Me and My Shadows

by Lorna Luft

  The doctor looked me over and told my mother that I was a perfectly healthy young girl experiencing the normal changes associated with the hormonal shifts of puberty. My mother asked him if that meant I was retaining water, and the doctor said that might be happening periodically. For reasons I’ll never understand, my mother interpreted this to mean that I had water on the brain. She even went so far as to explain to me that she now understood why I had been acting so irrationally lately; I had water on my brain! In another belief that defies explanation, she also decided that the solution to my hormonal madness was for me to take birth control pills, and she persuaded the doctor to put me on them. At that age I needed birth control pills like a lizard needs skates, but for some reason my mother was convinced the pills would make me more rational. Maybe she thought they would drain off all that water in my head!

  From her point of view I guess I did seem pretty crazy at times. The Beatles were a case in point. In spite of having watched her own generation go crazy over Frank Sinatra (and having gone pretty crazy herself the night she met Elvis Presley), she simply could not understand my virtual obsession with the Beatles. Mama herself had first told me about them two years before when she’d returned from a concert in England. She said that she had done a concert in London called “Night of 100 Stars,” and she’d met the Beatles. When she came home she told me about these four boys from Liverpool with long hair who had sung that night. When the Beatles hit big and came to America on their first tour, I naturally had to see them.

  I was one of the chosen few who actually got to see the Fab Four during their famous concerts at the Hollywood Bowl. Not only that; I got to see them twice, and from the best seats in the house. The first time, Leslie’s mom, Betty Bacall, took me. She and Leslie were in Los Angeles that summer, and she took Leslie and me to the concert to see our idols. It was incredible. Even at all my mother’s concerts, I had never seen people go crazy the way they did with the Beatles that night. The audience was completely out of control, screaming hysterically, sobbing, and fainting. I was almost as fascinated by the crowd as I was by the performance onstage.

  Leslie and I were so excited we were about to burst, but we sat quietly and took it all in without a peep. We didn’t dare peep. The only mom I’ve ever known who could be as intimidating as my mother was Leslie’s mother. When Lauren Bacall gave you that look, you shut up and minded your manners. And she gave us the look that night, the one that said, “Just because these other people are acting like lunatics doesn’t mean you can. You’re going to act like little ladies.” We did.

  The next night I was back again, this time with my father and Bridget. My father didn’t glare; he just looked around at the hysterical teenagers as if they were all insane, and as usual, I minded my manners. He and my mother had been pounding those manners into me from the time I could toddle.

  The high point of my entire junior high school career was going backstage after the first concert to meet the Beatles in person. Leslie’s mom took us back. She had been to a party with them the night before, so they said, “Ah, Lauren Bacall,” and came over to greet us. I even got to shake hands with them. I had a huge crush on George Harrison at the time, having inherited my family’s passion for skinny musicians, and I was simply awestruck to be meeting the Fab Four in person. I was so awestruck I didn’t even ask for their autographs; instead I just said what I thought was polite and even asked John Lennon courteously about his wife.

  As we got ready to leave, Leslie and I said, “Nice meeting you,” and then Paul asked us if we didn’t want them to autograph our programs. I told him we hadn’t wanted to trouble them, but then John smiled and said, “That’s what we’re here for,” and proceeded to write “Love, John Lennon” on both our programs. George, Paul, and Ringo did the same. Leslie and I returned home in a state of altered consciousness, and I spent months afterward listening to their records every waking moment and staring at the Beatles posters on my bedroom wall. My mother thought I’d completely lost my mind. I don’t know what happened to those programs. They eventually got lost in one of our countless moves. I hate to think what they’d be worth today.

  Whatever my mother thought, in many ways the Beatles kept me alive during those difficult days. I think adults forget how passionate those first celebrity crushes are, and how important they are to a child who is just beginning to grow up. The Beatles helped me define who I was, what I found attractive in a man, and how my generation fit into the world. And when things were dark on Rockingham Drive, I could get lost in the music of the Beatles and forget about the darkness and the silence for a while.

  Even in the darkest days, though, there were moments of light. My mother had a wonderful sense of fun, and it never left her completely, even when things were bad. She loved a funny story more than anything, especially when she got to tell it, and she could be silly in ways that were truly inspired. When Mama was feeling well, she was still Joe’s and my favorite playmate. I remember one night Tom Green had a whole lot of money from somewhere, and he and my mother went to the supermarket and bought the place out. They stocked the kitchen with food, and then my mother decided she was going to make a shepherd’s pie, which was one of her specialties. We were all in the kitchen, and Tom was rolling up the meatballs when my mother picked up a big spoon, leaned forward, and started shouting, “Hey, Batter! Batter! Batter!” The next thing we knew she’d tossed a meatball into the air and whacked it across the kitchen like a baseball. Then she whacked another one, and someone caught it. The next thing I knew we had a full-fledged baseball game going on, with the spoon for a bat, hitting meatballs all over the kitchen and running bases. We never did get our shepherd’s pie, but no one cared because we were exhausted from laughing ourselves silly. There was minced meat everywhere, even on the ceiling.

  Though Lionel was still getting stuck with much of the cleanup, in many ways I was becoming the adult in our little family. Tom Green and other friends helped out when they could, but when everyone went home and it was just me and Mama and Joey, I was often the grown-up in charge. The pills knocked my mother out of commission regularly, and my survival instincts told me that I’d better make sure everything was all right or no one else would. I kept an eye on the food supply, and when there were no groceries in the house, it was my job to figure out a way to get some.

  One night when we were in New York she ran out of Ritalin, and I ended up calling her friend John Carlysle in California in the middle of the night to see if he could find us some. John called his friend Charlie Cochran, good friend to my mother, unlike so many of the other men in her life, but he didn’t yet understand the real implications of her medication problem and thought nothing of the request for Ritalin. Half the musicians they knew took Ritalin and other stimulants to keep themselves alert for late-night performances, so Charlie called around and eventually showed up in the wee hours of the morning with a couple of Ritalin for my mom and a man he introduced as “Dr. Deans.” I was thankful to see them. It meant that my mother had her medication and I could go back to bed. What I didn’t know was that “Dr. Deans” was disco manager Mickey Deans, who two years later would become my mother’s last husband. To this day John regrets what he did, and he is still my good friend.

  The happiest event in our lives in 1967 had nothing to do with Mama, though; it had to do with Liza. Liza and Peter Allen got married. My mother was thrilled because she really liked Peter, and I thought he was wonderful, too. My mom had introduced Liza to Peter herself, so I think that made the marriage even more gratifying for Mama. Peter was sweet and warm and very talented, and I already thought of him as a big brother. I still do.

  We flew back to New York for the wedding. The reception was at Marty Bregman’s apartment. He was Liza’s manager at the time. The apartment was beautiful, and everything had been done up very elegantly for the ceremony. Liza wore a Victorian wedding dress and looked pretty and happy. My mother wore a rainbow-colored coat over a yellow sheath, and a pillbox hat. She lo
oked as bright as a daffodil and almost as happy as Liza. The wedding was small, just the families and a few friends. Liza’s father, Vincente, was there, and so was mine. He and my mother were back on speaking terms by then, and he still thought of himself as Liza’s stepdad. Liza and Peter said their vows, and it was all very lovely and very romantic. I was fourteen by then, naive and starry-eyed about the whole thing. Besides, for the first time in quite a while my parents and Joe and Liza and I were all together as a family, and no one was fighting. It was almost like old times.

  Almost, but not quite. At least my parents were talking again, instead of staying away or screaming at each other, and that was good for all of us. My dad had always provided what stability there was in our lives, and with him around a little more, things seemed a little less chaotic.

  Shortly after Liza and Peter’s wedding, my mother began working on the film Valley of the Dolls. She fervently wanted to do a good job, to find her way back to peace and sanity. But for my mother a movie meant early makeup calls, staying thin, and facing the ghosts of a whole string of past failures. It also meant more medication. A few weeks into production she was up to twenty or more Ritalin a day, with more Seconal to bring her down, and the strain on her health became unbearable. Eventually the film company had to let her go, and she plunged into utter despair. It was heartbreaking to watch.

  After the Valley fiasco, my mother was desperate to start working again, and once more she turned to Sid. Whatever their personal problems, she still trusted him more, professionally, than she did anyone else, and she asked him to begin putting together another concert series for her. My dad, still the rescuer, and still carrying the world’s biggest torch for my mother, agreed. Vern Alves also returned to the fold, a new management contract was drawn up, and the old team was back in business. The plan was to go East again, find a place in New York where we could see Peter and Liza more often, and book a series of concerts on the East Coast. The Rockingham house was already in foreclosure, and Vern agreed to stay there and clean up the business details while we went ahead to New York.

  So once again, in the finest Gumm family tradition, we packed up those same old trunks, tried to leave our troubles behind us, and took the family act back on the road.

  Collection of John Fricke

  Backstage at the Palace, opening night, with Mama and Joey, July 31, 1967.

  CHAPTER 10

  Spin Out

  When I think of the last two years of my mother’s life, I always think of them as a ball of yarn unwinding. When yarn unwinds, it does so slowly at first. Because of the ball’s size, the unraveling process has little visible effect in the beginning. But as the ball continues to unravel, it gradually becomes smaller until at some point you suddenly notice that it has shrunk to an alarming degree. At that moment the uncoiling seems to pick up momentum and you realize that you are helpless to stop it. The process was like that for my mother. Her sickness was a slow unwinding. For more than ten years our family had slowly spun out as we lost our center. It was only near the end, though, that we realized we were all spinning out of control.

  We arrived in New York in the middle of 1967. I was fourteen and a half by then, five inches taller than my mother and rapidly growing up in other ways as well. We moved into a huge three-level brownstone on Sixty-third Street that looked like a cross between a French bordello and a mausoleum. No expense had been spared by its owner in making it truly hideous. It was the ugliest place I’ve ever seen in my life, and it gave everyone who came through the door a shudder.

  That building still haunts my dreams on occasion, or at least my nightmares. It was a tri-level monstrosity. Downstairs was a maid’s room and a small service area with a washer and dryer. On the main floor were the entrance area, the dining room, the living room, and a small kitchen. The dining room was Louis XIV on a bad day, with everything done in pale blue—blue carpeting, blue wallpaper with a gilt pattern, matching drapes, and highly formal, intricately carved furniture. Adjoining the formal dining room was a huge living room decorated with smoked glass, dark wood, and orange drapes and carpets. Everything in the room was ponderous and ornate; even the big pool table at the far end was made of heavy mahogany. In the middle of the living room was a staircase leading to the upper level. The banister was constructed of fancy glass rods and mirrors. When you came down the stairs at night, the reflection in the glass gave a ghostly effect.

  It wasn’t any better when you reached the top floor. My room had red carpet and was done entirely in black, white, and red. Joe’s room, which was kind of a converted library, was done entirely in lime green. My mother’s room was an ornate Oriental affair. One of the brownstone’s former occupants, I was later told, was a man who lectured on the subject of sexual mores. My mom ran across his cache of whips, chains, and other implements used as lecture props shortly after we moved in and nearly moved us all out again. A friend of hers came and disposed of the collection. I never saw it myself, but somehow it doesn’t surprise me that it was there. The whole place smacked of the Marquis de Sade. Mapleton Drive it wasn’t.

  Fortunately, we didn’t spend much time there that summer. We spent most of our time on the road in New York and New Jersey, playing the Westbury theater and other summer concert venues. My dad decided it might be fun to have Joe and me do a couple of bits onstage with my mom, so we tried out some routines in New England. I got to go to a store called Splendiferous in New York and pick out a hip outfit to wear for my number: long white shorts with shells around them and a minidress that came down over the top—very sixties. I would sing, and Joe would play his drums. We were a huge hit, and the next thing I knew we were appearing with Mama at every performance. It was really exciting.

  Rip Taylor was usually the opener. My mother would stand in the wings watching as the orchestra went into the overture, pumping herself up by singing along. Then she would go bursting onstage, and the audience inevitably went crazy, standing and cheering. About forty-five minutes later, just before intermission, she would introduce me and Joe and bring us out onstage with her to do a sort of family segment. I sang Petula Clark’s “Don’t Sleep in the Subway,” which was a huge hit on the radio at the time, and then we did “Bob White” together, a Johnny Mercer song my mom had taught us. Finally we’d do “Together” from Gypsy, Joe’s old favorite.

  The crowning glory of the tour for all of us was the famous run at the Palace. My mother had gotten pregnant with me during her first Palace run, and now fifteen years later, my dad booked us in for four weeks. It was amazing. By then Joe and I had gotten a lot more professional than we’d been in the beginning of the tour, and we worked hard to prepare for the opening. I got to work with some of the best in the business, people like Harold Arlen, who had written “Over the Rainbow” for my mother all those years ago, and John Bubbles, who had performed in my mother’s concerts when I was small. John taught me to soft-shoe, and Dick Barstow, who had choreographed the numbers for A Star Is Born, did the choreography. I wore a yellow dress, and Mama, Joe, and I all had on burnt orange bowler hats.

  Opening night was truly extraordinary. Jackie Vernon opened for us, followed by my mother, and a little later it was my turn. As I stood in the wings waiting to go on, I could actually hear my knees knocking together from fear. My heart was pounding so loudly I could hardly hear the orchestra. When my cue finally came, I entered singing a special arrangement of “Singing in the Rain” that Harold Arlen had put together for me. Our next number was “Me and My Shadow.” John Bubbles would start it by himself, and when he got to the lyric that said “All alone and feeling blue,” my mom would jump out and fall into step behind him, singing along. Then I would jump out and fall into step, and finally Joe would jump out and fall into step behind me. We were all wearing our bowler hats, which had been worked into the choreography, and as we strutted our stuff, the audience went crazy. After our number together, I sang a medley composed for me by Harold Arlen. Toward the end of the show, Mama and I did a couple of
songs together. It was so much fun being out on that stage, dizzyingly exciting. And it felt so good to be doing it together. I can understand how my mom must have felt when she was singing with her sisters and parents on the vaudeville stages all those years ago, before the pain and trauma that destroyed “Jack and Virginia Lee.” They say the family that prays together, stays together. For my family, performing together had pretty much the same effect. After the performance we went to the opening night party at the El Morocco, and that was thrilling, too. I was almost fifteen, and I got to bring a real date, a boy from the Splendiferous dress shop that had supplied my costumes. I felt that at long last, I’d arrived. I was up there with my mother the way my older sister had been at the Palladium three years before.

  When the summer was over, we settled into the mausoleum on Sixty-second Street. Tom Green had come to New York with us, and my dad had moved into a hotel. He would soon meet Patricia Potts, the woman he would eventually marry. Patti was a singer (Sid would meet her when my mom went to open Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas), and since neither she nor my dad thought “Potts” was much of a name for an actress, my father rechristened her Patti Hemingway. The family wasn’t exactly together again, but we managed. Joe and I got to see our father often, and it was comforting to know that he was usually only a few miles away. Liza and Peter were nearby, too, so for the first time in a long while we were functioning more like a family. A dysfunctional family, but a family nonetheless. Soon Vern Alves joined us in New York, and life seemed almost normal for a while.