by James Gavin
“Circle in the Sky” was her eeriest latter-day performance—a trip into the twilight zone with a singer who seemed about to evanesce before one’s eyes. But a Peggy Lee appearance at The Ballroom was no longer news. Many of the shows didn’t sell out, and as Lee’s salary demands increased, Greg Dawson could no longer afford her. At the end of this engagement, Lee would once more bid goodbye to New York for a while.
The enigma that was Peggy Lee kept growing murkier. She devoted hours each day to seeking spiritual enlightenment while numbing her senses with Valium. Reading and rereading Letters of the Scattered Brotherhood, she memorized lines about achieving a Christlike inner tranquility: “This power held in stillness will go far toward stopping wars . . . Come closer to the center of all light; come freed from the ignorant emotional habits.” Then she demanded majority ownershop of “Circle in the Sky,” all of whose music Palame had composed. For Lee, it seemed, there could be no peace.
At home in Bel Air with Baby, 1997. (PHOTO BY JANE DAVID)
Chapter Eighteen
A YEAR AND A half had passed since Lee had called battle upon the “evil empire,” as she called the Walt Disney Company. Progress had been slow, and the singer was desperate. Her performance income had crashed, and the specter of financial ruin once more hung over her. She even came close to selling her home.
The long wait for her trial was hardly uncommon in L.A., with its jammed court calendars. Sometimes it took twice that long for litigants to have their day. Lee kept pushing her lawyers to speed things up. As determined as she was to fight to the end—and to exact an eight-figure payoff—Lee wanted it known that, yes, she might die at any moment. And if she did, it was Disney’s fault.
But the company’s lawyers had plenty of confidence. In February 1990, they motioned for a “summary judgment”—a judge’s predetermination of guilt or innocence. The 1952 definition of “transcription” would surely prevail.
Unbeknownst to Disney, David Blasband had made a useful discovery in Nimmer on Copyright, the definitive textbook on copyright law. He read that in 1968, Disney had sued the Alaska Television Network for unlawfully airing videotapes of its films. To prove its case, Disney had invoked the 1909 Copyright Act, which defined transcription in just the sense the company was now trying to deny: as a copy.
On March 30, Blasband and Disney’s chosen litigator, Roy Reardon, convened before a judge for the summary judgment hearing. Blasband brought up the 1968 case. “I thought I’d have to argue for hours,” he recalled. “The judge cut me off after a minute. He grilled Roy and Disney’s inside counsel for thirty minutes about that case. They couldn’t really get around it.”
With that, Judge William Huss of the Los Angeles County Superior Court made “what could be a landmark decision,” as the Hollywood Reporter suggested. Huss ruled that Lee’s original contract did entitle her to payment for all commercially sold versions of Lady and the Tramp, notably home video. Now a jury would decide the amount of damages owed to Lee. And it might happen soon, for her legal team had successfully invoked an obscure California law that guaranteed priority scheduling to people older than seventy.
Disney tried to shoot the judgment down, but failed. A company spokesman maintained the position that a transcription did not mean a copy of a film. Disney had to hold its ground. Entertainment Weekly warned: “Stars are dusting off decades-old contracts, hoping to find clauses that will allow them to share video’s $10-billion-a-year revenues.”
Mary Costa, the voice of Sleeping Beauty, had already filed suit against Disney for a multimillion-dollar share in the movie’s ten-figure video profits. Costa’s attorney, Lise Hudson, had incited more fear in Disney by announcing that she had uncovered sixteen other contracts with the “transcription” clause.
Disney could not allow Lee to set a potentially costly precedent. Despite the speedy trial she had been promised, the company lawyers erected every roadblock they could. Lee would wait almost another year to go to court. For now she sat in bed, writing in longhand a book about her experiences with Walt Disney—“a dear, sweet man”—and the monsters who had succeeded him.
* * *
ONCE UBIQUITOUS ON TV, Lee now went on it rarely. Gone were the variety shows that had brought her on to promote her latest Capitol LP or single; Johnny Carson, her longtime champion, was soon to wind down thirty years as host of Tonight. When a show did invite her on, Lee’s entrance backstage in a wheelchair, with an attendant and oxygen tank at hand, alarmed the staff; and her current appearance jarred many viewers. Her daughter cringed at the unkind things she heard audience members say about her mother’s looks. “Maybe that’s my codependence,” Nicki admitted.
In May of 1990, Lee flew to New York for a very special occasion: Night of 100 Stars III, televised from Radio City Music Hall. The three-hour galaxy of celebrity cameos included a sentimental tribute to the American Popular Song. On a two-level set, a series of risers held white pianos; at all of them, songwriters teamed with their hit-making muses. With composer Jule Styne at the keys, Carol Channing performed “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” her showstopper from the 1949 Broadway hit Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Singer B. J. Thomas and lyricist Hal David reprised “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” their shoulder-shrugging 1970 ode to optimism. In a flashback to the 1974 Oscars, Barbra Streisand had once more declined to perform “The Way We Were”; Gladys Knight, who had recorded a competing version, sang it in the company of the lyricists, Alan and Marilyn Bergman.
With Leiber and Stoller at one of the upper-tier pianos, Peggy Lee, seated in the instrument’s curve, offered a minute-long fragment of “Is That All There Is?” Millions of viewers saw the onetime vixen looking as wide as an easy chair—an explosion of black beaded fabric and ostrich feathers, with a foot-high black plume rising out of her wig. But twenty-one years after she had recorded that nihilistic hit, there she was, still “not ready for that final disappointment.” She smiled her way through the oft-told tale about the burning-down of her house, and sounded much as people remembered.
Still, the woman who had recently sworn that she would keep singing “as long as I have a breath” didn’t do it much anymore. That month, ASCAP had given Lee its Pied Piper Award for lifetime achievement, but such sweeping honors usually signaled careers that were almost over. Her near-inactivity baffled Robert Strom, the young president of her fan club. Strom, who had moved to L.A. from Northern California, had stepped in as personal assistant after one more of Lee’s secretaries left. He idolized her “more than any living human being,” he said. “I expected her to be employed, going out on the road, into the studio. I didn’t expect her to be in the house all day, every day. She was in bed twenty-four-seven.”
But for Lee, performing had become an agonizingly drawn-out, painful process; and with her disabilities widely known, few bookers were eager to gamble on her. Ahead of her in 1991 were two shows at Pasadena’s Raymond Theatre and at the Sundome in Sun City, Arizona, and not much else.
And so she stayed in bed. But her mind raced constantly, and even from a horizontal position she stirred up a whirl of activity. A parade of business appointments, social dinners, and interviews took place at her bedside; she dictated letters, signed photos for fans, had her hair and nails done, and made to-do lists for her staff. John Chiodini and Emilio Palame pitched in by helping her organize a shrine to her musical past. Along a living-room wall were a series of cabinet doors; behind them, in cubbyholes, rested her lifetime of musical arrangements. Each had been placed in a coded Ziplock bag and filed alphabetically. A three-ring-binder held the master log, which Lee kept within reach of her bed.
By now, of course, she didn’t have much need for it. Lee made greater use of the fax machine, also at her bedside. It rang and hummed throughout the day as friends sent her jokes to keep her spirits high. When she read one she liked, she repeated it for days. Forgetting the three-hour time difference between Los Angeles and New York, Lee would frequently call Rex Reed to regale him
with some surprisingly filthy humor. She adopted a French accent to tell friends about a grade-school English teacher in France.
“Today, class, we’re going to learn to use the word ‘probably.’ Who wants to use the word ‘probably’ in a sentence? Oh yes, Jacques?”
“Well, my mother is cutting up some potatoes and some onions and some lamb and some turnips, and she has some water boiling on the stove, and I think she is probably making a stew.”
“Very good, Jacques! Michelle?”
“Well, my mother is cutting up some fabric, and she has some knitting needles and some thread, and I think she is probably going to make a quilt.”
“Very good, Michelle. Maurice?”
“Well, the other day I saw my sister and her boyfriend in the music room. And he was pulling down his pants and she was pulling up her dress. And I think they were probably going to shit on the piano.”
Lee’s low, hearty laugh would boom into the hallway outside her door. The staff knew it was a good day.
The scene on Bellagio, said Strom, had its “sitcom moments,” with a cast of characters to match. It included Lee’s live-in cook Erica—“the stone-faced German,” Strom said, “who in Peggy Lee’s opinion was ‘dressed like a clown!’ Her son was there all the time. He was constantly in the garage using the Xerox machine.” José Prado had brought in his wife, Yolanda, to do laundry and cleaning. Never had Yolanda met the likes of Miss Peggy Lee. More than once she came crying to Strom: “Oh, Rrrrobbie—Mees Lee ees loca!”
No one disagreed. One day she told Strom she had just seen her long-ago flame, Quincy Jones. “He was on me like a blanket!” she declared. Looking out of the French doors in her bedroom, Lee noticed that the Peggy Lee rosebushes seemed thin. She decided that José was making extra bucks by selling the flowers to fans who showed up on celebrity tour buses, hoping for a glimpse of her. Bruce Vanderhoff found the notion hysterical. “That story is so fabricated Peggy Lee,” he said. “No tour bus went there!” Lee lived in an obscure corner of Bel Air; even some friends had trouble finding the house. What’s more, her staff knew that deer roamed the grounds and loved to eat roses. But Dona Harsh knew how neurotic Lee had grown. “Someone was always ripping her off,” she said.
Lee had hired an accountant, Pam MacGregor, to work at the house. Pam belonged to the Science of Mind Spiritual Center in Los Angeles; later she became Pastor Director. She did her best to safeguard the strained finances of a star who lived as though she were rich, and who employed too many people. Comic relief was helpful, and Pam provided that, too. “She had a wild, off-the-wall sense of humor,” said Strom. “She always made Peggy laugh, and she could quickly change things from bad to good. Remember, they ‘worked’ for each other in the Science of Mind fashion, which was all about positive thinking.” But even MacGregor had her limits. Two times, when the day had dragged on much too long and she couldn’t bear one more of Lee’s demands, the accountant conspired with Strom. He turned off the alarm system, and Pam escaped out a back window.
Many people phoned, but apart from her granddaughter Holly and a handful of other regulars, few came to visit. Lee’s best friend was now Baby. As the tiny animal nuzzled her face, the seventy-year-old’s eyes lit up. “Hi, little darling!” she said in the same maternal tone she had once directed at Nicki. Covered by a blanket, Lee began writing a children’s book about her pet, who attended every boudoir business meeting. When Ken Bloom and Bill Rudman (who had produced her Love Held Lightly album) dropped by, Lee offered hours of stories about Frank Sinatra and Pete Kelly’s Blues and her glory days as a Capitol goddess. “Now here she was, in bed with the cat,” said Bloom.
When the occasional journalist arrived, Lee offered a carefully staged look at a Hollywood legend. After a suspense-building wait in the living room, the reporter would be ushered into the master bedroom by some member of the staff. Lee sat in bed, eyelashes and turban in place, a queen in her court. After pleasantries were exchanged, Lee rang a bell and José appeared, bearing a sterling-silver tray of watercress sandwiches, chocolate mousse cake, and tea. “That bell belonged to Commodore Vanderbilt,” Lee would explain; she also pointed to her “prize-winning” Peggy Lee roses outside. A masseuse was sometimes there in a white uniform, massaging the star’s feet.
As always, Lee charmed each writer with her warm, lulling voice and seeming candor. Her revelations about her ill health ensured a kind article. In the 1990s, she channeled most of her ailments into a condition she named “polymyelitis rheumatosis.” It was “a distant relative to polio,” she noted, “and it boils down to being paralyzed due to inflammation of the nerves, muscles, and joints—everything from the neck down. Horrifying pain.” No disease by that name existed in the medical textbooks; the nearest namesake, poliomyelitis, bore little resemblance to the ailment Lee described. But everyone, it seemed, took Lee at her word.
Reporters invariably asked her to name her favorite current singers. Lee mentioned Whitney Houston, Sade, Linda Ronstadt, Anita Baker, and Tina Turner, none of whose records she played. She preferred to recount the past. Hers seemed as rococo as Oliver Twist, and no less fraught with danger and death. When the BBC’s Alan Dell flew in from England to record a long interview for broadcast, Lee rewarded him with some of her most fantastical tales. To the story of her train ride from Fargo to Hollywood in 1937, she added a rainstorm of such torrential force that it kept washing out the tracks behind them. “I almost drowned,” said Lee. “And I was an excellent swimmer.” The account bore a close resemblance to her father’s story of a 1918 storm that had swept away the Midland Continental tracks; a railroad car had overturned, killing several people.
She rewrote history further by calling her early vocal resemblance to Billie Holiday “only a coincidence,” and explaining that Richard Rodgers had grown “very much in favor” of her version of “Lover.” In fact, said Lee, “he told me he used it as the subject of lectures on songwriting and how different interpretations could give the song more life or longer life, and he gave me permission, carte blanche, to do anything with his music that I wanted to.” His daughter, Mary Rodgers Guettel, couldn’t recall any of it.
The credit-stealing that had caused Paul Horner such anguish had spread to other collaborations. Lee now claimed that she, not Duke Ellington, had written the music for “I’m Gonna Go Fishin’,” when in fact she had set her words to a theme from his already-finished score for the movie Anatomy of a Murder. For years Lee had sworn that she and Barbour, not Willard Robison, had penned nearly all of “Don’t Smoke in Bed.” Now she said that Dave’s music for that and other songs were, in fact, “my melodies”; Barbour, she said, had only added harmonies. “I’ve never told that much until lately,” she allowed.
Bruce Vanderhoff had no doubt that Lee believed these claims: “After she’d said them ten times, they were cemented in her mind.” But for Lee, the emotional and physical costs of so much illusion had long been steep. Valium still helped her escape, but now that she had reached her seventies, she was less able to withstand the amounts she took. One day Robert Strom couldn’t wake her up. He panicked. After a while Lee regained consciousness, but he phoned Nicki in Idaho to tell her that her mother seemed in serious danger. She was concerned, but didn’t feel she could change anything; this was a two-decades-old issue. Nicki, said Strom, “knew that Peggy would not go to any kind of treatment program, like Betty Ford.”
No amount of pills or attention from doctors and nurses could ease Lee’s regrets. One of them involved her failings as a mother. Lee had read Mommie Dearest, Christina Crawford’s exposé about her allegedly abusive mother, Joan Crawford; and Going My Own Way, in which Gary Crosby detailed the brutal maltreatment he had suffered at the hands of his superstar father. Lee defended both Bing and Joan. Celebrity children, she insisted, “don’t realize how spoiled they are, because they’re given a lot of things that other children don’t get.”
Lee had long ago absolved herself of any responsibility for Barbour’s decline.
“David’s problem had nothing to do with my career,” she insisted. “He was proud of my success.” She recalled him romantically to audiences: “I loved him then and I love him now.” But once in a while, residual anger welled up. “There were days when Dave was on her shit list,” said Strom, mostly due to the fact that he had left her. “The abandonment thing,” as Strom put it, remained her ultimate sore spot.
* * *
LEE KEPT WAITING FOR the giant Disney settlement that would solve all her problems. The case was costing her dearly. “It’s a drain financially, it’s a drain physically, emotionally,” she told a reporter. “I’ve been insulted. It’s a strange way to try to begin winding down your career.”
She planned to leave the money to Nicki and her grandchildren, she said, “and to a program that helps children who are visually and hearing-impaired.” In the meantime, Pam MacGregor helped her cover expenses by placing calls to record companies in search of royalty checks. In 1990 EMI sent two, each for $15,000. But given Lee’s expenses, such sums vanished in weeks.
At last came the news she’d been pining for. On March 11, 1991, Peggy Lee v. Walt Disney Company would commence at the Superior Court Building in the mid-Wilshire district of Los Angeles. First she trekked to court to join all involved lawyers, and Judge Stephen M. Lachs, for a pair of pretrial meetings.
It was then that the opposition truly saw the challenge they faced. Reporters from Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, the Los Angeles Times, and CNN had shown up to cover what promised to be a Hollywood fight to the death. Flashbulbs and TV cameras greeted the heart-tugging sight of an attendant wheeling Peggy Lee into the courtroom, white wig, black dress, glasses, and oxygen tank in place. Her face looked bloated and weary. “She suffers from a heart condition and severe diabetes,” reported the Associated Press, “and is unable to walk after fracturing her pelvis in a fall.”