How I Got This Way (24 page)

It would be very quiet around here without him.

Chapter Twenty

CLAUDIA COHEN

I
like to think I’m a New Yorker. I mean, I was born about eight blocks from the studio where we’ve been doing our morning show for nearly three decades now. But my boyhood years here seemed to speed by so quickly, and then, after my high school graduation from Cardinal Hayes in the Bronx, I was
gone
! By now you know that I spent the next four years at Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana; then, immediately afterward, enlisted in the navy for two years and was stationed out near San Diego, California, when not at sea. I did briefly come back to the city for the summer of 1955 to work as an NBC page—which was exciting, to be sure—but then I got that call from Hollywood, which could not be ignored. Yes, it was only a job in a prop house for a local TV station, but at least it was a hands-on start in a new medium that I very much wanted to be part of. So, for me, it all really began out west. And then it just stayed out there—a twenty-eight-year run in California, where I had my share of terrific ups and gut-twisting downs, which is life in a nutshell, I guess.

So despite my Big Apple roots, when New York tempted me back, offering an exciting chance to start all over again, the transition wasn’t all that smooth. I used to make jokes on the show that I felt like an old elephant who had come home to die. But the fact was that I really
had
come home, and in time it would feel great again. I just had to get used to things. It helped that the new live morning show I was doing was more or less the same as my
A.M. Los Angeles
show. I wanted to hold on to that friendly “local TV feel,” and we did. In fact, we even held on to it after we went national five years later—on WABC-TV. (The irony of my remembering all this now is that we debuted on the first Monday in April 1983, and I’m writing these words on the Sunday before the first Monday in April 2011, marking another twenty-eight-year run, but this time in the town where I’d been born, so this difficult move had to have been worth the effort after all!) What also eased the transition was being reunited with Cyndy Garvey, who had been my morning cohost during the last few years at KABC-TV in L.A. As it turned out, she, too, happened to be a newly transplanted Manhattan resident, so in many ways it was easy to pick up where we’d left off—except that instead of our old routine of chatting each day about Hollywood (what else do they talk about out there?), we were now able to talk about a whole new world.

To put it mildly, New York was as different as could be: The city continually bursts with major events and daily manic complexities that make great lively morning-after stories to share during the show’s opening Host Chat segment. I wanted the city to become—
or at least feel like
—the third cohost of the show. I know that so many tourists come and go just to get a taste of its wild pace, wondering if they could actually ever live here. It’s a tough town, no question, and maybe most go home after their visit more grateful that they don’t stay. And then there are all those who never get here, but can’t help seeing it in the movies or on TV, and certainly reading about its nonstop action in the papers or on their computer screens. It’s pretty much the capital of the country, and to be honest, in many ways it’s also the capital of the world. Millions of people are here, always in such a hurry—it can be overwhelming for a newcomer and sometimes even for those who’ve lived here forever.

But from the time I hit town onward, there was one person who made all the difference for me. Quite simply, she unlocked the doors to the city, introduced me to the people and places I needed to know about. And it helped our show’s opening segments so much—to be able to talk about where I’d been the night before and who I’d met and what glittering adventures had taken place, never mind all the peculiar little things that can also happen when you’re just out wandering about or even when you stay behind the closed doors of your apartment. I wanted to capture the color and craziness of New York. And it worked, all because she helped get us started.

Of course, I’m talking about Claudia Cohen.

She was pure glamour, charm, wisdom, and warmth, all rolled into one remarkable lady. As the
New York Times
once characterized her, Claudia was “a crucial person to know if anybody who was somebody wanted to become even more of a somebody.” And was that ever the truth! She not only became our show’s “gossip girl,” but she was also the absolute best friend I had in those early days of my New York homecoming. She knew everybody and everything—including the good and bad about each one of them. She was a walking encyclopedia on who was who around town and all the specific ways they mattered most. She’d had a gossip column in the New York
Daily News
before running the famous (or sometimes infamous) Page Six celebrity column in the
New York Post
. Believe me, she had her eye on everyone.

And it was such a great luxury having her shepherd me around the city. Naturally, she made sure to introduce me to the storied Elaine’s restaurant on the Upper East Side—whose illustrious namesake owner, Elaine Kaufman, passed on not too long ago. But I still remember that first time Claudia escorted me into that now-shuttered place. There was Woody Allen entertaining a party of four at his usual table—or was he just staring at them? (The brilliant Wood-Man is, you know, a pretty quiet guy.) There, at another table in a remote corner, was Francis Ford Coppola sitting behind a typewriter, thoughtfully working on his next script. There were writers all over the place. I knew only their names—men and women whose work filled various newspapers and magazines and books, those who reported and interpreted all the things that made New York jump. And Claudia, like the instinctive super press agent she really was, would pull me toward each of them and give me a terrific over-the-top introduction like I was the next big star they simply had to know! Most of them would look at me for a moment and then continue talking amongst, or about, themselves. To them, I was just another TV guy trying to get one more talk show up and running in New York. Their disinterest practically screamed,
So what! Who cares?
(if I may borrow Joy Behar’s great catchphrase from
The View
). But Claudia’s zealous introductions made me sound like the new savior of morning television.
Which was embarrassing,
I don’t mind telling you. So many times I’d ask her, actually
plead
with her, to tone it down. I mean, I appreciated all she was trying to do, but it felt a little heavy-handed for this sophisticated crowd. And how could I ever live up to these accolades she was doling out, anyway?

But to be sure, there were many
very
exclusive parties and dinners I would have never been invited to if it weren’t for her. Same goes for so many impressive people I would’ve never gotten to know. She was a certifiable whirlwind who enjoyed covering those splashy star-studded events for our show, and she was a great asset to all of us there. Beyond that, I so admired a couple of Claudia’s personal traits that most of our viewers probably never knew about. Her loyalty to close friends, for instance, was unmatchable. One such friend was Steve Rubell, co-owner of the famous Studio 54 disco/nightclub, who went to prison for tax evasion—and every day during the thirteen months he spent behind bars, she wrote him cheerful notes and letters. Yes:
I said every day
.

Also, she was unafraid of a good fight. Like the time, in the early days of our show, when she and my old Hollywood friend Zsa Zsa Gabor locked horns in our tiny guest makeup room, which was equipped with
only one chair
—meaning that all the guests had to wait their turn, one at a time, to get their faces prepared for those bright TV studio lights. Zsa Zsa, well known for her temper, walked in while Claudia was in the chair and ordered her not only out of that chair but also out of the room! Claudia wasn’t about to budge and said so. As you can imagine, all hell broke loose. The shouting match made the front-page headline story of the
Daily News
and had everyone in town talking about it for weeks.

Anyway, at the end of my first summer in town, Joy and our girls—who’d initially stayed behind in L.A. to enjoy the summer and rent our home while I got the new show rolling—finally joined me around Labor Day and we stuffed ourselves into a two-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side, all of us hanging on as best we could while adjusting to that dramatic cross-country move. Joanna and J.J. had their troubles getting accustomed to the city. They missed their house in Los Angeles, their street with the palm trees and the backyard with the swimming pool. Hey, so did Joy and I! But now, forget it, those days were over. Joy and I would go out for an evening, and believe it or not, Gelman (then in his early twenties) would babysit for us. Afterward, when we got back, the girls would be asleep, but we would inevitably find notes they’d left on our pillows, scribbled with things like “Please, please, Mom and Dad, take us home!” The notes were so heart-wrenching and sad—and frankly, the change of location was plenty tough on all four of us. But in the second year we did move into a bigger apartment; the girls now had their own bedrooms and more space to move around—and bit by bit we started letting a little more New York magic come into our lives.

Joy, meanwhile, had finally met Claudia at her fabulous apartment overlooking Central Park. That particular day, we all watched from her terrace as the runners in the New York Marathon trotted along down below. The three of us instantly formed a great friendship. Soon enough, Claudia would be telling us about a special gentleman she’d met at the original Le Cirque restaurant, then located on Sixty-fifth Street. He was Ronald Perelman from Philadelphia, the incredibly successful business magnate who happened to own Revlon, among other companies—and he came on like gangbusters: flowers, cards, gifts, romantic dinners, you name it. Claudia loved the chase. She had never married, never really had the time for it, so this was something new and very important. Joy and I met and liked him very much; all of us who saw them together soon waited for the inevitable wedding.

And once Claudia and Ronald married, they bought the grandest house, I think, on the oceanfront of East Hampton. Those Hamptons on Long Island are a great place to be in the summer months. Practically every big shot in New York has a getaway house there. But no one loved to throw Hamptons parties more than Claudia. Over the years, Joy and I were lucky enough to be invited to those events and to spend glorious weekends there so many times. And Claudia was simply the best hostess in the world. She filled those weekends with aerobic training, tennis lessons, massages, wonderful food—anything you could imagine, and then some. And even after Claudia and Ron divorced, she remained in that big beautiful house, and her parties continued unabated.

There was always a great collection of New York characters on the guest list, and she took such great pains to dazzle them all. At dinners, every place setting had to be perfect. Each of those Saturday-night bashes was memorable—but equally fascinating were the Sunday-morning postparty wrap-ups. That was when those of us who had stayed over as her houseguests would gather around the breakfast table and review the events of the previous night, dissecting who said what to whom and who had too much to drink and so on. It was gossip, pure and simple—the very thing she did so well in the New York papers and on our show for years. But the laughs we had during those breakfasts were priceless!

Then later, as the years passed, Claudia became quite ill. You could see it developing over time, starting maybe around 2005. No one was sure what was happening to her, but it was increasingly noticeable, serious, and heartbreaking. Eventually we learned that she’d been stricken with ovarian cancer. She spent a lot of time in Germany looking for a cure. Her ex-husband, Ron Perelman, who always adored her, spared no expense in searching out new experimental treatments—but none worked. It was beyond sad. Here was this dynamic woman in the prime of her years, in love with her life, her family, and her friends—and unable to conquer this beast.

Joy and I saw her for the last time in the hospital. She was wearing a Yankee baseball cap and a robe, and even though she was in certain pain, she still had the courage to pretend everything was just fine, that it was just another Sunday in New York. Claudia died a short time after that visit, on June 15, 2007. It was a blow to everyone who knew her—and practically everyone did. At her funeral, the synagogue was packed with family and friends, numbering nearly one thousand mourners. Naturally, countless New York boldfaced names were there, too—Calvin Klein, Barbara Walters, Senator Al D’Amato, Matt Lauer, Jon Bon Jovi, Diane von Furstenberg, Bryant Gumbel, Rudy and Judith Giuliani, Penny Marshall, Lorraine Bracco, Graydon Carter, Liz Smith, Donald and Melania Trump—the list was overwhelming. And of course, most all of our show’s staffers—past and present—had also come to pay their respects, including Kelly with her husband, Mark Consuelos, Kathie Lee and Frank Gifford, the Gelmans, and the battalion of people behind the scenes who keep us going every day. Claudia had been part of the fabric of our lives in such a special way.

I was privileged to be asked to speak among the eulogists, who were quite eloquent and spoke beautifully about her. I followed them and talked about the quality of friendship Claudia displayed, the way she introduced me to New York, the way she wanted me to succeed—but above all, how she loved all the people there and always, if they were in her company or at her parties, wanted them to have the best time. She really cared about them. “She had a terrific zest for life,” I said. “And she made you enjoy your life more.” Then I told the story of how she once called me every night for two straight weeks before one of her parties, only to talk about who should sit next to Calvin Klein.
“Two weeks! Calvin Klein!”
I marveled. For the first time on that sad, solemn day, the mourners laughed long and loud. Claudia would have loved it.