Master of Ceremonies

by Joel Grey

  Jo’s growing belly was not only the promise of fatherhood but also further proof that I could finally put behind me all the complexities of my childhood and the fear and self-doubt I’d felt for so long. But the pregnancy wasn’t easy. From the beginning, Jo experienced complications, and the doctor ordered immediate bed rest. By this point, we had moved uptown, to 865 First Avenue, at 49th Street, a step we hoped toward a more sophisticated New York life. My great friend Larry Kert, who had originated the role of Tony in West Side Story, tipped us off about an apartment available in his building.

  I’d met Larry when we were just teenagers trying to make it in LA. Though I could have been the Juvenile Star of Borscht Capades, he was singing with Bill Norvis and the Upstarts. From the start, Larry was the funniest, loosest, most handsome and talented person I’d ever known. Everybody was drawn to him. A good horseback rider and excellent gymnast, he was thoroughly masculine. And he was gay, openly gay, even in his teens. He was one of the few young guys I’d met who was so comfortable with himself that his sexuality didn’t seem to be a problem for him.

  To me, that was nothing short of a miracle. I was envious of how he embraced his homosexuality, but his experience had no bearing on mine. His family was 100 percent supportive of him. They knew who he was and loved him anyway. That was beyond my comprehension. While I envied his openness, I felt as if the same behavior would never have been accepted from me.

  What Larry and I did share was a desire to be on Broadway, where we both struggled to get jobs in the theater. Although we didn’t talk all the time, we checked in with each other periodically, and whenever we did, it was affectionate. Larry and I adored each other.

  Years before I met Jo, when I had first moved to New York and was looking for work, Larry and I went out for dinner one night, and we talked for so long that it got too late for him to go home. We wound up back at the Belvedere Hotel, where I was living, and we slept together. It was sexy and brotherly at once. The radio was playing “Danny Boy,” and when I woke in the morning he was gone, but I found a note by my toothbrush, signed “Danny Boy.” Sleeping together didn’t change our relationship; it just made it better. We never stopped caring about each other. When Larry landed the historic role of Tony in West Side Story, I went to a run-through of the brilliant musical in New York, without sets and costumes, and then to the out-of-town opening in Washington before its Broadway debut, in 1955.

  Larry was living with a dancer, Grover Dale, by the time Jo and I moved to First Avenue. He was part of his own world, where he could be openly gay in his private life. (Everyone supported him. His sister Anita Ellis, a renowned jazz singer, and her husband, Mort, were so close to Larry that they lived in the building, too.) And I was part of my world. The situation between us was never tense. Whenever I was around Larry, I didn’t feel that he felt sorry for me or believed that I was living a lie. Just like any other friend, Larry was happy that I seemed to be getting what I wanted and needed from my marriage. And Jo loved him, too. Everybody did.

  Jo and I began fixing up our new flat. She had bought a big drawing by Rico Lebrun before we met that I loved, too (she always had a great eye for art). The burlap wallpaper we put up made all our art look great. It was also a great canvas for the furniture we purchased from Design Research, a Boston shop at the forefront of Scandinavian design, where we picked up a modern teak sideboard. We squirreled away money for the finer things, such as our first-anniversary lunch, at Lutèce. Although the French restaurant, famous for its haute cuisine, was only down the street from our apartment, it made us feel as if we were in Paris for the afternoon.

  No matter how tastefully our apartment was designed, Jo was miserable while confined to it during the difficult pregnancy. When I returned home after an entire day out—auditioning for an Off Broadway play; lunching with Charlie Baker at the Oak Room, around the corner from William Morris; and working on some new material with a writer for the act—I found Jo lying on the bed per doctor’s orders. She was at her wit’s end. “I told you,” she said. “I knew we should never have done this. You were rushing.”

  I felt horrible. Jo was imprisoned in a world of discomfort into which I had forced her. Through the anger and accusations, I could see that she was really frightened. We both were. She didn’t respond to my attempts to make her feel better with tenderness and humor, and I couldn’t blame her. This had all been my idea, not hers. It was my fault, because she hadn’t wanted to be pregnant, just as she hadn’t wanted to get married. The guilt of seeing my wife lying in bed day after day was bad, but nothing compared with what lay ahead.

  She was in her sixth month when in the middle of the night she woke up in pain. Weeping, she was having contractions. At 3:00 A.M. we rushed to the New York Medical College hospital, where we were met by our obstetrician, Dr. Vincent Merendino.

  Jo endured a nightmarish labor. And as I watched my wife writhing in pain, Vinnie explained that he didn’t want to give her too much anesthetic, because of the added risk to the baby, who was already in peril. I thought about The Sisters, my mother, and the voice planted inside my head long ago saying somehow it was always my fault. I was heartbroken watching Jo in so much misery, particularly because she was not a complainer. She never wanted to be that vulnerable.

  After five hours, she gave birth to a one-and-a-half-pound boy, whom we named Jeremy.

  When Jo, worn out from the punishing labor, had finally fallen asleep, I went to the neonatal intensive-care unit to see our baby lying in an incubator. It was like looking at something out of a science-fiction film. I sat staring at him, this incredibly tiny human being, thinking, How could this be? Everything from Jeremy’s traumatic entrance into this world to the size of his feet was unbelievable. I left his side only to return to Jo.

  Two days after our son’s birth, I was scheduled to open at the Diplomat Hotel, in Hollywood, Florida. I was about to call William Morris to cancel when Vinnie advised otherwise. According to the neonatal experts at the hospital, there was nothing inherently wrong with Jeremy other than his weight. In any case, he would need to be in an incubator for weeks.

  “It is just a matter of time,” Vinnie said to me as we talked in a corner of the hospital room where Jo was turning down the tray being brought to her by a nurse. “Each day is one more day that he is closer to being out of danger. But this is going to be very challenging, and there is actually very little you can do here.” He also thought it would be best for Jo and me to be together and for her to accompany me to Florida. I was left to make all the decisions, since Jo couldn’t even eat, let alone think; she was so exhausted and sad. It was impossible in that moment to make the right decision. I had no idea what that even was. It seemed crazy for me to keep the job and take Jo in her fragile state on an airplane. But her OB had suggested I do just that, and in times of great trauma and confusion, it’s normal to default to a passive position and follow doctor’s orders. So I heeded Dr. Merendino’s advice to go to work and take my wife. We flew to Florida the next day.

  After we arrived at the Diplomat, I made sure Jo, still in a lot of pain, was comfortable before I went down to the showroom to do a sound check. My performance that night was like nothing I had ever experienced. All the words, music, and jokes were there, but I wasn’t. I was on automatic pilot, the body doing its job and the mind somewhere else.

  After the first show, I ran back up to the room to check on Jo, who was still in a lot of discomfort. I saw that she had had a little water and melon. We didn’t talk much but that was all right. What was there to say? It was too horrible to talk.

  When I returned to the room after the second show, completely depleted, the lights were low. I turned them out, and after a few minutes lying quietly together in the dark, she said in a still, small voice, “Dr. Merendino’s office called.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “He said they did everything they could.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “The baby is dead.”
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br />   And that was it. That was all we said. Those two nightmarish words hanging above us in the dark took up all the space.

  As irrational as it was, I never imagined that we would lose our child. Even when he appeared so impossibly small. Even when he was in an incubator. “Each day,” the experts said, “was a success.” And that’s all I heard. I had wanted that baby so much, since I held that little girl at the Sovereign Hotel.

  If I had allowed myself to know how I felt, I never would have left Jeremy’s side or dragged Jo to Florida for a nightclub act. In that dark hotel room filled with grief, Jo and I held each other and wept.

  In my arms, her whole body shivered, her injury complete. I had promised to take care of her, to make her happy, to let nothing bad befall her. And here, feeling this little shaking thing pressed up against me, I realized that I had done just the opposite. I would have done anything in that moment to change what had happened, even though I knew that there was in fact nothing, just nothing, I could do.

  I was helpless and culpable, a father and not a father. When a terrible thing you can’t imagine—such as the death of a child—actually happens, it becomes a part of you forever. Jeremy’s death didn’t just shatter my confidence but my very core. The belief I had always had in myself—pushing to find a place for myself in the theater, where I wasn’t sure I was wanted; exploring my sexual desire for men but pushing past it to find the woman of my dreams; persuading Jo to follow me into this adventure of marriage and family—was gone. It was gone, all of it, because I had failed Jo and my son.

  I wept with joy and disbelief that our little girl—Jennifer—was in my arms. Now we will be happy, I thought. Everything is just right.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  At 3:00 A.M. the phone next to the bed in our apartment on First Avenue started ringing. I had come in from LA for three days in late March of 1960 to play a date in the Catskills (always a dependable source of some quick cash) and gone to sleep early, knowing that the show tomorrow at Brown’s Hotel in Loch Sheldrake would go late. Irritated, I picked up the receiver, hearing from afar the operator saying something about a collect call, before I hung it back up.

  A few seconds later, it was ringing again. A little more awake this time, I heard Maury Lazarus, our friend and new obstetrician, his voice a tad testy, saying to the operator, “Tell him his wife just had a baby and that he should accept the call.”

  That couldn’t be. When I had left Jo, in high spirits, less than twenty-four hours earlier, our baby hadn’t been due for another six weeks. I couldn’t bear the idea of missing the birth, and, even worse, the possibility that again something had gone wrong.

  We had lost our infant son a little more than a year earlier, and Jo and I didn’t speak about it often. We were both too sad. A few months after it happened, I had to travel to England, and when I was there I decided she needed a distraction—in the form of a puppy. I know it was silly, but we needed cheering up. I had planned to surprise Jo with it upon my return. I had heard that the best Yorkshire terriers were bred by a Mrs. Ethel Mundy, and an English pal drove me way out into the country to her house in Wallington Surrey. When I rang the bell, twenty tiny Yorkies went berserk, yapping until Mrs. Mundy commanded, “That’ll be sufficient.” Immediate silence followed—it was very funny. I left with a three-month-old I named Alfie. (The night before I had seen the brilliant actor Alfie Lynch perform in Oh, What a Lovely War! at the Theater Royal Stratford East.)

  Other than Alfie and our other Yorkie, Pablo, there was little that Jo and I found to love after we lost our son. We were shattered, and because the hole was so large that nothing could fill it, we sadly took it out on each other. So the grief, which had momentarily connected us in that Florida hotel room, began to tear us apart.

  There were many silent fights and petty squabbles. We couldn’t agree on the simplest things, such as where to go to dinner or if we should go visit friends in the country for the weekend. In every decision or discussion I was looking for signs of accusation on her part. I spent so much time blaming myself, and taking full responsibility for everything that happened, that my guilt informed every aspect of our lives. I walked on eggshells, worried about setting her off. The result was that she reverted to the life she led before we were married. She resumed her singing lessons, went to yoga more often, and started calling her agent for auditions. We didn’t see each other much during the day, and when we came together at night it was often with friends who acted as a buffer.

  It was amazing, therefore, that we decided to try for another baby. Like so many other couples, we never discussed getting pregnant again but instead relied on the nonverbal cues husband and wife give each other when they are too afraid to have direct communication. Maybe both of us knew on some level that if we were going to stay together that we would have to replace that loss. It would have been easy to simply drift further and further apart. So as time passed and the pain subsided, Jo and I found room to give each other another chance.

  Within the year Jo got pregnant again, and we became obsessed with learning everything there was to know about natural childbirth. That we allowed ourselves to love each other again felt like a real gift, and I wanted to do everything I could to honor that. At Lamaze class, we got to know the other couples. With the realization that their hopes and dreams were so much like ours, we started to feel wonderfully ordinary. As Jo practiced getting into different birthing positions and I tried out massage techniques, we were like any other expectant parents. While we could never forget about Jeremy, we weren’t a couple grieving but one with a child on the way. I came to love those classes full of heavy breathing, learning how I could help Jo. I was no longer powerless.

  After Maury woke me up in the middle of the night to relay the news that Jo had given birth to a healthy baby girl, I immediately called and woke up the Catskills impresario and agent Charlie Rapp, because I was getting on the first flight to LA. I had missed the main event, but I couldn’t miss another second. I had a daughter!

  When I arrived at the hospital, Jo was just waking up. Radiant and happy, she held the most perfectly formed child with little bee-stung lips. I wept with joy and disbelief that our little girl—Jennifer—was in my arms. Now we will be happy, I thought. Everything is just right.

  Jennifer was a very good baby, and I took her everywhere with me, to the dry cleaner, lunch, the park to walk the dogs, wherever I went—always stating proudly to anyone who would listen, “This is my daughter.” I was enthralled by every aspect of caring for her, from diapering to bathing to giving her a bottle in the middle of the night. I was finally getting to do all those things that I had been good at as an eight-year-old at the Sovereign. Nothing ever made me so happy and whole. Settling into family life, I was in total heaven—complete. Even if Jo was cranky, I had Jennifer.

  Our arguments continued to center on the question of Jo’s working. Whenever she got a call about an audition, there was a moment of whether she should or shouldn’t go.

  “You don’t want me to, do you?” she asked, as if she believed that by asking me the same question again and again, she might get a different answer.

  “You know how I feel,” I said. “But you do what you have to do.”

  Jo would always make up her own mind about whether or not to go on an audition. If she didn’t go, she would be angry that she might have missed an opportunity. But if she went and didn’t get the part, she would be depressed. Either way, there was great upset at home.

  I was getting a lot of work in television. Because of that, we returned to living full time in Los Angeles, where, not long after Jennifer’s birth, a wonderful little house we heard about was going on the market. Having a new baby, we wanted to settle into a home, so we bought the Mexican hacienda on an acre up on Woodrow Wilson Drive with a big assist from Jo’s father, Izzy. The plain stucco house was very small, but its windows looked out on a hill full of flowers, Italian cypress trees, and bright bursts of bougainvillea.

  My parents c
ame over a couple of times a week to fuss over the baby. Although my mother was a steamroller, Jo got along well with her. Grace loved to bring Jennifer little gifts such as a silver rattle or a china cup that she had painted herself. I was able to put the past I had with my mother aside enough that I truly enjoyed their visits. It made me happy to see my parents with my daughter in the picture of normalcy that I had always wanted.

  I was more motivated than ever to make a living, which I did in a string of parts on Westerns, such as Bronco, and Lawman. All my guest roles were on Warner Bros. TV shows, where I got my start in 1959 when I was cast in Maverick, the comedy Western series about Texas poker players, which was in the top ten at the time. I got the part of Billy the Kid, which was, to say the least, creative casting. Although my father was a cowboy in Borscht Capades, I was not your typical outlaw.

  I was thrilled about the role, so I never mentioned that I’d never ridden a horse before—and God, was I scared of horses! Particularly the gigantic, bucking ones they had on set. I hadn’t told the producers or director I didn’t know how to ride for fear they’d get someone to replace me. Thinking fast, I suggested that it might be interesting if I rode on the back of another rider’s horse. Well, the director loved the idea. But it didn’t turn out exactly as I had imagined. In the scene where we, the bad guys, make a getaway, a stuntman rode the horse fast, took hold of me, and pulled me up behind him. It was so much worse than if I had just got on the damn horse myself! Thank God they got the shot on the first take.

  The best part of working on Maverick, other than the subsequent roles it prompted, was becoming friends with James Garner. To the outside world we couldn’t have been more different. For starters, Jim was six feet two and I am five five. We made an odd couple wherever we went. Once, at a party, he and I went into a bedroom, traded clothes, and came out—ta da! Everyone laughed at my pants, which looked like shorts on Jim. We were like brothers with a slightly sick sense of humor.