I also worked with Jerry Lewis in Las Vegas. I’ve always admired him as a performer, and Marty adores Jerry because Jerry gave him his first break in show business. Jerry is a super-duper talent, but I found him far too full of himself. He would never talk to me the way a regular person does.
I remember when he remarried and adopted his first daughter and I admired her photograph. “Isn’t your daughter beautiful!” I said.
“Yes, she’s the light of my life, besides my business,” Jerry responded.
Other than that, I could never get a straight answer from him about anything. Every conversation always revolved around Jerry, and nothing else. But I still appreciated it that he was always so good to Marty.
Marty was also close to Danny Kaye and adored him, as well. Years before I introduced Marty to Danny, I found out that Danny could be a bad boy. One day I was in a restaurant, wearing a low-cut sweater, when Danny came over and put his hand right on my breast and said, “That’s pretty nice. . . . You’re a beautiful girl, and I admire you.”
“Thank you, Danny,” I said, and removed his hand from my breast.
On February 13, 1997, Marty and I did an Oprah segment on marriage, along with Marion Ross and her husband. As always, Marty was afraid to fly, so we took the train from Los Angeles to Chicago together.
We did the show, during which Oprah made it clear that she wasn’t crazy about Marty and his big mouth. When the show was over, and all us guests walked off the stage, Oprah didn’t follow her usual practice and come backstage to talk to us guests. We were all surprised.
Then one of the other guests on the show raised the subject of our fee.
“Fee? What fee?” one of the production assistants said indignantly, before breaking the news to us that Oprah would not be paying any of us for appearing on her show.
“This is Chicago, not LA or New York,” the production assistant said, somewhat reprovingly.
None of us guests were buying that we ought not be paid the AFTRA scale of $600 for our appearance on Oprah. At Marty’s behest, all us guests on that show signed a petition demanding to be paid the AFTRA scale. In the end we were paid, but Oprah never forgave Marty and me, and we were never invited to appear on her show again.
However, I had a great time making three episodes of The Drew Carey Show. In 1998, I played Celia, Drew’s middle-aged girlfriend, and it was all great fun. According to the script, Drew signs up to get a master’s degree at night school and meets sixty-two year old Celia there and starts dating her. Eventually, Drew’s parents come over and assume Celia is the maid. Drew asks Celia to move in with him, but then their relationship ends. Drew didn’t really act, though. He just played himself. But I loved working with him and playing a “cougar” for the first time in my career.
It wouldn’t be the last.
FOURTEEN
There’s a Golden Light
In February 2001, Marty and I separated. No third party was involved. I had resisted having an affair with my Sunbeam man, and although Marty had flirted with other women now and again, no one threatened our marriage.
He did have a flirtation with Patrick’s first wife’s mother, whom he met at Patrick’s birthday party. He talked to her for the whole evening, and I could tell that he was hugely enamored of her. The next morning, she turned up at our house and issued an invitation to Marty, asking if he would like to have lunch with her. Fortunately for our marriage, he refused.
Neither of us had been unfaithful, but we still decided to separate. The reason? The ongoing conflict between Marty and my sons David, Shaun, and Patrick. Of all the boys, Ryan was always the most well-disposed toward Marty. Marty, of course, practically turned cartwheels to win him over, and it didn’t hurt that Marty showered Ryan with gifts. Consequently, Ryan dubbed Marty “neat.”
It was always unbelievably hard for Marty to be a stepfather to my three sons and David. Marty was married once before, but never had kids and was also never a family person. In a way, he understood that he might not be capable of handling the situation.
But stepfamilies are difficult to negotiate—for all stepfamilies. And ours was no easier than others. At first, Marty tried to turn all the boys into his allies and treat them as if they were his friends. Then he switched tack and tried to become an authority figure instead. That didn’t work, either. The problems between him and David, Patrick, and Shaun were evident as early on as our wedding day. Shaun gave me away, but David was not there, although he had warmed to Marty on their first meeting and thought he was funny. David was happy that I’d found someone, but Marty quickly alienated him by saying, “Hi, shithead,” to him. Marty called everyone that in those days, but David just didn’t understand.
Patrick also had difficulty in accepting Marty in the beginning. He was a comic, a big mouth, and Patrick didn’t like that kind of person. I also think he felt that Marty was taking financial advantage of me—which was untrue, because when we first met, he had far more money than I did. But I was a movie star and Patrick believed that Marty was influenced by that and didn’t really love me. That didn’t bother me a great deal because Marty and I loved each other and that was enough for me.
Shaun also took against Marty, extremely quickly. When Marty and I first got together, Shaun’s show-business career was skyrocketing, and he was hardly around, so his relationship with Marty was on hold. Shaun, being true to himself, was always highly outspoken in his feelings about Marty. One of his early comments about Marty was “What the hell is this? What the hell did you marry?”
My answer was and is “I married the man I love. He is good for me, he loves me, and he is kind to me. In fact, he is much better for me than your father ever was.”
I never tried to influence Shaun to accept Marty, and Marty was often unhappy that I didn’t make an attempt to do so, but I believed that it was futile.
When Shaun got married, he didn’t invite Marty to his wedding. At first, I said I wouldn’t come without Marty, but Marty suggested that I go anyway. After the wedding, I had lunch with Shaun’s new wife, Tracey, and told her that I was happy for her and for Shaun and didn’t want us all to be at odds with one another. In the beginning, we all had Christmas at my house, and Shaun and Tracey and Tracey’s parents came, but then Marty said something that rubbed Shaun the wrong way, and Shaun said he and his family would never come to our house again. To him, Marty was too much of a showman, too much of a maniac personality, and Shaun just doesn’t like either of those qualities.
But to my joy, this Easter Sunday (which happened to fall on my birthday), he reached out to Marty and invited him to his Easter egg hunt.
He called out of the blue and said, “We’d like you to bring Marty.”
I said, “That’s wonderful.” And although both Marty and I were nervous, wonderful is what it turned out to be.
And I ended up having the best birthday of my life—perhaps the best day of my life, ever. And I am so thrilled that Shaun and Marty are now reconciled and we can all spend time together with Shaun and his family and be happy.
Patrick’s relationship with Marty was another story. Patrick was twelve years old when Marty blazed into my life, a difficult age under any circumstances to have to accept a man other than one’s father in one’s mother’s life. Patrick was so unhappy with my new relationship with Marty that, even though Jack and I were then well and truly separated, Patrick often threatened to move out of my house and go and live with Jack again.
I doubted very much if Jack, then living with Yvonne Craig, would have welcomed his twelve-year-old son into his home, but for Patrick’s sake, I didn’t say as much.
Instead, I always asked him if he had discussed his decision to go to live with his father with Jack. Patrick always replied yes. Then I always sighed and said that if living with Jack was what Patrick wanted, then that was what he should do. At which point Patrick would always burst into tears and I would hug him and there would be no more said about his moving out.
When Jack
and I finally divorced, out of all my sons, Patrick took it the hardest. He couldn’t understand the reason for the divorce and made me responsible. I never defended myself because doing so would have meant criticizing Jack to his own sons, and I had vowed never to do that. So I remained silent as Patrick hurled utterly untrue accusations at me like “It’s all your fault. You didn’t love Daddy enough.”
Patrick considered Marty the enemy, and nothing I could do would ever dissuade him. Then tragedy struck. One afternoon in 1975, while I was filming Winner Take All in Gardena, Los Angeles, Jack phoned me. Patrick had been spending the weekend with him and, as Jack explained, suddenly complained of severe back pains.
Fortunately, Jack acted quickly and took Patrick straight to the emergency room at Cedars-Sinai Hospital. There, Patrick underwent a series of X-rays, which showed he had a tumor adjacent to his spine. Patrick’s medical condition was critical, and an operation was scheduled for the very next morning.
Jack didn’t mince his words about the prognosis. “The tumor could be malignant,” he said bluntly.
Before the operation, poor Patrick underwent a series of painful tests and procedures, including an injection of dye into his back and a spinal tap. Then he was wheeled into the operating theater.
Jack and I waited at the hospital, terrified the operation would be unsuccessful and that Patrick would be paralyzed, or worse.
Finally, the operation was over. A tumor the size of an orange was removed from Patrick’s back. To our relief, the doctors informed us that it was not malignant, nor had it been attached to Patrick’s spine. There was no danger of paralysis.
Patrick was moved into intensive care, and Jack and I visited him at various intervals during the day. Soon after, he was moved into a private room.
Then Marty, who, at Jack’s behest, had not been present during Patrick’s operation, came to visit him. In typical Marty fashion he had taken great care to buy Patrick—a basketball nut—the perfect gift: a statue of a basketball player. But instead of expressing his gratitude for the gift to Marty, Patrick merely groaned, turned over in bed, and showed Marty his back, without saying a single word to him.
As the years went on, Patrick’s attitude toward Marty began to soften. Then his antagonism toward Marty flared once more while Patrick lived in our house while I was working in Australia. One day, Marty wanted to drive Cole, my grandson, to a pinball parlor, but Patrick—who didn’t like the way Marty drove—said, “No, I don’t want you to drive him.” Cole kept on begging for Marty to drive him, but Patrick still refused.
In the end Marty said, “Go fuck yourself and get the hell out of my house!”
So Patrick and his family did.
When I came home from Australia and found them gone, I asked what had happened. Patrick repeated what Marty had said to him, but Marty consistently denied it. I have a feeling that Patrick was telling the truth. Sometimes things come out of Marty’s mouth that he doesn’t realize he is saying. I think that’s what happened in this case.
As time went on, it became obvious that Marty, me, and my children were definitely not destined to ever become the Brady Bunch, or even the Partridge Family, and live happily ever after together. This caused incredible tension between Marty and me, tension that in the end almost destroyed our marriage.
In an attempt to find a solution for the dire situation between us, Marty and I saw a therapist, Ron Podell, who suggested that we separate for a year and, during that time, not talk to each other or see each other. “If, after that, you still feel things are not right between you, then get a divorce” was his advice. For the first three months apart from Marty, I cried every single day. When we split, I moved out of the house, as I was the one who wanted the split. Besides, I knew that Marty would never leave the house. He loved it so much.
I got an apartment in the Valley. Two great gay guys lived on one side of me, and two great lesbians lived on the other. Once I got over the pain of the split from Marty, I had a wonderful time with them.
Then it struck me that until now, I had never lived alone in my entire life. I had always lived with someone. But now I was living alone, and I discovered that I liked it.
Professionally, I was touring the country in my solo concert, and I didn’t hear much about Marty, except through the grapevine. I knew he was dating somewhat, but that he had no one special in his life. The same could be said of me.
At the end of our year apart, Ron Podell suggested that Marty and I come to Ron’s office and talk about how we each now felt about the other.
I arrived at Ron Podell’s office first. Then Marty made his entrance, wearing a big hat and playing the trombone.
“Well, looks like you haven’t changed a bit, Marty,” I said.
Marty laughed, sat down, and the two of us went through what had happened during our year apart.
Then Ron Podell voiced the $64,000 question: “Do you want to give up on each other? Or do you want to start again?”
We both said that we wanted to start again. Then we left Ron’s office hand in hand.
Outside, Marty pushed me up against the car and kissed me and hugged me, and I kissed and hugged him back.
“This is never going to happen to us again,” Marty said. And I agreed.
We were back together, and a team once more.
Then tragedy struck again. In November 2003, while I was playing a lawyer in an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, I received a phone call on the set from Sari’s son, telling me that she had suddenly died, just the day before. I choked up, and although I tried to carry on with the scene, I was too weak to walk down the stairs to the set, I was so overwhelmed with sorrow.
I am eternally happy that Marty and Shaun are now reconciled and that Patrick and Marty now talk to each other practically every day, they get on so well. And Patrick’s two sons adore Marty. They think he is funny and the best thing that ever happened to the human race.
Both Patrick and Ryan now completely understand why I married Marty and the reasons why I have stayed married to him for all these years. They understand totally what we’ve got together. Now and again they will still say, “Marty, you are crazy, screw you!” But basically they understand—as I do—that Marty is like a child desperate for attention, and that sometimes he will do anything to get it.
Through the years, all my four boys have constantly made me proud and happy. Ryan is a set director and always works extremely hard. Even as a little boy, his room was always picture-perfect, his shoes and clothes put away. He is extremely tidy, just as his father, Jack, always was.
When Ryan was forty-five, he married a beautiful Vietnamese girl, and he had his first child, a daughter, Megan Mae, and we were all thrilled.
Although he is the youngest Cassidy boy, in the last five years, in a strange way, Ryan has emerged as the head of the family. He’s the one his brothers call if ever they have a problem. I never expected that to happen, but I am glad.
Of all of Jack’s kids, Patrick is the most verbal. He’s fun to be around, and his sense of humor resembles Jack’s incredibly. Like his father, he’s a Broadway star. He’s got an amazing voice and has appeared in seven Broadway shows.
For me, the highlight was his 2004 starring role in 42nd Street, first, because he was brilliant in it, but also because I was starring in the show with him. Which made us the first mother/son ever to appear in the same Broadway show together, an achievement of which I shall always be inordinately proud.
When Patrick first asked me to play Dorothy Brock to his Julian Marsh in 42nd Street, I wasn’t sure that I would be able to do it. After all, I was seventy years old and hadn’t appeared in a Broadway show since Maggie Flynn, all those years ago, and what a debacle that was!
But Patrick convinced me that I was capable of playing the part of Dorothy Brock and playing it well. When we had our first rehearsal and I really got into the part, he was so impressed by my performance, and so emotional, that tears flowed from him.
So
there I was, living in New York and doing nine shows a week for four whole months. Patrick and I lived in the same apartment building, but not in the same apartment, and I loved every minute of living so close to him again and working with him, as well.
Being onstage with Patrick also brought Jack back to me forcefully. Patrick, too, continually evoked his father, asking what Jack would have done at a particular point in the show, how he would have handled a particular song, and how he would have played the part in general.
Doing 42nd Street with Patrick was a wonderful experience and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
Patrick is a great performer like his father, and from the time that Patrick was a teenager, he was also the womanizer of the century, just like his father. We clashed bitterly over his wanting to bring girls home with him, so that he could go to bed with them there, in our house.
I put my foot down and told him that no way, under no circumstances, was he allowed to bring a girl home and have sex with her in our house. Like it or not, Patrick had no choice but to accept my decision.
Later on, he invited a beautiful African-American girl to be his prom date. I was cool with that, but then I got a call from her parents saying that they didn’t want her to go to the prom with Patrick because it wasn’t right. The same thing happened again when Patrick started dating a Jewish girl; her parents called and said that although Patrick was a nice man, he wasn’t Jewish, so they didn’t want their daughter to date him.
But Patrick did find happiness for a time with the actress Bernadette Peters, who is fourteen years his senior. The age difference didn’t trouble Patrick, or me. I admired Bernadette, and so did Patrick. She is a wonderful woman, and they had a wonderful time together.
Nowadays, Patrick is doing well in his career, and today he produces shows more often than he appears in them, and fortunately, his private life, too, is a great success. He is married to a beautiful choreographer, and together they have two marvelous sons.
Shirley Jones: A Memoir Page 19