The Rainbow Comes and Goes

by Anderson Cooper

  “Of course, I told him it was out of the question,” my mother said, sounding annoyed.

  “Why? Why?” I cried out, “Why is it out of the question?”

  “What makes you think you could ever be an actress?” she said, glancing over at me.

  “I’ve often thought of it secretly, I have, I have!” I wanted to scream out. But I didn’t.

  Instead, I started dating Howard. Something had passed between us when I opened that door and saw him, and wild horses couldn’t have prevented us from seeing each other again.

  When my mother became aware of this, she seemed uninterested and never mentioned him again. Later, I learned she was angry because when Howard came to visit that first time, she thought he was coming to ask her out.

  Early on in our relationship, I told Howard that Pat frightened me and was pressuring me, so he sent him off to Chicago to handle some minor job for Pan Am. It was a huge relief, but I was angry that I didn’t have the courage to get Pat out of my life by myself.

  When I think of Howard Hughes, I imagine him as a recluse living in the penthouse of the Desert Inn hotel in Las Vegas, using tissues to protect himself from germs.

  I can’t reconcile the man I dated with the man he apparently became. When I knew him, he was thirty-six, wildly romantic, and gentle, yet he had the power to rule the world.

  I had never met anyone like him. He was extremely masculine, but there was a fragility about him, as if he were made of fine and tawny flesh; and a reticence, a shyness, which was extremely appealing after the crudeness of Pat.

  When I was with Howard, I always felt that he was concentrating on me exclusively, and he was so easy to be with. Silences in our conversation were not empty spaces I wondered how to fill; they were as natural as breathing. It was as if we had known each other forever, yet whenever we got together, we plunged into wild joy as if it were our first meeting.

  Howard was extremely possessive, and secretive about our relationship; no more nights dancing till dawn at Mocambo and Ciro’s. He would pick me up at my mother’s house in a shabby Oldsmobile and off we’d go. I never knew where. Often he would fly me in his plane to Catalina for dinner in a seaside restaurant. There were nights in his private screening room when he’d proudly show me films he produced and directed, Hell’s Angels, with Jean Harlow, his first big success, among them. Some nights when he was working he’d ask me to wait for him in the screening room. I’d watch movies until he’d suddenly appear with a picnic dinner we’d prop on our laps and enjoy.

  Best of all, sex not only worked, but it was the first time since I started having sex that summer that I didn’t have to fake an orgasm.

  Before long, though, Pat figured out why Howard had sent him to Chicago. He knew we were constantly together and started inundating me with phone calls.

  “Smarten up, Fatsy-roo. He’s never going to marry you!” he would shout.

  I stopped listening, but began to wonder if perhaps he was right. In the moments we were apart, doubts took hold. Howard could have any woman in the world; how could I possibly compete?

  Although with each meeting we grew closer, he never mentioned marriage. It didn’t occur to me at that age that we needed to spend more time together before any serious plans could even be considered. We had only started seeing each other, but time had no meaning to me. I was frantic and impulsive. I was desperate to get away from my mother but determined not to return to high school and my previous life with Auntie Ger.

  Suddenly, toward the end of summer, my legal guardian, Surrogate Foley, demanded that I return to New York immediately to meet with him. My senior year in high school was about to start, and he wanted to know why I wasn’t there.

  Howard would miss me, of that I was certain, but was he going to ask me to marry him? I didn’t know. After all, we had only known each other for several months. My mother insisted on taking the next plane to New York with me. Howard alerted the pilot, who came to my seat and said Mr. Hughes had requested that he escort me into the cockpit, where I could watch them fly the gigantic jet.

  Throughout the flight, I kept hearing Howard’s voice in my head,

  I love you, Gloria.

  And my own: Howard, I love you.

  To each other we said that. He meant it. So did I. There was no question in my mind that it was the truth. Everything was going to be all right.

  But then we landed, and it wasn’t. It turned out all wrong.

  I did not go to Auntie Ger’s house in Greenwich Village. Instead, my mother checked us into the Hotel Marguery, on Park Avenue. In our suite, yellow roses, masses of them, brimmed over the rim of a crystal bowl. I rushed to open the card, knowing it was Howard who had sent them.

  I did go and see my aunt, before the appointment with Surrogate Foley. I was happy to see her and put my arms around her as we sat on the sofa in front of the fireplace. I told her about Howard, boasting that we were planning to marry. She was pleased but cautious.

  “I do think it wise to wait until you complete high school. See how you feel about it then.”

  Of course, it was a completely sensible suggestion, but then she threw me into a panic, saying, “Let’s call him. You can introduce us on the phone.”

  Trembling, I went upstairs and dialed his number, imagining Auntie Ger congratulating us on our engagement. He answered immediately. We spoke briefly about how much we missed each other, but I made no mention of my aunt. I went back downstairs, where she was waiting.

  “He’s very busy right now, Auntie Ger. Maybe another time. . . .”

  “Oh,” she said pleasantly, but she seemed somewhat taken aback.

  On my way back to the hotel, I kept clutching the religious medallion Dodo had sent me to give to Howard. I had written her and told her we were in love. She’d had it engraved, G.V. TO H.H. NOVEMBER 1941. Hesitant, I had not given it to him, and it remains in my possession to this day.

  Later that evening, I went to a party at the Pierre hotel, and there he was—not Howard, but Pat DeCicco. He ignored me, as if I weren’t there. I, too, pretended I hadn’t seen him, until he came up to me looking angry and hostile.

  “What is it with you!” he said, grabbing my arm.

  I froze, a rabbit, terrified. He stared at me in silence. Then pulled me toward him and said, “You’re going to marry me.”

  I was repelled but fascinated by the darkness of his intensity.

  What was the destructive force that drew me to him? Was it my lack of self-esteem? Or something I dared not admit to myself: that he treated me as I deserved to be treated, punishing me for having brought shame on my beautiful, beloved mother by turning against her in the custody battle?

  All I had to do was run back to the safety of life with my aunt, but I didn’t. The next day, I told my mother that Pat had proposed. She was ecstatic, and hastily called the New York Times to announce our engagement. Everything was happening too fast. Every time I thought of calling Howard, I panicked, and so I never did.

  When I finally met with Surrogate Foley, Pat insisted on being there. Foley controlled my trust fund and demanded Pat sign a document stating he had no right to my inheritance should we divorce. It was as if hot pepper had been sprayed in Pat’s face. He jumped up, shouting abuse at Foley. It was an amazing performance. Head in my lap, I started to cry, but Pat dragged me from the room, leaving the document unsigned, and that was the last time I ever saw Foley.

  “May you always be as happy as you are now,” my mother kept simpering to me as she and Aunt Thelma bustled about, occupying themselves with wedding plans. It was like a weird Alice in Wonderland dream.

  How had this happened?

  Today I have plenty of theories, but there is really only one explanation: an immature seventeen-year-old girl was playing blind man’s bluff in a dark forest. I felt unworthy to be loved by a man who treated me as Howard did, like a queen. Pat knew the secret of unworthy me. It’s really no surprise that I soon found myself Mrs. Pasquale John DeCicco.


  It is a sign of how alone you were that no one sat you down and tried to help you make better choices.

  I just looked up an old Movietone News newsreel of the wedding on YouTube. You and DeCicco are on steps outside the church. There are crowds of people watching, held back by police. The wind is blowing your veil, and the whole affair looks rushed and confused. There is one moment when you seem to laugh at something DeCicco says, but it looks like you’re faking it. Your smile seems almost frozen.

  Oh God, that wedding! It took place in Santa Barbara, at the Old Mission Catholic Church on December 28, 1941. It was a modest wedding, paid for by the allowance my mother was getting from Surrogate Foley.

  I walked alone down the aisle in a dress designed by Howard Greer, with a thirty-foot veil trailing behind me. By tradition, it would have been appropriate for my mother’s brother, my uncle Harry Morgan, to take my father’s role in “giving the bride away,” but he wanted nothing to do with the wedding. He and his children refused to associate with me, blaming me for rejecting my mother in the custody trial.

  Dazed as a zombie on the altar, I stood, kneeled, stood, kneeled . . . while the four-hour High Mass droned on and on. Who was this stranger by my side, this tall, withdrawn dummy in a store window?

  Then it was over. Two robots turned and walked back down the aisle and out onto the steps, where photographers and onlookers had gathered to view the proceedings. One newspaper noted, “The bride remained un-kissed.” True, indeed.

  Photo © Bettmann/CORBIS.

  The wedding party drove back to a cocktail reception hosted by my mother and Aunt Thelma, in their house on Maple Drive. Auntie Ger had been impressed when I told her about Howard Hughes, but she was very much against my marrying Pat, and there was no question of her attending the wedding, but Dodo and Naney were there, though they kept clear of my mother and Thelma. They enjoyed ogling the movie stars, and Dodo commented, “Rita Hayworth is the only one that looks aristocratic.”

  For our honeymoon, Pat’s pal Bruce Cabot lent him a new car for us to drive to Kansas, so that Pat could begin his officer training course. It was just a few weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Pat had joined the army. Bruce’s car was a sleek silver vehicle that appeared to come from a Flash Gordon comic strip. Pat got big laughs christening it “Flash Gordon’s Bed Pan.”

  “Where are we spending our wedding night?” I asked as we drove off, waving to the assembled guests.

  “A surprise,” he responded.

  It certainly was. After a few hours on the road, we stopped at Joe Schenck’s house in Palm Springs. Schenck was chairman of 20th Century-Fox. Inside the home, Zeppo Marx and a group of men were playing cards. They briefly glanced up through the haze of cigar smoke to nod hello, indicating a room down the hall that was to be our bridal suite.

  “Settle in,” Pat told me. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

  I lay in the dark waiting until 6:00 a.m., when he appeared for a quick . . . dare I say? . . . fuck. Then off we went for a breakfast hot dog and many more days on the road.

  While Pat was in the army, I lived in a small rented house in Junction City, Kansas, for two years. I would see him on weekends, when he had leave. I didn’t look forward to his arrival. He would constantly put me down, calling me Fatsy-roo—and then there were his violent rages. He would scream at me and slap me.

  I was so ashamed, and I didn’t have anyone I could talk to about what was going on. I obviously shouldn’t have made such a hasty decision to marry him, but my mother had moved so quickly to make it happen.

  Auntie Ger had died four months after the wedding, which left me stunned. We hadn’t spoken, because she was so opposed to my marrying Pat, and no one had told me she was even ill. I went to her funeral in New York, and in the car on the way back to my hotel, I completely collapsed, hysterical. I was so unhappy and miserable, and now I believed there was no one I could trust to help me out of this huge, awful mistake.

  Though she was distant and reserved, your aunt had tried to bring a level of stability to your life that you had never experienced. I found a box of letters from her in storage last week and have sent them to you. She seemed to express things in writing that she never actually said to you in person, offering to “talk things over” with you and telling you how much she cared about you. In the letters, it was clear that she loved you and wanted to reach out to you. If only she had been able to express that to you when you were living with her all those years.

  So many of the sweet words she wrote to me in letters when I was in Los Angeles that terrible summer were sentiments she had never been able to directly express to me. After you sent me that box of letters and I went through them, I wrote her a letter. It made me feel a little better, and perhaps somehow, somewhere, she will hear of it.

  Dearest Auntie Ger,

  There are some things I’d like you to know even though it’s too late. I am sorry for the way I behaved at seventeen and I hope you know my actions came from bewilderment and panic. I felt alone and was unable to think clearly.

  When your offer to “talk things over” finally came that summer I was staying with my mother in California, it was too late. If only we had been able to “talk things over” from the beginning, when I went to live with you in Old Westbury, my life might have taken a different turn. But that was not to be.

  All this is to tell you how much I loved you and to thank you for rescuing me from the terrible fears I had concerning my mother. I wish we had come to know each other better—come closer, so to say, but this is tempered by peace in knowing we are closer in death than we ever were in life.

  I’m sorry that I failed you, but I have to forgive myself because at the time I saw no other solution to resolve the confusion I was feeling. I like to believe you understand and in doing so forgive me as well, but more than anything else, I hope you know how much I love you and thank you for all you did for me—all you gave me.

  Love,

  Gloria

  I wonder what would have happened if you hadn’t married Pat DeCicco and had instead gone back to New York to live with Gertrude. She died in April 1942, so you would have been nearly finished with high school. Assuming you didn’t marry Howard Hughes, you might have gone on to college or art school.

  I think about that a lot, what might have been. Instead, I lived in Junction City for two years while Pat was stationed at Fort Riley. In 1942, on a quick trip to Washington, DC, we met Senator Happy Chandler. He seemed a happy fellow indeed, and if he wasn’t, he certainly imitated one well. Pat and Happy really hit it off, both telling lots of jokes that I never found funny, though I would laugh along with them. Pat was soon calling him his new best friend, and together they were a merry Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

  One evening, when I joined them at a restaurant in Washington, Pat told me that Happy had the clout to turn him from a first lieutenant into a captain if only we could come up with ten thousand dollars in cash to give him. Both Pat and Happy kept looking expectantly at me as we sat around the table.

  Not yet twenty-one, I hadn’t gained access to the money I was going to inherit, receiving a monthly allowance instead. Pat knew this, but when we got back to our hotel, he started shouting at me. “Sit your ass down and get Hughes on the phone. Tell him you need to borrow ten grand; you’ll pay him back when you are twenty-one. And Fatsy-roo, don’t be a dummy and tell him what it’s for.”

  “I can’t do that,” I replied, and started to cry.

  Pig-eyed with fury, he snatched the phone and shoved it into my chest.

  Terrified, I called Howard, whom I hadn’t spoken to since my engagement to Pat was announced.

  When Howard picked up the phone, his only response was, “I thought you were calling to say you were coming back to me.”

  Howard and I never spoke again, and Pat did not get the undeserved promotion.

  People stay in relationships for all kinds of reasons, but you did have options. You could have returned to your mother or moved ba
ck to New York. You had attorneys and a legal guardian, Surrogate James Foley, who controlled the money being held in a trust for you. Why didn’t you leave DeCicco?

  Oh, darling, why does anyone stay in an awful marriage? I knew I had made a horrendous mistake, but I didn’t see an easy way out. I was an insecure eighteen-year-old who had never felt connected to her family, and I didn’t think I had anywhere else to go. Auntie Ger wouldn’t want me back after the way I behaved—or so I thought.

  The first time I remember having a glimmer of belief in myself was when I was riding on a train back to Junction City after a visit to Los Angeles. In the seat across from me sat an older man, and next to him, his son. I was immersed in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice when suddenly I heard my name. I looked up from my book, but the men continued their conversation, clearly oblivious that the person they were gossiping about was sitting just an arm’s length away.

  “So sad, that Vanderbilt girl, just a kid from such a well-known family, with so much to look forward to. Why didn’t someone do something to stop her from marrying a gigolo clearly after her money?”

  My face stinging, I wanted to bolt out of the compartment and jump off the train, but I just sat there paralyzed.

  “People say DeCicco murdered his first wife, that actress Thelma Todd. Wonder how he got Gloria to marry him. She’s just a kid in her teens, and he’s so much older, in his thirties.”

  I continued to sit with my head down in my book, as they chatted on—about my mother (saying hateful things) and Auntie Ger (who came out swell), but always returning to DeCicco and me.

  “Surely she can only come to a bad end starting out like that.”

  Would I come to a bad end? It frightened me to hear it said out loud, so evident even to strangers.

  We arrived in Junction City and stood in a long line slowly making our way off the train. Did I dare? Did I have the courage?