by James Gavin
“I said, ‘You can’t have strangers there, it’s her home!’ But he hated her guts. He went ahead and had his party. A few days later I got a call from a lawyer, accusing me of having had the party.”
* * *
AS THE SPRING OF 1977 ended, Lee’s prime emotion was rage, aimed at everyone she felt had wronged her: Okada, various employees, William Morris, the now-shuttered Empire Room for having “fired” her. Lee felt robbed. And she felt abandoned—her most explosive hot button. “She had to be the one to do the leaving,” said Dona Harsh. “Nobody else could leave her.”
The singer phoned columnist Earl Wilson, who printed any news she gave him. Wilson reported that Lee was at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, trying to recover from a “cracked rib” and “fractured pelvis” suffered in a fall at the Waldorf. A lawsuit was likely.
Shortly thereafter, a representative of Lee’s informed the wire services that the star was suing the Hilton Hotel corporation (which owned the Waldorf) and the Johnson Wax company for a near-fatal fall on an overwaxed lobby floor. The suit claimed that sand had fallen from a “toppled spittoon” (actually a tall, cylindrical ashtray) near the elevator, causing her to skid.
From there, her allegations snowballed. Columnist Marilyn Beck wrote that the tumble had “left her with a permanent hearing loss and temporary blindness, plus injuries to her head and rib cage, broken back teeth and sciatic nerve and foot disorders.” To that list, Lee added a “cracked skeleton.” She wasn’t through. “I literally could not walk across the room,” she informed Kathy Larkin of the New York Daily News. Lee told the Chicago Tribune that she had “nearly died . . . My ribs were torn from my spine, and I developed a heart condition because of the injuries.” The singer claimed a loss of ten million dollars in performing income, then fifteen. In truth, there wasn’t much performing to do. What appearances she had made, including her European ones, revealed no afflictions.
After their unfailingly gracious treatment of her, the management of the Waldorf was stunned. Their lawyers looked in bewilderment at Lee’s proposed evidence: Polaroids, taken by a friend, that showed sand on the floor and a raised carpet edge into which her foot had allegedly gotten caught—another claim that didn’t quite jibe with a slide on a sandy floor.
The case would drag on for six years. She refused to withdraw or to consider a settlement agreement; for Lee, being angry meant feeling alive. But with far fewer chances to sing, her days seemed empty. A star who had barely touched a domestic task in decades now had the time to crochet an afghan for Nicki. She listened to classical music, notably Satie’s “Gymnopédie No. 3,” which she loved for its “calming effect.” And she kept writing lyrics, most of which went unsung. Her romantic life seemed over in reality, but not in her imagination. Lee sent out a press release that declared her engagement to “Count” Philip Ashley, an Englishman who had allegedly flown to Toronto to propose to her during a tour. Years later, close friends of Lee’s recalled nothing of him or the engagement, which yielded no marriage.
One interview tactfully described her as “very selective in accepting bookings,” when in fact she was starved for them. Before a February 1978 concert at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, the always-sympathetic Leonard Feather allowed Lee to speak out at length in the Times. She sounded heartsick as she surveyed the current recording scene—in particular the “great power wielded by producers,” whose extravagant spending “all comes out of the artist’s royalties.” She cited one team “who spent a great deal of what was supposed to be our working time just lying around in the sun in the South of France . . . It wound up being nothing but a very costly demo, which in effect I paid for.” Already she felt nostalgic for the albums she had made in London: “The musicians were very well prepared and they didn’t waste time fooling around.”
If rock and roll had scared Lee in the 1960s, heavy metal revolted her. “Grotesque” was the word she used to describe Kiss, the leather-clad band who painted their faces in black and white, spat artificial blood, set off flames, and hinted at Nazism and Satanism. Lee was equally appalled by the tongue-in-cheek horror imagery of “shock rock” metal hero Alice Cooper—specifically by the urban legend that he had bitten the head off a live chicken onstage. She likened Cooper to the “mentally ill” sideshow freaks at carnivals. Lee was “shocked” by the fact that A&M had dismissed her but signed the Sex Pistols, the superstar British punk band. In London, she had heard about “God Save the Queen,” the group’s proletarian anthem, which compared the royal family to a “fascist regime.” To Lee, the hit tune was merely some “dreadfully offensive song.” Heavy metal was called a “subculture of alienation” and “outsider music for outsiders,” sentiments to which Lee could relate. But there was no way she could appreciate a form so violently nonmusical; to her, it symbolized the end of all she valued as a singer. She wondered if she should just retire.
But as so often happened, an offer came along just in time to buoy her hopes. That summer she was booked as the premiere act at Scandals, a Hollywood nightclub hyped as a Ciro’s for the disco era. Scandals had a projected budget of over two million dollars and lofty intentions to match. Owner Leonard Grant, the former agent for Ann-Margret and Liberace, had conceived a mini-Vegas-style emporium that would encompass a dance floor and a tiered, 315-seat showroom. Amid French brasserie décor, crystal chandeliers, and red-leather booths, Broadway and pop veterans of largely gay appeal, including Rita Moreno, Chita Rivera, and Peggy Lee, would entertain, backed by an orchestra.
Grant admitted that he and his investors were “sticking their necks out on a limb.” Yet Lee was sure that Scandals would revive the “all-out elegance and glamour” of Ciro’s and the Mocambo. On August 3, 1978, just before the opening, Johnny Carson featured Lee on the Tonight show. She hadn’t seemed so vibrant in years. Dressed in black and white Zoran, she sang three songs, including “Goin’ to Chicago Blues” from her Blues Cross Country album, and chatted at length with Carson. She was going to an acupuncturist, Lee noted; this and her excitement over Scandals had made her feel like a “new person.” Forgetting her Waldorf suit, she enthused: “I’ve never had so much energy. All those bones that ached from falling on them are all fine now.”
Lee was at her most charmingly scattered. She described the grounds around her home as a veritable Wild Kingdom, replete with “bunny rabbits,” coyotes, “enormous” robins, a squirrel “that throws acorns at you,” raccoons that “come and wash their faces in the pool,” quail, and a herd of deer that roamed the hill. The singer told an involved story about a six-foot snake that had appeared at her back door just before she hosted a press party for Scandals. She phoned the animal regulations office and an exterminator, and learned that it was unlawful to kill a snake. “My daughter said, ‘Is it against the law if the snake kills you?’ ” quipped Lee. “I knew it wouldn’t do any good to put Raid on a six-foot snake.”
On August 15—three weeks late—Scandals opened, but the place was a mess. Six out of the eight bathrooms didn’t work; paint cans, ladders, and drop cloths were in view. Laser light effects shot through the sky above Hollywood Boulevard and North La Brea Avenue, but Della Reese, not Peggy Lee, sang that night. At the last minute, Lee had been hospitalized at St. John’s for what Variety described as an “acute viral infection” with “hepatitis-like complications.” Reese finished out Lee’s engagement. Before she could be rebooked, Scandals had sunk.
Cancellations aside, certain critics were disheartened by the diminished Lee they saw, and found themselves straining to offer praise. “Peggy Lee Still Has Some of the Ol’ Magic Left,” read the title of one review. On June 28, 1979, Lee returned to New York for the first time since her Waldorf farewell. She would share a bill at Radio City Music Hall with the Buddy Rich orchestra. It thrilled her to sing at this cavernous landmark, and Lee sounded fairly spirited onstage, with some of her old swing restored. John S. Wilson, however, called the current Lee tired and rambling.
On she
soldiered. Lee’s fans reacted with joy to the news that she would be making her first American album since Mirrors. The label was DRG, an independent company that specialized in show music and reissues of classic pop. An orchestra was out of the question; Close Enough for Love, as the record was called, would feature seven musicians, including her veteran band members Max Bennett, Dennis Budimir, John Pisano, and conductor Dick Hazard.
The album was another attempt to mingle Lee’s style with the sounds of the 1970s, including electric bass, guitar, and keyboards. On one original song, “Easy Does It,” Lee sighed and moaned in the style of the 1973 hit “Pillow Talk,” a drugged-sounding, orgasmic reverie by soul singer Sylvia. Two songs she had recorded years before, “Just One of Those Things” and “I Can’t Resist You,” reappeared in disco arrangements—this at the time of a disco boycott, expressed on T-shirts that read DISCO SUCKS and DEATH TO DISCO.
On slow, dreamy ballads, notably a new Arthur Hamilton song, “Rain Sometimes,” her magic crept through. But Bennett found the sessions dismaying. “She wasn’t at her best vocally,” he said, “and the approach by her producer”—Hugh Fordin, DRG’s owner—“wasn’t working. It just didn’t jell.” Close Enough for Love got Lee on a few talk shows, but the three-album deal that Fordin had announced went no further.
As 1980 and her sixtieth birthday approached, Lee was so identified with accidents, injuries, and hospitalizations that one reporter called her a “walking calamity.” Recently she had begun fainting; in addition, one of her eyelids now sagged. Lee blamed Bell’s palsy, a form of facial paralysis with a variety of possible causes, including stroke. But friends suspected plastic surgery gone wrong. Later, in working with playwright William Luce on a one-woman show, Lee prepared a dramatic third-person account of her mishap: “What was the twisting sensation in her face? Why wouldn’t her eyes close when she blinked? My God! Paralyzed. No. Yes.” She could sing but not speak, she claimed. Lee wrote of “leaning on the arm of a friend” during an outing. That friend was Bruce Vanderhoff, who recalled nothing of Lee’s paralysis or blindness. The story alternated with her Waldorf fall as an excuse for why she wasn’t working much.
Lee bragged of having ESP, but increasingly she relied on her psychic to illuminate a scary future. She hung on his every encouraging word. “Something is correcting or something is straightening itself out,” he told her. “The vitality’s coming back, and you’re going to find out how really strong you are.”
“Somebody’s got to really fuck up for this not to work,” said Lee’s daughter, Nicki, of Peg, the singer’s one-woman Broadway show of 1983. In a New York apartment, Lee rehearsed with drummer Grady Tate.
Chapter Sixteen
LEE’S BIG HOME felt too lonely for one, and she had long thought of selling it. Certainly she could use the cash flow, and when she got an offer she couldn’t refuse, Lee embarked on her new beginning. Around the end of 1979, Vanderhoff helped her go househunting in Bel Air, the exclusive community of gated homes in the fussily groomed hills of West Los Angeles. Bel Air had a long history of star dwellers, including Burt Lancaster, Kim Novak, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Tony Curtis, Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hughes, and Gregory Peck. Lee was particularly conscious of the fact that the woman she most envied—Elizabeth Taylor, who got every man, diamond, and luxury she desired—lived there, too.
The house at 11404 Bellagio Road called out to her. “It would shimmer at me every time we drove slowly by,” explained Lee, and it blinded her to any intention of downsizing. Unlike many Bel Air homes, this one wasn’t hidden behind trees and manicured shrubbery; passersby beheld a white, nondescript two-story box. But the five-bedroom, white French Regency villa was even larger than her home on Tower Grove, and the interior dazzled her. Upon entering, guests passed through a two-story foyer with a grand circular staircase. Farther back was a spacious sunken living room, with French doors that opened out onto a patio and pool; beyond them lay a panoramic view of West Los Angeles. “I’ve found my dream house!” she exclaimed to Maggie Daly of the Chicago Tribune. “It’s so chic!”
Lee was busy touring, so she let Nicki organize the move. Once she had moved in, the singer, aided heavily by Bruce Vanderhoff, began designing her palace. Sixteen crystal chandeliers were hung throughout the house, one of them over her bathtub. Behind the white living-room sofa, Nicki’s watercolors covered an expansive wall. Peach, beige, and white dominated the house. “The colors sort of soothe the senses,” Lee noted. “You get that feeling of well-being.” She tried to create the same sensation underfoot. In the living room, the white carpet “was so thick,” said the record producer Ken Bloom, “that you left footprints on it as if you were walking through snow.” At rehearsal time, a chaise was wheeled into the foyer—“which we call Le Petit Music Salon”—while the musicians gathered close by at the living-room piano, made of blond wood.
Lee had an elevator installed, but rarely would she venture upstairs; the center of activity remained her bedroom, just off the living room. As always, she would spend most of her time in the queen-size bed, which faced a TV and an alabaster fireplace. To her left, French doors offered a view of her precious rosebushes, tended by her new full-time gardener and houseman, José Prado. The plants bore the pale pink “Peggy Lee” rose, named after her by the American Rose Society. A long-stemmed, oversize cabbage blossom, it had all the shapely voluptuousness of Lee in the 1960s. What’s more, it bloomed almost year round—a perennial that, like the singer herself, could seemingly withstand anything.
Its magical properties didn’t end there. Lee told a visiting journalist about the “Peggy Lee” rosebush that she could see from her bed: “When I watch it the roses turn toward me and bend, like a bow.”
Nothing could stop Lee from living like a star—not even the fact that she was hurting for work. She had entered an eight-year gap in her album career, and it agonized her to think that maybe the industry was through with her. “Some people still like good music,” she argued to Dennis Hunt of the Los Angeles Times. “You have no idea how much I miss recording. It’s like part of me is gone.”
Lee was taken aback at an offer from Norman Twain, a stage director. Early in 1980, he invited the singer to star in a regional production of Side by Side by Sondheim, the celebrated revue of songs by composer Stephen Sondheim, the darling of the theatrical elite. Throughout the decade, Sondheim’s brainy virtuosity had yielded a string of prestige musicals, including Company, Follies, Sweeney Todd, and Pacific Overtures. For another show, A Little Night Music, Sondheim wrote his most famous song, “Send in the Clowns,” the elegy of an aging actress who had placed career before love. Lee could relate to its theme, but she refused to sing it: “I’ve already done too many clown and circus songs.” Overall, she and Sondheim hardly seemed an ideal match; most of his songs came more from the head than the heart, and their airtight construction resisted swing.
But they certainly had drama, and even though the prospect of a scripted musical intimidated her, she rarely shirked a challenge. The production—a monthlong summer run at the Birmingham Theatre outside of Detroit, Michigan—wasn’t auspicious. But Lee’s name would go above the title, and the work was easy enough; she would narrate the action from a chair on the side and occasionally rise to sing, either alone or amid four fresh-faced young actors: George Lee Andrews, Marti Morris, Eric Michael Gillett, and Teri Ralston, an original cast member of Company. In keeping with the show’s small-scale coziness, the “orchestra” consisted of two pianists, Eileen LaGrange and Paul Horner.
Although Twain was the nominal director, he left that job—along with almost every other responsibility—in the hands of Teri Ralston. She was puzzled when their headliner showed up with her adolescent granddaughter, Holly Foster, but without a manager to protect her. Kathy Levy knew why. “She couldn’t keep one long enough to work out a trusting relationship. She was tough to handle. And a lot of the time she was wrong.”
Ralston tried to keep Lee happy, a trial at times. “She was ver
y neurotic. She had a lot of illnesses and she worried about them. She could be very difficult. She could also be very loving.” Lee proved it by inviting the young actress over more than once and cooking dinner for her. With Ralston’s help, Lee chose her own songs. They ranged from “Anyone Can Whistle,” the poignant admission of an emotional cripple; to “The Boy from . . . ,” a gay comedic spin on “The Girl from Ipanema”; to “I’m Still Here,” the survival anthem of an indomitable has-been. “Send in the Clowns” was unavoidable, and it went to her as well.
All this was a lot for her to learn. Lee couldn’t memorize her narration, so she read it from the script. “She was a little disconnected at the runthrough,” said Ralston’s friend Greg MacKellan. “The other performers were seasoned stage vets and she wasn’t, but she was still Peggy Lee, and it was great to see her.”
Regardless of that, Lawrence DeVine of the Detroit Free Press found her “ill at ease” as well as miscast. “As the hostess of this get-together, she distracts attention from the other crew by her very considerable presence, sitting down in a homely office chair over at stage left, biding her (and our) time until it’s time for Miss Peggy Lee to get up and sing ‘Send in the Clowns.’ ” For the finale, she and the cast used top hats as props and sang “Side by Side by Side” from Company. One night, Lee accidentally whacked Ralston in the face with hers.
She hoped the production would move to Broadway. It didn’t, but a separate dream took root in her mind. The source was Paul Horner, the shy, bearded young Englishman at one of the pianos. Horner worshipped Lee as a singer; he proudly told friends that on her Live in London album his was the voice shouting “MORE!” from the balcony. Horner had studied at the city’s prestigious Royal College of Music; after that he had scraped together a living by accompanying singers, writing special material for the BBC-TV specials of the campy singing comic Stanley Baxter, and playing in restaurants and bars. Now he lived in Los Angeles, where he cleaned apartments for extra cash. Ralston knew him, and when she called him in to audition for Peggy Lee, he thought a lucky star had shined upon him at last. Lee, in turn, was struck by his pianistic sensitivity, notably in his Debussy-like accompaniment for one of her Side by Side solos, “Small World” from the musical Gypsy.