Read My Lips

by Sally Kellerman

  Jonathan and I are so well suited for each other. He said he likes me a little needy. Well, honey, you’re in luck! He believes in my music—always has. He doesn’t let me wallow in self-pity. I remember that when I used to ask Rick if I looked good, he’d get frustrated and say, “Stop asking those rhetorical questions!” When I ask the same thing of Jonathan, to this day—even if he isn’t looking at me—he says, “Sure honey, you look great . . .” My kind of guy.

  Of course, more recently, when I’ve asked him if I look too thin—which at my age makes you look a lot older—he says, “Darling, I have just spent the last twenty-five years assuring you that you are not too fat. I’m not sure I can spend the next twenty-five years telling you that you are not too thin.”

  Jonathan has said, “I’m so proud of you having a great life in spite of me.” In truth, he’s a major part of why I have such a good life. However, we’re all responsible for our own happiness. If something isn’t working, we’d better start by looking at our part in it.

  Younger people sometimes ask me how to stay married thirty years. Well, you’re either stupid or you love each other. But one thing is for sure: both people really have to want to make it work. Now, with all those years behind us, Jonathan and I have just about seen it all and, because of that, truly know why we want to be together.

  IN 2000 JONATHAN AND I RENEWED OUR WEDDING VOWS, again at Jennifer Jones’s house. We had planned to host the ceremony ourselves, but we were a little disorganized. When it was only a week away, we still hadn’t finalized our plans. So we decided instead to have Jennifer join us for a lovely dinner, to commemorate our marriage at her home.

  Well, Jennifer wouldn’t have it.

  “Absolutely not!” she said. “You had a big wedding, and you’ll have big renuptials too.”

  Within a week she had her entire place redone and florists on call. The vows renewal was going to be beautiful.

  Jonathan and I quickly got on the horn to invite people. Oddly enough, everyone was free: the Altmans, Milton, Marilyn and Allen Bergmans, the Rydells, my sister Diana and her partner, Gloria, Claire, Jack and Hanna, Morgan Ames, Bob Esty, Sydney and Claire Pollack, Henry Jaglom, James Coburn and his wife, Beverly, and so many other close friends, many of whom were there the first time around.

  On the big day I got dressed with Jennifer. She was sitting at the makeup table with three magnifying mirrors. I said I didn’t know how she could stand it, all that reality staring you in the face.

  “Honey,” she said, “I do the best I can, then I walk away.”

  Thanks for the tip, Jennifer, because now I’m the one with the three magnifying mirrors.

  The vows renewal was one of the happiest, funniest nights of my life. Hanna was rushing around, grabbing hunks of the centerpieces and handing them to my “old” bridesmaids, the ones who were in my first wedding. Bob Altman, Mark Rydell, and Henry Jaglom were there, directing the action. Milton, who saved our marriage, again walked me down the aisle, prompting the joke, “Look! Milton’s still trying to give her away.”

  The ceremony had everyone in stitches. Jennifer had lined up a federal judge, Matt Burn, on short notice. When he forgot the words to the ceremony, Jonathan had to help him out. Hanna and her best friend, Vanessa, Lorna Luft’s daughter, began pelting us with roses, and all I could think was, Oh no, I’m going to have to replace all the carpeting in Jennifer’s house. Well, I didn’t have to. At the end of the evening Jonathan and I sailed home on a cloud with the kids asleep in the backseat. What a blast!

  I AM SO PROUD OF OUR LOVE AND ALSO PROUD OF THE SUCCESS Jonathan made of himself in his second career. “Passion first and the money will follow,” he always said. And it had followed for him, that’s for sure. After working with Blake Edwards and starting MCEG, he got into distribution. Our friend Marilu Henner introduced him to John Travolta. The two really hit it off, and Jonathan began managing John’s career and producing a string of hit films, like Look Who’s Talking, Face/Off, Phenomenon, The General’s Daughter, Michael, Swordfish, and others.

  Jonathan produced Look Who’s Talking for $7 million, and it made $500 million worldwide. Actually, from the minute Jonathan started working with Blake Edwards, our lifestyle started changing. At first, when the money began rolling in, I actually got depressed. Money—real money—made me uncomfortable.

  “I don’t want to be an alcoholic!” I wailed at Jonathan one night. I had this image in my head of self-destructive behavior brought on by idleness and wealth. I’d think of Palm Beach and all the huge mansions that line Ocean Boulevard, and I would imagine well-to-do drunks lying in their foyers—all those moneyed drunken wives I had played in my early days on television.

  Needless to say, I got over my distress. We didn’t go hog-wild on luxuries but instead started upgrading what we had.

  We asked Frank Gehry, whom we knew from ten years of group therapy, to come in and do our home. Years earlier, in group, Frank was always worried about going bankrupt at any minute, always questioning whether he was an architect or an artist. Then Frank went on to become one of the most famous architects in the world.

  The first time he came out to our house he did not seem all that impressed. “This is how you live, big movie star?” he said.

  That made me laugh. Then I started to tick off the changes I hope to make.

  “I’d love a balcony outside our bedroom,” I began.

  “You can’t have that,” Frank countered.

  “I’ve always wanted a family room off the kitchen,” I went on.

  “You can’t have that either,” he said. “But here’s what you can have . . .”

  Frank began making drawings and models, showing us all the best possible renovations. He was there for what seemed like forever, but we ended up with a rooftop garden, a screened-in porch off the master bedroom, a master bath with a big window on the curve of the street, measured so precisely that I could take a shower without giving everyone the Hot Lips show.

  Ultimately, Frank changed everything in the house. He even took out my one-of-a-kind, custom-made, Harrison Ford bookcases. In the new old house of my dreams, the screened-in porch off the bedroom is my favorite; it’s like a tree house. When I can relax for a minute, I sit out there and read and look out on the hills. After working with me for two years, Frank decided he never wanted to do another house again. So, actually, I’m responsible for his success. And P.S., we’re still friends.

  DESPITE OUR NEW INCOME, I CONTINUED ACTING, OF COURSE. I love working, plain and simple. Doing Boynton Beach Club was a wonderful experience with a fabulous female director, Susan Seidelman. It also gave me the chance to work with so many gifted old friends, like Dyan Cannon, Joe Bologna, and Brenda Vaccaro, as well as meet new ones, like Len Cariou.

  I also got more serious about my longstanding voice-over career, doing Sears, JC Penney, Volvo, Cadillac, Mercedes, Woolite, and more. Voice-overs are fun when the copy is good—it all starts with the writing. It was fun to work with documentarian Ken Burns on Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. When Bob Altman did his pilot for a television show based on Bill Gates, he featured a talking computer with a screen sporting a pair of big red lips—my lips, my voice.

  Funnily, I once got a call from Lena Horne’s people, saying they were going to sue me for using her voice. Here I thought I had been using my voice all along, from moaning in ecstasy for Quincy Jones to singing the praises of Hidden Valley Ranch. (I still remember Howard Stern calling me during a radio broadcast, saying, “Sally, come on. Say ‘Hidden Valley Ranch’ just once.”)

  Over the past forty years I’ve had an amazing ride that’s still going strong. Not long ago I voiced Principal Stark on the FX animated series, Unsupervised. And for the first time, after hawking everything from Woolite to Hidden Valley Ranch, my voice-over work was recommended for an Emmy.

  At one point the Wall Street Journal called me the industry’s most sought-after female voiceover artist. Tha
t makes me proud. But the voiceover field is getting crowded today. When my friends’ children come up to me to say, “Sally, I’m taking voice-over lessons,” I want to tell them, “Beat it, kid.”

  THANKS TO JONATHAN’S ADDED INCOME AND THE SUPPORT OF friends, I also had the time, money, and confidence to invest in music, my serious passion. The same year we celebrated our re-nuptials, Bob Altman hosted a show for me at the El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood. Hanna bought me a glass figurine and a pink lipstick she thought would match my suit, and Jack wrote me a little note that makes me weepy to this day.

  Dear Mom, You’re the best mom because you’ve reached your goal.

  Both kids have been so supportive. One day I told Hanna I might have to be in and out of town quite a bit because of some music commitments.

  “I don’t care if you’re gone for a whole month, Mom,” she said, “because I know you love it.”

  In the 1970s, when I was trying to break into music, actors who sang were not popular. It can still be a struggle for actors to cross over unless they’re doing Broadway or singing on prime-time television. But during the slow times my music has kept me from being a victim of “having to be hired.” As long as I can pay the piano player and I can sing, I’m okay.

  There have been bumps in my music career, for sure, but a lot of excitement too. In 2001 I did a show in Manhattan at Feinstein’s at the Regency that got panned by Stephen Holden of the New York Times. In essence, he said I couldn’t carry a tune, had no musicality, and I was desperate to seem young. When Bob Altman saw the review, he called me from London, where he was shooting Gosford Park. “Even if I didn’t know you,” he said, “I’d know there isn’t one word of truth to it.”

  My next performance, the night after the Times review, I caught sight of Elaine Stritch—not just an actress but also an incredible singer to boot—in the audience. After the show, as I was greeting people at the door to my dressing room, Elaine stuck her head in.

  “Kellerman, I saw that review in the Times,” she said. “I knew that the woman whose body of work I’d known all these years couldn’t be the one that the reviewer was talking about. And I was right.”

  Then she turned around and left. I’d always liked her. Now I loved her.

  But a New York Times review carries a lot of weight. The club’s management now wanted to cut short my run. I was in my hotel room packing to leave when I got another call. It was the critic Rex Reed, asking if I’d seen his review. I hadn’t.

  “You can’t leave!” he said. “My review just ran, and this is the week that everyone will be coming to your show!”

  As I was talking to Rex, my assistant at the time, J. J., was literally rolling my luggage out the door, and the concierge was ringing to say that the limo was waiting downstairs. I got off the phone with Rex, but the whole way to the airport I kept telling J. J., “I don’t want to go.”

  I called LA to find out when Michael Feinstein’s manager, who supposedly ran the club at the Regency, was flying into town. His office said he was arriving around 5:30, but they wouldn’t tell me what airline he was flying. It was 3:30 P.M., and I had a 5:00 P.M. flight to LA. I called Jonathan.

  “Jonathan, I don’t want to leave.”

  “Well, then don’t,” he said.

  I told him that my luggage was already heading down the conveyor belt. “Tell J. J. to go get it!” he said. So I sent J. J. running after it. He snagged it just in time, and we went and booked a hotel room at the airport. We got hold of all the LA–NY plane schedules and found the one landing closest to 5:30.

  Bingo!

  When Feinstein’s manager got off the plane, I was waiting.

  “Oh hi, Sally,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  I laid it all out. Why have the club dark, especially with Rex Reed’s great review, and so on. Finally, he told me, “Get in the car.”

  I got all resettled at the Regency—just hours after checking out—and the phone rang. I was getting only Friday and Saturday night, not my entire contracted run. Well, what the hell—I was going to make those nights count.

  I called all my New York friends, like Dan Aykroyd and his wife, Donna Dixon. They all turned out and packed the place. There were standing ovations, crowd whistles, and, more importantly, those shows were fun. J. J. and I were very proud of ourselves. I hadn’t been desperate; I was determined. It might have taken me a long time to learn the difference, but I knew now.

  Closer to home, I played the Roxy for a year, singing standards, thanks to Lou Adler and his son, Nic, who now runs the legendary club on my beloved Sunset Boulevard. Then I did three years at Genghis Cohen, bringing in new material all the time. No scripts, no rules, no way to make a mistake—Bob Altman’s influence. We called it the “antishow,” and it was a blast. If I dropped a lyric, so what? You can always go see a show where the singer knows all the words.

  These shows were all about getting free and finding myself in the music. Industry people—Val Garay, the Grammy-winning producer of Kim Carnes’s number-one hit “Bette Davis Eyes,” and performers like James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, and Bonnie Raitt—started coming in to Genghis Cohen when I sang. I was also working with legends Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Mike and Jerry were there for the beginning of rock and roll, the songwriting team behind hits like “Hound Dog,” “Stand by Me,” “Jailhouse Rock,” and “Love Potion Number Nine.” Their contributions to music were immortalized in the Broadway play Smoky Joe’s Cafe. I was a little intimidated, to say the least, but I felt so lucky to be able to work with them.

  Over the years I’ve had the good fortune to work with great talents and legends in the business: Along with Jerry and Mike, there was Mike’s wife, the legendary pianist and harpist Corky Hale. They’ve always been so supportive and special to me. Not to go on endlessly, but music is so important to me that I just have to thank people who helped me get this far: Kenny Vance, still a big hit out on the road singing doo-wop, would take me into a studio in the middle of the night so I could work; and Richard Perry, who had to hear every note of every song I ever sang to give me his critique. So shoot me, but I have to say one more time: I would have never been a singer if it hadn’t been for Bob Esty.

  Everyone has something to offer if you’re willing to listen. Take singing teacher George Griffin, who once told me to take a “surprise breath” while I was singing: “Like you’re saying ‘hi’ to someone,” he explained.

  I gave it a shot. It worked.

  I’m in the mood for—GASP! Oh, hi!—loooove . . .

  I got an invaluable lesson in performance from Moon Unit Zappa, who is a talented director and also an author. In 2004 I appeared in a short film she directed called Ugly. I’d known Moon most of her life. At one point the Zappas lived down the street from us and went to school with Claire.

  At one of my shows in Glendale, Moon heard me ad lib something along the lines of “I’d love to pay the band, but in lieu of that, could you just applaud . . .”

  Later she told me, “This thing about paying the band . . . Would you rather be thought of as somebody who couldn’t pay the band, or would you rather be thought of as the Dalai Lama come to Glendale?”

  Out of the mouths of babes.

  Hal David, my dear darling friend, was another source of love and constant support in regard to my music. He showed insight (not surprising) when he insisted I work with musician Chris Caswell. Chris wrote many good songs, and along with Bob Esty, helped me put together a selection of songs. Then I had the pleasure of having my CD, Sally, produced by the brilliant Val Garay, whom I adore.

  After hearing my CD, Barry Manilow sent me the nicest letter, which I cherish to this day. Burt Bacharach called me to say he listened to the CD. I thanked him. And he said, “No, I wanted to listen to it because I know how important music has always been to you.”

  I still remember when I heard the CD for the first time. Val played it for me.

  “Is that who I am?” I asked, hearing myself really
sounding like myself.

  Singing is so much fun, such a rush, once you find your real voice. A little jazz, a little blues, a little rock and roll. Breaking free.

  THINGS WERE GOING SO WELL WHEN THE MONEY I HAD finally gotten used to started to disappear—and not because I was an alcoholic languishing on the floor of a Palm Beach mansion.

  I’ve never known anyone as driven as my husband, Jonathan. He went to St. John’s College, reading all the classics in the languages they were originally written. He’s a genius, winning scholarships, fellowships, graduating from Yale Law School. Once he turned his hand to show business, he achieved tremendous success as a manager and producer. He had his own company—which went public—and produced over forty feature films. He won a Hollywood Visionary Award and a People’s Choice Award, just to name a few of his many achievements.

  But after so many years of working nonstop producing and managing—oh, and teaching at UCLA too—he told me that he needed a change.

  “I can’t do this anymore,” he said. “I’m an intellectual. I have to let my mind wander and follow it.”

  With that, he retreated. He holed up in his home office for almost three years. Not that he wasn’t busy. He wrote a textbook about the movie industry, he wrote scripts, and he mapped out his plan for the future. Still an achiever, he kept teaching movie production, and he set up a graduate film school in Florida. As always, he kept setting goals for himself and meeting them.

  One day he said, “I have a new financing idea.” Then came the first-class trips to Europe, to Germany and Cannes, all in pursuit of financing. We were investing in my music, we were investing in Jonathan’s new venture, and the kids were still in school. But it took us a while to grasp that, though we were living the same lifestyle, we weren’t earning quite the same as we had in the past. To make matters worse, one day we turned around, and the entire American economy had bottomed out. And so did we.