Bogie had signed to do Joe Mankiewicz’s Barefoot Contessa in Rome, starting in January 1954, which meant three months or more there. I didn’t want to leave the children for that long, so we agreed that I would follow in three weeks. Despite the fact that Steve was a January baby, he was allowed to enter school (kindergarten) a few months before his fifth birthday – Westlake was a school for girls, but the kindergarten was coeducational. Bogie and I went to stand in the background on his first day. There was this small boy sitting at his own little desk – of course he looked adorable, like a little man. I looked at Bogie and saw his eyes filled with tears watching his son starting on the road to growing up, learning independence – it caught Bogie unawares. I think he had never believed he’d be seeing a son of his doing anything at all – ever.
So he left for Rome and The Barefoot Contessa, and I headed for New York a few weeks later. The day before I was to leave for London, Frank Sinatra called to ask if I’d mind carrying a coconut cake to Ava Gardner, who was in the film with Bogie (apparently she liked coconut cake). We had started seeing Frank the year before. I don’t recall quite how the friendship began – he was alone and not happy, neither work nor his personal life had been going well, so we’d had dinner with him a few times and he’d been to our house. Close friendship was still to come. On the morning of my departure from New York the cake was delivered to me in a large white box – unpackable, of course, so I took off with the coconut cake permanently attached to my hand to keep it from getting crushed. I stayed a night in London, and then Bogie was at the Rome airport to greet me. The care he took of me – that he was still excited to see me, still looked forward to me – I marveled at his ability to keep our relationship fresh. He took me and my cake box to the Excelsior Hotel and I asked him to tell Ava Gardner I had brought it. He told her – she did nothing about it – so two days later I decided to take it to her before it rotted. I didn’t know her and felt very awkward about it – who knows what has happened between a man and a woman when it goes sour? Bogie had told me the picture was going well and that Ava had many people with her all the time, including her sister and a bullfighter named Luis Miguel Dominguin, with whom she was in love. I took the damn cake to the studio and knocked on her dressing-room door. After I had identified myself, the door opened. I felt like an idiot standing there with the bloody box – there were assorted people in the room and I was introduced to none of them. I said, ‘I brought this cake for you – Frank sent it to me in New York, he thought you’d like it.’ She couldn’t have cared less. She wanted me to put it down on some table she indicated – not a thank-you, nothing. I stood there very much out of place and finally managed to get away. I was furious with her and never did get to know her on that film, but have a little since and like her. Her reaction had only to do with Frank – she was clearly through with him, but it wasn’t that way on his side. I never told Frank the coconut-cake saga, he would have been too hurt. Bogie always said the girls at M-G-M were so pampered, so catered to, that they were totally spoiled and self-indulgent. But she was professional about her work, and that’s all he cared about.
Our time in Rome was fun. Howard Hawks, Harry Kurnitz, and William Faulkner were there preparing for The Egyptian, and a group of us, including Edmond O’Brien, also in Bogie’s film, would go around the corner from the Excelsior to Harry’s Bar for dinner. Invariably Bill Faulkner would be sitting alone at a table. He was such a shy man – Bogie or I would go over and ask him to join us and he was so grateful for company that he’d stay with us until we left. One night Howard gave a dinner at a great Italian restaurant called Passetto. I was seated next to Kurnitz and opposite Bill. With my usual tact, I said, ‘Tell me, Bill, why do you drink?’ Bill, in his soft Southern drawl said, ‘Well, with one martini ah feel bigger, wiser, taller, and with two it goes to the superlative, and ah feel biggest, wisest, tallest, and with three there ain’t no holdin’ me.’ An enchanting and revealing answer. I suppose the fact of his being a small man had always bothered him, probably started him drinking. He was a charming and gentle man, and very serious. He was telling us what he planned to do after he finished the script: ‘I thought I’d drive through the Loire Valley – tasting the wine of the country as I go.’ I remember Kurnitz telling us that Faulkner was poured off the plane on arrival in Cairo. After a few days of not seeing him around, Harry decided, as they were collaborating on the script, to stop by Bill’s hotel and visit him. He knocked on the door – a nurse quickly left the room, which had a few empty bottles on the floor. Bill was sitting up in bed. Harry said, ‘Well, Bill, it’s good to see you – how are you doing?’ ‘Just fine, Harry – ah just can’t seem to shake this cold!’
My two months in Rome consisted mainly of walking the same streets over and over again to keep myself busy while Bogie was working. At night, when Bogie got back to the hotel, I was full of energy and raring to go – but he, of course, had to work the next day, so we’d go to dinner and hit the sack. Still, whenever he had a few days off, we’d go to Florence or Venice, and he loved Italy as much as I did. But our time there was finally over and it was back home, via London and New York. Oh, how I wanted to see my children – the best part of going away was opening my own front door. Everything I really wanted was there.
We were deluged with phone calls from our friends welcoming us back, and we started seeing everyone. Lee and Ira Gershwin gave a large party for Leonard Bernstein, whom we’d never met. He was ravishing to look at, with enormous vitality, energy, and a great sense of fun. Bogie and I were dazzled by him, though if it came to a contest I would have won. Lenny sat down at the piano, I sat at his feet, everyone sang their old and new songs. I was in my element – there was almost nothing I enjoyed as much as sitting by a piano, hearing and singing songs. One of the rituals at the Gershwin house was the playing of new scores by the men who wrote them, as Harold Arlen and Ira himself did that night with the score for A Star Is Born. Judy Garland and Sid Luft had moved to our street, two houses away from us – their daughter Lorna was about six months younger than Leslie, so we had all become very chummy strolling back and forth between houses. Judy had just finished A Star Is Born, with Sid as producer, and we were all looking forward to it, feeling that at last Judy, after her many professional and private ups and downs, was about to realize her dream and win an Academy Award for her performance, proving to all the cynics that she was still very much an artist. So everyone that evening was ‘up,’ and the party lasted until the wee hours. Lenny Bernstein was in Hollywood to see On the Waterfront, as Sam Spiegel wanted him to score it. He and I were very much attracted to each other, I don’t know why – we were both happy with our mates. Anyway, Bogie and I saw a lot of him from that night on – he’d come to the house for tennis, drinks, dinner. He was always work-consumed. Bogie said that he was a genius – that he would always be on the move, had to do what he had to do. He was right, of course. Once when he knew Lenny was coming to town, Bogie said, ‘Oh, I can’t take that sitting on the floor, playing the piano all night, I’m going on the boat.’ With Lenny it was always music until three in the morning. It was fun – it was new, and all my life I have been prey to anything new. Besides, at Hollywood parties, women were ignored. If you weren’t the hottest, most successful kid in town, men stayed away from you and talked among themselves about the movies they made – about the picture business. Women did not feel like women, we were just there. So anyone who paid special attention became a necessary part of one’s life. I used to think that if we had been free souls, Lenny and I might have run off together. Another childish fantasy. As Bogie said, ‘Lenny has too many things to do in his life to be a satisfying mate. You’d probably have a great time for a weekend but not for a lifetime.’ That’s where the twenty-five-year differences in our ages showed. He had the patience and trust in me to let me grow. He knew I was an innocent, never having had the chance to spread my sexual wings, so he allowed me my intermittent crushes. He had taught me early that all through one�
�s life one meets people whom one is attracted to – sure, it’s fun, but that’s when you decide whether one weekend is worth it. I never dared. Not only did my nice-Jewish-girl syndrome get in the way, but I knew that Bogie – however much he loved me – would put up with flirtation, but if I ever really did anything, he would leave me. He valued character more than anything, and he trusted mine – I knew that and it kept me in check.
Time decided it was time for a cover story on Bogie. In the piece Bogie sounded off on all his favorite subjects:
WOMEN – They’ve got us – we should never have set them free [last-century man, remember].
MONEY – The only reason to have money is to tell any SOB in the world to go to Hell.
FATHERHOOD – It came a little late in life. I don’t understand the children and I think they don’t understand me and all I can say is thank God for Betty. [Is it any wonder I loved him?]
MANNERS – I have manners. I was brought up that way, but in this goldfish-bowl life, it is sometimes hard to use them. A night club is a good place not to have manners.
He talked about how much better he felt when working – ‘Puts me on the wagon.’
John Huston and a few friends were sitting around one evening and he asked if anyone had the desire to relive part of his life. Only Bogie said yes – ‘When I was courting Betty.’ (Is it any wonder?)
We opened an Edward R. Murrow Person to Person season that September. Great excitement in the household then – we were wild Murrow fans, stayed home every Sunday night for See It Now. Anyone who lived during that time had to be aware of Murrow’s dedication, character, and purity of soul. He changed the face of broadcasting, and had as much to do with McCarthy’s downfall as anyone in government. On Person to Person we took him through our home, talked about me on Truman’s piano, Bogie’s being the Maud Humphrey Baby, and Bogie’s future project, The Man Who Would Be King. Bogie’s definition: a project is what it’s called until you get the money together. Huston had talked about Bogie and Gable doing this film in the Himalayas – another inaccessible Huston location and another dream unrealized until 1976, when Huston actually made it, but with Sean Connery and Michael Caine. Stephen and Leslie, dressed for bed, made a brief appearance – even Harvey and his family were seen coast to coast. I was a nervous wreck as usual, but, as always, once it was over I wanted to go back to the beginning and do it all over again.
That summer and fall began our close friendship with Sinatra. We began by seeing more of him through others – then he started to visit us and we to visit him. Bogie always liked Frank – he enjoyed his ‘fighting windmills’ and Frank made him laugh. It was not a great career time for Frank, though getting better steadily since From Here to Eternity. He was lonely and still in love with Ava Gardner – I do believe it was the first and only time that someone else had done the leaving. Frank was attracted to Bogie and to Spencer Tracy – he admired them as men and as talents, and being with them gave him a feeling of solidity that his life lacked. He was a restless man, totally incapable of being alone. He really came alive at night, due to a lifetime of training as a band singer. Frank had an apartment in a great building on Wilshire Boulevard which belonged to Gladys Belzer, mother of Loretta Young. On his way to being superagent, Swifty Lazar lived in an apartment next to Frank’s. Whenever Swifty gave a dinner party, we were there and Frank often was too – the two bachelors were always free.
A Star Is Born opened in October – a big old-fashioned Hollywood opening. Sid and Judy were giving a gigantic party and, as friends and neighbors, we were of course invited. Bogie and I were not ones for openings – too many lights, people, and, worst of all, cameras, and to get all done up just to sit in a movie theatre seemed silly. But this was not the usual opening – because of Judy. She was a complicated woman of tremendous wit and intelligence who had survived a distorted childhood and distorted marriages and relationships that had left their mark. But she and I became good friends. She was fun and, when we’d sit quietly of an afternoon or evening, great company. It was hard for her to think beyond herself – it had been that way for too long. But A Star Is Born was made in spite of the cynics’ predictions, and it was Sid who helped her get through. Whatever quirks he may have had, he was very good with his children and he did take care of Judy through some rough times that could not have been easy for him. The movie was a real comback (I hate that word, but for want of another) for her, and at last she seemed happy – had a lovely home, Liza and Lorna with her, nothing could go wrong.
Bogie had four films released that year. Cary Grant came to the house one afternoon and remarked, ‘You get all the good parts now, Bogie – how do you get so many of them?’ Bogie’s answer was ‘Because I keep working.’ He felt that work breeds work, and you’re bound to get good things if you keep at it. So that our life (thank God) was far from being one enormous party. Most of our free time was spent at home. Our idea of a perfect evening was dinner on trays in front of the television. We had a great comfortable sofa with an enormous coffee table in front of it – our trays would be set on the table – I’d serve – and if Bogie liked the menu we’d have a wonderful evening. He’d sit at the end of the sofa nearest to the TV – I’d stretch out at the other end with my feet on his lap. We enjoyed our cozy evenings alone – we guarded them. Only my occasional urge to go to a party would get Bogie out – otherwise he was perfectly content to stay at home every night of the week. What he did enjoy was lunch at Romanoff’s. When he wasn’t working he’d go almost daily and take Steve from time to time. Often he’d play chess with Mike into the afternoon. Unless Bogie was on the boat, he was at somewhat of a loss when he wasn’t working.
We both started the new year with jobs – Bogie in We’re No Angels with Peter Ustinov and I in The Cobweb, my first time at the legendary M-G-M. It was also the year of the new Thunderbirds, and Bogie and Cooper and Gable each bought one – middle-aged hot-rodders. The new sleek look appealed to them all.
Judy was expecting another baby, she’d told me months before; was so excited about it, so looking forward to it. Maybe this time she’d have a boy! And she was nominated for an Academy Award for A Star Is Born. So was Grace Kelly for The Country Girl, and though she was riding very high at the time, we were sure Judy would win.
Frank stopped by our house for a drink the night Judy was taken to the hospital. We had a rule by then: If the light over the front door was on, we were home and awake and a chosen very few could ring the bell; if not, we were not receiving. Frank had started coming almost nightly – clearly we provided some sort of stability for him – and wherever he’d been for dinner or with whom, he still felt the need to check in. Bogie said some time later, ‘You don’t think he comes to see me, do you?’ Bogie was sure I was the attraction. But I was only one of them – Bogie sold himself short.
The night Judy’s baby was born Frank was going to the hospital to see her and asked me if I wanted to come along – Bogie was working the next day, so we went without him. Frank had brought some kind of stuffed toy for Judy. We saw her after she came out of the recovery room, still fuzzy from the anesthesia, having indeed mothered a son. We kissed her – Frank gave her the toy – it was a lovely moment, very sweet and thoughtful of Frank, and it meant a great deal to Judy. The Academy Awards would be given while she was still in the hospital. The TV networks had sent crews to wire the room, get cameras in – men were hanging outside her windows placing cables, lights, God knows what. The big night came and we were all gathered around our sets praying – and Judy lost. She carried it off beautifully, saying her son, Joey, was more important than any Oscar could be, but she was deeply disappointed – and hurt. It confirmed her belief that the industry was against her. She knew it was then or never. Instinctively, all her friends knew the same. Judy wasn’t like any other performer. There was so much emotion involved in her career – in her life – it was always all or nothing. And though she put on a hell of a front, this was one more slap in the face. She was bitter abo
ut it, and, for that matter, all closest to her were.
That year I was in Blood Alley with John Wayne – to my surprise warm, likable, and helpful – and William Wellman’s salty and terrific directing.
And then Bogie and I were offered a live telecast of The Petrified Forest for Producer’s Showcase – a two-hour special, with Fred Coe producing and directing, Tad Mosel adapting Robert Sherwood’s play. Henry Fonda was to play Leslie Howard’s role, Bogie his original one of Mantee, and I the girl. It was a simple, romantic, ingenue role, unlike anything I’d ever done, and all live. God – like a play! We said yes. I was totally terrified through the entire three weeks of rehearsal. I recall David Selznick telling me I was crazy to do a live show – ‘If you make a mistake, you make it in front of three million people.’ But I had long since decided I had to take chances with my career. I remembered Bogie telling Judy, when she’d sit in the living room saying she had more goddamn talent than anyone in town, ‘Talent’s no good in a living room, you’ve got to get out there and do it.’ I knew I had to take risks; if I fell on my ass, I fell on my ass. And certainly no one in the film industry would let me try anything new. So we did it. I’d never spent time with Fonda before – he was a rather withdrawn man then, ill at ease. But great to work with – professional, generous – the start of my admiration for and devotion to him. Scared as I was, it was wonderful working with pros like Hank and Bogie, even wonderful working in this new medium of television, which seemed to have a corner on the worst features of movies and theatre combined.
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