Leaving Home

by Anne Edwards

  “Sorry. It’s just that with your kind of talent . . .”

  “How would you know about my talent?” I interrupted.

  “Kit Adler.”

  Laura picked up the teddy bear and placed it on his lap. He put it back on the floor and scooped her up on his knee. She slid back down and dragged the stuffed animal a short distance away. “I’m a little new to being a single parent,” he smiled. “Laura was in New York with her mother, my ex-wife, until a month ago when they arrived in London. Her mother left her with me for an evening and was gone. No explanation. No forwarding address. So I have Laura.” He sat watching the child—a pretty little thing, very feminine. “I love the kid,” he said with great feeling. “She got a bum break and somehow I want to make it up to her.” He suddenly changed his mood. “So this television script you’re writing—who’s it for?”

  I told him.

  “Second team!” he snapped. “What you need to do is come up with a big idea, one that can appeal to a star, fill a movie screen. I bet you have a dozen of them buzzing around in your head. You should grab hold of one and go with it. Natalie Wood’s in town. I saw her the other night at the White Elephant. Bet you could write a helluva script for her. Poor little rich American girl runs away to England and falls in love with an East End Alfie-type guy. The two worlds crash.”

  Cathy came waltzing in none too thrilled, I suspected, at having a three-year-old to entertain. Like the good sport she always was, she pitched right in and led Laura to her room to show her some of her toys. Sy rose from his chair.

  “Seven, you said?”

  “Yes, that’s fine.”

  “Stretch it to eight. No, eight thirty. The au pair comes back about eight. I’ll bring her here. She can stay with the kids while we go out to dinner.”

  “Wait a minute! I didn’t say—”

  “You have another date?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  He was at the door. “Eight thirty. You been to the Tiberia? Best Italian in town.”

  He opened the door then stepped back in. “It’s better if Laura doesn’t see me leave. Tell her I went on an appointment and will be back later.”

  “You tell her.”

  “Father knows best,” he said and closed the door after himself. I stood and listened as the lift could be heard descending.

  That was how my affair with Sy Stewart—confessed promoter, part con artist—began. Oh, and by the way—gambler, big-time. I was asking for trouble and was likely to get it. But there was something about Sy that was genuinely appealing besides the sexual attraction. There was my incurable need to try to understand what made people tick, to get to the heart of the person. With all his bravado, Sy was a needy man. He was also fun, and that quotient had been missing from my life for a long time.

  By 1959 a new wave of Americans had arrived in London and not for political reasons. London was fast becoming a hub of commerce for the international film and music industry. New restaurants were opening every week, it seemed. Italian trattorias were now all the rage. London’s nighttime scene was also glitzed by the number of high-end, glamorous gambling clubs that had opened or been refurbished. Yearly membership was required at a cost of anywhere from five hundred to two thousand pounds. The city had always had shops where bets could be placed on almost anything—horses, cricket games, election results. A gambling club was different. They were handsomely decorated, had splendid restaurants and pandering service. Patterned after the casinos in Monte Carlo and the South of France, they had rooms featuring roulette, chemin de fer, 21, and baccarat. The croupiers wore tuxedos. Chips clinked, dice rattled, and the smoke was thick. The clientele were well dressed. Mostly the men gambled while the women remained in the restaurant or sat quietly at the gambling tables as they were plied with drinks and food by the waiters in order to keep them happy.

  Crockford’s, around since the mid-eighteenth century, had been a favorite of Edward, Prince of Wales. The Curzon Club boasted the best restaurant and highest fees (which would indicate wealthier customers). The White Elephant and the River Club (the two in which Sy had a membership) leaned toward a film and entertainment clientele. There were no singers or acts performing as in the French casinos. People watching was the divertissement. When dignitaries arrived from abroad, they were given guest privileges at the Curzon. When Hollywood personages of note were in the city, they were welcomed at the White Elephant.

  I was not blind to the fact that once again I was involved with a gambler. On my second date with Sy we went to the White Elephant. The restaurant was downstairs. After dinner, Sy escorted me upstairs to the gambling room. What took place here would not have attracted the gamblers who had previously played important roles in my life. Horses had been my father’s undoing; dice (or craps) my ex-husband’s; and Jule—sports. The common link between them had been the slender thread of secrecy that held them to their obsession. They were secret gamblers (or thought they were), much as some people are secret drinkers. For them, gambling was not a social experience.

  There were, of course, those in the room who were simply having a good time, “a bit of a go at it,” able to win or lose a few hundred pounds at the tables and call it an evening’s entertainment. They were seldom at the tables with the serious gamblers, Sy among them, who placed a mound of chips (each worth no less than ten pounds, and often were of one-hundred-pound value) on the 21 table and left them, plus his winnings, for the next deal. This kind of gambling was open, and often a display of confidence, bravado, or “swank” as the British called it—exhibiting that win or lose would not affect your bank balance. This last was not true for Sy, and probably three-fourths of the players. The perception was apparently worth the cost.

  I discussed this later with Sy. “Everything in life’s a gamble,” came the same old routine reply gamblers gave. “You gotta know how to take the ups and downs if you ever expect to win.”

  Shortly after our relationship began, I saw a psychoanalyst once a week. I needed to find out why I was drawn to gamblers before their addiction was revealed to me. Well, that was one reason. I also had other problems that required some counseling. My analyst, Phil, a wise older man in his midsixties, helped me to sweep out some of the cobwebs in my head, but I continued to see Sy.

  Sidney Buchman was the other person on whose intelligence I relied. He never pontificated. Sidney cared, not just about me, my kids, his family, but about why we did things, patterns, the people who could not help themselves, those who made a mark in the world with a little help. “In real estate it’s location, location, location,” he insisted. “In life it’s education, education, education.” He was always helping someone out. Perhaps his guilt was a result of his little sister’s death. If it was, I hope it eased his pain, for Sidney Buchman was one of the finest men I ever knew. “You can’t really be in love with this Sy Stewart,” he told me over coffee in the apartment, after we had spent a good part of the day working on a story proposal. “You must see that you are living two quite separate lives. He is not a part of your family life, any more than he is of his own. Nor are you sharing with him what means most to you—your writing. Does he even know—or rather did you tell him what you were currently working on? What is on your mind? In your heart? You see his friends. How many of yours have the two of you spent time with?”

  “The Adlers.” I stopped there. Sidney’s words struck deep. I had made no effort to combine our worlds assuming, probably correctly, that it would not work.

  “Women have hormones, men a sex drive. They equate to much the same thing. I don’t say deny them. But, sweet girl (a name he sometimes used, which did not seem demeaning to me), don’t confuse sex with love.” He smiled broadly. “Of course, if you have both, cherish it.”

  Within a short time, Sy’s ex-mother-in-law arrived in London, a lovely lady of middle-European background. She took a flat near Hyde Park and Laura moved in with her grandmother.

  Sy and I were seeing each other two or three times a
week. If we stayed together, it was at his apartment on South Audley Street. He was often surrounded by a small entourage of men who viewed him as a leader and were always trying to be helpful or discussing “deals.” I left as soon as they arrived. Often on a Sunday we would plan something that involved all three children. Meanwhile I saw my old expat friends on my own whenever I could. What had begun to disturb me was how many of us no longer were socially conscious—that is, to the point of doing something active about it. This seemed especially curious as we had all been so hepped up about the chaos at home, in England and abroad in the first years after we had arrived. Many of our members had turned their original anger at the Committee and Hollywood into self-pity, which I found especially troubling. Sidney called it “a transient madness.” None of us had forgotten the violation of our rights we had experienced, so why weren’t we more concerned for others who were now in the same place? That is not to say that nothing was expressed or done, it simply did not go deep enough.

  I had not been rich and famous in my Hollywood years. However, I had been young enough to start anew. Where, though, had I lost my zeal for protest? As a young woman I had carried picket signs in labor disputes, organized letters of protest to Congress decrying the conditions of our farm laborers, and lobbied in passing bills to aid the veterans of our wars. I had put my pen to paper to develop stories that pointed up injustice and man’s inhumanity to man and woman. Maybe that was one reason I clung to, and so admired, Sidney. Every script he chose to work on seemed worthy (his current project, The Mark, dealt with England’s harsh laws against practicing homosexuals).

  I could not speak for the others, but in my case there was a living to be made and there was no market for idealistic stories, even if I did carve out time to write one. More devastating was the cold truth that no such story had fired my imagination. I had folders filled with starts and spasms, but none that I was able to bring to completion.

  In the spring of 1960, Judy Garland came to London to recuperate from a serious and mysterious illness that for three weeks had put her on the critical list at New York’s Doctors Hospital. She was experiencing severe pain, her body had swollen monstrously, and her voice become a raspy whisper. Her condition was finally attributed to hepatitis, but I don’t believe that was ever a proven fact.

  Judy’s life had been reaching the extremes of up and down from her youth. Now only thirty-eight, she was in a severe state of depression. Her marriage to producer/promoter Sid Luft—her third husband and father of two of her children—had become a living nightmare. Though few outsiders knew it, Sid had encouraged her dependency on pills to keep her performing. He would withhold them before her entrance on stage, and stand in the wings, refusing to give them to her until after she took her bows. (“Like a trained dog who does tricks,” she once told me.) Despite the critical acclaim for her “comeback” film A Star Is Born, it had not been a financial success. (“Whaddaya mean, comeback? I’ve always been here!” she cried one time.) Sid did not curtail his lavish expenditures, and Judy was deluged with bill collectors and pressed on all sides for money she did not have.

  She was led to believe that her time in London would be work and stress free. Luft had collected a $35,000 advance from Random House on the promise that Judy would cooperate in the writing of an autobiography. However, he had been privately negotiating for her to return for an engagement at the Palladium where, in 1954, she had been a sensation. The deal he made was for her to do two solo concerts called An Evening with Judy Garland. When she found out there was little she could do to stop it, the advance from Random House had been spent and no work had been done on the autobiography. Bills were piling up daily and there were Sid and their two children to support.

  The media coverage of her presence in London stirred up strong memories in me. As a child of five I had been a member of the Meglin Kiddies, a booking agency for child acts. Judy and her two sisters were also Meglin Kiddies. Luckily, I did not have a stage mother. In fact, Marion had been extremely vocal against my pursuing a career at such an early age. This was, however, in the darkest days of the Depression. Mother and I were living with my uncle Dave and aunt Theo in a small house on the fringe of Beverly Hills. My aunt Theo convinced my mother that I should at least be given the opportunity to try it. Child performers were the current rage on the stage and in the movies. I sang (I was not very good, but I sang loud, a definite advantage as few theaters had microphones), had a good memory for lines and lyrics, and—if not beautiful, was eye catching with my red hair and long legs that looked good in tights (especially for a child of my tender years). Aunt Theo’s best friend from their “chorine” days was the tap dancer Ruby Keeler, now married to the star performer Al Jolson and on her way to movie stardom. Ruby came over and gave me tap lessons in the kitchen of the house (I had to dance around the old wood icebox and learn how to bow with one leg behind me—as if I were being presented to a king). Aunt Theo thought I should use the stage name Anne Louise, my full name being Anne Louise Josephson and a bit of a mouthful. My mother agreed and it made little difference to me. I thought dancing was fun, took to it naturally, and was happy to believe that I was pleasing the people I loved.

  Judy was five years older than I and when we were together at auditions or at the Meglin studio, she was extremely protective. I quit show business at age nine, after going from the Meglin Kiddies to Gus Edwards Kids (which is when I was renamed Anne Edwards), and ended up tap-dancing on a radio program (how crazy was that!) where the host was Jan Murray. Judy had been signed to an MGM contract. In 1943, at the age of sixteen, I auditioned for a role in the film musical Best Foot Forward. I did not get a speaking part but was hired as one of the two dozen or so young students attending the school that was the setting for the movie. A show was planned when a visiting star (Lucille Ball) shows up on campus (too complicated to explain why she was there!). Judy, now twenty-one, was on the lot shooting Presenting Lily Mars. She had just divorced her first husband, the considerably older composer/arranger David Rose. At lunchtime in the commissary one day, I noticed her seated alone at a table in a far corner of the room and went over to speak to her.

  “Remember me? Anne Louise.”

  “Anne Louise! My, how you’ve grown!” she laughed. “Sit down! Sit down!” She seemed genuinely glad to see me and asked me all about myself. I told her I had given up performing but was working on Best Foot Forward, as kind of a one-off experience, never having been in a movie before. I told her I saw most of her movies and asked about her two sisters and her mother. She leaned across the table and in a lowered, rushing torrent of words filled me in on all the difficulties in her current life. Her mother was stealing from her. The studio overworked her and had people sneaking around behind her. Her life was not her own. I felt a deep empathetic pain for her. She still looked as vulnerable as she had when we were children; the throbby voice, trembling with emotion, had not changed. Finally, I rose to go. She grabbed my hand and held it tightly. “No! Don’t go!” she said. I sat down again, and she leaned back in her chair and started to tell stories about our younger days. She was very funny, suddenly, a changed person until two men came over and told her she had to go back to the recording studio with them.

  MGM was like a small town with many buildings and streets that led to them. There was a lot of walking done, from office buildings to structures for makeup, cutting rooms, stages, sets, recording studios, wardrobe, and the back lots where city streets, foreign and domestic, had been constructed. In the next three weeks that I was on the lot I saw Judy a number of times. She always stopped, no matter who she was with, and talked to me, hugging me to her before we separated.

  I would never appear in another movie. However, two years later, having just graduated from high school, I had the incredibly good fortune to be chosen by an MGM scout who had seen a school musical that I had written the book and lyrics for (Mark Sandrich Jr., a school friend and son of the director of the Astaire/Rogers musicals, composed the music—later
he would write the score for the Broadway show Ben Franklin in Paris) and asked me to join the studio’s newly instituted Junior Writer Program. It was a dream come true, as by then I knew that writing was what I wanted most in the world to accomplish. Judy was now remarried to Vincente Minnelli and was on the lot making the nonmusical The Clock under her husband’s direction. (Fred Zinnemann had started as director and Minnelli had taken over after a disastrous beginning.)

  Judy and I met again on the lot, and she displayed the same graciousness and affection toward me. Once she took hold of my hand, pulled me aside near the Writers’ Building, and in a dead serious voice said, “Anne Louise, don’t let them own you!”

  She had thought I was acting in films, not writing, so I explained to her what I was doing.

  “Oh! How wonderful! That’s something I always wanted. To write. I do write sometimes—poetry.” She invited me to come on the set whenever I had time. I never did, thinking it might be an imposition. Now, here she was in London. No one could escape the tons of media coverage of her illness, her depressions, her weight and financial problems. There had been no mention yet, however, of a return engagement at the Palladium. I decided to write a little note to tell her I hoped she was feeling better after her hospital stay. I signed it—Anne Louise (Edwards)—and wrote my address and telephone number beneath my signature. A few days later my telephone rang and when I answered it Judy said, in a dramatic, declaratory voice, “Anne Louise, I hope to hell you followed my advice!”

  She called often, not always at the best hours. She was having an ugly time with Sid Luft. I don’t know if everything she said was true, but if only 10 percent was, Luft was pretty much a villain. She kept talking about writing her memoirs herself. “But you know, Sid owns everything. I can’t die without his permission!”

  She did two concerts and left tickets for me at the box office for both. Sy was in Paris, so I took Lester for one performance (we were working together on a first draft script for Carl Foreman) and Doris Cole Abrahams to the second. Judy was superb at both performances. The audience went wild. As much as she believed that Sid owned her—onstage, on those nights, Judy owned the theater and everyone in it. When Doris and I went backstage after the last performance, there was a gaggle of people in the hallway outside her dressing room. From inside came loud voices. Sid and Judy were engaged in a terrible row. Doris and I decided to leave.