At one point in the evening, she asked me to show her the powder room.
“It’s right there.” I pointed out the nearest bathroom, but there was a line of people waiting to use it.
“I have to go now,” she said.
She sounded serious. So I took her to use Todd’s bathroom in another part of the house, and returned to the party.
Shortly afterward Todd went into his room and ran right into Bette, seated on his throne with the bathroom door open.
“Hello, Todd,” she said, and proceeded to engage my eleven-year-old son in conversation while she continued her business.
In the early 1980s we were both hired to tape an awards show for the makeup industry at the Pasadena Playhouse, a beautiful old theater right outside LA. Bette was being honored and I was the emcee, appearing as myself and also doing my impressions of Madame and Miss Piggy. (It was the makeup industry, after all.) I had four introductions, which were all delayed because of my elaborate changes. During the first overlong break the singer Johnny Ray went onstage and performed one of his hits, which kept the folks entertained for four minutes. Bette got into the stalling act during another break, taking the stage to sing “I’ve Written a Letter to Daddy” from her 1962 horror film, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? This delighted the crowd, who had been in their seats for hours.
At one point backstage, I asked Bette which dress I should wear.
“Make it a happy color,” she advised, “because this night ain’t it.”
She was such a good sport. She sang and we sang together. It made the most ill-conceived show of a lifetime bearable. Thankfully it never aired.
On trips to New York, I would often visit Bette at home on Crooked Mile Road in Westport, Connecticut. We’d start with a tea service, like high tea in England, and gradually move on to wine or other drinks. Sometimes I’d spend the night. Roddy McDowell was another close friend of Bette’s. He’d come to visit for a few days. They really loved each other. Eventually Bette gave up her Westport home for a condo in West Hollywood. She was like a marble mantelpiece from a great home that was now transplanted from a grand salon to a one-bedroom apartment.
Once I lost a personal assistant to Bette. Hal Martin idolized Bette. He knew every line she ever delivered in her many films, and was happy to leave me in the dust when she asked that he come work for her. Hal’s typing wasn’t great, but he had more important duties than just secretarial work. Bette would sit on his lap and make out with him, reciting her famous movie lines while they kissed. It didn’t matter that Hal was gay. Bette found Hal lovable and really enjoyed kissing, and he was thrilled as long as he was near her.
Bette Davis was a classic. We were friends until she died in October 1989. I’ve always loved her, and didn’t mind when she took away my assistant. I was happy because he made my friend happy. But sometimes you have to do more than be passive when a friend needs your help.
UNCLE RUDY
Rudy Render was my pianist and musical director for twenty-two years. He was also my very dear friend for much longer than that. I called him Uncle Rudy.
He was originally a friend of my brother’s. They met when Billy and Rudy were both stationed at Fort Ord in Monterey. I used to entertain there on weekends when I wasn’t on some date for the USO. Rudy accompanied me on the piano.
Once when they were on leave in the early 1950s, Billy brought Rudy for dinner at our house in Burbank. Mother and Daddy and I were sitting at the table when they arrived just in time to eat. Daddy looked at Rudy, got up, and left the room. Nobody had told him that Rudy was black.
“Daddy has an upset stomach,” Mother explained, to cover for him.
She was terribly embarrassed about what Daddy had done. So were Billy and I.
After we’d all eaten and Rudy had left, we went to find Daddy in the garage, where he was repairing some machine. We asked him why he had been so rude to our guest.
Still concentrating on what he was tinkering with, he said, “I can take anything but not a n————.” And he used a horrible word I won’t repeat here.
“We can’t live here if we’re not free to have our friends,” we told Daddy, and went and checked into a motel.
Daddy found us the next morning and we told him that we would not come back unless our friends were welcome no matter what color their skin was. That had been the original agreement in our family: any friend of Billy’s or mine could come to our house as long as we lived with what Daddy could pay for and provide us. No color restrictions had been made.
I reminded Daddy about this, and he said that he would welcome Rudy in the future.
Rudy fractured his back in an automobile accident a few months later in LA. The doctors told him he needed a few weeks in bed. But he had no place to stay. Mother invited him to recuperate in our garage, which Daddy had recently converted to a guesthouse with a kitchenette and twin beds. Mother then nursed Rudy for three weeks.
I was out of town working, so Daddy was left to help her. He became so attached to Rudy that he considered him another son. Rudy felt the same way about Daddy.
During my first marriage, when Eddie was on the road, Uncle Rudy would spend the evening with me singing songs while he played the piano. Sometimes he’d stay over. He was there for me when my second marriage was falling apart, keeping me company until one or two in the morning when I needed him. He could always cheer me up.
Rudy was a respected musician who recorded for London, Decca, and Dot. In 1949 his single “Sneakin’ Around,” written by Jessie Mae Robinson, reached number two on the Billboard R&B chart. He cowrote the title song for my 1959 movie It Started with a Kiss. Three years later he convinced me to do my own act in Las Vegas. Rudy and I worked together in the music room at my Greenway house. It was pure pleasure. He was a master of vocal arrangements.
In 1972 he gave up show business to teach public school. But he continued to advise me on musical matters and directed students in school shows. We always spent Christmas Eve together when I was in Los Angeles. He retired in 2001.
I was devoted to him, and would have done anything for him to show it.
Uncle Rudy and Bobby Short were first cousins. Bobby, of course, was much more famous. He played at New York’s Café Carlyle for decades, from 1968 until 2003, two years before his death. Once, Uncle Rudy was filling in for Bobby, so naturally I went to see him play and sing. I was seated in the back of the small club, in a booth with one of the first ladies of the Broadway stage: Elaine Stritch. (She later became a resident of the hotel, she loved it so much.)
Elaine was drinking. A lot. As the wine flowed, she began talking while Rudy was performing. I tried to quiet her down. It was like trying to turn back a tornado. Elaine’s voice wasn’t soft either—she was once a stand-in for Ethel Merman. She could be heard throughout the room. After many attempts to silence the diva, I picked up the ice bucket chilling our wine bottle.
You’ve all been to the movies, so you know what happened next.
I dumped the ice and cold water all over her. This had the desired chilling effect: Miss Stritch shut up.
The next day I went to Saks Fifth Avenue and bought Elaine a beautiful silk dress to replace the one I’d ruined. I sent it to her apartment. She called me. She was very gracious, saying she loved the dress. But she never apologized to Rudy for talking through his show.
One of Elaine’s best-known songs was a number she did in the original Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim’s show Company, “Here’s to the Ladies Who Lunch.”
So here’s to the ladies who stay quiet during cabaret acts!
Uncle Rudy died on September 11, 2014. I miss him. Here are some stories I haven’t told before about two other dear friends who meant so much to me.
AVA GARDNER
In 1988 I went to London to promote my recently released book, Debbie: My Life. The publishers sent four of us on the trip: my mentor, Lillian Burns Sidney, who had worked very hard on the book; Kelly Muldoon, my hairdresser at the
time; and my good friend Margie Duncan. We stayed at the Savoy Hotel.
It was an interesting mix of people. We were all a bit crazy in our own ways. Lillian was older, with all the troubles that go along with that. Margie is a gal from Philly who is lively and fun. Kelly thought she knew everything. We were all equally bossy, yet we were great friends.
One of the reasons I was happy to be in London was because my dear friend Ava Gardner lived there. She’d moved there in 1968. I looked forward to visiting with her.
In 1986 Ava had had a stroke that left her depressed and partially paralyzed. Her arm was twisted and it was difficult for her to speak. Lillian and I knew that Ava was embarrassed about her appearance but we didn’t care. We were determined to see her.
Ava had a wonderful apartment in the Kensington section of London. She lived with her maid, Carmen, and a Welsh corgi she called Morgan. We took a magnum of chilled champagne, parked outside her building at Ennismore Gardens, and rang her bell. Carmen came down to the lobby, followed by Morgan, and took us upstairs to Ava.
We stayed for hours, drinking the champagne and reminiscing about our days at MGM when Lillian had coached all the actors at the studio. Ava was always sorry about her role in Show Boat. Although she loved playing the mulatto Julie La Verne, she thought that the part should have gone to Lena Horne, who was also under contract to MGM.
As the afternoon turned to evening, Ava became relaxed and happy. She even showed us some fabric that she was going to have made into drapes. I didn’t expect that her life would end just a few years later (she died in 1990).
Ava was so dear and so beautiful. She was one of our great stars. My brother, Bill, had been her makeup artist in 1985, when she had a running part on the hit TV series Knots Landing. At the very end, she was sad to lose her beauty. I went to see Ava a few years before she got sick. We spent a wonderful time visiting at her apartment, followed by a trip to her neighborhood pub for some drinks. She played Frank Sinatra’s music on the jukebox the whole time we were there. She loved Frank to the end. Frank was good to Ava until the end, too. He helped her with her medical bills and other expenses. It was a shame when Frank left his first wife, Nancy, for Ava, but when a man wants to leave, he leaves.
ELIZABETH TAYLOR
“My life has had so many startling tomorrows that I don’t think they’ve stopped,” Elizabeth Taylor told an interviewer about a decade and a half before she died. Elizabeth was one of the biggest stars ever. She had an exciting life, a thrilling life. If Elizabeth saw something and wanted it, she got it. But she lacked that one special element that is normalcy, to be just a movie star loved in a relaxed and normal way, without all the klieg lights going and not a minute when you’re not onstage. In our early days as friends she often said that she felt envious of other young people who got to be real girls, not just movie stars. Who didn’t always have to be “on,” and got to enjoy being young and innocent.
Elizabeth’s father, Francis, was an art dealer, very handsome and distinguished. He had that same great black hair, as did her mother, Sara, who looked like Laraine Day. The rumor on the MGM lot was that Elizabeth’s mother was pushy. She was in on every meeting. She got a salary from MGM. Maybe that was because Sara herself had been a successful stage performer, on Broadway and elsewhere. She retired from acting when she married Elizabeth’s father. Only her brother, Howard, a marine engineer, treated Elizabeth in a normal fashion. To him Elizabeth Taylor was simply his little sister. He loved her and she adored him.
I was fortunate when I first started at MGM. I got to go home to Burbank and have a normal life. Elizabeth went to University High in Los Angeles. They had an arrangement with the studio that underage contract players had to go there and pass an exam to show that they had completed their academic work. Even though I had finished at John Burroughs High School, I still had to pass that test. Afterward I was able to attend my high school basketball game with friends. Elizabeth just went to the MGM lot. I actually had a date for my prom. Elizabeth went to her prom with a date that was arranged for her. Still, she went hoping to have a good time. She got all dressed up, gown and everything, and wound up signing autographs all night. It wasn’t any fun for her. I doubt that she got one dance. It’s no wonder that she wanted to have a good time later on.
It never changed, not even when she was sick and had an oxygen tube in her nose, or when she was finally dying. The press took pictures of her going into and out of the hospital, and every time, she had to have José Eber do her makeup. And Elizabeth was sick for nearly her entire adult life, ever since becoming pregnant with her daughter by Mike Todd.
The doctors warned her: “We doubt that the baby will make it, but you definitely won’t make it, you cannot have this baby. Your back is so messed up we can’t fix it. You can’t put pressure on it like that.”
But Elizabeth didn’t listen. She adored Mike, and Mike was so excited that they were having a baby. And this adorable child came out. Liza looks like Mike, with Elizabeth’s eyes. I’ve known her since she was born in August 1957, less than a year after I had Carrie. She’s a beautiful girl and a very talented sculptress.
You could always tell how Elizabeth was feeling by her shoes. If she was happy and feeling well, she would be wearing pretty shoes. If she was sick, she wore slippers.
One night toward the end of her life I got a call from Elizabeth’s French butler, Jean-Luc, who was with her all the time.
“Elizabeth hasn’t had any visitors and she’s very lonely,” he told me in a hushed, soft voice. “She talks about you from time to time. She’d like to see you.”
He asked if I would come visit her.
Elizabeth was still living in the Bel Air home on Nimes Road that she’d bought in the early 1980s. I had never visited her there alone. Carrie and I went once with Billie, for an Easter egg hunt. The grounds included a tropical garden and an English garden. A big In-N-Out burger truck arrived with food for the guests. By then Elizabeth was in very poor health. She was having back trouble and walking problems, and she never came downstairs. Everyone would go upstairs to see her. The green velvet drapes in the master bedroom were always kept closed. Even so, everybody had a good time.
Then I got lost on my way home. Bel Air is a dark, scary place at night. It’s hard to see the street signs. I don’t visit a lot with my friends at night anymore because of this.
I asked Jean-Luc if it would be all right for me to visit with Elizabeth on the phone. So we did that. I felt sad that I couldn’t be with her.
In spite of her constant physical problems, Elizabeth loved to throw parties, especially on her “big” birthdays. To celebrate her seventy-fifth birthday in February 2007, she booked the Medici Cafe & Terrace at the Ritz-Carlton in Lake Las Vegas, seventeen miles east of the Strip. She invited seventy-five people for dinner with a Mardi Gras theme (jambalaya, prime rib, collard greens, sweet potatoes) and cake. I didn’t really want to go, especially outside Las Vegas. But Carrie really did want to, so we flew in together from LA.
Elizabeth arrived three hours late and in a wheelchair, but glamorous as ever, a vision in white. Floor-length, scoop-necked, long-sleeved white gown. A long white mink stole. A diamond collar necklace inset with three arced rows of huge pearls that covered most of the exposed skin above her bodice; matching bracelet on her right wrist and ring on her right hand; and matching dangling icicle drop earrings. Her short, jet-black hair and creamy white skin, combined with matching scarlet lipstick and nail polish on fingers holding a beaded white clutch bag, provided a striking contrast to her ensemble. She looked stunning.
All of her four children, now middle-aged themselves, were with her: Christopher and Michael Wilding, Liza Todd, and Maria Burton. The other guests included Kathy Ireland (Elizabeth’s business partner in the House of Taylor jewelry line) and magicians Siegfried and Roy (their animals weren’t invited). Aaron Spelling was there, as well as Nolan Miller, who’d designed all those over-the-top outfits for Joan Collins and Linda Evans in
Aaron’s 1980s show Dynasty as well as Elizabeth’s dress for her party. Steve Wynn and his wife. Elizabeth’s dear friend Michael Jackson, who had recently moved to Las Vegas, was nowhere to be seen, although his children came with their mother, Debbie Rowe—as did Michael’s dermatologist, Arnie Klein.
Photographers sang “Happy Birthday” along with the guests. Toasts were offered, and several of us made comments. I said something about Elizabeth and I having a very unusual friendship that had lasted all these years, and gave Elizabeth a Baccarat vase.
She stayed at her party only long enough to say hello to people, and then went upstairs to her suite with her children.
My last conversation with Elizabeth was shortly before she died. She had been in Cedars-Sinai for about six weeks. Everybody was very worried. I was in my house, and I thought, “I should call Elizabeth.” I didn’t know that she was really on the last lap. She didn’t take calls, but she took my call. And we just made conversation. We made nice conversation.
“How’s Carrie? How are you doing? How’s your health?” she asked.
“How are you doing?” I said.
“Not too well, but I’m fighting all the way.”
I couldn’t help thinking that if someone looking like Richard Burton walked in right then, she would get well.
But it wasn’t to be. Elizabeth became ill that night, and the next day—March 23, 2011—she died, with all of her children at her bedside.
I was sad when I heard the news, yet relieved. I loved Elizabeth. I never didn’t love her. But I felt sorry that she never got to enjoy a normal life.
The year of Elizabeth’s seventy-fifth birthday I needed a gown to wear to the Thalians ball, so I asked her to lend me the one she’d worn to her party. She sent it to me. I went to Nolan Miller’s shop on Robertson Boulevard. Even though he was living at the Motion Picture Home, he came and altered it for me. (I still have that dress. I may have another ball to go to someday.) Here’s a story about a Thalians gala where I wore another gown designed by Nolan Miller.
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