Judy & Liza & Robert & Freddie & David & Sue & Me...

by Stevie Phillips

  By midafternoon Judy convinced herself that I was the one who had hidden her drugs. She went into the kitchen, took a large black-handled knife out of the drawer, and came after me with it. Would she have stabbed me? I don’t know. She was a raving lunatic at that point. But I was younger, stronger, and way healthier. I wasn’t going to get into a fight or try to take the knife away. I didn’t want to risk either of us getting hurt. Terrified, I barricaded myself in the second bedroom. There was no lock on the door and I put my whole weight against it to keep it closed, while she did the same thing on the other side. Where did her strength come from? Was it fueled by some demonic adrenaline? I was managing to prevail, but how long could I keep this up? It was madness. I needed to get out of there. I needed a plan, and I formulated one. I would jump away from the door and let her rush in. I could only hope she wouldn’t fall on the knife. I would then rush out the moment the momentum took her. And I did! I got out the door to the hall, ran down the stairs to my room, got the maid to let me in, and collapsed crying on the bed. It was over. Fuck ambition. I was not ever going back. One would have to be crazy even to contemplate it.

  *

  Of course I went back. In the late afternoon I was awakened by a call from David Begelman, who spent twenty minutes on the phone telling me how sorry Judy was. He assured me that she was feeling better now. He told me a new doctor had been in to see her and had given her some medication for her pain and some for her nerves. That was shorthand for “She’s drugged,” ergo everything’s okay. David surely knew how to find those kinds of doctors. He said that Judy desperately wanted to call me to apologize. Wouldn’t I just speak to her? He was actually begging me. I savored that. Although I had cried myself to sleep, now with seven hours in the tank, I was a new person; that is, the old me was back.

  An hour and a two-hundred-dollar raise later, I agreed to have a conversation with her. I thought David’s offer was generous, and I decided it was okay if I returned purely for the money. Not for him, not for her. I also thought that if I refused to go, I might be replaced. By late in the afternoon, losing my job again seemed like a bigger threat than losing my life.

  Within two hours I had moved my clothes into Judy’s suite, adamantly refusing, however, to give up my own room key, and for the next ten days I remained there with her. Of necessity she would not allow anyone else to see her looking the way she did. I was the waitress, the maid, and the doorman, always there to make sure that no one put so much as a toe inside. All management keys were disallowed. The days dragged on. Our boring routine hung on us like a curtain that admitted no light. Nothing went wrong, but then nothing was good either. In spite of my staying up late, my interior clock never changed. I awoke at the same ghastly hour of seven every morning, regardless of having played cards until three. I ordered room service and read. I looked out the window a lot, staring at people enjoying their freedom, wishing I had mine. It was obsessive.

  At about noon I would hear her moving around in her room, but she rarely showed herself before three or four. Then she demanded everything at once. Breakfast might be French toast and a hot fudge sundae. Being indisposed was her opportunity for more than a bit of sweet self-indulgence. I encouraged it. Anything to keep her in what I called “a harmless place.” I received the linens at the door and made up a fresh bed for her each day by five. I changed all the towels and wiped up the sink and tub. I vacuumed. We played endless card games and listened to her records. She had Frank’s and Nat King Cole’s sent in, but we mostly listened to her own. She admired her own ability above all. Sometimes she would sing along. Would that there had been TVs in the suite, we might have watched all day, but that amenity didn’t yet exist. (It’s somewhat hard to believe, but the early sixties were a time when shampoo in hotel rooms was just becoming a must.)

  We talked about her affair with David Begelman ad nauseam because he was the common denominator in both our lives: her lover, her manager, and my boss. We talked about what she wanted in the future—how she and David would travel and enjoy life together. This was far better than hearing her talk about the past. For although the past was more interesting, revisiting it could send her into a tailspin that often led to a plaintive diatribe directed at Louis B. Mayer. Mayer, the man who, as she had admitted on television, had had the greatest influence on her life, but also the monster who was responsible for overworking her, underpaying her, and starting her down the yellow brick road to ruination.

  *

  Trust me, I did not feel as though I was in on something divine, listening to the “voice of greatness.” I was a prisoner yearning to be free. While David had turned the suite into a drugstore, guaranteeing that Judy had everything she needed, not a single one of my needs was fulfilled. No Vegas sunshine would touch my skin. Instead I learned more about who she was and more about who I was, and I didn’t much like either one of us. She was willing to do anything to satisfy her habit, and I was willing to do anything for success.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Back in New York

  Surviving a catastrophe has a way of making you realize your own worth. It was the end of 1962 and, after having lived through Judy’s Las Vegas disaster and getting more than a few raises, I started to feel I was irreplaceable. Who would put up with the things I had? No one I spoke to. Certainly none of my friends! My mother thought I was crazy. My husband was beginning to believe the same. But it worked for F&D. Not having to be with Judy all the time had allowed them to build a business. I patted myself on the back and was a little cocky. I believed I was worth every penny of the $450 they now paid me every week. I was no longer expected to take dictation or type letters for anyone but myself.

  Freddie Fields Associates had grown significantly. Freddie called it “the Tiffany” of management agencies. While talent agents were restricted to commissions of 10 percent, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Henry Fonda, and Lauren Bacall were now clients and willing to pay FFA 15. There were two more agents squeezed into our space. FFA was well on its way. And Judy? She had done her job. The concert tour had been a huge success. Judy at Carnegie Hall was heralded as one of the best concerts ever in the entire history of entertainment. Hollywood was back in Judy’s corner. Television was calling. The press was clamoring. Everything changed but Judy.

  By then Judy and her children had been living for slightly more than a year in a lovely home in Scarsdale that I had found for her in in my role as FFA’s real estate agent.

  I’d originally put them into an apartment at the Dakota, a dark, dank, dreary eleven-room pad owned by John Frankenheimer, the brilliant and prolific film director best known for The Manchurian Candidate. All its apartments surround a quad that was eerie at four in the morning, which is when I usually showed up at least several times a week. “Wuthering Gothic,” with a courtyard into which no sunlight ever filters, is the way I still think of the Dakota. The place scared me. I was delighted when Judy wanted to leave it.

  She had no desire to replace it with sunny California. She seemed finished with her life there. This was a new chapter. She definitely wanted to stay on the East Coast. Would that she could have chosen a home in New York City! She said, however, that she always felt better in the country, so she had sent me out to find the ideal bucolic retreat for the family, a house large enough so that each of her children could have a room of their own. She needed something furnished because from all her homes over the years, Judy had salvaged nothing. Not a stick of furniture. Not a single memento from her brilliant career. No linen, no dishes, no silver. No precious possessions from all the homes she’d lived in in Los Angeles. She did carry a few pictures in her suitcases—like a homeless person. She came with nothing else. Nothing.

  Once I identified a place in Westchester, Judy asked me to make the moving arrangements. She didn’t ask to see the place first; I think she couldn’t have cared less. But I cared. This was a real family home, like a family home in the movies. It had a staircase and bedrooms upstairs. If this sounds silly, so be it. It f
ulfilled my idea of the way things were supposed to be. It made me feel as if I’d done something good. After the family moved in, she asked me to buy new furniture for the children’s rooms, but she took no interest whatsoever in what I bought. It mystified me. How could one not care, but the Judy I knew seemed not to care about things! Stuff wasn’t ever important to her. Once all the arrangements were taken care of, I had to deal with a new realization. Instead of running across town to the Dakota, I now had to travel up to Scarsdale at four in the morning.

  One night (meaning between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m.) I thought Judy sounded “different.” It made me anxious. I threw on a sweat suit and called David Begelman after assuring Judy I was on the way. I knew I could call a limo and go to Westchester by myself, but I wouldn’t do that when I was worried stiff something was wrong. The final Judy responsibility lay with David or Freddie; I was not ever going to be there alone if indeed she was dying.

  I didn’t ever call either of them carelessly because I knew their wives were not nearly as supportive as my husband. Both women fumed at the late night calls, and both spoke of it with me, more than once. Most of their conversations had an opener like “Just who the fuck does she think she is?” This night, however, I made the call to David. “I think something is really wrong this time,” I whispered. Although these were words he’d heard many times before, he knew that if I called, he’d have to go. I was the poison taster, and the poison taster is never wrong. “I’ll call a car and pick you up in twenty minutes.” Those were the only times I ever saw David in store-bought polyester rather than custom-made worsted.

  We got to Judy’s house just before four. We found her sprawled on the floor next to the front door. This meant we wouldn’t have to go upstairs and disturb the children. It smelled fishy. That she was beautifully dressed in a diaphanous gown with matching peignoir was the giveaway. Indeed, she wore matching satin slippers with a little heel and caribou trim, and her hair was perfectly coiffed. After only two minutes I knew it was a hoax. I told David what I thought. What an actress she was. She had sounded “different” on the phone knowing I would then want to bring D or F along with me. But David looked at her and told me he thought she was turning blue. Had he really swallowed the fish, along with the hook, the line, and the sinker? But then he added, “Her pulse is not strong, and she’s very cold. Call an ambulance.” I did it immediately, becoming scared that we might be looking at a suicide attempt that had actually worked. David was no drama queen, quite the reverse. He was a cool customer. He never exaggerated except when telling stories in the aftermath. Then he could go way over the top and be highly amusing. As we stood over Judy’s comatose body at that moment, he was dour.

  Fifteen minutes later, without our once having awakened anyone in the house, our limo was trailing the ambulance as it screamed its way down the Hutchinson River Parkway. Had Judy been dying, the forty-five-minute ride would not have helped, but then we could go only to her personal doctor, Kermit Osserman, who recognized the need to keep everything out of the press, and he could only do that at Mt. Sinai, the hospital he was affiliated with. Osserman was an elderly internist on whom Judy’s late-night ravings took a great toll, but he was a trouper, wanted never to disappoint, and whenever called upon, this capable doctor and lovely gentleman was there on his marks.

  With the limo on its tail, the ambulance raced up the ramp into the emergency dock, where four white-coated orderlies were waiting to transfer Judy onto a rolling gurney that would carry her inside for an examination and whatever other treatment was called for. At the very least I expected it would be another stomach pumping. Even before the brakes were set, the orderlies had the back door of the ambulance open, and in an organized phalanx quickly pulled the bed, on which Judy lay motionless, out of the truck. They lined it up parallel to the gurney, and then in one brilliant motion all four men grabbed the corners of the sheet on which she lay, yanked it up, and plunked her down on their rolling cot. Whereupon Madam sat up straight as a ramrod and, in a tone indignant with rage, spoke these memorable words:

  “How dare you fucking morons handle me like a fucking side of beef? How dare you! Get your fucking meat hooks out of me, you fucking apes!” No comment from the astonished gallery was possible. Judy then got up, and with as much dignity as she could muster—given that one of the satin slippers trimmed in caribou had gone missing—Madam limped, one-shoe-on, one-shoe-off, over to the waiting limousine, got in the backseat, and ordered the driver to take her home.

  Poor Kermit! He didn’t deserve to be awakened at four in the morning. Judy was turning his practice into a water-cooler joke. He was a man of great integrity, totally unlike the many Dr. Feelgoods in my little black book who would prescribe unlimited amounts of any drugs Judy wanted, for a fee. At one point I became so concerned about the handfuls of Ritalin Judy was swallowing that, without a word to anyone, I decided I had to do something about it. Looking through the Yellow Pages, I found a small pharmaceutical house in southern New Jersey and made an arrangement with them to mill an identical sugar-water version. I imagined I would be helping her, but I had no idea what I was doing. I replaced all the real Ritalin in her vials with the placebo, which I purchased in big canning jars, ten thousand at a time. Although after that I never saw one iota of difference in her behavior, just doing it made a big difference to me. At least I knew that she was putting less chemical shit into her body, and that gave me a little peace of mind.

  *

  It seemed that most of the drugs were for insomnia. Her inability to sleep was a nasty monster that stalked her. It lived in a black hole. She teetered on the edge of that hole all the time. I imagined she knew that if she fell into it she would go mad. Drugs kept the monster at bay. They helped her to quiet a mind that wouldn’t be still, a mind that made sleeping impossible. Judy cried about it. Sometimes she put her head in my lap and just wept. How sad is that? It made me wonder from time to time whether or not leaving her in peace, as she was before Freddie sought her out in London, would have saved her. If she had been allowed to veg out, eat, and do nothing, might she have survived? Finally I think not. I don’t think vegging out was at all what she wanted. She knew she had options, and she chose what she wanted. She wanted the fame, the power, least of all the money—these things went into a cocktail she wanted to drink. She was as addicted to all those as she was to the prescription drugs. And once she came back, she needed as many drugs to get her up as she needed to go to sleep.

  I knew nothing about drug addiction until I started working with her. Oh, I knew about alcoholism, about the falling-down drunks who populated my aunt’s place on the Bowery, but I hadn’t the slightest notion that anyone got addicted to prescription drugs. Bayer Aspirin is all that was found in the medicine cabinets in my home. Thrust into Judy’s world, I was getting a fast education about a dozen different kinds of pills. I needed to know more, so I scoured the news for stories and devoured what I read about heroin, the drug that in the early sixties got the most lurid coverage. I could see that what I read exactly matched what I knew to be true about Judy and my experience with her—that addiction was a progressive disease that keeps increasing, as does the amount and the strength of the drugs needed to satisfy the craving.

  Finally there are never enough pills. And so it was with Judy. As it was with Michael Jackson and other famous people. The more I understood her addiction, the sorrier I began to feel for her. It was tragic, and no one understood it better than David, who for his own pecuniary reasons had to keep her working. I will get back to that. David also understood she desperately needed a break, and he planted one into her schedule. And thereby hangs a tale.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  A Vacation

  Apropos of nothing, David invited me into his office one afternoon and asked, “How would you like to go on vacation?” I had now been working two and a half years with nothing more than the occasional Sunday off. I preferred to think of what I was doing as building my career, but what I was really doin
g was acting as an enabler and general handmaiden to a demented, demanding, supremely talented drug addict, while also being a doormat for one brilliant male narcissistic egomaniac. And I was totally whipped. I got all excited at the prospect of a vacation, forgetting for a moment that when a snake is in the grass, you can’t always see it. I jumped at the opportunity. Then David added, “Judy is going yachting in the Caribbean, and she would like you to go with her.” Can anyone make “yachting in the Caribbean” sound bad? David just did that, I said to myself. David offered me a thousand dollars extra to go, and I said I would. I didn’t do it for the money—not that I disliked having it—I did it because I hadn’t arrived at a point where I felt comfortable saying no. I wasn’t yet sure what letting Begelman down would cost me. I hadn’t developed enough confidence to take the risk professionally. However, that, too, was about to change.

  I went home and told my sweet husband I was leaving for two weeks. As usual he was just fine about it, actually excited for me. I was always a tad less guilty when I wasn’t home cooking dinner, which was not anything I did well, often, or had any appetite for.

  *

  So how does a non-yachting person get a yacht without having to rent it? One borrows it from a rich friend, of course, and Judy had a fine collection of those. Newport wasn’t the only place where she knew wealthy people she could call upon. Charles Wacker was rich enough to have a whole avenue named after his family—as in Wacker Drive in Chicago. I assumed that Charlie—as Judy liked to call him—owned a lot of shares in the family’s holdings on the street that bears his name. I’ve never been on Wacker Drive in Chicago, and I’ve never met the man, and I often wish I’d never met the boat.