The last time I spoke to Elizabeth, she was close to death.
“Getting old is really shitty,” I said.
Elizabeth laughed that wonderful full laugh.
“It certainly is, Debbie. This is really tough.”
I told her to be strong and just hang in there. Elizabeth liked kidding about being ill, but she hated all that pain.
“I’m really trying,” Elizabeth said softly.
Elizabeth and me on the set of These Old Broads. It was like the old days when we were girlfriends on the lot together, young and happy.
When she finally died, I knew she was at peace. She had suffered for so long, yet she still grabbed life by the balls. Even with her failing health in her later years, she would go off to Hawaii to swim with sharks. There was no one like her.
My dear friend remembered me in her will. She left me a beautiful set of sapphire earrings with a matching bracelet and necklace. Her gesture touched me deeply, not just because of her great taste in jewelry and her endless generosity, but because she’d thought to acknowledge our friendship. Elizabeth had always been generous with me. Many years ago, one of Richard Burton’s costumes from Cleopatra went up for auction. I didn’t have any money to bid on it, so I called Elizabeth and asked if she could help.
“Of course,” she answered.
“It’s a beautiful costume, Elizabeth. I’d like to have it.”
Elizabeth said she’d also like me to have it, and asked, “How much is it?”
I told her I wouldn’t know until I bid. Without hesitation, she told me to buy it.
Richard’s costume ended up costing $16,000. When the auction was over, I called Elizabeth with the total. She sent me a check and never even saw what she’d bought.
Many people asked me for my thoughts when Elizabeth passed. I was happy she was out of pain, yet sorry that I wouldn’t see her again. I released this statement to the newspapers:
Elizabeth had a long, productive career. She was the most glamorous star and sexual star of our generation. No one else could equal Elizabeth’s beauty and sexuality. Women liked her, and men adored her, including my husband. Her love for her children is enduring. She was a symbol of stardom. Her legacy will last.
CHAPTER 20
I’M PRINCESS LEIA’S MOTHER
IN DECEMBER 2000, ABOUT SEVEN weeks before These Old Broads first aired, Carrie did an interview on ABC’s Prime Time in which she told Diane Sawyer—and an audience of millions of viewers—that she had a mental condition that, in its most extreme state, would lead her to need hospitalization. This was not exactly news to anyone who’d read or seen Postcards from the Edge. Carrie’s best-selling book and hit movie were at least a decade old by then. But I have to admit, it was a little strange to watch Carrie chat with Diane as if she were talking to a doctor, openly discussing her mishaps and hospital stays. Not every parent with an addict in the family gets to turn on the TV and see her child telling a newscaster how she took thirty Percodan a day to regulate her moods.
Carrie described how she’d named these moods “Rollicking Roy” and “Sediment Pam.” Roy takes her on incredible highs during which her mind races so much that she can’t sleep, sometimes for days. Pam stands for “piss and moan.” Pam stands on the shore and sobs. She’s in charge of Carrie’s low moods. As Carrie explains it, Roy is the meal and Pam is the check, and anyone who has stayed awake for days is likely to wind up psychotic. Which is what happened to my daughter.
But that’s Carrie’s story to tell, which she went on to do in her hit show and book Wishful Drinking, in the process not only entertaining audiences and readers but finding humor in her devastating experiences and demonstrating her belief that “if you claim something, it has less power over you.”
I don’t think many people these days need me to explain manic depression, or bipolar disorder, to them. Those readers who do can find it in Carrie’s brilliant book or watch the DVD of her show. She’s done so much to educate people on the subject. Instead, I want to tell you what it’s been like for me to have a child I love completely who has a biological condition that cannot be cured, only recognized and treated. To do that I need to go back about forty years, to when Carrie was thirteen or fourteen and her personality changed.
She became reclusive. One day she’d be friendly with someone, and the next day she didn’t want to see that person anymore. Around this time, all our lives were changing due to the breakup of my second marriage, to Harry Karl. It was difficult to keep track of the emotions the family was experiencing, and I thought some of Carrie’s conflicts with me were just natural teenage rebellion. There are different kinds of mental conditions, and some people who have them are more affected than others. I’d worked with the Thalians for years, raising millions of dollars for mental health treatment and research—it’s ironic that this was my charity. But it didn’t occur to me that my daughter might need professional help at that time.
When I was hired to star in the Broadway show Irene in 1973, I decided to take Carrie with me to New York. She was then sixteen. Todd was in junior high school; he stayed behind with my soon-to-be-ex-husband and joined Carrie and me after the show opened. Carrie smoked pot with the kids in the chorus of Irene. This didn’t seem to be something I needed to control. Then Carrie went to London for eighteen months to study at the Central School of Speech and Drama. While she was there, she made it clear that she did not want to be in contact with me. I felt rejected and hurt, but since I was the one who had insisted she go in the first place, ultimately I had to do it her way. After she moved back to Los Angeles, Warren Beatty cast her in his film Shampoo, which was a huge hit and for which Carrie received glowing notices. Then she was cast in Star Wars and returned to London to make the film.
Carrie was only twenty when Star Wars was released in May 1977 and made her an international star. I was the same age in 1952 when Singin’ in the Rain made me a celebrity. The similarities ended there. When I was twenty, I lived with my parents, and alcohol was never allowed in the house. Two and a half decades later, the culture was sex, drugs, and rock and roll. I don’t know many young people who didn’t join the fun in those seemingly carefree days before AIDS, crack, and punk rock. Carrie partied all the time with the likes of Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi and the Saturday Night Live crowd. She met her husband Paul Simon through them.
In 1981 I was working at Warner Brothers, on the TV series Aloha Paradise, when I received a phone call informing me, “Your daughter is in the hospital at Century City. We don’t know how serious it is.” No mother ever wants to get such a call. When it happens, the world stops. Your heart pounds so fast, you think you’ll faint, even as your adrenaline rises to meet the crisis. Someone you love is in trouble, and you might not be able to help. It’s out of your control. All you can do is pray.
Carrie had been working on a movie called Under the Rainbow. I knew she was very unhappy, but not that she was in trouble. Without changing my clothes, makeup, or hair, I put on a scarf and rushed out of the studio into a rainstorm. Between my tears and the screaming rain, it was impossible to see the road. I drove across town afraid I wouldn’t make it to the hospital.
I finally arrived at Century City to find Carrie being taken somewhere on a gurney. She was still in her Under the Rainbow wig and costume, curled up on that table, so still and small. Terrified that she was dead, I asked one of the doctors in attendance if my daughter was going to be all right.
“We hope so,” he said.
Then they wheeled my little girl away.
I can’t remember much about the waiting room except my anguish. I believe that every mother who thinks she might lose her child has the same feeling. You don’t know what the outcome will be. They don’t tell you that she’s dead, but they don’t know if she will live. It’s horrible. I was frustrated and afraid. Helpless. (I went through something similar when I couldn’t reach Carrie the day I married Richard Hamlett, until Ava Gardner came to the rescue.)
Somehow I
didn’t cry. After an eternity, one of the doctors came to tell me that my daughter’s condition was stable and that she’d been lucky. I shook with overwhelming gratitude that Carrie was going to be all right.
Several years later, Carrie was admitted to Century City Rehab. She didn’t want me to come to the hospital with her because I was so recognizable that her anonymity would be gone immediately. Instead, her brother was her companion, constantly by her side. Carrie and I are so fortunate that our Todd is always there for us. Our housekeeper, Mary, would go to the hospital with fresh linens, quilts, and anything else I could think of that might make Carrie more comfortable. I did whatever she wanted. When the lows hit, we all rally around Carrie, to buoy her up and assure her that she is loved.
This was the episode that triggered her writing Postcards from the Edge. Carrie came out of it finally learning to live a sober life—one day at a time—and used her experience and sense of humor creatively to become a successful writer.
Carrie’s bipolar disorder wasn’t properly identified for a long time after I first noticed a change in her; it wasn’t a common diagnosis in the ’70s and ’80s, as it is now. Mood swings that I felt were normal in a young girl later became known as symptoms of a serious condition. Even though I had access to the best doctors in the mental health field through my work with the Thalians, none of them could tell me anything conclusive about Carrie’s behavior. And none of us could imagine that she would be on this journey for decades.
Sometimes it takes a while before medical knowledge catches up with reality. I remember when the Thalians honored Rita Hayworth as “Miss Wonderful” in 1977. Most recipients made elaborate acceptance speeches. After Gene Kelly handed her the award, beautiful Rita just stood onstage staring at the audience.
“Say thank you,” I whispered in her ear.
“Thank you,” she repeated mechanically.
The fact is, Rita had Alzheimer’s. She used to sing in the street near her house with no clothes on, going over to see Glenn Ford, who was her neighbor and friend. This was before Alzheimer’s was commonly diagnosed. The tabloids accused Rita of being a drunk. My father later developed Alzheimer’s. We now know millions of people have it, and there still isn’t any cure.
Bipolar disorder isn’t new, but its diagnosis and treatment have only become common in the past thirty years. Rosemary Clooney admitted in the late 1970s that she struggled with manic depression. Several scientists connect the condition to the creative part of the brain, which explains why a higher percentage of performers, writers, and other creative types seem to suffer from it. In Wishful Drinking, Carrie lists many famous people who were bipolar. Women are also more likely to be bipolar than men. It is difficult for everyone it touches.
Originally Carrie believed she was just a drug addict, but finally she came to understand that her body has a chemical imbalance that cannot be dealt with solely by abstaining. It can be controlled with the help of psychiatrists and medicine, and Carrie has been fortunate to have great doctors. Bipolar disorder is progressive: as time passes, depressions can become increasingly severe. It’s a constant battle. A few years ago, Carrie experienced a deep depression that made her (as she put it) not necessarily feel like dying, but feeling a lot like not being alive. This can be normal for some bipolar sufferers, but it was new to Carrie, and it scared her. Carrie has so much courage. She always ventures forward to seek the newest treatment, refusing to give up. So a few years ago, she decided to try electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT.
ECT is not the horrifying shock treatments inflicted on Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Rock Hudson in Seconds and Ellen Burstyn in Requiem for a Dream and, going all the way back, Olivia de Havilland in The Snake Pit. ECT is a new frontier in the treatment of bipolar disorder, done under light anesthesia so Carrie can recover as soon as she comes home, the same day as the procedure. Now when the lows become intolerable, Carrie gets ECT. She has written about all this in her book Shockaholic.
There are no long-range studies on ECT yet. We have to trust that the doctors administering these brain treatments are doing what’s best. It’s new territory for them as well as for my daughter. Todd and I have spoken to the doctors about the effects of this treatment. Carrie works every day to fight her demons. No one else can do it for her, but we support every step that Carrie takes. We try to do everything we can to help her not get depressed and to remain strong. It’s hard for everyone, but it’s hardest for Carrie.
Still, it’s heartbreaking to watch someone you love struggle so. As a mother, I find the hardest thing for me is to love my daughter and not to intervene in her life. I want to do everything humanly possible to keep my girl out of pain, to pick her up when she’s down. If I could, I would suffer for her.
Over the years, many professionals have told me to practice “tough love” with my daughter—to reassure Carrie that she is loved and then cut her off. I can’t do this. So many of my friends had children in similar situations and did what the doctors instructed. George C. Scott lost his son to drugs, as did Carroll O’Connor. Their tough love didn’t matter once their children were dead. It’s not natural to outlive your child. This has always been my greatest fear. Like countless others, celebrity families are touched by substance abuse. Being famous doesn’t protect you. Every family has to decide how they will handle their child who needs help, even when that child has grown up. Carrie is my child, and I love her with every ounce of strength I possess. If love alone could cure our children, they would always be well. Since it can’t, I will do whatever I can to make her life less difficult. Too many mothers have lost their children, for thousands of different reasons. I don’t know if I could survive that. I’m so grateful to Carrie for working so hard to stay well when sometimes it might seem easier to give up.
Every day I worry about my children. When I wake up, I wonder where Carrie is and how she’s faring. Todd has these concerns too, but I do the lion’s share of worrying. I’m sure that’s normal for most mothers. Carrie is blessed to have her daughter. Billie loves her and needs her, and Billie’s love anchors Carrie. It gives her strength. She and Billie work through everything and are in a great place.
We all have to find strength wherever we can. The AA program has worked well for many people with alcoholism. They also have programs for people on narcotics, and people with food issues or sex addiction. There is help if you seek it. Luckily, I’ve been able to find help in my faith and in my son and daughter, who make my life worth living.
God has given me many gifts. When I count my blessings, which is often, strength is one of the gifts I’m most grateful for, as well as the fact that the things I’ve needed to be strong for have all been outward circumstances and situations. I haven’t had to deal with inner demons as Carrie has, and continues to do every day. When you have someone in your family who suffers from these severe mood swings, you think that someday you’ll be able to handle them. Not true. All you can do is pray and hang on.
At the end of Wishful Drinking, Carrie states, “At times, being bipolar can be an all-consuming challenge, requiring a lot of stamina and even more courage, so if you’re living with this illness and functioning at all, it’s something to be proud of.”
I’ll end this chapter with a fervent Amen to that.
With my beautiful daughter, Carrie.
CHAPTER 21
HOLLYWOOD & HIGHLAND
AFTER THE HOTEL WAS SOLD and my third divorce was final, my life became more settled.
Temporarily.
My dream of a museum for my collection had been put on hold by the sale of the Vegas property. Now, creating a permanent home to preserve all these magnificent pieces became my priority.
After Todd moved the pieces from the Vegas museum to the warehouse on his ranch in Northern California in 1998, he was concerned about maintaining everything properly. So he visited the Victoria and Albert Museum in London to learn how they archive their costumes. The Victoria and Albert curators info
rmed Todd that their collection, which includes clothing that was worn by Henry VIII four hundred years ago, is not costumes but “textiles.” Todd learned that all the labels MGM and 20th Century Fox had used contained acid that could burn through the fabric. All the hangers were wrong. (This explained why some of my things were falling apart on their hangers.) Everything had to be laid flat, wrapped in acid-free tissue, and kept at a consistent temperature.
When Todd built the museum at the hotel, he began a database to keep track of all the costumes and props in the collection, as well as the films they appeared in, the actors who’d worn them, and other pertinent information. It took him years to complete the database. Before the Vegas museum was built, most of my collection had been stored at my North Hollywood dance studio. We now knew that to preserve the costumes properly for future generations, we needed to store everything at a controlled temperature, so the electric bill at our new storage space was four times what it had been at the studio. Todd removed all the acid labels and bought thousands of boxes and miles of tissue paper. It took a lot of manpower and many years of work. The studios had thought of the costumes and props as objects to be used, reused, and then thrown away—which may be why people used to make fun of me for buying all those “rags.”
Now that the museum in Vegas was closed, people approached me about putting a new museum in the theater and shopping complex being built at the corner of Hollywood and Highland in the heart of Hollywood. The initial call came from a company called TrizecHahn, which was developing the space. They were excited about creating a Hollywood memorabilia museum so close to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and many other entertainment industry attractions. They put us in touch with the Community Redevelopment Agency for the City of Los Angeles, which had agreed to issue bonds to cover the development of the complex. The CRA had already put up a lot of money through fundraising and issuing bonds.
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