By Myself and Then Some (49 page)

Sometime during that summer Harvey became ill – he coughed a lot and seemed to have difficulty moving quickly. Definitely not his spry self, and off his food. The vet concluded that Harvey’s heart was weak, that he must have had some kind of attack that went unnoticed, and said I’d have to find a way of keeping him from climbing the stairs more than once a day. How do you tell a dog to slow down? Bogie was as upset as I was. We pampered him more than ever – tried to explain the need for a new routine. We couldn’t have loved him more – from the beginning he’d had as much care and love as a child. I tried to explain to Steve that we had to be more careful with the dog – not too much play, don’t get him excited.

Leslie had her fourth birthday party out of doors – twenty children, all as usual.

We spent Labor Day weekend on the
Santana
and had a quiet, happy time in Catalina. The weather was beautiful and, as always, Bogie was happier on the boat than anywhere.

Bogie had not gained an ounce since that famous pound. But he was still feeling stronger and trying to eat more, and at least life was proceeding somewhat normally. Drs Brandsma and Flynn still checked in, but not on a daily basis, and it was a relief not to see them – I’d had enough of doctors, nice though they were. Arrangements were finalized for my birthday in Las Vegas – Cole Porter, Swifty, the Burt Allenburgs, Martha Hyer, the Romanoffs, and the Nivs were to fly up together. Bogie had decided to withdraw – he wanted a long weekend on the boat, would go to Newport, taking Steve along.

I flew to Vegas with the group – I think we were there for Frank’s opening, but I’m not sure. The place was packed – our group was at a long table down front facing Frank and the mike. He’d had a cake made, three-tiered with ‘Happy Birthday Den Mother,’ gave me a large stuffed horse for me and my children, introduced me and sang ‘Happy
Birthday’ to me from the stage. I was called to the phone – it was Bogie to wish me a happy birthday. I hadn’t expected it and screamed with excitement and pleasure. Should I have gone with him? I kept wondering. I was escaping from reality until that call – I must have needed the noise, the extravagance and general insanity of Las Vegas, the feeling of no responsibility, the feeling that life was being lived. We all stayed up too late – Kim Novak was Frank’s date and we were all photographed cutting my cake. It was fun, like the days before February 29. I returned home to find Bogie waiting for me in the Butternut Room – a bit edgy and resentful, whether because he couldn’t go or because I did, I’m not sure. Finally he calmed down enough to hear who’d been there and what we’d all done. He was somewhat jealous of Frank – partly because he knew I loved being with him, partly because he thought Frank was in love with me, and partly because our physical life together, which had always ranked high, had less than flourished with his illness. Yet he was also crazy about Frank – loved having him feel that our home was his home. Knowing Bogie, I suspected he was beginning not to feel quite so well as he had been. He told me Steve had been marvelous on the boat – responsible, capable – everyone was crazy about him. Bogie couldn’t wait to teach him how to sail – told Steve, ‘We men will go sailing. Leave the women – Mommy and Leslie – at home to wait for us.’ Steve loved it – felt important and special. It was good for them both to be together.

I started
Designing Woman
, coming home with my nightly reports. Our first day’s work was at the pool of the Beverly Hills Hotel, and Bogie brought the children to watch for a while. He stayed to one side – the still man photographed only Steve and Leslie with me. Greg and I had days of shooting on a sailboat – Bogie was there on the
Santana
and Greg and I went aboard for lunch. That movie was one of my happiest film experiences. It had one of my all-time favorite lines – ‘Open your eyes, Maxie, and go to sleep.’ It was also a godsend. Greg and I played characters very much in love, working in different worlds, fighting a lot. In one scene I was leaving him after a fight, running on a cobblestone street in spike-heeled shoes – and of course proceeded to fall and sprain my ankle. It was a romantic movie and I seemed to be constantly running toward Greg or away from him, so I had emotional and physical release to compensate for keeping everything inside at home.

One afternoon I came home to find Bogie in a state of rage. Dorothy Kilgallen (one of Bogie’s least favorite columnists and Frank’s number-one hate – she was truly vicious) had printed in her column that Bogie had been moved to the eighth floor of Memorial Hospital, where he was fighting for his life. I wouldn’t have believed that even she could be so rotten. The press for the most part had made it a point not to mention anything about Bogie’s health since his surgery, except that he was on his way to recovery and would start
The Good Shepherd
soon. He was horribly upset. Why wouldn’t he over-react – who had more right? He’d been struggling for so many months to gain weight, to feel better, to function. The phone started ringing. Of course the fact that there was no Memorial Hospital in Los Angeles was only one minor inaccuracy! Bogie sent a wire to Kilgallen saying, among other things, ‘Unless you start checking the facts you’re apt to wind up on the nineteenth floor of Bellevue.’ His comments to the press were, ‘The fact that there’s no Memorial Hospital didn’t bother me so much, but that eighth floor was what got me sore. Pretty damn ominous.’ He was determined to straighten it out. He put in a call to the night editor of the
Journal-American
, Kilgallen’s paper – in a way, it was the old Bogie stirring things up, not letting the lie prevail, not letting the cheap gossip press – the leeches he loathed – get away with anything. Joe Hyams had called to check the story. Bogie in a fatigued and feeble voice said, ‘If you want to do me a last favor, come right over.’ Joe of course arrived immediately, to find Bogie slumped in his chair, waving a letter he had composed. Joe promised to print it word for word as he had written it. As Bogie started reading it aloud – ‘An open letter to the working press’ – the phone rang. I got it – it was the editor – Bogie took the phone and shouted into it, ‘Do I sound as if I’m fighting for my life? God damn it, don’t you check your stories? You just allow that bitch to print anything,’ and on and on he went – unrelenting, shouting, finally hanging up totally exhausted. As he pulled himself together and got his breath, I sweetened his drink, and after some forced conversation between Joe and me, he was able to go on with his letter.

Joe felt that he had been duped – Bogie was not drawing his last breath – but Bogie, as Joe was on his way to the car, pointed a finger at him: ‘You promised – you gave me your word,’ so Joe was forced to print it.

Bogie never, from the beginning, believed in disguising the nature of his illness. ‘Why should I? It’s a respectable disease – nothing to be ashamed of, like something I
might
have had.’ ‘No worse than gallstones or appendicitis.’ ‘They’d all kill you if you didn’t catch them soon enough – the way people act, you’d think that cancer was as bad as VD.’

Around that time Bogie started complaining about a pain in his left shoulder. He never mentioned anything unless it really hurt. It was treated rather as if it were a pulled muscle. I remember him reaching back and showing me the spot – my trying to massage it – his saying it felt better. From then on he talked about wanting to work more than anything else. ‘But I couldn’t do it thirty pounds underweight.’ He was
deeply discouraged about not gaining weight. I kept repeating that he would – just give it time.

The pain persisted. He went to see Dr Brandsma and came home with the diagnosis. It seemed to be a pinched nerve – in the healing process this often occurred. As it wouldn’t go away, both Dr Brandsma and Dr Flynn re-examined Bogie and gave him some pain-killing pills. His appetite lessened and he lost more weight – nothing drastic yet, but enough to cause concern. After a while the pills didn’t help. Bogie was resting upstairs one evening, and before they went up to see him they talked to me downstairs. They were afraid the cancer had returned.

There was only one choice: nitrogen mustard. That treatment, while severe, if not killing, often arrested the spread of the disease. It would mean four or five days in the hospital. They would tell Bogie it was treatment for the scar tissue – more words that I didn’t really understand. He accepted what they said – no questions but obvious ones. ‘Will the treatment solve it?’ ‘Absolutely it should. It’s strong, but we’ve seen it work before.’ Then they explained in detail how scar tissue formed in an area after extensive surgery, very often crowding a nerve, pressing in on it, causing pain. There were no lies – they couldn’t lie to Bogie, they knew he’d know, so they skirted around the truth. It was announced to the press that Mr Bogart was entering St John’s for treatment of a nerve-pressure condition ‘due to excessive scar formation following previous surgery. Pills given to alleviate pain cause lack of appetite.’ It was also printed that he would check in with a chess book, some detective thrillers, a bottle of Scotch, and his portable chess set.

The sun was shining brightly when we arrived. I carried his case – he walked, but with effort. That night he felt pretty good. They had given him some treatment, but the real thing would start the next day. Meanwhile they had alleviated the pain with special compresses, heat, and some intravenous medication to dissolve the scar tissue. He wasn’t happy to be in a hospital again, but the atmosphere of St John’s was fairly cheery and there was to be no surgery this time. Actually, I think it was a relief to him in a way to be able to stay in bed – not to carry on the pretense that everything was fine. He would be taken care of, not feel he was inconveniencing everyone at home; he hated to impose. Dr Flynn was at the hospital that evening and walked with me to my car as I left. He told me the chances were good that the nitrogen
mustard would work, and that in any case it was the only chance – the last chance.

I was terribly depressed as I drove home. So little was known about cancer: there was surgery, there was X-ray, cobalt, nitrogen mustard – and that was it. I could feel the doctors’ frustration, though, as John Jones kept saying, ‘We must do everything we know how to do. As long as the patient’s alive there’s a chance. Research is being conducted all the time – one day suddenly there’ll be a cure, as with penicillin. One day there was no penicillin, the next day there was …’ But I was sick of talking to doctors – of listening to words and phrases I didn’t know the meaning of, of seeing no solution, of having hope become despair in a matter of hours, of being at the mercy of it all.

Frank was constant with his phone calls and visits to Bogie – and it wasn’t easy for him. I don’t think he could bear to see Bogie that way or bear to face the possibility of his death. Yet he cheered Bogie up when he was with him – made him laugh – kept the ring-a-ding act in high gear for him. He did it all the only way he knew how, and he did it well.

The five days Bogie was in the hospital he didn’t feel too bad – a little listless, and not eating. They plied him with liquids like grape juice, which he liked, and the sustagen malteds, but he had lost more weight. The night before I was to take him home I had a meeting with the doctors. They told me he would be weak but otherwise all right – they wouldn’t be able to give me a true prognosis on the nitrogen-mustard treatment for at least a week, probably more. They didn’t think I’d need a nurse unless I wanted one so I could get some sleep, but I knew Bogie would hate having a nurse around and as long as no medical attention was required I could handle it.

The next day I got him into his clothes, although they hung on him. He was so happy to be going home. The nurse wheeled him almost to the car – he walked the rest of the way, apologizing for leaning on me. It was being in bed and not eating for five days. ‘Once you get home we’ll fatten you up, Baby. The pain in the shoulder is gone now – you’ll be fine. Besides, I love you to lean on me – it’s the first time in twelve years. Makes me feel needed.’ We got home and very slowly climbed the stairs. He would lie down until dinner and then come down to the Butternut Room, where we’d eat and watch television. I helped him into his pajamas. While he rested I did whatever I had to do – told the
children to try to keep the noise down while Daddy was resting. They went in to see him before he came downstairs. It was almost enough for them to be in the room – they kissed him but didn’t climb on him or make any noise. At their dinnertime Bogie and I started downstairs – had a drink together. We had something on trays which I ate and Bogie didn’t. The children had gone to bed. Bogie and I were on the sofa in the Butternut Room, having coffee, watching the box. I was worried about how he felt, but I couldn’t ask: he hated that direct question beyond description. What could he answer anyway – lousy? He got up to go to the bathroom, which was no more than eight feet away – I tried not to watch him, not obviously at least. He looked strained. I heard the door open after a few minutes and as I turned to look at him he just disappeared. I jumped up – oh God! – I rushed over to him – he had fainted and was out cold. I screamed for the butler, told him to carry Mr Bogart upstairs to bed. I was hysterical. I rushed for the phone and could hardly dial Dr Brandsma’s number, my hand was shaking so. I screamed into the phone, ‘He fainted – why didn’t you tell me something like this could happen?’ I ran upstairs to see Bogie, who had come to – composed myself, saying, ‘It must be a reaction to all the medication you’ve had – don’t worry, darling.’ What could I say? He couldn’t understand what had happened – was worried, even frightened, though he never said he was either. I told him to try and sleep – that if he hadn’t come downstairs, it wouldn’t have happened. Anything to try to soothe him. I didn’t know what I was saying.