Both of Us (2 page)

He doesn’t mind that I see him doing this.

More evidence that everything isn’t exactly perfect for them.

On the way back home—and this is when I get my first true sense of her—she’s in the backseat, Lee and I are in the front, we’re in my Mercedes, I’m driving, and I put on this tape of a musician I like named Ry Cooder. He’s a wonderful guitarist and blues singer. As the music plays, she leans forward and I can feel her behind me, her clean, fresh fragrance, her aura, the warmth of her breath on my neck. I’ve known her for several days now, have experienced her at her most delicious, happy and smiling. I can tell that she likes me—she doesn’t love me, she likes me—and she keeps moving in closer, and I get this helpless sensation. I didn’t feel it with Ursula Andress or any of the other women from my past, but I do feel it with her and it’s unnerving.

We drive all the way back to Malibu because Lee’s car is parked at my house. I introduce Farrah and Lee to
my fourteen-year-old son, Griffin, Tatum’s brother. He’s thrilled at the chance to meet the TV star whose poster is a favorite among his friends. It’s evening now and we decide to have dinner nearby at Orsini’s. Now Lee drinks and pees all the time, so he’s constantly getting up and leaving the table, which gives me long moments with Farrah. I try to be funny, and then mix in some anecdotes from my years in television. I just get rolling, and he’s back. “Here, Lee, have another beer.” He’s gone a long time, must be standing there like a plow horse. While he’s relieving himself, Farrah talks about throwing him a surprise going-away party at their commodious house in the hills. He’s departing for Canada again in several days to start a movie with Robert Mitchum, and I, selflessly, volunteer to help.

We finish dinner and go back to my house. By now, I’m nervous. Lee drives a Porsche and he’s been drinking all night. As I’m watching him and Farrah climb into this sports car and drive off, I say to myself,
I hope he’s okay to drive
. Looking back now, I shudder because I didn’t take his keys and insist they spend the night. Thankfully, they arrived home safely.

Farrah’s party for Lee is a big success! She’s a relaxed host. She puts people at ease. The vittles are surpassed only by the interesting guests. It’s an intimate group: Robert Mitchum, whom I’ve admired and secretly envied ever since I saw
Out of the Past
, the best noir film ever, and his son Jim, with whom I’d attended University High; singer/songwriter
Paul Williams and his wife; Jack Palance and his daughter. Farrah is wonderful and we tease each other and flirt. We’ve initiated something. It seems to me we’re obvious but no one, including Lee, seems to notice. The only thing that keeps it from being a perfect evening is the absence of my daughter. Tatum is still in Canada making the film, but I’ve been regaling her over the phone about my dinners with Lee and Farrah. She’s electrified, can’t get enough. I remember that a few years back, Tatum and I were staying at the Pierre Hotel in New York, and she overheard the bellman mention to someone that Farrah was also a guest. My daughter camped out in the hotel lobby half the night waiting for a chance to meet her. They never connected. Maybe this should have been a premonition of things to come, but of course none of that occurred to me at the time. Tatum had always gravitated toward sophisticated women, cool characters whose chic exteriors did little to hide their neuroses. When I dated Bianca Jagger, she became Tatum’s fashion model. Tatum even emulated her characteristic hat and walking stick when she went to the podium to accept her Oscar as Best Supporting Actress of 1974. She was ten. And Ursula Andress never minded Tatum slipping into bed between us. Ursula thought it sweet. It worried me, but I allowed it to go on. I guess I recognized that Tatum was the primo female of the house, a role she would be loath to relinquish to Farrah.

• • •

L
ee’s now back in Canada, phones me, implores me to call Farrah, make sure she’s okay. “She’s all alone up there,” he says. “Why don’t you take her to dinner one night?” I swear I can’t believe it. “Don’t worry, I’ve got Tatum here in Toronto,” he adds, thinking he’s being witty. A week goes by. I don’t call Farrah. I feel uncomfortable about it. Lee’s an okay guy and she seems susceptible to any emotional offer; plus I don’t want to look like a predator. I hold out, hoping maybe she’ll call me. She doesn’t. As I’m leafing through the newspaper I notice an ad: “Santa Monica Civic Auditorium Sunday night Ry Cooder.” A reason to call. That’s all I need. I pick up the phone and dial. She answers.

“I thought I’d hear from you,” she says, with more self-control than I can muster.

“Well, I have a reason to call you now. Your husband asked me to take you to dinner. I will if you’ll see Ry Cooder with me.”

“Can I call you back?” she asks.

Not what I want to hear. Who does she have to get permission from? I’m intrigued as it’s usually the women who wait by the phone for me to call and not the other way around. She does phone me later in the week as promised and says she’d love to go. In the interim, Swifty Lazar, the talent agent, invites me to a party he and his wife, Mary, are hosting a couple of days before the Cooder concert. He always has memorable parties, lots of famous people, very
famous people. And I think,
I wonder if Farrah would like to go to that? Do I want to push it?
So I call and tell her who’ll be there: Gregory Peck, a fine gentleman and almost as suave as Cary Grant; Ann and Kirk Douglas; Burt Lancaster; and other stars of that era.

“Is it dressy,” she asks?

“No, no,” I reply. Well, of course it is but I badly want her to go, and I don’t want her saying to herself, “Oh, do I have to buy a gown?” Farrah is not a gown person. Not yet. She arrives at Lazar’s fabulous home in jeans and boots and a snakeskin jacket. She sparkles in jeans, exquisite, but everyone else is wearing bespoke suits and couture dresses. It’s an older crowd, and she’s miffed that I hadn’t made it clear to her what people would wear. To my surprise and delight, she’s the hit of the party. They’re fascinated by her. She’s famous because of
Charlie’s Angels
. And, of course, her poster. But she’s not well known to this group. They recognize her. They just don’t know her. I watch this room full of the truly illustrious gathered around her while Swifty asks her questions and Kirk Douglas tries to get her attention by broadening his smile till we can see his molars. She’s quite taken with the attention. Farrah, I should realize, is an icon of young American womanhood. I don’t fully grasp that at first. I worked with Streisand. Now she’s an icon, but of a different sort: a woman who conquered the entertainment business by sheer force of will and talent. When we were shooting
What’s Up Doc?
, Barbra had “kill approval,” meaning she had the
final word on which still photos the studio could use in its publicity and marketing campaign. That’s harder to get than final cut. I remember sitting there with her, watching her review these thick stacks of photos one at a time …

“Gee, that one looks good, Barbra.”

“Kill it.”

“But I like—”

“Kill it!”

“Barbra, it’s hard to achieve the perfect shot, and I look good in that one!”

“Nope, nope,” she’d say, flicking one discarded photo after another onto the floor.

She’s never satisfied with how she looks. But that’s not unusual in Hollywood. Some of the biggest stars carry the most burdensome insecurities. One of the few people I know who is consistently self-confident is Ron Reagan, now Governor Ronald Reagan, who’s announced his candidacy for president. He’s likable. He’s an effective governor under difficult circumstances, but I don’t think he’s president material. He has the actor’s gift of making a speech and he looks the part, but the economy is still shaky and the cold war is in a deep freeze. Washington is a hell of a lot bigger than Sacramento, and I’m not sure what’s inside that brown suit. I worked with Nancy way back, 1959, in a
General Electric Theater
production. She played my mother. He was always on the set supporting her. Today, years later, thinking about them reminds me of what Farrah and I had.

Farrah and Barbra will meet at the house of my agent, Sue Mengers. Sue is a powerhouse, represents Barbra and many other luminaries of the time: Burt Reynolds, Cher, Joan Collins, Michael Caine, Sidney Lumet, my former director and former friend Peter Bogdanovich, Herb Ross. Sue is married to director Jean-Claude Tramont; Barbra was the maid of honor at their wedding. There’s a party every weekend at Sue’s house, always with a wonderful cast. Sue makes an effort to ensure that everyone’s at ease. Her Bel Air home is lavish, reminiscent of Hollywood’s golden era, and invitations to her soirees are coveted. In the movie business, films are packaged and Sue is a wizard at the game. She’s the one who gets the producer to buy the script that’s written for her actor client, who only works with a director who’s another client of hers, or some such tangled maneuvering. I bring Farrah to one of these parties. Gore Vidal is there, and he and Farrah talk about the movie based on his novel
Myra Breckinridge
, which she was in with Raquel Welch, the only woman I can think of whom Farrah ever had a problem with. (Once, at an event, Raquel complimented Farrah on her beautiful white teeth, then added demurely, “Of course all the ones in the back are yellow.”) Rod Steiger, who always seems to be doing an imitation of himself, is there; so too are Tony Perkins; Neil “Doc” Simon and his wife, Marsha Mason; Jack Lemmon, who, as usual, plays the piano without being encouraged; Walter and Carol Matthau. Some years back, Walter had made the film version of
Hello,
Dolly!
with Streisand. They didn’t get along. Walter was famously quoted in an interview, “She has no more talent than a butterfly’s fart,” a comment neither chivalrous nor accurate. It’s a star-bright evening. Maybe it’s best that Barbra isn’t there. Jack Nicholson arrives late after the Lakers game. We talk politics with Warren Beatty, Gene Hackman, Blake Edwards and his new mate, Julie Andrews. My instincts are liberal, like most of the people I know, maybe because we can afford to be. But we have problems here that no one wants to be honest about. Southern California is not the paradise it was only a dozen years ago. You can’t see the mountains most days for the smog, and the 405 threatens to become a parking lot rather than a freeway. A guy I know told me about the Central Valley farms and the Mexican migrants who used to be seasonal. Now they don’t go home after the harvest. Who can blame them?

I remember another gathering at Sue’s, which would happen later, after Farrah and I have been long together. I’m agitated that night because Mickey Rourke is monopolizing Farrah. He isn’t coming on to her, just keeping her to himself. I’m actually jealous. Farrah notices, leaves Rourke, grabs my arm, and says, “Come with me.” She marches me up the stairs to a bathroom and, without bothering to even lock the door, straddles me on the toilet and makes love to me. “Feel better now?” she says. I certainly did.

When Sue asks to manage Farrah, she whispers to me, “She’ll be as big as Streisand.” Barbra sees the future in a
different way. When she meets Farrah at another of Sue’s gatherings, her casual comment about our relationship is “I give it three weeks.”

But now, at the beginning, the night of the Lazar party, I wonder:
What’s with this Texas girl, this poster beauty with a wonderful tenderness who doesn’t seem affected at all by the tumult of pop stardom?
We hesitate, then finally kiss for the first time. She is a great kisser. She has such sweet breath. I knew by the way she was kissing me that she had made up her mind.

Reflecting, I remember the insecurity that would take hold of me while waiting for her phone calls, worrying I
wouldn’t be able to hold on to this extraordinary creature. She once told me, with a wink and a smile, that she was maybe the most recognizable person in the world, and I said, “What about Muhammad Ali?” She answered, “Well, okay, the most recognizable Texas girl in the world,” and we both laughed because it was true. Imagine the pressure of loving someone whom millions of men fantasize about and desire? Imagine trying to be that woman and having to live up to your own poster. They would be obstacles we’d both struggle dearly with. But I don’t know any of that now.

Two nights later, we see Ry Cooder. I take her home and we make love for the first time. She has her period and she’s
shy because she thinks it might offend me. I tell her that I’ve never been as excited.