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by Harper, Valerie

  We later learned the poignant fact that the birth mother had the painful duty of picking up the little one in North Carolina to bring her to California. When she and her boyfriend arrived at Nanny’s house, the little girl asked, “Are you my mommy?”

  “No, but I’m taking you to meet your mommy,” she answered. It must have broken the mother’s heart. She sat apart from her boyfriend and child. What an unbearable plane ride that must have been.

  Although we had agreed to a closed adoption, Tony’s curiosity got the better of him. He wanted to get a glimpse of the birth mother. Due to nerves, we made an illogical choice. Instead of Tony’s SUV, we took my two-seater—a white Mercedes convertible I called Blanche. I was swathed in black—a black scarf, a black sweater, and black glasses. It was a warm March evening, but I didn’t want to risk being recognized. Truth be told, I probably stuck out like a sore thumb. Since then a celebrity wearing a baseball hat and dark glasses at night has become de rigueur and is a veritable attention magnet! We pulled up to the curb outside Piedmont Airlines—in those days you could—and I slunk down in my seat.

  Tony sneaked up to the gate—in those days you could—and lurked behind a pillar, not wanting to blow his cover. One of the first passengers off the plane was a tall, pretty redhead who ran over to sit with Durand. She seemed nervous and unsettled during their brief conversation. He gave her some papers, which she hurriedly signed, and then she ran off. Tony kept watch as every passenger deplaned. Finally a man with a goatee appeared holding a little girl in his arms.

  When I saw Durand emerge from the terminal, I got out of the car, my heart thumping. He was carrying a beautiful blond child in a pink coat, holding a stuffed alligator (I still have that coat and that alligator).

  When Durand reached me, he whispered, “Boom-Boom [her nickname], this is your new mommy.”

  She turned toward me and jumped into my arms. “Mommy, you picked me up!” she exclaimed. Every day at the day care where she lived, she had watched as parents came to get the other children. She had always been left behind, and now she, too, was being picked up. It brought tears to my eyes.

  Just then Tony reached the car. “And this is your daddy,” Durand said, pointing out Tony. “Daddy,” she said, jumping into his arms.

  Her openness was shocking and delightful. It was not at all as we had imagined. I had worried that she would be scared and shy. But she was remarkably agreeable and excited—so full of life, from the second she came off the plane. She adopted us on the spot. She sat on my lap and chatted the whole way home.

  When Durand had told us that he’d found a child for us, Tony and I were in the process of moving from our house in Brentwood to a larger place in Beverly Hills to accommodate what we hoped would be our growing family. Our new house wasn’t ready, and our old house was entirely in boxes.

  We had rented a place in the Malibu Colony for the summer while the renovations were finished on the Beverly Hills house. We hadn’t yet moved. On our first night as a family, Tony and I and our new daughter literally camped out among our moving boxes and wardrobe carriers in Brentwood.

  Our little girl had been called by her nickname Boom-Boom because of her unceasing energy. Perfect for us! Her name was the classic Celtic name Siobhan, which the hospital had misspelled as “Sibeon.” That’s too close to “simian” and the inevitable schoolyard taunts. Obviously, she couldn’t go by Boom-Boom Cacciotti, which sounded like either a stripper or a Sicilian boxer. And Siobhan Cacciotti wasn’t too great, either. We felt that we should change her name, but she certainly needed to be a part of such a decision.

  “Boom-Boom is a cute nickname,” I said, “but would you like to have a real name?”

  She immediately agreed.

  “Well, let’s pick one together,” I said. “Something that sounds good with our last name.”

  “Yes,” she concurred quite seriously.

  “Would you like Carla, Mia, Christina?” Tony asked.

  “I like Chris,” she said, smiling. “You know, from Cagney & Lacey. She’s blond, like me.” She meant Sharon Gless’s character, Christine Cagney.

  So Boom-Boom became Cristina Harper Cacciotti. Initially, I chose the American spelling, Christina, but Tony’s mother, Filomena, who was originally from Italy, sent a card that read, Buonvenuto, Cara Cristina. And her spelling stuck.

  My sister, Ginger, Angela’s daughter, a darling, lively twenty-five-year-old, happened to be in Los Angeles when Cristina arrived. Angela, who was back in New Jersey, gave Ginger marching orders to welcome Cristina. “Ginger, take my credit card and shop. I mean shop! I don’t care if you max it out. I want you to go into every store and buy more than you can carry—dresses, toys, games, anything a four-year-old might want. I want you to walk into Valerie’s house like Auntie Mame.” Angela went about shopping for Cristina the same way she went about serving food: “You don’t ask, you just put.” (Translation: “You don’t ask people if they’d like something to eat. You just put it out—and lots of it!”) Ginger followed her mother’s orders and swooped down on us with an avalanche of gifts.

  Two days after Cristina arrived, we moved out to the pretty home right on the beach in the Malibu Colony and made an amazing discovery. There on the wall of the bedroom for Cristina hung a giant rosy pink neon-glass signature that read “CiCi.” This was literally a sign! Durand had told us that we didn’t need to be married to adopt, but we knew it would facilitate the process if we were; plus, we’d always intended to get married. And since the “baby” had already arrived, we arranged a quick shotgun wedding.

  I took Cristina with me to pick out rings. It was going to be a three-ring ceremony, celebrating that we were now a trio. Cristina picked out a little gold ring with a tiny ruby. For Tony and me, I bought traditional gold bands. At the jewelry counter, I held Cristina in my arms so she could see into the display cases.

  “Hey, Val! Who is this beautiful little person?” a voice near me asked.

  I looked up and saw Shirley MacLaine. “Oh, Shirley, meet my daughter,” I said. “A very recent addition.”

  Shirley fussed over Cristina for a while, then she and I got involved in our own conversation. Eventually, Cristina grew bored with all the adult talk and started tugging on my hair. “Mommy, Mommy, can we go outside?”

  “I can’t believe she’s completely accepted me as Mommy so soon,” I said to Shirley. “Can this be possible?”

  “Val,” Shirley said, “it’s a miracle. Accept it. You are her mother, and she is your daughter. You two have found each other in the universe.”

  “Of all the people to have run into at this emotional, thrilling, and scary time in my life, who better than you, O spiritual one, Shirley MacLaine?” With a shake of the red hair, a flash of the famous smile, and a kiss for each of us, Shirley blessed this adoption.

  The next day Tony and I were married by a female judge right on the beach in Malibu. My mother’s presence was wonderful, as she was both welcoming Cristina into our family and witnessing my marriage to Tony. After all, she had missed my first wedding. Tony’s eldest son, Michael, and my treasured friend Gene also joined us for the tiny, impromptu yet tender ceremony. At a beautiful beachside Malibu restaurant, we had our wedding dinner where Cristina was the belle of the ball.

  When Tony and I decided to adopt, I prepared myself for a difficult transition, especially because the child coming into our home was four years old. The media tends to amplify horror stories of maladjusted kids rebelling against their new families. But with Cristina, it was effortless. She was so completely at ease with us in her new home. She was very comfortable talking about where she came from, her old life back in North Carolina, and Nanny’s dog, Scooby-Doo. One of her favorite television shows was Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies. Whenever the little Muppet Babies and their caregiver, Nanny, were all in a scene together, Cristina would point at the screen and say, “That used to be me.”

  That first summer on the beach was a magical time. I loved watching Cristin
a play in the sand in her little bathing suit. The sun made her beautiful blond hair even more golden. Whenever she got out of the water, her wet hair turned dark, and she’d rush over to me, holding strands of her wet hair in her hands. “Look,” she’d say. “Now my hair is just like yours and Daddy’s.”

  One night not long after Cristina came to us, I woke up in the middle of the night to her shouts. “Mommy! Daddy!” she cried. Tony and I rushed across the hall to her bedroom. Cristina was sitting up in bed. She didn’t look the least bit terrified, sad, or troubled in any way.

  “What is it?” we said, dashing to her bedside.

  “Nothing,” Cristina said. “I was just making sure you’d come if I called.”

  I admired her logic. She wanted to know where she stood with us. She was only four years old and couldn’t possibly know how much she meant to us from the moment she leaped into our arms at the airport.

  chapter

  ELEVEN

  Cristina made Tony’s and my world complete. It was as if we had always been a family. If only our work lives could have been as perfect as things at home. Not long after the joyful arrival of Cristina, things on Valerie began to unravel. In 1987, before the third season, Tony and I entered into a serious contract dispute with Lorimar. Suffice to say, we had some extremely tough negotiations, but at the eleventh hour, we came to a suitable agreement, and I prepared to go back to work for season three.

  As was customary, we filmed the show on a Friday evening, and I looked forward to the season ahead. On Monday morning, Gina Trikonis, the costumer for Valerie, was at my house energetically putting together outfits for the upcoming show. Incidentally, Gina, a spectacular dancer, was in the original Broadway company of West Side Story in 1956 (that I failed to be hired for!). Also, hearing her talk about her daughter Christina inspired me to consider the name for my new child. Kindred spirits, we were looking through shoes—and having fun doing it—when a call came from Lorimar. For reasons of their own, Lorimar wanted out of the deal they had made with Tony and me the previous week; they wanted to go back to before we had renegotiated and reached an agreement. They told me I should “walk away.”

  Gina and I were in complete shock. I had just been fired.

  When I called Tony in a panic, he wisely advised me to calm down and do nothing until he reached our lawyer, Bill Hayes, a top name in entertainment law. Coincidentally, Bill was the attorney who had handled the creation of Lorimar years earlier. Bill told Lorimar, “You wrongfully fired Valerie. See you in court.”

  Being fired from our own show—an eponymous one, no less—was painful and humiliating. That night Tony and I sat on the floor of the unfinished bedroom of our house in Beverly Hills, with him holding me as tears ran down my cheeks. The floor was strewn with moving boxes and packing material. We sat in silence, mourning Valerie’s demise. I had to put it in perspective. That very week Joan Rivers’s husband, Edgar, had killed himself, and a large passenger plane had gone down on its way to Los Angeles. These were the real tragedies. All we were confronting was people in our business behaving inappropriately.

  During this period, I tried my best to hide my distress from Cristina. When she asked why I was crying, Tony said, “Mommy’s feeling a little sad.”

  “Don’t worry, Mommy,” she said, putting her hand on mine, “I will hold you.” This was the same thing she said whenever we saw something gruesome—like a nest of tarantulas—on television. I was so touched by the fact that Cristina took on the job of comforting me.

  The following week, my good friend Carol Kane took me to lunch at a cozy spot called Trumps. A mutual acquaintance stopped by our table and asked me what had happened on Valerie. “Well,” I said slowly, “I was fired.”

  After he left, Carol said, “You don’t have to tell people you were fired. You could just say you left.” Sure, that would have been less painful, but it wasn’t true. And I didn’t want to lie about what had happened.

  My friends and coworkers supported me thoroughly, which was reassuring. Shortly after Lorimar made their decision, I called each of my three television sons. I didn’t want them to hear it through the grapevine that their TV mom had been fired. Jason offered to make calls to have me reinstated, as did Jeremy and Danny. Danny’s mother, Diane Ponce, went so far as to have a meeting at Lorimar on my behalf. As much as I wanted to be back on the show, I didn’t want the kids mixed up in this.

  Within days the rumor mill was in full swing. There were reports that I’d been unable to perform on show night—that I’d taken my anger out on my TV family, endangering the boys and throwing furniture. Since I was a woman, the ever popular accusation that I was unbalanced, hormonal, and menopausal was flying around.

  These allegations were particularly upsetting because Tony and I were well into the adoption process, and we desperately wanted to avoid a public smear campaign by the rag sheets and a prolonged court battle. We certainly didn’t want anything getting in the way of finalizing Cristina’s adoption. Tony and I were afraid that one of the social workers who made random, unannounced visits to our house, checking up on Cristina, would be influenced by a slur in the gossip “press.”

  At the suggestion of my publicist, Michael Levine, I called a press conference. I sent out seventy-five handwritten letters inviting the press to attend. Michael told me that we needed to determine our SOCO (pronounced socko) “single overriding communication objective,” one crystal-clear message to get across to the press. This was simple: to clear up the lies. I was going to demonstrate to them that, contrary to any rumors or allegations, I was perfectly stable, had done my job, and had been wrongfully fired.

  There was a huge media turnout. They all listened as I read my statement with Barry Langberg, a lawyer from Bill Hayes’s firm, by my side. Many members of the press knew me personally from having interviewed me for over eighteen years. I told them that Tony and I were not about to “walk away” from Valerie, as Lorimar suggested, and we were not going to let my reputation be ruined. Lorimar and NBC could expect a fight. We were going to court.

  The first battle I had to face was over the name of the show, which NBC wanted to keep even after I was fired. My name! Needless to say, this wasn’t acceptable. Get rid of me, but hang on to my name to maintain viewer loyalty? That wasn’t going to happen without a lot of resistance.

  We had a hearing to work out the issue. My lawyer Barry Langberg, a terrific litigator, came before the judge and said, “They fired her wrongfully, as we will prove at a later date, but they want to hold on to her name. If she goes, her name goes with her.”

  Opposing counsel stood up. “Valerie Harper is a second-rate actress. Nobody knows who she is. Her name means nothing.”

  The judge, a charming curmudgeon with a sharp wit, banged his gavel, silencing the opposing counsel. “Do not be pejorative in my courtroom,” he said. “My wife loves Valerie. And she knows the show. When I hear Valerie, I think Valerie Harper. What other Valerie is there?”

  “Valerie Bertinelli,” Lorimar’s lawyer said.

  “Who’s she?” the judge asked. “I’m inclined to have Ms. Harper take her name with her.”

  During recess, I told Barry I didn’t want them to use my name. But he explained that my case could take years to come to trial. There was a huge backlog in the California court system at the time. He thought it was in the best interest of my career if we got to trial as quickly as possible. Both Lynn Redgrave and Raquel Welch had been involved in court cases that dragged on for years. Barry wanted me to be able to get back to work immediately. So he made an agreement with the Lorimar and NBC lawyers: They would be able to keep my name on the show if they would agree to share the costs of hiring a judge to hear the case. This was a perfect way to get the court case under way without a long delay.

  Rent-a-judge (the colloquial name for this program) was a unique system in California designed to beat the backlog in the courts. It allowed the plaintiff and the defendant to split the cost for a retired judge who would pres
ide over a case. We contracted Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William P. Hogoboom, and our court date was set to take place in about three months.

  Between the hearing over the Valerie name and the court date for our trial, NBC offered me the starring role in The People Across the Lake, a television movie with Gerald MacRaney. The film, a murder mystery, was set to shoot in Vancouver, British Columbia, and I was reluctant to leave Cristina. Barry convinced me otherwise.

  He explained that NBC’s offer to hire me signals to the entire industry, the media, and the country that I am completely employable—not unprofessional or unstable, as was claimed. The very network I am suing wants to star me in their film.

  So I went to Vancouver. And Tony took great care of Cristina. Working with Gerald MacRaney, “Mac,” was a total pleasure and a great comfort to me at this harrowing time. A wonderful actor and such a good guy, Mac helped me through my anxiety about the impending court case. Over the course of the shoot, we had many engrossing conversations as we commuted back and forth from Los Angeles to Canada on weekends. During one of these flights, Mac described a gorgeous aquamarine and pearl choker that he was going to give to his fiancée, Delta Burke. He said, “She’s got those gin-clear blue eyes that a man knows perfectly well, once he’s lost in them he’ll never find his way out.” Tony and I were at their splendid wedding and Delta looked dazzling in the choker. It’s been happily ever after for them ever since.

  As a result of doing the film, I dropped my suit against NBC, which was exactly what they wanted. Since they’d hired me for a movie, I could no longer accuse them of blacklisting me and ruining my reputation. Now that they were out, the case would be between Lorimar and us.

  In the suit, I claimed that Lorimar had wrongfully terminated me and ruined my reputation. Lorimar countered that my erratic and unprofessional behavior led to my firing. They alleged that during the final show I taped, I put the child actors at risk, and most important, I had been unable to perform.