My First Five Husbands (35 page)

“Why don’t you tell her to go to hell? Make your own fortune,” I urged him.

But he just shrugged. “I don’t need the aggravation.”

He eventually got hired by the phone company and started to make acquaintances, bringing one or two fellows home for supper. I thought they were
stupnagels,
boring, not in his league. Still, I was grateful he had some new friends. He was really a darling, happy to drive me to rehearsals for a play I was in, happy to come to the performances, happy to meet my showbiz friends, who of course found him an odd choice for me but never said so. (God knows what they said behind my back.) He got along with everyone, and we had some great chili parties.

Having snagged him as he drifted by, I felt responsible for this marriage. I tried to develop more patience and endurance, but there was just no intellectual connection. Within a year, I was around the bend, trying to make the ill-fitting match a success. I felt like I was in a leghold trap. He and David went to Texas for Christmas, and before they left, I bleakly said, “Maybe we should call it quits when you get back.”

Perhaps because he was also unhappy—or perhaps because he was drifting downstream—he agreed.

Over the two weeks he and David were gone, I was at peace, then toward the day they were due back, I started to feel lonesome for sweet, sexy Keel. When they drove up, I ran out to welcome him, asking him to stay longer, and he was happy to. But nothing substantially changed.

That April, Lil gave Tom $2,000 for a wedding anniversary trip to the same Kauai resort hotel she had stayed in umpteen years ago. (Of course, $2,000 wasn’t nearly enough to cover it, so I kicked in the rest, but it’s the thought that counts, right?) The hotel Lil had picked for us was one of the most luxurious on the island, but it was covered in tall palms that dropped coconuts like bombs every few minutes.
Whomp! Whomp! Whomp!
After a day or two, the hotel personnel warned us not to walk on the grounds, since some people had been conked out by the falling coconuts. We moved to a less expensive—and less dangerous!—place, drove all over Kauai, visited the perpetual rain forest, and saw
Arsenic and Old Lace
at the VHW lodge, played by the townspeople. The postmaster played the Cary Grant role facing upstage to deliver his lines and walking with his left arm moving forward when he stepped with his left foot, his right arm forward when he stepped with his right foot, like a toy soldier that had been engineered wrongly. It was sheer heaven!

We snorkeled, surrounded by bewitching fish of all colors, and took a kayak trip up a river past the ruins of an ancient village. So peaceful. Unforgettable. The island of Hawaii had eucalyptus trees of unimaginable beauty and a bubbling volcano interspersed with green growth. We walked barefoot on black lava, and I picked up a small, long-cooled hunk of volcanic rock to take home, although it was illegal and Tom objected. (Hey, now—I still have that rock!)

We stopped at a diner for lunch one day, and while Tom went to the men’s room, I shuddered at the music being piped through the restaurant—various short snippets of classical pieces with a
BOOM-da-da BOOM-da-da
disco rhythm accompaniment underneath.
BOOM-da-da
under Beethoven’s Fifth,
BOOM-da-da
under Mozart,
BOOM-da-da
under Tchaikovsky. Tom came back and, as I was about to take a bite of some juicy island morsel, he said, “Oh, that’s the classical tape I play every day in the car for David.”

If this had been a movie I’d have done a spit-take. Folks, there’s only just so long you can pretend you’re listening to the same Beethoven. When we arrived home, I said to Keel, “Let’s face it. We really don’t belong together.”

I remembered something told to me by an actor friend who’d married his high school sweetheart and subsequently divorced: “I was hoping she’d grown up, and she was hoping I hadn’t.” That rang a gong in my head.

Keel and I parted with no animosity, just regret. He wanted to leave Harrod, which was fine with me but not with Harrod, who began to howl and bark after Tom drove off and kept it up for two months. He did eventually settle down and get contented, though, becoming my dog. A year later, Keel came back for him.

I know people were urging Keel to sue me for half the money I’d earned during the marriage, and I was nervous about being tomato-juiced again, but he says he never even considered it. When our tax return of $5,000 came in, he asked if he could borrow it for a while, and I said sure. Hell, the man deserved compensation for putting up with my foolishness. He signed the divorce agreement and our business was settled. And he did some mighty nice things for my father—and for me—over the next many years, including repaying me the $5,000 in 1995, when Lil died, finally leaving him his inheritance of half a million hard-earned bucks, which he quickly and cleverly parlayed into a million.

A
ll this time, Norman and I had been whizzing along with our musical farce, having a great time. Still untitled, it was set in Athens in 457
B.C
. We alternated writing every other scene, and I wrote all the music and lyrics. Norm was a terribly talented writer but needed to be ridden herd on, tending sometimes to go too far for my taste. He whipped off the final scene in one long night’s session, pulling all the disparate threads of the farce together. Well, it was certainly full of action, but it was a holy mess. He had characters leaving through windows and coming immediately through doors in totally different costumes—things like that. I spent weeks straightening it out, taking what he’d created, and making it flow.

Meanwhile,
Mama’s Family
wrote my character out of the show. The fates that ruled Mama’s Universe had Aunt Fran choke to death on a chicken bone.

I did not grieve her passing. In fact, that turned out to be the luckiest chicken bone ever choked on. Must’ve been a wishbone!

In February of 1985, I was languishing in
Love Boat
limbo. By this time, I’d done five stints in Captain Stubing’s celebrity purgatory, as well as guest shots on such timeless classics as
Gimme a Break!
and
Charles in Charge
. I was cautiously optimistic when Sylvia Gold, my agent at ICM, gave me the heads-up about a pilot script she was sending by messenger.

“I think you’ll like it,” she said. “It’s called
The Golden Girls
.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

W
hen I opened the bright yellow pilot script from NBC, a tingle ran up my spine, giving rise to a strong, immediate feeling:

“This one’s a winner.”

The
Golden Girls
story line concerned four women of a certain age joining up for financial reasons to share a house but finding in each other the love and support of a family. I started reading. And I started laughing. The zingy, spot-on dialogue crackled like sparklers.

I instantly loved these characters: Sophia, the nursing home escapee with outlandish tales of her Sicilian girlhood. Dorothy, the acerbic divorcée with a wisecrack for every occasion. Rose, the farm-fresh ninny with her sweetly guileless take on life. And—ooh-la-la—Blanche, the Southern miss with her free, joyful sexuality and sassiness.

(BLANCHE ENTERS)

BLANCHE

Oh, Dorothy, can I borrow your mink stole?

DOROTHY

It’s Miami in June. Only cats are wearing fur.

ROSE

Are you going out?

DOROTHY

No. She’s going to sit here where it’s a hundred and twelve degrees and eat enchiladas.

BLANCHE

I just need some cucumbers to put on my eyes.

DOROTHY

You’ll have trouble seeing, Blanche.

BLANCHE

It’s very good. It reduces puffiness.

ROSE

Does it work on thighs?

BLANCHE

I don’t know, honey. I don’t need it on my thighs.

(SHE EXITS)

I called my agent at once.

“Sylvia? Rue. This script is definitely for me. I’m perfect for Blanche!”

“Actually, they’re thinking of Betty White for Blanche,” she said. “They want you to read for Rose.”

“Oh, God…
Rose
? But I have no connection with Rose. And I know exactly how to play Blanche!”

“Well,” she said, “you can either go in tomorrow and read for Rose, or pass.”

I read and reread the script, becoming more certain that Blanche and I were made for each other. Oh, dear Saint Dymphna! Don’t pull another Aunt Fran on me! I went to NBC and read Rose for the pilot director, Jay Sandrich, and after a scene or two he said, “Rue, I know it’s an unorthodox thing to ask, and you’re not prepared, but would you mind going down the hall to an empty room and taking a look at the role of Blanche?”

“Why, Jay,” I cooed, my heart leaping. “I wouldn’t mind one bit!”

Not prepared? Please. I’d all but memorized it. I went down the hall for a few minutes, then came back and gave Jay the full Blanche treatment: “In high school, I had to break up with Carl Dugan, captain of the football team. I was very nervous, but I just spit it out—‘Carl, I’m dumping you for Coach Wilkins!’”

Next day, they asked Betty White to come in and read Rose opposite my Blanche. Caught by surprise, Betty gave Rose an absolutely hilarious interpretation, with a childlike charm that was not your runof-the-mill ninny: “What a great day! It’s like life is a great big weenie roast and I’m the biggest weenie!”

Susan Harris, the creator of the series, called me later that day.

“Rue, we offered Bea Arthur the part of Dorothy, but she turned it down,” she told me. “Do you think you could help persuade her?”

I hadn’t seen Bea in seven years. We didn’t really stay in touch after
Maude
closed in 1978, because, for one thing, she’d kept The Greek on her party guest list, while I was summarily removed. Being excluded from my former pal’s parties hurt my feelings, but I didn’t hold that against Bea. The Greek was great at parties. Hell, I should’ve kept him on
my
party list instead of marrying him. Over the years, I’d hear news of Bea through the grapevine—a Woody Allen play at Lincoln Center, a couple of pilots that fell on their fannies. But I loved working with Bea, and she was perfect for Dorothy. I was on the phone within minutes.

“Bea? Can you tell me why you’re not jumping at the best script to come along in twenty years?”

“Because, Rue,” Bea replied in her distinctive baritone, “I don’t want to do
Maude and Vivien Meet Sue Ann Nivens
. Boooorrrrrring!”

“No, Bea, I’m doing the sexpot, Blanche. Betty is the dimwit.”

A pause, then, “Oh, really? Well, now,
that’s
interesting.”

Within a day or two, NBC had us three, along with Estelle Getty, who’d already been hired as Sophia, come in to read for the big suits. We read cold—no rehearsal—but the chemistry was plain as a preacher’s daughter.

(BLANCHE ENTERS)

BLANCHE

Oh, Rose, I’m borrowing your earrings. Lord, I’d love to get a face-lift by eight o’clock.

DOROTHY

Blanche, who is Harry?

BLANCHE

Oh, girls, he’s just wonderful. He’s very gallant. He’s a perfect gentleman. He’s a great dancer and doesn’t make noises when he chews.

DOROTHY

Chewing. That’s way up there on my list. Comes right after intelligent.

BLANCHE

He doesn’t talk loud at the movies, doesn’t take his own pulse—and he’s still interested!

ROSE

In what?

We had those guys wetting their pants, and—bam—that afternoon, it was settled.

Like Rose says: “Dorothy, you’re the smart one, and Blanche, you’re the sexy one, and Sophia, you’re the old one. And I’m the nice one. Everybody always likes me.”

To which Sophia replies, “The old one isn’t so crazy about you.”

We taped the pilot, which had the audience inebriated with laughter, and were picked up by NBC for thirteen episodes, to begin taping in July.

Heaven on wheels!

O
ur set was a happy one. Guest stars always remarked on how congenial it was, how different from most TV shows. This was remarkable, since Betty, Bea, Estelle, and I came from drastically different performance backgrounds. Bea had worked on the stage in New York for years before Norman Lear brought her to L.A. to do
Maude
. Though she was a natural for sitcom, her roots remained in the theatre. Betty, on the other hand, was truly an American television institution, getting her start on one of the first TV broadcasts in 1939 and doing her own daytime talk show in the early 1950s.

“I actually started in silent television,” she used to wisecrack.

A graduate of Beverly Hills High School, she was a TV baby, playing not just to, but with, the audience, flirting with them between scenes, hiking her skirt up and calling out, “Hi, sailor. Long in town?” She wasn’t fond of stage work, but she loved TV game shows, interviews—I think she even liked the public service announcements we did, staying late after taping. We never had time to learn the copy, seeing it just minutes before we had to perform it. The rest of us read the copy from big cue cards, but Betty, blind as a bat, couldn’t read the cards and wouldn’t wear her glasses, so she had to memorize her lines after seeing them once. And she never made a mistake. I just figured she was a witch. There’s no other explanation.

Estelle Getty, meanwhile, had raised two sons in New York, doing Off Off Broadway plays until she was almost sixty, when she was cast as the Jewish grandmother in Harvey Fierstein’s hit play
Torch Song Trilogy
. She toured the country with it for four years, finally playing Los Angeles in 1985, where she was seen by the
Golden Girls
producers, who snatched her up to play Sophia. I’d seen her in
Torch Song
and she was dead-on funny. For me, she saved the play. But not having done sitcom, she was a fish out of water and kept asking, “Can’t we make Dorothy and Sophia Jewish?”

Estelle always had me rolling on the floor with anecdotes about her Jewish neighbors in Queens. I kept telling her, “Estelle, you should do stand-up!” and made her repeat one story in particular over and over. She did a priceless imitation of her elderly neighbor. “Oh, Eshtelle, vas terrible! You shudda been dere! I bang over to pick up the hong-yungs and I cou’n garrup!” And Estelle acted it out, bending over to “pick up the onions” and not being able to “get up.” (It’s impossible to write the thick Jewish dialect with anything approaching the inspired Getty delivery.)

Her little quirks gave Betty and Bea and me a lot of laughs. She never got the point of a funny line; we had to explain every joke, why Sophia was saying a particular line and why it was funny. She also had a way of delivering certain lines with the accent on the wrong syllable. We called it her “marble cake” delivery, because she had once had a line about marble cake but had pronounced it “marble CAKE” instead of “MARBLE cake,” leaving us in stitches. It was like saying, “I’ll tell you a bed TIME story,” or “I used to have a COCKER spaniel.” Give me a slice of marble CAKE? As opposed to what—marble popcorn?

I don’t know how the rumor got started (possibly Estelle’s PR firm), but a lot of people who watched the show thought Estelle was the youngest of us four, and that Sophia was a combination of brilliant acting and clever makeup—which, of course, she was. However, folks, let me set the record straight: I was the spring chicken on that set. Bea, Estelle, and Betty were all born during the Harding administration, and I came along a dozen years later with FDR’s “New Deal.” By the time that always-on-hand cheesecake appeared in what would become one of the most familiar kitchens in America, I had done a lot of stage work in New York, seven or eight movies, played five years on
Maude,
two seasons of
Mama’s Family,
seven episodes of
Apple Pie,
and felt at home in all media. Although I, too, observed the theatrical fourth wall for the first few seasons, I eventually said, “What the hell,” and began joking with the audience between scenes with Betty.

My salary was based (as they do in television) on what I was paid for my most recent series,
Mama’s Family
—peanuts. Lower than peanuts. What’s lower than peanuts? Squeegee sponges? Probably the lowest of us all, certainly tens of thousands below what Betty and Bea were paid, but, hey—all I can say is
tanks Gott
for that chicken bone, or I would have still been stuck in prim little dresses playing Aunt Fran, bored out of my gourd, and not available for
The Golden Girls.
Whew!

In May, the pilot of
The Golden Girls
was taken to New York and Chicago to be played for subsidiary market heads—the bigwigs who decide what programs they’ll run on local stations—and we girls were asked to go. Betty and I happily complied, and it was thrilling. Reception in both cities—overwhelming! People were on their feet! They knew they had a surefire hit on their hands.

M
ark was off living his life, playing guitar, traveling the world, studying Stone Age cultures, collecting primitive art. I was so proud of the good man he had become. Over the years, I never stopped encouraging his father to get to know him. I had stayed in touch with Tom after the whole EST adventure, and after Keel and I divorced, Tom and I occasionally went out to dinner and jazz clubs. He was full of gaiety and fun, and when I gave one of my frequent parties, he was right there. Mr. Sociable. I have scores of photos of him looking handsome, laughing and chatting with Mark and Lette and Jack and other guests, carrying on like monkeys. He was full of cheer, friendly, even affectionate at times.