I wasn’t doing much interesting acting work. Guest shots on one series and another. Love Boat, Fantasy Island, that sort of thing. Then, in 1981, I was cast in Mama’s Family, a spin-off of a Carol Burnett Show sketch. Vicki Lawrence played the bossy, brash Mama, with Ken Berry as her weakling son. I was to be her nemesis, Aunt Fran, a fireball who matched Mama insult for insult. What fun! I love playing spitfires. But when the pilot script arrived, Aunt Fran had been rewritten as a mousy, uptight minor character. The producers had seen an actress they loved on the soap All My Children and decided Mama’s nemesis should be the white-trash floozy wife of Mama’s spineless son.
Well, poop. The pilot got picked up, and we made shows throughout the summer. Not the standard sitcom schedule.
That fall, I played Karl Malden’s wife in Word of Honor, the true story of a lawyer wrongfully sent to prison. The producers were appreciative of my talent, which was heartening, and the marvelous cast included Ron Silver and some young Detroit and Chicago actors. John Malkovich, one of the founders of Chicago’s new Steppenwolf Theater, played my son-in-law and kept me in stitches every day during lunch. On a day off, Gary Sinise came and drove us to Chicago, where I stayed with John and his girlfriend, Glenne Headly, and went to an excellently acted and directed Steppenwolf production. It was wonderful to watch John and Gary go on to huge success. And Glenne Headly gave a perfectly crafted performance in the movie Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. She’s aces. Our Word of Honor played on TV the other night and holds up quite well, I’m happy to say. Lord, my butt was trim.
Meanwhile, a tall, handsome émigré from Yugoslavia moved in next door to Norman Hartweg. Drago Zdenko had been an award-winning film actor in Eastern Europe before moving to the United States three years earlier with aspirations to be a director. He married his mother’s cousin so he could stay in the States and learned English from watching television. Drago was sexy beyond words, intelligent and amusing, and his apartment was neat and orderly, in contrast to Norm’s, which always looked as if hordes of gypsies had pitched camp.
Growing up in post–World War II Belgrade, Drago and his mother and sister had to share a one-bedroom apartment with another family. His mother chose the bedroom and bathroom for their half, leaving the other family the living room and kitchen. She figured cooking in the john was less off-putting than doing daily ablutions in the kitchen. Consequently, her son developed a decidedly cavalier attitude toward home cooking and an even more nonchalant open-door policy toward bathroom privacy. Mercy! (Talk about being caught with your pants down.)
Linda had sold The Castle to our friend, Ronnie Claire Edwards, the parsimonious Corabeth on The Waltons, whom Lette called Ron Éclair, and I took Drago to a party there one night. Ronnie never served supper before eleven, following an extended cocktail hour, but around nine-thirty, Drago wandered into the kitchen, loudly inquiring, “VEN DO VE EAT?” with ever-increasing volume until Ronnie Claire suggested I not bring him to her next soiree. Or ever again. He was full of more bravado than a Veterans Day parade. In the two years I knew him, he never paid a traffic ticket; he always went to court and argued, and always got off. His ego was a tad overweening (and by “tad” I mean…“boatload”), but he was engrossing, full of original ideas. It had been a while since I’d been with a man, and Drago and I had immediate sexual rapport. At thirty-three, the energy surged.
Rating? I have to credit him with an A. Or a yat, in Serbo-Croatian.
“It is best and proper I must to move in vith you,” he informed me, but I insisted he keep his own place. I did allow him to install a toothbrush and other sundries at my house, however, and over time, he pretty much settled in to stay, driving to his place for mail once in a while.
That December, I was invited to join a celebrity group in Colorado for a film premiere and took Drago along as my guest. One lovely consequence of the trip was getting to be friends with writer Bob Parnell and his wife, actress Marsha Hunt, who had both been chewed up and spit out by the McCarthy witch-hunt blacklisting scourge, having refused to testify against friends under investigation. I don’t recall who else was on the top-heavy plane other than the beautiful and charming Joan Hackett, a popular actress who’d done guest shots from Dr. Kildare to The Love Boat. That night in Colorado, we all attended the film and ate a late supper, then I went to the room assigned to Drago and me. But he never showed up.
He’d spent the night with Ms. Hackett. Well, hooray for Belgrade.
“I am conzoomed with pazhion for her!” he told me when we got back to L.A.
“Zvell,” I said. “Move out!”
But he wouldn’t go. For three excruciating days, he continued to hang out at my house, spending the nights at Joan’s place in Beverly Hills.
One night, Joan called me and said, “Rue, does this strange creature belong to you?”
“No,” I told her. “He does not. In fact, I’m trying to get him to leave.”
She said, “I can feel him calling to me over the mountains. He has a strange connection with me I can’t explain.”
“You’re welcome to him,” I assured her, and a day or so later, he finally left—for good.
This split with Drago had an unexpectedly disastrous effect on me. Once again, I was crippled by panic. I couldn’t understand it, because I wasn’t in love with him. The rejection felt like a stone thrown at a wasp’s nest. The old fears swarmed out and overwhelmed me. Mark had moved out earlier that year and was living with roommates in Van Nuys, so he knew nothing of what I was going through. For several nights, unable to bear the agony, I slept on the floor at Norman’s, doubled up on a pallet behind his TV set. I had no pride about it. Dear Norm talked me to sleep. He didn’t indulge or patronize me. He simply made small talk, speaking evenly about this and that until I could stand to close my eyes.
Shortly after Mama’s Family began shooting in July of 1982, the pain in my side, which I’d had since I was pregnant with Mark, grew worse. During rehearsal one day, the stabbing pain was suddenly more acute than ever before.
“Sounds like gallbladder trouble,” said my doctor in Studio City. “Go home, eat two pieces of bread covered with butter, and call me if the pain gets noticeably worse.”
I ate the buttered bread and within minutes was writhing on the floor. I was rushed to Sherman Oaks Hospital, and after three days of tests went off to surgery. When I woke up—minus my gallbladder and a portion of my liver—I felt relatively okay but couldn’t draw a regular breath. The best I could manage were fast little pants.
“It’s the psychological trauma,” said the doctor. “Do you have a therapist?”
“It’s not psycho—logical—trauma,” I gasped. “I—can’t—breathe!”
They finally tumbled to the fact that I had adult respiratory distress syndrome, a condition that sometimes follows major surgery, and my chances for survival were not good. Not good at all. They whisked me to intensive care, trying to intubate me.
“Rue!” said the doctor. “I need you to cough. C’mon, Rue! Cough for me!”
Cough? I thought. Where do you cough? I tried to find the muscles, the apparatus for cough, but everything felt paralyzed. I finally willed myself to cough, and the doctor said, “You just saved your life.” But I wasn’t out of the woods. Intubated, I spent the next four days under heavy sedation, only briefly awake enough now and then to scribble in a wobbly hand on a large tablet.
Am I dying?
My doctor answered, “Not if I can help it, Rue.”
Is there anything I can do to help?
“Just stay strong.” She smiled down at me. “Hang in there.”
I scrawled in large letters: Please keep Drago Zdenko out of here!
Drago was annoying the hell out of me. He had moved on from Joan Hackett to live with a volatile French woman and, having heard from Norman that I was seriously ill, insisted on visiting, striding into the ICU every day, cheerfully bubbling, “Don’t vorry! Everything is juzt vine!” Everything was not juzt vine! I was quite possibl
y dying. Poor Mark was scared out of his mind, and my doctor was frantically consulting the New England Journal of Medicine for a clue. It was terrifying. And yet…fascinating.
Alone inside my brain, I felt myself enter a single cell, observing all the machinations and chemical reactions, and as I watched its machinery buzzing along like a little robot, I thought, Well, you little dickens. How primitive. How marvelously organized. Tootling along your appointed rounds, without an ounce of compassion. You don’t give a damn if I live or die. But I do! And I’ll lay you eight to four I win this contest, you unemotional little dick-head.
The doctor called my dad and urged him to get to Los Angeles as soon as possible if he hoped to see me alive, but Marie didn’t like to fly, so the two of them drove to L.A., and by the time they arrived, much to everyone’s surprise, my prognosis was much better. I was moved from the ICU back to my room, and there Marie shared the happy news that they’d gotten married without telling any of us. I don’t know exactly when. The doctors had been rather hasty during the emergency intubation, so I couldn’t speak. I could only croak tepid congratulations.
One day, as my shy little Catholic nurse was bustling about, and Oliver Hailey was visiting with his wife, two little girls, and his mother, a gorgeous young man appeared at the door with a boom box, from which issued sexy, slinky music. He slowly began to strip. Yep. Strip. Vicki Lawrence had sent him as a surprise. And surprised we were! The dear little nurse squatted down in a metal locker and tried to close the door. The rest of us stared, transfixed, until he was down to his G-string. Oliver’s mother remained quite composed, the girls giggled, and I just tried to live through it. I do hope I remembered to tip him. He needed encouragement. Turns out he was a sweet young man from Peoria and this was his first strip job. My God, the least we could have done was egg him on a bit, twirling some pillowcases or something. Hollywood can be tough on newcomers.
All told, I stayed in the hospital a little over three weeks. Doctors’ orders called for me to stay longer, but I decided the hell with doctors’ orders. I weighed 133 when I checked in, and when I got out of intensive care, only 121. They wanted me back up to 133, but I left at 125, and they could jolly well like it. (I did.)
“You’re smart to leave,” my little nurse told me as I packed. “The entire floor above you has come down with pneumonia.”
Drago insisted over my weakly croaked protestations that he drive me home. I thought he was the last person on earth I wanted to see, but even he was bumped up a notch when my dad said jovially, “Oh, guess who I invited to come visit you!”
And in walked The Greek. Good Christ and little spanakopita.
Drying my hair with a towel, I ignored him until he left, which was blessedly soon, but not soon enough for me. Back at my house with Bill and Marie, feeling like my insides were going to fall out onto the carpet at any moment, I crawled into the daybed in my office, too sore to climb even one stair. Bill went up to bed, but Marie pulled a chair up to my bedside, opened her Bible, and began badgering me to accept Jesus Christ as my personal savior.
“Marie, I’m extremely tired,” I croaked diplomatically. “I don’t feel like visiting.”
But she droned on and on and on. I don’t know who I wanted to strangle most—her, Bill, or myself. The next morning, her proselytizing done, they departed for Ardmore and I began the difficult healing ordeal. Getting around was difficult. I couldn’t sit in a chair; I had to perch on the arms. The drugs played hopscotch in my brain. I tried to sign a check and couldn’t remember how to spell “and.” Was it a-n-d, or a-d-n? A favorite poster of Koko, the gorilla who’d learned sign language, now terrified me and had to be taken down. Norm talked to me every night on the phone. Once, I fell asleep listening to his voice and woke up to a dial tone.
I croaked for the next two years, my range lower and noticeably impaired. Where were those high notes? Gone, my darlings, all gone. No more Lucia di Lammermoor. Now I sounded like a muted whiskey baritone. Mama’s Family was miked, of course, so I was able to croak my lines until the season ended early and we went on hiatus. I’d been cast as the Fortune Teller in Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego with Sada Thompson, Blair Brown, and Harold Gould (who later played Rose’s beau on The Golden Girls), but I couldn’t project past the first few rows. Director Jack O’Brien had me use a megaphone, with disappointing results. We also recorded it for PBS. My hoarse six-note range made it impossible to develop that juicy character the way I heard her in my head. I was only middlin’ fair in this role I was so right for! Maybe someday I’ll get to play it again—on a double bill with “The Three Little Kittens.”
I went to some no-frills health spa for weeks of colonics and raw vegetables. Infused with new energy, I was frisky as a young goat, when one day, my old friend from high school, Lynn Pebbles, called.
“Eddi-Rue, you’ll never guess who I saw recently. Tom Keel!”
I was suddenly back on the bus with my high school squeeze in his hep leather jacket.
I just want you to know, Eddi-Rue, I’m not a sex fiend.
“He just got divorced, and he looks great,” said Lynn. “If you don’t go after him, I’ve half a mind to give him a call myself.”
You don’t have to worry, Eddi-Rue. I won’t take advantage of you.
Wanna hear about Husband #5?
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Did you ever see a dream walking? Well, I have.”
—REVEL AND GORDON SONG LYRIC FROM Sitting Pretty
“Did you ever see a dick dancing? Well, I have.”
—ME, PARAPHRASING
My dear reader, whatever else you might take away from this book, please hold fast to this idea: Be careful, careful, careful whom you marry.
We’ve covered four very good reasons not to make that fateful trip down the aisle: pregnancy, pressure, panic, and…more panic. Good looks and romantic notions are nice, but not enough. I hate to admit it, but sometimes, love is not enough. There was something to love—or at least like—about each of my first five husbands. There’s no such thing as an Ideal Man, but if I could take a few ingredients from each of the men I married and mix them in a big bowl, I might whip up an Almost Ideal Husband Pudding. Take a pint of meltingly great looks, musical talent, and humor from Tom Lloyd Bish. Equal parts kindness, genius IQ, literary talent, courage, and artsy quirkiness from Norman Hartweg. A pinch of smelling sweet and a dash of orgasm from The Italian. A soupçon of high spirits from The Greek. And from my fifth husband, Tom Keel, a generous dollop of vigor and good looks, plus a gallon of gasket-blowing sex appeal.
Yum. My pudding bowl runneth over. Almost.
I called Keel in Dallas, and he was delighted to hear from me. He was planning to visit his mother, who lived in San Juan Capistrano, an ultrachic town down the coast from L.A.
“I’d love to drive up and see you,” he said. And I said, “Terrific!”
It would be a blast to see him again. It was so easy talking to him on the phone. After all, I’d known him for thirty-four years, we’d been good friends as kids, dah-dee-dah-dee-da…Okay, it was also pretty damned exciting, and when he showed up a week later—well, well, well, Miss Pebbles was right. He did indeed look great. These days, it’s not unusual to look great at forty-nine, but you never know; in reunion photos of my high school mates, some looked pretty haggard. Tom was vibrant. Same familiar grin, same sturdy body, same broad shoulders. Vavoom. This was one sexy dude.
We talked and talked, laughed and laughed. I don’t remember what we had for dinner, or if we had anything for dinner, except each other. What can I tell you? Hot and heavy when we were teenagers never went further than my bringing him to climaxes by hand while we were parked out at the lake. I remember standing in my parents’ driveway in 1953, saying good-bye to Keel after a visit, aware that this was not the man I wanted for life. At nineteen, however, my life was before me. At forty-nine, the terrain looked quite different.
That night in 1984, with
none of the old guilt but all the old chemistry, we finally had an adult sexual experience. And that man had a penis that would stand straight up and dance. No, really. Dance. It was a sight to behold. Can other men do that? Certainly none I’ve ever known. I found Keel to be highly sexed and pleasantly uncomplicated and just as big a sweetheart as he always was. FQ Rating? Oh, definitely A. With extra credit for his amazing dancing oo-hoo (as Mother called our private parts).
A lot had happened in Keel’s life since we were kids. He had had four children with his ex-wife: three older girls and a son, David, then fourteen. Just before Christmas of 1979, his father (that old bear, Louie) had gotten desperately sick while in Mexico with his wife, Lil, and her twin sister, also named Lil, oddly enough. Tom flew down, put them all on a plane for San Juan Capistrano, then drove Louie’s car back, arriving three days later—the day after Louie had died and been immediately cremated. In Louie’s will, he left everything to his wife. Nothing to Tom, not a sou. Nada. Not even a memento.
Ah, Lil. And Lil. Therein lies a tale. Lilian and Lilly, both widows. They lived within blocks of each other and looked identical, except Aunt Lil had a sweet face and Mother Lil had hard lines etched by a lifetime of crankiness. They shared an astounding dinner-table dynamic that usually ended with Aunt Lil rushing off in tears. Aunt Lil died not long after I met her. I was sorry I didn’t get to know her. And sorry I did get to know Mother Lil.
I went to visit Keel at his pleasant Dallas condo with his happy little Scottie named Harrod, and Tom drove us around Dallas in his pickup, drinking beer at the wheel. (You could do that in Texas in those days.) We were residents of two very different worlds. I, an ambitious actress with laserlike focus on my career. He, not particularly happy or unhappy in his job as a computer specialist for the phone company, not looking for advancement, just troubleshooting whatever problems were handed to him. He knew computers like the back of his hand, but I think he was bored.
My First Five Husbands Page 24