Rita Moreno: A Memoir

by Rita Moreno

  Gregg spent that money, too. Finally, she married her bodyguard and spent his money. He shot himself in the head. She went on to live a long life, dying at age eighty-seven, but she died in “reduced circumstances.” I can still see her legs, her hair, her glowing skin…and feel the surprising lightness of that fine “fuh” she draped across my shoulders.

  * * *

  The most important evening event on that publicity weekend was the official opening of the Colony Hotel. This took place at the in-house nightclub, the Royal Room, which still functions and books many cabaret artists. The place was jammed with socialites, horsey folk, and famous people of every stripe.

  The person I remember most vividly from that event was Anita Ekberg, the Swedish-American model, actress, and pinup girl. Anita, a lush Nordic beauty, was at the height of her fame and caused a stir every time she brandished those exceptional “ladies”: her giant breasts. And brandish those breasts she did, causing much alarm or joy, depending on your gender.

  Anita made all of the papers the next day because she—most likely in her substantial cups, pun intended—decided to grace the waters of the Atlantic Ocean with her voluptuous self. Well! The word got around instantly—isn’t that what press agents are for?—and at least three-quarters of the populace of the Royal Room raced out to see what was going on.

  It looked like the club was vomiting people as out they scurried. The ladies got sand in their golden sandals and hopped about on one foot to take them off, looking for all the world like crazed marionettes in their hurry to see the spectacle.

  And what a sight it was! Anita emerged from the sea like Venus rising above the frothy waves, minus the clamshell, strapless chiffon clinging like Saran Wrap. She truly showed the world and us mere mortals what God can achieve on a good day.

  But all good things have to come to an end. The goddess, walking along the sand, fell down ugly. Splat! Right down on her ample derriere, ass over teakettle, glocken over spiel, and legs splayed, one still airborne as her goddess tunic slowly crept up to her knickers and, the final insult, her tiara cocked over one eye. Showtime was over and that rude, fickle audience sauntered back to the club, looking forward to more booze and buzz.

  I was sitting with Ann Miller close to the door that led to the beach, watching the sandy crowd crunch their way back to their tables, when I spotted a very handsome redheaded gentleman in full formal wear. He was accompanying a lovely, regal woman wearing the gown of the moment. I had seen that dress in Vogue magazine that very day: a silk taffeta print with large red roses on a full gathered skirt. Gorgeous! It was the very first time I’d ever seen a woman wearing white opera gloves. In other words, a lady.

  As this couple slowly walked in, sauntering as though to catch everyone’s attention, the gentleman in question caught my eye with an expression on his handsome face that was unmistakable. His hairline moved back an inch, as when a predatory animal spots his prey and paralyzes it with “that look.” It was obviously lust at first sight, and I remember thinking Whooo, this guy don’t waste no time!

  All of this happened in the wink of an eye while his white-gloved companion in the beautiful dress was busy trading hellos with friends. To me, though, their procession was taking place in slow motion as they reached their destination at the opposite end of the room. They were gorgeous.

  For the rest of the evening, I played a private little game that I called “eyesies.” Every time I looked this man’s way, I would catch him sending me smoldering signals. They were so obvious and so shameless that I actually started to laugh. Whenever I caught him staring at me, I would point my finger at him as if to say, Caught ya! He didn’t even blink.

  I’m surprised that no one else noticed our game, but they were too busy looking at this beautiful couple. I was also stunned that a man with such a perfect woman at his side could be even remotely interested in the likes of me.

  At one point, I asked Ann to take a look to see if she could identify him. “Oh, honey, who the hell knows?” she said. “They all look the same to me: rich!”

  I want to add that, had I sent the most subtle I’m interested! What next? visual message, I have no doubt that this man would have sent someone over to my table to escort me upstairs. No doubt whatsoever!

  Imagine my shock, then, weeks later, when the redheaded man who had flirted so boldly with me reappeared on the cover of Life magazine and I discovered who he was: the young senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy.

  There was a show that night with an upcoming comic who probably wanted to slit his throat after his stint, because nobody, but nobody paid the least attention to him except Ann and me. The first rule of thumb in my profession is to never, never, never perform for high society. They will murder you; they will destroy your will to live through their toxic inattention.

  After that debacle at the Royal Room, we were all invited to attend a reception at one of the Topping brothers’ mansions on the waterway. I don’t remember which Topping brother it was, but brother Henry was married to Lana Turner, and brother Dan later became part owner of the New York Yankees.

  The mansion was exactly what you would expect if you lived in that milieu, but you can imagine that my eyes were popping out. The front lawn was actually at the back of the house, because that was where the boats—or rather, the yachts—were docked. That was where all of the outdoor festivities took place.

  Out on the lawn, I ensconced myself on a carved-stone Victorian bench, where a number of rich old roosters put the make on me. I really wanted to go back to my room, but Ann prevailed upon me to stay.

  At one point, Ann also somehow convinced me that we should go on an exploratory mission to look inside all of the medicine cabinets. I did investigate a few medicine chests with her, but got cold feet after I saw a year’s worth of condoms in one. Yes, the entire bloody cabinet! I fled the house at that point, fearful that the owner/reprobate would somehow find me looking in there and haul me off to one of those endless bedrooms to give me what-for with his bottomless supply of Goodyears.

  A bit shaken, I returned to my perch on the front lawn that was really the back lawn. This time, not a soul approached or spoke to me, but I wasn’t moving from my cold stone bench. I was kind of hoping some of those old farts had fallen into the canal. In truth, one of the boats was rocking rather suspiciously.

  Ann finally came outside again, looking so breathless and wide-eyed that I asked whether she’d been caught during her exploratory journey through the immense manse.

  “Oh, my gawd, honey!” she said, with those Minnie Mouse eyes as big as plates. “You will not believe this! I’d already finished with the cabinets and walked out to the hall when I heard some thuds coming from behind a closed door. I opened it, and would you believe it? Pressed against a bookcase was a woman with her skirt over her head, with a man leaning into her with his pants around his ankles, doin’ it!”

  Ann was shrieking by now, so I was grateful for the band playing the good-night song, “Wishing (Will Make It So),” as she told me in detail about the amorous couple having a major go at it.

  “There were a number of books, some open, that must have tumbled from the force of the action and lay all over the floor,” she said. “Well, you know, that makes sense, right? When you’ve got a skirt over your head and don’t have a clue where you’re being pushed, things will fall off the shelves.”

  “So what did you do?” I was completely caught up in her story, picturing the whole scene.

  “I didn’t know what to do, so I just kept saying, ‘Oh, my God, oh, my God, ohdearohdear, ohmy!’ Have you any idea how complicated it is to pull up your undies with a skirt over your head? Well, better than showing your face!”

  We were helpless with laughter by then, as I tried to imagine Ann Miller, Miss Potty Mouth, reduced to uttering pithy things like, “Oh, my!” while this hapless couple skittered around, skidding on books and trying to pull up their underwear.

  The next day at lunch, I tried to guess which
couple Ann had surprised in the act, but it was impossible. I observed too many red-eyed people looking as if they wished they were dead. You know, with the kind of expression that says, What was I thinking?

  Ann and I had some more raucous laughs over the mating couple, and I made her swear that she’d really uttered those inane words, so unlike her. She assured me that yes, it was the truth. She was that genuinely shocked.

  Ann then told me that she had become very fond of me. “You’re okay, honey,” she said, adding that she had planned a special treat for me when we flew back to Los Angeles that day: She had rearranged our Pan Am tickets so that we could enjoy a three-hour stopover in New Orleans and have dinner at Antoine’s, the restaurant for “great, great Southern and Cajun cookin’, honey. Really glamorous!”

  And it was! It didn’t hurt that I was with the great Ann Miller, either. They rolled out the red carpet and sent over their violin trio, along with a bottle of Champagne while we dined. Could a little Puerto Rican girl have asked for more?

  At the airport terminal afterward, I watched Ann buy hundreds of dollars’ worth of costume jewelry and tchotchkes, such as a three-inch Eiffel Tower. Her absolute favorite souvenir was a pair of dangling plastic fruit earrings in tropical colors.

  “Look, honey, aren’t these adorable? And only a hundred dollars!”

  One hundred dollars. Half my weekly salary! I wondered whether I’d ever be able to be so carefree with money.

  When we landed in LA, Ann gave me a lift in her big black limousine. She dropped me off at my Culver City cottage, gave my stunned mother a big hug, and disappeared from my life for ten years.

  THE COCKTAIL PARTY: PIMPED?

  At that time, a starlet’s life followed a pattern of nearly enforced public dating. Often, budding starlets like me were paired with young male wannabe stars and sent out on the town for what were really photo ops. We were the young pretty faces and had nothing to do with each other before the date, during the date, or after the date but pose for the pictures. Those dates were superficial and false, but the publicists convinced me that they were essential to my career.

  Other kinds of studio “dates” were more ominous. For some girls, this practice came uncomfortably close to pimping. If they went along with everything the men in power proposed, they descended from starlet to some kind of hybrid creature—a harlet?

  At one point early in my career, I was “set up” to attend a party where I would supposedly meet a lot of famous people at a Bel Air mansion. I was encouraged to go by the publicity people, because these “important people” could help my career.

  To prepare for this appearance, I was even allowed into the costume department, where I could choose a dress from racks labeled, “Elizabeth Taylor, Ava Gardner…” I picked out a gorgeous lacy dress that had been worn by Debra Paget, a starlet at Fox. (I knew this because I had seen a picture of her wearing it.) The dress was filed on the costume rack as “Ingenue: fantasy party dress.” How dreamy is that?

  This beautiful gown was strapless and quite low-cut, but of the full-skirted, lacy, innocent Cinderella type of design. Wearing it the night of the party, I felt airy and light enough to dance all night. And even though I still secretly thought I was plain, I conceded that, with my makeup tricks, I looked…well…quite pretty.

  I did not comprehend that I was about to be in the company of legendary lechers until after it was too late. One of the party guests, Harry Cohn, was the studio boss whom Elizabeth Taylor had once called “a monster.” The head of Columbia Studios, he was rumored to demand sex from all of his female stars in exchange for employment. Movie stars such as Rita Hayworth, Kim Novak, and Joan Crawford were known to have rebuffed his advances.

  The party host, Alfred Hart, was equally horny and evil. “Alfred Hart of Hart Distilleries,” as he was always referred to by public relations people, was supplying the party venue—his Bel Air mansion—and, I suppose, the booze. Hart was a longtime associate of the Chicago mob and had a reputation for doing business with known gangsters. He had been a beer runner for Al Capone and later developed an odd “friendship” with FBI head J. Edgar Hoover, who also kept a file on him. In 1948, Hart had invested seventy-five thousand dollars in the famous gangster Bugsy Siegel’s Flamingo Hotel and was implicated in a corrupt racetrack deal.

  Since that time, Alfred Hart’s mob involvement has been well documented in several books, especially around an infamous legal case involving the takeover of the Del Mar Racetrack. He lived his corrupt life in the orbit of more famous mobsters and movie stars.

  I didn’t know it yet, but many people in Hollywood had ties to organized crime, and names that came up around Alfred Hart included Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. Around the same time that I met Hart, future president JFK was also seen with his crowd, and even shared a mistress, Judith Campbell Exner, with a famous gangster.

  I was soon to discover that show business, politics, and organized crime all overlapped, crisscrossing seedy borders. That night, I innocently stepped right into a trap of corruption in my lovely borrowed dress and strappy diamond slippers.

  * * *

  Knowing none of this, I was excited and naive. I must have looked to these men like a dewy-eyed innocent, and fair game. I floated in my beautiful gown and clutched a tiny purse that held my keys, a lipstick, and a five-dollar bill. My date for the evening was to be Harry Karl, a shoe magnate who later became famous not only as “the shoe magnate who married Debbie Reynolds,” but as “the bogus millionaire who bankrupted Debbie.”

  When Karl appeared in the doorway of my apartment in Westwood, I thought he was good-looking enough but was slightly disappointed. I had seen his picture in the papers, but in person Karl’s features were somewhat coarser. He had slightly kinky iron gray hair and dressed very much in the style of many men in the business, along the lines of “the look” that Sy Devore designed for almost every successful male in Hollywood.

  Sy was expensive, but so much in demand that he had created a breed of clients who appeared to be clones of one another. Whether it was the effect of the wide lapels, shawl collars, or vents in the back, the men all looked like dressed-up chorus boys from an expensive production number, or well-heeled, gnomish gangsters. The fabric always appeared to be just a little too shiny. To complete the ensemble: Gucci moccasins in velvet, suede, or crocodile skin.

  Karl looked like an overgroomed gangster and may well have been one, given his cohorts. He drove a canary yellow Cadillac convertible, and we sped off in it to the gated Xanadu of Bel Air. We made very small talk, and it quickly became apparent that we were definitely not meant for each other.

  In fact, it was unclear whether Harry Karl was a married man at that very moment. Karl was either married to Marie McDonald, the blond bombshell star of Pardon My Sarong, or he may have been momentarily single, on the brief hiatus between their two marriages to each other. I later discovered that, despite being such a homely troll, Karl had an insatiable appetite for beautiful young women. Apparently I wasn’t his type, though, and I’m still grateful for that today. Perhaps in this instance being a Latina helped. He was no gentleman, but he seemed to prefer blondes.

  Oh, well, I thought, that’s fine. This is a business outing.

  I reminded myself that this party was a chance to meet important people, not a real blind date or a place to pursue romantic interests. Besides, I was excited and eager to see the inside of a famous mansion and meet the rich and famous.

  At least I wasn’t disappointed by the setting. Karl drove through a set of massive curlicue iron gates onto a vast estate. We passed a tennis court and groomed hedges where gardeners were feverishly at work, wielding heavy pruning shears that gleamed in the late-afternoon sun.

  A uniformed valet whisked away the yellow Cadillac on our arrival, and we were greeted at the door by a formally dressed butler (in livery!) who took my wrap. Another butler instantly materialized, offering us a round silver tray that held champagne flutes sparkling in the roseate light.


  My hopeful little spirit rose at the sight of bubbly in crystal. I gratefully accepted a glass and thanked the butler. When I turned around, Harry Karl was gone—so completely gone that I couldn’t see him anywhere! Meanwhile, the host, Alfred Hart of Hart Distilleries, introduced himself and led me around to various clusters of glamorous-looking people, introducing me to everyone as this “sexy little starlet.”

  Hart dropped me off at a bridge table in the middle of the living room, introduced me to Harry Cohn, and left. “Are you the new girl at Twentieth Century Fox?” Cohn asked.

  “Yes,” I said, and we made small talk for a few minutes.

  Then, out of the blue, Cohn said, “You’re very fuckable. I’d like to fuck you.”

  He said it in the same kind of tone you might use to remark on the weather. My response was pathetic. I gave him a horribly crooked quasi smile and excused myself.

  I found the powder room, locked the door behind me, and leaned against it. I was panting with anxiety, thinking, What am I going to do? What am I going to do?

  I stayed in the powder room as long as I could, until someone knocked and I had to leave my safe haven. I looked for Karl to ask him to take me home, but couldn’t find him. I didn’t want to attract attention by moving around any more than I absolutely had to. I chose a spot in a corner of the room with the most people and sat down, trying to figure out what to do.

  The orchestra started to play a bolero, and our host, the gnome, asked me to dance. I could hardly refuse him in front of everyone, I thought. Besides, at least here we were surrounded by other people, including his wife. What could happen?

  Alfred Hart of Hart Distilleries whisked me (as well as a gnome can) to the dance floor of his vast living room and held me very close. Within one minute he started to breathe heavily, and perspiration began beading on his upper lip and forehead. He squeezed me so hard that you couldn’t have slipped a piece of paper between our bodies, then began grinding against me. His wife could not have been more than two yards away, but she was flirting with another gnome and playing poker (a different sort than her husband’s version of the game).