Confessions of a Prairie Bitch (2 page)

In 1962, while we were living in New York and shortly after I was born, she was cast in the first comedy album ever to mock a seated president, “The First Family,” about JFK and Jackie and the whole gang starring stand-up comedian Vaughn Meader. She was the voice of Caroline Kennedy and baby John-John. It sold so many copies so fast (seven and a half million, to be exact), it made the
Guinness Book of World Records
for fastest-selling album in history. It was played over loudspeakers in department stores and won the Grammy for Album of the Year. Even President Kennedy was said to have loved it.

A second
First Family
album was recorded and set to be released Christmas 1963, but, since JFK was killed on November 22, that was the end of that. The album disappeared from the air-waves, and poor Vaughn Meader’s career never really recovered. It’s still a major collector’s item, and yes, that’s my forty-year-old mom on the cover wearing knee socks and holding a balloon.

By the time I was in first grade, my mother was so well known in cartoons, that on the occasions she would walk me to school, the other kids would beg her to perform: “Do Gumby!” “Do Casper!” And there, in the school yard, at eight in the morning, in her coat and scarf, even on days she was fighting a hangover, she would smile bravely and say, “Hi! I’m Casper the Friendly Ghost, and I want to be your friend!” On some mornings she could even be persuaded to sing: “Where oh where has my Underdog gone? Oh where oh where can he be?” Not only were her early-morning performances impressive in quality, but I was amazed just by the fact she did them at all. I have to hand it to her; I don’t know if I could have done that before my first cup of coffee.

I, of course, loved this. At that age, kids think you’re nuts when you tell them your mother is Gumby. Having her come down to the school yard in person and
prove it
was more than I could ever dream of. It gave me a smattering of what would pass for “street cred” in the first grade.

My mother was very beautiful, and she had that whole ’60s style going. She had very, very dyed red hair, although I believe it was called strawberry-something. It was teased into a bouffant not unlike the hairdo of her cartoon character Sweet Polly Purebred. Because she liked to wear smart suits with three-quarter-length sleeves and black pumps, the resemblance was positively disturbing; the only difference at all was she was missing the big cartoon doggie nose. Sometimes I went with her to the hairdresser’s, where her stylist would smoke endless Benson & Hedges while spraying her and the whole room with Aqua Net. I don’t know how either of them was able to breathe. I nearly passed out.

My mother didn’t do the usual “mommy” things. She wasn’t into all the arts and crafts activities that other mothers so enjoyed. I can just imagine the look I would have gotten had I suggested she make me a Halloween costume. Mine all came from the store, until I got older and started making them myself. It wasn’t really a problem, except for the Girl Scouts. All my school friends were in the Brownies, the lead-in to being in the Girl Scouts, and I wanted to join, too. My mother and I went to a meeting where the program directors explained the whole process, as well as their very pressing need for more den mothers.

This is where things went south. When we got home, my mother sat me down and told me very solemnly that we needed to talk. She explained that at the meeting, they had suggested that she become a den mother. She explained that if I joined my local troop, she would be expected to join as well and fulfill the duties of a scout den mother: driving girls around, going camping, making treats for meetings, helping with arts and crafts, etc.

She said, “I’m very sorry. I know you want to be a Brownie. But seriously, ask yourself, do you honestly see me as den mother material?” I was six, but I knew she was right. The images were horrifying: I tried to visualize her in a schoolroom, handing out little Dixie cups of Elmer’s glue and glitter with her shaky hands, and I could just see the ensuing disaster. I saw her standing around in a supermarket parking lot helping me sell cookies, with the far away, sad, deadened look of someone who’s been waiting in line at the DMV for several hours. Did I really think
she
was going to make lunches for a troop of twenty little girls? This was a woman who had trouble cutting the crusts off my peanut butter sandwiches, for God’s sake.

I told her I understood. And I did. I did not join the Brownies, and I never became a Girl Scout. In retrospect, I sincerely doubt I was what they were looking for either.

After we moved to Hollywood in 1965, Dad became a personal manager. This is like an agent, only weirder. Being an agent is simple: you have clients; you get them jobs; they pay you 10 percent. The end. The personal manager’s job is to “counsel and advise.” But personal managers are not lawyers. They are different from business managers, who handle bank accounts and investments. They do not specifically procure employment. But they get paid 15 percent instead of 10. So what the hell does a personal manager actually do? If they’re a bad one, not much at all. And if they’re a good one?
Everything.

The agent may get you the three-picture deal and negotiate for the raise and the bigger trailer. The publicist may get you the cover of
People,
but the manager is the one who will come in the middle of the night to bail you out of jail. The publicist might spin the story of your arrest to the press and try to make you sound innocent. But the manager will come before the cops arrive, flush the dope down the toilet, give the girl cab fare home, and wipe the prints off the gun. My father was a manager.

Before he started his own firm and became my manager, he worked for Seymour Heller and Associates. This was how he wound up working for Liberace.

It was 1969, so Liberace was famous by this time. Back in the ’50s, he had his own TV show (called
The Liberace Show
; what else?) and was now touring to packed houses. As strange as it may seem to young people now, at the time, Liberace was in fact the highest-paid entertainer in the world. I had the hilarious privilege of going to see his show when I was just eight years old.

My parents prepared me for this by admonishing, “Now, whatever you do, don’t say anything, because no one must know that Liberace is gay.”

“Excuse me?” I said. “I’m eight. I know he’s gay.” I thought they had to be kidding. No grown-up person really thought this guy was straight, did they?

“No, no!” they said. “His fans are in love with him. You mustn’t say a word!”

I agreed to behave myself, under protest. If I thought hiding Liberace’s gayness was a ludicrous proposition before I saw the show, I was absolutely in hysterics afterward. He came onstage in hot pants—spangled, gleaming, red, white, and blue hot pants covered in sequins and rhinestones. He tap-danced in this outfit and did a baton-twirling routine. He also had a floor-length cape that lit up. Really, it was wired with thousands of little bulbs. The house lights would go down, and he would blaze away like a Christmas tree. He wore elaborate makeup and gallons of hair spray. He sat at the piano and played (quite beautifully, by the way) and sang, simpering and winking and giggling the entire show. And in case anyone still didn’t get it, he raised his arms over his head, soared into the air, and flew across the stage.

Yet there they were, his legions of female fans, mostly older women dressed in fur coats and jewels, with that well-sprayed, perfectly coifed, slightly blue hair that was considered cool at the time. I watched them in amazement at intermission as they scooped up all the merchandise. Liberace was crazy about merchandise. He was ahead of his time. People didn’t sell things at concerts as much as they do today. But old Liberace did. He had records and coffee mugs—he even had soap, for the love of God, with his picture on it. I tried to imagine who in their right mind would actually get off on bathing with Liberace. It was too icky to contemplate. Yet as the cash registers rang furiously, I began to understand why Liberace’s most famous quote was, “I cried—all the way to the bank!”

I overheard some of the fur-coated ladies talking. They paid no attention to the eight-year-old in the frilly yellow dress and white tights hovering near them. They assumed, of course, that my mother must be nearby purchasing scads of Liberace merchandise, so I could eavesdrop with impunity. They whispered and giggled like teenagers, and I heard bits and pieces: “Oh, he IS!!” (Shriek!) “Just darling!” and finally, “You’d be safe with him!” followed by gales of laughter. THEY KNEW!

They didn’t call it “gay,” but they knew perfectly well what it was when they saw it. If you had walked up to any one of these women and asked flat out: “Is Liberace a homosexual?” she would have slapped you soundly across the face and screamed, “How DARE you!” But if you asked something along the lines of “So, why do you think he’s not married?” she would have winked at you and said, “Oh,
really,
dear!” That’s how they liked it, and that’s how he gave it to them. Just as he floated over the stage, Liberace eternally hovered over the concepts of gayness and straightness, never really touching down on either side. It was genius.

CHAPTER TWO

THE CASTLE

NELLIE:
My mother says we’re not like the rest of the children.

T
he Chateau Marmont is probably not most parents’ first choice as a place to raise their family, but like most actors, it was where we landed when we came from New York in 1965. It wasn’t yet the infamous location of Belushi’s death, but it was already notorious. For those who haven’t been on the tour of Hollywood and seen it yet, the Chateau is a big, gorgeous pretend–French castle, sitting right smack in the middle of Hollywood on the Sunset Strip, surrounded by liquor stores, banks, and nightclubs. It really stands out. Built in the late ’20s, it was meant to be a fashionable, high-end apartment building for very respectable people, but it became both semipermanent and totally transient lodging for people in show business and those who
think
they are in show business. It now has a fancy bar and restaurant and is frequented by many notorious, drunken, pants-dropping celebrities. This observation is not meant in a negative way or considered a sign of the Chateau’s falling from grace. It was always the home of notorious, drunken, pants-dropping celebrities.

I, of course, loved it from the minute I set eyes on it. All little girls of four and five think they are princesses, but I was the only one I knew who could tell people she really did live in a castle. We moved in just as the 1960s were breaking right there on the Sunset Strip. We had come to California because my older brother, Stefan, was supposed to star in the movie
The Singing Nun
with Debbie Reynolds. I say “supposed to” because between the time he was cast and the time shooting began, he grew and was deemed much too big—and therefore replaced. He then had to settle for playing Kirk Douglas’s son in
The Way West.
Stefan, who’s six years older than I, had started acting when he was barely five, playing sad-eyed orphans on soap operas. This led to an article in a New York paper about “the theatrical Arngrim family: Dad’s a monk, Mom’s a ghost, and their son’s an orphan!”

No one seemed to question the parts he got. I remember my mother proudly telling the story of how when he was very little, she had begged him to smile at an audition, to “try to look happy.” He didn’t, but when he came out of the reading, he was thrilled. “They didn’t want a happy little boy! I got the part!” He worked like crazy, playing everything from the French war orphan on the series
Combat!
and the embarrassing illegitimate spawn on a soap opera to the moody “disturbed child.” There was no shortage of parts for the cute boy with big, sad brown eyes, who looked like he had the whole world on his shoulders. But no one seemed to want to know
why
he looked that way.

By the time he was twelve, he was officially a “teen idol.” He played Barry Lockridge in the Irwin Allen sci-fi cult classic
Land of the Giants,
released in 1968. Yet another in a series of unhappy orphans, Barry was on his way to a new family, when the suborbital plane he’s on, the
Spindrift,
crashes on another planet, inhabited by, well, giants. He’s then left to be raised by the crew and passengers of the ship, including Mr. Fitzhugh, the constantly sweating and panting “embezzler on the lam.” Luckily, Barry had his faithful dog, Chipper, with him, resulting in endless scenes of him shouting, “No! Chipper! Chipper, come back!” It was sort of like a warped, sci-fi version of
Gilligan’s Island,
but without the laughs. Stefan should have been happy then; he was making tons of money and was now world-famous. Yet he still managed to remain in a seemingly permanent state of gloom.

Living with an official teen idol was very bizarre. Every month he was in one of the magazines or all of them—
16, Tiger Beat, Teen Beat
—they all seemed to blur into one big mass of teenage girl squeal speak: “Who’s your Fav?” and pages and pages of “Luv,” “Fax,” and “Pix,” all “cos they’re the grooviest!” I did not think my brother or anything he did was remotely “groovy.”

This didn’t stop the media from dragging me into his “fab” world. I hadn’t worked a day in my life, yet articles began to appear with titles like “Meet Stefan’s Cool Kid Sister!” with pictures of me modeling the latest in cool children’s wear. I even technically have a song-writing credit. My brother and I wrote a song called “Otis the Sheep.” It was sort of an homage to the Lewis Carroll nonsense poem “Jabberwocky” with lots of “cool”-sounding, made-up words. It was perfectly stupid, but by God, they printed it, “lyrics by Stefan and Alison Arngrim.” I was famous, and I hadn’t done a damn thing.

One day, a fanzine came over to interview the family (“Meet Stefan’s Groovy Family!” “See Stefan’s Groovy Dog!”). The woman who interviewed us was very nice; she even stayed for lunch. Back then, we had the great status symbol of a maid. She was primarily for symbolic effect, since with my neat-freak father around, there just wasn’t that much left to clean. My brother and I must have been unusually well behaved that day, because the maid had baked us a lemon meringue pie. It was fantastic, and of course we served it to the lady from the magazine.

When the article came out, I was stunned. Not one single word anyone actually said all day was in there. There were lots of other words, all very nice, but all completely made up. I was only six, but I had
been
at the lunch table. These people in the article didn’t even talk like anyone in my house! They were total strangers! And to top it all off, it included the ridiculous claim that my mother had made the lemon meringue pie. Bewildered, I asked my father, “Why? I don’t understand—we were all there—why not write down what we said? And Mom
bake a pie
? Everyone knows Mom can’t cook!”

And that’s when I learned one of the most important lessons of my life—at age five. “That’s what they do in magazines,” explained my father patiently, “they make things up. No one cares if it’s true. So they write whatever they think will make a better story.” This blew my mind at the time, but I’m so glad I learned this warped lesson then, long before I was ever on TV and had to deal with the
National Enquirer
and
TV Guide
. It’s good to have your expectations lowered as much as possible before you go into show business.

We Arngrims arrived in Hollywood just in time for the riots. In the summer of 1966, there was a teeny little rock club on Sunset called Pandora’s Box. Well, not really on Sunset, but on what was actually a traffic island in the middle of the street. It was that teeny. And apparently it was ground zero for the entire L.A. hippie population. As a kid, I was fascinated with it, since it was painted purple and looked like some kind of kid’s playhouse, just sitting there in the middle of the street. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t allowed to go in. Turns out a lot of people didn’t want their kids going in, and the police shut it down one night, resulting in a series of demonstrations and riots, so huge, that they became the basis of the Buffalo Springfield song “For What It’s Worth.” You know, “It’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound? / Everybody look what’s going down.” Yeah, that one. There really were “a thousand people in the street.” Probably quite a bit more than that, actually. At one point, the rioters even turned over a bus.

We were living up on the fifth floor of the Chateau, giving us the best view of the scene. My parents and their friends gathered on the balconies to drink wine and watch the spectacle. I wasn’t allowed out on the balconies, so I felt quite put out. My mother explained to me that it wasn’t safe because there might be something called “tear gas.” I remember hearing the adults talk and asking my mother, “What’s a riot?” The explanation I was given about people fighting in groups, etc., didn’t make a lot of sense, and I became convinced it was some kind of sporting event. I had visions of organized teams in something like karate robes with wooden poles taking turns hitting one another. It’s not surprising I thought it was all a game from the reaction of the grown-ups on the balcony. They were yelling and laughing: “The peasants are revolting!” “Let them eat cake!”

But riots weren’t the only thing I could see from our perch in the castle. From my bathroom window, I had a perfect view of a revolving billboard. No, not just any revolving billboard, but a giant Bullwinkle. For also on Sunset were the offices of Jay Ward, the creator of Rocky and Bullwinkle. At the corner of Sunset and Marmont Lane, he had erected a perfect replica of Bullwinkle J. Moose, in a glittering, cut-away showgirl costume, with Rocket J. Squirrel perched on his outstretched hand. Every time I went to the bathroom, I watched Bullwinkle go round and round and round. I thought he had been put there just for me.

Back then, children were permitted to play in the halls at the Chateau. But they weren’t the only ones roaming aimlessly. Some of the more stoned or spaced out adults could also be found wandering about. One day, I found an old woman in my hallway. She was very well dressed and had an accent. She sounded British, like the people in that annoying
Mary Poppins
movie. She had a wonderful smile and seemed sort of funny and dotty. As if I had found a stray kitten, I brought her home to my mother and asked if I could keep her.

She turned out to be the famous music-hall star and actress Beatrice Lillie. No, I couldn’t keep her, as she really did have her own apartment down the hall, but she did officially become my new best friend. I made it clear that she was specifically
my
friend, and my parents were allowed to play with her only when I was busy.

We all went to see her in her movie when it opened:
Thoroughly Modern Millie,
with Julie Andrews, Carol Channing, and Mary Tyler Moore. Bea played Mrs. Meers, the scary old lady with the chopsticks in her hair who kidnaps the girls in the movie by chloroforming them and dumping them into a large wicker basket. I absolutely loved her. She was the villain.

Bea was delighted to come to my big event as well—my fifth birthday party, held in our apartment in the Castle. She brought me a present. It was in a big box with lots of tissue paper. When I got it open, I pulled out a ceramic sculpture—of what appeared to be a disembodied head. The grown-ups all stared at Bea in horror. She said simply, “Oh, I just never know what to get for children.”

I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It was a sculpture of what looked like a beautiful dark-eyed East Indian boy. I eventually named it Mowgli, after
The Jungle Book
character, and kept it on my dresser and stored hats on it. I still consider it one of the top-ten best gifts I’ve ever received.

I liked surprises, and my childhood was full of them. I never knew who in the way of friends my parents were going to spring on me next. Some of my parents’ pals were more fun than others, some I just barely tolerated, but I couldn’t say any of them were boring. One of my favorite grown-ups was named Christine, whom I befriended when I was about seven. She was an older lady, but I liked her because she didn’t talk to me like I was stupid. Because I was so small for my age, a lot of adults treated me as if I were younger than I was. But Christine wasn’t one of those. She would look me in the eye and listen to what I was saying. She would ask me sensible questions and pay attention to the answers. If I asked her a question, she didn’t laugh and say, “Oh, how cute!” She just answered it like a regular person. In other words, she was capable of holding a normal, intelligent conversation.

She met my mother through their shared publicist. My mother was at the height of her
Casper
and
Gumby
fame, and Christine had a book that she discussed on the lecture circuit and in a nightclub act. She, like my mother, had become quite famous in the late ’50s and early ’60s. Her name was Christine Jorgensen—the recipient of the world’s first “publicly acknowledged” sex-change operation.

She had at one time been a soldier named George Jorgensen, who one day realized that certain
things
were just not what they should be. So he went on a quest for medical assistance with what at that time was thought to be a rare condition. He found his way to the doctors in Denmark who were pioneering this new treatment, and several very experimental surgeries later,
she
returned to America to live out her new life as a woman, in peace and total anonymity.

Except it didn’t quite work out that way. The press found out, and the 1950s equivalent of today’s rabid paparazzi met her at the airport, where all hell broke loose. The headlines read: “Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty!” and “Operations Transform Bronx Youth!”

I didn’t have a clue about Christine’s past, but then one day, my parents came to me and said, “We need to talk to you about Auntie Christine.” I was worried and thought maybe she’d been in an accident or something.

“It’s just that Auntie Christine is famous, and, well, you might hear about this on the news,” my mother said delicately. (I was surprisingly up on current events for the average second grader. A major news junkie, I never missed Walter Cronkite.)

My parents seemed to be hemming and hawing, which was unusual. Finally, they said, “Auntie Christine used to be a man.”

“What?” I said and stared at them. I knew they were nuts, but I thought maybe this time they had finally gone the rest of the way around the bend.

“She used to be a man,” they replied nervously. “She’s a woman now, of course. Uh…you see, she was born a man, and, well, she had an operation…” The whole explanation tumbled out quickly.

“Oh.” I mean really, what can you say to a story like that? But then my curiosity was piqued. “So wait, you mean people can change? Men can become women, and women can become men?”

They looked even more nervous. “Uh…well, yes. But it’s very complicated.”

“So then, if I wanted to,
I could become a guy
?”