Judy & Liza & Robert & Freddie & David & Sue & Me... (16 page)

Since we both knew his divorce wasn't happening, I was careful not to let it sound like I was judging him. Thank goodness he couldn't afford a divorce! I told him we would remain friends, and we actually shook hands on it. Once I felt secure again, I asked myself some questions I'd been avoiding. Did fucking David improve my professional prospects? Was I trying to make it to the top on my back? I hated these questions, and disliked the answers even more, but when I finally had the breathing room to examine whether or not I thought the affair had helped my career, I knew the answer: You betcha! David felt he owed me.

Guilt was the currency David traded in. I got promoted instead of married. If I had been some complete dummy without any potential, I doubt the affair would have gotten me as much as a free pass to Radio City Music Hall. But because I was dumb only about inconsequential personal things, the affair gave me a leg up—so to speak.

However, once it was over and done with, he didn't delay (nor has any man I have ever known, for that matter) securing the next body for his bed. He moved on immediately. That sums up for me how much I had mattered. First he went a few more rounds with Judy, and when that was finally over after the London episode, he settled on the wife of his best friend, the real-estate magnate Lew Rudin.

*   *   *

I don't find it strange that all three of David's wives died of cancer, especially if there's any truth to the mind-body-connection theories. David brought misery to all the lives that he touched in a personal way, most notably Judy's. I escaped that, more than likely because Judy's exposure to him toughened me. I already knew who he was. He became my experiment rather than the other way around, and rejecting him let me know I was on the way to becoming the independent woman I wanted to be. I was pleased I did it with kindness. Having said that, I'm ashamed of having had an affair with a married man. It wasn't for me. I'm sorry I did it then, and I never did it again.

Nor is it at all strange to me that he committed suicide. And why? Because he brought misery as well to most of the lives he touched in a professional way, and it cost him. He lost most of his friends. He could send three, four, or more studio executives to bed believing they had a deal with him only to find out the next morning that not only didn't they have a deal, the deal they thought they were negotiating was no more than a figment of David's imagination. He persuaded himself that people didn't talk to one another, and he could say whatever he pleased. But people did talk to one another.

In a town like Hollywood where a rumor is old news within minutes, this wasn't good for the reputation of the company he was working for—be it FFA, CMA, or Columbia Pictures, nor was it good for agents in general. The executives in New York and LA knew he was a scoundrel, but he was their scoundrel. For a long time they closed ranks around him because of the important stars he represented (like Newman and Streisand), even when he put their backs up against the wall by making deals that were too tough—because when he finally did make a deal, he went for the kill. It wasn't necessary. The stars knew he was a bastard, but he was their bastard. So they, too, put up with him until they couldn't, until they caught him in lies or broken promises.

In the end everyone knew he was a louse, and the day he needed friends—well after he had left the agency business, and Columbia—they were gone. His debts finally caught up with him.

When he borrowed from Peter to pay Paul, instead of paying back people he already owed, he opened new accounts to support his grand unearned existence. He knew this would catch up with him. He would be punished. He needed that. It felt as if he intentionally drew a net of despair around himself so tight that he and everybody in the higher echelons of showbiz knew he was going down in disgrace. No longer his friends or admirers, the people he owed were coming at him from all sides. It would not be long before he was facing bankruptcy and, more than likely, jail. Thirty-two years after he was my bed partner, he ended his life alone in a bed at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles.

I have never again in my life run into anyone whose considerable charm and great intelligence, coupled with such ugly instincts, produced so much unhappiness. David was one of a kind, thank goodness. He was never able to put so much as one single toe on high moral ground, the only real estate that matters. Freddie and I talked about it from time to time. Freddie thought that one day David would slit his wrists in a warm tub. I disagreed. I thought when that fateful day came, he would blow his brains out. And so he did. His suicide was exquisitely planned and flawlessly executed. Just like every other awful thing he did. I did not shed a tear.

 

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

A Very Sad Day

The day Liza married Peter Allen ended the Judy Garland chapter in my life. It was March 3, 1967. I had now been representing twenty-one-year-old Liza for five and a half successful years. I am jumping ahead to include you in Li's wedding because I feel I can't move on until I put a period at the end of my involvement with Judy.

Mark Herron, a tall, thin, attractive gay man, became Judy's husband in 1965. They were traveling together when they discovered Peter and his friend Chris Bell, billed together as the Allen Brothers, performing in Hong Kong. Judy was impressed. She brought the two young singers to London, where they became her opening act, and she introduced Peter to Liza.

With Judy's blessing, Peter and Liza got engaged quickly. I never understood it, except to say that since the introduction came from Judy, it was paramount to Liza, who forever sought Judy's approval. However, like Mark, Peter was also gay, but perhaps not quite ready yet to own it. Still, Liza must have known. Even though very young, Liza was out there sexually. Way out there! One would have to say promiscuous. She was a healthy, strapping, beautiful (though not in the classic sense) young woman. She and Peter seemed blissfully happy in each other's company. They were inseparable; they ran all over town together. I found it hard to find her when I needed to. Were they in love? Was sex a part of it? I don't have the answers.

Both Judy and Liza each married gay men. I can understand why Judy Garland married the brilliant Vincente Minnelli, who is reputed to have shown up in Hollywood wearing purple eye shadow. Vincente made Judy feel beautiful, and he made her exquisite in every film he directed. Liza was their love child. There's that, at least, but that's all I can account for. There is no point in my dwelling on what I thought were weird mismatches. I asked my beloved gay friend Albert Poland, a great general manager in theater who started the original Judy Garland Fan Club, what this kind of marriage was about, and he couldn't come up with an answer either. (And, by the way, Albert knows many more details about Judy's life than I do.)

No one in Liza's immediate or extended family stood up and said they would give Liza her wedding. Judy couldn't afford it, and Vincente was not heard from. And no word from anyone on Peter's side of the aisle. I watched and waited, but there was only a shattering silence. I was heartbroken for Liza, and so I decided I would do it. Li agreed that my apartment—now a lavishly furnished pad on fashionable Park Avenue that my second husband's corrupt music money helped pay for—would be a suitable setting. Liza designed the dress she wanted to wear, she and Peter chose the man who would perform the ceremony, and I took care of everything else.

The day came, the guests arrived, and Liza never looked more beautiful. When all were assembled, Judy arrived. I opened the door, looked at her, and wanted to cry. The toll her life had taken on her was enormous. I had seen her last at CBS in 1964. Here it was only three years later, and she, at forty-five—in the prime of life—looked twenty-five years older. More. Fifty years. I don't exaggerate. Healthy women of eighty look much better than she did that day. She was wrinkled and pale and so wasted that I momentarily lost the ability to speak, to graciously welcome her into my home. Her elegant outfit could not hide how emaciated she was. I doubt she could have weighed more than ninety pounds. Drugs have to have been the reason she was this suddenly ancient-looking casualty. Her face was overly made up, the makeup accentuating the skeletal holes in her cheeks, just barely covered with skin. She was macabre, and had to be supported by Mark Herron, her husband, as she walked. I took her bony hand in mine, and she smiled as I led her into my living room. I imagined she was in pain.

The old familiar chill seized my body, turning my hands to ice. I took a bathroom break to run my hands under hot water and cry into a towel. Regardless of all she and I had been through together, it was devastating to see her in this reduced state. I blanked on the wedding. Fear and loathing and pity and despair all got mixed up together, and for the rest of the afternoon I operated on automatic pilot. It was an event fraught with so much emotion it blocks out my memory.

I do, however, remember trying to make myself see another Judy, willing myself to see Esther Smith, the girl next door whom I adored. I wanted her once again to be young and beautiful and back in Technicolor St. Louis falling in love with her handsome neighbor, John Truett, while I, a little girl of eight, was falling in love with her. That was a sustainable love that endured throughout my childhood and then some. And now, for the balance of that afternoon, I wanted the dream and not the reality. It had to be Esther who was here in my living room to honor her little girl; I needed to push away everything that was wrong with the world. I try not to think of Judy looking as ghastly as she did at Li's wedding. If I conjure that up, it still hurts.

If I once believed that I'd developed immunity to feeling anything at all about Judy because of what we'd been through together, I knew that afternoon that I was wrong. If I believed that the business had turned me into a hard-hearted Hannah, I was mistaken. Nor had David wrenched away the remains of some tender feelings I had for Judy. I found out that March day between the hours of three and five that I wasn't nearly as tough as I thought. And why was I grateful to know I still cared? Because it made me aware all over again of how important she'd been to me. She was the one—more so than anyone—who had made me aware of my life—what it should and should not be.

I was grateful that my chores as a hostess kept me wholly busy. But I also refrained from conversing with Judy because I feared she harbored residual bad feelings toward me. That was ridiculous, and I'm sorry I wasted my opportunity to be kind to her. At the end of the afternoon I again took her bony, damp hand into mine to congratulate her. Judy Garland, on the last day that I would ever see her in person, broke my heart.

*   *   *

Judy died not long after. Her funeral was held one city block away from where I live. I couldn't make myself go. I went downstairs in the course of my daily routine, and for two days saw a line that extended up Madison Avenue, turned the corner, and went all the way to Fifth. The line kept moving, but it never got shorter. What a tribute! How wonderful that all these people loved her and wanted to honor her. I thought back and was appreciative of her greatness, but that appreciation was larded with the memories of bad times.

I crossed Fifth Avenue at one point and watched the line from a bench just outside Central Park and pondered the same things I had wondered about so many times in the past—mostly when I was watching her perform. How would that audience feel if they knew what I knew? Would they then still be sympathetic? Why could I not mourn her now when I mourned her the day Li married, and she was then still alive? Would I always be stuck with this conflict raging inside me: loving her one day, hating her the next? Had I allowed Judy to make me feel this way?' Who did I care about anymore? Could one, I wondered, be in showbiz, be hard nosed, hard boiled, pushy, and pushed around and still care about the people who did the pushing? I don't know. But those are generic questions, and Judy was a special case. For good or bad, there was only ever one Judy Garland.

 

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Sometimes

Allow me to take a moment here to indulge myself and simply consider how I feel about Judy at this moment.

As I said at the start, Judy Garland remains the lens through which I have seen, lived, and dealt with my life. But as I've gained distance and experience, I now view our relationship without the same emotional involvement. However, it's difficult to separate the person from the performances, which makes it hard to love Judy as I did when I was a child. My reaction today varies depending on the mood I'm in. The word “sometimes” is one that I can't be without when I describe how I feel.

Sometimes a simple thing I've done a thousand times will trigger some Judy ugliness—like picking up a bread knife. Sometimes I cannot be riding the Fifth Avenue bus as it passes the Plaza Hotel without thinking of putting out the fire Judy set to her nightgown there. And it was there that I pulled her off a high-floor ledge when she tried to go out a window. Let others debate her motives, I'm happy on the days when I pass by the Plaza and see only a building. It happens sometimes.

Sometimes when I see the old Carnegie Hall album featured on a Web site, it reminds me of the magnificent performance whose equal I have never seen again, but then sometimes it reminds me of Boston. Sometimes I can enjoy the old films when I'm channel surfing, but then sometimes I have to move on quickly because I know how different the image is from the person. I do not forget that sometimes I felt immensely sorry for Judy Garland. I remember her lying in my lap sobbing that she had worked so hard for so long and had nothing to show for it. But then sometimes I will see a limo on the street and remember the cars she would not allow me to dismiss, which waited, constantly changing shifts of drivers, outside her hotel for days. She tore my heart out with her tears, but finally my pity was engaged not because of the tears but because she simply didn't understand that the bad choices were all hers. The true sadness was that she didn't get it.