by Goldie Hawn
Our lives up to this point have been badly out of sync. She moved out of the house when she was nineteen, leaving me like an only child. She moved to the suburbs and had babies and had the life I once imagined myself having with Willy Hicks. Only I didn’t have the babies, or Willy Hicks either. I became a movie star instead, and wasn’t home enough to bridge the gap to our grown-up years.
This is time for us, just us. Not Mom or Dad. Not husbands or children. Not the growing responsibilities of our daily lives. Patti can dress up every day in a new outfit, and so can I. We can go wherever we want to go—the best hotels, great restaurants, in chauffeur-driven cars that can make left-hand turns.
We fly over Rome, peering down at all the buildings and the rolling green hills threaded by the mighty River Tiber. When we land in Rome, we are whisked by limousine to our hotel, which is on a hill. The weather is glorious for June, and as we stare in openmouthed wonder as we pass the Coliseum and the Vatican—which is like nothing either of us has ever seen—the laughter just pours out of us.
“Okay, what do you want to do first?” I ask as we unpack in the suite we have decided to share.
“Drink a cappuccino by the Trevi Fountain!” she announces.
Our feet barely touch the ground for the rest of the trip. We walk the streets as if we own them. In our floaty frocks and big hats, we make quite the pair. The Italian men flirt outrageously with us, and we flirt right back. We feel sexy and sassy. My sister. I don’t want this feeling to end.
My sister has such big energy; she is so alive. She walks quickly; she talks quickly; she is always on the go. She loves to sing; she laughs big; she is very feminine, and there is a lot of sexuality about her, the flaming redhead. Best of all, she has so many of the childlike qualities that I do.
Over the course of the next few days, I watch Patti be as happy as anyone I could possibly imagine. And it doesn’t take a lot to make her happy. A chance to go somewhere new, a new hat that looks fabulous—these things can make her day. I wish I could give her a new hat every day.
On the night of the di Donatello Awards, we get dolled up to the nines in our suite like two best girlfriends, drying each other’s hair, sharing makeup, zipping each other into our clothes. She looks gorgeous in a beautiful green silk gown. I choose something simple, a sparkly little dress that I wear with some perilously high-heeled shoes.
The limousine collects us and drives us to the ancient Baths of Caracalla, built by the Romans in the third century A.D. It is an amazing setting for the awards, open to the sky, surrounded by redbrick walls and deep sunken baths in which emperors once bathed.
“Prego, signorine. This way,” someone urges as they usher us past the waiting paparazzi and into the main arena. Patti and I blink into the flashlights popping wildly all around us and do as we are told. The evening has been organized with great pomp and circumstance, with a grand procession to the stage, but also with the Italians rushing about and speaking so fast and so expressively that it all seems a little chaotic.
“Mamma mia! Where is the stage director?” someone shouts.
“Bellissime. This way. Prego!”
The organizers seem so disorganized, and everything looks like a Fellini movie, it is so over the top. I start to giggle, and then Patti starts to giggle, and we both know that we are treading on very dangerous ground. When the organizers try to separate us, sending Patti to the auditorium with the other VIP guests and me up toward the stage to wait for my award, we almost lose it completely, and they have to leave us for a moment and come back.
“Okay, now, stop it,” I plead, wiping tears from my eyes and checking my makeup in her mirror, “we’ve got to pull ourselves together. I know Dad instilled a healthy disrespect for this industry in us, but in a few minutes I have to go up and make a speech.”
Nodding, pursing her lips, yet with her eyes full of mischief, Patti allows me to compose myself before kissing me good-bye and wishing me luck.
A handsome young Italian in a tuxedo leads me backstage and introduces me to my fellow awardees. There is Bernardo Bertolucci, and Franco Zeffirelli, the famous film directors, and all these other uccis and ellis whose names I can’t remember. With only one syllable to my surname, I feel like an impostor.
Oh well, I think to myself. At least I get to take home one of these gorgeous eighteen-karat-gold replicas of the statue of David by Donatello. He’ll look just perfect next to Oscar.
Ryan O’Neal arrives backstage, and the chaos rises to a new level. Everyone fusses around him, wanting his autograph or his photo. He is here with Ali MacGraw to accept an award for Love Story.
“Stand here, Signor O’Neal. Wait there, Signor. Smile into this camera, Ryan.” They say the name Ryan so that it sounds like “Orion.” I can’t help but giggle.
Ryan and Ali are at the peak of their careers. They seem unstoppable. Robert Evans is there too in his capacity as Ali’s husband, but he is a big producer at Paramount and really happening in Hollywood. I stand to one side, watching these big players being shoved this way and that with increasing pandemonium, and feel completely out of place.
Ali MacGraw sweeps in, wearing the most amazing gaucho outfit, with a black hat and silver studs, looking absolutely gorgeous. She strides across that stage—which I now notice with alarm is raked dangerously downhill toward the audience—and accepts her beautiful golden statue with a flourish. Not only does she look fabulous but, to my horror, she speaks fluent Italian both to the presenter and to all the people watching.
“Grazie tante,” she concludes, as the crowd applauds enthusiastically. “Mia tutte. I love you all.”
Perfect, I mouth to myself. How in the world do I follow that?
“And now,” the presenter announces, “for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Cactus Flower, Signorina Goldie Hawn.”
A ripple of polite applause goes up, and I teeter with little baby steps down the stage toward the presenter. The closer I get to the microphone, the more I imagine what I must look like after Ali, and the more I begin to laugh.
Hardly able to walk as I negotiate the raked stage, I can see myself flying off and straight down into the Baths of Caracalla. Worst of all, I know that Patti is out there somewhere. Catching a glimpse of her at the front, I dare not look at her.
Reaching my spot with enormous relief, I turn to the presenter and try to pull myself together. Turning to his assistant for my award, he takes not the beautiful gold statue of David worth thousands of dollars but a strange and rather ugly lump of green rock with a gold-embossed plaque. He plops it in my hands, and it is so damn heavy that it almost throws me off balance and straight into the orchestra pit.
“Oh. Oh, thank you.” I smile, looking longingly at the other gold statues.
“I’m sorry,” he explains, “we don’t give those to people who come a year late.”
Finding the whole situation more and more absurd, holding on to my lump of green rock with both hands, I approach the microphone and open my mouth to speak. But just as I begin with “Signore and Signori…” the orchestra cuts in and my time is up.
Catching my sister’s eye and abandoning all attempts to control myself, I give myself over completely to the sheer release of laughing. My mascara bleeding and desperately trying not to blow snot from my nostrils, I climb to the back of the stage, knees bent, steadily making the ascent clutching my rock, while the orchestra drowns out my howls of mirth.
My award being the last, suddenly everyone else is brought back onstage, and I find myself standing next to Sophia Loren, who is proudly flaunting her beautiful gold statue. With a long drumroll, the presenter announces that the 1970 David di Donatello ceremony has come to an end. As the orchestra strikes up, he pulls on a red cord and fifty white doves are released from a box into the warm night air above us, flicking feathers and droppings all over us.
Well, that just about finishes me off. I am now laughing so hard that I actually pee my pants, right then and there, next to some of the most ill
ustrious movie stars in Europe.
Goldie Hawn, I hear a voice say in my head, you might as well just pack it up and go straight back to where you came from, girl, because you sure as hell don’t belong here. My knees clamped together, doubled over, I know that I shall almost certainly never be asked again.
“And then…and then Goldie was holding this thing that was so heavy she could hardly move!” Patti is squealing into Daddy’s tape. “My sister—your daughter—was standing there, laughing so hard, I just knew she’d wet herself…I thought she was going to roll down that stage, right into my lap.”
My father is laughing. So is my mom.
“Honestly, Daddy, I felt like I had my finger up my hiney! I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t feel like I belonged.”
My father laughs. “Oh, you two hippies. You so don’t belong up on that stage!”
“I know!” I agree.
“Oh, but then we went to Capri,” Patti continues, her eyes bright, her skin golden from the Italian sun. “Ryan O’Neal invited us to a party at Valentino’s house! It was amazing. Right by the sea…”
“And everything was in zebra,” I chip in. “Even the bathroom!”
“Zebra?” Dad repeats.
“In the bathroom?” Mom scowls.
We giggle some more, and Dad moves the microphone closer to capture every precious drop.
“We hired a little motorboat, driven by this gorgeous Italian,” I continue, “and he took us to the Blue Grotto.”
“We had to crouch down to go in, and, when we did, it was unbelievable. Electric blue. Oh, Mom, you should have seen this place…”
“Then there was the Green Grotto,” I exclaim. “We couldn’t believe the color…”
“I can still see it in my mind’s eye,” Patti adds. “Emerald. It was so cool.”
An image flashes across my mind. My sister’s red hair, streaked from the sun, blowing away from her face as we blast across the sea, sitting on the bow of a speedboat, heading for the Green Grotto.
“But we haven’t even told you about when we went back to Rome,” Patti cries, bringing me back to the present. “We got to the hotel, and they were on strike!”
“They were on strike?” my father interrupts, checking that his machine is still recording. “Everybody’s always on strike in Italy.”
“I know, Daddy, it was so funny. There were no rooms.”
“But where the hell did you sleep?” Mom asks.
“On the couches in the lobby.”
“On the couches in the lobby? Oh, that’s great.” She throws her head back and laughs like hell.
Patti and I catch each other’s eye and begin to laugh from a place deep within us that only we really understand. Our special time together is drawing to a close, and soon we shall be back on different sides of the country. But as we cling to each other, we both know that we have amassed a precious store of memories to feed on for the rest of our lives.
Sometimes a jewel can be right under your nose and you don’t appreciate it. Then, one day you suddenly realize that it was there all along. Because of the history Patti and I share as siblings, sometimes we feel we don’t have to work at our relationship. It is so easy to overlook each other because each assumes the other is always going to be there.
The trip to Italy allowed Patti and me to discover each other as women, not just as sisters, because the sister thing can sometimes really get in the way. Here we were, away from Mom and Dad, away from sibling rivalry and all its attendant issues, just being a sister’s sister. And guess what we discovered? That sister or no sister, isn’t she a blast?
I was never supposed to be the successful one. This wasn’t meant to be. I was just a fluke of nature. Patti was the smart one. In the space of a few years, she must have gone from wondering if I was even going to get through school to being amazed that I was a regular on a popular television show and everybody knew my name.
Siblings don’t need much to feel threatened by each other; that’s a force of nature in itself. Then when success gets in the way, the ripples start to spread. There must have been times when all anyone ever wanted to ask her about was me. I mean, how many times do you want to answer the question “What’s Goldie really like?” or questions about whichever male movie star I was working with at the time.
I am sure she must have wanted to scream, “Yeah, Goldie’s okay, but you know what really ticks me off about her is…” and list my most annoying traits. So, at times she must have felt as isolated from me as I did from her.
No matter how hard you try, success promotes guilt in the person who is successful—especially when you know that deep down, it can’t be making others feel all that good. It is a very tough thing to look at someone else’s good fortune and say, “Oh, I’m so happy for you.” Somewhere inside there has to be a voice screaming, “What about me? Why was I dealt this hand and you dealt that hand?”
What was important for me about taking this extraordinary journey with Patti was that I learned I couldn’t fool her. I couldn’t be who I was not. I couldn’t fake it. She knew me better than anyone. It didn’t matter what I looked like with Patti. I could go without makeup, or even tie my hair back off my face, and it didn’t matter. A lot of people arm themselves with who they think they should be so that they can become individuals and break away from what they have been in the past. But until you can be completely raw with someone—as happy as you want to be, as loving as you want to be, as mean, as helpless, as bereaved, as scared, as lost—then you can never really feel comfortable in your own skin. I can be that honest with Patti.
As life goes on, you realize that as siblings, you are the only people in the world who can reference your lives from a similar perspective. No one else has that ability; no one else lived inside those walls, knew your parents as people and is able to laugh or cry at the same things in the same way.
There will always be something about siblings that irritates or annoys you, but, as with any other relationship, in order to sustain it you have to learn to show tolerance for whatever they are going through. Just because there is a threatening situation or maybe anger bubbling beneath the surface, don’t overreact. There are ways to handle it. You might sometimes see your sibling acting out and you may not like it, but you have to know when it matters and when it doesn’t.
The relationship between siblings is about as deep as you can go. As your parents die and fall away from this earth, the bond becomes deeper, and, if you have honed it, massaged it, nurtured it, then on the day you both become orphans you will be able to seek solace in each other and know that you are all each other has.
No one on the planet will ever know you better than your sibling. They know the good parts, the bad parts, and the secrets. It is a very powerful and valuable relationship. Don’t let it slip through your fingers. It is like going home in your heart.
So I do look the part! Playing a Russian ballerina in The Girl from Petrovka. (© Universal)
wonder
Wonder shows in the light of our eyes.
Without it, they become dull and old.
“But I don’t look Russian!” I protest to Richard Zanuck and David Brown, who are sitting in my trailer on a film set somewhere deep in the heart of Texas.
“Oh yes you do!” they sing back in unison, perched on the edge of my couch. “Do you think we would offer you this part if we didn’t think you were perfect for it?”
Zanuck and Brown are the beloved producers of my fifth movie, The Sugarland Express, directed by Steven Spielberg. They look like Mutt and Jeff: Dick Zanuck, with his jaw sticking out, and David Brown, with his round teddy-bear appearance, always sporting a cigar. I’m crazy about these guys; they are the most dedicated producers, devoted to their films, to their actors, to their directors and to the goal we’re all trying to achieve. They defend their films with their lives, and they are a dying breed.
The rain beats down on the tin roof, drowning them out, as I continue to argue my case.
&nbs
p; “People just won’t buy me as a Russian. I mean, I’ll have to speak with a Russian accent, and who on earth will believe me? I mean, really.”
They are trying to persuade me to accept the role of Oktyabrina, a Russian ballet dancer, in a new movie called The Girl from Petrovka. Based on the book by George Feifer, it is the true story of a young girl who falls in love with an American reporter before being banished to Siberia.
“Goldie, don’t underestimate your own talent,” they tell me. “Of course you could do this.”
“All right, guys.” I smile. “You’re wearing me down. I’ll tell you what. Let me go to Moscow and meet some Russians for myself and then I’ll see if I even look Russian.”
“Great idea!” they respond in unison.
It is October 1973 when I land with a thud on the tarmac of Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport. I am flying Aeroflot, which has the worst safety record in the world. The Cold War is in full bloom.
As I walk through the drafty immigration hall, I look right and left at the gun-toting soldiers standing guard, all buttoned up to the neck and as stiff as boards. It is the first time I have ever witnessed a military presence at an airport, and the sight chills me.
When I finally get through the endless process of checking my papers, I am met by the Los Angeles Times correspondent in Moscow, Murray Seeger, who has promised to help me. He reaches his hand out to me eagerly and introduces himself.
“Oh, great, great,” I say, taking his hand. “It’s good to finally put a face to your name.” He is open, friendly and warm.
Chatting to him as we make our way out of the airport, I find him something of a curiosity, for I have long wondered why anyone would ever choose to live in Russia. I frequently read his articles about Brezhnev and the cast of Cold War characters, and Russia didn’t seem like a fun place to live.