Judy & Liza & Robert & Freddie & David & Sue & Me... (14 page)

I meant to make good my threat. I planned to be gone the minute I was dressed. Unfortunately I had to wait for the valet to deliver my clothes, and they didn't show up until 11:00 a.m.—at about the same time as Begelman. By the time he got to Miami, he knew exactly where Judy was: at some fleabag hotel on lower Collins Avenue (the part of town that's been gentrified and is now trendy South Beach). Clearly she had called him sometime during the night. It was impossible for me to imagine her moving herself around Miami Beach with dressings all over her face. And bloodstained clothes. What kind of place had she gone to? David told me she had registered as Mrs. David Begelman. She was delusional.

This “thing” with David (I could no longer dignify it by calling it an affair) was like some ghastly pas de deux, in which she depended on the sick dynamic between her and her controlling lover. David depended on it also. The moment one of them stopped dancing, the dance would be over. Neither one could leave the dance floor. They were equally addicted, and equally dependent.

I've concluded, at least for myself, that “dependency” is the operative word, as I was learning it is with addicts, and they were both addicts. He—an addicted gambler—depended on creating chaos. She—addicted to prescription drugs and liquor—depended on pain. They fed each other's illness. And I had seen more than enough of this bedlam to know that I now wanted no place in this picture. I was willing to tar myself with several brushes: ambition, dysfunction, neediness, but I was not an addict living with all the sturm and drang that comes with that, and I wanted no part of it in my future. Of course it doesn't always work out that way. But for the moment I believed I was growing up past the need to participate in what I thought was sick. Yes, I could become successful without living with sick people all around me.

So she had managed to stage another hideous drama to get David's attention. Although he was not fucking her at this particular time, it would come again. Meantime he was still manipulating her. He was the Svengali who hypnotized her, had her totally within his control—and he seemed to exercise this control easily as making mayhem was part of his nature. Maybe she was still in love with David. I wouldn't hazard a guess. It seemed to me, however, that with Judy, being in love meant being dominated and controlled. Since David was out at this time, there had to be someone who was in. There always had to be someone. It was Sid Luft. And there was no one more dominating than Sid. All I knew about him were the things Judy told me. I did not know him, or mix it up with him, until later. I'll get around to him. The brute deserves his own chapter.

*   *   *

By the time David arrived at the Fontainebleau, he had already seen her. He told me he put her in a hospital, and that I needn't be concerned about her anymore. I wasn't, and I thought he understood that I really was leaving. I felt so very finished, with him, with her, with the job, with anything that fit into that sentence. He absorbed that and then said, “I want you to come with me to something special.”

“No!”

“It's really important. For old times' sake! You can still take a plane late this afternoon. I've put you on first class at five o'clock. Isn't that okay?” he asked me in his most plaintive way. I silently called it his bullshit tone. But finally I agreed to go with him after I extracted another thousand for the new/old/lost wardrobe.

He took me to an elegant luncheon at an estate on Miami Beach's bay side in an upscale part of town. It was a beautiful white-frame home with an imposing entrance, but it really sparkled when you walked through to the back. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out on a large, manicured lawn that sloped gently down to the bay.

It looked to me as though the whole of Miami high society was politely partying on that lawn. I stood there for a moment looking at all the women dressed in poufy organdy dresses with matching picture hats, and I was embarrassed. I looked like Popeye in drag. David had done it again. I felt he was having a cruel joke at my expense.

David didn't have a decent instinct ever, ever, ever. He had already hurt me, hurt Judy, hurt Lee, and hurt many others he worked with. He was cruel, and I was in the wrong frame of mind for any of his “fun.” Whatever wonderful charitable event these women were in the midst of participating in, it had nothing to do with me. David knew that. He also knew the chapter and verse of what I'd just been through. How could he be so callous? But that was David: always pushing the envelope. While his action might give him a few jollies, he knew it would make me angry. Why? I was vain about my appearance. I understood that I looked as if I had accidentally stumbled into the wrong place. I felt like all the women were staring at me, feeling sorry for me. Moreover, I had told David on the phone what I had been through, and he was both sensitive and intelligent enough to understand that this scene was completely inappropriate under the circumstances. It amused him. My anger amused him. How cruel!

Unfortunately for him he didn't realize just how furious I was. I made a fist, pulled back my arm, and with all the strength I had left in my weary body, I punched him as hard as I could in the face. He went sprawling backward into the table behind him, on whose fancy white cloth at least fifty set-ups were resting. The table went over with him on top of it. I don't think it was the force of the blow that sent him reeling; it was more likely the shock. I didn't wait to find out. I was out of there before anyone could ask: “Who is she?”

*   *   *

Back in New York I stayed home, allowing my anger to cool for a while, refusing to respond to David's calls. But after about a week, I knew I wanted to go back to work as long as it meant I would never have to work for Judy again. I was bored sitting at home. There was nothing for the “good little wife” to do, plus—I wasn't her. Although I discovered reading again, I had much too strong a work ethic to curl up in a corner with a book during the working person's day. And when I questioned myself about looking for a job, the answer was always the same: Forget about that! I had now put three years into FFA. That, I believed, was my equity. I wanted to turn it to account for myself. I wanted David's job—well, not quite.

It was time for me to be an agent, a real agent, not a stage manager, not a dresser, not an assistant or a trainee. I needed to advance my career. I had to get back. I no longer had any fear that limiting my boundaries would cost me my job. My confidence had taken a huge leap. Freddie and David knew that they could always trust me to get the job done. Any job. And I knew that after what I'd been through in the last two years, there was damn little I couldn't handle.

*   *   *

I didn't learn anything about Judy from this episode that I didn't already know, but I learned something hugely valuable about myself: I was totally dependable, responsible, and capable. I could be counted upon in any situation to act with reasoning intelligence to bring things to a reasonable conclusion. Were these qualities always there, lying dormant, waiting to be tapped? I don't know. But I had now been tested time and time again, and I didn't disappoint myself or anyone else. Grasping this gave me confidence, and the confidence was brand-new. I would never feel threatened about my job again. I was “womanpower” worth having.

I met with F&D and made my demands. I wanted to be an agent. I wanted five hundred dollars a week. They agreed to my terms. They needed more manpower. (We weren't up to calling it womanpower yet.) The business was growing. Freddie was talking about opening an office in LA. “If you're going to be successful, you better remember this,” Freddie said: “The business belongs in the hands of the people who sign the clients!”

 

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

One Kind of Husband

And now to Sid Luft. He was an ape! When we met, he was an attractive man in his late forties who was built like a truck. He was strong, with the kind of hard body that suggested he worked out. And he knew how to hit. Judy assured me of that. She told me on a number of occasions that she and Sid had gone a couple of rounds together, but mercifully, I wasn't on hand to see them. I wouldn't like to think of him, or any man, laying a hand on any woman, but that's not reality, and it wasn't Sid's. He was, however, responsible for one of Judy's great comebacks, having produced the movie
A Star Is Born
years after Judy was fired from MGM. But their marriage was fraught with difficulty, and they were not living together when Freddie signed her as a client late in 1960.

Sid didn't think twice about manhandling me. It happened on the very day that Judy was leaving for London to start
A Child Is Waiting
. After all Judy and I had been through together, David thought it was appropriate for me to bid Judy good-bye. “She wants to thank you,” he told me. I was now a fledgling agent in the office. I had no clients, and I was just starting to learn how to deal in TV. I didn't have to go to the Stanhope that day, and I shouldn't have gone. Or at least I should have realized that there was something else going on. But I bought David's bullshit once more and went to the hotel (now an expensive Fifth Avenue co-op) where she was staying prior to flying out that night.

I arrived only to discover I had been summoned to be the reliable babysitter for the afternoon. Judy needed her younger children—Lorna, who was then ten, and Joey, seven—out of the suite so she and David could negotiate her departure with Sid Luft, who had a shared custody arrangement for their two children. Sid wanted to keep Judy from taking Lorna and Joe out of the country. He had booked a suite in the same hotel and was intending to stop her however he could. Judy asked me to take the children to Central Park and to check in with her in an hour to find out if it was okay to bring them back to the hotel. I counted the minutes.

I crossed the street with the two children and their attractive red-haired Irish nurse, who seemed to be kind and devoted to them. We took the Fifth Avenue bus downtown to the little zoo in Central Park, some fifteen blocks south. When it came time to make the check-in call Judy had requested, I could find no pay phone anywhere in the park. (Before cell phones, one had to go to a pay phone on the street, and chic Fifth Avenue never accepted such eyesores.) So while the children were enjoying the seal pool, one of the liveliest attractions in the zoo, I walked to commercial Madison Avenue, where, if I had a quarter, I could make the call on any corner.

I asked the nurse to stay exactly where she was. Even though the zoo is small, I didn't relish the idea of chasing through its various animal houses looking for her. David answered the phone in Judy's suite and told me to stay put and check back in another hour. Ugh. When I came back, the children were gone. No, they're here, I said to myself. The seals, especially at feeding time, are such a popular exhibit that they draw crowds two- and three-deep around their fence. I ran around and around the circular pool assuring myself that the nurse and children had to be somewhere in the crowd. But no! Then I ran like a crazy person all over the zoo looking for them. I checked all the bathrooms, and everywhere I went I asked strangers if they had seen this nurse, knowing one could not miss her fire-engine-red hair. But no one had seen them anywhere but at the seal pool. How strange is that? I thought. I was in a panic. I couldn't call Judy and tell her I'd lost them.

And then it dawned on me that the nurse had to be working for Sid. It was the only notion that made sense from the discussions I'd been party to, in which Sid was painted as a schemer and an opportunist. However, at that moment, it was also the only hook for me to hang on to. Given the battle then waging between Judy and Sid, it was the one scenario that worked.

In the taxi on the way back to the Stanhope I wrote a script for what might be happening. A kidnapping plot was afoot. Money for Sid the motive! The closer I got to the hotel, the more likely my scenario seemed. What made it possible were the two principals in the ongoing negotiation: David, a merciless extorter who would push anyone's back to the wall and then beat them down, and Sid Luft, about whom everything was said to be unsavory, underhanded, and slimy. But no more so than David!

When I got back to the Stanhope, the desk clerk could see how concerned I was, and, even though he was not supposed to give out room numbers, he told me where Sid was. I think the clerk saw himself as an incidental character in an unfolding plot. It was clear to everyone behind the desk that something improper was happening. Famous wife and sullen husband in suites on separate floors. The level of interest rises among the staff.

I went directly to Sid's suite. I knocked on the door, and when he opened it I could see the children playing on the carpet in the living room straight ahead. I confronted him, told him that Lorna and Joe were in my charge, and I wanted them back. Sid looked at me as if I were a total loony just before he slammed the door in my face. At least I knew the kids were safe. But that was hardly the point. I never for a moment thought they had come to any harm. What to do? I knew I must do something to get them back or face ugly consequences. Both Sid and Judy had vile tempers.

I knocked on the door a second time and appealed to Sid in some limp, whiny fashion, hoping that such an appeal would gain more traction. However, the reverse was true. This time he was far more annoyed with me and wanted to put an end to the nuisance I was causing. I never expected him to do what he did, which was to pick me up and throw me across the corridor. Literally. One hundred twenty-five pounds of me was like a paperweight to him. I bounced off the opposite wall and lay crumpled on the floor like a balled-up piece of paper trash.

My back went into some kind of spasm I'd never known. I was hurting badly and couldn't get up. Finally I crawled to the elevator and, using a tall sand-filled ashtray for support, pulled myself up with difficulty. The elevator man helped me limp into the old-fashioned phone booth that lived in the lobby, while behind the desk everyone stared, and without any alternative, I made the call to Judy. She went ballistic. I could not explain, given the screaming coming through the phone, that the fucking nurse was a no-good double-dealer. After listening to the stream of abuse leveled at me, I then told David what really happened. He asked me not to leave the hotel. Dummy that I was, I stayed, cowering on the seat in the phone booth.