Eighty Is Not Enough: One Actor's Journey Through American Entertainment (25 page)

Lovers and Other Strangers
was my first play on Broadway in five years, and it did crack open a little bit of a door for me to get moving on the road back. A few months later, I took a small part in a drawing-room comedy,
But Seriously
, at the Henry Miller Theater on Broadway. Opening in March of 1969 and starring Tom Poston and Bethel Leslie, it lasted just a few days, when, as
The New Yorker
wrote, the play “closed wisely after its fourth performance.”

One positive note was a stand-out performance by a young actor playing the couple’s son, named Richard Dreyfuss. I wasn’t the only one who noticed him. The same critic who panned the play also noted that Richard had come “within an ace of stealing the show.” He also had a kind word for me, saying he “enjoyed Dick Van Patten as the hearty and pompous neighbor.”

During rehearsals for
But Seriously
, my nephew Casey came to the set with me nearly every day. He was interested in making his way as an actor, and I was glad to see him hanging around with Richard, who advised him to hone his acting skills by doing as much live theater as possible. I certainly agreed with that.

Later in 1969, I received a call from Wayne Carson, an acting friend who had worked on
Mister Roberts
and now was the stage manager for a show called
Adaptation/Next
at the Greenwich Mews Theater starring Jimmy Coco and produced by Elaine May.
Next
was a one-act comedy written by Terrence McNally about a hapless, middle-aged, overweight divorcé who mistakenly finds himself at the draft board, where the strict female Sergeant Thech tries to enlist him. The repartee between them is wonderful.

Jimmy Coco was getting very hot at the time, soon to win a Tony for his role in Neil Simon’s
The Last of the Red Hot Lovers
and in the winter of 1969, Jimmy wanted to leave the show. Also, the production was going to Los Angeles for several months, and Coco wasn’t interested in doing it on the West Coast.

I auditioned for the part, and Elaine May selected me as Jimmy’s replacement to finish up the New York run and then go to Los Angeles. At the time I thought I’d be away for just a few months and then come back to New York and the real estate business.

Coincidentally, at the very same time, Connie Stevens was looking for a young boy to play her son in a show she was prepping for television. She had heard about my son, Vincent, who was 12 years old at the time. Connie came to see him for an audition in New York City. She loved him and decided he should come to Los Angeles to film the pilot.

So with two reasons to once again think about Hollywood, Pat and I decided that we would all head west—at least temporarily. The time constraints were more pressing for Vincent, so he and Pat took a plane, which left me, Jimmy, Nels and Casey to drive out.

By now, I thought I had the gambling thing pretty much under control. But with several weeks to kill on the road, I decided to do something a little out of the ordinary: take a cross-country tour of America’s race tracks. I’ve known hard-core fans who tour the baseball parks—zigzagging from state to state, catching games in all the famous venues, so I decided to do the same with the tracks. I sat down at the kitchen table in Bellerose making a list of all the tracks in the country and then mapping out our circuitous route west.

We almost lost everything in Ohio. Stopping at the Beulah Park racetrack in Grove City, I quickly lost a series of races. Suddenly we didn’t have enough money to keep going. By this time, Jimmy and Casey had returned to the car and sat there wondering if they were going to sleep in the racetrack parking lot. Nels stayed with me as I put all the remaining money on the final race. The two of us watched as our horse came roaring down the stretch with a tremendous upset. We ended up pulling away with more than when we arrived.

I’m sure all this sounds reminiscent of the Gallant Man fiasco when the urge to bet was threatening to destroy my life and my family. But by this time, things had changed. The grip that gambling and the races had over me in the late 1950s had diminished greatly. I certainly realized that gambling addictions don’t just go away. I also realized it would be a constant presence in my life, and I would have to be vigilant to ensure that it never controlled me again. It might make a nice story if I could say I just walked away from the horses and the poker tables and never looked back. But it would be dishonest. The truth is I found a middle ground; a place between addiction and abstinence. I understand there are many good people who say that can’t happen, or that it’s not the right way to beat a habit. And I don’t dispute them. But I will say, as I’ve said about so many things in life, that every one of us is different. We’re all unique. And what works for one of us may not work for someone else.

Moderation has worked for me. That’s as much as I can say. I still go to the racetrack with an excitement I’ve felt my whole life. I love the grass, the track, the horses, the jockeys, the stables, and, most of all, the people. And each time I look out at the infield, it takes me back to my childhood watching my grandfather sitting up there on the high stool next to his big blackboard on the beautiful grounds of Saratoga.

What’s changed is that I won’t bet the house. In fact, I don’t really bet that much at all. It’s true there will never be that wild, insane rush gamblers feel when they put it all on the line. There’s a natural high that comes from living on the edge. I felt it that day in 1957 when I lost the wedding bonds. But the price was too high. It nearly cost me my family—and that was the most frightening thing I’ve ever experienced.

It’s different now. And it was already changing by 1969, even though I did drag the kids along on that crazy zigzag through America’s racetracks. I suppose I’ll always feel the impulse to put something down on a horse, but it’s as much a social event as anything else. Out at Santa Anita or Del Mar, I enjoy the company of my good friends, Mel Brooks, Tim Conway and Jack Klugman, not to mention the more colorful characters like Jimmy the Hat, Fat Eddie, and many more. For better or worse, the horses have been an important part of my life, and, while I’m figuring out whether it’s all been good or bad, I’ll be out at the track still looking for the big win—but doing so on a much smaller bet.

Yet that’s not to say my trip out West was a model of maturity. Nearly every day, I’d stop at a motel with a pool. And while I’m not so proud of it now, I had the kids put on their bathing suits and jump in for a swim as if we were motel guests. I figured no one would think a grown man with three kids would do something so stupid—and I was right. While I feel a little ashamed of it now, we did enjoy great pools all the way to the West Coast.

The road trip continued through a dozen different tracks. And along the way, we stopped in Arizona to see the Grand Canyon. I still had a vivid memory of this natural marvel from my trip with Florence in 1935, and I wanted my kids to enjoy it too. Finally we arrived in Los Angeles on Halloween Day, October 31, 1969. And we’re still here.

*  *  *

Just as we were getting comfortable in our new home on the Queens Road cul-de-sac in Hollywood, a big family moved in next door. As we watched them unpack, we could see that there were a lot of them. Pat and I went over to meet the family. The parents introduced themselves as Joe and Katherine Jackson, and then we met all of their kids, including their eleven-year-old, Michael.

They had just moved from Gary, Indiana. The kids played together in a band, which already had some local success back home, but now they had gotten a recording contract and were making a push for the big time. I thought nothing of it, but I was happy to have a bunch of kids next door. The transition had been difficult for our boys, especially Nels, who had to leave all their friends back in New York and now at least there were some new kids on the block.

Quickly the Jacksons became like family. The kids played sports together and hung out all the time. Every day I could hear them practicing their music in the garage. Michael became especially attached to Pat. He came by every day to see the kids. If the kids weren’t home yet, he was so nice that he would always agree to help out if Pat was working hard in the house.

Years later, Michael and Pat just missed running into each other in Las Vegas, and Michael thoughtfully left a note for Pat who arrived after he left. In it, he remembered the time he spent with her on Queens Road. Pat still has the note: “Mrs. Van Patten: It’s Michael here. I truly love you and miss you. Please say hello to the kids. I miss cleaning your house.”

As our families grew close, I could see that the Jacksons were well-behaved, polite and fun-loving kids. Pat and I believed they were a fine family, although later revelations by some of the children paint a somewhat different picture.

I remember one time when I did something really stupid. Deciding it was time for all the boys to learn a little something about the great outdoors, I piled the Van Patten and Jackson broods into the station wagon for a camping trip. Now Hollywood may not seem like a rural place to most people, but compared to New York City it’s like living in the Australian outback. In fact, there are a series of mountain ranges that surround Los Angeles—the famous Hollywood sign is on one of these, and there are many more.

Like my father, I believed in living healthy, which for him meant going to the park in the middle of the winter and shoveling the snow off the handball court and then playing until your body temperature rose to the point that you’d be sweating even though it was below zero. That ruggedness was something I admired and wanted to instill in my own kids.

We drove way up to the top of the mountain in Griffith Park where we found an old campsite. I helped pitch a couple of tents when suddenly I remembered that I had an important appointment that evening. I made the command decision that the boys would stay, and I would pick them up in the morning. And so, just as it was getting dark, I left a crew of three Van Pattens from New York City and several Jacksons from Gary, Indiana, all alone to fend for themselves way up in the mountain lion–coyote-infested hills of Griffith Park. To make it worse, later that night a tremendous thunderstorm hit the region which, as I later learned, had its epicenter pretty much right over
Camp Van-Jackson
!

When I came back the next day, I was lucky they were all alive. Shivering, rain-soaked and scared to death, they vowed never to go camping again. I felt terrible.

After the extraction, the Jackson parents still let their kids play with mine—although I’m sure they would have been a little more reticent had Dick Van Patten proposed any more great ideas about toughening-up the kids.

All of our kids were athletic, and they played a good deal of touch football on the street in the cul-de-sac on Queens Road. One day, Nels recalls, they were in the middle of a game when suddenly Michael came running out of his house, followed by Marlon and Jermaine, with a transistor radio in his hands screaming at all the kids: “We’re on the radio! We’re on the radio! They’re playing our song on the radio!” They all stopped and gathered around the little transistor and then began dancing wildly on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Queens Road as everyone listened to the Jackson’s first chart record—“I Want You Back.”

It was the beginning of one of the most extraordinary success stories in the history of popular music. Within months, the Jacksons released, “ABC” which shot to Number 1 on the charts, and soon our friends and neighbors from Queens Road were off to super-stardom, with Michael and Janet eventually rising into the stratosphere of American music and popular culture.

Later, we saw a cloud descend over Michael’s life. In truth, I have no insight or knowledge about it—nor do my children or wife. Then, just when it seemed he was turning a new page with hopeful plans for a massive international tour, the bombshell came—Michael was dead. Like everyone, Pat and I were stunned—and deeply saddened. We have only wonderful memories of a precocious, fun-loving, enormously talented and endearing child who carried his own unique innocence and charm into our home on Queens Road. He came from what to us was a wonderful family, and I have only the fondest memories of our time as neighbors.

Through the years, Nels has remained friendly with Jermaine, and on occasion they still get together and reminisce about the days on Queens Road when our families, each looking for a start—in my case a new start—came together quite fortuitously and got to know each other before the good and bad of celebrity status made those kinds of relationships more difficult to sustain. Looking back, we were blessed to have had the Jackson family as our neighbors and our friends at that precarious moment in our lives. And with millions of others we will miss the enchanting young boy whose enormous charm and talent was so evident to all of us from the very beginning—a talent that despite his often troubled life would shine brighter than we could have ever imagined.

The Los Angeles run of Next was a success. Fortunately I received good reviews as Jimmy Coco’s replacement and was happy to be back with a significant part in a successful production. Things began to take off when Shirley Booth, whom Joyce had worked with in
Tomorrow the World
, enjoyed the show and recommended it to a talent scout from MGM. MGM was about to produce a television series with Herschel Bernardi, titled
Arnie
.