Raymond Massey came to town and visited – they were longtime friends and colleagues. Ray started the visit avoiding any talk about Bogie’s illness, but Bogie turned the tables on him by saying, ‘Wait till you hear what happened to me – it was awful,’ describing his operation in detail and asking if Ray wanted to see his scar. By the end of the visit it was Ray who needed cheering up.
Christmas was not far off. David and Jennifer Selznick came over one afternoon – David very concerned whether everything that could be done for Bogie was being done. Shouldn’t I maybe call in another doctor? Get another opinion? In this great country of ours, wasn’t there one mind who knew more than any other? He was sweet and loving, and I was grateful. Oh, how I wished there were one mind that had the answer! I told him I had asked the doctors the same question. They all had said no – if it made me feel better, I should by all means bring in someone else, but they had discussed Bogie with some of their colleagues, and it was agreed that they had done all that could be done. David understood – said he’d like to give Bogie pictures of me and the children for Christmas, and would I mind if John Engstead came over to photograph us? What a lovely idea. I didn’t know how to make Christmas and Bogie’s birthday even halfway normal, but I would have a tree and many gifts for the children, even gifts for Bogie.
It was around this time that the three doctors sat me down in the Butternut Room. Brandsma was the spokesman. ‘I’m sure you’d rather know the truth, wouldn’t you? I’m sure you know already. Bogie cannot last much longer. We don’t know how he’s lasted this long. The nitrogen mustard didn’t work – we would certainly have seen a difference by two weeks after he’d had the treatment. We really didn’t expect it to work, we just hoped.’ ‘But isn’t it possible,’ I asked, ‘that it might still have some effect?’ I knew there was no answer they could give me that I wanted to hear, yet I still asked the question. I didn’t accept, couldn’t, the fact of Bogie dying. I heard the words – answered accordingly – but that was all. I had continually asked the nurses, ‘Isn’t he better today? He ate a little more – isn’t that a sign of improvement?’ They shook their heads. There was no way he would get better – it was just a matter of time.
Brandsma advised me to begin to think about arrangements, to prepare myself and figure out what I would need and from whom. I remember looking pleadingly at these men who held my husband’s life in their hands – John Jones, wonderful and dedicated, saying, ‘I’ve done everything I knew how to do – I hoped I’d gotten it all, but clearly I didn’t.’ They were all sad – they admired Bogie so much. I didn’t know what to do. I thought of K.C. On some excuse, I left the house one afternoon and drove to All Saints Church and sat in Rev. Smith’s office, telling him what the doctors had said. ‘So I suppose it will happen sometime soon – it could be days, weeks, no one is quite sure. K.C., he is not a religious man in the churchgoing sense, but he’s very religious in the life-everyday sense. He believes in the Ten Commandments, he believes in the Golden Rule, and he’s lived his life by them. So if you’d just think about it, so when the time comes you’ll know what to say …’ I knew K.C. would help with the children. He had a gift of communication with the young which was to be envied – they loved and trusted him.
I don’t remember repeating my discussion with the doctors to anyone else. Mother and Lee were at the house daily, but they spent more time with Steve and Leslie than with Bogie. I suppose one reason I kept silent was that voicing it might make it happen. I know I didn’t articulate even to myself that he would leave me soon. As long as he was breathing, could talk, I felt our life would continue. I knew the word death – but I’d never really been in the presence of it.
I knew he wanted to be cremated, but that too was only a word. How much preparation could one make when dealing not with fact but with emotion?
He still shaved every morning – on a tray in front of a mirror, with an electric razor. I don’t know what he saw in that mirror, but he never turned away. So how could I?
Spence and Katie came to visit almost every night – about eight-thirty, after everyone else had gone and Bogie was back upstairs. He looked forward to their visits – so did I. They behaved as they always had: Spence pulling up a chair at the foot of the bed, using our bench as a table for his coffee – Katie on the floor. Spence telling jokes – kidding around as he always did with Bogie. I don’t know how he managed, but he did. Much later Katie told me that he was shattered before each visit and shattered after. While he was there it was no different from the way we had all been in better days. I loved those people so much – they were both so solid, so complete, so unqualified. They helped me as much as they did Bogie.
I remember Carolyn picking me up one afternoon to go Christmas shopping. As we were driving away from home, I said, ‘If anything happens to Bogie, I’ll never get married again – never.’ Her reply was ‘Never say never.’ She was right. But despite such apprehensions about a future without Bogie, I never sat down and thought to myself, ‘He’s going to die.’ I never thought each day could be his last – or that I would waken one morning and find him gone.
By that time we had two nurses. When the pain increased, the doctor prescribed something. I don’t know what – morphine? Bogie was so thin by then that every time a needle touched him it left a mark – there were fewer and fewer areas that were in the clear. One afternoon he got out of bed and, with only his pajama top on, pushed the wheelchair across the room to the chaise. His will to live was so strong, he forced his body to do what it was incapable of doing. The sight of him walking away from me – he was skin and bone, I don’t know how he stood up – was devastating, heart-breaking.
When Brandsma came, Bogie would ask careful questions – no life-or-death ones. ‘Why was I in pain after the last treatments?’ ‘The scar tissue hadn’t completely dissolved and was pressing on a nerve.’ Bogie knew you had to eat to stay alive, but he couldn’t. The malteds came twice daily – coffee, water, liquids mostly. He just couldn’t get food down – he would chew endlessly a bit of toast. His plea to me was always the same: ‘If I could just work.’ Because if he worked he’d be okay.
I often left the room when the doctor was there, hoping Bogie might say something to him he wouldn’t say to me. I’d ask Brandsma endless questions afterward: ‘What did he say – what did you tell him – what does he think?’ Finally Bogie began having trouble breathing. The doctor told me we should have oxygen in the house – he told Bogie it would make it easier on him while he was trying to gain strength, an occasional whiff was a great pick-me-up. Even I should try it – it’s terrific. Nothing was terrific. But two enormous green tanks came, one for upstairs, one for down. I was shown how to work them – not too complicated. I took some and it was good. Bogie tried it – he didn’t make a fuss – another indignity which had to be borne. It made him feel easier and he used it from time to time – more often each day.
One afternoon Steve and Leslie were in our bedroom playing. Bogie was on the chaise – he just watched them. When they went for their baths, he said, ‘Don’t have them in here too often, Baby.’ He didn’t want them to see him as he was, or he didn’t want them to remember him as he was. Or, he couldn’t bear to look at them knowing he wouldn’t be around for the rest of their lives.
It is extraordinary that not once did Bogie ever say a word to me along the lines of ‘If anything should happen to me’ – or ‘When’ – or ‘I know.’ We continued the game of its being nothing more than a bad virus. Bogie set the tone, and his attitude was such that I had to play along. He said to me once, ‘If you’re okay, then I am – if you’re upset, then I am.’ So there was nothing for me to do but be okay.
He was still presiding over the cocktail hour. He’d started drinking martinis again which I made with dry sherry – he liked that better. Probably he could taste them more than Scotch. His lungs must have been filling up, because he spat a lot. Instead of having to ask for a tissue constantly, it was easier for him to have
a receptacle. The nurses provided a stainless-steel one, hideously kidney-shaped and hideously clinical-looking. It would sit on the table next to him when he was downstairs and beside the bed when he was up. A couple of people were having drinks – I don’t remember who, but they must have been good friends. I was sitting on the sofa opposite Bogie, having just handed him his drink. As I looked across at him – conversation was proceeding – he just sat there, sipping his martini, interjecting an occasional word, using the steel spittoon. He looked so helpless, so vulnerable, so uncomplaining, that I had to walk over and put my arms around him. I didn’t say anything – it was something I had to do. His reaction was immediate. Almost brushing me away, he said, ‘Don’t do that, Baby – there’s nothing I can do about it.’ That was as close as he ever came to saying anything pointed about his illness.
He was a complete shut-in – had been since St John’s. He’d even said that he was. Once when he was sitting downstairs, Steve and Leslie ran into the room wanting to watch TV. As Leslie ran by, he reached out and stopped her – sat her next to him and kissed her fingers and held her hand in one of the most gentle, loving, and moving gestures I have ever seen …
We got through Christmas – I don’t remember how, but we did. I gave Bogie a portable radio, new pajamas, a smoking jacket – I don’t know what. There was nothing festive about the day. Steve and Leslie opened their many presents and loved that, as any child would. Bogie loved the pictures Engstead had taken – we used one for our Christmas card – and he became fifty-seven years old. By next year all would be well and we’d be having a party once again. New Year’s Eve we had champagne and caviar and drank toasts to each other in the bedroom with Mother and Lee.
Huston was back in California and came every day, regaling Bogie with stories of the filming of Moby Dick. Everyone came in ten-minute shifts – I told them that, no matter what Bogie said, ten minutes was all he could take at a time. There were exceptions – Spence and Katie (who were always there when no one else was anyway), Huston, Morgan, Nunnally, Swifty, Niv, Romanoff – the closest.
Clifton Webb, an old friend of Bogie’s and close to both of us from the beginning of our marriage, had been in Italy making a film. He returned around the end of December and called immediately – wanted to know all about Bogie – had been told he was very ill again and wanted to see him. He became very emotional, kept saying, ‘Oh, poor Bogie – I can’t bear it,’ got weepy on the phone. I told him he could not come unless he could hold himself together, that seeing Bogie after so many months would be a terrible shock to him, but Bogie was very alert and would notice the slightest suggestion of emotion. Clifton shouldn’t come alone, I thought – better with a friend. He finally came with George Cukor, who had been before. I was very apprehensive and stayed with Clifton and George as Bogie was wheeled into the room. Clifton got through it somehow, but as Bogie was being wheeled out of the room, Clifton totally collapsed – started to cry, moan. I was trying to keep him quiet so Bogie wouldn’t hear him. One had not only one’s own emotions to contend with, but also those of friends who couldn’t deal with the facts. Clifton was a special friend – and cried easily – so there was no point in being angry with him. That afternoon, however, he was definitely more of a problem than Bogie ever was.
One day Sam Goldwyn and Willie Wyler came for drinks. By then Bogie was no longer being transferred to the big chair, he just stayed in the wheelchair. The nurse stayed downstairs in case he needed anything. There was general talk. Bogie suddenly beckoned for the nurse – pulled up one pajama leg, exposing his pathetic frail limb – he needed a shot. No fuss. Goldwyn was stunned to see the thinness of that leg. Bogie didn’t see his face – Goldwyn slowly turned away – the conversation was somehow kept going till the shot was administered. That was the only time Bogie ever did anything like that in anyone else’s presence. He apologized briefly, but said he’d needed it for the pain – he was okay now. No dramatics. I marvel at him every time I think of his conduct. He suffered such humiliation from his disease – his poor body had been driven further by his will to live than it was ever meant to go, but still he would not give up. The only thing different I noticed those last few weeks was that he wanted me with him all the time. If I was downstairs visiting a friend, talking with a doctor, whatever – the phone buzzer would ring: ‘Can you come up for a while, Baby?’
One morning Jack Warner called and wanted to know if it would be all right to visit Bogie. I was very much surprised, but I said, ‘Certainly, Jack.’ I gave him a time to come and told Bogie, who was touched that Jack would make the effort – and an effort it was. At the appointed time, the doorbell rang and there stood Jack in Homburg hat. Awkward, nervous, ill at ease. He removed his hat and kept turning it around in his fingers. He said, ‘I won’t stay long – I wanted to see Bogie – I’ve always liked him – admired him. I’ve heard what a time he’s had.’ I took him upstairs, where he stayed with Bogie for about fifteen minutes. I stayed in the room. Bogie had to put him at ease – of course tell him that his first film would be for Columbia. A gentle ribbing – Bogie wouldn’t step too far out of character. And Jack tried to tell some kind of terrible joke. I’m sure he died a thousand deaths during that visit, but he showed up, and that counted for a great deal. He thanked me for letting him come – he felt good about having done that. And I was grateful to him. Bogie said, ‘Jack’s not a bad guy – he’s just so uncomfortable with everyone. He has to make jokes to prove he’s regular.’ Whatever his reasons, it was one of the better things Jack did.
Louella Parsons asked if she could come. Bogie said sure. She had been a good friend – not a friend friend, but a columnist friend. With the exception of Kilgallen and a couple of other New York items, the press had been respectful of his privacy during his illness. About a week before he died there’d been a rumor in the East that his death was imminent and when the wire services and newspapers called to check, Bogie’s words were, ‘What are the ghouls saying about me now?’ Joe Hyams had come over to check the rumor that he was in a coma – always ready to give Bogie a place to let off steam publicly. He told Joe, ‘You can say that I’m down to my last martini. The only thing I’m fighting is to keep my head above the press.’
Our routine had been the same each day for months. I kissed him good night before I went to sleep in the little nap room next to our bedroom – wakened each morning to kiss him good morning – had my breakfast with him. The doctor came – the nurse was there – Harvey came up every day and always walked over to Bogie and stayed with him for most of the day. The children were in school except during the holidays. My conversations with the doctors were always the same. Bogie was getting weaker – I had noticed that when he sipped his grape juice through a glass hospital straw his hand shook, and when he put the glass down on the table his focus was less good. I’d talk to the nurses about it, to the doctors – they said it was because of the pain-killing drugs they were giving him. Since that day in the Good Samaritan Hospital when he asked them to please stop the suction machine, he had not uttered one complaint. I don’t know how we all got through those days – the routine saved us, I guess. Somewhere in there Steve had his eighth birthday party, not a large one, but he had his best friends and a cake and presents – I ran some sixteen-mm. film for them. The essential thing was to do as many normal things as one possibly could. Steve and Leslie saw Bogie every night – kissed him good night – they knew he was there.
One day when Dr Brandsma came in, Bogie said, ‘You know, I don’t seem to be getting any better. I’m getting worried. Am I getting worse or is it what you expect?’ He gave the doctor his arm.
‘I would say it’s about what we expect.’
Questions like that left me unsure whether he really knew he was dying. If there is anything good to say about cancer – and I don’t really think there is – it is that its victims always seem to feel they have licked it. Yet he never asked direct questions, questions that would require definitive answers.
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nbsp; On Saturday, January 12, Spence and Katie came to visit in the evening. They stayed for about forty minutes – maybe more. It was their usual kind of visit, Bogie really enjoying them – except that he was a little less concentrated, his focus a little less good. If they noticed his shaking hand, they never let on. I walked them downstairs to the door and went back up. Bogie wanted to watch Anchors Aweigh with Gene Kelly and Frank on television. We watched it and enjoyed it. Bogie wanted me on the bed with him – next to him. Whenever we were alone in the evening it was always side by side with the television on, there was nothing new about that. Then he said, ‘Why don’t you sleep here tonight, Baby?’ It was the first time that request had been made. ‘Of course I will. I hadn’t because I felt you’d be more comfortable without me.’ Actually, he felt freer about waking up at night without me on the bed – he didn’t like to disturb me! Even at that stage he told the nurse he wanted his wife to stay with him that night. They both looked at me as though I didn’t have to – shouldn’t. But of course I would stay – I wanted to stay with him. I could hold his hand. I always loved holding Bogie’s hand even in its frailty. Odd how important holding a hand can be – how reassuring.
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