“They’re quite a thorn in our sides,” sighed a Bel Air Association head. “We hope no more of these Beatles and beatniks come into Bel Air. Why, we had an experience with one of the residents domiciling beatniks right here near the office. They overran the rustic places, destroyed the brush. Nitwit kids!
“The neighbors are very much frustrated by the appearance of the houses. Bel Air is a very fine community restricted by the covenants of deeds. Rhonda Fleming lives here and Pat Boone… .”
The most recent arrivals included the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson and his wife and the Mamas and the Papas’ John and Michelle Phillips; Terry was close friends with both couples. The Beach Boys had bought Edgar Rice Burroughs’ house, a gracious Mediterranean villa, and I can’t imagine what their neighbors might have objected to about its appearance—unless it was possibly that they had painted the entire house deep purple.
In the garage, when the whole Wilson family was at home, there was a Rolls Royce Phantom—once John Lennon’s—a Rolls Royce Silver Cloud, a Mercedes, two Ferraris and a Jaguar. In the foyer of the house stood a plaster cowboy holding a birdcage, a water fountain, and a Hammond organ. In the living room was a mahogany statue of Buddha, a bronze bust of Beethoven, and a jukebox. In the den, a $7,000 concert grand piano with the legs sawed half off sat in a large sandbox, where Brian composed and sometimes spoke to the ghost of George Gershwin. There was a complete gym, a private recording studio, and a large pool that they were trying to equip to hold dolphins. Good vibrations.
John and Michelle Phillips lived in an ersatz-English elliptically topped cottage that once belonged to America’s sweethearts, Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. Directly across the street was a sugar-cube chateau, the brightest feather in Bel Air’s cap; the Mamas and the Papas climbed their trees to see over the high stone wall of the mansion. It was the Kirkeby estate—with the elevator, electric waterfall and ballroom—where I played as a child: the symbol of the old order and the shrine of my youth. California Dreamin’.
From near and far, by sandal and sole, Bentley and Rolls, they came to the Mamas and Papas high on the hill. The house filled and swelled with people, then ebbed and emptied into the early morning mist: Zsa Zsa Gabor chatted with Janis Joplin, Art Garfunkel with Gypsy Boots, the Lovin’ Spoonful with the Rolling Stones, Jim Morrison with the Beatles, when they were in town. They played billiards—more for the blur of brightly colored balls than for the game, watched Laurel and Hardy and drank tequila in the stone taproom around a heavy oak table—on which I once saw a green cake.
Mornings started in the afternoons; guests began sharing whatever was handy—swallowing Librium like Life Savers, “windowpane” acid, may be mescaline. Then John might lead his guests outside, pick up a bow and arrow and shoot straight up into the sky, watch the arrow arc and whistle downward as his guests ran for cover, waiting to see if it landed on someone’s head. This explained the avocado trees bristling with arrows and the anxious-looking gardener, who wore a red parka to announce his presence to the archers while nervously tending his wounded trees.
Well pleased with their new lifestyle, the Phillipses shared it freely. John, a Cossack hat cocked low on his forehead, would fold himself into a great Gothic chair, gently fondling the lions’ heads that roared from its arms. “I think I’ll buy some more land in Bel Air.” He grinned slyly. “It’s going to be a very groovy scene.”
These people astounded and amazed me, as they say in the circus. But I was never at ease. I felt self-conscious and uncomfortable in their presence, unpleasantly aware of my pretensions, clumsy and awkward. Like a little kid who wants to play with the big guys but doesn’t know how to get in the game.
“Laid back” was not yet something I had learned how to be. Besides, sitting around stoned, staring into space, could sometimes be a little boring. I wanted action, conversation. And, let’s face it, my blazer, slacks and Gucci loafers, with my transatlantic lisp, I was beyond straight. No number of robes and beads, no amount of dope was going to change that, though God knows I tried. While I was dazzled by these people, I was also a little afraid. They knew and I knew that I was not one of them; there was no place for me on their team.
At Terry’s house on Cielo Drive I felt at home. Surrounded by tall, thick pine trees and cherry blossoms, with rose-covered rail fences and a cool mountain pool grown over with flowers, it snuggled up against a hillside—a gingerbread hideout that hung high above the city.
There were stone fireplaces, beamed ceilings, paned windows, a hayloft, an attic and four-poster beds. Built in the forties by a French film star to resemble a farmhouse in her native Normandy, it looked more Twentieth Century-Fox than French.
There was a cartoonlike perfection about it: You waited to find Bambi drinking from the pool, Thumper dozing in the flowers, to hear the dwarfs whistling home at the end of the day. It was a fairy-tale place, that house on the hill, a Never-Never Land far from the real world where nothing could go wrong.
It was the first time either of us had lived with anyone and we went about it excitedly, if a little uncertainly, like two kids dressing up and playing house. We hired a butler who cooked and served us dinner on the lawn under the trees at a table banked with flowers and lighted by flickering candelabra while we sat happily over red wine, Brie and Mallo-mars, watching the lights twinkle on in the city below. When the butler disappeared, a middle-aged black woman named Ruth moved in, to become more housemother than housekeeper; and we had a houseman named George who did odd jobs, drove Ruth to the market and fed the animals: Terry’s fourteen cats, the kinkajou I had brought from Peru, and a Saint Bernard named Nana. We had a florist’s bill of four hundred dollars a month. Talk about Never-Never Land.
We were younger in those days than when we first met—giddy with romance. Now, however, we had the means and freedom to act out our fantasies: with what Terry made in records and what I made in films, we were starry-eyed kids on a big budget. As Hollywood’s children, we instinctively did things larger than life. Just like in the movies.
We were in some way like brother and sister—born blond, blue-eyed and blessed, beating a retreat from being grownup. Whatever we did together, it was in the spirit of two kids setting out on a great adventure, exploring the stuff of dreams.
My parents had no idea I was living with Terry: I went to great lengths to ensure this. Though now a legal adult, who, through luck and pluck, had struck out successfully on her own at an early age, I could not bring myself to come clean about my actual whereabouts.
For one thing, I knew how deeply my father disapproved of Terry—his politics, his friends, his lifestyle and especially the influence they exerted on me. To my father, Terry was not simply unsuitable; he was totally unacceptable.
Deceit seemed the easiest route; I wanted to live with Terry but I wanted my father to love me, so I lied. Though Terry’s house was five minutes from my parents’, I cooked up elaborate charades to convince them that I was living alone in New York. (I’d kept my apartment there, but very seldom used it.) Calling my mother on one phone with the receiver of another extension rigged in front of a radio tuned to static, I created a crackling long-distance effect of which I was very proud, deftly modulating the waves of static with the volume knob. My mother and I would chat, she would ask how the weather was, I’d answer, “Hot and muggy,” she’d worry that the call was costing me money, and guiltily I’d say goodbye. Then, if I went into Beverly Hills, I’d slouch down in the car to avoid being spotted.
It was a shoddy deception, but for some time it worked. I always assumed I’d return to New York, but I kept staying. After a few close calls too many—driving past my mother, for one—I pretended I’d taken an apartment in Los Angeles, so I was free to visit my parents and my brother without their suspecting where I lived.
Finally, several months later, I told my mother, ashamed of having carried it on so long. She was justifiably furious; but eventually she looked at me levelly, and, protecting us all from the certain
rage she knew would follow, said, “Candy, whatever you do, don’t tell your father.” And I never did.
Her disapproval hadn’t only to do with Terry; in 1967, a couple “living together” without the sanctity of marriage was still considered highly unconventional. Most of the girls I went to school with had by now gotten married; some already had children. If I had to live with somebody, my mother wanted to know, why couldn’t I choose a more traditional arrangement? What was wrong with getting married?
Well, I don’t know. Certainly, since I could remember, I’d dreamed of the day: being kidnapped by Robin and bundled off to Sherwood Forest where I’d cook and clean and be just plain Mrs. Hood. And, God knows, I’d always counted on my prince to come to take me away from all this, take care of me, take charge of my life—all the things that princes are famous for: thundering up on his horse, hoisting me into the saddle, and carrying me off into cartoon sunsets while the dwarfs cheered and the bunnies and deer wept with joy and the music swelled and an invisible brush painted “The End” across the screen. Ah, Walt, you have a lot to answer for.
But, to my own surprise, I wasn’t much interested in marriage right then: my life was just beginning, not ending; I found I wasn’t ready to “live happily ever after.” Because once you find your prince, the story’s over. I had a lot to do first—places to go, people to see. I was too young to be closed in the castle. When marriage begins, life ends. Everyone knew that.
Besides, Terry and I weren’t meant to be married; it was even surprising that we were together, so different were we from one another. And Terry was no prince who would take charge of my life—he was still a kid just starting his own.
And I had always loved the luxury of being able to take care of myself. If this self-sufficiency was terminal, that only made me enjoy it all the more.
During the two years I spent with Terry, the three films I made (and the several I turned down) were mixed choices.
The first was The Magus, filmed in Majorca, starring Anthony Quinn and Michael Caine. I had loved the novel and very much wanted the part of Lily, a nymphomaniac schizophrenic (one would have thought that one of those conditions was sufficient, but by the time the screenplay was done, the pair of twins in the novel had been combined into one character). But when I got the part, though my intentions were by now more serious than they had once been, I hadn’t the training or experience to back them up. My execution was inept; my looks were not enough to carry me through the complex role and convoluted script, and fear once again made me back away. I was stiff and self-conscious—sure, still, that I was in the wrong game.
One episode in particular reinforced this. The director, Guy Green, realized that they needed a close-up of an orgasm for a love scene in a dream sequence shot earlier that week. It would be just a quick shot—an insert, as it were—to be done at the end of the day. “We’ll be in very tight on you. Can you just come to climax for us quickly, dear? We’re racing the clock.”
They had set up a makeshift bed to match the original, swathed in red satin. It was too tight a shot to include an over-the-shoulder with my partner, a German in a cat-burglar suit wearing a mask (a dream sequence, remember: by the time they were finished, no one watching it could make heads or tails of the film), and so I writhed alone. I Writhe Alone—it should go on my tombstone. I groaned on “Action,” as the crew glanced at their watches, eager to go home. Rolling my eyes heavenward like an El Greco saint, less in an expression of passion than in supplication for help. Then, gasping, collapsing, spent, on the shiny red. “Okay, fellows! It’s a wrap!”
It certainly is, I thought, slinking in shame to my dressing room, though, as usual, I had no grounds for complaint. It even made me grateful for love scenes with partners.
Getting Straight was the film that followed—-an unpretentious, democratic production made in Oregon, whose style felt more like shooting in Europe: a minimal crew, with everyone participating and pitching in, working hard and fast. While I had grown up around glamour, studios and star systems, I was more comfortable in work situations removed from it all. I felt happier, easier, without such self-conscious encumbrances. Being waited on by wardrobe women three times my age who addressed me as “Miss Bergen” made me extremely uncomfortable; I preferred productions that reduced the distances between people rather than emphasizing them. There were inequities enough without inventing them. Here there was no competition for wall-to-wall campers because there were none. We worked as a group and as friends. There was a sense of proportion, not pretension; our energy went into our work, not our Winnebagos.
A comedy about college protests that some found unconscionable and lacking in integrity, Getting Straight was nevertheless a sizable success. It had humor and toughness, and a crazy, brave performance by Elliott Gould, who was as unpredictable in life as he was on screen. Once I went with him and a group of friends to a basketball game, Elliott as ever in his knitted New York Knicks cap. As we approached the entrance, we passed the many souvenir vendors who lined the sidewalk, one of whom, an older man, was selling mechanical windup dogs that whirred in circles around his shoes. Grinning, Elliott said, “Watch this,” gave the man a five, stomped ferociously on one of the tiny dogs, flattening it, and ambled nonchalantly on. Others in the group laughed, but my eyes were on the old man, who bore his casualty stoically, pocketing the five and reaching to deploy a new dog.
But Elliott was a generous and good-natured co-star, easy and fun to work with, and he helped make Getting Straight the fun it was. For the first time I got to play a real person. A college coed instead of an Ice Queen. Someone with blood in her veins instead of mineral water. I enjoyed that especially; it felt good.
Yet I was still adept at rationalizing less discriminating, more expedient choices, and my next film was one of those. The Adventurers was based on a Harold Robbins novel, which the producers pretended they would turn into War and Peace. They were not, they insisted, setting out to make successful shlock but to transform this immensely commercial, crass novel into a film of rare sensitivity and depth. Artistry on a grand scale. By the time they were finished, you wouldn’t be able to tell Harold Robbins from Leo Tolstoy. Just wait and see. A silk purse from a sow’s ear, if ever I heard it.
Of course, nobody believed it. They didn’t believe it, the studio (God knows and God help them) didn’t believe it, and no one in it believed it. Least of all me. But they had such a huge budget—who could bear to turn down a substantial increase on a salary already well into six figures?
So we all pretended to believe that we were making honorable art: they hired obscure actors from critically acclaimed European art films; they hired the traditional stars—Olivia De Havilland, Ernest Borgnine, Rossano Brazzi; they got Renoir’s grandson to photograph it and they got $10 million to make it—an enormous budget in the late sixties. And what we got was shlock. Expensive shlock. Well-shot shlock. Shlock that cost a fortune.
But we made the shlock in Rome, where we ate superbly and had a good time, and no one much mentioned the movie. We squandered our per diem on weekends in Positano and on Sardinia: we lived as well as the characters we played. For six weeks I shot in Venice, Santo Stefano and Rome, and to tell the truth, it was swell.
And then, a year later, the movie was released. The Adventurers was hailed as a celebration of shlock, a triumph of bad taste, a redefinition of trash. Almost a leader in its field.
The reviews I received were almost generous. “Miss Bergen performs as though clubbed over the head,” said The New York Times, allowing that “The dialogue may simply have stunned her.” Of the entire film, The Times said, “On the screen, The Adventurers turn out to be an even duller bunch of meatballs than they were in Harold Robbins’s best-selling novel … most of the cast looks slightly sheepish.”
Slightly? That Roman holiday haunted me for years. “Weren’t you in The Adventurers?” an interviewer would inevitably ask accusingly, as if urging me to confess a crime. “Was I? Let me see… . Wasn’t that th
e Harold Robbins? Oh, yes, but they swore it was going to be an art film, you know, and we had no idea
It’s a wonder I didn’t retire. Instead, I returned to photojournalism to sooth my pride (and hedge my bets), writing and photographing two more articles for Esquire: one called “Is Bel Air Burning?” about the rock invasion of Bel Air, and another on the sport of Roller Derby called “Little Women.” Cosmopolitan assigned me a piece on the 1968 Oregon primaries and I crisscrossed the state in the candidates’ press buses tagging after Eugene McCarthy, Richard Nixon and Robert Kennedy. In all these assignments I would have been an idiot not to know it was my name and not a God-given gift for journalism that got me in the door. But once inside, while I might not win any Pulitzers, I worked happily and hard with a confidence that was absent in my acting. When a twelve-page play I’d written in college was published in an anthology of short plays alongside those of William Saroyan and William Inge, netting a royalty of $6.75 when it was performed, I was thrilled. It was the smallest check I had ever received, but I was prouder of it than any other.
While I never came to feel comfortable in Terry’s world, his political convictions—aided by the temper of the times, by all I saw around me—helped to forge a political conscience in me.
If you grew up a Republican in Beverly Hills, the transition to liberal was inevitably loaded with irony. I remember the day Martin Luther King was killed; our housekeeper, Ruth, tears streaming down her face, hung a transistor radio on the Electrolux and sang slow gospel songs as she moved from room to room vacuuming. The best gesture of sympathy and solidarity the rest of us could muster was to drive around Beverly Hills that day in our Mercedes with our headlights on.
Terry was incensed by the plight of the American Indian; he had spent time on reservations and would tell me of the despair and hopelessness of their lives. Soon it weighed on my conscience too, and I visited reservations, met tribal leaders and became involved in the Indian movement on my own.
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