Here's the Story LP: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice (12 page)

One Flew into the Cuckoo’s Nest

C
laudia was dating James Caan, who had been one of Hollywood’s hottest and busiest actors since his sizzling turn in
The Godfather
in 1972. He was also an enthusiastic partier, with an appetite for fun that matched his gregarious personality. He and Claudia met at the Playboy Mansion, and I subsequently joined them for weekends at Jimmy’s ranch in the Las Vegas desert, where we got obliterated.

I fell in love with actor Gregory Harrison. It was love at first sight. He was my type: dark, handsome, and good-natured. He liked sports, played guitar, and was incredibly romantic. Our affair was hot and heavy. I actually thought he was the one I would marry. But once again my drug use got in the way. Some days were lovely, and other days I was like a cyclone tearing through a house. There were times when I was so coked out of my mind I wouldn’t let him into my apartment. I also blew off dates. I can still picture a time when he stood downstairs at the front desk and had security buzz me over and over, pleading with me to let him up. I wouldn’t.

He ended up walking away from the relationship. I didn’t admit that drugs had ruined a serious relationship. Instead I told myself that I needed to chill out, take some time to recover from the breakup, and get healthy. So I went to Hawaii with my brother Kevin.

Now in his mid-thirties, Kevin was still trying to figure out what to do with his life. Psychologically, his swings were bigger than mine. His drug use was heavier, too. My mother, who’d wanted to get him professional help since he dropped out of high school, began openly worrying he might kill himself. Both of my parents were scared he might do something crazy.

I felt a strong kinship with him, stronger than I can rationalize. It was just that the more lost he seemed, the more empathy I felt. After we landed in Hawaii, our first stop was the health-food store. We picked up a load of fresh fruit and juices, vowing to cleanse our systems. We ran on the beach, lay in the sun, and played guitar at night. Somehow we reasoned that doing mushrooms also fit into this regime.

The theory was that mushrooms opened the doors to a deeper, clearer understanding of life. We hiked to the seven sacred pools in Hana, where we’d heard that mushrooms grew in cow paddies. It had rained recently, and the mushrooms were all over. We brought a bota bag of wine, which we used to clean the ’shrooms before we ate them.

We tripped for several hours while gathering more mushrooms. I remember being down on my hands and knees and feeling connected to the earth as I dug through the soft, moist ground. On the way down the trail—there were only a couple trails in and out—other hikers asked what we were doing and I was so joyously high that I told them about the mushrooms.

“They’re the greatest thing in the world,” I gushed. “You have to try them!”

We met two gay guys on the trail, and I gave them a handful of hallucinogenic truffles. A few hours later, Kevin and I saw them again at the general store. They still had a bit of a glow in their eyes as I asked if they took them.

“Did we take them?” one of the guys said, rolling his head back as if he were surveying the sky.

His boyfriend hugged me and said, “God bless you, child.”

Kevin and I made subsequent Hawaiian getaways for the same purpose. Each one was intended for getting into shape. I wonder how many times I would’ve had to go there before I realized that I returned more strung out than I was when I arrived. It was a different kind of exhaustion. I looked great physically, but my brain was fried.

After returning from one so-called vacation, I went to work on the movie
Skatetown, U.S.A.,
which starred Scott Baio, Flip Wilson, Ruth Buzzi, and was billed as “the Rock and Roller Disco Movie of the Year.” Like a disco, there was a lot of cocaine being done on the set. Many people were open about it. Unable to resist temptation, I fell back into my same old routine. Soon I was missing days on the set. Few people in Hollywood were so straight that they made a stink about actors getting high. But God help the person who cost the production money by not showing up.

I didn’t think I was above such behavior. I simply didn’t think. My friend Carin’s uncle Bill Levey was directing the movie. Ray Stark, who’d produced my first play when I was a kid, was the producer. He had become one of the most powerful men in the business. He also had one of the more explosive tempers. I was nervous every time he was on the set.

Plus I was already self-conscious from having to do most of my scenes wearing tight short shorts and a tube top. To ensure that I was superskinny, I did coke and popped diet pills. I got below 110 pounds, which was too thin for me. But I was of the opinion that I couldn’t be too thin.

I thought I was doing a good job keeping myself together, but I was only fooling myself. Bill Levey covered for me when I showed up late or flaked altogether. But it got to the point where the whole set talked openly about my erratic work habits and unreliability. One day Ray took me aside and said he wanted to take a walk with me. We went around the corner from the soundstage. Then he stopped and turned toward me.

“Maureen, I know what you’re doing,” he said.

“You do?” I said, scared and trying to hold back tears.

“This is a business,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll do better.”

“It’s not about doing better,” he said. “Listen to me carefully. I want to make sure you understand. You aren’t showing up for work. You’re behaving irresponsibly. If you don’t go get help, I’m going to make it so you never work another day in this business.”

He paused to let the thought of losing my livelihood sink in. I didn’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t work.

“Do you understand me?” he asked.

“I do,” I said.

I
didn’t know what to do. Nor did I know how to get help or who to turn to for advice. I felt trapped. I couldn’t lie or pretend my way through the situation as I had done every time up to that point. With so much at stake, I turned to Carin’s parents, both of whom I respected. They made calls and found a hospital in the Valley that treated drug problems. Then they did what I was too scared and ashamed to do myself: They told my parents.

I can’t imagine the devastation my parents felt, especially my mother. They knew that I wasn’t in good shape, but this was confirmation that their daughter was plagued with the kind of problems that had cursed various members of our family. They didn’t say anything; privately, I’m sure they cried. But to me, they offered nothing but support. They closed ranks and let me know how much I was loved.

On top of the guilt I felt for causing them pain and worry, I was frightened to death by the reality that I was going someplace for treatment. I came up with umpteen excuses to get out of it. Except I took Ray Stark at his word. I knew not going was the end of my career. Without my career…

I didn’t want to think about that.

I drove myself to the small psychiatric hospital in Van Nuys, parked my car in the lot behind the building, and broke down. I was scared and sick to my stomach. My fear that I might one day go insane had finally come true. I thought of how my grandmother had died in a mental institution after losing her mind. I had a sense of inevitability, like I had arrived.

The staff was waiting for me inside. It was more proof of inevitability; they were expecting me! I was shown into a room where a nurse went through the bag of clothes and belongings I had brought even though I insisted I wasn’t hiding anything. It didn’t matter. Everything was taken away from me. Next, a doctor examined me, wrote down the drugs I said I’d abused (coke, diet pills, quaaludes), and then nodded blankly when I said that I hadn’t done anything for two days.

I stayed for a week. Even though I was assigned a private room, I was aware that almost everyone knew who I was. They whispered and talked about it openly as if I didn’t have ears. One day we took a field trip to a park in Pasadena. As we stepped off the bus, several mothers pushing strollers stared at me. I immediately asked to be allowed to get back on the bus lest someone ask for an autograph. When the attendants refused, I felt like I was losing whatever scrap of dignity I had left.

Just like in the movie
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,
a nurse gave us meds twice a day in a little white cup. I had no idea what they were, and when I asked, the nurse simply said they were to help me. I called home from a pay phone in the hall and expressed concern to my parents. But they’d been called separately by the hospital’s doctor and told that I was still doing coke, which wasn’t true. It made me feel like I really had lost my mind.

On the day I checked out, I drove myself from the hospital to the Santa Monica pier, where
Skatetown
was shooting scenes. I assumed everyone knew where I’d been, and I was given a warm welcome back. Many, including Bill Levey, expressed their concern and hope that I felt better. I wanted to keep it quiet and move on. My first scene was with
Welcome Back, Kotter
’s Ron Palillo. We were in a car and about to run through our first take when he took hold of my wrist.

“Maureen, you still have your hospital bracelet on,” he said.

“Oh my God!”

I stiffened, mortified. Then Ron burst into his unmistakably Hor-shack laugh. Hearing that right in my ear, I laughed, too. Everyone offered support. One day, Bill Levey brought Richard Dreyfuss to the set. The thirty-one-year-old actor, at the top of Hollywood thanks to winning a Best Actor Oscar for
The Goodbye Girl,
was starring in the hit
Close Encounters of the Third Kind,
and had his own struggles. He shared those stories with me.

I related to those stories. I also respected Richard. He managed to hit a note in me that others missed. At his urging, I attended a couple of AA meetings.

I
started to think that maybe I could stay sober. It was a daunting task. The people who were rooting for me were the same people with whom I’d gotten high a couple weeks earlier. Most of them were still getting high. But I made an effort, and my willpower seemed rewarded when I auditioned for a small part in the movie
The Idolmaker,
a drama about music’s Frankie Avalon era.

The buzz in Hollywood on the film was that it was a hot project. Taylor Hackford was making his directorial debut, and Ray Sharkey was already cast in the lead as a rock Svengali who turned hot guys into stars.

Hundreds of girls interviewed for the same role as me, but the casting director asked me back the next day. I prepared by talking to several reporters at fan magazines who used to write about me during the
Brady
days. I wanted to be great. Then I went in the following afternoon and nailed my audition. I had never been better, or prouder of myself. Afterward, I called my agent, Sandy Bressler, and gushed, “I really can do this. I really can act.”

However, in the interim between the audition and filming, the lure of old habits proved too strong, and I started doing coke again. My need to do it, and do it in greater quantities, seemed to be more powerful than before. I stayed up for three nights prior to my first scene on the movie. I remember looking out my apartment windows and seeing the sun come up. Nothing was worse than knowing I had to be someplace in an hour and feeling wasted from not having slept or showered for days.

I only had two full days of work on the picture, so I didn’t let myself think about bailing. Somehow I made it to the set and did my scenes opposite Peter Gallagher, who was making his first feature-film appearance. If he knew I was blitzed, he graciously didn’t mention it. Neither did Ray Sharkey, who spent time with me off camera that day. He was probably having problems, too. But I was paranoid that everyone knew I was messed up, and I got pissed off at myself for blowing an opportunity.

Nearly a week passed before they needed me again. Although I was straight and rested that second day, I’ve always believed Taylor Hackford was disappointed in the performance I gave compared to my audition. Why didn’t I have more self-control even when I knew my behavior was self-destructive? I had no faith in myself—no faith, period.

In that frame of mind, I chose guys for the wrong reasons. I was at a party when I spotted writer-actor David Ladd across the room and knew I wanted to be with him. I felt like it was love at first sight.

But I confused lust with love, which explains why we didn’t last. I didn’t want a real relationship as much as I wanted a man who would keep me company
and
keep the party going.

That explains my relationship with an older, talented, and very accomplished man in the music industry. For the purpose of this story, I’ll refer to him as Colin.

We met through a mutual friend, a girl I knew from Frank’s, and we had instant chemistry. It wasn’t just physical, though that was nice, too. He was slightly over six feet tall, with longish, Rod Stewart–like hair, and he spoke with a British accent. But with Frank as our common denominator, we shared an even more potent attraction, and on our first date it was pretty clear from what we did in the back of a limo that both of us were into coke.

I was just as intoxicated by his world. A master at making records, he slept late, worked at night, and seemed to live in either the back of a limo or at the console in a recording studio. At the time we got together, he was working on albums with four or five well-known bands. All were FM-radio superstars. The music was phenomenal, and the drugs were better. The two were inseparable.

And so were Colin and I. We hung out at night and returned to his place in the wee hours. He sent me home in a car the first few times. But it wasn’t long before I went inside with him and stayed the rest of the night. We got close quickly. We told each other stories. We shared secrets. We also shared each others’ bad habits. We were like lights that never got turned off.

He took me to parties at homes rented by some of rock’s most famous personalities, and I hung out at recording sessions. I liked this world. Rock stars were fun, and they tended to let pretty girls get away with anything. I remember getting obliterated in the studio, sniffing lines off the engineering board when no one was looking. I also sang background vocals on several songs.