Stories From Candyland (10 page)

A
s a girl I was as fascinated as anyone by “celebrities,” but even though I grew up in Los Angeles, my family was not in the entertainment industry, so I had little exposure to the “stars.” I studied—sometimes memorized—my movie magazines, and dreamed of Ricky Nelson or Elvis Presley someday singing to me, thanks in part to the beauty tips Elizabeth Taylor, Lana Turner, Audrey Hepburn, and Ingrid Bergman generously shared with me through these fan magazines.

And then I became a celebrity wife. In Hollywood terms, I’m a celebrity by marriage and a celebrity by motherhood. And in the “industry,” that makes me a celebrity.

Celebrities get way too much attention and credit, but they certainly sell movies, music, products, and all forms of entertainment. Thanks to more TV stations, reality shows, and the Internet, there are more celebrities than ever before, although not all of them will be as enduring as those I grew up loving.

There’s a big celebrity culture that you’d have to be here in L.A. to appreciate or truly understand. There are celebrity shoppers and stylists, shoemakers to the stars, top entertainment valet parkers, lots of star hairdressers and makeup artists, supermarkets and restaurants where celebrities supposedly gather, leading celebrity dog groomers (I think the dogs belong to the celebrities, but maybe it’s “celebrity dogs”), and many more.

Being a celebrity, knowing celebrities, working with celebrities, writing about celebrities, feeding celebrities, repairing celebrity cars, and photographing celebrities—these are just some of the elements of our local economy. There is no end to the public’s fascination with all things (and people) celebrity.

Do you remember Sally Field’s often-misquoted “You like me . . . you really like me!” cry at the 1985 Academy Awards? (She actually said, “I can’t deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me.”)

I understand what she meant. Celebrities (and celebrities by marriage and motherhood) are never quite sure if people like them for themselves, or because they just want to be part of the celebrity world.

And that’s where my house comes in. I live in a “celebrity house.”

I knew we were asking for it, building the largest home in Los Angeles. We didn’t set out to build the largest home. In fact, because I couldn’t read blueprints, I was often surprised by what was eventually built. I had no concept of how the size on the blueprints translated to actual size. My gift-wrapping room should have been larger, and two of the powder rooms could use more space. My office could have been a lot smaller. I kept adjusting my guesses as I saw the room sizes. It was far from a scientific way to operate, but we were so happy with it. We just wanted a great house that had everything we’d dreamed about. We knew how fortunate we were that years of success in television were allowing us to live out our dreams.

I’d like to explain some misconceptions about our house.

First, yes, it is called Spelling Manor, or just The Manor. It was built on the site of the old Bing Crosby house, and “Crosby Teardown” just didn’t resonate.

Second, it does not have 123 rooms. I don’t know where that number came from, but it’s not that many; and I refuse to count the rooms. It’s better to truly be able to say, “I don’t know.” I can say there are many rooms in my 56,500
square feet of living space and 17,000-square-foot attic on our five-acre property.

Third, yes, there is a bowling alley in our basement. My husband loved to bowl, and he found it quite relaxing. But when we were building the house, there weren’t very many local places to bowl, and as more and more people found out Aaron loved to relax by bowling, anytime he entered a bowling alley, he would be barraged with head shots, videotapes, résumés, and lists of credits by people aspiring to acting careers. One night, an aspiring actor actually jumped into Aaron’s lane while he was getting ready to bowl and started reciting lines from a
Starsky & Hutch
episode. Aaron never recovered. That night, he proclaimed that our new house would have to have its own bowling alley.

He really liked the bowling alley, and our family and friends often hung out there. We had a big sectional couch on a raised platform behind the scoring table, and two lanes for the rooting section; and a lot of Aaron’s favorite awards, photos, and memorabilia were on display there. We also had a closet of bowling shoes in every size for men, women, and children. Well, we thought we had every size—until Tom Selleck came to bowl one night. We didn’t have shoes large enough for him that first time, but we did for his next visit. I think Tom won with and without bowling shoes. I was watching, but not keeping score. Anyway, Aaron didn’t miss a chance to challenge a guest. We even had special red-and-green
bowling balls we would move down from the attic and into the bowling alley every December.

Next, I have three gift-wrapping rooms. When people visit for the first time, they almost always ask to see the gift-wrapping room. I show them my favorite space, a fifteen-by-fourteen-foot room adjacent to my office and near the kitchen door. Our companies often employed a thousand or more people, and Aaron worked with hundreds more at the networks, studios, talent, and PR agencies and elsewhere. Holidays aside, when we had thousands of gifts to give, we often had a few gifts a day to wrap. I love selecting gifts and wrapping, and I even opened a gift and wrapping store in Beverly Hills with a partner, Lehr and Spelling. I had to give it up, though, because there was too much happening with building the house; my running a business at the same time was too much for Aaron. So it was logical and practical to have a room dedicated to wrapping and distributing gifts. I have dozens of rolls of paper, hundreds of ribbons and bows, thousands of different decorations to individualize each package, glue guns, scissors, tape, and bubble wrap, and I never stop buying cards and fun souvenirs to put on the gifts.

Just for the record, my two other gift-wrapping rooms are more industrial-size, for big packages, and equipped to rival any professional mailing center.

And, yes, Tori and I did once change my grandson Liam’s diaper on the table in my gift-wrapping room. We were
walking to the kitchen when she realized he needed his diaper changed. The flat table in the gift-wrapping room was the perfect surface.

So, I’ll admit that the bowling alley and gift-wrapping room add to my house being classified as a “celebrity house.”

But there’s more.

On an average summer day, tour buses stop in front of my house at least every ten minutes. I hear the microphones and megaphones:

“It’s the largest house in Los Angeles, with one hundred and twenty-three rooms.”

Wrong (except for the largest house part).

“It’s the house where Tori Spelling grew up.”

Wrong. (She lived in that house for a very short time. She actually spent most of her life in our previous house, also on the same street but a few blocks away.)

“There’s a full-size bowling alley in the living room.”

Wrong.

“The house is for sale for one billion dollars.”

I wish.

“Dynasty
was shot in this house.”

Wrong.

The house has quite a reputation to maintain.

Celebrities, whether people or houses, have to be on guard all the time. One bad photo can wreck an image, or maybe
even a career. Celebrities have to put on makeup when they go out, to avoid a bad photo getting taken. We rush any repair trucks in through a service gate before the tourists can spot that we, too, have plumbing problems. It’s all about the image, darlings.

Before Tori and Randy established their own careers, they, too, were celebrities by birth. It was sometimes difficult to keep them grounded, and harder to make them understand that many of their life experiences were unique to them.

I always wondered what our kids thought when strangers walked up to Aaron and said, “I love you” or “I love your work.”

I can’t count how many people approached them as children to tell them their favorite episodes of
Dynasty
or
The Love Boat
, and recited dialogue line by line. Our kids rarely watched those shows, as they were on too late, but I was always proud at how polite they were at these times.

Tori always felt important when someone asked her to sign a napkin when we were out to dinner. She liked being the center of attention.

Randy, too, would accommodate strangers who asked to have their picture taken with him, although I’m not sure he knew why.

I still haven’t recovered from the first time someone in a public ladies’ room asked me to autograph a paper towel and address it to “Tifany with one
f
.” I dried my hands first
and then tried to explain to Tori, who was with me, why I was signing a paper towel. I don’t remember how I explained it.

I spent a lot of time explaining to the kids that some people would be nice to them because they thought they might get something from them. It wasn’t a message I wanted to give my children, but often it was true. I would point out the flaws I saw in some of their so-called friends, but they got angry with me and questioned my motives. Some of the teens they were friends with ordered my staff around. One houseman refused to serve some of Tori’s friends because, as he told me, “there was a distinct lack of manners and a collective sense of entitlement.” One night, two of Randy’s friends ended up in Tori’s bedroom. Tori was no longer living at home, but that didn’t make it any easier when I found them in her bed, the girl looking at me coyly as she puffed on a cigarette. My own kids weren’t like that.

I didn’t like it when the children were mad at me, so I’d usually give in when those same “friends” of theirs persuaded them to hold parties at our house. I either allowed the parties (and cooked and prepared for them) or risked alienating my children. Suffice it to say we had a lot of teen parties at The Manor. Tori was in full teenage mode when we moved into the house, and Randy became quite a host, too.

Expectations are always high, and that’s especially true with my house. People who visit don’t know if they’ll see Scarlett O’Hara’s Tara before the Civil War, the Carrington
House during a black-tie party, or the Beverly Hillbillies’ mansion.

My insecurities rage when I invite people to The Manor. I’m afraid they’ll find something they won’t like, afraid they only want to see the house, not be with me. Maybe it’s too many years as a celebrity by accident?

At the end of 2007, I took a deep breath and decided to have a holiday party. I spent weeks working with the socalled “celebrity” party planners, caterers, assistants, artists, chefs, tree decorators, and others to make sure everything was perfect. I hadn’t entertained in a long time, first because my husband had been ill for years, and, after he passed away, because I didn’t feel like socializing. But I decided it was time. . . .

I spent weeks agonizing over every detail of the décor, food, invitation, table settings, songs the piano players would perform, making sure everything was perfect for the 140 guests I was inviting. All 180 boxes of my Christmas decorations were used, from holly to adorn the lamppost at the bottom of the driveway, to hundreds of toy soldiers standing at attention outside the front door, to the antique ornaments on the trees and stuffed animals carefully placed on the staircase, to even miniature holiday decorations in my doll museum.

And then there was the candy. How can Candy not have the right candy? I collect candy jars, candy dishes, candy dispensers, and antique candy machines, so my guests can
have their choice of candy. As long as I’ve been entertaining at home, I’ve felt I would be judged on my candy (and lots of other things, as you now know). The afternoon of my party, I realized I hadn’t taken care of the candy. I bought thousands of calories of goodies—hundreds of little candy bars with all our favorite childhood brands, Hershey’s Kisses, M&Ms (plain and peanut), Snickers, Hershey bars, bags of Sour Patch Kids, chocolate-covered raisins, almonds covered in chocolate, boxes of See’s mixed nuts, jelly beans, white Jordan almonds, Mary Janes, malted balls, Dots, plus peanuts and pretzels—but I hadn’t relegated each to its proper place. I filled two dozen candy dishes and jars with a variety of candy, and put them everywhere, where people would be doing everything from singing karaoke to sampling caviar. I ran around so much and so fast to get it all done that I rewarded myself with two handfuls of M&Ms, a Crunch bar, some Sour Patch Kids, and nut and candy combinations. I figured I had worked off just that many calories.