by Marc Eliot
She eventually got off with a thirty-day sentence for criminal negligence and then married her lawyer.
Besides watching the trial, Jack’s plan was to kick back and spend the entire winter in Aspen, do some skiing, take some advanced lessons, and get back into writing by working on the script of a western he had been playing with for a while called Moontrap (aka Moon Trap), set in Oregon in 1850. The plot involves a white mountain man who has been living with an Indian tribe and has an Indian wife but wants to make it in the white world. Jack hoped winning the Oscar would make it easier to get the film produced. It didn’t. His best hope, moneyman Lester Persky, whom Jack had first met at Jimmy Carter’s inaugural gala, was initially enthusiastic about the project but cooled on it when Jack decided he also wanted to direct it and have Lee Marvin play the lead rather than himself (in 1990 Kevin Costner would direct and star in a somewhat similar film called Dances with Wolves). Without Jack committing to being onscreen, Persky quickly lost interest, and Moontrap went nowhere.
In August 1977, the story of his heritage that he dreaded would one day come out, finally did. It was casually dropped by the normally staid, scandal-free, Sunday morning supplement Parade, in a piece by columnist Walter Scott, who told the whole Ethel/June story, and added that his source was Jack’s real father, Don Furcillo-Rose. Jack immediately tracked down his number and placed a phone call directly to Furcillo-Rose.
When they connected, Jack asked if he was his real father, he said yes, and added that he had been part of a love triangle between June and Ethel May, which was the real reason why Ethel May let him occasionally stay at the house after June left.
Jack was understandably shocked. He refused to accept that Furcillo-Rose was his father.
It didn’t take long after the article was published for the phone to start ringing. Some time later, Jack told his agent to redirect all calls to his lawyers, who prepared a public statement that was also sent by registered mail to Furcillo-Rose. It said, “Our client [Jack Nicholson] refutes and repudiates as without foundation the statements by [Furcillo-Rose] alleging he is Mr. Nicholson’s father. Such statements are false and defamatory.” For the longest time, Jack would not discuss any of it with anybody, and he never again talked to Furcillo-Rose.2
JACK’S FRIENDS KNEW that his door was always open to them, even when he wasn’t home. Even when he wasn’t in California. Even when he wasn’t in the country. One day early in March, while Jack was in Aspen, Roman Polanski helped himself to the use of Jack’s Mulholland Drive home and Jacuzzi. In February 1977, seven years after his wife’s murder, Polanski met and was intensely attracted to thirteen-year-old Samantha Gailey. He was taken by the young girl’s beauty and traveled with her to her home in Woodland Hills, an expensive neighborhood in the valley, to ask her mother for permission to photograph Samantha for the French edition of Vogue. Gailey’s mother was not offended; she was a TV actress, model, and friend of Polanski, and at the time nothing seemed out of the ordinary. She agreed, and Polanski took the young Gailey to a nearby outdoor secluded area, where, after taking several photos of her, he persuaded the young girl to pose topless for him, which she did.
A month later, on March 10, 1977, Polanski scheduled another photo session, and this time he took Gailey to Jack’s house, knowing Jack was away; he gave her half a Quaalude and a glass of champagne to wash it down—he took the other half—and then had the girl take off all of her clothes and get into the hot tub. He did the same. Afterward, he instructed Gailey to go into the bedroom. Reluctantly, she later told a grand jury, when he joined her, she let him have sex with her.
Their lovemaking was interrupted by a persistent knock at the front door.
That same afternoon, as it happened, knowing Jack was in Aspen, Anjelica had given up on believing in anything that had the words marriage and Jack in the same sentence. She made their split official when she began moving the things she kept at Jack’s Hollywood Hills place to Ryan O’Neal’s Malibu beach house.
She thought it might be a good time to go over to his house to get the last of her stuff. As she drove up the left fork, she noticed Polanski’s car in the driveway. She didn’t think much about it. She knew that Polanski often came over to Jack’s, even when he wasn’t there. She opened the unlocked front door and called out Polanski’s name to let him know it was her. After a few moments, he opened the door to Jack’s upstairs bedroom and shouted that he was in there, finishing up a photo shoot.
Anjelica was still in the house when Gailey came out of the bedroom, her clothes and hair disheveled and not looking at all like she was doing a high-fashion modeling session. She talked briefly with Anjelica and then went by herself to Polanski’s car, to wait for him to drive her home. A few minutes later Polanski came out of the bedroom, looking similarly unkempt. He mumbled a few words to Anjelica, then left the house, got into his car, and drove away. Anjelica didn’t think too much about it; Polanski was a regular visitor to the house, and more than one time she had seen him stoned, and she knew that he liked young-looking women.
Almost immediately after Polanski dropped her off, Gailey called her boyfriend to fill him in on the details of what had just happened: that, according to later grand jury transcripts, Polanski had performed oral, vaginal, and anal sex on her; that they had drunk champagne while nude in the hot tub; and that they had shared a Quaalude. She also claimed none of it happened in Jack Nicholson’s house, that when they arrived they heard other voices and Polanski took her instead to a house about a half mile away (this was eventually proven not to be true). It is not clear from the transcripts (and has never been) whether she was disturbed by what had happened or just bragging about it to her boyfriend, especially since she didn’t choose to tell her mother. Her sister overheard that phone conversation and told their mother, who then called the police. The next day, both mother and daughter were questioned for several hours, during which the young Gailey insisted that Polanski had forced himself on her. The LAPD then went after Polanski. They apprehended him in the lobby of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. He did not deny the incident but kept telling the police the sex had been consensual. He claimed that he was the victim of entrapment, that Gailey was the true aggressor, looking to advance her career through him.
Deputy District Attorneys Jim Grodin and David Wells took Polanski back to Jack’s house to search for evidence. When they arrived, Anjelica was there, still removing her things. They decided to search her purse, found a half gram of cocaine in it, and arrested her on the spot. They also found some hashish in a container in a bureau in the upstairs master bedroom. (Fortunately, for him, the rest of Jack’s ample stash of drugs was so well hidden, in fake shaving cream containers and the like, that the police missed it.)
Polanski was taken to jail and arraigned on six felony charges, including suspicion of raping a thirteen-year-old girl by use of drugs, sodomy, lewd and lascivious acts upon a child under fourteen, and feeding a controlled substance to a minor. He posted $2,500 bail and was released. Anjelica was also charged with illegal possession of cocaine and released on $1,500 bail. The police told reporters that so far they had no reason to believe at the present time that either Jack or Anjelica had any connection to the alleged rape.
When the news reached him in Aspen, Jack booked the next flight back to Los Angeles. Anjelica met him at the airport and she asked if she could stay with him until everything was straightened out. She was frightened and upset. Jack said of course.
On Wednesday, March 23, after four hours of deliberation, Polanski was formally charged by the Los Angeles County Grand Jury, indicted on the same six felony counts, and ordered to surrender to police no later than the following Tuesday. His lawyer managed to get the surrender postponed several times. Anjelica’s case, the police said, was now being handled as a separate incident, and her charges were left pending.
Two months later, the district attorney’s office dropped all charges against Anjelica. Her lawyer had successfully argued that the amount of co
caine was insufficient for a felony charge and that in any case the police had no right to search her purse that day without a separate warrant.3
THREE DAYS AFTER his arrest, Polanski, looking completely unperturbed, was spotted at a Beverly Hills restaurant with another girl who appeared to be little more than a teenager.
ON APRIL 1, despite Jack’s ironclad alibi that he was in Aspen when the incident happened, the police wanted him to let them take a set of his fingerprints to see if they matched those found on the container of hashish. Jack refused and insisted he had no idea where that hashish had come from. A few days later, the LAPD was then somehow able to obtain a set of Jack’s prints from the Aspen, Colorado, police department (why they had them is not clear), and when they didn’t match the prints lifted from the hashish container, they issued a warrant for Jack’s arrest and took him into custody so they could get a set of his prints. He was fingerprinted at the station and let go without being charged with anything. The prints matched the set from Aspen, but not those on the hashish box. Whose it was remains a mystery to this day.
The police stayed close to him for weeks after, and let him know it. He found himself on the periphery of one of those major Hollywood scandals that was sure to lead to a media circus, the kind that often hurts everyone pulled into it, even though he was three thousand miles away when the alleged incident had occurred.4
TO STAY OUT of any more trouble, Jack sequestered himself at his Hollywood home with his art—“my pictures,” as he called them. His collection had grown formidable: Tamayo, Modigliani, Botero, Soutine, Matisse, Picasso, a sculpture by Rodin. A hundred million dollars’ worth of art leaning against the walls of his simple, half-million-dollar house that was furnished with the same-as-the-day-he-bought-them well-worn armchairs, sink-into sofas, and large soft ottomans.
He was still in no hurry to go back to work, especially after this latest round of controversy, despite the deluge of offers and continual in-depth praise from think-piece critics like Alan Warren, who anointed him as the Bogart of the seventies, having, “the feral energy lurking just beneath the easygoing, almost lazy-appearing exterior, which resembles that of Henry or Peter Fonda. He seems laconic, but this is only part of his technique—words do come forth, and when they do they seem always too few and too late, so that they are supercharged with a violent intensity. They seem to come from directly within Nicholson, not from Nicholson the actor or from Nicholson the scriptwriter. They seem improvised on the spot, just as Brando’s lines always do …”
Talk of a sequel to Chinatown surfaced. Towne had already finished a draft, but after thinking it over Jack said no, preferring to try to get his stalled Moontrap project off the ground.
Louis Malle wanted him for Pretty Baby opposite Brooke Shields. Jack said no to that too (Keith Carradine eventually got the part). Hal Ashby had landed the plum directing assignment for Coming Home, a film about the harsh realities of the Vietnam War, and wanted Jack to star in it. It was a great part, but Jack turned it down as well and suggested to Ashby he give the role instead to Dern. Ashby did, only not for the part he wanted Jack for, opposite Jane Fonda as the paraplegic veteran, but as her unsympathetic military husband. The other part went to Jon Voight (who won an Oscar for his performance, as did Fonda for hers).
Andy Warhol had wanted Jack for a film he wanted to direct about Jackson Pollock. And he wanted Anjelica to play Pollock’s girlfriend, Ruth Kligman. Jack turned Warhol down too. Even Polanski had a script he somehow thought was perfect for Jack—Pirates, a swashbuckler. Jack turned it down because it was going to be filmed in Tunisia (it was eventually made in 1986, with Walter Matthau in the role Polanski wanted Jack for, and it bombed badly).
Producer Ron Clark wanted him for a remake of Jack Arnold’s 1957 sci-fi classic The Incredible Shrinking Man. It was tempting, but Jack said no to that as well. Henry Jaglom was trying to help Orson Welles film what would be his final original script, The Big Brass Ring, and asked Jack to be in it, but when he declined, the project stalled. Welles’s movie never got made in his lifetime. Steven Spielberg wanted Jack to star in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but Jack said he didn’t want to make a flying saucer film. That role went to Richard Dreyfuss.
Michael Douglas had a script that he thought Jack would be great in. Jack said no. The film eventually became 1979’s The China Syndrome and the part went to Jack Lemmon, whose performance in it earned him an Oscar nomination.
The only offer he was interested in was from Stanley Kubrick, a director whose work Jack greatly admired. Kubrick had called Jack asking if he would be interested in starring in the film version of Stephen King’s The Shining (to collaborate, really; Kubrick admired Jack’s ability as a scriptwriter and was eager for his input in bringing this difficult novel to the screen). Jack said yes immediately. He had missed the chance once before to work with Kubrick on the Napoleon project that never happened; he wasn’t going to let another one get away.5
Kubrick’s career-making films included 1957’s neo-Wellesian Paths of Glory, produced by and starring Kirk Douglas; 1962’s erotically suggestive Lolita; 1964’s darkly satirical Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb; 1968’s stoney 2001: A Space Odyssey; 1971’s furious A Clockwork Orange, based on Anthony Burgess’s dark satirical novel; and 1975’s period-piece-gone-wrong Barry Lyndon. His work had earned him a reputation as a filmmaker who made high-quality movies but worked very slowly. Then, when The Shining initially failed to come together, a disappointed Jack said he would always be available to Kubrick to make that film.
Jack flew to New York for a few days prior to his commitment to appear at the April 3, 1978, Oscars to present Best Picture. He wanted to give himself a little sprucing up. He planned to fly back to L.A. the day of the Awards, hand one out, and then try to spend some time with Anjelica. He hadn’t seen much of her since the Polanski incident.
Exhausted and alone, Anjelica wouldn’t see him after the Oscars, and Jack decided instead to fly to St. Tropez, on the French Riviera, where he was soon seen all over with a young, lithe beauty named Winny-Loo Hardley. When the local paparazzi got wind, he retreated with her to the privacy and protection of producer Sam Spiegel’s yacht, where, upon boarding, he dropped his pants and mooned the mob of paparazzi camped on the shore.
A few weeks later, he flew to London and checked into the Connaught Hotel to attend a party that Donald Sutherland was throwing in Jack’s honor. There he met up with Mick Jagger and the two spent some time with racehorse owner Nelson Seabra, who had a reputation for being the best gin rummy player in all of Europe. Racing horses and card playing were both things Jack was very familiar with.
From London he flew back to New York, where he slept most of the time during the day, and at night he hung out with Diana Vreeland and the Andy Warhol clique doing the club scene, where cocaine flowed so heavily it seemed as if a permanent blizzard had hit the city. John Phillips, the former husband of Jack’s ex-girlfriend Michelle, and one of the most successful singer-songwriters of the sixties, had been caught in the snowstorm and reduced to begging for coke money. Jack later told friends he felt sorry for him.
Back at the hotel Jack took a long hard look at himself in the mirror to find out why Diana hadn’t fallen on her knees for him. What he saw was a man who was forty and fat, and nearly bald.
The next day he began another series of painful hair transplants that ultimately didn’t take. Youth remained stubbornly elusive.
ANJELICA, MEANWHILE, was having a long talk with her father about her career. Huston was blunt. He told her that at twenty-seven she was a little too old to think about a real career in film, despite the few parts she had done. “I didn’t have much confidence at that time in my life, and that comment made a big impact. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might be too old.”
She was lost in thought driving home after that discussion. She thought her father had been too harsh and not encouraging enough. “Shortly after my chat with my father,
I was driving down Coldwater Canyon at dusk when a BMW came very, very fast from up ahead and clipped the bumper of the car in front of me. I watched the whole thing in slow motion. My next memory is headlights, and then I felt a tremendous impact. These were the days before we all wore seat belts, so I smashed against the steering wheel or the windshield. When I reached up to wipe the blood from my face, I had no nose.
“I made it to Cedars-Sinai, where I had a long operation to remove the bone shards from my forehead and skull and reconstruct my nose. When I opened my eyes, Jack was standing there with flowers.”
Seeing him did something to her. She felt the love that had faded between them suddenly return. As did her desire to make it as an actress despite what her father had said and how she knew Jack felt. “After that, my thinking turned around. I felt much more capable, receptive, and energized—for the first time, I could see myself as a conqueror. Instead of feeling defensive about my lack of experience, I sought out an acting teacher and started to deepen my knowledge. It was like I’d woken up.” She decided she wasn’t going to ever live with Jack again, that it was not good for her ego, and she bought a small house for herself, a statement of independence and determination. Reflecting on the move-out further, Anjelica said, “Living with Jack [had become] impossible for me.”
JACK HAD BEEN turned on by the thought of working with Kubrick, and when it didn’t happen, he accepted the next offer that came his way, to star in and also direct Paramount Pictures’ comic western called Goin’ South. It was scheduled to start shooting immediately on location in Mexico (substituting for Texas). He had waited a long time to step back into his director’s shoes and was looking forward to proving he could do it.