Banging around in my brain was what Freddie had taught me years before when he first instructed me: “Agents, lawyers, and accountants—they’re only just advisers. The client is the principal. The client is the only one that makes the decisions.” Rudin was a wealthy attorney with unlimited resources and a reputation for being nasty. I would have had to hire legal counsel, and, at best, my grounds were questionable. I hadn’t yet signed a contract with Liza for the new company. I felt I had an oral agreement, but then it was Liza’s word against mine. I was bleeding. I licked my wounds and talked to nobody.
Worse, once I was gone from the agency, it was okay for Liza to stay there. Josephson changed the call letters from CMA to ICM, and it continued to be Liza’s professional home. Had I crawled back to get myself a paycheck, I would have had to face the humiliation of no longer representing her. How calculating of Rudin! It was beyond cruel.
Hardest to accept was that none of this could have gone down if Liza hadn’t wanted it to. I kept repeating this to myself like a mantra: It was Li’s decision. But while my head knew this was true, my heart didn’t want it to be. We had won the Triple Crown. And for this I was fired, summarily dismissed, a disgrace in the company? What heinous crime could my associates imagine I’d committed? Had Liza really considered all the ramifications of her decision? Did she even know what happened? Probably not. She was as self-absorbed as any other star. She was busy being in love again. Somehow I was able to keep moving, but not able to let go of my denial—that it was Liza who did this to me in the nastiest way.
For a time rumors about Liza beat a path to my door. There was no avoiding them. Everyone I knew in show business was anxious to tell me whatever he or she knew. Mostly I heard how Mickey was going to make Liza rich. She was already rich, but maybe she wanted a lot more. Her mother, after all, had died broke. That had to be pretty scary. If that in fact was Rudin’s promise, he made good on it. He kept Liza touring all the time. It’s easy for me to say he should have used her success as a launching pad to further her film career. That wasn’t, however, what he was capable of. He wasn’t about to turn his back on his practice in order to harangue literary agents to find appropriate material for her. He put Liza in the hands of inexperienced agents who weren’t capable or connected. They weren’t film packagers trained by Freddie Fields; they were merely order takers. What they could do was follow Mickey’s bidding, and that was to keep her on the road. They wanted to keep Mickey happy. After all, he also represented Frank Sinatra and Lucille Ball. If they did a good job for him, might they now get into the Sinatra business?
Mickey did package Liza with Sinatra. Frank and Liza in Atlantic City! It made lots of money, but in my opinion it was a crime. It didn’t mean a thing for her career. The longer she stayed out on the road, the more the Hollywood interest in her diminished. Her movie life went into the toilet. It was a giant missed opportunity. Mickey Rudin made her richer than she then was while lining his own pockets in the process. And while on the road, where permissiveness and bad behavior are as commonplace as tacky hotel rooms, it was rumored that most of Liza’s earnings were going right up her nose.
It was at least a year before I got a call from her. I’m not sure why it came, and I didn’t ask. I simply accepted the invitation she offered to lunch. We spent an empty hour and a half on inconsequential small talk. Though it may be hard to believe, hardest of all for me to believe, I still hadn’t completely processed what had happened, hadn’t yet located my anger, and I wasn’t prepared to join any issues with her. And it wouldn’t have mattered. Liza doesn’t confront issues. She has always passed the buck to someone working for her. I understood that. I taught her how to do this during all the years when I was pleased to be the “heavy.” Had I had the presence to open a real discussion with her, she might have sent me back to Mickey Rudin. But I didn’t, and she didn’t. Instead she treated me like an old friend, hugging me when she saw me, jollying me. “It’s so good to see you. How are you?” It was bullshit.
Finally at the end of the meal, it having accomplished nothing toward personal redemption, I decided to look at the luncheon as an opportunity to find a softer way back into her life. I told her I wanted to write a screenplay for her based on one of her songs, a piece of special material Fred Ebb had written for her entitled “Liza with a Z” about her name, which was continually misspelled and mispronounced. The idea just popped into my head. She was delighted. Maybe she saw it as a way out of guilt. I have no idea if she had any.
I was winging it, but as a result of my ad-lib, I got myself a deal at United Artists. In the script I conceived, the misspelling leads to all kinds of other complications. The script was a piece of crap, and when I turned it in, that was the end of it. I considered the payment my severance for fifteen years of work. Now that we were “friends” again, I got a Christmas card with a small gift for the next five years.
*
It was while doing a benefit concert at Radio City in 1990 that something telling happened. She phoned from backstage as she was about to go on to say that her good friend Halston had died, and that she was in terrible pain. She was sobbing and couldn’t get herself together. “What should I do, Stevie? Tell me what to do. I’m hurting so much. I can’t stand the pain.” I found the nicest possible way to tell her that the show must go on, and made some suggestions for honoring her friend after. Why me? Why had she called me instead of all her other powerful friends? Because I had been the most stable person in her life. We both knew that.
In 1991, when she was appearing there again with a new act, I arranged a pair of tickets and took my Jenny, now twenty-two, to the show. We went to the greenroom after the show, and when Liza entered she gushed over us, ignoring everyone else there, including Baryshnikov.
Perhaps the continuous touring, the endless concerts, Halston’s death and, most of all, her increasing addictions sent her into the tailspin that prompted the next call, about a year later. She was now in the kind of pain that was beyond her endurance. She said she couldn’t get out of bed for days at a time. She told me that she had trouble differentiating colors. Everything hurt. She was so totally lost that her voice barely resonated.
My heart hurt for her. I never got over feeling sorry for her, but she needed more help than I could give. I urged her to go to Alcoholics Anonymous, and encouraged her to make a permanent commitment to it. She did that, and was open in the press about seeking rehabilitation. At her request I even attended a few meetings with her. But during this period her career went further into the dumpster. At this point we were in totally different places. She was suffering, and I was back on my feet. When she got back on her own, perhaps I could help her once more with work.
I thought the remedy for her career might be found in television. In the eighties important careers were being made on TV. With the assistance of Jim Watters, the former entertainment editor at Life and Time magazines, and a good friend of mine and Liza’s, I developed a comedy series idea that was, at least in my opinion, salable. Liza had a wonderful sense of comic timing. If she showed any interest in the idea, Jim and I would secure the best writers, the best show runner, the best of everything needed to support her.
I went with Jim to Los Angeles to visit Liza, who was now in recovery and feeling more like her old self. She was resting and trying to find her Hollywood land legs again. She was sharing a house with a good friend and living a healthier lifestyle. I approached her with the series idea tucked under my arm. It was definitely self-serving, but the concept was strong, and if I could take it to market with Liza starring, it would put her back on her feet at a time when her career was still salvageable. By then, my having produced successfully on Broadway, my career was thriving, and I thought my success could serve her.
However, the world she was living in at that moment was far from any reality that I understood. She boasted in our meeting that she was working on four new films and that she was going to direct them all. What notable project had she ever directed?
What film existed to display her work? It was nonsense. But it was also clear that she understood she had missed out on an important film career; however, the moment when she still could have grabbed on to a film life, and held on if she did any good work, had long since passed. Comebacks in film don’t happen often. Judy was one of the lucky ones. Her daughter was not.
*
Although it took at least ten years, my denial of Liza’s betrayal finally vanished. I had to deal with understanding that I’d been unceremoniously dumped by an actress who could not have cared less, by a performer who may have been too self-absorbed to understand, even to realize, that she had once left me out in the cold. In time my anger disappeared, and I realized that Liza was sadly stuck with the choices she’d made. She owns those decisions, and like Judy, she’s made some really bad ones. She has hurt herself and her career more than anyone else ever could have.
I never told Liza any of the terrible episodes that I endured when I traveled with her mother. I would never have spoken of these things then. We had both been children. What did I, at twenty-four, understand about self-destruction? I was anxious to protect her from all that. And Liza never discussed with me anything that went on between her and her mother. My own experience informs me that bad stuff had to have been going on, but there was this code of silence that served neither of us. I gave it up long ago.
I finally heard—twenty years later—an explanation for my dismissal that rang true. A mutual friend of Liza’s and mine told me that it was Desi’s mother, the great Lucille Ball, the mother-in-law-to-be, who told Liza to dump me. She suggested to Li—firmly, I suspect—that if Liza was going to be part of the family, using the family representative, Mickey Rudin, was the way to go. If, after all, Rudin was good enough to call the shots for her and Frank Sinatra, he was good enough for Liza. Stevie who? is what I imagine Ms. Ball asked. Perhaps Liza simply got tongue-tied. Perhaps Liza agreed. To Ms. Ball I was nobody. But back then, I was somebody who cared. Of course most every story has a footnote: Both Lucille Ball and Frank Sinatra eventually fired Mickey Rudin.
*
There is a postscript to all this. In 2001 I was taking care of my mother’s youngest brother, who was at the time ninety-six and failing. I’d made a sort of assisted-living arrangement for him with a woman he had a crush on; she’d been one of his caretakers while he was still able to live independently. (Uncle George was proof positive that the male “thing” is never over.) He continually spied on this woman having sex with a succession of lovers in her home until the day he slipped on one of her seven shih tzus’ dog shit, and it was all downhill from there.
The love nest in West Palm Beach was not far from a house Liza was renting while recuperating from a bout of encephalitis. She called me in New York to say that she had to see me. “Please come, please!” It sounded dire. And I cautiously told her I would come on my next visit to West Palm. Would I have come if she had called from Seattle? I doubt it. I bundled Uncle George and his walker into my rented car and drove to Li’s house, where a tall, casual-attired beefcake ushered us into the living room, where we all sat waiting for Li to appear. He and I stared at each other without anything to say. I had no idea if he was the boyfriend, the bodyguard, the friend, or the neighbor.
Finally Liza appeared, leaning heavily on her own walker. She dragged one foot, and her speech was slurred. She spoke slowly and worked hard to form words. It was easy to see she was suffering. “Look, Stevie, I can walk. And the doctor says I’m going to be fine. I’m going to go back on the stage before you know it.” I introduced her to Uncle George. He said hello, but she did not. “You will help me, won’t you?” That was all that interested her.
“Li, honestly, honey, I haven’t represented anyone for years. Truthfully I don’t even know the buyers anymore. Do you have all the medical help you need?” She looked at me. It was finished. The interview was over. She said, “Excuse me, I can’t stay any longer.” As she turned to leave, I noticed that some department store’s plastic security tag was still attached to the printed chiffon blouse she wore. On the car ride back, Uncle George—who was of sound mind—said, “I can’t believe that was her.” Neither could I.
It was Liza who finally taught me the lesson Freddie had tried to teach me years earlier. Loyalty in show business doesn’t exist. I know people who would protest this statement, and perhaps a few might be right. But for most it’s easy to believe one’s partners are loyal when all is going well. It’s when the sun goes down that one usually finds oneself standing alone in the dark.
Part 3
Maturity
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
A Different Kind of Whorehouse
What makes a comeback? Here’s my theory: Hunger. Not for money but for the chance to show you’ve still got what it takes, that you can’t be kept down, that you don’t accept defeat. Confidence. Just forget about starting a business without it. You must have unwavering faith in your own ability. And eyes. Preferably those directly connected to your brain, so you can recognize an opportunity when it’s put in front of you. I’ve watched a lot of people let such a moment blast right past them. Why don’t they see it? Are they too comfortable in their misery—or too scared to grab life by the balls? When Judy opened the door to her flat in London in 1960 and saw Freddie standing there, she saw her chance and grabbed hold of it with both hands. It was a life lesson for me. It planted a seed that took root in a deep place. I saw my chance and threw caution to the wind.
It came by phone: a last-minute invite from Bill and Eileen Goldman, good friends, to join them at the Actors Studio to see a musical in progress being worked on by mutual friends. They feel sorry for me, and they’re just being nice, was my first thought, which was probably correct. Unattached, underemployed, unappreciated, and feeling generally unloved, I had very little desire to go out that night, but no reason not to. Because they were such kind and caring friends, I got up off my butt, got dressed, and met them for dinner followed by a play at the Studio. I didn’t know what I was going to see and didn’t much care. But once the play started, everything changed. By its end I knew I wanted to produce it on Broadway. I’d never produced anything before.
After brief encounters with solar energy and social activism, the results of a little interlude I had with a guerrilla architect I’d met through Redford’s consumer-advocate wife, Lola, I’d hurried back to show business, where sunshine radiates in the smiles of the few winners, and wind power is what comes out of the mouths of those who dole out the dollars on either coast. Ned Tannen, then president of Universal, was willing to pay me a small retainer to look around the company to determine if I could make a contribution somewhere. What he really wanted was for me to utilize my prior connections with big stars for the studio’s benefit. He had reason to believe that I could attract Redford into a Universal film. But he wasn’t quite that blunt. Instead he urged me to evaluate the possibilities for myself within Universal and then let him know what interested me.
I looked first at the television division. In California it was a male-dominated bastion with a lot of little fiefdoms, not one of which would I want to inhabit. I saw women sitting at all the secretarial desks not able to do more than answer the phone and deliver the coffee. No one, surely not the self-important feudal lord of this boob-tube kingdom, was going to give me an opportunity to show him squat. It could remain an all-boys’ empire as far as I was concerned.
I looked next at the movie division. Movies, my drug of choice, were as wonderful to me then as they had been when I was a child, and as they are now: a wonderland of escapism, entertainment, and pure joy. But again, everyone in movies had their butts in a chair at 100 Universal City Plaza in LA, and I didn’t think I could make packaging movies come to fruition from New York; at least not easily. Getting actors into movies didn’t interest me nearly as much as putting movies together.
So, as I had imagined, my being appreciated at the studio came down to delivering the talent whose private telephone n
umbers I possessed (quite a few!). I was at the point of admitting that to myself. My retainer after a year was running out, and soon I would be out the door as well. And then the universe spoke. What I saw on the stage that night at the Actors Studio changed everything.
*
Peter Masterson was directing his gorgeous wife, Carlin Glynn (an excellent actress), in a musical about Texas that they had put together with two people I didn’t know, Carol Hall (the composer) and Larry L. King (on whose Playboy article the show was based). Texans all. It was an endearing story about hypocrisy, not about prostitution, and what was so terrific about it was its authenticity. It looked and sounded like Texas. You could smell the barbecue.
I’d never seen a musical about Texas (Oklahoma was one state removed), and from the first delightful song I thought that this could hit. The book was charming and very funny. Without my having the slightest assurance that Tannen would step up to the plate, I went backstage afterward and offered to option it in Universal’s name. You need two things to do that: a lot of balls and then a bathroom close by to throw up in.
I met with the authors and sold myself. (That confidence I never lacked.) I told them Universal would option it for twenty-five thousand immediately. Although there were a few other producers interested, the authors conferred quickly and went with me. I think they believed the show—if a big studio were to be involved—would really happen. They liked the instant cash, until much later when the show was a huge success and Universal exercised the option to make the movie.
Judy & Liza & Robert & Freddie & David & Sue & Me... Page 21