Let's Just Say It Wasn't Pretty (14 page)

Cher once said, “There is only value to having the look you have when you are young and no value to the look you have when you are older.” Who can argue with Cher? She’s not wrong. But she’s not right, either. What she is, is right for herself. Diana Vreeland claimed she approved of plastic surgery, noting that none of her friends could understand why she hadn’t had it done herself. But, Vreeland added, she had her own reasons.

What were her reasons? I know what they were. They were hers. All of us over sixty-five have our reasons. I respect Cher’s choices as much as I respect mine.

I tell myself I’m free to do whatever the hell I want with my body. Why not? I may be a caricature of my former self; I’m still wearing wide-belted plaid coats, horn-rimmed glasses, and turtlenecks in the summertime. So what? Nobody cares but me. I don’t see anything wrong with face-lifts or Botox or fillers. They just erase the hidden battle scars. I intend to wear mine, sort of. At least that’s what I say to myself.

Let’s take the example of being in your sixties but looking forty, like Ricky. Kathryn wanted to know who Ricky was. “Duh! Ralph Lauren’s wife.” “Is it his second marriage?” I set her straight: “They’ve been married almost fifty years.” We marveled at her great hair, thick and long; her dazzling smile; her straight-as-an-arrow patrician nose, so unfair; but most of all, her fantastic figure in her Ralph Lauren pantsuit. Okay. Okay. We agreed. What woman in her sixties doesn’t want to look like Ricky Lauren? I do. But the awful truth is this: no matter what I do, I’m never going to look like Ricky Lauren. Kathryn and I are going to have to let that dream go. And we did. We made it to Sabarsky’s. They didn’t serve apple pie, but the strudel was delicious. Grace would have ordered it hot, with vanilla ice cream on the side. And Ricky Lauren? Ricky’s beauty will always be high on my want list.

Yep. I belong to a group of sixty-five and older show business folk. Sometimes I wish I could talk to my contemporaries about how they’re grappling with their senior years. Do they wake up every morning and, like me, look in the mirror with a big sigh? Do they? Do they ask themselves what old age is for? I do. I think I know the answer. It’s for grace—not Grace my friend, but now that I think of it, Grace was a perfect example of generosity, goodwill, and poise, and isn’t that what grace is? No one wants to be called doddering, or past their prime, or long in the tooth. No one wants to be
reminded that they’re no spring chicken. No one wants to be a dilapidated, broken-down, beat-up, out-of-date, cast-off, worn-out, stale example of a human being. We worked hard to become who we are. But with the accolades behind, and the honors of the past in front, what is our present? For those of us who’ve been separated from reality by fame, being old is a great leveling experience. I don’t mind being taken down a peg or two, but what about the physical effects?

Every one of us is going through bodily decline. We’re less active. We have wrinkles and liver spots. Most of us, I would venture to say, have tried to remedy these unsightly problems. And why not? Our hair color has changed from black, brown, red, and yellow to gray and white all over. In most cases that, too, has been rectified—with the exception of Michael Douglas, who is one silver-haired fox. I am a sorry example of the truth that women, as well as men, are losing their hair. Not only do we have reduced circulatory system function but we’re losing lung capacity, too. It’s all pretty tragic. Our immune systems are shutting down, and I don’t know about anyone else, but there are changes in my vocal cords that seem to be producing a strange “old person” voice, which I hate worse than my envy of Michael Douglas’s hair. Every one of us has a heightened risk of injury from falls, hearing loss, diminished eyesight, and, yes, as if I didn’t know it, we all have reduced mental abilities, too. Thanks for nothing.

I have become friends with some of my show business contemporaries. The most unlikely is Jack Nicholson. When I first met him, in my thirties, friendship was not possible. He was Jack Nicholson. I didn’t want to be his friend. I wanted him to kiss me. It didn’t happen. In my mid-fifties we met again, when Nancy Meyers cast us in
Something’s Gotta Give
. On the set I listened to his stories about being raised in a beauty salon surrounded by women. He listened to mine. We commiserated about old friends and how to make new ones. We played around with the idea of forming a pseudo-salon in Los Angeles, where we would gather like-minded people to discuss topics of the day. Jack and I still meet every month or so for lunch at his home on top of a hill. His unassuming California ranch house, built in the 1960s, is filled with paintings by Henri Matisse, Picasso, Maynard Dixon, Andy Warhol, and Tamara de Lempicka.

A few years ago, I wrote him a little note of friendship. The sentiments remain the same today.

“I’ve been thinking about you and friendship,” it began. “Here’s what it means to me. It means from down here at the bottom of the hill to way up there at the top of the mountain, I’ll be watching your back. I’ll be looking out for you. Think of me as your Palisades rep, your gal Friday on the West Side.

“Unlike me, you are not a person who resides in the world of right and wrong. You are not bound by moral platitudes.
Your authenticity has been earned by the choices you’ve made. These choices show on your face. Your face, your great face, challenges standardization. Looking at you for as long as I have has made it easy for me to come to the conclusion that your face is the best face I’ve ever seen. Not only because you’re pretty—and you are pretty, Jack—but mainly because over the years your face has morphed into something magnificent. I believe that at the heart of this magnificence one would
not
find the bad boy genius actor who has dazzled us, but the good man. You may not like hearing this, but you are
a good man
. In spite of all your fame, talent, wealth, and temptation … you are a good man. You are
my
good man. And even though words like ‘good’ and ‘decent’ have come to represent sappy Hallmark cards … they mean everything to me, especially now that I’m older. Based on accumulated evidence collected over years of watching both of us rise, stumble, fall, and get up again, you remain a friend. As we plow headfirst into the so-called golden years I continue to think, rethink, and re-rethink you. It’s been a great challenge. My interest in you will never decline. As the years go by, like I said before, I’ll be watching your back and, might I add, loving you from down here.”

Kathryn had to get back home. I had a few hours to kill, so I took a chance and called Woody. He was about to leave for France to make a movie, something he’s done virtually every
year since 1965. What could we do together before he headed off? I asked him if he wanted to take a walk on Madison Avenue, like we used to. We started at Seventieth Street. We didn’t hold hands, like the old days, but I swear he wore what must have been one of his beige bucket hats from
Annie Hall
. I had on my Marni dress, sans the Neptune Society letter from Tim Nicholson, over a black long-sleeved turtleneck and leggings, along with Prada boots, a big fat cross dangling around my neck, and the requisite wide-brimmed black hat. We looked in the windows of stores, starting with the Ralph Lauren complex on Seventy-second. We passed the Whitney. We took in the people. They took us in, as well. When we reached Campbell’s mortuary, we looked at each other. He was seventy-seven. I was sixty-seven. Where did the time go? We walked into a corner deli, where he bought me a vanilla ice cream and a chocolate milk for himself.

Around Seventy-ninth Street, we ran into Paul McCartney and his wife, Nancy. People gathered around us. It was almost like it used to be, only sweeter, because I knew it couldn’t last. Paul waved goodbye as we headed back. I could almost hear Jimmy Durante sing, “Oh, it’s a long, long while from May to December, but the days grow short when you reach September.” We’re there, Wood. We’re in September. I didn’t say it. He would have told me I was a dim-witted cretin
and a worm to boot. I dropped him off at home, took a cab back to Grand Central Terminal, preserved for us by Jackie Kennedy, and rushed alongside fellow commuters to get on the train.

Every day I wake up, at least so far. Every day I wash my face in front of a mirror. And every day for the last few years I have a little chat with myself. “Okay, Diane … your hands still wash your face. You can still feel hot water. See’s Candies peanut brittle is still your favorite dessert. The wild parrots on the telephone wire outside your bathroom still sing to you every morning, and just like them, you’re still a live animal. Be grateful for what you have, you big jerk.”

That said, it’s still hard to wrap my mind around the fact that I’m a post–World War II demographic. I’m one of seventy-six million American children born between 1946 and 1964. That’s right, I’m a baby boomer.

Major corporate boards require us to resign at sixty-five. Yet 42 percent of us are delaying retirement. Some 25 percent of us claim we’ll never retire, and all of us refuse to acknowledge our coming demise. You can be sure that Steven Spielberg, Sly Stallone, and Rob Reiner at sixty-six; Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler, Steve Martin, and Cher at sixty-seven; sixty-eighty-year-old Michael Douglas; Joni Mitchell, Sam Shepard, and Robert De Niro at sixty-nine; David Geffen and Harrison Ford at seventy; Paul McCartney at seventy-one;
Al Pacino at seventy-three; seventy-six-year-old Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, and Robert Redford; and, finally, seventy-seven-year-old Woody Allen are not retiring. Who cares if the U.S. government has proclaimed us old? We’re not letting go. This past year the Social Security Administration informed me that my retirement age was sixty-six. I tell myself not to feel bad because my life expectancy is eighty-six, which means I have nineteen more years of life. I’ll tell you one thing: I’m going to try to make the best of those nineteen years.

After all, I’m part of a group of seventy-five million American baby boomers who are in the beginning stages of learning how to let go. The requirements for a good ending are difficult, considering my life choice. I’m a performer who chose my profession because I wanted to be loved by large groups of people. This sort of choice—actually, more an impulse than a choice—has led me here, right where I am today. On the way, I’ve learned to recognize beauty in the lives of role models like Dave Gold, the hardworking family guy who loved an idea and lived it. I respect the pigheaded courage of my money-mad grandmother Mary Hall. She did not leave this world afraid. I loved Grace Johansen for living out her dream, even if it didn’t land her a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. My conversion from crush to friendship with Jack Nicholson has made me enjoy the company of men as friends, rather than hoped-for conquests. I live with a newfound
respect and mourning for the dead I’ve lost, including Jackie Kennedy, who saved Grand Central Terminal so that years later people like me could walk inside its beauty and feel the thrill of art built in the name of transportation. As for Woody, the man who gave me this future, I am full of love. Without him, there would have been no senior ticket to Grand Central for me, no walk across newly refurbished Central Park, no pondering Grace in front of
A Beautiful Way to Go
, no Ricky Lauren, no Frank Zimmerman, no Dave Gold, and no dear Kathryn, either. All of it came to be because Woody Allen cast an unknown Diane Keaton for his play
Play It Again, Sam
in 1969 and then cast her in the movie version of
Play It Again, Sam
, followed by
Sleeper
, leading to
Annie Hall
, which sealed the deal for Diane Keaton.

These people, including and because of Woody, are my mentors, my heroes in the face of what hopefully will be a long, fascinating, new, and ever evolving journey to the great unknown. It’s ironic, isn’t it? I was never a fan of gold. I’ve never owned a gold watch or enjoyed looking at gold-leaf details on buildings or even church altars. I passed on gold gowns with gold accessories for the red carpet. “The golden years” is my least favorite metaphor for the period of life I’m living in. I have no interest in espousing the golden age of movies. I can’t stand CNN’s endless retirement commercials where two attractive elderly people smile at each other as they
hold hands while walking into a soothing landscape, as if to say,
It’s so peaceful accepting the autumn of life
. Golden oldies. The golden rule. A heart of gold. Worth its weight in gold. Gold shmold. The one saying that resonates through example, the one that has heart, the one that’s worth its weight in gold is simple and true: Old is gold.

It seemed like an ordinary morning. I heard the water splash in the sink. Emmie barked as I washed my face. I rushed downstairs to the Nespresso machine. I heard the pod puncture. The sound of hot coffee hitting the bottom of my favorite glass. I took the first sip, and I heard my throat swallow. The glass cup clinking on the tile counter gave me a chill, and for the first time in my life, I wondered why I take sound for granted.

I’ve never considered the shape of my ears with any real interest. On occasion I put my finger in one only to feel the gnarly protrusions that lead to a dead end. That’s usually when Spock comes to mind, or Dumbo, the flying elephant, or Prince Charles and, I’m sorry to say, Michael Phelps, too. That’s when I remember Mom’s best friend, Willie, telling me that Bing Crosby’s ears were so big they had to be glued down. So much for the look of ears.