Larry Hagman - Hello Darlin'

by LARRY HAGMAN

  “I don’t care how many Western movies you’ve seen. You’re here now and there are very different customs.”

  Things got very heated and I went to my room. It must’ve been embarrassing to them in front of the other diners, but I was beyond caring. About three o’clock in the morning, I started down the back stairs, trying to sneak out quietly, except I kept knocking the walls with my heavy leather suitcase. I was like a bull in a china shop. Mother was waiting for me when I got to the bottom and asked what I was doing. I told her that I was getting away from him.

  Mother convinced me to stay. She wouldn’t admit Richard was a son of a bitch to me, but she emphasized that having me in the play was very important to her. Though she didn’t say it outright, it was a way for us to have a relationship. I know she wanted me to see her in London, the scene of many triumphs, and I have to admit it felt like a homecoming when we checked into the Savoy Hotel a few days later.

  Once rehearsals began, Mother was quickly drawn into her own world. She was so focused, so consumed with breaking in a completely new cast, doing interviews, and she was just plain remarkable when it came to handling the pressure of getting things together in less than a month. It was the first time I’d ever watched her this closely and I saw how much she loved it.

  Richard was also busy, planning her schedule, dealing with the producer and the press, and generally getting on everybody’s nerves.

  For some reason, he brought up the Castle Combe horse-vaulting episode again and this time I couldn’t take it and left. I was on the street again, looking for a place to stay, when I got an offer from Archie Savage, the show’s lead dancer. He was the only other American in the company besides Mother, Wilbur, and me. Archie had a great place on Belgrave Square and said I could stay there. I knew Archie from New York, where I’d once rented his Third Avenue apartment. He was a gay black man with impeccable taste. I remember him saying that he’d been turned away by several hotels in London, so he’d found a beautiful twenty-room mansion to rent, and he opened it up to an array of guys, some of whom were in the show, others who he met in town.

  The night I arrived Archie called everyone together for a meeting. He introduced me to the group. They were a colorful crowd to say the least.

  “Here’s the deal,” Archie said. “Larry has this room up there on the second floor and if anyone touches him, or even tries, I will beat the shit out of him.”

  “It’s nice to meet all of you,” I added.

  And it was. They were great. That mansion was hopping twenty-four hours a day. I was there for two weeks, then hooked up with Ted Flicker, my friend from college. He had a nice little flat in Saint John’s Wood and was looking for someone to share the expenses. It was the perfect arrangement. He went to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art during the day, and I was in South Pacific at night. We seldom got in each other’s way.

  * * *

  Director Josh Logan, the original director on Broadway, came in for the last week of rehearsals and gave the show its finishing touches. I had a nice little part. In a scene when the captain talked to his aide-de-camp, I was to come in through the door and tell the captain that Ensign Nellie Forbush—Mom—was there to see him. I handled that with ease—until opening night.

  Everything was wonderful. Mother stood behind me in the middle of the stage, concealed behind the cabin that was the captain’s office. She was bursting with pride as I waited to go on. I was so goddamn excited. The audience was filled with royalty, famous actors, and important British dignitaries. I was riding the rush of such a thrilling evening. Then I heard my cue, opened the door, and walked in front of the audience, and behind me, at the moment I started to speak, I heard Mother whispering, “No, not yet.”

  She was right. Overanxious, I had once again jumped my cue. The actor playing the captain stared at me like I had lost my mind. He ad-libbed. “Tell her to wait.” I did an about-face and walked off chagrined. Mother didn’t say anything. Her laugh was sufficient. A moment later, I opened the door again and introduced her at the proper time.

  Afterward, the audience applauded thunderously. There were at least two dozen curtain calls. It was tremendous. They also threw coins onto the stage as was the custom at Drury Lane and showered Mother with loving shouts of “Mary! Mary!” It was exhilarating to stand out there.

  Then all of us went to the Savoy for the party, where I had one of the thrills of my life. As Laurence Olivier led Mother across the dance floor, I danced with Vivien Leigh. My God, talk about a beautiful woman. I was so enamored of her I worried my knees might give out. Even though I had grown up around celebrities, I was starstruck, and Mother chuckled about it later.

  “How was it, Larry?” she asked.

  “Oh my God, Mom, I was dancing with Scarlett O’Hara.”

  * * *

  After each night’s performance, I got on my bicycle and rode ten minutes to the Irving Theatre, off Leicester Square, a late-night theater where I earned an extra three pounds a week by singing and dancing in a musical revue. Around 1 A.M., the tube closed, so I caught a cab back to my flat, using up the money I’d earned that night. I was always tired and broke. But happy.

  “This beats the hell out of getting your ass shot in Korea,” I said to Ted.

  Oh my God, was it ever. The Korean War was going full tilt. I’d registered for the draft in Texas and constantly thought about my chances of being called up for service. They were higher than I wanted to know. From what I’d heard, the military liked the boys from Texas. They had a reputation for being good soldiers. While that was a reason to be proud, there was also a downside to being a great soldier. Occasionally you got killed. I wasn’t interested in either fighting hard or getting killed. But when the letter arrived calling me into service, I couldn’t disregard it.

  I went to a U.S. military base in Germany for a physical. The doctor asked about South Pacific while reading through my papers.

  “So you’re in the theater?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Are you homosexual?”

  “No, I am not,” I replied.

  “Why don’t you say you are?” he asked. “Then I can get you out.”

  Okay, I admit it, the idea sounded good for about a quarter of a second. But back then people had different attitudes about gays, especially in the military. As bad as it is today, it was worse then. I worried that if I answered yes, it would be on my record forever. So I exclaimed, with the proper sense of outrage, “I cant do that!”

  “Aw, come on,” the doc said. “Who’s going to know?”

  I came up with another idea.

  “I’m nearsighted,” I said. “Without my glasses, I can’t see a damn thing.”

  “Okay, I’ll give you an eye test tomorrow.”

  That night I stayed in the barracks. Almost a year had gone by since the opening night of South Pacific, and as I lay on my cot I marveled at how quickly time had gone by. One night I was in the Savoy, dancing with Vivien Leigh, and now I was going to sleep in a nearly empty Luftwaffe military barrack in Germany. Only one other guy was bunking in the barrack that night, and the next morning we hit the shower at the same time.

  “You got any soap?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said and tossed a bar his way.

  Then I heard it drop. I saw him glance around for it.

  “Hey, listen, can you find my glasses?” he asked. “They’re on the shelf over there.”

  I handed him his specs. I noticed the lenses were thick as Coke bottle bottoms. I thought, My eyes are perfect compared to his.

  “What do you do?” I asked.

  “I’m in the army. A machine gunner’s assistant.”

  “But you can’t see.”

  “That don’t mean nothing,” he replied. “I carry the ammo and feed the belt in the machine gun. You don’t have to see real good to do that.”

  There goes my chance of getting out of the service.

  “What are you in?” he asked.

  I t
hought about it for a moment and said, “I’m in deep shit.”

  Chapter Nine

  When I got back to London I looked up Captain O’Rourke, who was stationed at Bushy Park, and asked if he knew of anyway that I could get based in London. He did. Bribery.

  “If you can get tickets to South Pacific for all the brass—the generals and the colonels—you’ll probably be able to get any posting you want,” he said. “Knowing who your mother is, I suspect those tickets ought to be relatively easy.”

  “I’ll do my humble best, sir,” I said.

  Since Bushy Park was the enlistment center for the U.K., Captain O’Rourke walked me through the whole procedure like the good drinking buddy he was. While I was in basic training in Wales, he spoke to the general, and eight weeks later I was back in London, posted to the Third Air Force Headquarters, in South Ruislip, Middlesex, a convenient forty-five-minute subway ride from the apartment I shared with Ted Flicker. Then Ted was drafted and had to go back to the States for his basic training in the army. Before he left, Teddy found me a new roommate, his friend Henri Kleiman, a young, smart, stylish Englishman who wore pinstriped suits and a bowler hat. We became lifelong friends.

  I belonged to the Remington Raiders, named such after the typewriters we used in the office. I was assigned to Special Services. Nowadays, that means a crack commando unit. In those days, it was different. I was in the entertainment division. I reported to a civilian who ran a ticket bureau for the military. If a VIP came to London and wanted tickets to a show, they called her and she tried to take care of them. But on my first day, I realized she couldn’t get anything done when she turned to me in a panic.

  “I got a general and his wife who are huge Mary Martin fans,” she says. “Do you have anyway of getting tickets to South Pacific?”

  Obviously the scuttlebutt hadn’t reached her. She had no idea of my relationship to the show or its star. That’s how out of the loop she was.

  “It’s a popular show,” I said.

  “The hottest ticket in town.”

  “I’m not promising anything, but I’ll do my damnedest.”

  I understood how crucial it was to make myself vital to the war effort right from the start.

  She looked relieved when I said, “Why don’t you let me deal with the general directly on this one?”

  I met the general, who told me that he wanted six tickets. I informed him that the show was sold out every night, which he already knew, but I said I’d do my best to get him seats. A few days later, I delivered the prized tickets. Needless to say, that put me in very good standing with the general of the Third Air Force.

  Soon I took over the ticket business. My boss was upset, but she was a civilian and didn’t have to worry about the gunfire and mortar shells on the thirty-eighth parallel, so I didn’t really care if her nose was out of joint. I just wanted to do a good job getting tickets for VIPs and keep my own ass from getting shot off.

  By the end of the year I was put in charge of all the entertainment in the United Kingdom, which involved providing entertainment for sixty thousand men and their dependents. I produced Stairway to the Stars, a talent contest that drew from aspiring entertainers in the army and the air force. Dozens of acts were brought to Bushy Park, including comics, jugglers, barbershop quartets, tap dancers, magicians, jazz combos, and vaudeville routines. I put the winners of each category from Stairway to the Stars in another show, called The Spotlight Review, and toured it successfully across the twenty-seven U.S. air force bases in the U.K.

  I traveled with the show as producer, director, and coordinator—training I’d learned from Sinjin in Florida. Through these trips, I met the people who ran the service clubs, and they spread the word that the show was great, and soon I was bringing the show to military bases in France, Germany, Italy, and Austria. It was a great scam.

  I also came to handle all the NCO and officers’ clubs, too. I might have been only an airman second class, or the equivalent of a PFC in the army, but I could take advantage of a staff that included a major, a lieutenant, a captain, several sergeants, and three civilian secretaries. I also dressed in civilian clothes most of the time and lived in my own apartment. For the military, it was the good life. No one had a clue what I actually did—nor, most of the time, did I.

  For the most part no one bothered me, because I was successful, but there were a few hard-asses who tried to put me in my place. One lieutenant, an escort officer with a USO group, which I also handled, came on the base for a week and made my life miserable by demanding one thing after another as if my sole purpose were to take care of him, not the other way around. As soon as he left I had my buddies in Personnel Services, the department in charge of the records, get even for me. They lost his pay records, threw out his medical records, and arranged a transfer to Thule, Greenland, which was the armpit of the air force.

  * * *

  As for my social life, I specialized in nighttime maneuvers. During my first year in the service, I dated actress Joan Collins, who was then seventeen years old and so breathtakingly beautiful I thought she made Elizabeth Taylor look like a boy. I met her through Ted Flicker when he was going to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Almost twenty, I was a lark for her, since she normally dated older men, in their twenties and thirties. But we had some fun. I also went out with her sister, Jackie, who was just as stunning. I never got anywhere with them, but boy, they were lots of fun.

  Two years later I met Maj (pronounced My) Axelsson, a twenty-five-year-old Swedish girl who was a successful clothing designer for a major wholesaler. She was my roommate’s friend, part of Henri’s cultured little group that liked to meet at pubs and coffeehouses, discuss important social issues, and attend the symphony. Henri told me she was a beautiful blonde, sharp, funny, and sensible. I liked what I saw from the moment I looked into her blue eyes.

  And Maj? She thought I was cute. She gave me that much. From what she later told me, she liked a lot of things about me, including my sense of humor. Mostly she liked that I was very different from anybody she’d ever met and that I seemed to make my own rules.

  “Almost everything is right,” she confided to Henri.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Larry’s an American. He couldn’t be more American.”

  She’d lived in England for three years. During that time, she’d assumed the snobbery of her clique, and all of them looked down on the American servicemen they saw in Piccadilly. She quoted the popular saying at the time. “There are three things wrong with them,” she’d say. “They’re overpaid, oversexed, and over here.”

  But she thought I was different. She’d flipped when I played her a George Shearing album, and she liked that my record collection also included Vivaldi and Gregorian chants. She also liked that I was able to sell her black market cigars for her boss, which incidentally helped pay for my rent. In any event, I seemed to have taste and connections, so when I finally asked her out, she said yes.

  For our first date, I took her to the Colony Club, a very posh night-club on Berkeley Square. It was a freebie for me, since I was looking for acts for the NCO clubs. Everything was comped, from champagne to dinner. Maj seemed to be very impressed. Eventually we went out three or four nights a week to clubs around London, always free. I was constantly searching for new acts, and I wanted to see Maj as much as possible. It worked out well.

  My travels to the Continent with The Spotlight Review often kept us out of touch for long periods of time. I let her know I was thinking about her by sending her notes on the back of menus. She claims there were only three. When I was around, we were almost inseparable and had a ball. We ran all over London on my Vespa motor scooter. We hung out in coffeehouses and pubs, always running into people we knew, as if London were a small town. I was pretty serious about her, but I was constantly going away on trips and she worked hard.

  About six months into our relationship, I went away on another long trip, this one lasting three months, and during tha
t time Maj rented my apartment from me. She cleaned it up, repainted it, and slipcovered all the furniture. Clearly she improved my life. When I returned we planned to celebrate my twenty-third birthday by going to the theater. It was raining that night, a hellish downpour, and I waited for Maj in the NCO club at Burdrop Park, about sixty miles outside of London.

  She was late. Several hours went by. I figured she was having trouble in the weather. The whole base knew she was late. When Maj arrived at the front gate, the guard told her that I was waiting for her in the bar at the NCO club. Indeed, I was—having my third or fourth martini. Finally, Maj pulled up in front in a little Morgan sports car. The top and the windshield were down. She was drenched, but explained she could see better with the top down.

  With great difficulty, we put the top up, bailed the car out, and I got into the sopping wet driver’s seat. I was intent on making the second act.

  “I’ll drive,” I said, not thinking that as I put the sports car into reverse my blood was higher proof than a Molotov cocktail.

  Once outside the base, I made a wrong turn and drove onto a field that had been used for practice by the British army’s Tank Corps. The ground had been churned into a muddy quicksand. The little Morgan immediately sank up to its hubcaps in this muck. We could not budge. I stared out the window, into the darkness, and then turned to Maj, shaking my head in disgust.

  “This is great. Just great,” I said.

  Maj nudged my shoulder lightly.

  “At least we don’t have to rush anymore,” she said with a laugh.

  Suddenly our situation brightened. Nothing changed except my outlook. For the past few months, I had mulled over the idea of asking her to marry me. I had gone from debating whether or not I should ask to contemplating the perfect time and place to pop the question. I had only one concern. What if she said no?

  That was a possibility. I had no idea Maj had serious reservations about getting involved with a guy from a show business family. She worried she was in too deep and was thinking about ending it before she got in any deeper. In other words, she was in love with me. But thank God I did not know, otherwise I never would have found the nerve to say what I felt in my heart.