We left Kazan’s farm and drove south to the Big Apple. I felt a few butterflies when imagining the Broadway curtain going up. I thought I was prepared for the moment, though. After months of performances, I’d come a long way as a stage actor. I was ready to “hit the boards” in the big city.
The second I caught sight of Manhattan’s skyscrapers, though, I felt terribly ill. Maybe I was in denial, repressing my fear, or maybe it was just a coincidence that I got nauseous. One way or the other, my brow heated up like a hot plate, and I felt like throwing up. I prayed that it was the lunch that we ate at Kazan’s and not a real sickness.
By the time we arrived at my Uncle Bernard’s apartment on the Upper Westside I was burning up and puking. It was the goddamn flu bug, for sure. I had five days to recover before we reopened on Broadway. That was going to be cutting it close, no matter how much Sprite, chicken soup, and vitamins I ingested.
I tried to nurse myself back into good health, but sure enough, I was running a temperature over a hundred degrees on opening night. My throat was so sore that I could barely speak. The show must go on, I reminded myself. That stupid saying had to have been invented by a producer. Nobody should ever have to perform when they’re about to hurl big chunks and their head is filled with lava.
Somebody else by the name of Barry Livingston performed on opening night. It certainly didn’t feel like me. I ran around the stage, in front of fifteen hundred people, in a fuzzy, dreamlike state. The best that can be said is that I got through it. I was on autopilot and, amazingly, didn’t crash. Friends and family told me afterward that I was good, but I didn’t trust them. Most people, after witnessing a bad performance, will lie like some politicians to avoid speaking the painful truth. In my mind, Big Bird could have acted my part with more nuance and subtlety.
Fortunately, the show didn’t live or die on my shoulders. Liz Ashley carried that load. As expected, she vamped and ad libbed wisecracks like crazy, hoping to pull off a miracle. The magic didn’t happen, though. The theater gods, and the cavernous Mark Hellinger Theatre, swallowed us whole. The New York reviews were unanimously bad, and our days were numbered unless we could put fifteen hundred butts in our seats for every performance. That’s hard enough to do with raves.
I recovered from the flu, and the show plowed ahead. We were hoping that good word-of-mouth might bring in the people and rescue us. Six weeks passed, but the people never came. The Skin of Our Teeth was no more. It was an amazing, six-month journey that cemented my love of performing. I will carry that memory forever. It’s high on my bucket list to get another chance to play on the Great White Way. Next time I hope I won’t have dengue fever on opening night.
CHAPTER 32
Back to Los Angeles, Yawn
Once the play officially closed, I flew back to Los Angeles, eager to reunite with family and friends. I returned to a painful realization: everybody was stuck in the same place. My parents were still in the painful throes of their perpetual separation, and my friends were in a post–high school rut, smoking tons of weed and living on In-N-Out burgers. After my exhilarating East Coast experiences, the fun of “hanging out” with my Beret Brothers faded quickly. Nothing compared to the excitement of New York. There was a big dull void at the center of my life. I started to fill that hole with a new drug: cocaine.
If there ever was a Lost Weekend period of my life, this was it. Coke was the quick fix for every boring San Fernando Valley evening. The drug, once the exclusive high of rock stars and hipsters, was now available to everyone. Average Joe Suburb had joined the party.
You’d be offered a toot from your barber or from your auto mechanic, even at your lawyer’s office. The white powder snowed at most every party, too. Bathroom doors would fly open, and sniffling people would exit with white rocks falling out of their noses. It became a badge of cool to whip out your vial, unscrew the black cap with the tiny brass spoon attached by a chain, and offer a hit of your “blow.” You were just like Mick Jagger—except he was doing pharmaceutical-grade coke, and the crap I bought was usually “stepped on” with laxatives. You’d snort a line, feel the first rush of the coke, and then fart like a Gerber baby.
I spent the next few years in self-destructive party mode. To give some balance to this chapter of my life, I should say that I held on to most of my money; I never shot anybody or robbed any convenience stores. I was twenty-two years old and uncertain about a lot of things: mainly who I was as a person and where I was headed as an artist. Coke was an artificial burst of excitement to fill a scary void.
Not long after my return to Los Angeles, I got a call from Steve Railsback who had remained in New York. He had been offered the role of Charles Manson in the miniseries Helter Skelter and wanted to know if he should accept the part. Railsback had real concerns regarding his safety. Charles Manson was in custody, but many of his murderous minions were still loose and making death threats to anybody participating in the upcoming movie. I grew up in Los Angeles and remember the horror of those grisly murders. It completely changed the way that hippies and counterculture types were perceived. The paranoia was real, and, of course, the media trumpeted every story about the Manson Family they could dig up.
Based on what I knew, I advised Railsback to not accept the role of Manson. The movie was probably going to be a huge hit, but it wasn’t worth getting killed over. Railsback agreed and turned the Manson role down.
The director of Helter Skelter, Tom Gries, continued to pursue Railsback, though. He felt that Railsback was the only actor with the power and charisma to credibly play Manson. My pal also bore an eerie resemblance to the cult leader. Gries contacted Elia Kazan, Railsback’s mentor, and pleaded with him to intervene. Kazan called Railsback up and told him to never be intimidated by anybody. “Fuck ’em all!” said Kazan. “Play Manson!”
Railsback accepted the role, giving perhaps the most convincing and human portrait of a madman ever put on film. Manson was a monster, but Railsback made his twisted, evil logic comprehensible. No small feat. Watching the movie today, it feels dated. Railsback’s performance, though, is timeless and chilling.
Railsback came to L.A. to shoot Helter Skelter, and I hung out with him constantly at his new home, the Montecito Hotel in Hollywood. The hotel was every New York actor’s favorite haunt when working in Hollywood.
I watched Railsback prepare to play Manson, and that included learning the cult leader’s original songs. The studio got hold of one of Manson’s demo cassettes and passed them on. The tapes were mostly hypnotic, droning blues rants. In all honesty, they weren’t half bad, kind of like the early Rolling Stones. The chilling part was listening to the lead singer’s snarling vocals and knowing this was the voice of pure evil.
Manson wanted to be a rock star and gave his music to Rudy Altobelli. He was a personal manager for talent in Hollywood and owned the house where the murders took place. When Altobelli rejected the songs, the cult leader ordered his followers to kill the manager at his home. Unbeknownst to Manson, though, Altobelli had moved out after leasing his residence to Sharon Tate. She had no connection to Manson whatsoever. The same was true for all the other innocent victims who were murdered at the house.
There was one other interesting aspect in this story. Soon after the murders in 1969, Altobelli moved back into his home and became Railsback’s personal manager, frequently letting him stay at his house. When Railsback played Manson in the movie six years later, my actor pal had actually lived at the murder scene, not to mention having a relationship with the cult leader’s prime target. Only in Hollywood.
CHAPTER 33
The Slow Slide into Oblivion
Almost a year had passed since my return to Los Angeles. The excitement of doing Skin and my sense of accomplishment were fading into the boredom of unemployment. Auditions for TV and film work were few and far between, too. This struck me as odd, particularly since I had been working steadily before going to New York.
My TV and film career prior to Skin seemed
to be steaming along quite nicely and then, like the Titanic, I hit an uncharted iceberg in the black of night. I was entering a period where acting jobs just seemed to vanish. Of course, I didn’t realize that my career was sinking until it was fully submerged.
It’s hard to know what caused my stock to drop so abruptly. The easy answer would be to say that recreational drug use adversely affected my work. I honestly don’t think drugs were a big factor. Perhaps it is denial to say that, but let me make a couple of points in my defense. Number one: I never snorted or inhaled anything illegal while I was working. Never. It wasn’t because I was afraid of getting caught. I was paranoid about becoming dependent on a chemical to hot-wire my talent. That idea truly scared me, particularly if I couldn’t get the specific drug I needed when the director yelled Action! Call it ego, but I wanted to believe it was me who was giving a good performance and not the pharmaceuticals. Number two: I never had any public relations disaster: drug busts, car crashes, or dalliances with cops pretending to be hookers. Those kinds of publicized mishaps can surely throw a career into a tailspin.
I was partying under the radar, doing about three grams of coke a week and steering clear of run-ins with the law. There were other factors, beyond my control, that I feel contributed to my career suddenly fading out.
About once every decade the television business (not so much film) evolves. A new edgy show arrives to change the landscape: All in the Family in the 1970s, Dallas in the 1980s, Cosby in the 1990s, Reality TV in the new millennium. If your big hit show is associated with a previous era, you can quickly become persona non grata when the next programming wave hits. Nobody wants to see an Edsel in a show full of shiny new Fer-raris.
There is a way around this problem, though. It starts with talent and ends with the luck of being cast in something new and hot. When that happens, your membership in the “Hollywood hip club” is gladly renewed. It doesn’t occur often, particularly with child stars who were series regulars. Ron Howard got that break going from The Andy Griffith Show to Happy Days, and look where it got him. Michael J. Fox went from TV’s Family Ties to a feature film career. Neil Patrick Harris segued from Doogie Howser, M.D. to How I Met Your Mother.
I had a great opportunity at making the career leap forward with Sons and Daughters. Unfortunately, the series didn’t fly and I was left in limbo ... for a long, long while.
Unemployment can be a “good news/bad news” situation. The bad: it’s a karate chop to one’s self-esteem that can send you reeling into self-destruction. The good: it gives you plenty of time to find out what you are made of and build some character. My future was filled with both.
CHAPTER 34
Love at Long Last
While waiting patiently for the next job that wasn’t coming, my love life finally improved. I had dated a number of girls since high school, but I never had a relationship that felt anything like love. Women inspired more lust than trust. I was still bruised from the kick in the heart delivered by Tina, the Sunset Strip groupie. I had some psychic healing to do with the help of the right woman. Where do you find such a girl in the Hollywood jungle? Anywhere, everywhere, nowhere. Might as well start in a bar and hope to get lucky.
I was out drinking with my high school buddy Jeff Eget on a Saturday night. We wound up at Cyranos on the Sunset Strip, and I saw a girl walk in I recognized. It was Dale, the Ingrid Bergman look-alike from Ned Mandarino’s acting class. I was too shy to let her know about my infatuation back then, but I wasn’t going to make that mistake tonight.
We reunited over drinks and laughs. I got the feeling she was pretty happy to see me, too. Things were going great until a big glitch arose: her fiancé, Richard, joined us. She neglected to tell me about him.
Richard latched on to Dale’s hand, said they had dinner reservations at a nearby bistro, and quickly led her out the door. In an instant, Dale reentered my life and was gone just as abruptly.
My heart sank as I looked out the bar’s window and saw Richard escorting Dale into a cozy little French restaurant across the street. Then, something possessed me: a swirling brew of ardor, booze, and insanity. This infernal love potion forced me to my feet, and I dashed out of the bar. Damn the torpedoes!
I weaved through the speeding cross-traffic on the Sunset Strip, ignoring the cacophony of honking horns, cursing drivers, and screeching tires. I was on a mission: to be with Dale or die. The latter option was closer than I’d realized.
Inside the bistro, I searched every nook and cranny until I found the couple at a cozy little table. Richard’s jaw dropped. Dale smiled broadly, and that was as good an invitation as any for me to sit down.
To his credit, Richard kept his cool and at first seemed entertained by my drunken, foolish audacity. By the time the soup de jour arrived, Richard’s amusement began to fade; he realized the fool wasn’t leaving anytime soon. Not only that, I was eating his leftover appetizers.
Richard’s face was growing redder, angrier. He tried to get me to leave with sarcastic put-downs about my rude manners and my child-acting career. The insults bounced off my ears like Ping-Pong balls. All I had to do was glance at Dale’s amazed grin and I could withstand any verbal dagger Richard threw at me.
The party took a grimmer turn when my drunken pal, Jeff, tracked us down and sat at our table. One lovesick fool was barely tolerable; now his sidekick was here.
Trying to lighten things up, I proposed a toast to their pending marriage. Unfortunately, I clinked my wineglass against Richard’s glass with too much gusto and it broke, splashing him with wine. The table went silent, and Dale’s fiancé did a slow burn that would have made Jackie Gleason proud. My eyes were fixed on him, waiting for his next move.
Richard rose to his feet slowly, as if he were being inflated on the inside with hot air. He hovered over me, glowering, almost snarling. He fought the urge to tear my head off, angrily grabbed Dale’s hand, and marched away from the table with her.
Of course, I had the unbelievably stupid instinct to give chase, again, but Jeff wisely held me in my seat. My pal convinced me that Dale’s fiancé would surely knock out my front teeth if I pursued her.
Right on cue, Richard and Dale’s fish dinners arrived. The waiter’s grand presentation of the meals, to the wrong dinner guests, triggered gales of laughter. There was nothing to do now but chow down. In the end, I got stuck with a pretty hefty bill, which was cause for another crazy laugh. Served me right.
A few weeks later, my phone rang. It was Dale. The engagement was off and she was free to date. No risk, no gain.
Dale and I started dating, and the relationship quickly became romantic. She was the first woman who became my friend as much as a lover. This was a big emotional step for me. I finally started feeling like a man, not a boy anymore.
My new mature relationship triggered thoughts about marriage, kids, and a future without show business. If I didn’t have an acting career, how would I make a living? Thank God for the Sons residuals that were paying my bills. Sooner or later, though, they were going to run out and I’d have to make a hard choice: abandon my acting aspirations and get a real job or starve.
For the moment, I was still in blissful denial, enthralled in a wonderful, new kind of romance.
CHAPTER 35
Big Changes for One and All
While I was basking in new love, my parents’ stormy relationship finally came unglued: they separated. It was twenty years in the making, but it happened. My mom stayed at the family home in Studio City, and Dad was exiled to the Oak Wood Apartments, a sterile cluster of buildings overlooking Warner Bros. in Burbank. This sprawling hillside complex was a station for young actors looking for their big break, sex-hungry singles, and the severely depressed: the divorced and separated. Everyone wanted to be somewhere else, including my dad. He longed to be back home. That wasn’t going to happen, because my mom was going solo, heading for a new planet.
Mother had hit fifty years of age and was in the throes of a full-fledged midlife cr
isis. She got a face-lift, bought hip-hugging spandex clothing, and made a new friend, a professional psychic named Dorothy Schwartz.
Schwartz was a chain-smoking Jewish yenta in her mid-sixties, about as tall as a hobbit and quite popular on the celebrity circuit for her predictions and advice. Her cigarette smoke–damaged voice rattled with phlegm, much like Andy Devine, the old Western movie star. She’d pop in for a daily visit with my mom flanked by Benny, her dim-witted forty-year-old son and Ida, her balding, orange-haired sister, another homunculus psychic. Bringing up the rear to this odd entourage was her driver, Doctor Gomez. His curly Mexifro hairdo and bushy mustache made him look like the Frito Bandito (or perhaps Gene Shalit, the Today show critic). He was once a successful plastic surgeon in Tijuana but currently was barred from practicing medicine for some unmentionable mishap. The cast of a Fellini film suddenly populated my old home.
Schwartz’s psychic specialty was interpreting tarot cards. “Angel!” Schwartz would rumble with a frown while studying the cards. Angel was the new nickname Schwartz gave my mom. Her old nickname, Maryland, no longer fit. “Don’t go back to Hilliard, Angel! He doesn’t appreciate you. He doesn’t see that you’re an angel!”
I’d sit there, biting my tongue. My mom was pretty cool, but an angel? Okay. Whatever.
My mother absorbed Schwartz’s every word as gospel. She seemed to be under her spell. Soon strange things started happening to the paintings that hung on the walls of the Milbank house. The names of the original artists had been painted over and the name Angel replaced them. It was clearly my mom’s handiwork. I couldn’t believe what she was doing. It wasn’t that I cared about defaming our cheap works of art. Her state of mind is what concerned me most. When I confronted her about the changes, she insisted she had actually painted these masterpieces long ago, under pseudonyms. At Schwartz’s urging, she decided it was time to put her real name, Angel, on the artwork.
The Importance of Being Ernie: Page 16