by Ron Perlman
I really enjoyed working with Linda Hamilton, but with Linda back then, there was just a slight inconsistency. On the days when Linda was doing well, and I say this without trying to be hyperbolic, she was amazingly good. She was the sweetest, most charming, most generous woman I had ever met in my life. Then there were these other days when this kind of darkness overcame her, and I really wanted to keep my distance so as not to add to her uneasiness. It was clear that she was capable of saying things that were less than politic.
The unpredictability of those two different swings made people curious. Nothing more than that—nothing alarming, nothing serious, but just curious. And it turns out—and this was long after Beauty and the Beast, long after the second Terminator movie, when it made more sense—that after her marriage with Cameron ended I guess something about her own life patterns inspired her to go check herself out. After much consultation she got diagnosed as bipolar, and then shortly after that she decided to become a spokesperson for it, and I mean in a very big way. She went on Oprah; she went on Larry King. The way she described this and unflinchingly used herself as an example of the potential tragic effects this particular mental illness could have on a person’s life was, to me, among the greatest pieces of work she’d ever done. I will always remain a huge admirer of her as an actress. But her willingness to sacrifice herself no matter what anyone was going to think or say about her—that was class. That was brave. That had character. And knowing her as I did, I wasn’t so much surprised, just real damn proud. She was saying things like, this is what I had, these are all the years I didn’t even know I had it, and this is how it fucked up my life, my career. And she went on to encourage anyone who felt a lack of control in their lives to not sweep it under the rug, to grab hold of it, because once you do, there are things you can do to help it. Linda—what a beauty!
She was magnificent to work with, even on her bad days. Even on her down days she always looked into my eyes and could see this undying admiration from me to her and know that she was safe, she was okay, and she didn’t need to feel threatened. So no matter what, she and I got along phenomenally well. With regard to wanting off the show, I decided that this was her business. I thought that for me to try to convince her of something that she was determined to do would have run counter to our friendship. So I stayed out of it. I never had a conversation with her about it. In retrospect Linda leaving didn’t directly cause the show to end; after all, there are plenty of shows that transitioned smooth enough when one of the main leads exited.
But anyway, six months later we closed on our house. And Opal was pregnant with our second kid. And the regime had just changed at CBS. And the first order of business for the new head of programming was to cancel Beauty and the Beast.
(CHAPTER 15)
How You Doin’?
Season two was essentially the set up for Beauty’s demise. She and Vincent consummate their love, and she gets pregnant. Meanwhile a mysterious, diabolical industrialist is watching us, and he becomes obsessed with owning the offspring of such a union. Beauty is kidnapped and held till she delivers the child, thus leaving Vincent on a frenzied search to rescue both mother and child. By the time he catches up with her, it is too late. The bad guy takes the newborn, leaving Beauty poisoned. He escapes in a helicopter one moment before Vincent arrives, leaving Beauty to die in the Beast’s arms. Fade out. End of season two. Nobody wants to write out the main character, but if you gotta go, surely this turn of events made the most of it.
Where to go from there was anybody’s guess, so the run-up to season three was a scramble, to say the least. One thing was certain: there was no Beauty and the Beast without a Beauty. So the search went on. We ended up with a sweet girl named Jo Anderson. She was to play a New York detective investigating the disappearance and eventual death of Beauty. Throughout the investigation, as she is gathering clues, Vincent is observing her from the shadows. He comes to feel there is something about this girl he can trust, so he reveals himself to her. That’s right, sports fans, for those of you who guessed, she was to be the new beauty . . . well, you actually don’t win anything, but hey, good fucking guess! Anyway, we played out this little charade for another twelve episodes, with me telling the whole crew to take the money and stuff it in a mattress, ’cuz we didn’t have long for this fuckin’ ride.
Sure enough, the moment Jeff Saganski took the reins, before they even showed him to his fucking desk, his first official act as the president of CBS Television was to cancel Beauty and the Beast. He fuckin’ hated us—well, he hated how emblematic the show was of the guy he replaced, Kim Lemasters. Lemasters was personally involved in developing Beauty and the Beast when he was just an executive at the network, so when he became president our show was his pride and joy. As long as he was around, he was going to give the show every opportunity to thrive and flourish. Which he indeed did. In trying to keep it going during that third season, he really went out of his way to give us the benefit of the doubt when a lot of other guys would have seen the writing on the wall. But Saganski’s attitude was, “Nah, let’s not throw good money after bad.”
So just at the point at which Vincent finds the boy and is getting ready to become the kid’s father, they canceled us. And because we were in the middle of transitioning to a new storyline and had broke for Christmas holidays, when the edict came down, there was no real closure—no good-byes, no group hugs, and no time to mourn. Nobody was really prepared for it, but everybody was prepared for it. We just went home one day, and while we were chilling we got the call telling us there was no need to return. Everything changed again. I remember how the last day of shooting of the second season was so incredibly different, so joyous; it was almost too painful to recall, knowing that instead of having this state of grace to return to, the era had ended. But what memories! Milestones! New friends!
As I mentioned before, nothing to date had ever topped meeting Sammy Davis Jr. But if I wasn’t totally blown away by just the fact of that, what truly took me by surprise was the regularity with which I would hear from him. He would check in on me every couple of months either to arrange a dinner, a boy’s night out, or just to shoot the shit. Hard to believe, but as I will get into later in more depth, I never took advantage of these gestures. I truly felt outclassed, not worthy, even. And it wasn’t because of Sammy—he couldn’t have been nicer, warmer, more welcoming. It was me. Because even though I was a grown man and had withstood some pretty tripped out episodes and begun to make a small splash, there were still personal ghosts lurking within me that hadn’t truly been addressed. But more of that anon . . .
Somewhere around April during season two Sammy called and said, “Hey man, I don’t know if you’ve read about it yet, but me and the fellas are going back out on the road together one mo time. It’s gonna be called, ‘Frank, Dean, and Sammy Together Again.’ And we’re hittin’ about thirty states.” Wow! That is gonna rock, I was thinking. Then he said, “The weird news is, you’re never gonna guess where we’re rehearsing.” He proceeded to tell me that of the two sound stages that were at Desilu where we shot our show, the one we were not using to shoot the Beast was gonna be turned into a rehearsal stage for the tour and that their two rehearsal days were gonna be my last shooting day of season two, followed by my first day of freedom. “Ya gotta come by, man. It’s gonna be very groovy!”
So I got to work really early to shoot what was to be the last day of season two. And the amazingly brilliant Margaret Beserra, the makeup artist responsible for transforming me for three years, and I were in my trailer, into about hour three of the four-hour dealio. Someone knocked at the door, and before we had a chance to say come in, we heard, “Hey man, is the Perl about?” Margaret hit the fuckin’ floor. That’s right: she looked up, saw Sam, and her legs literally went out from under her. We managed to get Margaret back on her feet. Sam gave us both hugs and kisses like only Sam could and told me to come see him and the boys when I got a break.
We worked like slaves that las
t day. We hadta get a lot of filming in, and we hadta finish that day, no matter how many hours it took. It turned out we worked twenty-three hours that day before they wrapped us. They didn’t wrap us till around 7:30 the following morning. And because my shoot day was so work intensive, all I had a chance to do was sneak over to the other stage for five minutes, hang out in the shadows in back so as not to be seen, check out this stage they had built to accommodate the three greatest entertainers of all time, see the seventy-five-piece orchestra that had been assembled and surrounded the stage, see hundreds of people scurrying around doing whatever to make this into a giant event, and then close my slacked jaw and go back to work.
Anyway, I then ran home, took a shower, changed clothes, and came straight back to the studio because I was gonna spend the whole day hanging out, watching these guys rehearse. Sure enough, I came in and George Schlatter, the guy who produced Laugh-In, was there with a TV crew. He was filming the rehearsal because they were gonna do a big behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of Frank, Dean, and Sammy Together Again, so there were probably forty people from that alone. Then Sammy had an entourage. He had his own orchestra leader named George Rhodes. He had his own costume people and his own makeup people. And he had this guy who was his personal assistant named Jolly Brown. And then Frank had an entourage of probably about forty or fifty people, not including the orchestra. The leader of Frank’s whole clan was a guy named Jilly Rizzo, who was famous for his restaurant in New York called Jilly’s. He and Frank had been partners in the joint, but then Frank made him sell out so Jilly could spend all his time just running Frank’s life for him. He was Frank’s best pal; they came up together. Coupla goombahs from the ol’ days. So there was Jilly for Frank, and there was Jolly for Sammy. And I’m with one of my best buds, David Schwartz, who to this day I lovingly call Jelly.
Dean Martin showed up in just a Cadillac. All he had was a driver. He had no fucking band leader, no makeup artist, no entourage—just Dean and a guy sitting in his Cadillac, waiting for him to fucking say, “Okay, we’re out of here.” He didn’t talk to anybody or engage with anybody, but for reasons one might not expect. Dino was the most beloved guy in all of showbiz. He was the coolest, the funniest, the kindest, and the smoothest, just purely loved by one and all. But by this time he had already lost his son to a plane crash—his favorite son, the kid who hung the moon for him—and from the time he lost that kid and forever onward, Dean’s fire went out. He was basically sleepwalking through life; it was a well-known fact. So he was not part of the falderal; he was just like, “Okay, let me come in here, spend a couple of hours rehearsing with the boys, and get the fuck out of here.” He stopped playing golf and stopped hanging out. He stopped partying. He was a shell of a man by that time. The loss crippled him, just stopped him in his tracks, which spoke volumes about the facade of Dean Martin and the real Dean Martin. You know, the guy who seemed to not care, who seemed to have a laissez-faire attitude about everything, who seemed to always be drunk was actually the most loving, caring, wonderful, beautiful, generous man to come down the pike in showbiz.
Strangely enough, to this day I’m more fascinated by Dean than any of them because the older I got, the more I realized the qualities that he was able to maintain through all those periods in his career were truly what separates the men from the boys. And it is said he died richer than any of them because nobody ever let him pay for anything ‘cuz he was so fucking loved. Unfortunately, I never got a chance to even get a glimpse of a window into where Dean was at that point. Just as well. All he wanted was to be left alone.
But for the rest of the day I was watching these armies that surrounded Sammy and Frank as well as this army that was shooting, with George Schlatter involved, all running around. So I walked over to the buffet table, got a little bite to eat, and tried like hell to be unobtrusive. I was standing off to the side, and all of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sammy Davis Jr. with a hanger over his shoulder, and he was kind of dancing up to me. Like he was doing a little dance number up to me, and he was singing some little ditty. “This is for you, my friend, the Perl!” He handed me a crew jacket that said on the back, “Frank, Dean, and Sammy Together Again,” and on the front of it, on the left-hand lapel breast of the jacket, it said, “The Perl”—P-E-R-L. He even found out how I spell my nickname. I have that jacket, presented to me by Sammy Davis Jr., to this very day.
So I was hanging out, watching this thing like a kid in a candy store. Dino only stuck around for a couple of hours. They did a few of the numbers that they were all gonna do together in the medley, and then he got in his car and split. Sammy ultimately split too, so it was then three to four o’clock in the afternoon, and Frank started rehearsing by himself, just him and the seventy-five-piece orchestra. He wanted it that way. He wanted all the shit to die down; he wanted all of the hangers-on to split. And he waited for there to be as much peace and quiet as there possibly could be, considering the surroundings.
He sat on that stage, on a stool, and worked with the orchestra. He sang as quietly as I’ve ever seen him sing. He was just basically marking time, but he was working on every single note of every single song he was going to sing. And these are songs that he had been singing for forty, fifty years, arrangements that I’d heard from the days of my pop’s Victrola. But any time anybody in the orchestra played a note he didn’t like or he thought was too loud, too soft, or came in a half beat too soon or a half beat too late, he would stop. He’d say, “Okay, let’s go back sixteen bars,” and he ran this fucking thing, this rehearsal like Michelangelo would run a sculpting session on the Pietà. It was the most eye-opening of things to see.
I was standing there—pretty much by that time the crowd had died way down—and I guess my mouth was down to my knees. Out of the corner of my eye I saw some guy standing next to me, starting to look at me, but I didn’t pay him any attention because I was just mesmerized by Frank. I could not take my eyes off of him. I could not believe his work ethic, his aesthetic, how much control he had of every nuance, every moment, every song. I just couldn’t believe it. It was like an acting lesson. It was like watching the guy who made everything look easy be the guy who never took anything for granted, never finesse anything, never kind of just halfway do anything. He was involved with every minute of every single song. I was standing in a pool of my own God-only-knows-what. But I continued to see this guy out of the corner of my eye, and I was hoping, Shit, whoever the fuck this guy is, I hope he goes away, because I’m in my own private Idaho over here. I’m mesmerized. I’m having a religious moment.
Sure enough, I heard this guy say, “Holy fuck,” and I turn to look at him. It’s Jilly Rizzo.
He was looking at me, and I looked at him and said, “Hey?”
He said, “Holy fuck!”
“What happened?” I asked.
He said, “You’re that fucking guy.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re that fucking guy, right? You’re that fucking Beast guy. You’re that fucking Beast guy on fucking television—Hey Frank!” And he started yelling at Frank, who was in the middle of singing “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning.” He did not want to be disturbed, and Jilly was yelling, “Hey Frank, look who this is! It’s that fuckin’ guy! That fuckin’ Beast guy!”
I was telling him, “I don’t think he wants to be disturbed right now.”
And of course, Frank was so used to this shit that he completely ignored it, but Jilly started saying, “Holy shit, it’s that fuckin’ Beast guy from television. You know how much we love you?” He took his arm and wrapped it around my head like the Italians do when they go, “This kid is beautiful. I love this kid!” He was pinching my cheek like I’m some fucking guy from Hoboken he grew up with. He said, “Ah, I love this guy. Does Frank know you’re here?”
“I don’t think so,” I said, “but I really don’t think we should disturb him right now.”
“Fuck that,” Jilly said, “Frank!
C’mere! You gotta meet this fucking guy. It’s the fucking Beast.”
Eventually I got Jilly to calm down. He and I were kinda standing there, chit-chatting, getting to know each other, and at the end of that song Frank came down off the stage and went through three or four people, passing words with his orchestra leader, his driver, and then he finally got over to me and Jilly. Jilly said to him, “You know who this is, right?”
Frank asked, “How you doin’?”
“This is that fuckin’ Beast guy.” Jilly said. “What’s your name again?”
“Ron.”
He said, “This is that Beast guy—Ron.”
“Hey, how you doin’?” Frank asked again.
“I’m doing really great, Mr. Sinatra,” I said. “Really great.”
Jilly then asked, “Have you guys met?”
“No, not yet,” I said. “This is a huge honor for me.”
And then Frank asked, “Hey, how ya doin’?”
So I said, “I’m doing really fine. How are you doing?”
“I’m doin’ okay,” he said. “How are you doin’?” This conversation went on like this for about three more minutes, and all he says to me about eighty times is, “Hey, how you doin’?”
I told him, “You have any idea what my dad would do if he knew I was standing here right now with you!”
“So how you doin’?” he said.
I told him, “You know, ‘In the Wee Small Hours’ is the greatest album ever recorded in any genre, by any artist in the history of music.”
He said, “So, how you doin’?”
After about sixty, seventy times of this, I realized I’m not gonna get anywhere. I’m not good at conversations to begin with, and then standing in front of me and my dad’s number-one icon. I finally said, “Well, it’s just a thrill to meet you. I’m here because of Sammy. I became kind of friends with Sammy. I don’t want to take up any of your time—I know you guys are putting together this thing. You must have a million different things to do. So I just wanted to tell you, man, thanks for letting me hang. You’re fucking beautiful. What an honor.”