Not Young, Still Restless

by Jeanne Cooper

  There was one red flag after another with Harry. It took me years to stop renaming them and start getting honest with myself about this man I thought I wanted.

  And as superficial as it sounds, the truth is, there wouldn’t have even been a second date if he just hadn’t been so damned handsome.

  Harry Bernsen was born and raised in Chicago, one of four very competitive brothers. Their father was a successful real estate investor who owned several properties on the Loop until he lost everything in the 1929 stock market crash. Their mother would hang a framed portrait on the wall of whichever son had given her the most money that week. It was usually Harry, who lived with her well into his twenties. (Red flag: a mama’s boy who should have been out of the house and on his own long before then. The euphemism: how sweet that he gets along so well with and takes such good care of his mother.) He served in the armed forces as a marine before moving to Los Angeles, drawn to show business like a moth to a flame.

  His mother had converted from Catholicism to Christian Science, some of which Harry adhered to with remarkable commitment—he didn’t drink coffee, tea, or alcohol, he didn’t smoke, he didn’t gamble, and he couldn’t have been less interested in drugs. (Red flag: a long list of principles that fails to include anything resembling a faith-based moral compass. The euphemism: what a clean-living, disciplined man!)

  He spent a lot of time traveling as a kind of road manager and merchandiser for such popular acts as Martin and Lewis (starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis), Guy Lombardo, and Burl Ives before becoming an incredibly gifted agent with the Jaffe Agency. I so admired his talent and found his gift of gab so addictively stimulating that I bragged to anyone who would listen that Harry Bernsen could sell ice to an Eskimo. It took me longer than it should have to realize that I was one of the Eskimos.

  He was charming, he was funny, and he had an audacious self-confidence that I found wildly attractive until the novelty wore off and I discovered that “audacious self-confidence” was my euphemism for “massive ego.”

  From the very beginning, my family disliked him. My predictable take on that: “They just don’t know him like I do.” Besides, his mother and I couldn’t stand the sight of each other, so how much did family opinions really count anyway? (There were actually family members of Harry’s whom I adored, but we’ll get around to them later.)

  The bottom line is, I’m the first to admit that I fell into a trap to which we women are vulnerable much too often: I found (or imagined) enough good qualities in him that I was convinced I could nurture them into the spotlight and drive the less admirable ones into the darkness forever and ever. I’ll never understand why it seemed like such a good idea at the time, but it was my choice and my responsibility. Or, as one of my favorite wise women, Judge Judy, puts it so inarguably, “You picked him.”

  I did mention that he was incredibly handsome, though, right?

  It was a wild, exciting ride at the beginning. My career was going beautifully, I had a loyal and gifted group of friends, and there was a new man in my life who not only seemed to respect but also even to understand and encourage what I did for a living. And when his love of gamesmanship revealed itself very early on, I didn’t think that much of it. I’d been around the block a time or two myself by then, so I’d learned how to play my part in a few of those games myself.

  “Call me,” he whispered as we ended our first night of passion at my apartment.

  “I will,” I promised as I kissed him one more time and watched him walk away, already looking forward to seeing him again.

  I waited a day or two before I called—never a good idea to look too eager or too available, after all. Finally I picked up the phone and dialed.

  A woman answered. His mother, it turned out. Harry wasn’t in, she told me, as terse and unfriendly as she could be. She wasn’t sure when he’d be back, and yes (with a thoroughly inconvenienced sigh), she would tell him I called.

  Twenty-four hours later, when I hadn’t heard from him, I called again. Same icy woman, same result, and I’d officially reached my phone call quota.

  A couple of weeks went by. I was a little disappointed, but I didn’t have that much invested either, and I had work to focus on, so it was easy to shrug and move along. I also had another dinner party to look forward to, with my pal Patrick Clement, at that same beach house where Harry and I met, so it wasn’t as if my social life was suffering either.

  There were a lot of people at that party, but I spotted Harry across the room as soon as we walked in the door. He was with a date. He probably thought I was too, although Pat and I were just good friends, nothing more. It didn’t take Harry long to slip away from his date and catch me alone on the deck while Pat was inside getting our drinks.

  He greeted me with a simple, “I thought you were going to call me.”

  “I did,” I said. “Twice. You weren’t there.”

  “Call again.”

  “You call me.” I smiled and left him there on the deck by himself, and it was no accident that I left the party that night without giving Harry my phone number.

  Game, set, and match.

  I won’t even pretend it surprised me that he got my number from our host and called first thing the next morning. And there it is, the touching story of how Harry Bernsen and I became a couple.

  We actually had a lot going for us when we started out together. We both loved to laugh and had very similar senses of humor. We both loved going to parties, drive-in movies, and the theater. We were both committed to our careers and both spoke fluent “show business,” so we were genuinely interested in each other’s answers to the question “How was your day, dear?” He admired my work, and I admired his, especially when he became an agent, and a brilliant one, at the Jaffe Agency with the highly respected Phil Gersh. He thought I looked gorgeous in an evening gown, and I thought he looked gorgeous in a tuxedo.

  A year after we started seeing each other, Harry moved in with me.

  His mother never forgave me for taking her darling twenty-eight-year-old baby boy away from her. But she didn’t like Harry’s three sisters-in-law either, all of whom I loved, so I took her disdain as a compliment and happily avoided her like the plague.

  Living with Harry meant that I was now deeply invested in believing he was fabulous, and because I hate to be wrong, I didn’t pay nearly enough attention to any evidence to the contrary. It’s that red flag thing I was talking about earlier. Facing those warning signs meant admitting that I couldn’t trust my own judgment, and somehow that felt more threatening to my sense of security than anything Harry could do to me . . . or so I thought.

  I was really eager for my sister, Evelyn, my brother, Jack, and their respective spouses to meet him now that we’d officially set up housekeeping. They met him. They didn’t like him one bit. In fact, from that first meeting on, they were only interested in coming to visit when Harry was out of town.

  He didn’t seem to care much for them either, or anyone else I was close to whose status didn’t impress him, for that matter. That gregarious life of the party I’d spent a year dating was suddenly likely to turn sullen and pout his way through any social gathering that wasn’t his idea and/or his guest list. Of course, it became easier to let him have his way than to run the risk of his being rude to my friends and family, so I cooperated more than I should have. Unbeknownst to me until much, much later, he was also screening my phone calls, only passing along messages from people of whom he approved.

  And then there was my beloved woody convertible. I had that car when Harry and I met, and I adored it so much that I’d probably still have it to this day if it weren’t for him. But Harry, image-conscious to a fault, felt strongly that as a successful Hollywood actress, I should always be seen in nothing less than a chauffeur-driven town car instead. I put up a halfhearted fight, but again, to keep peace, and because it didn’t occur to me that he was up to something, I finally agreed to it . . . after which Harry promptly sold my woody convertible and
used the money to pay off a debt to his brother.

  So there I was, without my own car anymore, seeing less and less of my close friends and family, and having my phone calls and messages carefully screened without even knowing it. Or, to put it another way, becoming more isolated and less independent but still grimly determined to prove that my investment in Harry Bernsen was worth the time and effort I’d put into him.

  And no one was more surprised than I was when it turned out to be worth all that and more. (Didn’t see that coming, did you?)

  There’s nothing quite like the words “you’re pregnant” when you’re not expecting them to shock you into an instant reevaluation of your life.

  To be honest, I had no business being as shocked as I was. I’d been sexually active and irresponsible about it for years, apparently assuming that not intending to have children was all the birth control I needed. I’d honestly started to think that maybe I couldn’t get pregnant. And after a year and a half with Harry, neither of us using any protection at all, I believed his claim that he’d been told he would never be able to father a child.

  Of course, my single actress friends and I had talked many times about whether we wanted children. We were almost unanimous in our position that children could and should wait until later in our lives, when our careers were either well established or over. Our theory was that a combination of a career and children meant that inevitably, sooner or later, one or the other would have to come first, and none of us would have put our careers ahead of our children. So the idea of children was always coupled with another abstract idea: someday.

  All of which was blown right out of the water with the news that I was pregnant (as was that theory that career women can’t be good, attentive mothers, needless to say). And to my amazement, I found pregnancy to be one of the warmest, fuzziest, most fulfilling experiences I’d ever had. By sheer instinct, decades before there was such a wealth of information available, I became the most health-conscious pregnant woman you’ve ever seen. I maintained a very strict diet, helped considerably by the fact that while I’d had several pregnant friends whose cravings consisted of things like hot fudge sundaes and angel food cake, I lucked out—all I craved throughout that pregnancy and the two that followed were tomatoes. I gained so little weight that I never even had to invest in maternity clothes, and I was able to work until two weeks before I delivered.

  Corbin Dean Bernsen was born on September 7, 1954. It was such an easy delivery that the nurses had to wake me up to tell me he’d arrived. At the time, it was common practice for nurses to whisk newborns away after birth. However, baby Corbin was inexplicably kept from me for a few hours after he first entered this world.

  I couldn’t understand for the life of me, nor could I get anyone to explain, why the nurses were so obviously avoiding bringing my son to me. I wanted to see him, and I wanted to see him now, or someone had better damned well give me a good reason why not.

  Finally, trying to calm me down and reassure me that Corbin was a fine, healthy baby and there was nothing to worry about, a nurse told me that Harry had asked them not to show him to me because he was “deformed.”

  I predictably went berserk, offered a few thinly veiled threats if there were any further delays in my holding my child, and informed the nurses (along with probably most of the hospital and a few low-flying planes) that they had no right to let Harry’s orders override mine.

  They brought Corbin to me. Even before I first laid eyes on him, I knew that whoever it was who said there’s no love like a mother’s love for her child knew what they were talking about. He was breathtaking. Obviously Harry was too busy and too mystified by babies in general to experience the same overwhelming joy. Baby Corbin couldn’t have seemed more alien to his father than if he’d been born with antennae. The “deformity” that had so horrified Harry was nothing but a hematoma on his head, presumably from a collision with my pelvic bone and not all that uncommon. It went away in a couple of months, but until it did, Harry actually wanted me to either postpone letting people meet our firstborn son or keep a blanket over his head when showing him off. I would have preferred a more devoted, adoring reaction, but not for a moment was I about to let Harry Bernsen diminish my awe of this little six-pound miracle. Needless to say, I proudly introduced Corbin to everyone I knew, without a blanket on his head, and dared Harry to try to stop me.

  I think that was the first time I became aware of what turned out to be one of Harry’s most insidious modus operandi. He supposedly didn’t want me to see my baby because his so-called deformity would upset me. On a much broader scale, unbeknownst to me for far too long, “Don’t tell Jeanne. It will upset her” was almost a mantra when he was trying to manipulate someone, seduce someone, or borrow money.

  A typical money-borrowing scheme went a little something like this: when hitting up a friend for a $25,000 loan, rather than be truthful about why he wanted the money, he would and did say, “Please don’t tell Jeanne I confided in you about this—it would upset her—but I’m afraid she had a mental breakdown and blew $25,000 on an insane shopping spree without telling me . . .” Many years later he even borrowed money to bail our daughter out of jail. But to keep the lender from finding out that our daughter didn’t need bail money because she’d never been in jail or ever in trouble in her life, he added, “Don’t tell Jeanne. She doesn’t know anything about this, and she’d be devastated.”

  Of far more importance, though: so much for my old concern about having to choose between my child and my career. I went back to work as soon as possible, but with even more passion than before. I’d always worked for my own benefit—for rent money, for groceries, for a car, for a respectable wardrobe. Working for the benefit of my brand-new little boy made it so much more worthwhile. I couldn’t wait to get to a soundstage or location first thing in the morning to earn my paycheck and earn it well, and I couldn’t wait to get home to spend every second with my son. I did start a tradition with Corbin that I continued with my next two children as well, though—I took six months off when they were about to start walking, because I didn’t want to miss all the “firsts” that go along with that incredible phase of a baby’s life. And not a day went by when I didn’t appreciate being able to afford that luxury, believe me.

  Harry, in the meantime, was proving to be a really extraordinary agent, natural-born salesman that he was. He also loved the doors my success opened for him in a business where it really does often boil down to who you know, while at the same time resenting the fact that I was outearning him. It put me in the impossible position of feeling as if I was supposed to apologize for one of his favorite things about me. But I don’t play when I know it’s impossible for me to win, and I had a beautiful baby who needed me as much as I probably needed him, so I let Harry go about his business without paying as much attention as I should have. He was gone a lot, which was frankly easier than having him around. At least when he was gone I didn’t have to make excuses for his inattentiveness toward the precious new life in our home.

  We’d moved to an apartment on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood next door to Ciro’s, one of the most popular nightclubs in the city. The Ciro’s parking lot was essentially Corbin’s playground for the first couple of years, and he took maximum advantage of it—he was as outgoing and personable as any child I’ve ever seen and especially loved being in the company of adults. Artists who were booked to perform at Ciro’s could count on a very friendly greeting from the tiny Mr. Corbin Bernsen when they arrived for rehearsals, particularly Sammy Davis Jr., who would actually look for Corbin (escorted by his mother, of course) if he wasn’t on hand for an exuberant hello and a hug before Sammy disappeared through the stage door. My friend Sylvia Browne has always said that because all our souls are the same age, created at exactly the same time an eternity ago, the term “old soul” refers to one who’s been on earth for several incarnations. Corbin was definitely an old soul, running into far more pals than strangers from the moment he was (re
)born.

  It was at Corbin’s first birthday party that Harry, almost in passing, said, “Let’s get married.”

  I replied, “Yeah, okay.”

  And if you think that’s romantic, wait till you hear about the wedding.

  Of course, people had been asking since Harry and I started living together when we were getting married, and I always responded with some vague, joking answer, because the truth was I was in no hurry to get married, or to get married at all, for that matter. But now there were three of us, one of whom hadn’t asked to be born and deserved the very best we could give him, and parents who’d legalized their commitment to each other didn’t seem like that much to ask. Looking back, I can see with crystal clarity that I wasn’t in love with Harry when I married him. If we hadn’t had a child together I wouldn’t have even considered it. But at the time, it seemed like the right thing to do, and I still had a tenuous grip on the belief that I could somehow be so supportive and so encouraging of Harry’s best qualities that he’d become a man I could admire in spite of himself.

  And so it was that we left our year-old son with his beloved babysitter and headed off on the four-hour drive to Tijuana to get married, sparing ourselves the time, energy, and expense of a full-blown wedding in Los Angeles that neither of us cared about to begin with. We’d been to Tijuana for occasional long weekends, and we liked the Palace Hotel there, so it seemed like a reasonable “why not?” destination.

  The wedding itself went like this: we arrived at the courthouse, walked up a couple of flights of stairs, signed some paperwork, and left the courthouse legally married. No music, no flowers, no photographer, no vows, no exchange of rings, no cake. I can’t even begin to tell you what I wore, other than definitely not a gown. Our witnesses were two total strangers who happened to work there and may or may not have spoken a word of English. Harry, who clearly didn’t understand the “civil ceremony” concept, was somehow shocked at the lack of guests, decor, and opportunity to be the center of attention.