Filling in the Gaps

by Peter Keogh

  Then on to Los Angeles - where - because we arrived late at night stayed in a hotel near the airport. In the middle of the night there was big a fire in the kitchen, so we were all evacuated into the street in our underwear and some even in towels. Once we realised that no one was hurt we could not stop laughing. Just our luck! Disneyland was our next stop and it was everything we expected and a lot more. We arrived early and left very late, totally exhausted but just filled with the famous Happiest Kingdom in the World vibe. We did not miss any attraction and even came back two more times! We also visited Knott’s Berry farm, where the following photo of Mum and Sacha was taken.

  Next stop was Florida, where we checked in late again at our hotel, only to be told it had been flooded, so we were sent to another hotel a few miles away. A VERY basic hotel but once again we were able to see the funny side. One night I thought I was having a stroke - Mr Hypochondria - and found out that there was a doctor’s surgery nearby. However, on arriving at the surgery we were told we had to pay hundreds of dollars up front before they would even take our details - and this was with insurance! My stroke immediately became a mild headache and I headed back to the hotel.

  We then drove to St. Augustine, the oldest city in America, where we stayed in a beautiful old-world building similar to Tara in Gone with the Wind. I had never seen Mum so relaxed and totally involved in every aspect of the holiday, which made me very happy. It also helped cement even further the deep and permanent bond between her and Sach.

  Then it was time to head home to Perth and a new life with a new - male - partner! We both found full- time work with BOCS Ticketing. I worked there for nineteen years and Sach for about fifteen. Not long after returning to Perth Mum experienced her first bout of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, which was very aggressive. Sach also experienced a scare with prostate cancer, causing him to have a radical prostatectomy. They were such frightening times for the whole family. Mum recovered eventually after a hard battle, as did Sach, who returned to the work force. Through BOCS we now have a group of friends whose friendship we value hugely.

  One of Sach’s first jobs was doing wardrobe on the tour of the Maly Drama Theatre of St. Petersburg, which was quite an experience. Sach said that the costumes reeked of body odour, so much so that the staff almost vomited and had to spray every costume with eucalyptus. Most of the male cast had shaved heads for their roles in the play, which was set in the middle of winter in Russia. However, many of them rushed to the local beaches in Perth and turned up at the theatre with severely sunburned bald heads, not quite the correct look for this period piece! Sach also noticed that when the company left the theatre after their last performance they took with them every tea bag, sugar bag and toilet roll in the theatre. Who would have thought that there was a shortage of such things in St. Petersburg?

  Sach and I decided we needed a break to recuperate after his operation, so we flew to New Zealand and hired a campervan and drove from Auckland to Wellington and back, and had one of the best times of our lives! There was no television in the van, only radio, and we used to park by a local stream for the night where Sach would cook dinner and we would just unwind. One of the streams we parked beside - in a field that was actually called ‘Hi-de-Hi’ - seemed to flow faster and faster during the night, so much so that I couldn’t sleep at all. I woke up Sach because I was worried that a tsunami-type wave would come down the stream and wash us away! Poor Sach just rolled his eyes and went back to sleep. In Auckland we had our own personal natural spa at the door of our campervan, which we would slide into after we had eaten and relaxed with a glass of wine - or for me, a scotch and coke. New Zealand was beautiful and we fell in love with every aspect of the country. The only unusual incident was when we pulled into a petrol station high on a mountain on a lonely stretch of road to fill the tank. The proprietor and his wife looked like characters from the movie Deliverance - tough and a bit scary. We then drove up the mountain and after about fifteen minutes the van started to cough and splutter, so I coasted back down the hill to the petrol station, where I was told that I had mistakenly put in diesel fuel but that it floated on top of the petrol, so I was given a piece of tubing and ordered to ‘suck it out’. I wrapped my lips around the tubing and after much gagging I eventually got most of it out. Then the bloody proprietors had the nerve to resell the second-hand diesel I had just sucked up and charge us again for the correct fuel! They were too creepy to make me angry.

  We returned to Perth and work only to find that Mum’s cancer had returned, so chemo was the order of the day again. Sach had more time on his hands then, so he was able to take great care of Mum and she survived yet again. Poor Mum is totally invincible and the bravest person I have ever known - not like her son!

  Our next venture was touring with Debbie Reynolds all over Australia and New Zealand - the greatest adventure ever and covered in my last book in depth. Here is an article written about how the dreams of an eleven-year-old boy came to fruition after he wrote to Debbie and then became friends with her.

  The following article is from 2008, courtesy of Terry Larder.

  ‘A life-long fan, Princess Leia’s Mum, and a show!

  The alarm clock is set for 4.30am! The not-so-mellow tones of the clock blast the early morning silence and I rise from my slumber yawning all the way to the bathroom. Now running on auto-pilot, I slip the razor out of the drawer and jump under the shower, then it hit me... what the #@*#... it’s a telephone interview, so why all the preparation? ‘I guess one must’, I mutter out loud as I continue with the duties at hand. For this morning I would be talking to the adored, vivacious, ageless siren of stage and screen, Miss Debbie Reynolds.

  To the strains of waking magpies, I dialled the number and waited... ‘Hello’, came the response... ‘Hello, Debbie’, stabbing my ear at the same time and adjusting the ear-plug microphone that popped out in the excitement of hearing her voice. ‘How are you?’ she said in her typically warm Southern drawl.

  So you’re coming to Perth for a couple of one-off shows at His Majesty’s, I said to get the ball rolling...

  ‘Yes, I’m so excited and I owe a lot to Peter and Sacha, it was all their idea, you know, they suggested it would be fantastic and ‘kinda’ ironic that I’ve lived long enough to play both the leading lady and the Patsy Kelly role (Irene’s mother). I first opened Irene on Broadway in 1973 and now in 2008 I’ll be playing the mum, won’t that be fun!’

  What is the one question you hate to be asked and why?

  ‘You know I don’t mind answering questions, my life has been an open book since day one. Since 16, I have been in movies, theatre, plays, I’ve toured and really I’ve had a fabulous life of travel and doing different roles, so I don’t have any objections to questions (hesitates) oh, one thing is always asked, Are you and Elizabeth (Taylor) still friends? And the answer is, yes, we are friends, probably no one believes it. We both laugh about what has happened to our lives and the past and the circumstances that lead up to it. Life goes on, you know!’ (Eddie Fisher married Debbie Reynolds in 1955 and they divorced in 1959. Eddie Fisher left Debbie and their two children and ran off and married Elizabeth Taylor, a major scandal at that time).

  ‘My life has had its ups and downs just like everyone else, sure there were tough times, especially when you marry three men whose primary motivation was money!’ she said. (Her second husband, shoe magnate Harry Karl, gambled away his fortune as well as Debbie’s. At one particular low point she confessed to literally living in her car, a Cadillac).

  Was there a common thread in their (husbands’) personalities?

  ‘You know if I knew that answer I would marry again, I just think I have terrible taste in men and if there’s a bad guy around, I’m ‘gonna’ find him! (Laughs at length) I think it’s something like the measles; I just have very poor taste in men. And my daughter (Carrie) seems to have contracted the same disease. I married a short boy singer; she married
a short boy singer! (Paul Simon). I made ‘Singing in the Rain’; she made ‘Star Wars’!

  My sources tell me that you’ve recently finished two shows on a Gay Cruise to Mexico?

  ‘Oh, I had a wonderful time, just wonderful! There were only 25 lesbian couples on board and the rest were all gay boys. They all secretly wanted my dresses, my feather boas, some not so secretly; they’d take it right off my body! Gay boys have such a great attitude to life and the cruise was a great success. I’d love to do another one.

  Is the story true that Peter Keogh (co-producer of Irene) wrote you a fan letter at the age of 11 and your agreement to do Irene is in part due to his life-long admiration of your work and he’s your number one fan?

  “Yes, totally true. I still personally reply to all my fan mail today. (After getting his three-page letter, which by the way Peter still has, this sent the 11 year-old boy on a mission that he still continues today). ‘In fact when I did a tour in 2006, Peter presented me with all this material, recordings I didn’t know I’d made, he had everything I’d ever done, every tape, every album, every show, movie or play. I was amazed and I was truly flattered that half way around the world there was such an ardent fan, in fact with those old and rare recordings he gave me last year, I now use them to open my nightclub act.’

  The telephone interview went for over 40 minutes and I can honestly say this grand dame of the theatre was a dream to interview. If I could own three words in the English language it would be... witty, warm, and charming! And I would give them to Debbie Reynolds, who is all of those words and more!

  Irene originally opened at New York’s Vanderbilt Theatre in November 1919, and ran for 670 performances. With such hit tunes as ‘Alice Blue Gown’, ‘I’m Always Chasing Rainbows’, and ‘You Made Me Love You’, this toe-tapping musical lifts the spirits like no other.

  When Irene was first played at His Majesty’s Theatre in January 1983, those performances were also a sell-out. Now the 25th Anniversary production, “Irene - in Concert” hits Perth at His Majesty’s Theatre for seven performances only from January 25 to February 2. This production will not be touring Australia, so Perth is the only place you will see such an enduring enchantress of the stage and screen, Miss Debbie Reynolds, and sitting front row centre will be the two guys that made it all possible, the dynamic duo (celebrating their 20th anniversary together next year), none other than Peter Keogh and Sacha Mahboub.

  The 11 year-old boy’s dream has come true!’

  A few little fun snippets, some of Debbie’s anecdotes, left out of my last book include the following: Lucille Ball was apparently extremely tight and the only person she knows who would re-gift presents she received, but she was also a genius and very serious off camera. Shirley Maclaine, in her opinion, was slightly ‘off the wall’ but they were friends and even appeared together in a movie called These Old Broads, which was written by Debbie’s daughter Carrie Fisher and also starred Elizabeth Taylor and Joan Collins. Her greatest friend ever was the beloved Agnes Moorehead. They made several movies together and Debbie very much looked up to her. There were rumours that Debbie and Agnes were lovers for several years because they were so close, but I know for a fact that they were just very dear friends. Sir John Gielgud was hired to direct Debbie on Broadway in the musical Irene but he was fired from the job by the producers. Debbie said it broke her heart to see Sir John in tears as he was told the news, but they remained good friends.

  One of her best friends was Liberace, and it made her very angry when he passed away that more was made about the fact that he died from AIDS than the quality of his enormous talent. Charles Waters, the director of the movie The Unsinkable Molly Brown, in which Debbie was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress, only wanted Shirley Maclaine to play the role of Molly Brown, so Debbie made an appointment to go to the director’s home to talk it through and also invited him to see her show in Las Vegas. Finally he said, ‘Debbie, you are too short for the role’, to which she replied, ‘How short is the role?’ The rest is history! She also confided that although everyone thought she may not have liked Elizabeth Taylor because of the Liz/Eddie Fisher history, she was very close to her and would deliver fun meals to Elizabeth’s home on a weekend and they would have girlfriend-type chats. She was very saddened by her death.

  Debbie is a night person who is at her best afternoon. I could write two books about her. When we were flying to New Zealand from Perth she called me over to her seat on the plane to show me some article in Time magazine about Paris Hilton. Debbie knew the Hiltons but she was not a fan of Paris - ‘Famous for what?’ she said. Then she looked at me and said, ‘24 hour room service’ and threw the magazine on the floor. I was aching I was laughing so much!

  Debbie looks amazing for her age and one of the tricks she told us was the first lesson she learned at MGM - never let too much sun on one’s face as one ages. She always wears a hat outside and always keeps her skin well covered. She is so tiny and like Sach adores the big band-era music. She is also not computer savvy but is slowly adapting to it all. Luckily, her assistant Donald helps her a lot with that kind of work. Often during the time we spent together on her trips to Australia Debbie called me her ‘Australian Donald’. Knowing Donald as I do now it was indeed a compliment.

  When Sach turned seventy she, together with my BEST pal, the late Jenny Powers (Debbie’s PA), plus dear Gerry Gennario who has now also passed, and her MD Joey Singer sent a beautiful video greeting. Likewise, when I turned seventy last August, she sent me a personal video. I just love her, as does Sach.

  Workplace Issues and Reaching Seventy

  Not long after I started work at my current workplace I started to have some regrets, mainly because I found the computer system very user ‘unfriendly’ after what I had been using at BOCS. Also, the manager I was taking over from was pregnant and I later found out totally unskilled in retraining. I hated it so much that I used to meet Sach in the car park at lunch time and sit with him in the car for the whole hour dreading to go back, but I needed then, and still do, a wage. I also was shocked to find out that before I arrived someone had run my name through Google and discovered that I had been involved in a trial in London. At that time, this was not something I was thrilled everyone knowing about and I felt a bit sad, but since my first book was published it is now common knowledge. I guess it’s human nature to be curious and with search engines like Google everything is at hand these days.

  I have had a very successful career in the theatre industry for over fifty-five years and pride myself on working hard and was quite highly respected in many areas of the industry. I have also always been known for my slightly vulgar and very out-there self - double entendres and the like - which hardly ever caused any kind of offence, except twice - once at my first job more than fifty years ago and again more recently, but I have been advised not to discuss the latter here. I also know that for some reason I have the ability to be able to make people laugh; hopefully never at the expense of anyone’s sensibilities. Now at almost seventy-one years of age, I adhere to Bette Midler’s statement, ‘Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke’! When I resigned from BOCS I was overwhelmed by the cards and greetings from all the staff and even members of the public, so I guess I am doing something right!

  I recently decided to take a look at myself a bit more deeply and try to assess why I allow myself to get hurt quite often. I realised that I really feel for people, which is why some people can pull me this way and that, and when I care about them and can’t go their way, it really hurts.

  Life does start to take its toll, especially after seventy years. One still feels as one did at fifteen but a quick jog now requires a nap afterwards and looking in the mirror one sees a totally foreign person. I always shave with my eyes shut now! We were in a gay bar here a few months ago when some younger guys were passing me and one of them said, ‘Excuse me Nanna.’ It was like a knife in the bosom - I jest but it
didn’t make me feel that wonderful! It also made me feel a bit sad because the gay bars now are so different from those we spent time in. Everyone was out for a great time, and not just sexually. My best pal at the time, Betty Box Office, and I used to visit a gay bar in the ‘70s that was run by the most wonderful man, Holly Wood. I think it was called the Clarendon. One day after work at the box office of the Playhouse Theatre we popped into the Clarendon for a quick beverage and noticed all the inviting colours of the liqueurs on the shelves and decided we would try every one of them. A couple of hours later we both staggered out to the car park and almost passed out on the bonnet of Betty’s car and vomited our hearts out. After we had recovered sufficiently we took off for home. As we sped along the freeway for some unknown reason - I still tease her about it today - Betty suddenly changed gears from top gear to reverse. I have no idea why! We did not have seat belts at that time so we both almost went head first through the windscreen. Sobered and a bit bruised, we made our way home. If it had happened today we would no doubt be in prison! Dearest Betty is about to turn eighty and we are as close now as when we first met.