Foxy

by Pam Grier

  We were rehearsing when I heard a rumor that the great John Lennon was in the house, accompanied by his famous musician friend Harry Nilsson. As if seeing John Lennon was not enough! Victoria and I kept pointing him out to each other. There he was, in the flesh, and I was more than stunned when Jack Haley said to me, “Hey, Pam, we’re heading over to the Troubadour to catch the Smothers Brothers act. Why don’t you come join us?” The “us” he was referring to were John, Harry, and entourage. “We’ll come back to finish rehearsing in a couple of hours.”

  “Yes” was my answer. I gathered my things together quickly. I didn’t want to keep John Lennon waiting. I mean, there were stars, and then there was John Lennon.

  The Troubadour was a popular nightclub on Santa Monica Boulevard where the hippest musicians used to perform their acts while large audiences imbibed the latest designer drinks and drugs and danced all night. That particular night, the Smothers Brothers were staging their comeback show, and we all loved their irreverence, their political wit, and their hysterical bits.

  The place was packed that night in anticipation, and a burly man who was married to a famous porn star met our limo. He maneuvered the crowds to make a space while out of the limo came Jack Haley Jr., Peter Lawford, Marty Pasetta, Harry Nilsson, John Lennon—and moi!

  Someone must have called ahead, because the manager led us through the crowded room to an elevated VIP section at the back of the room. We sat and ordered drinks. So far, no one had noticed that John Lennon had just walked in, and I had a few quiet moments to have a conversation with my favorite Beatle.

  “Where are you from?” he asked, his intelligent eyes looking through his signature rimless glasses as he threw back his first drink.

  “Colorado,” I said.

  “Where’s that?” he inquired, in his unmistakable Liverpool accent.

  “It’s out west,” I said. “They have cowboys there.”

  “There are black cowboys?” he asked.

  “Absolutely,” I told him.

  “Well, I’d really like to see Colorado. I’d like to see black cowboys in that part of America.”

  It was a well-known fact that one of John’s earliest musical inspirations was Little Richard, along with many other R&B artists and African American gospel singers. As John continued to knock back drinks, his eyes got a little glassy, his words got slurry, and he began to discuss his separation from Yoko Ono.

  “How do you feel about her now?” I asked.

  “I really miss her,” he said.

  “I bet you do,” I said.

  “There is this woman now, and I spend a lot of time traveling,” he said wistfully.

  “But what do you really want?” I asked him. “You were so involved with Yoko, and the two of you built something together. Are you ready to throw it all away? People trade in their mates like cars. I’d love to have what you have with Yoko. But I don’t.”

  “You will,” he said.

  “Maybe and maybe not,” I answered. “I don’t know. I think I have to learn more about people. I feel like I’m on the outside watching.”

  John finished his drink and gestured to the waiter to bring another. “I have to think about what you just said,” he told me.

  I looked into his eyes, which were unfocused and staring off into the distance. We truly do get haunted by the ghosts of our lovers in this life, and there was no doubt that I was looking into the eyes of a haunted man.

  Suddenly, as if someone had tapped him on the shoulder, he turned to Harry and said, “I heard this great song by a woman. Something about, ‘I can’t stand the rain.’ ”

  I knew that song. It was one of my favorites, so I launched into a chorus immediately. “ ‘I can’t stand the rain,’ ” I sang, “ ‘on my window.’ It’s by Ann Peebles.”

  John broke out into a huge smile. “That’s it. I love it.”

  Harry joined us in the next chorus while John started singing and pounding out beats on the table with his hands. As the three of us raised our voices in song, waiting for the Smothers Brothers, people began turning around to see who was singing. When they realized it was John Lennon, Harry Nilsson, and a crazy black woman, the place erupted. All boredom and impatience were gone and everyone joined us in a chorus of “I Can’t Stand the Rain.” I’d have hated to be the Smothers Brothers that night and have to follow this act!

  Now I was feeding John the words, and the rest of the audience was joining in the chorus. People were getting hysterical—they were getting up out of their chairs and calling out for John to come up and sign autographs. The waiters were trying to sit them back down, because if this continued, the Smothers Brothers wouldn’t be able to do their act.

  “Sing us another song, John,” the people called out.

  “No, no,” John said with false humility. “This isn’t my night. I’m just here to catch my friends perform.”

  There was a stir on the stage and in walked the Smothers Brothers, the main event, but no one was bothering to look at them. Who cared about the Smothers Brothers when John Lennon was in the house? Someone was offering John a guitar, and they were urging him to get onstage to perform a one-man show.

  “No, no,” said John. “I don’t want to do that. The Smothers Brothers are here.”

  The lights went down and Tommy and Dick started singing. But the audience would not calm down. They were so excited to be in the presence of one of the Beatles, they refused to take their attention away from him. John, looking pretty tipsy by now, began to sing again, encouraged by the crowds.

  Jack Haley tried to quiet him down. “C’mon, John, why don’t you be quiet? That’s rude.”

  “I don’t give a fuck,” John slurred.

  He started singing louder and banging on the table again. People were staring, and Harry was trying to reason with John, who was getting antagonistic. “We better get him out of here,” Harry said to Jack just as the manager approached our table. “C’mon, man,” he said to John. “They wouldn’t do this to you.”

  “Okay, okay,” John said. “I’ll be quiet.”

  We should have left right then and there. That was our cue, but John started up again and the manager was back. “This isn’t cool, John,” he said. “You really need to leave.”

  John uttered an obscenity, and the next thing I knew, fists were flying. The manager tried to grab John by the arms and shoulders and pull him across Harry and over the railing that was next to our table. Drinks spilled all over us as a war broke out. John was punching indiscriminately, taking people out right and left in a drunken brawl. I was trying to block my face against flying chairs when the police showed up.

  In the next moment, John, Harry, and I, along with the rest of our party, were all standing at the curb outside the club. Photos of us were was splashed all over the LA Times the next day, and my claim to fame was getting thrown out of the Troubadour with John Lennon and Harry Nilsson. It doesn’t get much more notorious than that.

  CHAPTER 22

  An Unlikely Couple

  When you consider contributions in the seventies that changed the way people talked about life, comedian Richard Pryor comes to mind. Born and raised in Peoria, Illinois, few were more prone to addiction and self-destruction than Richard, yet another comedian caught up in the glitz and speed of a dangerous game, a Russian roulette called “Drugs.” A look at his childhood says it all. Richard was raised in his grandmother’s brothel in Peoria, where his mother, Gertrude, was a prostitute and his father, LeRoy Buck, was her pimp. On top of that, or maybe because of it, he was sexually molested by both a neighbor and a priest before his mother deserted him at age ten. His grandmother raised him, and it’s a miracle he survived as long as he did. But we all have our obstacles to overcome in life.

  When Richard was in his prime in the sixties, conservatives and “the establishment” judged his urban comedy as vulgar. But to the youth movement, urban was hip and Richard was the king of hip. His audiences got a charge out of hearing him say the words d
ick and pussy in public, and they loved to hear him talk about drugs. “Hey,” he famously said, “cocaine ain’t addictive. I’ve been using it since I was thirteen, and I ain’t addicted.”

  Everybody laughed because he was saying what people were thinking but didn’t dare speak out loud. In the spirit of Lenny Bruce, Richard was a champ at dropping the filters, opening his rebellious mouth, and saying whatever came out of his drug-addled mind. And like Lenny Bruce and so many others, his addictions would be his downfall.

  I met him when Freddie called me from his new house in the Hollywood Hills and asked me to take a drive with him. It had been a while since Freddie and I had split, and I wondered where he was taking me that morning when he pulled up in his brand-new blue Corvette convertible. He called upstairs, and I looked out the window to see him there, smiling and idling in his car.

  “Ready to go?” he asked.

  I walked downstairs and stood by his car.

  “I need to prove to someone that I know you,” Freddie said. “He doesn’t believe me.”

  “Who is it?”

  “I’ll tell you when we get there,” was all he’d say.

  Freddie drove me to Northridge, about twenty miles north of Hollywood, where we made our way through a private citrus orchard and pulled up to the security gate of a sprawling Spanish hacienda that was being renovated. Freddie pushed the button and spoke into the intercom. “It’s Freddie. Let me in.”

  The intercom emitted a stream of expletives, like a parrot that was raised by a pirate. “Hey, fuck you, you goddamned motherfucker, motherfucker, motherfucker.”

  I gave Freddie a tentative look. “I don’t know who that is, but I’m getting out of the car right here,” I said. “You can go in without me.”

  “Please, Pam, just wait a second.”

  The gate swung open, and before I could get the car door open, Freddie drove onto the property and the gate closed behind us. Several men in overalls were standing on tall ladders, painting the house exterior, as I saw a man in a black and white robe and house shoes walking toward us. It was Richard Pryor. Although I’d never seen him in person, I was familiar with his picture, I loved his comedy records, and I was well aware of his reputation for having an obscene mouth.

  “Great fuckin’ wheels,” he told Freddie, referring to the blue Corvette that had been a gift from Freddie’s studio. He had liked my Corvette and had asked the studio for a blue one, just like mine. At that time, Freddie usually got what he wanted.

  While I was still sitting in the car Richard stared at me and turned his gaze toward Freddie. “Motherfucker,” he said with wide eyes and a grin, “you do know the bitch.” Unbeknownst to me, Richard had already “started his day,” meaning he was well into his recreational drug ingestion by 11 a.m.

  “I won the bet,” said Freddie, “but don’t feel too bad.” He reached into his pocket and took out a vial of what he told me later was pure liquid cocaine.

  Richard’s face lit up. “C’mon,” he said to me. “Get out of the car.”

  I sat there.

  “I’m not gonna hurt you,” he said. “Come on up and hang out. Let me show you my new pad.” He took off on a diatribe, reciting my exact dialogue in one of the hottest scenes of Foxy Brown. Clearly, he was a fan of my movie. He had memorized the lines, and I had to laugh. But I was not interested in watching two grown men get stupid on cocaine.

  “It was really nice to meet you,” I said politely, “but I have to go.”

  A look of amazement swept over Richard’s face. Then he looked offended. I must have been the first woman who had ever refused his offer of checking out his massive pad, doing the best designer drugs, and whatever else was expected to go along with it.

  “You have to stay,” he told me with a grin. “Please be my guest.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I have to go.” Freddie shrugged his shoulders at Richard, promising to come back as soon as he dropped me off.

  I met Richard again in Georgia, in 1976, when Melvin Van Peebles cast me in his new movie, Greased Lightning, starring Richard Pryor, Cleavon Little, and Beau Bridges, with music by the Commodores. Later, Michael Schultz took over as director. I was twenty-six, and I remember showing up for that first day of shooting and seeing Richard face-to-face once again. We stared at each other, speechless. I was in sweats with no makeup, and he held a cup of coffee in his hand, looking bleary-eyed so early in the morning. We both smiled when we realized that neither of us was at all like the characters we portrayed for the public, the ones with the big ’fros who went around yelling “motherfucker” all over the place. In fact, after a short conversation before we headed to makeup, he said to me, “Pam Grier, you’re just a farmer. A hick.”

  He was right, but no one ever wanted to see me that way or to acknowledge my real background. They didn’t want to know that I’d been raised in a rural town, that I’d been raped several times, that I loved science and medicine, that I was not too squeamish to put a worm on a fishhook, that I had begun to study premed, and that I didn’t curse or do drugs. But Richard seemed fascinated by the real parts of me. He wanted to get away from the drug culture, so he said, and maybe he saw me as his way out.

  I found Richard to be very personable, but I wondered why he was interested in me. After all, I was focused more on work than play. As for Richard, during the filming of Greased Lightning, he was a softer, gentler, humbler personality in the mornings when we arrived for work. But by mid-afternoon, after his friends had spent ample time in his trailer, he emerged like a haughty, outwardly confident macho man, definitely different from earlier in the day. I understood why his personality was so mercurial. He was getting high.

  Actually, Richard and I did not begin dating until several months after Greased Lightning had wrapped. That was right after he broke up with his most recent girlfriend. A photograph appeared in a gossip magazine of Richard, in a full-length chinchilla coat, having a public argument with her. He was single and lonely, just like me, when we dropped our facades and got to know each other as real people instead of constructed film images. I saw a wonderful side of him: the way he loved his family, his pride in his success, and his humility about his career. This was a good sign, since he had power coming to him that was unprecedented in the world of black comedians—or any comedian, for that matter. I wanted to be friends with him, and I thought we might become lovers, but I also feared what power and money would do to his psyche. Would it help or hurt, and where did I fit in? He was part of a world that I didn’t really understand. And I had to wonder what it was about comedians that attracted me. Was it a hormone cocktail that inexorably drew me to these men?

  It didn’t take long until Richard and I realized that maybe we were not as unlikely as we first thought. For starters, we had a wonderful and romantic sex life—an ordinary one, which was contrary to both of our images. The truth is that he was shy and my military upbringing (as well as my difficult past) had taught me to be cautious. But I was interested in helping him get healthy, which he wanted me to do. He was a great talent, a brilliant man, and I hated that drugs were stopping him from attaining real success. The most profound and naked comment he ever made to me about his drug addiction was, “I’m afraid if I stop doing drugs, I won’t be funny.”

  “But you’re naturally funny,” I told him. “The drugs just enhance what you already do and say. Maybe they give you courage to say things that you normally wouldn’t. When the filter is gone, you can just go for it. But that has nothing to do with whether or not you’re funny.”

  We’d met at a time in Richard’s life when his body was starting to rebel against so much abuse. He was having physical symptoms—his skin and his scalp were broken out, he was losing sleep—and he desperately wanted a way out of the drug culture. Something inside of him was telling him that he needed a break, and he hoped I was that break. He hoped (as I did) that he could conquer his addictions and we could be together indefinitely with a deep commitment and dedication to each other and ou
r relationship. He was banking on my strength and will to help him stay away from the wrong people—his so-called friends who claimed to love him and told him how great he was, while they devoured his food, did his drugs and alcohol, and took whatever he offered them. And believe me, he was a generous man.

  “The first thing you have to do is find yourself,” I said. “You have a good personality so you can attract good people who care about you for you, not for what you can give them.”

  My presence in Richard’s life was a positive influence—for a while. First thing in the morning, Richard embarked on a health regime that I helped him fashion. He wanted to get up early like a normal person instead of sleeping in until two in the afternoon as he was accustomed to doing. He wanted to eat a real breakfast, so his cook and I made fresh oatmeal with berries, eggs, bacon, toast, and his favorite—my mom’s recipe for pancakes. Whenever I had time, I cooked them for him, added some cinnamon and nutmeg, and he was in seventh heaven.

  After breakfast, we met our trainer on the tennis court and lobbed some balls around for a while. Some days, he invited over his friends who were stuntmen, and we all engaged in tennis tournaments. There, he would get inspired with an idea and would run various stories by me. His creative energy seemed to flourish when he was doing sports, and more than once he took on several different personas throughout the tennis game, which he would write about later.

  After I’d known him for a while, Richard confided in me that he couldn’t read. He learned all of his lines phonetically with the help of a few intimate acquaintances, and more than anything in the world, he wanted me to teach him to read. I found some novels about humor and Western history, and he made great strides in his reading, with me coaching him along the way. It turned out that he loved words, and his dream was to read War and Peace. He said, “I heard that War and Peace is the hardest motherfuckin’ novel to read. I’m gonna read it. If I can’t read it, it’s so damned big, at least I can kill someone with it. Use it as a weapon.”