“That’s it?” he said as we waved adios to our witnesses, Senor and Senora Whoever-They-Were, and left the cramped, cluttered office.
To the best of my recollection, I just gaped at him, for neither the first nor the last time in my life.
The honeymoon complemented the wedding—in that there wasn’t one. Harry had to be back in Los Angeles for a meeting on Monday. After a night in the presidential suite at the Palace Hotel, we were back in the car, paperwork in hand, for the four-hour drive home.
To answer the question I know you’re asking yourself right now, yes, it really was exactly as glamorous as I’ve made it sound.
My baby boy and my career were thriving in the mid- to late 1950s. Corbin was enthralling and funny and the light of my life, and I had the stimulating pleasure of working on a couple of feature films and a wide variety of television series, including classics like Playhouse 90, The Ford Television Theatre, and The George Sanders Mystery Theater. Harry, in the meantime, began making regular trips to Europe, especially Rome, where he was supposedly looking into setting up a branch office of the agency. Unfortunately, like many of his colleagues, he also decided that, instead of focusing all his energy on being a successful, very gifted agent, he wanted to be a producer. And frankly, he had no talent for that at all, primarily because he couldn’t let the crews he hired do their jobs—his ego was so enormous by then that he was mistakenly convinced he was better at those jobs than they were. But he loved the title and its unearned prestige far too much to give it up and commit himself to the agency business where he belonged.
He was home from time to time, though, as evidenced by the fact that, in the summer of 1957, we got the joyful news that I was pregnant again. My second pregnancy was as perfect as my first—same strict diet, same rabid cravings for tomatoes, same lack of need for maternity clothes, and same ability to work until two weeks before I gave birth. In fact, I distinctly remember a rehearsal for Zane Grey Theater in which Dick Powell (one of the nicest people I ever met, by the way) pulled me into his arms so tightly that my baby gave him a swift kick from the womb, prompting Dick to ad-lib, “Alone at last, just the three of us.”
Collin Bernsen was born on March 30, 1958. He was a breech baby, so by definition it was a more difficult delivery than Corbin’s. And according to Harry, poor Collin was “deformed” as well, with a few marks on his face from the obstetrician’s forceps and one eye that didn’t open as soon as Harry thought it should have. But by then the hospital staff knew better than to withhold Collin from me, and sure enough, he was gorgeous, just like his brother.
Collin’s arrival made it apparent that our family had outgrown our apartment, so it was off to a beautiful new home in Beverly Hills, complete with a guest house and pool, that Harry bought for us (I thought). As an added bonus, our guest house was going to be occupied by Harry’s two aunts, Mamie and Elsie.
I know. You wouldn’t necessarily expect that to be good news, would you? But they were two fabulous women. I don’t know what we would have done without them. (Actually, I do—we would still have been living in a cramped apartment, for one thing. It seems that Harry, after his usual “don’t tell Jeanne” warm-up speech, had convinced his aunts to loan him the down payment on our house in exchange for his promise that Auntie Mamie and Aunt Elsie would have a place to live rent-free for the rest of their lives.) I adored them, and my children, whom they helped raise, adored them every bit as much. Elsie had worked as a grocery store clerk and loved her beer. Mamie and her late husband had owned a bar in Chicago and she could have been cast as a gangster’s wife. She was a strict disciplinarian with the children and was also fiercely protective of them. Both women were fun and funny and just plain Good People, and we were blessed to have them with us for many years.
I was quickly back to work after Collin’s birth, happily going from episode to episode of one television series after another, including State Trooper, Tales of Wells Fargo, and the iconic Twilight Zone. And speaking of The Twilight Zone, I do have a confession to make: I didn’t cheat on my husband when I shot that episode, but I most definitely thought about it.
It was the first time I’d ever worked with Dan Duryea. I knew he was a wonderful actor, but I had no idea I would find myself so attracted to him. He had the most irresistible puppy-dog eyes, and an aura that was both intensely masculine and romantic. And he made absolutely no secret of the fact that the attraction was mutual—we hadn’t finished our first day of filming before he became openly flirtatious and asked me to dinner.
I was tempted, what can I say? I was excited by him and by being wanted by him, and frankly, the thought of being naughty was suddenly very appealing. I’m sure it took longer than it should have for me to say, “I’d love to, but I’m married.”
Imagine my surprise when he replied, “Okay, so bring your husband.”
As we say in scripts, cut to Harry, me, and Dan Duryea in a quiet, elegant restaurant, Dan shamelessly ignoring Harry and draping himself all over me, making comments like “Where were you when I was ready to get married?”
I would have been a little embarrassed and put a stop to it if it had been making Harry angry or uncomfortable. But no—he thought it was great and thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. I don’t understand a thing about that. Dan must have thought I was married to a complete wuss, and I was beginning to wonder myself. The only possible explanation I could come up with was that maybe it was exciting to Harry to see how desirable his wife was to another man. But if some woman sat right in front of me and threw herself at my husband like that, I promise you, she and I would go off together for a little talk, and only one of us would come back.
In the end, nothing ever happened between me and Dan Duryea, and I guess I’m glad that I did the Right Thing. I don’t mind admitting, though, that I was sad when we finished filming and we went our separate ways, and I’ll always wonder . . .
I took my usual six months off when it was almost time for Collin to take his first steps. Just as so much of Corbin’s personality was apparent from the beginning, it was obvious even then that my second son was highly charged, very funny, and utterly determined—no matter how many times he fell while he learned to walk, he doggedly got back up again. With apologies for getting ahead of myself, it still makes me laugh to remember him at the age of five, emptying out his closet every morning during the week to study his options and put together exactly the right outfit for that day at kindergarten.
I wouldn’t trade my two boys for anything in this world. I was in love with both of them while they were still in my womb, and I would lay down my life for them with a smile on my face. And I must say, even though he had no idea how to interact with them, let alone feed them, change their diapers, or rock them to sleep, I never doubted for a moment that Harry loved his sons too.
But I’d begun to yearn for the one thing that seemed to be missing from my life: a daughter. I dreamed of a little girl to fuss over and dress up and have pretend tea parties with, another feminine presence in a house full of testosterone.
That dream came true on August 17, 1960, with the birth of my sweet, gorgeous Caren Bernsen, after another easy pregnancy that allowed me to keep working almost until it was time to head for the delivery room. It was no secret that I was hoping for a daughter, and my hospital room was so filled to the brim with congratulatory flowers from friends and family that I finally asked the nurses to start delivering them to other patients.
There’s no doubt about it, Harry loved her. But he still had no clue what to do with babies, and the fact that she was a girl made her even more mystifying to him, so he rarely interacted with her on the rare occasions when he was around. More often than not, though, he was away—on business trips, he said—for weeks at a time. As independent as Caren was from the moment she was born, she was also more sensitive than her two rowdy big brothers and more of an introvert, and I know it hurt her when she was a child that her father was absent so often and so seemingly disinterested
in her.
Let’s see . . . a little girl with two older siblings and a father who always seemed to be off somewhere working instead of home with his family. I admit it, it took me years to figure out why, in addition to adoring her, I always felt a special connection to her—as different as our personalities have always been, raising her was like watching my own childhood repeat itself right before my eyes.
I can’t begin to count the number of times I begged Harry to spend time with his children, especially Corbin and Collin as they got old enough to start really wanting and needing their dad. Play with them, I said. Get to know them. They’re fabulous, funny, wonderful boys. I know you love them, but you’ll also enjoy them if you’d give yourself a chance to find out who they are.
And so it was that when Corbin was about eight years old and Collin was four, Harry decided that on Saturday mornings when he was home, he would go on outings with his boys. What that translated to on the Planet Harry was that he would take his sons with him to do what he always did on Saturdays anyway—drop off and pick up his laundry (which for some reason he loved and wouldn’t dream of letting anyone else do for him), get a haircut, and go to the car wash. After the third or fourth Saturday of this, Collin finally asked his father if they could please not play with him anymore because it wasn’t any fun. To the best of my recollection, that about wrapped up the father-son bonding between Harry and the boys until they were old enough to play Little League baseball, which Harry did enjoy, especially when he discovered what gifted athletes our sons were.
For the most part, life was filled with blessings when the 1960s began. I had three beautiful, healthy children, plenty of adoring help from Auntie Mamie and Aunt Elsie, and a steady stream of work I loved, from more episodic television work to the role of a “hooker with a heart of gold” in a wonderful film called Let No Man Write My Epitaph with my old friend Shelley Winters. Harry, in the meantime, was spending a lot of time in Rome, partly to set up an Italian branch of the Jaffe Agency and partly to take care of a client, Dolores Hart, who was there filming Francis of Assisi with Bradford Dillman and Stuart Whitman, and directed by the great Michael Curtiz.
I don’t remember which one of us suggested it, but somehow, Harry and I headed off to Rome together, a business trip for him and a much-needed vacation for me. I was looking forward to going to the Francis of Assisi set and meeting Dolores Hart, who was a beautiful, young up-and-coming star at the time, but Harry informed me when we arrived that it was a closed set—no visitors allowed. (I know. If it was a closed set, what was Harry doing there? But I didn’t push it.) My friend Ethel Levin was living in Rome at the time, and over lunch one day, when I explained that Harry couldn’t join us because he was on the set with Dolores, she gave me a very intense look and said, “Jeanne, I’m telling you this as someone who cares about you—keep an eye on those two.”
It felt like a punch in the stomach. For one thing, it caught me completely off guard. For another thing, while I can’t claim that the thought of Harry being unfaithful had never entered my mind, I’d never had anyone strongly suggest it to my face before. For still another thing, nothing I’d heard about Dolores Hart implied that she would have anything to do with a married man. I didn’t ask Ethel what prompted that warning. I probably wasn’t ready to hear it from anyone but Harry, if at all. It ate at me, especially in my hours alone in our hotel room while he was “working” and “running late,” but I wasn’t about to confront him about it based on nothing more than a comment from a friend.
The coup de grâce of that trip actually didn’t involve Dolores Hart at all. It involved another of Harry’s clients, a handsome actor named Guy Madison, television’s “Wild Bill Hickok,” who also happened to be the former husband of a stunningly beautiful actress named Gail Russell. Guy was in Rome for some reason or other, and Harry and I met him for drinks one night. We were chatting away, having a perfectly enjoyable time, when Guy mentioned that he was looking forward to a trip to Majorca that weekend.
“Majorca, huh?” Harry piped up. “It’s beautiful there. Jeanne, why don’t you go with him?”
It was awkward, it was embarrassing; Guy and I both stared at him with our jaws hanging open. We knew he wasn’t kidding, and since neither Harry nor I drank in those days, we couldn’t use too much alcohol as an excuse. No, stone-cold sober he had just tried to send his wife away for the weekend with another man—and not just any man, but another man who was also a client, for God’s sake. It disgusted me. It also made me think that my friend Ethel probably knew what she was talking about.
“No, Harry, I won’t be going to Majorca this weekend, but thank you for inviting me on Guy’s behalf.” I turned to Guy and added as I stood up, “Guy, I apologize for this. It was lovely seeing you again. Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .”
I went straight to our suite, packed my bags in record time, headed to the airport before Harry got back to the hotel, and flew to Madrid for the second leg of this alleged “vacation.” He arrived two days later, begging and pleading for me to forgive him and please, please not to leave him over a stupid mistake, just under so much stress, will never happen again, loves me and our children so much, blah, blah.
In the end, we flew home together. I don’t know if this is an explanation or an excuse, but I still had my heart, or head, set on admiring him, despite all evidence to the contrary, and I was more determined to be right about him than I was to do the healthy thing and walk away. Someone put it perfectly once in something I read somewhere: “I think I loved you first and knew you later. I wonder if love is strong enough to overcome dislike.”
It took years for me to find out the whole story, and of course not from him. Nothing sexual had ever gone on between Dolores and Harry, it turns out. He tried his damnedest, but she wouldn’t have anything to do with a married man. He assured her that his marriage was over—he was taking me on this one last trip to Rome, and then as soon as we got home, I was well aware that he’d be filing for divorce. He had to handle things delicately, you see, because of my mental problems. If I became too upset, I might become dangerous, either to myself or to him or to our children. Unfortunately for Harry, Dolores considered “almost divorced” to mean “still married,” so while they spent a great deal of time together and seemed fond of each other, their relationship was purely platonic. And to keep the cast and crew of Francis of Assisi from passing stories from the set along to me, Harry told them, “Jeanne is giving up her career for the sake of our children, and she resents all the time and attention my work requires, so please don’t upset her by saying a word about my clients or show business in general.”
Dolores Hart, by the way, made four more films and then, in 1963, at the age of twenty-four, she abandoned both show business and secular life to become a nun. She eventually became prioress of the Benedictine Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut. I like to believe Harry Bernsen inspired her decision—if he was any indication of the men she had to look forward to, she would rather run, not walk, to the nearest convent. It’s not remotely true; I just like to believe it.
Through the 1960s and early 1970s, between my healthy, thriving children and my healthy, thriving career, I was so busy and had so much to be grateful for that I chose to assume my marriage was intact. Harry was adamant that he didn’t want to lose our children and me. It never occurred to me to ask him why.
It’s hard to describe the embarrassment of riches in the world of television back then, decades before “reality” TV convinced network executives that actors and writers are foolish wastes of time and money. I had the good fortune to shoot more than seventy prime-time series episodes and a few feature films, and to work with some of the most fascinating actors in the business. There was the incredibly suave Roger Moore (Beau Maverick of the Maverick series), who went on to superstardom in seven James Bond movies. (I loved Sean Connery as much as the next person, but let’s face it, Roger Moore wasn’t exactly chopped liver.) There was the wonderful Richard Boone in
Have Gun—Will Travel, as brilliant an acting teacher as he was a performer. There was the theatrically trained Robert Vaughn in The Man from U.N.C.L.E., whose flawless diction was a joy to these theatrically trained ears. There was The Boston Strangler star Tony Curtis, whom I so admired for never letting his extraordinary success give him amnesia about his tough, humble childhood in the Bronx. There was the wildly playful Leslie Nielsen in Bracken’s World, who was rarely seen without a homemade “fart machine” hidden in the palm of his hand for those inevitably stressful moments on the set. And there was Jack Lord, the original “Book ’em, Danno” man of Hawaii Five-0, thanks to whom I inadvertently came to believe that one of the most fundamental doctrines of show business is nothing but a myth.
Jack and I were doing some publicity shots during an episode of his series Stoney Burke that involved the two of us in equestrian outfits playing around on top of barrels used in horse shows. The short version of the story (trust me, the long version isn’t especially interesting) is that I fell off one of the barrels and landed on my elbow. I was in a lot of pain but ignored it as best I could to finish that day’s work. The pain didn’t ease up during the night. I finally went to the doctor for X-rays, and what do you know, my elbow was broken. I walked out of my doctor’s office in a cast, still in quite a bit of pain, and, with the help of some wardrobe adjustments involving long puffy sleeves, made it through whatever it was we were shooting. My performance was commendable, all things considered.
It was that “all things considered” part that bothered me and ended up making me a nonbeliever in the timeworn premise “The show must go on.” Every audience member, whether he’s watching television, a stage play, a concert, or a movie, deserves nothing less than 100 percent for the time, effort, and/or money he’s invested. If a performer isn’t capable of offering 100 percent because of illness, injury, personal problems, or just plain irritability, that performer needs to step aside, temporarily or permanently, or the audience is going to be shortchanged. It’s that simple. “The show must go on”? Not ever at the expense of the audience, and that I’ll believe until the day I deliver my last line.
Not Young, Still Restless Page 6