The Face That Changed It All

by Beverly Johnson

  The legendary architect Paul Randolph had been responsible for the interior design, which was awash in various tones of white and gray. Those colors mixed perfectly with the furniture, upholstered as it was in the same knit flannel Halston often used in his clothing collection. Gray was a color Halston thought looked good on just about everyone and everything, so even the floors in his home were covered in a gorgeous gray velvet carpet. Adding to the sense of restraint, my dear friend Halston avoided using a lot of artwork on the walls, and there wasn’t much in the way of accent pieces, either. It was haute, and minimalist, and all quite spartan.

  After I completed my tour, I noticed that Pat and Sterling, who had previously been dancing seductively on the catwalk, were now mingling with the crowd. Sterling, an absolutely beautiful black man, had a small (well, not so small) cup covering his private parts, while Pat was now gleefully free of any clothing at all and proudly showcasing everything for all to see. She was particularly interested in highlighting the fact that her pubic hair had been waxed into a perfectly defined heart shape. I was completely taken aback (one of the many times that night) when I heard her ask people their opinion of her new design.

  Pat’s exhibitionist ways turned what I had hoped would be a fabulous night of fun into something rather uncomfortable for me. She was the only other black woman in attendance and now she had become the “show” for the evening. I suspect that Pat had done her homework and discovered that the easiest entrée into that world was simply becoming the night’s exotic entertainment. By “that world” I mean the white, upper-crust, very wealthy one that few blacks ever got the chance to witness, much less enter. Performing for the crowd was Pat’s hall pass through the front door, I suppose. It seemed to have unlocked many doors for her, but I guess my twenty-one-year-old mind just didn’t fully understand or appreciate Pat’s thought process that night.

  In the wake of the civil rights movement, I felt obligated to those who had fought and died for my right to be treated equally. There were so many who had marched and sacrificed their lives so that I could have a place in the mainstream world of fashion and even attend that party that night. Maybe Pat felt the same but just had a very odd way of showing it.

  Juggling the knowledge of this country’s volatile racial past while navigating the hippie movement of the seventies would often put me at great odds not only with others in the industry, but with myself at times, too. Whereas the sixties demanded a certain amount of social responsibility, the seventies demanded the complete opposite. Halston’s designs and Pat’s unabashed nature defined an era known for both its luxury and excess, and they were two vices that became far too comfortable for far too many of us.

  There were other vices, too. Cocaine was Halston’s drug of choice, and all of his dinners offered a large supply of it. The drug was presented in small salad bowls alongside tall glasses of champagne. As my relationship with Halston grew, I regularly observed him enjoying his daily intake of the three c’s; caviar, champagne, and cocaine. We sometimes joked with each other that water simply had too many calories! It all seemed so fun and harmless back then.

  With Pat’s heart finally out of view, I made my way through the throng of guests to the dining room. In the middle of the room there was a rather odd-looking Lucite block table that easily could have been confused with a large slab of Antarctic ice upon which Elsa Peretti–designed votive candles and Tiffany flatware had been placed. There was also a marble-topped cocktail table, numerous hassocks, and some people were even eating on the stairs. Halston’s best-buddy-for-life Liza Minnelli always ate on the stairs, and that night there she was, in her favorite spot, laughing it up as she drank glass after glass of champagne.

  Waiters were beginning to serve the meal created by Halston’s charming live-in assistant, Mohammed Soumaya, so I decided against joining Liza on the steps and instead cozied up to the Lucite table for a sampling of the meal du jour. And what a meal we dined on that night! Crudités for starters, followed by an entrée of blanquette de veau, and Halston’s favorite, a baked potato topped with caviar. (Later, I would learn that though the entrée menu varied from party to party, that side dish rarely, if ever, changed.)

  As I began to eat, I briefly looked up and found myself staring at the most beautiful pair of violet-hued eyes I’d ever seen in my life. In fact, I’m quite sure I hadn’t seen a pair of violet-colored irises ever until that night. Sitting across from me was the grand dame of all grand dames, Ms. Elizabeth Taylor, in all her legendary glory. I knew she and Halston were great pals and that he’d designed a number of her most beautiful gowns, but I’d never imagined for a moment that I would be in the same room with her. But there she was, looking exactly how I’d have imagined she would, and more. She was incandescently beautiful, with the most gorgeous porcelain skin and a head full of glossy dark-brown hair. I had to force myself not to stare. She said, “Hi,” but all I could manage in return was, “I love your ring.”

  That night she was wearing the famed Taylor-Burton diamond, given to her by her then estranged husband Richard Burton. I had followed every detail of their torrid love affair in the popular Hollywood gossip magazines, including the story of that ring. From what I’d read, Liz clearly lived her life unconcerned with how others felt about the decisions she made. I had tremendous respect for her for just that reason. I think she also lived by the motto that life was too short not to look amazing every day, so she never left home without dripping in millions of dollars’ worth of bling. I had a tremendous amount of respect for that, too!

  Yes, Liz had other gems, stones, and diamonds, but none like the diamond she wore that night. The original rough diamond had been found in 1966 in the Premier Mine in South Africa and cut into a pear shape by jeweler Harry Winston. Burton had engaged in a fierce bidding war with shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis just to get his hands on that diamond, and he eventually purchased the 69.42-carat ring from Cartier for $1.1 million in 1969, making it the most expensive diamond in the world at the time. Now that’s real love for you.

  As I gazed at that storied piece of jewelry, Liz Taylor said, “You like it, you wear it.”

  Without missing a beat, she pulled the ring off her finger and threw it across the table. I caught it in midair and slipped it on my finger just to see how it would feel to wear something so rich with history and love.

  I won’t lie. For a moment I fantasized that I was the owner of that amazing rock, waving it around for all to see as I explained that my newest BFF, Liz Taylor, had recently gifted it to me on a whim.

  My fantasy didn’t last long. As I much as I loved the ring, I had an even stronger desire to get it back to Ms. Taylor as quickly as possible. Lord knows the last thing I needed in my life was to lose, or even run the risk of losing, Elizabeth Taylor’s history-making, million-dollar ring. I could just see Liz Smith having the time of her life in her column the next morning were such a mishap to take place. But before I could hand it back, Ms. Taylor wandered off to chat with other people, though I’m quite sure she could see me out of the corner of her eye. Clearly the woman known for playing roles in films such as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Cleopatra was having a good old time watching me sweat. I figured her throwing her huge diamond ring to some poor unsuspecting soul was one of her favorite party tricks, done just for laughs.

  After what seemed like forever, Liz came back to our large block of ice and motioned for me to come sit next to her, giving me the chance to finally return her ring. With all the stories about her historic Hollywood career and rocky personal life, I honestly didn’t know what to expect as I made my way to sit by her side. What in the world would I talk about with this woman I’d watched all my life on the big screen? Or should I breathe a word at all?

  Thank goodness she was nothing like what I expected. She told me that Halston explained to her a while ago that I was the new and beautiful “It Girl” and now she wanted to know more about me.

  I may have been the It Girl of the moment, bu
t she was the It Woman of all time as far as I was concerned! Why would she want to know more about me?

  As the dinner party began to wrap up and the beautiful people in attendance began making their pilgrimage to their next stop on the party train, with Halston leading the way, I decided to head in the opposite direction. I wasn’t in the mood for Studio 54, which was no doubt where they were all headed. I needed to go home and prepare for my next day of work.

  I wasn’t much of a club girl. I needed to get some rest so I’d be ready for my next close-up! I wouldn’t get it hanging from the rafters at Studio 54. So I took my third cab of the day and headed home.

  CHAPTER 2

  Smile

  In the taxi on the ride home from Halston’s dinner party, my mind was spinning!

  Home was now my new—but still very empty—apartment in Midtown Manhattan, the one I had shared with Billy, my still somewhat-present and ever-clingy ex-husband. I hopped out of the cab to find the same overdressed pimps hovering outside my building; inside, oversized rodents ran around in what was supposed to be my one-bedroom haven.

  It’s safe to say my real-estate choices in the big city left much to be desired. It was also safe to say I wouldn’t be inviting my new BFF, Liz Taylor, over for drinks anytime soon.

  How had I gotten to this magical (if sometimes contradictory and confusing) place from where I’d started?

  Nothing in my life up to this point could have prepared me for the world I found myself in. To be honest, I don’t think anything could have prepared me—not even my mother’s wisest words of wisdom. Which was odd because there was a time when I thought Gloria Johnson had an answer for everything.

  For as long as I could remember, my mother had always offered each of her children the most deceptively simple yet amazingly effective advice. And it worked! One day, for example, I was changing into my after-school clothes in the bedroom of our modest two-story home. As I did most days, I was telling my mother all about my school day. For good measure, I decided to share with her my fear that I didn’t have enough friends. At the time, my next-door neighbor Dada Bratton was my one and only friend in the whole entire world. Although I loved Dada dearly, I felt I needed to expand my personal circle somehow.

  My mother’s advice? If you want more friends, smile more.

  As luck would have it, not having a multitude of friends as a child was not the first clue my mother had that I’d likely be the most offbeat of her five children.

  I was born smack-dab in the middle of two girls and two boys, and without question I was the only bona fide introvert in the gregarious Johnson clan. I certainly wasn’t the one in the family who turned all the heads. My sister Joanne was a year younger than me, and a shade or two lighter in complexion, which during those years made a world of difference. She was petite and short, too, with curves in all the right places. I often wished I looked more like Joanne. She was also very charming, and that won her friends, too, particularly boys.

  My older sister, Sheilah, was pretty easy on the eyes as well. But her beauty was something all together different from Joanne’s. In her bare feet, Sheilah stood nearly six feet tall, and her skin tone was a beautiful golden brown, just like our father’s. But it wasn’t Sheilah’s height or her blemish-free skin that made her a big standout. Whereas Joanne’s brick house of a body caused quite a stir wherever she went, Sheilah’s trademark was her thick, silky head of hair that grew like a weed in summer; it thoroughly refused to comply when she finally decided she wanted to get down with Black Power and grow an Afro. (By the way, my sisters are still knockout beauties to this day.)

  I was born right between them and had neither long silky hair nor light-colored skin. I was simply an African-American nerd. Brown, lanky, and painfully shy, I always had my head in a book. I read nonstop, between classes and late at night, everything and anything, from James Baldwin to Pearl S. Buck. My books meant the world to me, because they allowed me to escape to faraway places and helped me avoid unwanted eye contact with people.

  So while my siblings enjoyed an endless supply of friends during our childhood, I had more serious things on my mind. Keeping my grades up was one of them, and resisting the girls who bullied me anytime the opportunity presented itself was the other. These were little roughneck girls who waited for me at the school bus stop, ready and willing to start a fight for no reason. Apparently Regina, Betty Ann, and Rita from down the street thought that my being taller than most of my classmates and making straight As in all my classes were good enough reasons to give me constant grief.

  So with only a few friends of my own, and with the threat of a regular beat down hanging over me, I turned to swimming. When I wasn’t reading, I was swimming or teaching someone else how to swim. I loved the water, and I usually swam before school in the morning and for a few hours after school was done. My father once lovingly teased me by saying that I was as dark as a copper penny due to the fact that I stayed outside in the sun all day during the long summer months. He didn’t say it as an insult, but that was the era of “light being right,” so my feelings could have been hurt. But I hadn’t planned on using my looks (such as they were) for much of anything as I got older anyway, so I thought nothing of it. Instead, I was planning on a future in law. It was the end of the 1960s, and I’d been profoundly influenced by my heroes, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and President John F. Kennedy. I wanted to somehow continue their work, and the best way I could see of doing that was by becoming a lawyer.

  But along with my dreams of being a lawyer, I spent most of my preteen and teen years pursuing my dream of becoming a world-class swimmer. Being under water allowed me to escape from those mean girls at my school. Spending time at the pool every day gave me the chance to sidestep, as much as humanly possible, that awkward and unenviable Odd Girl Out title that every kid, no matter who she is, dreads with a passion.

  Too bad I wasn’t able to live under water 24-7.

  But what about my mother’s advice to smile more often? Well, I decided to try that simple exercise one day in Mrs. Miller’s science class. Mrs. Miller was my favorite teacher, and when she asked me to read the class assignment out loud, I did so with a huge smile plastered on my face. I also threw in a joke here and there. Thankfully, I drew a few giggles and smiles from classmates who up to that point had completely ignored me. Mission accomplished—or so I thought.

  After class, I received a couple of high fives, as well as a note from Mrs. Miller to give to my parents. Mrs. Miller liked me, so I didn’t give the note much thought.

  Big mistake. When my mother read the note out loud to me later that night, I discovered that it suggested I had been boisterous in class and that my jokes were out of place and uncalled for. I was close to tears, but my mother was just plain angry. Not at me, just to be clear. My mother’s first and only inclination was to come to my defense, given my consistent record of excellent grades and exemplary behavior. She didn’t understand why Mrs. Miller hadn’t just pulled me aside to ask why I had done something so out of character. Maybe something was wrong with me that day or I just needed some extra attention for some reason.

  Gloria Johnson was something else, especially the way in which she fought to protect her children whenever she felt they were under attack.

  My mother’s calm and pleasant demeanor hid a fierce dedication to her home and family. That’s not to say that my mother was the type to offer long, mushy hugs at bedtime, or kisses whenever you made the honor roll or won class queen for the year. She was a traditional, old-school southern African-American mother, one who worked hard to make sure all her children were well fed, clothed, and protected from the elements. That was true motherly love as far as she was concerned. She wanted nothing but the best for her children and she made sure each of us had it, but overt acts of affection and outward expressions of emotion weren’t a part of that package.

  I came to realize that this behavior was pretty typical of my mother’s generation down south. I can’t imagi
ne that tenderness was something she was shown a great deal of as a child, given that she was born when her own mother was just thirteen years old. My grandmother, “Mother Dear,” as we called her, was forced into an arranged marriage to a much older man. My mother was the result of that marriage, and I think it’s pretty fair to say that love had nothing to do with it. The arrangement didn’t last very long—one version says my great-grandfather got wind of physical abuse toward my grandmother and my grandfather went missing under “mysterious” circumstances.

  I assume that since my grandmother was still a young child herself it was decided that raising my mother was just too much for her. So my mom was sent away to boarding school up north. Little black girls attending boarding school was a rarity during the thirties and forties, but my mother wasn’t big on sharing the details, so I never got the chance to hear much about those days. Black folks from the South, particularly those who struggled through the challenges of postwar America, often kept their personal lives private. No amount of prying could or would get them to open up about what they’d been through, and it was an unspoken rule to respect their wishes.

  Though I never learned the details, boarding school is where I believe my mother developed her impeccable sense of style and grace, attributes that she still carries with her to this day. My mother was always refined and elegant. It would be a few years before I developed that type of elegance or grace in my own life, though. After my classroom reading fiasco, I reverted back to my old ways of keeping to myself, hanging out with my neighborhood friend Dada, and devouring my favorite books to pass the time. I continued to devote myself to swimming every morning and afternoon, which saved me from more confrontations with the mean girls from my neighborhood. But that didn’t last very long, either.