Dear Cary

by Dyan Cannon

  I was thinking about this one glorious summer evening as I sat at a sidewalk café, watching the unhurried crowd float by like driftwood in a lazy river, when my senses opened up to the beauty that surrounded me. It was one of those moments in which your mind captures every detail, impression, and feeling, and seemingly preserves it as a hologram of memory. I glanced at the snifter of Campari on the table in front of me and noted the last ray of the setting sun flare off the dwindling ice cube that bobbed in the rose-colored liquid. There was a man in a beret who smoked a very black, thin cigar and I will forever remember the exact scent of it. Time stopped, or seemed to, and I wanted it to stop. I wanted this magnificent spell never to end. How did a girl from West Seattle end up in this marvelous place? I asked myself. In Rome, with a friend like Charlie, and a pal like Bangs, and an extended family of warmhearted, creative, life-embracing people?

  Yes, I’ll stay here, I thought to myself. Forever, maybe. Who could want anything more?

  “Dyan.” I stirred from my trance to find Eduardo standing next to me. His hand was on my shoulder. I smiled up at him. He certainly was an attractive part of the landscape, but I wasn’t going to go forward until I was absolutely sure he was on the up-and-up. My high school misadventure with Larry had left me watchful and wary. No amazingly handsome, impossibly brilliant South American god was going to make a Brazilian pie out of this gal.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Back to Earth

  As the plane descended over Southern California, I felt something in my tummy that was halfway between butterflies and queasiness. It wasn’t like I was plunging into the unknown. I was returning to a welcoming circle of good friends, and I’d be back in the ring auditioning, doing what I loved best. It was just that my Roman carriage had turned into a pumpkin faster than the stroke of midnight. As if without knowing it I’d been gazing into a mirror that someone had hit with a sledgehammer, leaving me to stare at a blank piece of wood. Plus, I was coming back to L.A. with no home, no car, and no money. I felt a little like a prodigal daughter. I didn’t want to worry Mom and Dad with it, though. I knew I had to get cracking and find some work. It was late January, a beautiful time of year, and it was nice to be in the crisp sunshine of Southern California.

  God bless Addie Gould! Other than my mom, there was no one I could’ve been happier to see when I got off the plane. The beautiful Addie had a heart as big as the San Fernando Valley, which is where she lived with her adolescent son, and now she was taking me in like one of her own. That was Addie: surrogate mom to the world. The third time I asked her whether I was imposing, she shushed me and said, “Dyan, you’re family. Mi casa es tu casa.”

  I hit the ground running, and for the next two weeks it was back-to-back auditions—tiring, but exhilarating too. I needed work. I needed a new life. And I needed my friends.

  Charlie called the morning after I got back. “Mr. Wonderful asked me for your number in Los Angeles,” he said. “I didn’t give it to him, but as a man of my word, it is incumbent on me to relay the message—just in case your appetite for deceit hasn’t been completely satiated.”

  “Oh, it has,” I said. “I left with a big doggie bag of it.”

  “Shall I just mark that as a ‘no’?”

  “Yes. Please.”

  ***

  Me: Eduardo, I really need to know. Are you or are you not married?

  Eduardo: Oh, Dy-yann, I have tol’ you many times already. I wass marry-ed, and I have two bee-yootiful children, but I am no longer marry-ed.

  Me: So you’re divorced?

  Eduardo: Technically, yes. But officially, no.

  Me: Then you are married.

  Eduardo: My wife and I, we have been living apart for a year, and we have both agreed to make it final . . . and final it is!

  Blah, blah, blah, and blah.

  I’d had my share of unrequited schoolgirl crushes, but Eduardo was the first man to throw a dagger into my grown-up heart. And it hurt. What made it hard, really hard, was not the death of our romance but the puncture wound he inflicted to my hale and hearty sense of trust. I grew up believing in the basic goodness of people, and happily, I never completely lost that. I hadn’t flung myself into the tryst with Eduardo before doing what I thought was due diligence on his marital status. It was just unfathomable to me that any man could misrepresent himself with such utter and unflappable consistency. Trying any harder to pin him down would’ve meant handcuffing him to a chair beneath a bare lightbulb.

  I’ll say this for him, though: when he broke my heart, he certainly did it with style.

  You can’t imagine being given such a rush. Limousines. Champagne. Candlelight dinners. “Mea amor,” he would ask me, “would you mind to live in Brazil half of the year?” I pictured myself managing a jungle plantation at the edge of the Amazon, though of course I had no idea what type of plantation it might be. Bananas? Mangoes? For all I knew, we’d be breeding squirrel monkeys.

  Oh, how’d he fix me with eyes as hot as the equator and set my blood to simmering. Finally, I relented and to my mother’s horror (we kept Dad in the dark about it as he would have turned it into an international incident) moved into the sybaritic splendor of the Excelsior Hotel with him. I felt like one of the Medicis. Each night seemed more magical than the one before it. I would just look at him and lose myself in his big, green eyes.

  By dating Eduardo, I’d really put myself out on a limb emotionally. My father was the sternest enforcer imaginable of feminine virtue and rarely passed an opportunity to proclaim, “A woman who sleeps with a man before she gets married has lost her self-respect!” That condemnation stuck in my mind like tar on the sole of my shoe. I overrode it, though, because I was so certain that Eduardo’s intentions were of the highest order. I wasn’t his wife, but I knew I would become his wife.

  In keeping with the whole operatic Roman atmosphere, Eduardo’s unmasking as a cad was high melodrama. A letter was slipped under the door. The letter was from Rio. Eduardo’s name was written on the envelope in a distinctly feminine hand.

  Yes, I opened it.

  An investigative committee comprised of the plump chambermaid and the scrawny bellboy parsed the Portuguese words from their Latinate roots and strained them through Italian into sort-of English. “Ees from Mrs. Wife of Eduardo!” the chambermaid exclaimed.

  “Eet es-sez she is messing [missing] with him and the boys they mess him too,” the chambermaid said.

  “An’ she ees asking him for when he come home,” the bellboy added helpfully.

  At the bottom of the letter, Eduardo’s wife had even drawn a tiny heart.

  I sat on the edge of the bed, gasping for breath. I felt like I’d been stabbed. I don’t know how long I sat there, but I know I was so numb I couldn’t even cry. Eduardo showed up an hour later, kissed me with great passion, and told me to dress. “We are going to a wonderful place for dinner tonight,” he said, oblivious.

  I acted as if nothing was wrong. We went to a bustling restaurant where everyone sat at a very long table that reminded me, somewhat appropriately, of the table in The Last Supper. Finally, I turned to him and said, “You’re not really separated, are you?” He just looked at me, saying nothing. “A letter arrived at the hotel, from your wife. She and the children miss you.” He kept looking at me, still saying nothing. He knew I knew.

  “The story about getting a divorce—that wasn’t true, was it?”

  Finally, he spoke. “No,” he said. “But if I had told you the truth, you wouldn’t have agreed to move in with me.”

  I stood up, looked around, and saw Charlie at the far end of the table. I crossed to his side. “Charlie, I really need to get out of here,” I said.

  With a glance in Eduardo’s direction, Charlie got to his feet and led me out of the restaurant.

  “You were right,” I said, tears welling in my eyes. “I never should have trusted him.”

  Charlie took me back to the hotel to gather up my things and then took me to a small hotel where E
duardo wouldn’t think of looking for me. I asked him to see if there was room on the morning flight to Los Angeles.

  “Dyan, take a few days and think it through,” Charlie said. “You don’t really want to leave.”

  “Yes, I do,” I said firmly. “This is the first time you’ve been wrong about me, Charlie. I’m ready to go home.”

  Now I was back in L.A., slogging through a bog of grief by staying as busy as I could. I was auditioning like crazy, and of course I hadn’t been away so long as to lose my wonderful chain of friends. I didn’t say much about Eduardo to anyone except Addie. I just wanted to forget the whole thing.

  “Okay, kiddo, get to bed early because tomorrow is going to be a big day,” Addie said, snapping off the TV as The Rifleman ended.

  “What’s so special about tomorrow?”

  “Hal’s set you up with back-to-back meetings at Universal. You’ll be meeting some heavyweights.”

  Hal was Hal Gefsky, Addie’s business partner and the ultimate mensch. There’s just no other way to describe him. He had a kind, round face and a gentle dignity that had a way of calming the choppiest waters. In meetings, he brought out the best in both parties. If Addie was the mom, Hal was the dad. With the two of them behind me, I felt protected from the most feral beasts that dwelled in the wacky kennel called Hollywood. And there were some. There were many wonderful people, and in fact I always felt they predominated, but there were definitely some critters.

  “You look fabulous,” he said encouragingly the next morning. Hal was the epitome of understated courtesy; he always made you feel, well, fabulous. And I felt fabulous. I was wearing a simple blue dress and heels, and I still retained a reasonable percentage of my Italian tan. I was happy to be back on the playing field and eager to stretch out. I liked comedy, I liked drama, I liked musicals. I liked dramatic musicals and comedic dramas. Of course, my first concern was just getting some work, but I didn’t feel desperate. I was angling for parts with some substance. Hal and I made the rounds for two hours, and I met half a dozen charming people who were producers, directors, and the like. All encouraging, all supportive, all eager to work with me . . . all noncommittal.

  We were done by noon and Hal took me to lunch at the studio commissary. After we ordered, Hal’s lips pursed into a mischievous, self-satisfied grin.

  “You look like the dog with the key to the meat truck,” I said.

  “We have one more meeting.”

  “With whom?”

  “Cary Grant.”

  “Cary? Grant? Cary Grant?”

  “He still wants to meet you.”

  “Wow.” I was still taking it in. I could be aloof about Cary Grant in Rome, but now that I was on the studio lot, his gravitational force was the rough equivalent of Jupiter’s. “What’s the project?” I asked almost as an afterthought.

  “He’s always juggling more than one project. I imagine he’s looking at more than one thing he could fit you into.”

  After lunch, I went to the powder room and looked at myself in the mirror. “I’m ready for this!” I declared out loud.

  A voice from one of the stalls called out, “Then knock ’em dead!”

  “Thank you,” I said, smiling, and off I went to meet Cary Grant.

  I guess I knew as much about Cary Grant as the average moviegoer, which is to say not much. He was still one of the most sought-after leading men in Hollywood, but I hadn’t known he was also a successful producer. I conjured up various screen images of him and realized they stretched from movies I’d seen as a child to his more recent efforts. I realized I couldn’t pin an age on him, and I asked Hal how old he was.

  “Fifty-eight.”

  “He’s three years older than my father.”

  “I wouldn’t tell him that if I were you,” Hal said, arching an eyebrow at me. But he was counting on his fingers. “I just did the math,” he said. “Cary was thirty-three when you were born.”

  “That makes him sound really old.”

  “I think you’ll find him to be quite vigorous,” Hal said with a smile. “He keeps talking about retiring, but it’s not going to happen anytime soon. He’s still the most bankable guy in the business.”

  “Is there a Mrs. Grant?”

  “Not anymore.”

  By this time, we’d reached the winding walkway to Cary’s bungalow—an “office” on the Universal lot in those days was like a country cottage, and a spacious one at that—and made our way through the lush garden to the front door. Hal knocked and Cary’s assistant, Dorothy, greeted us. She was middle-aged and elegant in an understated way. After the introductions, she turned and knocked on the open door that led to Cary’s office and announced me.

  “Good luck, kid,” Hal whispered.

  “You’re not coming with me?”

  “I don’t think he’s interested in me.”

  That threw me off. I’d just assumed I’d have Hal’s steadying presence to prop me up. I regained my balance, but when I stepped into the room, I felt for a second like I’d been hit by a stun gun. Standing in front of me was the most arrestingly handsome man I have ever laid eyes on. He was tall, trim, and tan, in white slacks, a white linen shirt, and brown leather sandals. I hadn’t, and still haven’t, seen anyone who radiated such godlike masculine beauty.

  He stepped forward and extended his hand. I could barely breathe. Literally. His hand was so large, so warm. He held me with his gaze and broke into an absolutely enchanting smile.

  “Nice to meet you, Miss Cannon. I’m Cary Grant.” That voice.

  “I-I’m Dyan Cannon,” I stammered.

  “Yes you are!” he said, laughing. “That’s why you’re here,” he added jovially.

  He steered me to a chair and with perfect grace lowered himself onto a massive leather couch. He seemed to fill the room completely. Years later, I realized there was a word for this; it was called presence.

  “Well, Miss Cannon,” he said. “You are even more attractive in person.”

  I wanted to say, “So are you! Way more attractive!” And he was. There was a distinguished dab of silver at his temples, but he glowed with youthful vitality. Containing myself, I simply thanked him for the compliment.

  “I saw you on an episode of Malibu Run,” he said.

  “Yes, my agent told me.”

  “But I see you have a long list of other credits.”

  He was being generous. Have Gun—Will Travel. Playhouse 90. Highway Patrol. Lock Up. Zane Grey Theater. Wanted: Dead or Alive. Bat Masterson. Ben Casey. And of course I’d also done that feature, The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond. Yes, before I played hooky in Rome, I’d succeeded in becoming a working actress and not a lot more. But this . . . man . . . the greatest leading man of all time—he was talking to me like a peer, like I was already in and worthy of his full respect.

  “I do what I can,” I said, whatever that meant.

  He leaned forward and fixed me with his huge, café au lait eyes and said, “Tell me about yourself.” In any other similar situation, this would have been my cue to be entertaining, to go into audition mode. In other words, a trained-seal moment. This was different. There was—I don’t know how else to say it—a note of urgency in his voice, like he needed to know. Like I might have something to tell him that would make a difference.

  “What would you like to know?”

  “Everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “How about anything . . . anything you’re comfortable with?”

  So I unscrolled a bit of biography: I was born Samille Diane Friesen in Tacoma, Washington (my parents expected a boy whom they were going to name after my maternal grandfather, so the name Sam was gelded into Samille). My courageous mother, Clara Portnoy, had escaped the pogroms in Russia and was a passionately observant Jew. We went to temple on high holidays, and we went to Hebrew school once a week. My father, Ben, was an insurance broker whose religious convictions could be summed up as “God who?” so my mother was free to raise us—my younger bro
ther, David, and me—in the Jewish faith.

  Mr. Grant followed this with interest. “That’s lovely! I’m sure your father admired the Jewish code of moral discipline, even though he wasn’t religious himself.”

  “Well, that was before the—let’s call it a plot twist.” This was getting awfully personal, but Mr. Grant was such an engaged listener that I let down my guard.

  “Do tell.”

  It was kind of a peculiar story. Dad came from a big family, and as the story goes, his brothers all found Jesus on the same day, though I never heard a clear explanation as to how that happened. But one day when I was about six, I came home to find Dad and his brothers in the living room on their knees. At first I thought they were playing jacks. Then Dad looked up at me and asked me to get on my knees and to pray with them. My devoutly atheist father had found religion.

  I was a little shocked, and as young as I was, I knew this was not going to make things any easier for Mom.

  “Did you get on your knees?” Mr. Grant asked.

  “Yes, I did. I wanted to make my daddy happy, but I was afraid it would upset my mother. And it did.”

  “How did things go from there?”

  “There was a lot of conflict,” I said. “There was a big tug of war for our souls. Daddy drove us to temple every Sunday morning, singing ‘Jesus Loves Me, This I Know’ in the car. Then I’d go into Hebrew school and sing it for the rabbi. That caused quite a stir.”

  Mr. Grant laughed, and I went on. It was funny in hindsight, but my dad’s conversion put a real strain on my family. Mom had married out of her faith because Dad agreed to let her raise the children as Jews. Then suddenly he was as passionate about Christianity as she was about Judaism.

  “I can see how that could give you religious whiplash,” he said. “It’s fascinating how people have so many different ways of searching for God.”