Milton’s words reminded me of what Sydney Pollack had said about working with Meryl Streep on Out of Africa. I had met Sydney through my good friend Mark Rydell and had even worked with him for about three minutes back in the 1960s on a pilot that never got off the ground. I had also been in group with Claire, Sydney’s wife, for ten years. Sydney was a great director. There was no subject, from comedy to thrillers to tear-jerkers, that he couldn’t do. Tootsie. The Way We Were. Three Days of the Condor. Out of Africa. I cherish those three minutes I got to work with him. Such directors are very rare.
What Sydney had said about Meryl Streep was that she was on time, every single day, without fail. She was always prepared, and she never, ever, complained about anything. And they were shooting in Africa. Milton’s words underscored that that was the way I wanted to behave, the kind of professional I wanted to be.
So thereafter on the set I became a dream. I told my makeup team on Back to School that I was going to be like Meryl Streep. Easy, no worries. One day a production assistant came into the makeup trailer, saying, “Sally’s gonna kill me! I called her in at five this morning, and looks like she’s not going to work until five tonight!”
The makeup girls said, “You mean Meryl Streep? No, Sally’s happy. She loves her trailer. It reminds her of a tract house in the Valley.”
What a change!
That’s Life was a success, but Back to School was a blockbuster. It was HUGE, one of the highest grossing films of 1986.
But you know, what they never tell you when you’re working so hard in acting class, doing plays, trying to get into television, and doing some movies is that there is no arriving. What is truly difficult in Hollywood—and what really matters—is not achieving success but sustaining it. I know that as well as anybody.
There is no “top” you ever reach. Success just means more hard work, so there is no point to joining the ranks of show business unless you need to, unless it’s a drive that you can’t ignore. Being able to work at what you love is a gift. Jonathan would always say, “Passion first, money will follow.” I, for one, am grateful that I still have such a passion for entertaining.
Milton had suggested to me to get discipline and that if I did, I would see results. And I did: a huge uptick in work, a marriage to a lovely man, and, now, two critically and financially successful films. I was excited. Claire was off at college, and my husband was becoming a successful manager. I felt reinvigorated about my career and was looking forward to the next challenge, the next adventure.
God laughs while we make plans.
CHAPTER 15
Two, No Three, Little Surprises
I WAS FIFTY-TWO WHEN JONATHAN SAID HE WANTED KIDS.
This, despite the fact that I had warned him on our wedding day that I would kill him if, when I hit fifty, he told me that he wanted kids.
“I was talking to my shrink about things that have meaning in my life, other than work,” Jonathan said. “I know you’ll think it’s bullshit, but we were talking about kids.”
Guess how I replied.
“Well,” I said, “lately that’s all I’ve been thinking about too.”
We both did a double-take, as if we couldn’t believe what had just come out of our own mouths. But it was true: every time I saw a baby or a young child, I just ached.
We were both busy. Jonathan was producing more and more, and he now had his own management and production company, MCEG. And I was about to head off to Chile to shoot a film called Secret of the Ice Cave. The two of us decided that if we both felt the same way about kids after I returned from Chile, then we were going to adopt a baby.
I had just come off three films: a cute one called Three for the Road with a twenty-two-year-old kid named Charlie Sheen, who was a real joy to work with, then Meatballs III with another adorable guy, twenty-one-year-old Patrick “Dr. McDreamy” Dempsey. In Meatballs I played “Roxy Dujour,” a recently deceased porn star who is working to earn her way into heaven by helping Patrick Dempsey’s character lose his virginity. One day Patrick and I went to lunch together, and I remember him innocently asking me how he could get a girl to like him.
I have no idea what advice I gave him, but clearly it’s working.
After Meatballs I worked on an ensemble picture, Someone to Love, with my friend Henry Jaglom. There was no script. Henry simply told me, “You’re a movie star who just left her husband. Action!” It was also Orson Welles’s last film appearance, and Andrea Marcovicci was in the film as well. It was a memorable experience on a lot of levels.
Chile, however . . . well, if I had known in advance what it was going to be, I never would’ve gone. But oh, am I glad I did. My first impression was a little rough, to say the least. At our first stop I wasn’t even sure what town I was in. “Your suite is right this way,” I was told upon arriving, and we made our way to my room. The living room consisted of a wooden board with a little thin pad, which I assumed was supposed to be some sort of couch. From there I headed down the hallway and came face to face with an enormous spider hanging by a single thread of web, right at eye level. In the bathroom I soon learned to focus my attention on the flowered shower curtain rather than the floor, where a team of termites were busy making dust. When Jonathan called to see how I was, I told him I was fine as long as I didn’t put my bare feet on the floor.
“I’m sending someone right down there to be with you!” he said.
“Don’t you dare!” I answered. “I’m twenty-eight and I’m having an adventure!”
It’s important to think young.
When I woke up the next morning in my “suite,” I heard birds. Ahh, birds. I got up to open the balcony doors. There were birds alright—gigantic black ones diving down to dip into the dirty brown water of the swimming pool to my left, then swooping up to circle the oil derricks straight in front of me.
At our next location some of cast members claimed, “Sally got the good room.” The good room? No water pressure—it took me a half-hour to rinse the shampoo out of my hair—and some mysterious rug sitting on my bed, hiding God knows what. But I had a great afternoon with fellow actor Norbert Weisser, goofing off on horseback in the middle of the desert in the broiling hot sun. I think that by the time we got back we were hallucinating from the heat.
Next stop: a tiny village, where I was thrilled to have a window in my room. Then finally, at our last stop, we stayed in a giant hotel that looked like something out of The Shining.
While I was in Chile Jonathan hopped on a plane to come see me, which he normally didn’t like to do while he was working. A film he was producing, Slipping into Darkness, was shooting at the time. But he came anyway. When he arrived, I could tell by his behavior—and the fact that he came to see me at all—that he was worried I was having an affair.
I wasn’t.
We had a lovely visit, snuggling and talking and continuing our thrilling discussion about having a new baby. So when I got back to LA, we moved into adoption mode.
I WENT TO LUNCH WITH A FRIEND OF MINE, COSTUME DESIGNER Marilyn Vance, to share the news.
“We’re going to adopt a baby,” I said excitedly. Marilyn leaned right across the table, taking my hand in hers.
“Oh,” she said. “I wish you could have twins!”
“Yeah, right,” I said, laughing. “You have twins and call me later!”
After lunch we walked outside to wait for the valet to bring our cars around. Again, Marilyn took my hand and looked straight into my eyes.
“I’m serious about the twins,” she said.
“Don’t say that!” I told her. “I feel like they’re circling overhead and about to land!” And that’s exactly how it felt.
After talking to two adoption lawyers and not feeling right about them, I decided to call Burt Reynolds and his wife, Loni Anderson. I’d known Burt since I was a kid but hadn’t been in close contact. I did know, however, that he and Loni had adopted successfully. They agreed to make a referral, but days passed before I heard from
anyone. In the meantime I decided to share my decision with my sister Diana.
“I wish you could have twins,” she said.
“Why is everyone telling me to have twins? I’m the oldest living mother-to-be!”
Then late afternoon on Sunday the phone rang. It was a woman named Mary Hinton, who Burt and Loni had referred to me. She had news: there was a baby available.
“It was supposed to go to another couple,” she told me, “but they’ve gotten pregnant.”
But here was the thing: if we wanted the baby, Jonathan and I had to accept right away. Mary gave me some background about the parents and began telling me what we would have to do to make things happen, but I had already said yes. Before getting off the phone, though, Mary said there was just one more thing I should know.
“It might be twins,” she said.
“Jonathan!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “Jonathan! Twins!”
Jonathan, thinking I had said “friends,” yelled back, “Great! We could use some.”
Not long afterward Jonathan, Claire, and I were in New York when the call came: the mother was indeed going to have twins. In the ultrasound image they had their backs to the camera, so it wasn’t clear yet what sex they were. But Jonathan and I were sure that they were two boys. “Jack and Joe,” were the names we’d picked out. But then one day I had had lunch at the Ivy and afterward wandered into a small antique store. I was just browsing, thumbing through some cards on a rack, when one particular postcard caught my eye. It was vintage, a brown tintype card with the image of a boy and girl washing a dog on the beach.
I rushed home to Jonathan.
“We need a girl’s name,” I said. “It’s going to be a boy and a girl!”
And indeed, that’s precisely what those two little loves turned out to be. We found the girl’s name while looking for a baby nurse. I had called Tom Selleck, whom I didn’t really know at all, because I had heard that he and his wife, Jillie, had a nurse they loved. While Jillie was on the phone with me, I heard her call out to her daughter.
“Hanna!”
So there it was. About two months after Jonathan and I decided to adopt, I was the mother of twins: a little boy, Jack, and a little girl, Hanna. It felt like a miracle.
My dear Bud Cort later confessed to me that all of our friends thought I was crazy to adopt at my ripe old age of fifty-two. But so far in my life I’d never done what anyone thought was right or proper. Why start now? Thank God I listened to my inner voice. Happiness and joy arrived in the form of those two, eleven-day-old darlings. I don’t think I spoke a word to my children for the first three years of their lives—I sang everything to them.
And I wanted those babies all to myself. Jonathan’s stepmother, Bubby, came over the very day we brought Jack and Hanna home. I could hear her from clear across the street when she pulled up in her car.
“Where are my grandbabies?! Let me get a look at those babies!”
My first instinct? Lock the door!
Then I wised up and realized just how lucky I was. How blessed my children were to be loved by someone like Bubby, someone who could hang out all day in the playhouse, care for them, play with them, and, when they were older, and teach them skills she treasured, like sewing. I was so grateful to have Bubby and my mother—fountains of support and unconditional love—at my disposal.
I was lucky too that Vivianne Carter, who had been my housekeeper since the days when I was married to Rick, was still with us. She was such a wonderful influence on everyone in her life. Vivianne went to church faithfully every Sunday. Each morning when she awoke, the first words out of her mouth were, “Thank you, God!” She cooked up big kettles of food, which she carted to downtown LA to feed the hungry. She was tall, beautiful, and loud—a proud black Texan, through and through—and my dear friend. Years later, when she got sick, she became just about as big as my finger. But she still had that spunk.
She called me from the hospital: “Sally,” she said, in her still-booming voice, “get down here right now before I die.”
And I did.
When I got to the hospital, she said, “Tell Jonathan to write me a letter!” And Jonathan did, but Vivianne died before she could read it. I was able to share it with her family at her memorial. In my home her picture and spirit still watch over us to this day.
Knowing that I would need help with the kids when I was on the road, I began looking for a backup nanny to help Vivianne. Along came Delmi, another tremendous blessing. In the beginning, when Delmi complained about my unpredictable and “snapping” personality, Vivianne would say, “Honey, tell me about it.” I had to laugh. Vivianne had been there, done that, and got the T-shirt with my picture on it.
Delmi was an inspiration in the way she raised her three boys without help, all the while working for my family, then eventually started her own cleaning business. She has made a real success of it. And she has been phenomenally generous and giving to our family. I can’t believe I got that lucky twice with the women who helped me take care of my home, of my children, of my life.
When the twins arrived, Claire was already twenty-five and living on her own. She absolutely adored Jack and Hanna. I’m sure that when the four of us were out and about, passersby thought she was the mother and I was the grandmother. I didn’t care. I knew who I was. This time around I was going to be Mother of the Year. Smooth as silk. Happy every moment. Never a cross word. Just sheer bliss.
I joined a “Mommy and Me” group with some neighborhood moms. I was in my fifties, and they were all in their thirties. I can hardly express how much it meant to me to have a group of women to share experiences with, other moms who were witnessing the same miracles that I was seeing. What a joy it was just to hang out in somebody’s yard and watch our kids grow up and play together. There was no rushing—just enjoying the children and each other’s company.
Jack and Hanna’s childhood was like a second one for me. At first I wanted to mother the kids totally on my own. I taught Jack and Hanna to swim. I made a bowling alley out of cardboard boxes. I crawled under the bushes again, just like when I was small, pretending with my children that we were in a jungle. I set up tents and sleeping bags in the backyard and invited all the kids’ friends over to play. I still had my good middle-class values—no cliché Hollywood mom here!
By the time the children were six, I had brought in pony rides, disc jockeys, and inflatable bouncy houses—I did everything to entertain them short of hiring Barnum and Bailey.
But like many of the other mothers in the group, I remained a working mom. In between acting gigs I was working on my music and singing a couple nights a week in a local club. My home office had a big bay window, so I could rehearse and watch the kids play in the backyard. The rule was that they could come in to interrupt me any time—and they did. My keyboardist would play “London Bridge,” and Jack and Hanna would take turns singing with the mic.
Though I am sure that was fun, I talked with Milton about how guilty I felt for continuing to work.
“Live your life,” he told me. “Make your appointments. If you love the kids, they’ll know it. The best thing you can do for them is to give them an example of how to live an independent life.”
A FEW YEARS AFTER THE TWINS ARRIVED JONATHAN AND I DID Boris and Natasha together, a film based on the Rocky and Bull-winkle TV show.
“Sally would be a great Natasha!” our friend, writer Charles Fradin, had said.
Thus began our underfunded saga, fueled by a lot of creative enthusiasm. I loved being around that.
Charlie was a darling guy who worked on the script with Brad Hall. Charles Martin Smith directed. SCTV alum Dave Thomas played Boris. Andrea Martin and John Candy—well, what can you say? All Canadian, all funny, all the time.
I actually had the chance to meet with the woman who had voiced Natasha for the original Rocky and Bullwinkle show. When I asked her what Natasha was about, she didn’t give me a lot to go on. All the woman said to me was “She loved B
oris,” in that famous deep, guttural voice. It didn’t seem like much, but it was actually an important tip. When I saw the final product in the theater, I actually thought we did pretty good.
I then had the opportunity to work with the wonderful German director Percy Adlon on Younger and Younger. I’d been a fan of his since his Oscar-nominated film, Baghdad Cafe. Donald Sutherland, Lolita Davidovitch, Brendan Fraser, Julie Delpy, and Linda Hunt were all in the film, and Jack and Hanna were a big hit on the set.
The shoot was a dream. I got to dance with Donald Sutherland in our first movie together since M*A*S*H*. Julie, then about twenty-five years old, was lovely, and I’m so impressed with her career now as she’s grown into a director. Linda Hunt remains one of my favorite people. And my little boy, Jack, played my grandson in one scene, in which he comes running toward me yelling, “Grandma! Grandma!” Talk about heaven.
Best of all, on that film I got a demonstration of how, when you’re not demanding love and attention, you can get it in spades.
I was still following Milton’s advice about being a cog in the wheel, and my new attitude had been working well. While on the set I was relaxed about costumes and makeup and call times. I would even just sit there when I wasn’t working, quietly observing. The results were remarkable.
One day Percy approached me.
“Are you all right? Have everything you need?” he asked.
“Yes, of course,” I said. “I’m great.”
“Do you know how much I love having you in this picture?” he said.
“Well, that’s how much I love being in it,” I replied.
Love and support were coming to me—without me having to beg—in my work, from my kids, from my mother-in-law, from my friends. . . . Pretty cool, huh?
Then came my third surprise.
ALTHOUGH I HAD LIVED MY ADOLESCENCE BEFORE I GOT MARRIED, it turned out that Jonathan was living his afterward: he was having an affair.
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