By Myself and Then Some (57 page)

With civility and nervousness I got through the following day. When he took me home that night, I knew it was over, at least for a while. I was due to make a life-saving trip to New York to publicize the not very good film I’d just made. Of course he didn’t call to say goodbye. I tried hard to make excuses for him, telling myself it was all because of his unhappy past. It seems to me that by concentrating so much on Frank,
I left no time for facing facts. Except at night, when my subconscious took over.

One afternoon in New York I came back to my hotel from an interview and there was a message from Frank. He had called from Philadelphia, he’d call again. He did – almost as though nothing had happened – saying he’d be coming through New York en route to California and could I have dinner with him? I was calm – on the surface – and said that I could make it only because I had early publicity to do the following day and had been planning a quiet evening alone.

He was waiting for me when I got to the bar downstairs. I was friendly, though not overly so. We talked like two friends who had insane electric currents running between them all the time. I seemed stronger in New York, away from the Hollywood scene. I had my family there – extra security – really, the only security I could count on. And I was busy, which always helps. More independent. I drove to the airport with Frank. Although we’d been out in public, there seemed less of a chance of publicity in the East. The press had really been bugging both of us in California. I recall a wire-service man on the Coast saying, ‘When are you and Frank getting married?’ and me pleading to be left alone, asking why they wouldn’t stop. He said, ‘We’ll keep at it until you do or you don’t.’ Even I was getting paranoid about the press. I’d always thought I could handle them – I’d been taught by the master. But the pressure was strong.

At that moment I felt in a position of strength with Frank. I told myself that I expected nothing, but I knew I wanted everything. Though his erratic behavior was very much a part of him, I flatly refused to face what it might portend for our future together. I probably thought that if I didn’t face it, it might go away – that was the unrealistic hope. All I wanted was for my life to continue as it used to be. My fantasizing was so great that I didn’t realize there was no way that could happen. Now I can see that I was trying to erase Bogie’s death – pretend it had never happened – that he had never happened. The pain of that loss was so excruciating, I wanted to deny its being. Impossible – ridiculous – but real at the time. Had anyone suggested that my motive was to eliminate Bogie from my life, I would have lashed out at the liar. It takes so long to understand things, so much time wasted.

Frank was wildly attentive while I was in New York, keeping close tabs on my return to California. The night I got home he came over to see me. He didn’t know how to apologize, but he was fairly contrite, at least for him. He said he had felt somewhat trapped – was ‘chicken’ – but now could face it. ‘Will you marry me?’ He said those words and he meant them. Of course all my barriers fell. I must have hesitated for at least thirty seconds. Yes, I thought to myself, I was right all along – he couldn’t deal with it, was afraid of himself, but finally realized that he loved me and that marriage was the only road to take. I was ecstatic – we both were. He said, ‘Let’s go out and have a drink to celebrate – let’s call Swifty, maybe he can join us.’ I questioned nothing. That was my trouble – one of my troubles. Fortunately, it was nighttime, so the children were asleep and I didn’t tell them anything.

We were going to meet Swifty at the Imperial Gardens on the Strip – a Japanese restaurant facing the Garden of Allah. On the way, we started to plan – we’d have to add rooms to Frank’s house for the children. That house high on a hill – never meant for small children – I tried to imagine it all. Something wrong in the picture, but I dismissed it.

Holding hands, we walked into the bar and sat down in a booth where Swifty was waiting for us. When Frank told him we were going to get married, I don’t think he took it seriously. He thought it a ‘great idea,’ but didn’t believe it – until Frank started to plan the wedding. ‘We’ll get married at the house and instead of our going away, we’ll have our friends go away.’ He knew the way he wanted it – he didn’t ask what I might want. He wasn’t dictatorial, he just had his plan and it never occurred to him I might not accept it. I didn’t disappoint him. I was too happy, and I loved his taking over, that being one of my most acute needs.

A young girl came over for autographs. Frank handed me the paper napkin and pen. As I started to write, he said, ‘Put down your new name.’ So ‘Lauren Bacall’ was followed by ‘Betty Sinatra.’ It looked funny, but he asked for it and he got it. I often wondered what became of that paper napkin.

Frank was leaving for a singing engagement in Miami – we’d work everything out on his return. Mum’s the word until then.

I was giddy with joy, felt like laughing every time I opened my mouth. My face radiated happiness. I said nothing to anyone, but now
I knew – my life would go on. The children would have a father, I would have a husband, we’d have a home again. I had been right to move away from Mapleton Drive. I’d have to get rid of more stuff – no way for all my belongings to fit into Frank’s house. It was a hard secret to keep – I was about to burst – I wanted everyone to know. But I kept my mouth shut.

Emlyn Williams opened in his Dickens evening at the Huntington Hartford Theatre. Frank was away, Swifty took me. All Hollywood was there. At intermission, before I went into the ladies’ room, Louella Parsons stopped Swifty and me, asked me if Frank and I were going to get married. Being a lousy liar, I said, ‘Why don’t you ask him?’ and kept moving. My heart leaped at the question. Why would she ask that? Louella so often gave the impression of vagueness, of being slightly out of it. On my return I saw Swifty still talking to her – just as I reached him, she disappeared. Swifty said nothing, and I thought nothing further about it – was just relieved not to see her. On the way home after the theatre and supper we pulled up to a newsstand for the early edition of the morning paper. I saw enormous black letters jumping out at me from the
Examiner:
SINATRA TO MARRY BACALL.
I gasped – oh my God, what a disaster – how the hell did that happen? How could Louella have printed that? ‘My God, Swifty. You told her – are you crazy? Frank will be furious!’ Swifty just laughed: ‘Of course I told her – I didn’t know she’d do this. I just said I happened to know that Frank had asked Betty to marry him. So what? He did! What’s wrong with saying it?’ I said, ‘It wasn’t up to you. You’re coming home with me right now and calling Frank – I don’t want him to think I did it.’ I was so insecure it was pathetic.

When we phoned Frank, Swifty told him the news, but didn’t make it clear that he had been the culprit. It was a great joke to Swifty – ‘Ha ha, the cat’s out of the bag now, old boy.’ I got on the phone briefly, saying I was ready to kill Swifty. As I recall, Frank was not overjoyed, but at least he was prepared for the coming onslaught of the press, and he didn’t chastise me. I must have sounded contrite, though I had no reason to be. I was just frightened of making waves. Hopeless for any relationship, much less a marriage. But he said nothing to prepare me for the next and final step in our saga.

The following day, of course, my friends started to call. I told them all I didn’t know, there was no final decision yet. So somewhere in the
back of my foolish head I recognized a major problem. Slim Hayward called from New York and asked, ‘You’re not going to do it, are you?’ I said, ‘Maybe – I’m not sure.’ Her memorable remark was, ‘Well – everyone is entitled to one mistake.’

I told my mother that he had asked me, but that the story was premature. I still didn’t go into anything with the children except to say there was a story in the paper about Frank and me that wasn’t true – protection in case someone at school mentioned it. It was a hectic time. I was not quite walking on air – rather limping – Frank hadn’t called for a few days, so the operative word was apprehensive.

Finally one night the phone did ring. It was Frank saying, ‘Why did you do it?’ Me: ‘I didn’t do anything’ – heart pounding. He: ‘I haven’t been able to leave my room for days – the press are everywhere – we’ll have to lay low for a while, not see each other for a while.’ ‘What?’ I screamed silently. ‘What are you saying, Frank? What do you mean?’ Foolishly I was pleading to be forgiven for something I’d had no part in. ‘I won’t hear from you again?’ Disbelieving, but realizing how important this conversation was. I was incapable of being reasonable – still all open nerve ends – still unprotected – finally having to begin to face that.

There was nothing left to say to Frank. He was three thousand miles away, his attitude remote. Clearly he thought I’d given it away – he couldn’t deal with the press, they were driving him crazy, and under this circumstance the pressure was too great. He felt trapped. I tried to rationalize his feelings – couldn’t – but he’d be back in a couple of weeks and we could figure it out then. I didn’t know that this was to be my last phone call from Frank – the end of our exciting, imperfect, not-to-be love affair.

From a friend, I don’t remember who, I heard he was back in Los Angeles. Swifty had dinner with him – Swifty, the perpetrator of it all. Frank was speaking to him, but not to me! I was so hurt, so miserable. When a party was given, Frank would be asked – I would not. Bill and Edie Goetz asked us both once, a month or so after his return. We had one person between us at dinner, but Frank didn’t acknowledge my existence. He did not speak one word to me – if he looked in my direction, he did not see me, he looked right past me, as though my chair were empty. I was so humiliated, so embarrassed. Nothing would bring my sense of humor back – it deserted me that night and for some
time afterward. I would have preferred him to spit in my face, at least that would have been recognition. I couldn’t deal with this – there was no way to understand it. We had been such friends for so long, how could he drop the curtain like this? I was under a permanent cloud then – trying to excuse him to others, pretending I understood – but others had seen his behavior before. No one just drops someone without discussion. It was such a shock, that cold slap in the face in front of everyone.

I felt so on the defensive. To be rejected is hell, a hard thing to get over, but to be rejected publicly takes everything away from you. Adlai Stevenson once said you must never take a person’s dignity from him. I understood now what he meant.

I spent night after night in tears, hearing from time to time about Frank’s activities – dinners, girls, work. I was suddenly an outcast, and there was no one really to talk to. Carolyn – my one friend who was
my
friend, not part of the Hollywood group – was unforgiving of his behavior, and at least I could say sane things out loud to her. One weekend a few months later I was staying in Palm Springs with Carolyn and Buddy. There was some kind of open-air concert Buddy had to go to – Frank was to sing. I thought I’d have to learn to deal with it eventually, might as well start, so I went with them. While Frank was singing I put on my usual front. After the concert Buddy went to get his car, I got separated from him and Carolyn, wanted to leave, to avoid seeing Frank, and found myself face to face with him. He looked right at me again as though I were not there – not a flicker of recognition – called his group – got into his car. The blood ran to my face, then away. I felt sick. My humiliation was indescribable.

I did everything I could those next few months to try to make a life. What was I doing living in a rented house anyway? It had nothing to do with any part of me. I belonged nowhere – to no one. I faced more realistically each day the passing of Bogie. It was almost as though he had died twice.

Frank and I did not meet again for about six years. When we finally did, it was at a party Swifty gave, funnily enough. Frank came late from a TV show, beefing about TV’s incompetence and demands, foul-humored. Mia Farrow was waiting for him – they were not married then. We exchanged superficial words – he drank a lot – became furious with Swifty, who was sitting at another table – let him have it
verbally. Then he pulled the tablecloth out from under the glasses and plates, and amid the crash and spillage he shouted furiously at Swifty, ‘You – you were responsible for what happened between her and me!’ I almost laughed. It was Frank’s way of admitting finally that he did know it was Swifty and not me who’d spilled the beans. Some beans!

As I look at it all now, it doesn’t seem possible it happened as it did. I see that under no circumstances could it ever have worked. I expected more from him than anyone has any right to expect of another human being – loaded him with more responsibilities. No one could have remained upright in that circumstance. We used one another in some crazy way.

Actually, Frank did me a great favor – he saved me from the disaster our marriage would have been. The truth is he was probably smarter than I: he knew it couldn’t work. But the truth also is that he behaved like a complete shit. He was too cowardly to tell the truth – that it was just too much for him, that he’d found he couldn’t handle it. I would have understood (I hope). Well, he’s paid for his lacks in his life – okay, it’s his life – but why the hell did I have to pay for them too?

Anyway, it turned out to be a tragedy with a happy ending. Now, after a slow start, we are back on some sort of friendly basis. We don’t live the same kind of life or think the same kind of thoughts anymore, but I’ll always have a special feeling for him – the good times we had were awfully good.

I
n the middle of this
terrible year, when Mother was in California resting after her heart attack, the phone rang early one morning. Mother was due at my house in an hour or so. It was Rosalie: Charlie was dead. Oh God – not true – not him, not my Chach. She was distraught. He had just returned from a trip – they’d had a delicious evening together, ending up in bed, and on completion of the act of love, he was dead. Rosalie couldn’t believe it. Through the night she kept shaking him, talking to him. Useless – he was gone. He was young – only fifty-three. To lose him was unbearable.