Dear Cary: My Life With Cary Grant (14 page)

A
fter a couple of months, the show hit the West Coast. Cary came to San Francisco for the weekend, where we were settling in for a two-month run. My mother and grandmother—we called her “Bobbie,” which was our version of “
bubbe,
” the Yiddish word for “grandmother”—had flown down for the show, too. The second I stepped onto the stage, Bobbie stood up from her fifth-row seat and yelled, “Hello, dahlink! How are you? You look bee-yoo-ti-f!”

The audience roared with laughter, and the performance ground to a halt. One thing I'd learned in theater is that when the unexpected happens, just go with it. “Hello, Bobbie!” I called out. “Do you and Mom like your seats?”

“The best seats in the house!” she hollered. “And the play, very nice—
so far
.”

The audience roared again. My mother tugged at Bobbie's elbow and gently pulled her back into her seat. Fred Lerner, the conductor, cued the orchestra and got the show rolling again.

Afterward, Cary and I took Bobbie and my mother out to a late dinner and showed them some of the sights. It was the first time either of them had met Cary, and they were charmed but maintained a stance of quiet observation. Cary raised a toast: “To the three most beautiful women in the world!”

Mother and I clinked glasses, but not Bobbie. She looked Cary straight in the eye. “So you like my granddaughter,” she said. It was a statement, not a question.

“More than words can say,” Cary replied, amused.

“Nuthink wrong with words,” said Bobbie. She pointed a finger at Cary. “How much you like my granddaughter?” Then she pointed to my mother. “My daughter wants to know.”

Cary smiled at Bobbie and then looked directly at my mother. “I
love
your daughter,” he said, and leaning toward Bobbie, took her hand and kissed her on the cheek.

They were both happily exhausted by the time we returned to the hotel. I walked them to their room. As I was saying good night, Bobbie took my hand and squeezed it. “Be careful with your heart, dahlink,” she said.

“I love you with all of it, Bobbie.”

That was the last time I saw her alive.

B
obbie and my mother left San Francisco Monday, but Cary stayed on for a couple more days. The show was dark on Mondays, and that particular day, I joined the cast for a photo shoot for the
San Francisco Chronicle
. When I got back to Cary's suite I found him having lunch with none other than Dr. Timothy Leary, who was already well-known and controversial for his evangelizing about the incredible benefits of LSD. Cary was pointedly casual in the way he introduced us, as if major countercultural figures like Leary were bobbing around everywhere. I sensed I was being set up; Cary had been hinting about how great it would be if I joined his cosmic exploration by dropping acid.

So it was obvious that the good doctor's visit was hardly coincidental. I didn't mind, though. Timothy was quite a striking man, both in appearance and personality, and his intelligence blazed like a klieg light, though he softened it with old-fashioned, courtly manners and understated charm. We chatted for a few minutes, and Timothy asked some questions about my acting—maybe that was just the windup for what was to come, but he was disarmingly sincere in everything he said.

Then Cary steered the conversation to psychedelic experiences.

“I think Dyan would benefit enormously from it,” Cary said. “But she's a little apprehensive.”

“Anybody with any sense would be,” Timothy said, making his point with a chicken drumstick. I could tell he enjoyed eating as much as Cary. “It's a powerful energy form. But if you have the proper respect for it, it'll change your world.”

“It changed my world,” Cary said. “It brought me closer to God.”

“I just don't see how taking a drug can bring anyone closer to God,” I said. And I didn't. It just seemed very counterintuitive. But it was an interesting conversation. Cary was one of the most thoughtful and intelligent men I knew, and if he found something in it, I was happy to listen.

“It's not a drug,” Timothy said. “It's a chemical.”

“But if it brings you closer to God, why do you need a tranquilizer to bring you down?” I asked.

“It's a matter of energy management,” Tim said. “We're the pioneers. As time goes on, we'll refine the method. You see, we use
drugs
for one of two reasons: either to put us in a nice, cozy stupor or to wake us up. LSD, though, is a
chemical
that contains the equivalent of about several hundred
Encyclopaedia Britannica
s . . . Cary, save that last shrimp for—oh, too late.”

Timothy went on laying out the case for LSD as a wonder drug—oh, make that chemical. When it was in your brain, he said, time evaporated. Colors and forms continually morphed into different colors and forms, dancing to the rhythmic pulsation of the heart. “Our brains are constantly in direct contact with our cells and our tissues, and when you take LSD, it's like plunging through the barrel of a microscope and swimming with your own cells!” he said.

He lost me there. I didn't want to go swimming with my own cells or anybody else's.

Cary didn't find that notion any more appealing than I did. So he flashed a sort of yellow caution sign. He didn't want Timothy freaking me out by going too far. Timothy got the signal and shifted emphasis.

“And it'll enhance any relationship with another person,” he said. “Especially the people you are closest to. It tears down the walls that divide us from each other.”

At this Cary nodded approvingly.

I had to admit I was impressed by the utter sincerity with which they both made their case. Timothy had the conviction that LSD was a spaceship to utopia. When my tutorial was over, I was starting to give him the benefit of the doubt. And I was open to anything that could tear down any wall between Cary and me and meld us into one person.

Still, somewhere deep inside, a little voice was stubbornly crying, “Danger, Dyan! Danger!”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Middle Finger

T
he show's next stop was Los Angeles, which for me was the best of all worlds. I was working
and
I was spending time with Cary and catching up with my friends. I had a great two months. Cary and I met up for an occasional lunch, went to dinner on nights when the theater was dark, relaxed at his house, and even made it to Palm Springs a couple of times. Being on the road, I'd let go and stopped worrying about what the future held. Still, at the end of two months, it was painful to say “see you later.”

The next stop for
How to Succeed
was Chicago. About six weeks into the run, one of my fellow actors barged into the dressing room I shared with several other women, enraged that he'd been
upstaged again
. It was about the hundredth time we'd all heard this rant, and here he was again, practically foaming at the mouth. “We're not having this conversation again,” I said calmly. “Please . . .” I held the door open for him, with the obvious intention of shutting it behind him. My right hand was on the knob and the fingers of my left curved around the edge of the door. But psycho diva wasn't going peacefully, and to make his point, he flung the door shut with angry vigor. My grip was tight enough that the force took my hand with it, and my middle finger got caught when the door slammed into the frame, just catching the tip. The room fell silent, and the actor stood there red faced and panting with fury. Then one of my dancer friends shrieked and pointed to the floor. “Oh my God! Dyan, is that the end of your finger?” I looked down and, sure enough, saw a piece of my finger lying on the floor like a piece of chicken gristle. Now I noticed that the tip of my finger was spurting blood. Strangely, I didn't feel a thing . . .

Until a minute later when a shock of pain tore up my arm from the mutilated finger. By now the others were kneeling in a circle around my lost fingertip. One had a cup of ice. “Go ahead, pick it up!” “Maybe they can sew it back on!” “No, I don't want to ruin it!” “It's
already
ruined!” “No,
you
pick it up.”

The next thing I knew, I was in the car with the stage director on my way to the emergency room. They stitched it up and we left. It hurt like hell, but I didn't think it was all that serious.

The next morning, though, my hand had swollen to the size of a cantaloupe—a
blue
cantaloupe. And it throbbed so hard I could almost hear it. I took a cab back to the hospital. The ER doctor admitted me immediately.

When the doctor on call came into my room, my jaw dropped. He was drop-dead
gorgeous
. So gorgeous I actually forgot about my hand for a moment. He touched his fingers to my forehead and smiled right into my eyes.

“Don't tell me: you were in a fistfight,” he said with a laugh.

“Yeah, but I went down swinging!” I replied.

He examined my hand. “What's your diagnosis?” I asked.

“In medical lingo, we call this a complete mess.”

I laughed.

“Keep your sense of humor, but don't take this lightly, Miss Cannon. Can I call you Dyan?”

“Yes, Doctor!”

“I'm Dr. Steve Mandell. But you can call me Dr. Steve. You'll be fine as long as you do as I tell you. This
really
has to be cared for properly or it could turn gangrenous. And I'd really hate to see a beautiful gal like you turn green from head to toe.”

“Oy. So what do I have to do?”

“Nothing, for a few days. You're staying put here. We'll do the rest.”

“I have to stay? I'm in a
play
!”

“Then this is a great day for your understudy. It's not negotiable, Dyan. I don't want to go to the theater a year from now and see you playing Captain Hook. So relax. Watch TV, read, and enjoy our
exquisite
hospital cuisine. You're going to be here for a little while.”

As it turned out, I was there for more than a little while. Seven days. A friend from the company took Bangs in. I missed her, but the days weren't too bad, really, because I had a steady stream of visitors from the cast and crew. The nights, though, were pretty boring. But in the meantime, I was definitely getting some special attention from Dr. Dazzle. His timing was perfect. He always seemed to drop by when I was on the phone with Cary, who called two or three times a day. I was a little disappointed that Cary didn't fly in to see me, but I had to accept it; he was a busy man.

One afternoon, Dr. Dazzle came into the room with a white sack as I was picking at my lunch.

“I brought you a little something,” he said, taking a huge sandwich out of the bag. “Best pastrami in Chicago.”

“It looks delicious,” I said just as the phone rang.

It was Cary. “Why is that man always there?” he snapped, hearing Dr. Steve in the background. “I tell you, he's interested in far more than your finger. He's
after you
.”

“You think that about everybody!” I whispered.

“You watch yourself around him,” Cary said. “If he wants to play doctor, let him do it with one of the nurses.”

“Best egg cream in Chicago,” Dr. Steve said the next time he visited, handing me a large paper cup. “I don't like to see my patients waste away on hospital food.”

I took a sip through the straw. It was delicious.

“How sweet of you,” I said.

“Now it's time for your medicine.”

“What medicine?”

“It's a special medicine. You're the first patient I've prescribed it to.” With that, he leaned in and planted a wet one right on my lips.

“I'm sorry,” he said with just the right amount of false sincerity. “I've developed a mad crush on you.”

“You're wonderful. But I'm taken.”

“Me too. What does that have to do with anything?”

We both laughed, but the episode sent a little chill down my spine. Not so much that Dr. Steve kissed me, but that Cary—from a distance of two thousand miles—had anticipated it. Did he have ESP? When I was a child, my dad convinced me he had eyes in the back of his head, and it freaked me out. For a moment, I got the same feeling from Cary.

Finally, Dr. Steve released me from the hospital. My hand was still in pretty bad shape, though, and performing was out of the question. My understudy had been giving great performances, and the producer didn't have any choice but to release me from the show. It's just about impossible to get out of a theater contract unless you're maimed or dying, but that's how bad my hand was. They were understandably reluctant, because I was playing the lead and we were packing the house, but there wasn't much to argue about. I was less than heartbroken. I'd been on the road for eight months, and I missed home. I'd had enough of hotels and psycho divas.

“I'm only releasing you on the condition that you see my associate in Los Angeles the
minute
you get back,” Dr. Steve told me. “I know I'm repeating myself, but
do not take this lightly.
You don't want complications setting in.”

I thanked him, and he gave me a most gentlemanly kiss on the cheek.

“You'll be missed,” he said.

“You've been very kind, Doctor,” I said.

I packed my things and took myself and my devoted dog to the airport for the flight back to Los Angeles.

I crashed, once again, with my dear friend Addie. When I got to her place, she said Cary had already called three times, but it was the middle of the night when I got in and I didn't call him back. I went to bed exhausted, and the ringing phone woke me early in the morning. It was Cary.

“I'm so glad you're back, my love! How about we celebrate with a Dodgers game today? Dodger Dogs galore!”

I told him that sounded great. I'd promised to let the doctor check my hand out, but I could do it early in the afternoon, then head to Cary's house before the game. My hand looked horrible and felt worse, but I didn't think anything dramatic was going on with it.

When I got to the doctor, he took one look and admitted me directly into UCLA Medical Center. Cary came over later that afternoon with flowers.

“Silly child,” he said, kissing me. “What kind of mess have you gotten yourself into? Let me see that paw of yours.” He ran his finger delicately over my bandaged hand. “You really did a number on yourself, didn't you?”

I smiled. “Looks like I'll be here for a few days.” I looked up at him and beamed. “You're a sight for a sore hand. Are you in the mood to hold the other one tonight?”

Cary clenched his jaw and let out air through his teeth.

“Darling, I have a confession to make. I am utterly
phobic
about hospitals.”

I believed him. Except for the time he'd gone to see Elsie without me, I'd never seen him look so ill at ease. At that moment, the door opened, and before the nurse could close it I got a glimpse of Stanley Fox standing in the hallway.

“I understand,” I said, reaching for his hand.

He gave a little laugh and ran his handkerchief over his forehead as the nurse took my temperature. “The truth is out,” he said. “I am a terrible coward.”

“I don't believe that for a minute, Cary,” I said with the thermometer in my mouth. “Why did you leave Stanley waiting in the hall? Invite him in.”

“I just wanted a moment alone with you first.”

Cary cracked the door open and beckoned for Stanley to come in. Over the months I'd learned that Stanley was the person Cary trusted more than anyone else in the universe. He looked like a rabbi, not a lawyer, an agent, or a confidante, all of which he was to Cary. In fact, Cary was unusual among actors in that he relied on a single person—Stanley—to manage all of his affairs.

“Dyan,” Stanley said, “I'm so sorry about your injury. You look great. I'm sure you'll be back in business in no time.”

Cary looked at his watch. “Well, we'd better be off,” he said.

“To where?” I asked.

“Oh, we're going to the Dodger game,” Cary said a little sheepishly. “I didn't want to disappoint Stanley.” He kissed me on the cheek and the two of them left.

We haven't seen each other in weeks, I'm in the hospital, and you're worried about “disappointing” Stanley?

You're a big girl, Dyan!
I told myself.
No need to have a pity party about this . . .

But I did anyway.

So I called Mary and she came and held my hand for the rest of the night. Thank God for girlfriends.

A
fter three more days in the hospital, I went to stay with Addie again until I could find my own place. Two weeks later, I rented a spacious one-bedroom apartment on Havenhurst, in West Hollywood. After about a month, my hand was finally healed, but my release from the theater contract stipulated that I couldn't appear in anything else for three months. There wasn't much to do but take it easy. As it happened, at about this time my parents were making their annual trip to Desert Hot Springs, where their friends Honey and Sam Dorf owned a rustic but comfortable spa motel. It was a homey, no-frills kind of place. The little apartments had kitchens, so you didn't have to go out to eat, and there were several thermal pools, a cold plunge pool, and a sauna. It was really the perfect place for a family vacation.

Cary, of course, had already met my mom, but not my dad. I wasn't sure this was the best time, since we'd be two hours from Los Angeles in a fairly isolated place. If it didn't go well, we'd kind of be stuck. Since he was busy with meetings, though, I was sure he wouldn't be able to come. I felt completely safe inviting him.

“I really want to meet your father,” Cary said when I told him, “but I'm locked in.” I was slightly relieved. It wasn't that I expected any trouble; Dad was a very tolerant person and Cary was the consummate gentleman, so the worst case would be a slightly chilly encounter. But it could wait.

So I drove down to the desert alone to stay with my parents.

The morning after I arrived, Honey gave us a knock and gave me a slip of paper. “Irving wants you to call him,” she said. “Irving,” of course, was Cary. For absolutely no reason, I called him “Irving” and he called me “Matilda.” It was just a part of the secret vocabulary that couples invent as they grow together.

I went to Honey's office and called Cary collect.

“Dear girl! Bob Arthur's down with the flu and we've had to postpone for a day. I'm getting in the car in just a few minutes.”

“That's great! I can't wait for you to meet Dad.”
Let the chips fall where they will,
I thought. It had to happen sooner or later.

“Are there many people at the motel?” he asked.

“It's pretty quiet,” I said.

“Good. I won't be there 'til after dark, so hopefully I can slip in without people noticing.”

“M
om, how would you feel about Cary coming down for a night?”

“Oh, I would feel fine. Your father, though. Not sure he's ready for that.”

“Can you help me get him ready? Cary's on his way.”

“This is gonna be interesting,” Mom said.

Dad, though, was completely sanguine about it. “Sure, I'd like to shake hands with the man,” he said. “I've been seeing him in movies since I was a young man.”

“What were your favorites, Dad?”

“They're all good. The one with the monkey. No, I think it was a leopard.
Bringing Up Baby,
that was it . . . do you know you were one year old when that movie came out?”

“What are you trying to tell me, Dad?”

He smiled. “Nothing really. It just makes me realize how fast time goes by. I look forward to meeting him.”

Then he went into the bedroom, closed the door, and prayed for two hours, which was just about the length of time it took Cary to get there.