Foxy

by Pam Grier

  We left the wardrobe malfunction in the film, and I got a lot of respect because I did it in my own integrity. I viewed the exposure as artistic, not salacious, and I was comfortable walking that edge. The audiences were enthusiastic as I shot one more major film in Europe before I headed out on a big-city tour across the United States to promote Coffy, which was my best film and largest role to date.

  CHAPTER 18

  Donatello

  Cinecittà Studios are located in the heart of Rome, home base to legendary world-renowned Italian film directors like Bernardo Bertolucci and Federico Fellini. Roger Corman had decided to produce a film called The Arena through Cinecittà Studios, the Italian version of Universal Studios. It was to be shot in Rome and directed by Steve Carver, and I was cast as the co-lead. I would be working with Margaret Markov, a beautiful, tall, blonde actress who had appeared in Roger Vadim’s Pretty Maids All in a Row. We previously had worked together on the Corman film Black Mama, White Mama in the Philippines, and we had developed a wonderful friendship. Now, not only would I be working with someone I liked, but I was also going to Italy, a dream of mine, to act and to do stunt horseback riding.

  They put us up at the Pontevecchio Apartments in Rome, a twelve-story high-rise with a swimming pool, down the road from a number of large mansions and villas. I had a gorgeous apartment there, and the producers wined and dined me in the finest restaurants and took me to the open market. I did my best to learn Italian cooking (tons of garlic), which was flavorful, organic, and very pure.

  I jogged in the mornings along the road in front of my building, and I often spotted a gorgeous guy with a colorful scarf speeding by in a red Ferrari. How Italian can you get? I thought. I had on my favorite pair of Nikes, jogging along the Via Cassia beside my apartment building, when the Ferrari pulled to a screeching halt beside me. The Italian hottie flashed his deep brown eyes at me and said, “Hey, what are you doing?” At least he spoke English. “Why you running all the time?”

  I smiled. I suddenly realized how I must have looked to him as I ran down this dirt road every day, as if someone were chasing me. “It’s called jogging,” I told him.

  “An American thing?” he wanted to know.

  “Yes, it is,” I said. “We like to stay fit.”

  “So do we,” he said. “But we don’t jog. We Italians drink wine and make love.”

  I broke out into a smile. “My name is Pam.”

  “I’m Enzo.”

  “I’m here doing a movie,” I said.

  “Oh, cinema,” he said. “Allow me to take you around Rome and introduce you to my friends.”

  I brought him to the set that day, and everyone took me aside, informing me that he was a famous playboy and chased all the actresses, and that I needed to be careful. I knew a playboy when I saw one, and Enzo was just that. But it didn’t matter to me, because I was not interested in dating him. I just wanted to make friends, and although he tried for more with me, he didn’t get very far. He probably assumed I was gay since I didn’t want to sleep with him, but I knew exactly what I was doing. I was not interested in creating a sexual bond with a guy whom I’d be leaving in a month or two. Besides, he was far too promiscuous for me as a romantic interest, but he turned out to be a really good friend.

  He and a few of his buddies showed me the sights in Rome, like the Coliseum, the Trevi Fountain, and the Sistine Chapel. I rented a little Machina Mini Cooper and drove it all over the place with a woman friend named Lucretia Love, who worked on our film. While the guys showed me the sights, Lucretia showed me where to shop and taught me some rudimentary Italian.

  I celebrated my birthday in the Latina Beach area, where we shot most of the gladiator fighting in our film. The premise of The Arena was women slaves fighting their way out of bondage. The film was a period piece, taking place during Roman times, and I was set to ride a black stallion called Donatello. But when I looked at the tack, which was also from that period, I saw immediately that it would give me very little control over the horse. I trusted my riding ability—after all, I’d been riding horses since I was a child and I had taught myself to do stunts—but one look at the tack told me that even if I managed to stay on Donatello’s back, I was in for one sore behind, no matter how well I rode or how much experience I had.

  Donatello, our lead stunt horse, was as sleek and black as Frodo’s famous horse in The Lord of the Rings. I fell in love immediately as I trotted him around a few times to see how he moved and how he followed directions. Donatello seemed to like me—he wasn’t trying to get away—but he refused to acknowledge my verbal commands. It didn’t take me long to see that I had a major spitfire on my hands, and I wondered how he’d get along with the other horses that were tethered nearby. I got the attention of the Italian horse handler and asked him, “Are you sure this horse is trained? He feels really wild, and he’s paying no attention to my directions.”

  The man watched me call out commands that the horse completely ignored. Then he began to laugh and said, “He no speak-a English.” He taught me some commands in Italian, to which the horse still barely responded. Now Donatello seemed to know what I was asking him to do, to start and halt on cue, but I guess he wasn’t sure he wanted to listen to me. I would have to establish our partnership. While that took time with any horse, I had a special case here with such a high-spirited stallion as Donatello, who was more interested in the mares than putting in a good day’s work and minding his manners.

  When you work a horse, instead of getting tired, he usually becomes even more excited. For example, if you’re taking him on a course with eighteen jumps, by the time he gets to the ninth jump, he’s more energetic than when he started and is excited about the next jump and the one after that. It makes sense, then, that of all the skills a professional horse rider needs, keeping a horse calm and collected is first on the list.

  I made it my personal mission to work Donatello for fifteen minutes every day in order to burn off his energy and build trust, speaking to him in a firm, comforting voice. We didn’t have a lot of time for training, but by the time we were ready to shoot the scene where the horse and I gallop off to war, I felt I had established a pretty solid connection with him. The trouble was that there was so much going on around us during those long days of battles and sword fights, Donatello was getting more fired up from one day to the next. With the smoke rising off the fake fires, we had some trouble, since horses are notoriously afraid of fires and smoke. They tend to make them skittish and unresponsive.

  When the time came for the ultimate action shot, I climbed on Donatello’s back, speaking gently and quietly to him, keeping him calm and relaxed. I tucked my feet into the tiny stirrups and tried to take control, but the more noise the crew made, the more Donatello got excited, and he began tossing his head from side to side. The fact that I was riding in sandals with a leopard skin wrapped around me, sitting on a small fur piece that was supposed to be a saddle, only added to my difficulty. “I need some time to calm him down,” I called out to the director.

  “No, we need to do the shot now,” he yelled loudly. “Before lunch. Make him listen to you.”

  Yeah, right. Easy for you to say. “I need a minute,” I said, straining on the reins to hold him back. “If he takes off,” I warned the director, pulling him up and turning him in circles, “the other horses are going to follow, and you’re going to have a big mess on your hands.” I could imagine what the Vatican would think when they saw a load of horses galloping unchecked through the middle of the city, led by a tall black woman with a huge ’fro, in leopard fur and Roman sandals.

  We decided to give up on the shot and finish it after lunch. That would give me some time to school the horse and get him collected. While everyone else ate, I rode Donatello back and forth calmly, talking gently to him, getting some control back, wearing off some of his energy. And then something unexpected happened. It seemed that a crew member who had been watching me work with the horse was impatient and had decided to hel
p. When he finished lunch, unbeknownst to me, he came up behind the horse and me and popped him on his flank with a towel.

  Donatello took off like he’d had a kick from Satan himself, with me on him. Four other horses joined the runaway parade, and while I tried to get him to stop, the crew members became hysterical, screaming curses and commands at Donatello in Italian at the top of their lungs. “Stop screaming,” I begged them. “Keep your voices down.” Horses are flight animals, and the pop on the flank gave Donatello a message that he was being attacked by a predator.

  No one could hear me, and even if they could have, it was too late, as an overzealous crew member rushed in front of us, waving a colored banner at the horse.

  “Get out of the way,” I yelled. “Stop waving that thing in front of him or he’ll kill you.”

  In the next few minutes, everyone who was trying to help me made every mistake in the book. But even if they had known the right things to do, it probably wouldn’t have mattered, because Donatello was fast and young. The only thing I could do was try to stay on him until I wore his energy down. I figured if I ran him at full gallop for about five minutes, he would have to slow down. At the moment, he was in a panic, and the people around us were only making it worse, so I looked around me to see where we could run freely without trampling anyone.

  I guided him to an open area at the start of a clearing. Someone jumped in front of us, and Donatello made a quick turn. I held on for dear life as he began charging toward a fifty-foot, two-story backdrop. I jerked at the reins to turn him when a crew member interfered again, scaring him as he ran away from the set this time. Now we were heading for a backdrop of a painting of an ocean liner in the distance where another movie set had been erected.

  I feared I was about to die as I held on to the horse beneath me. I tried to breathe deeply, knowing that the more I panicked, the more the horse would panic, too. The distant movie set got closer and closer until we galloped toward a slight-looking man with dark hair, a cowboy hat, and a viewfinder around his neck. He ducked out of the way as the back of the huge ocean liner came into view. We galloped right through his set toward the backdrop. The director’s jaw dropped as he watched a nearly naked black woman with an afro, wrapped in a leopard skin, riding a black stallion with a group of wild horses following behind. He gasped, “Oh, Il mio Dio, my fantasy has come true.” It was Federico Fellini, someone whom I’d always wanted to meet. But not like this.

  We were clear of Fellini’s set when I could feel Donatello starting to slow down a little. But my girth had slipped, and I had no stirrups and nothing to hang on to. I managed to keep my seat until the horse stopped, and then I held on to his neck and went flying over his head. Thanks to my martial arts training, when I slid off his neck, I knew how to tuck and roll. But I’d never done that in a leopard skin and sandals, no bra, and no padding whatsoever. Ouch! I didn’t get badly hurt, but I got the wind knocked out of me.

  As I tried to catch my breath, looking up from where I lay with black horse hairs stuck to my legs, Federico Fellini was staring at me. Was I dreaming? He helped me up and said with great enthusiasm in his thick Italian accent, “I love American cinema. We should talk.”

  The next thing I knew, he had broken for lunch and had escorted me back to the kitchen of Cinecittà Studios. He decided we would have lunch together, and he would teach me to make an authentic Italian red sauce. He wanted me to teach him to make authentic southern fried chicken. I was willing, but there were no chickens, so I used squab instead. A first.

  When we sat down to eat lunch together, he said, “You must live in Rome. You must learn Italian. You must do movies here. Broaden your horizons. Don’t be just an American. They oppress Americans in America.”

  Starry-eyed, I returned to my own set for the afternoon, but first I had to have a talk with our crew, who had nearly gotten themselves and me killed. I gathered them together and asked someone to translate for me. “Do any of you know what happens when you touch a horse’s flank?” I asked them.

  No one said a word.

  “That’s what I thought,” I said. “If he thinks a predator is attacking him, like that pop on the flank”—I glared at the crew member who had done it—“he kicks at the predator and starts to run completely out of control, because horses are flight animals.”

  I waited while the translator made sure they understood what I was telling them. I went on, “You could have caused several people to be seriously hurt or even die. Morte, morte,” I repeated. “Don’t you ever do that again. I could have ended up crippled, physically or mentally. I was very lucky, and so are you. If I’d gotten hurt, you would have lost your jobs.”

  After close to two months of filming, we wrapped the movie and I returned to Hollywood with a great deal more confidence than when I left. I had bonded so deeply with Donatello, I fantasized about bringing him back with me and getting him gelded. It turned out, however, that I couldn’t afford such an expensive stunt horse, so I left him behind. Fellini wrote to me occasionally, and I really missed Donatello, but I had my hands full. I was about to go on tour to promote Coffy, which was premiering shortly after my return. And then, I would have even less time to myself than usual, as I was about to enter into a relationship with a man I adored and could easily call a great love of my life.

  CHAPTER 19

  Freddie and Me

  In the early seventies, there were no satellite interviews that aired a broadcast for millions of people. To properly promote a film back then, an actor had to show up personally in at least thirty cities. To promote Coffy, for example, a film rep and I hit a city a day—in some cases, every two to three days—for a couple of months, and it was utterly exhausting. I usually had no idea which city I was in, since I only saw the inside of a few TV studios and a hotel in each place. But Chicago stands out. I’d been booked on the Irv Kupcinet Show, and someone in the green room asked me if I’d heard of a burgeoning comedian named Freddie Prinze.

  I hadn’t, but he was booked on the same show, and when he entered the room, I liked what I saw. A fine-featured Latino a few years younger than I, Freddie had a striking demeanor and a sophisticated polish. He was not muscled, but his skin was smooth and he had adorable freckles on his face. It took only a moment to see that he was a true gentleman who respected women, and he kept everyone around him laughing. When we were introduced, he was complimentary, and apparently he had not only heard about me but had also seen my movies Black Mama, White Mama and Coffy.

  I had never experienced love at first sight until I met Freddie that day in Chicago. Maybe lust at first sight is a more accurate description, but when you’re young, it’s a little hard to tell the difference. I only knew I was as intensely drawn to Freddie as he was to me. He loved my spirit and I loved how he held doors open for me, the way he spoke, his scent, and how he carried himself. We fell hard for each other, and he contacted me the moment we were both back in Los Angeles.

  Ever the cautious one, I needed to find out if Freddie was the same person back home that I had met in Chicago. It didn’t take me long to find out that he was. He and his roommate, another struggling comedian named Jay Leno, were doing stand-up at the Comedy Club, a popular LA nightclub. And Freddie was about to audition for a possible sitcom called Chico and the Man, with Jack Albertson as his co-star.

  At Freddie’s invitation, I went to the Comedy Club one night to watch his show. During the half hour that I sat in his dressing room before the show, I saw how his magnetism drew crowds of people to him. He was a bright light, fully acknowledging and enjoying the attention that people were lavishing on him. He scanned the notes that he had taken during the day concerning his political and religious observations. Maybe he would insert some of them into his routine that night. He was a lover of old-school vaudeville, especially the Marx Brothers, and he utilized this kind of humor as the foundation for his performances.

  I left the dressing room about ten minutes before the show began and took my seat to the side of th
e stage where he couldn’t see me. I didn’t want to be a distraction. Suddenly the lights went down and Freddie walked onto the stage, glowing like a lightbulb, wearing a brown silk shirt, a pair of blue jeans, and black dress shoes—his Puerto Rican macho attempt to always look well-dressed for the ladies.

  The room was packed that night. He was making everyone howl, and I was stunned to see how popular he really was. Every single joke he told tore the roof off the building, and he was blasting into stardom before my eyes. I laughed through his entire set because he was so damned funny. You could tell that Freddie had been influenced by Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, and George Carlin; his jokes were intensely political, edgy, and charming, all at the same time. I wondered if a comedian like Freddie, who was this hysterical on stage at night, was the same man in the morning. He was so accustomed to living the night life, drinking Courvoisier, partying, and eating late, what would he be like when he first opened his eyes the next day? I had yet to find out.

  Freddie got off stage and rushed right over to me. When he introduced me to his agent and his manager, who had high hopes for their rising star, I felt the powerful aphrodisiac of dating someone who was about to pop in the entertainment world. Money, lust, and power hung heavy in the air, and everyone wanted to be seen with him and around him. He seemed to be eating it up, and I was getting familiar with the lifestyle of a comedian, someone who lived differently from me and kept very different hours.