by Wendy Walker
Even more important was the question of how to accept my loss. Since my husband had not died, my task was to find forgiveness. And to find forgiveness, I needed to understand my inner patterns while I was grappling with the idea of real love. I had a few examples of people in love who had really affected me. Larry and I had had lunch with Nancy Reagan when her husband was ill but still alive. Larry had looked at Nancy with great compassion and gently asked her, “Do you ever wish he would just peacefully move on?”
“No,” she said, “because then I wouldn’t be able to kiss him good night.”
Now that was a love to emulate, a role model for the way a husband and wife could be with each other, even in the most difficult of circumstances. And then there’s Jenny Craig, weight-loss guru and philanthropist. She and her husband, Sid, were like a second family to me and they had the kind of love affair that dreams are made of. When Sid died in 2008 at the age of seventy-six, Jenny wrote the following letter and read it at his funeral.
Remember when our love was in its infancy? Because of work commitments we lived in two separate cities. We wrote letters expressing our desire to one day be together. You later reminded me that you saved each letter as a treasured keepsake… so I write you my last letter.
My darling Sid,
I can’t remember the very moment that I fell in love with you. It was as though it had always been. From the start, I knew it was God’s plan for us to share a life… and what a life he had designed for us. Whether at business, watching our horses cross the finish line or dancing to our favorite songs… each day was like a trip to the Winner’s Circle. Was it your flashing smile, your sparkling eyes, your intelligent wit or the kindness in your heart that made me know from the start that it was you I wanted to spend the rest of my life with? How do I begin to thank you for the happiness you brought to each day… each hour… each moment that we were together? How do I begin to summarize the many celebrations of achievement as each year brought us more and more blessings from God? Sid, together we created a family and lifestyle that most people only dream about. How soon you were taken away from me. Was that all part of God’s master plan? If so… then he must have needed another angel in heaven. I will always cherish our years together… the midnight talks… the love-filled moments when I thought I heard God whisper, “Until death do you part” and now the time has come… the time when we must say good-bye. I will be with you again in heaven one day and until that time… rest in the knowledge that my love for you is undying and will grow stronger with each day until we’re together for all eternity.
Rest in peace, my love… and once in a while wink at me from Heaven… I promise I’ll be watching.
With all my love forever,
Jenny
I remember when my father died, my mother said life was like drinking champagne without the bubbles. I was lucky to have had parents who were so in love with each other.
And so, with the help of some really great friends, like Char, Mary, George, Ken, John, Michelle, Cindy, Jenny, Katie, and so many more, I realized that I could rise above it, but it was a process rather than something you did and then it was over. I needed to find forgiveness newly, every day. And then the next day and the day after that. Blame only made the pain hurt more and I needed to find a way to release it and move on. When it was gone, I’d have a chance to see the higher purpose for the pain in the first place.
During this challenging period, I consulted my friend, spiritualist Deepak Chopra, who asked me an intriguing question. “What do you really want for yourself?”
I thought for a few minutes. Then I said, “I want good health. I want to enjoy my life and my children and I want to live for the future, not the past. I want to find someone who truly loves me and it would feel so good to be a family again.”
He listened carefully and said, “Here’s how you get what you want. You need to be ruthless, cunning, patient, and sweet.”
That was some food for thought. I had so much to consider, but the turning point came for me when I finally realized that I had loved my husband completely, as much as I possibly could. When I finally realized that, I started to heal. I found some peace in that recognition and enough personal forgiveness to move forward and embrace my new life as a single woman, once again.
Another turning point came when I took a good long look at my friends. Being in crisis really shows you who your friends are, what they believe, and how much they care about you. Char says, “I got to watch Wendy transform into the person she always was. I could see traces of her emotional scars fading through time and she became herself again and found some new and wonderful friends. Life is a school and we are here to learn lessons.”
Char taught me that our lives unfold according to the choices we make. And there is a reason why things happen. She told me that she uses her psychic work to prevent problems and achieve goals. “When we combine logic, common sense, and intuition, we get our best answers.”
I recall a night during my divorce when Char and two new friends of mine, John Assaraf and Ian, were at my house for dinner. We were just finishing our main course when John said, “Let’s go around the table and say one thing we’re grateful for.”
While the others were talking, I thought about my divorce, the children, the upheaval in our lives, and the loss of a dream of a tightly knit family who were there for one another. I thought about our menagerie of animals—our three dogs, the cat, nine fish, and a bearded dragon. When Walker wanted yet another pet, I recalled telling him I would get him anything he wanted—as long as it didn’t breathe. I thought of gorgeous, successful women like Halle Berry and Reese Witherspoon who were disappointed when their relationships fell apart. And they had found the strength to move on. It was true that I had lost the fairy tale of happily ever after, but I had gained the people who were smiling at me and making me feel loved. And I had gained myself. That was a good enough reason for anyone.
When my turn came, I said, “I’m grateful for having met each one of you. I can see why this happened. If I hadn’t divorced, none of you would be sitting at this table.”
I have come to realize that in order to forgive, I can say, “Thank you for giving me this experience.” I also understand that when I relinquish my desire to impose my will on the future, the path to happiness becomes clear.
EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON
This might be the most important and most difficult lesson of all. Life is full of both wonder and excitement. In an attempt to see the glass half full, let’s list our accomplishments for the year. There are plenty, and the list keeps getting longer, the more you think about it.
Now, list your disappointments that have happened throughout your life. Put them all down and take a look. When I did this, I was amazed to find that the things that had most upset me in life had all been gateways to something better. Oh, now I understand, I thought to myself, it’s all in the perception.
My list included my father dying early in my life as a terrible disappointment. As a young woman, I had no male figure on whom to lean and who would take care of me. But now I can see that the loss of my father was a pivotal reason for my success. Since I had no one to fall back on and no one to make my decisions for me, I had to do it all myself.
Then there was my divorce, during which I opened myself up to a spiritual part of life that I never fully understood. I began a search for the light and positive energy in people and in situations that I had previously overlooked. And I found what I was looking for.
You just have to let go. If you can take your list of disappointments and understand the good that came out of them and how they helped you change for the better, that will help you deal with future disappointments. For each difficulty along the path, there is a really good reason that it happened, whether you get to see it now, a year from now, three years from now, or even thirty. You just need to keep your faith, believe in yourself, cultivate patience and goodwill, and surround yourself with positive people. Then the rest will
take care of itself.
CHAPTER 17
Treat All People like the “Big People”
Marlon Brando had been on our Larry King Live wish list forever, but we didn’t have a lot of hope. We’d tried many times, but rumor and conventional wisdom told us that legendary Marlon Brando had become a recluse. Few people ever saw him, and although we knew he lived in Los Angeles, he reputedly was hugely overweight and rarely left his home.
During the OJ Simpson trial in 1994, I was booking a show featuring some of the principals when I heard an overhead page in the CNN newsroom in Los Angeles. “Wendy,” a voice called out, “you have a call on line one.”
I picked up the closest phone to talk to one of my bookers who could hardly contain her excitement. “Wendy,” she said, “are you sitting down? You’re not going to believe this. We just got one of the top people we really wanted. They called us. Guess who it is.”
“Is it Michael Jackson?” I asked hopefully. Larry had once interviewed him when he was twelve but never as an adult. He had been on our wish list for a long time.
“Nope,” she said, “better. It’s Marlon Brando.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” I said.
“No, I’m not,” she assured me.
I could hardly believe our luck. Generally, with someone as legendary as Marlon Brando, it takes forever to do the negotiations, to come to terms, and to finalize the interview, if it ever happens at all. You see, no matter who it is, we never offer to pay for an interview. While other news shows find ways around this by perhaps paying large sums for photos, we make no exceptions to this rule. Not even for the Marlon Brandos of the world, the people who are not only uninterested in publicity but generally run from it like the plague. So why was he offering to come on the show? I wanted to know.
Apparently, someone had written a kiss-and-tell biography about Brando that had really made him angry. He had decided to write his own book and tell his own story but he hadn’t read the small print in his contract with Random House, stating that he was required to do one publicity appearance to promote his book—any one he chose. While he preferred to do nothing, rather than breach his contract, he had decided to appear on Larry King Live. So instead of our having to work with his people to try to nail this rare interview, his rep had picked up a phone and offered him as a guest—with one caveat. He wanted to meet Larry in person first. Right away.
I’ve seldom heard Larry sound more excited than when I told him Marlon Brando wanted to appear on the show. “But he wants to meet you beforehand,” I told Larry.
“When?” Larry asked.
“Actually,” I said, “he’s in his car right now on his way to our hotel. He wants to pick you up and take you for a drive.”
We were staying at our usual LA spot, the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, and in less than ten minutes, Larry and I were standing in the hotel breezeway as this larger than life man came driving up in a great big white Chevy. He waved, so did we, Larry jumped into the passenger seat, and they zoomed off. I stood there, dumbstruck. He was bigger than life. I mean huge, so I had expected someone else to be driving. But it was Marlon himself at the wheel of the car. What kind of trouble would these two men get into?
I had no idea where they were going or how long they’d be gone. Neither did Larry. But in a couple of hours I got a call from Larry that they were returning. When I headed back down to the breezeway to greet them, they were sitting as close as they could manage in the front seat of Marlon’s car, their arms around each other, hugging, singing songs, and having a great time. Clearly, the interview was on.
As I saw them reluctant to leave each other, I had an idea that this kind of intimacy would thrive in a more homey atmosphere than the CNN studio. Larry and I were of one mind about this when he happily told me, “He’ll do it but he wants to do it at his house on Mulholland Drive.”
That was where Marlon felt the most comfortable, so I called Atlanta to speak to Tom Johnson, then president. “You’re not going to believe this,” I said, “but we have an interview booked for a few days from now with Marlon Brando. We have him for the whole hour and he wants to do it at his house. I’d like ninety minutes. What do you say?”
It was an unequivocal yes. In fact, it was all systems go as I kicked into high gear and gathered the production team to head up to Marlon Brando’s house for a site survey. When I walked through the front door, I thought I had entered a time warp. Everything in this bachelor pad–type bungalow felt like it was straight out of the sixties and relatively small compared to what I had expected.
A few days later, I arrived at the house around midafternoon once again, this time to prepare for the upcoming live interview. But time was going by and as our crew was setting up, I wondered when the great man himself would come out and show his face. As we approached 6 p.m., the start of the show, I wondered if Mr. Brando intended on coming out at all. But just when we had less than fifteen minutes to airtime and we were all in terror that he might have changed his mind, he wandered out from a back room, barefoot, with a coffee cup in his hand. But there had to be more in that cup than just coffee! Still, I have to say, I have rarely seen a man act more graciously before a show. He was determined to show no favorites as he stood at the entryway of the room.
After a quick look around, the legendary Mr. Brando did not greet Larry first, which surprised everyone. He also did not greet me. Instead, he went around the entire room, shaking hands with every technician, truck operator, soundman, camera operator—anyone doing anything of a technical nature. He personally introduced himself to each person, saying, “Hi, I’m Marlon. Welcome to my home.”
I was in awe that this extraordinarily unusual man was not acting arrogantly or rudely, as his reputation dictated. Instead, he was making everyone in the room feel comfortable as he walked around with no shoes. And in my opinion, he was badly in need of a pedicure! To add to that, he had applied his own makeup, he looked pretty rough around the edges, and I made an unusual decision to leave him exactly the way he was. If it were anyone else, I would have made sure his feet were covered and that he looked reasonably well groomed, but in this case, I decided to just let it be. Marlon Brando was Marlon Brando, with no help required from me.
In the end, I believe that one of the reasons this ninety-minute show was so appealing was because it was so real. I gave no directives to “lose the cup” or “fix his makeup” or “straighten his pants” or shoot from a different direction to eliminate a crotch shot. If Marlon Brando was willing to let it all hang out, so was I, a decision that gratefully worked in our favor.
The interview began when Marlon said to Larry, “You can’t see my feet, can you? I forgot to put my shoes on.”
Larry answered, “That’s okay, that’s all right.”
From there it progressed into a mutual admiration exchange.
KING: Explain what you did, don’t put me on, Marlon, you put your own makeup on today?
BRANDO: I did because I wanted to look exactly like you and… This was my goal, that’s right.
KING: And you believed…
BRANDO: I wore some red suspenders in your honor. I did everything I could and then I’ve received some criticism from these people [the makeup people] then.
KING: They wanted to do you themselves?
BRANDO: They wanted to do it.
KING: I’m honored. Do you see my eyebrows that dark and that way and that sort of stark look?
BRANDO: Yes, a little of the, what do you call it, who was that famous Italian guy, the big lover that played the Sheik, what was his name?
KING: Valentino.
A few minutes later, Larry asked Marlon a provocative question.
KING: Why don’t you like being interviewed?
BRANDO: Because I don’t like the idea of selling yourself for money. I—
KING: You don’t like to go on to sell a book?
BRANDO: I don’t.
KING: Or sell a movie?
BRA
NDO: I don’t. I’ve never sold a movie and this is the first time I’ve ever been beating the drum for some product. In this case, it’s Random House’s book.
KING: Because you promised them you would do one?
BRANDO: It was unbeknownst to me that it was part of the contract and if I didn’t [do an interview], I would be in breach of contract. But aside from that I’ve had pleasure talking to you. I’m fascinated with people, especially the kind of people—I wouldn’t lump you with others because you are exceptional.
As the show went on, I watched them becoming more intimate in a way that Larry rarely allows. Some wonderful things came out of that interview that surprised all of us. Mainly, we all learned that Marlon Brando did not act for the art of it alone. One thinks of him as one of the most iconic actors who ever lived in such roles as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront, or as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. Surely acting was under his skin and he did it for the art, not the money. But he had something different to say about that.
KING: Why did you choose acting as a career? Why did you choose to be other people?
BRANDO: It’s useful to make an observation that everybody here in this room is an actor. You’re an actor and the best performances I’ve ever seen is when the director says, “CUT,” and the director says, “That was great.” That was wonderful. That was good. But they said we had a little lighting problem. Let’s do it again. What he’s thinking is, Jesus Christ, that’s so fucked—excuse me… It wasn’t done well, so we’ve got to do it over but everybody tried to handle it.
When you say, how do you do, how are you, you look fine, you’re doing two things at once. You’re reading the person’s real intention. You’re trying to feel who he is and making an assessment and trying to ignore the mythology.