movie stars of all time. I mean
West Side Story, Rebel Without a Cause,
and who could forget her with Warren Beatty in Elia Kazan’s
Splendor in the Grass
? Despite all of this, she was as self-conscious as the rest of us women are, if not more. She always wore this big, chunky bracelet on her wrist to cover a bump she had on the joint from when she had broken it. It always amazed me that these stunningly beautiful women could have any insecurity at all.
Another couple we had fun with were Dick and Dolly Martin. Dick was the co-host of the comedy sketch show
Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In
. The show was so funny and so different for the time. After the show ended, Dick developed a career as a television director. At the time, he was directing episodes of
The Bob Newhart Show
. He would go on to become a sought-after director who worked on at least a dozen television series. Dick’s wife was a gorgeous Playboy Playmate appropriately named Dolly. Dolly had also been in Russ Meyer’s campy film
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.
Dick and Dolly used to host movie night at their in-home theater. This was a big deal in those days since not everybody had home theaters.
It was at Dick and Dolly’s house that I first met Dean Martin and his new wife, Cathy. She was Dean’s third wife, and I just loved both of them from the moment I met them. It sounds funny to say, but since being married to Aaron, Dean and Cathy were the first friends I had made on my own. And Dean was the first celebrity I had befriended before Aaron did.
In 1974, the six of us plus Bob Newhart and his wife Ginny took a trip to Las Vegas to see Frank Sinatra’s comeback performance at Caesar’s Palace. Even under serious peer pressure, Aaron refused to fly in the private jet that Dean had chartered. In fact, when he first heard about the trip and the private
plane, he said, “Well, that’s it. We’re not going.” I was really upset and started to cry, which made Aaron reconsider. So while everyone else in our party traveled on the jet, we drove.
The MGM Grand had just opened in 1973, and it was the first super luxury resort on the Las Vegas Strip. It had just over two thousand rooms and this decadent fountain that was lit up at night. The hotel was incredible, and, at the time, it was the place to stay in Sin City. When we all met up in the lobby of the brand-new MGM hotel, Dean said that they had waved to us as their plane flew over our car chugging along the desert road. At the registration desk, Dean requested a room lower than the fourth floor. It turned out he had a phobia of elevators. Sure enough, when Aaron heard that, he said he didn’t want a room above the fourth floor either. It didn’t happen often, but this was one of those times where I put my foot down.
“Aaron, that’s Dean’s phobia, not yours! We can stay on a higher floor. You already have your own phobia.” I just couldn’t imagine if in addition to flying, Aaron also stopped taking elevators.
The show at Caesar’s was really something else that night. Trying to get through the throngs of manic people to our VIP seats was a little frightening. Even with private security guards and Las Vegas police cordoning off the VIP area, fans of Dean were reaching, clawing, and doing anything they could to get his attention or talk to him. I thought I had seen it all at Hollywood premieres or nights out with Aaron where people, one after another, approached him. This was something else altogether. It was that evening that I realized the magnitude of the power these stars have over their fans.
After Frank’s show we all headed for the casino to our own private blackjack table. Ironically, none of us were really gamblers. Dean jumped behind the table and assumed the role of dealer. Aaron and Dick partnered up but refused to play with their own money. It was funny to watch all these men who were creative geniuses and risk takers play cards. They were so hesitant and completely overthought everything.
Dean, on the other hand, just went for it. He went bust every time. Cathy and I could see his cards and couldn’t understand why he hit when he already had twenty-one. We were finally able to persuade Aaron and Dick to take the plunge and gamble with their own money. Dick had been a bartender and referred to martinis as “see-throughs,” so I kept joking that he’d had a few too many “see-throughs.” Meanwhile, Dick was playing a big hand and all the while he kept saying that he didn’t gamble. He kept on that he was afraid he was going to lose all his money and have to go back to being a bartender. No such luck! Dick and Aaron ended up winning and winning big, but Dick was so drunk that Aaron and I had to escort him and all his chips to his room.
In the morning, Dick came knocking on our door. He wanted to know where the pile of chips in his room had come from. We told him that he had won them playing blackjack.
“You know I don’t gamble, Candy. Now really, tell me where all these chips came from.” Aaron couldn’t stop laughing, so Dick probably thought we were playing a joke on him. The conversation we were having was not unlike the sketches on
Laugh-In
when Dick always played the frustrated straight man. He remained adamant. It just wasn’t possible. He simply didn’t gamble.
I explained one last time that he had been so drunk that Aaron and I had literally tucked him into bed. Dick was absolutely mortified. He obviously had had a few too many “see-throughs.”
11
The King of Cool
Of all the friendships we developed over the years, our friendship with Dean Martin stands out as one of the most special. We met one night at one of Dick and Dolly’s movie nights. Sometimes the movies we watched were comedies, which I sometimes dreaded because of this problem I have when I laugh. I hate to admit it, but when I really get going, I mean a real belly laugh, I sound like a seal. Well, at one of those movie nights, we were watching something that was very funny, and it happened. My inner seal came out, and I was exposed in front of “The King of Cool.” Dean couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He literally looked away from the movie over at me, and now he was laughing his heart out too. It wasn’t mean-spirited, it was more like a big brother making fun of his sister. Aaron got a big kick out of the whole thing and somehow, after that brief albeit ridiculous moment, we were all bonded.
One of the biggest misconceptions about Dean was that he was an alcoholic who stumbled around all day. In his 1996 obituary,
People
magazine printed the headline, “Dean Martin perfected a 100-Proof Wink.” They added that Dean’s “image slowly evaporated like uncorked Scotch.” This just goes to show how little the media sometimes knows and how there usually is more to
the story. As far as I could tell, the problem Dean had was that every night he would take one of his prescription sleeping pills, even if he’d had a few drinks. This, as you can imagine, did not produce good results. I saw this firsthand when Dean and Cathy would come out to stay with us at our beach house in Malibu.
Dean was so much fun to have around. He had this adolescent sense of mischief about him that brought so much energy into the house. In the mornings, we would wake up to Dean driving a bucket of brand-new golf balls into the Pacific Ocean. Watching him out there hitting one ball after another out into the water made me realize that Dean really was a loner. When he chose to be with people, he was very present, not to mention big on teasing. For the longest time he couldn’t remember the name of Aaron’s Belgian shepherd, Adam. Dean always called him Bruno, probably because Adam was a very large, dark creature. I would always correct Dean, “It’s Adam!”
One morning Aaron and I woke up and Dean was still groggy from his sleeping-pill cocktail from the night before. He apologized for stepping on Bruno. I had no idea what he was talking about, and then I remembered that Adam liked to sleep on the landing of the staircase that led to the second floor of the house.
“It’s Adam!” I yelled.
I looked over at Dean, and he had that sly, quiet smile of his on his face. He was just teasing me. He really had stepped on Adam, but fortunately Adam was large enough to handle it. At worst, Adam had probably just been startled by Dean. That particular morning Dean also apologized for eating all the cookies on the counter. Once again, I was baffled. Suddenly I realized Dean was referring to the freshly baked cinnamon rolls I had left out for us to have in the morning. They weren’t cookies, and Dean had eaten all four of them.
Sadly, Dean and Cathy divorced a couple of years later. We didn’t see much of him after that. I think he must have felt like ours had been a couples thing and he wasn’t part of a couple anymore, so he was off on his own.
It was almost a decade later that I drove out to the set of
Hotel
to visit Aaron. It was pouring rain, and they were shooting way out at Zuma Beach in Malibu. Wonderful actor Richard Kiley, who had worked with Aaron on
The Mod Squad,
was guest-starring in this episode of
Hotel
. Richard was also a stage actor and had won two Tony Awards, so I always found him interesting to talk to. He said something so poignant that afternoon as we sat there in the rain. He said that he wanted to hide behind the character he was playing at the time. This immediately made me think of Dean. I had seen him hide behind the drunken character he had created. He put on his “drunk act” for fans and for people he didn’t want to interact with. It was his defense mechanism that nobody would have ever thought to look beyond.