By Myself and Then Some (58 page)

How would I tell Mother? What a pattern in our lives – first I’d had to break the news to her of Grandma’s death – then Jack’s – then Bogie’s – now Charlie’s. And with Mother’s heart condition … I called a marvelous doctor in Beverly Hills, Rex Kennamer, who knew her
case – I’d had to have someone to call since her attack. He said he’d come right over – give her a shot – keep her calm. I was not to tell her before he got there. I stared out the window at the driveway, watching for his car or hers – shaking from head to foot – trying to stop my tears, to forget my own loss.

At last a car – it was the good doctor, thank God. He got his shot ready. I decided to say he’d just stopped by to see how we all were – had been in the neighborhood. Another car – Mother. I opened the door, hugged her – small talk – I don’t know what I said. She wasn’t suspicious – she liked him, he was a nice man, a perfect doctor. I brought her into the living room, sat her on the sofa next to him. ‘I have something to tell you, Mama’ – my heart was breaking for her, for Charlie. ‘What?’ she said. ‘What?’ – knowing it was disaster. But which disaster? There had been so many. The doctor gave her his shot to calm her down. ‘It’s Charlie, Mama. Rosalie called – he died –’ A sharp intake of breath – a moaning ‘Oh’ and tears. She said, ‘We must go – I want to go to New York!’ My poor mother – she became the matriarchal figure after Grandma, not because of seniority, but because it was she who believed that keeping a family together was the most important thing on earth. Now she didn’t even consider her terror of flying. We threw things together, boarded the night plane.

The next day in New York, Rosalie kept saying over and over, ‘But, Betty, what do you do about the pain? I have this pain’ – pointing to her heart – ‘and it won’t go away. Is it like that for you? What do you do about it?’

The funeral was the following morning – the casket would be open. My first reaction, remembering Hellinger, was that I would not look. But that evening, friends and family around, the casket at the end of the room, I found I was drawn to it – I wanted to see my darling Charlie once more. Charlie who held so much of my formative years in his hands – who took so much of my love with him. So I walked quietly toward the bier with some trepidation – and there he was, looking much the same as he had in life. As if sleeping; not waxen. I just stood there looking down at him, the years and moments with him flashing before me. I could not bear the thought of never seeing that face again. I had lost the two great male influences my thirty-three years had known.

The next day, on the drive to the cemetery, Rosalie was sitting in the
back of the car, I was in the jump seat, and she said again, ‘It’s this pain – it won’t go away – what can I do about it?’ The pain was the wrenching of Charlie from her. Like surgery. I could only tell her, ‘It takes time – it takes a long time. Bogie’s been gone a year – it takes a long time.’ I didn’t dare say, ‘Maybe that pain never goes away.’

That April Rosalie was coming through California. I was in Palm Springs staying with Buddy and Carolyn. She stopped by the house to see the children and called me from there. She’d been traveling for Boys’ Town, was on her way to Las Vegas, then home. She sounded very up, but the pain, she said, still wouldn’t go away. I’d be in New York soon and see her – I loved her, wished she could stay until I came back, but she couldn’t. ‘Okay, darling – see you in a month or so.’ The next day Mother called from New York. There’d been a mid-air collision over Las Vegas – Rosalie was in it – there were no survivors. Three months to the day after Charlie died. It didn’t seem possible, such incredible timing, yet if she would have had to live with that pain, was she better off? Better off dead?

Was there to be no end to disasters? For two years they had come non-stop – Bogie, Charlie, Rosalie, Mother’s attack, Frank. I couldn’t bear it. I had to go away. I knew I should get out of California, there was no future for me there, but I still couldn’t make the decision. Slim called me saying that she and Leland Hayward had to go to Europe in the fall – Leland was going to negotiate with the Baroness von Trapp for rights to what would become
The Sound of Music
. She’d been after me to get the hell out of that dead place – ‘It’s not for you.’ I knew she was right – I was miserable, tense, desperate – Europe would help. She suggested Spain, and finally we agreed to make the trip together.

Slim was fantastic. She had been responsible for changing my life. Now, some fifteen years later, she was pulling it together for me. She knew I was desperate. The best things about Slim were her gift for total friendship, her original, inquiring mind, her great sense of fun, her willingness to accept her friends as they were without judging them. She never pushed, she just said what she thought – you could take it or leave it. She was loyal and she was funny. That trip with her was the beginning of my being saved, the first step toward facing and dealing with my life as it truly was – not as I wished it were.

B
eing in a new country
, with an unknown language and all new people, filled me with abandon. We did everything. I drank whatever was put before me, ended up watching and half-dancing flamenco through more than one night – had a continual hangover and never stopped moving. I even played a scene out of a Marx Brothers comedy one night in our hotel suite, with Slim sitting in her bedroom reading a book and me being chased around the living room by a Spaniard. I kept stopping at her door en route, saying, ‘I’m still on my feet.’ It was an incredible time – new fun, madness – and I didn’t think of Frank. I felt like a woman for the first time in ages, being admired and desired as a woman, having value.

After two weeks we headed for Paris, where Leland joined us. Then Munich. When Slim and Leland went back to New York, I returned to Paris. I’d been sent the script of a film to be made in London the following year. I said I’d go to London to meet the producer and director. While in Paris, Vivien Leigh called to tell me she wanted to give a party for me Whom did I want? ‘I only want to see you and Larry – you don’t have to do anything special for me.’ But she insisted, so I left it to her.

On arrival in London I learned she was heading toward another breakdown – still playing
Duel of Angels
eight times a week, but having gained a great deal of weight. The party she wanted to give had turned out to be for more than one hundred people. She had taken over a nightclub for it.

Larry asked me to lunch at the Ivy. He was honest, simple, and terribly sweet as he explained that the party was Vivien’s doing, not his; that of course he would go because of me, but he wanted me to understand the situation. He was going to California to be in a film and would not come back for a long time, and when he did, it wouldn’t be to Vivien. The marriage had been heaven the first ten years – hell, the second. Now it was over. But she needed her friends – he wanted me to stand firm and close to her. He felt such concern for her, such pain at the ending of it all. But he knew he would not survive if he did not get away.

He took me to see her play, in which she was wonderful and beautiful, overweight or not. Backstage she greeted us with champagne and non-stop talk, then we left for the party, which was overrun with cameras – at the entrance and upstairs, where I found myself in a
receiving line with Larry on one side and Vivien on the other. Every name in the English theatre was present – old friends, new friends-to-be. Flamenco dancers, orchestra, up till dawn when the dregs – being Brian Bedford (in the friend-to-be category), the Burtons, the Kenneth Mores, Jack Hawkins, and a few others – were dragged to the Connaught or somewhere for scrambled eggs by Vivien, who was possessed of a manic energy and total inability to sleep – all symptoms. Watching her and Larry that night, it was hard to believe they were the same two people whose life had once seemed so idyllic. It brought into sharp focus the luck Bogie and I had shared, and the almost guaranteed-to-be-unlucky union that Frank and I had escaped!

I happily agreed to do the film, which would take several months, with locations in India and Spain, interiors in London. I would put Steve and Leslie in the American School, and I went to see the headmaster, who made it all seem easy and attractive. Work is what would determine my life from now on – six months in England (I wasn’t allowed more by their laws).

By the time I got back to California I knew I would leave there for good. I had spent the last several years in misery and desperation – I couldn’t have done anything right there. And now I’d discovered there was a whole big world for me to live in – something I had never even suspected until that trip. Naturally I was a little apprehensive after fifteen years in California, but why stay, for God’s sake? Out of the thirty friends I thought I’d had, there were maybe eight true ones – better to know that, but painful to learn. Had my whole
raison d’être
been Bogie? Wasn’t I myself worth anything? I was so confused, so demoralized, I had to find out who I was, make a place for myself – my own place. I’d been protected and spoiled for so long, it was almost a way of life. It was time to grow up – learn to stand alone. I had to get out from under being ‘Bogart’s widow.’ That was not a profession, after all – and there would be no hope of a new beginning unless I fought for one.

The children too needed a fresh start. I sang London’s praises to them, describing the palace, riding in the park, the zoo. May would come with us, and I’d register Steve and Leslie in New York schools for the following September, just in case we ended up there. And on January 9, 1959, I left for London to start a new life with the two people I loved most in the world, my children.

We were met by a barrage of press. Steve hated being photographed. From the day Bogie died, he instinctively turned away from cameras. I was welcomed with open arms as Bogie’s widow, and as someone who loved England and had many friends there. We had one day to familiarize ourselves with our new home, which my old friend Joyce Buck had found for me. Then up at dawn Monday morning for the children’s first look at the American School in Regent’s Park. Again photographers waiting – I’d asked the headmaster to prevent their entering the school, and he was only too pleased to comply.

So we were immediately thrust into our new lives – having to run before learning to walk. Just as well. It was snowing – very cold – not good for May, but she bundled up and together we found our local fishmonger, butcher, greengrocer, all within a block of each other and our house. May, who had only been out of the U.S. once – to Honolulu – had the greatest adjustment to make, but she never complained. I arranged for French tutoring, for piano lessons. On the weekends it was sightseeing – the changing of the guard, which Steve and Leslie adored – the zoo – Portobello Road – museums. It was all an adventure, and discovery was fun. My friends were marvelous, as always – when you have a friend in England, you have a friend for life. The Mores and Jack and Doreen Hawkins became close chums. Rex Harrison was playing in
My Fair Lady
at Drury Lane and Larry Olivier was in California, so Vivien, Kay Kendall, and I became a steady threesome. The press couldn’t figure out why three ladies went everywhere alone – the facts of Rex’s working and Larry’s absence not occurring to them. I was preparing for my film,
Flame over India –
we’d shoot a week in London, India for six weeks, Spain for another six, and wind up again in London. Except for leaving my babies, I couldn’t wait to see India for the first time.

Life was falling into place. I was still lonely – still missing Frank – but enjoying England, and getting stronger. Half of life’s problems disappear when one’s head is healthy. I yearned for someone to belong to, but I didn’t brood. There was too much to do and see.

I was asked to appear at the Royal Command Performance – Alec Guinness’s film
The Horse’s Mouth
was chosen. I was very frightened, though I only had to be introduced and stand on the stage with Maurice Chevalier, Richard Todd, Richard Attenborough, and several others, and sing a song I hoped to remember then and can’t now. Cole
Lesley, Noel’s secretary, took me there – I was so nervous standing on the receiving line waiting for the Queen Mother that I made him get me a drink. He presented me with a glass of water which turned out to be vodka, on which I almost choked – a funny evening. You can tell yourself it’s nothing to meet royalty – they’re only people, like our President – but it’s something nonetheless. I was bedazzled by the Queen Mother and her diamond tiara. If my mother could see me now!

We did wardrobe tests and started shooting at Pinewood Studios – old, beautiful. The large dining room for casts and crews had a bar, unheard of in Hollywood, so civilized. In England acting was an honored profession. I loved working there. I fell easily into the English rhythm – less pressured, much saner than any I’d known. No ring-a-ding-ding.

Kay Kendall and I became very close. She was such a funny woman and so, so beautiful. One night at a party she told me about having gone to her doctor about bumps in her groin – she was longing for a baby – said, ‘I’d thought I’d bought the building’ (British expression for dying), but no, he gave her some explanation, she was all right. She and I went to Rex’s closing night of
My Fair Lady –
an exciting, moving evening. I remember looking over at Kay and seeing tears streaming down her cheeks. It was months after that, on my return from location, that I heard she had leukemia – she had indeed ‘bought the building.’ Another unreasonable injustice – why always the best people, while the shits of the world go on?

Jock Whitney, our Ambassador to Great Britain, invited me to dinner at the Embassy. Fred Astaire, an old buddy of his, and his sister, Adèle, were there. Fred, recalling old times, demonstrated a bygone happening by dancing a few steps ending with a flourish on a sofa, and reminisced with Jock – wonderful fun. I was having a happy time until I was called to the phone. It was the children’s nurse – I’d been robbed. That took care of that evening. I rushed home to find Scotland Yard there and every piece of jewelry I owned, including everything given me by Bogie, stolen. The thief had come in through a window – Steve’s window while he was sleeping, thank God he didn’t wake up – tiptoed into my bedroom, and quietly emptied all my drawers. May and the nurse, on another floor watching television, had heard nothing. The Yard men told me they knew the culprit – a man called the Fly, who
climbed the outside of houses till he found an open window. They recovered a good deal of the jewelry, though not all the irreplaceable sentimental pieces, and I hired a detective to stay in the house every night. As I would be away for a couple of months, I wanted no anxieties about the safety of my children. The Man Upstairs wasn’t through with me yet.