Tales of a Hollywood Housewife

by Betty Marvin

  For the next ten days I hung in a delicate balance between life and death. Lee and our children stayed by my bed. When I was able to focus enough to really look into their eyes, I could see the fear in their faces.

  “Claudia, come here,” I said. My nine-year-old daughter stood at the far end of the bed and would not come near me. “Don’t be afraid, darling. Mommy’s going to be fine.” Claudia stood frozen to the spot, and I could see that she was crying. I struggled to maintain lucidity, but I knew at that moment I was beginning to slip away. You can’t leave your children now, I kept telling myself, They need you. Sheer determination saved my life.

  Finally the clot was dissolved, and I was transferred from intensive care to a private room in the hospital, where I spent another ten days getting my strength back, my leg still in a full-length cast. The cast was still on when I was sent home to begin the long recovery from the fracture.

  After the last leg cast was removed, I spent the next six months in physical therapy. The accident had severed the nerves from the knee down, and I had been told I probably would never have full use of my left leg. Not on your life, I told myself. I swam every day in the pool to prove the therapists wrong.

  The freedom I felt in the water allowed me to go over what had happened to me. My marriage to Lee was truly over. I could feel myself moving past it as I swam back and forth, lap after lap. The accident had forced me to slow down and take inventory of my life. I needed to make real changes, and while slowly moving through the water, I began to look beyond the accident and create a survival plan.

  First, I was determined to put some real distance between Lee and myself. “I’m moving to Rome,” I told him when I saw him next.

  “You’re what?” He looked at me in astonishment. “You’re joking.”

  “No, I’m quite serious.”

  “What about the kids?”

  “Of course the kids are coming with me.”

  “When?”

  “When school lets out. I’ve enrolled the girls in schools there, and Christopher’s coming back here to college in the fall. I’ve signed on as part of a team to restore the paintings that were damaged in the Venice flood.”

  “You’ve really thought this through, haven’t you?”

  “I want to get away from this town,” I said. “The change will be good for all of us. I’ve been worried about Christopher, surrounded by wealthy students smoking pot. The inside of the van you gave him to carry his drums around looks like a harem. I’m relieved he’s going to college in the fall, now that he’s beat the draft.”

  “I can’t understand why you fought to keep him out of the war,” Lee said.

  “Because the war in Vietnam is a crock. Let’s not get into that again. We have better things to fight about.”

  “Let’s talk about us,” he said. “Mishell and I are finished. I have moved out.”

  “But that’s your house.”

  “I know, but the dame won’t leave. I told her I wouldn’t marry her. So now she has had her name legally changed to Marvin.”

  “Maybe I should change mine back to Ebeling,” I said, laughing. How desperate can she get, I thought.

  “It’s not funny, Betty. My attorneys have to get a court order to have her evicted.”

  “I think you should know she has started using credit cards with ‘Mrs. Lee Marvin’ on them. I found out when I was shopping at Saks. The stores won’t give me credit if I change my name. So now there are two Mrs. Lee Marvin accounts. It’s a mess. Also, she has found where I shop and have my hair done. She calls and makes appointments in my name. It’s driving everyone crazy, including me.”

  “I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”

  “Why did you choose such a dame?” I asked.

  “Because I didn’t have to talk to her. She was just there.”

  “I’m sorry for you.” I meant it.

  “I made a terrible mistake. I wish we could get back together.” I shook my head slowly.

  “Will you at least think about it?”

  “Lee, we’re divorced. Someone once said that going back to an ex-husband is like breaking into prison.”

  I kept my word. In July, 1969, the children and I packed up and sailed on the Raffaello from New York to Genoa.

  25

  The King and I on a Roman Holiday

  “BETTY, MEET IL Marchese Luigi Bruno di Belmonte III.” Nancy and Carroll O’Connor had taken me to a fashionable restaurant to celebrate my arrival in Rome. Il Marchese, the king of Modica, Sicily, bent toward me, took my hand, and kissed it, never taking his beautiful blue eyes away from mine. I had never met a king before and was thrilled. He was short, handsome, and elegantly dressed, with a silk scarf tucked into a pale blue shirt under a tan linen jacket. “Signora Marvin. Welcome to Rome. I heard you were moving here.”

  “Really,” I responded. “And how is that?”

  “Word travels fast in certain circles of this village.”

  Oh, God, I wondered, has the scandal of my divorce traveled this far? I came back to his smile and was relieved when he said no more about it.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off Gigi, as his friends called him. We drew closer and closer together. Eventually the others went home and Gigi swept me from club to club, introducing me to the best Rome had to offer. He drove me back to my flat in the Borghese Gardens, kissed me on both cheeks, announced he was leaving the next day for New York, delivered a parting “Ciao,” and was gone.

  The next day when I arrived home from delivering the girls to school, our housekeeper, Antoinetta, seemed desperate to give me a message.

  “Signora, Il Marchese Luigi Bruno di Belmonte ha telefonato. Signora, Il Marchese, capito?” The king had called and she could barely contain herself. “Signora, per favore, Il Marchese.” I was a little thrown by her excitement, but obviously this was a man of importance. I felt a quick rush. Soon the phone rang.

  “Betty, this is Gigi.” So now we were on a first name basis. Good.

  “I thought you were on your way to New York.”

  “I decided that could wait until after we have dinner.”

  As soon as I hung up the phone rang again. I picked it up.

  “Pronto?”

  “Pronto yourself, sweetheart.” That familiar, seductive voice gave me a rush. I sat down.

  “Oh, hi, Lee.”

  “How’s life in Rome? How’re the kids? Do you miss me?”

  “We’re fine, thank you.”

  “Well, I miss you, and I’m coming over in a couple of weeks.”

  Panic set in. “I’ll see you then,” I said and hung up.

  I called regularly about going to the conservatory to begin work on the restoration program, but the masterpieces had not yet arrived from Venice. I was disappointed, hoping to throw myself into hard work doing what I had grown to love—painting. I was beginning to realize a lot of Italian projects took place domani, tomorrow.

  Gigi and I began seeing each other every day. Before I knew it I was caught up in a whirlwind of socializing with aristocrats. Gigi dressed me in a collection from his favorite designers and hired a tutor to improve my Italian. “Those snobs at the club are never going to accept you unless you speak perfectly.”

  Gigi and I in Rome, 1969

  As Lee’s visit became imminent, my apprehension grew. I was torn between my own fear that being with him would draw me back into what was, and knowing the girls should see their father.

  One evening I was brushing my teeth while listening to the international news in the background. When I heard the name “Lee Marvin,” I rushed to the TV and saw his face on the screen. The report was in Italian, but I could piece it together: a whirlwind second marriage. Lee had run into an old girlfriend from years ago and suddenly tied the knot. I sat down on the bed in disbelief, still holding my toothbrush, as the newscast went on to other stories.

  Over the next few days I learned, through family and friends, what had happened. Lee had postponed his trip to Italy when he heard
his father was dying and had gone up to Woodstock to be with him. Perhaps running into Pam, a woman he’d dated when he was just out of the service and still living upstate, brought him some comfort. At any rate, the report was true. Without a word to anyone, Lee had remarried.

  When the shock wore off, I went into mourning. I realized that despite his behavior, including this last topper, I still loved him.

  I was happy when Aunt Rella came for an extended visit. It was so good to have someone from home, and Cynthia and Claudia adored her. Having Rella there also allowed me to feel less guilty about leaving them to be with Gigi.

  I remained intrigued by him, but soon realized I was merely another possession in his collection of wives and mistresses. He had two of each. As time went on he became more demanding. Being a good Italian boy, he lived with his mother in Rome but kept flats in Paris and London, in addition to his palace and villa in Modica. He expected me to go to any one of them with him whenever he chose.

  One weekend Gigi and I flew to Palermo and were met at the airport by a chauffeured limousine for the drive to his villa. Our relationship had become strained and we began to argue. “I can’t simply drop everything and run off with you every time you have a whim to jump down to Sicily for the weekend or drop into London for dinner.”

  “Why not?” He seemed confused.

  “Because I have responsibilities as a mother and I made a commitment to work in Rome.”

  “The babies are fine with Aunt Rella and Antoinetta. And forget about that nonsense with the museum. Your only commitment is to Il Marchese.” Ignoring me, he leaned forward and spoke in Sicilian to his driver. I was so exasperated that I barely noticed when the limo parked and we were let out onto the street. I was brought back to reality when the villagers bowed and even dropped to their knees as we approached. Barely acknowledging them, Gigi turned to me.

  “You see, they understand respect. You have much to learn.”

  I’ve had it with him, I thought. I’m going back to work. I gave up waiting for the restoration program to begin, set up a studio in the apartment, and started painting on my own.

  Rome was beautiful, but after some months of our first year living abroad, I started having terrible problems walking. I saw Italian and Swiss orthopedists, who found remaining complications from my ski accident. They recommended surgery, but I wanted to be treated by the doctors who had cared for me in the United States. And the beauty of Rome had done little to bring me the happiness I longed for. I suggested to the girls that perhaps we should go back to California, and they were overjoyed. The geographical change had been good for them, but they missed their friends and their country. It was time to go home.

  26

  School Days of an Art Junky

  BACK IN CALIFORNIA, with the kids in school, I had the necessary foot surgery and plunged back into painting. I rented a studio in Venice and opened a contemporary art gallery. But I soon realized I needed to train more seriously to forge the career I wanted, so I started looking into going back to school.

  Lee called to invite the kids to his beach house. Even hearing his voice made me feel queasy. We never spoke of his broken promise to come to Italy, much less of his sudden second marriage. Contact with him left me edgy and lonely. Later that day the children came home in tears. Lee’s new wife, Pam, had sat them down and shown them an accounting of every penny Lee had spent on them since they had been born. I was furious. I got him on the phone.

  “What were you thinking? How could you be so cruel?”

  “We just thought they should be aware of the facts,” he said.

  The issue of money grew uglier. It was not long before I was hauled back into court to alter the terms of my lifetime alimony. The annual amount was to decrease each year, ending completely in several years. It seemed as though greed had destroyed the last of our marital ties. I remembered the young girl I was when I met Lee, planning a music career while working at Rattancraft, not much in the bank. When I fell in love with him, money was the last thing on my mind. It cut deeply that after so many years, money would prove to carve the final dividing line. Any possibility of a friendship with Lee, my great love, the father of my four children, finally vanished.

  His attitude toward me and the children was no longer supportive, and he drew back, less and less present in their lives. Finally, I came across an interview that floored me. Lee referred to us as part of his “past life.” When asked about his children, he said that I was a great mother and he had given me full responsibility for them.

  Full responsibility. Okay, then I’d better prepare myself to support them. I went back to UCLA and then on to Otis Art Institute. My life was more and more my own.

  I first saw Matsumi Kanemitsu, or Mike, as he was affectionately called by those close to him, when he was introduced at the Otis Art Institute student body orientation. We were both in our midforties.

  His quiet elegance stood out from the shaggy casualness of the rest of the staff. He was short and slender and immaculately dressed in spotless white duck pants, a pale banana-yellow mandarin over shirt, a faded blue vest, and black velvet Japanese sandals. His thick, long, straight, prematurely silver-gray hair was pulled back into a pony tail, revealing a cherubic oriental face with penetrating eyes and Kewpie doll lips. He held a cigarette between the third and fourth fingers of his raised left hand, and I noticed on his little finger a pearl in a sculpted gold setting. I thought his hands much too beautiful to have ever done a thing but make art. He spoke very little, and I had trouble understanding his broken English, but I was hypnotized by his manner. At the time little did I realize how he would impact my life.

  Under his influence I began to see painting in a totally different way. I had essentially been a traditional painter, using many brushes and glazes to produce portraits, still lifes, and landscapes. Though I had moved on to abstract impressionism, I still used outside information to create imagery.

  Mike taught me to meditate in order to connect with my subconscious and create from within, then, without hesitation, to release that energy on canvas or paper, many times without brushes, working very wet, letting the painting set up without controlling the outcome. After this I would stop all activity and look at the work for long periods, learning to see where the painting should go, following the discipline of the space and light brought about by color. There was no painstaking copying with a certain goal in mind, but rather a total involvement with the process.

  I lost all interest in painting anything that already existed. Thus began my long love affair with abstract expressionism and the master, Kanemitsu. Watching him work, I was fascinated by his initial quiet contemplation, followed by the trancelike dance as he applied paint to a canvas lying flat on the floor. It looked so simple but was really complex—as was Kanemitsu himself.

  He was gentle, but powerful, the embodiment of contained passion, the perfect balance of yin and yang. Once he said to me, “I have something for you.” He took a nickel from his pocket and, emitting a small grunt, he effortlessly bent the coin in half, handing it to me. He could move polished rocks across the dining table without touching them and penetrate my mind from across a room.

  His personal life was difficult. He was born in Utah, the son of Japanese Jewish parents. He was sent to Hiroshima at the age of four to be raised by his traditional grandparents. As a young man, feeling very constrained by the formal, repressive culture in Japan, he left to join Rothko, de Kooning, and Jasper Johns in the abstract expressionist movement in New York. Though his parents were interned during the Second World War, he joined the American army. Following the war he married a beautiful Caucasian actress, causing his wealthy, aristocratic family to disown him. At the height of his success in New York his wife died, and he moved to California to teach. There he married another actress, who eventually abandoned him and their three children.

  Together we shared the burden of being single parents. It was a marriage of East and West. We would throw studio parties serving
English high tea along with a formal Japanese tea ceremony. We regularly had dinners of sushi and sake in downtown Los Angeles and yet would devour hot dogs with the kids at Disneyland. Sometimes we hung out at the racetrack. Mike loved to gamble, like other artists I have known, perhaps because gambling is a natural component of creativity. It’s high-risk, grand fun, and addictive. But Mike did not play for small stakes. Poker kept him up and away for days at a time. Whenever we went to the racetrack he always went into the locked room for placing $1,000 minimum bets. I never knew if he won or lost because his expression told me nothing.

  On summer break from Otis Art Institute I had a house full of kids, my four and their many friends. The picture had certainly changed since they were young and all living at home.

  Christopher had wanted to live at the beach with his dad for the summer, but his stepmother did not welcome him there. He had let his hair grow long and seemed to have little interest in anything but playing the drums. When I tried talking to him about his plans, he just looked at me and smiled. “Don’t worry about it, Mama,” was his standard reply.

  Courtenay, home from the University of Iowa, was moody and ignored me most of the time.

  Cynthia and Claudia were still a pleasure to have around. Cynthia was at her adored Courtenay’s beck and call. Claudia, jealous of their relationship, spent most of her time on the phone.

  “What time did you come in last night?” I asked Christopher when he came down the stairs one noon, disheveled and in a fog. He looked at me and smiled, giving me a hug.

  “Mom, I’m not your little boy anymore. Give me a break.”

  “Well, you’re the only little boy I’ve got. Don’t I have the right to know what time you came in?” He took a marijuana cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. “What are you doing?” I asked, dumbfounded.

  “Having a little toke before breakfast.”

  Before I could respond, he sauntered out the back door. Courtenay, Cynthia, and Claudia came in from the beach. I intercepted Courtenay on her way up to shower.