If You Ask Me (10 page)

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A
t this moment in time, it seems somewhat current and choice for women to pair up with younger men. These gals are called “cougars.”

Well, animal lover that I am, a cougar I am not. All my life, even as a kid, I have preferred men older than I am.

Unfortunately, today I don’t think there
is
anyone older than I am!

Even at this age, once in a while I meet a man who seems a trifle more interesting than usual. Nothing untoward—just someone who might be fun to know a little better. I’ve even thought (
to myself
) that it might be nice if he asked me to lunch or dinner, perhaps. Then reality kicks in and it cracks me up. This guy is probably a much younger man—maybe only eighty—and not about to even look my way.

So I don’t worry very much about whether I’m going to be asked to lunch. I know I had a rare thing in my relationship with Allen. In fact, my castmates on
Hot in Cleveland
seemed so curious about him—and asked so many questions about him!—that I finally had to wonder out loud, “Why do you always ask me about Allen?”

The answer was simple: “We love the look you get on your face when you talk about him.”

ABC PHOTO ARCHIVES/ABC VIA GETTY IMAGES

A
llen is always with me.

The other night, a dear friend, Mark Alexander, called me to say he had seen the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie I did,
The Lost Valentine
.

He said he was surprised to see me doing something dramatic.

“At one point, when you were crying so hard, you glanced up and it stopped me cold. I knew who was in your mind.”

I think the toughest thing about loss, and the hardest challenge, is the isolation you feel in its aftermath. You spent so much time sharing your life with someone, talking through issues, even disagreeing about things, and all of a sudden there’s a hole. There’s nobody there and you think,
Well, who’s in charge?

And that’s tough because you don’t fully trust your own judgment.

That’s why it’s great to have people like Jeff Witjas in my life. And why it was so great to have Jerry Martin, whom I lost just a few weeks ago. Jerry and I would talk to each other around dinnertime almost every night. I could get things off my chest that I couldn’t necessarily air to anyone else.

The older you get, the fewer of those there are.

I always thought I would be the one who would go—particularly with the Golden Girls, because I was the oldest. But then we lost all of them, and I’m the only one left and I’m still functioning. I think,
How did that happen?

MARIO ROMO/GLOBE PHOTOS

On
Mama’s Family
with Vicki Lawrence and Rue McClanahan.

NBCU PHOTO BANK

T
here are all kinds of different friendships.

With a new friend, you start to tell an anecdote and there’s a whole explanation that needs to go with it so they’ll understand.

But with old friends, you don’t have to do the back-story, because you talk so often that they know what’s going on in your life—or maybe they were there at the time.

Then there are the business friends—whose job it is to tell you where you’re wrong, whereas your other friends may just agree with you.

Friendship takes time and energy if it’s going to work. You can luck into something great, but it doesn’t last if you don’t give it proper appreciation. Friendship can be so comfortable, but nurture it—don’t take it for granted.

My closest friends have always been boys or men. As a kid, I wasn’t interested particularly in what the girls were talking about. I had to watch myself. I didn’t want to get a reputation that I don’t like women, because that’s not true at all. I just like guys best.

That’s not politically correct these days. But it’s still fun.

KEVIN WINTER/GETTY IMAGES

J
eff Witjas and I met at the William Morris Agency when I was a client. He wasn’t my agent, but I knew him from the company. When William Morris began to disintegrate, Jeff moved over to APA and set up shop there.

My long-term agent, whom I adore, and who is still one of my dearest friends, Tony Fantozzi, was one of the partners at William Morris, but then he retired. So I inherited a new representative with whom I wasn’t really connecting.

I kept getting calls from APA: Would I come in and take a meeting?

They weren’t from Jeff, but I knew where they were generated from.

Tony, who was no longer with William Morris, said in his inimitable tough-guy Italian accent, “Why don’t you take the meeting?”

So I went down to APA, and I went into this boardroom for a meeting with all their executives seated around the table. I didn’t have to explain my work or what I’d done or my background. They’d all done their homework. I was really impressed by that, and very gratified. So we talked quite a bit, and then they made the formal request: Would I consider coming to the agency?

I said, “Let me think it over.”

After the meeting, Tony picked me up and we went back to the Beverly Hills Hotel and had a beer and talked about it. I explained to him that I was really impressed at how they had worked at being informed about my career to date.

Tony said, “Why don’t you go with them?”

And so Jeff became my representative at APA, and I haven’t stopped working since.

We’re a great team. He never lets me go on a trip—for instance, to New York—without accompanying me. Not just as a protector but as an arranger—he takes care of all the appearances and sets everything up while we’re in town. He’s a delightful travel companion, because he never lets me get overloaded but he still gives me the freedom to do things that are important to me.

On one occasion, we were spending three nights in New York. We’re both fans of Chinese food, so that first night we found this wonderful Chinese restaurant and were as happy as could be. As you know, there are
many
good restaurants in New York City. So on the second night we were trying to decide where to go to eat and somehow decided to go back to the same place.

The third night, we didn’t even discuss it—we just went right back to the Chinese place. And the next time we were to go to New York, he called in advance from California and set up a reservation.

It’s obvious how well we get along.

When we get home, I call his wife and daughter and thank them for loaning him to me.

We have a lot in common, and I rely on him implicitly.

I trust his judgment more than I trust my own!

©PATRICK MC MULLAN.COM

L
et me share another animal-related episode that I revisit in my mind from time to time, like a mental DVD.

BraveHearts Therapeutic Riding & Educational Center is a fine therapeutic riding school in Chicago dedicated to giving disabled children a new perspective, and I was invited to host their annual fund-raiser. I was familiar with BraveHearts because the former chairman of Morris Animal Foundation, Dan Marsh, and his wife, Dayle, are on the board. A few years earlier, they had enlisted my help on behalf of a beautiful young horse named Butterscotch who had terribly crippled hooves—a result of flounder, followed by a bad case of pneumonia. There wasn’t money for the necessary medical procedures at the time, but Dan and Dayle made such a case for him, I couldn’t resist getting involved. I underwrote the surgery and he made a complete recovery. When the invitation came to host the benefit, my first thought was
I’ll get to meet Butterscotch!!
and off I went.

I arrived in Chicago the day of the fund-raiser and that afternoon was taken to the ranch for a tour of the school.

Riding therapy enables children who have spent time looking up from a hospital bed to get an entirely different view of the world, looking down from the back of a horse. They are led around a corral by a young person walking alongside. Instead of boring exercises in a bleak hospital environment, they receive the same benefits in an exciting and stimulating setting.

As the tour ended, I headed straight for the stables to find my friend, Butterscotch. They had warned me that he had a tendency to nip, but when I walked up to his stall he put that velvet nose in my hands and seemed to appreciate the kisses.

I met his trainer, Tom Chambers, who invited me to see a program he had put together, “with your pony, Butterscotch.”

I followed Tom out to a large corral in the back. I was told, “Just stand still in the middle of the corral and follow my instructions.” He then signaled for the other trainers to bring in Butterscotch. The red horse, however, had his own ideas and it took four burly men to finally manage to push him into the corral. He galloped at full tilt around and around inside the corral fence—with me turning to watch him, Tom standing beside me.