The Eternal Party
Page 24
As I was cleaning Dad’s apartment after he died, I found a letter sitting on his desk. It was written in red ink on several pages of long, yellow legal paper in my grandmother’s distinctive handwriting. Ganny had written it a few months after the fight occurred in Brazil. Reading it, I understood how terrible the confrontation had been for both of them. As she wrote, “We literally stripped each other’s soul apart.”
It was the first time I had ever seen the letter, though Dad must have looked at it often after receiving it more than forty years before. She wrote:
I know we think differently about life, God, love, forgiveness and probably always will. But in my heart or soul—whatever you wish to call it—I cannot live with myself without saying—“I forgive Larry.”
She then addressed the words he’d said in fury:
You are not my mother and you never were. The thing I must deal with is that what you spoke is the truth and the truth hurts. I must admit that decisions I made all those years ago were the wrong decisions as far as they concerned you. I didn’t fight to keep you, my son. And now I come face to face with the fact that you have lived—lo these many years—with a hurt, with the sense that you were an unwanted little boy. I ask for your forgiveness. Until now I have never known what it means when they say, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Even if I weren’t your mother and was just a friend—and so help you darling one—I am both—I love you.
Your mom
This letter had been written forty years earlier, yet my father had always kept it and, in his final days, had placed it on his desk. I could see from the traces of fingerprints that he’d read it again and again. And I could literally see how much it meant to him because certain words had been blurred and stained by his tears.
The letter was a treasure. The fact that Dad had kept it so close at hand made it a window into the true feelings of two people who had so carefully crafted everything the world knew about them. For the first time, I understood why, in the final hours of his life, my father’s mind was focused on forgiveness.
Perhaps, ever since his grandmother died, the little boy inside of him was convinced that he had done wrong. Because he’d made a practice of handling his various transgressions by making light of them, he was not a man who knew how to say, “I’m sorry.” All his life, no matter what he did, no matter how adept he had been at getting everyone else to forgive him, it struck me that he had never been able to forgive himself.
I had been there in his last coherent moments when, as I realize now, all the façades had fallen away and we were alone together, he no longer felt he had to perform.
I remember watching the monitor after I told him, “You’re a very good boy”—words that a mother would say to her son. I remember that his breathing had calmed and that I saw his heart rate become normal. These monitors had verified that the outward calm extended deep within him.
Those words—you’re a very good boy—had provided absolution. They had given him the essential belief that he had been forgiven for everything. They had allowed my amazing, restless, loving dad to find the peace he had never sought but had always needed.
Acknowledgments
I want to thank Elizabeth Kaye, my coauthor, with all my heart. As a person with learning disabilities I never imagined that I could ever write a book. She patiently mentored me and helped me tell this story, and in doing so enabled me to find my writer’s voice. Thank you to Thomas Dunne Books, especially Executive Editor Laurie Chittenden, who knows all about Texans, Melanie Fried, associate editor, who was very patient with all my questions about the writing process, and Rob Kirkpatrick, who believed in this project.
I send kind wishes to my fellow traveler on this adventure, my brother, Preston Hagman, and his children, Noel, Tara, and Becca. Also my aunts, my beloved BB, Lilimore, and Heller.
This story would never have happened without all of you who watched my acting family members doing their work. Dad and Ganny loved you all.
I want to thank all my friends who have been so supportive to me throughout the writing of this book. I am very fortunate, and there are too many of you to name, but I can’t let people close this book without acknowledging a few of you. First, thank you to my rock, Kevin Murphy, who is always there when I need him. I want to thank my father’s best friends, Roger Phillips and Henri Kleiman. Others who helped me are: the Fondas; the Brewer family; Philip Mengel; Barbara Baumann and Johan Feldbusch; Laura Hubber; Richard and Jasper Bangs; Annie Whitney; the entire Quinn family; my improv group from the Comedy Store, along with their wives. Also my neighbors in Santa Fe, Seattle, and Santa Monica, who have fed me body and soul. I also want to thank Santa Monica College, especially the dedicated English teachers, the staffs of the Learning Disabilities Program and High Tech Training Center, and Patti Davis, leader of the Beyond Alzheimer’s support group at UCLA Medical Center.
Dad in the backyard learning how to handle a gun with his father, Ben Hagman, and half brother, Gary, in Weatherford, Texas
Mom and Dad camping in the Hamptons when I was a baby
One of the many photos taken on the bed that day. (Don Loomis)
Age 3 with Mom and Dad. Dad wears his favorite beaver coat and Mom is in clothes she made for herself.
Dad sitting and reading in the screened-in front porch Mom invented and made so that camping would be more comfortable
Camping near a glacier stream in Canada
The day I became a Girl Scout. This was also the day before I came home from school to find a bunch of teenage boys in my bedroom. (Larry Hall)
Me (age 15) and Dad in front of the mural I painted on our garage door
Dad’s birthday at home in Malibu
Mom and Dad
Dad in one of his favorite outfits, proudly sitting in his custom-made van. (Nancy Ellison/Polaris)
Ganny hired her favorite photographer to take my head shots when I was a young actress auditioning in Hollywood. They were beautiful photos but they looked more vintage than of a girl in the 1980s who worked at the Comedy Store. (Jo Bill Hiedger)
Ganny and me
Mom and me dressed up to go to the Santa Fe Opera
Dad with me, Ganny, and Mom at my first Los Angeles art opening. (Bill Nation)
Dad visits Santa Fe and stages this photo as a way of saying he was sorry. (Daniel Masler)
Dad with shiny red lizard on his shoulder at Pike Place Market, Seattle
Photos of Dad dressed as a cowboy good guy in white hat and suit riding down the center of Wilshire Boulevard on the way to the auction at Julien’s in Beverly Hills were featured in newspapers around the world. (Darren Julien and Martin Nolan)
Having lunch with Mom and Dad after her Alzheimer’s had set in
A typical weekend in Malibu
About the Author
KRISTINA HAGMAN is an artist who has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, People magazine, Closer magazine (UK), and more. She is the daughter of Larry Hagman and granddaughter of Mary Martin and lives in Santa Monica, California. You can sign up for email updates here.
Sign up for email updates on Elizabeth Kaye here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Author’s Note
Epigraph
1. Dad’s Last Day
2. A Forensic Study: The Search for My Father
3. Pot and Friends to Share It
4. Two Stars
5. Real Texas Roots
6. Dad Goes into the Family Business
7. The Eternal Party
8. Set Free in the Wide-Open Country
9. Life Above the XXX Cinema
10. Taking Art in a New Direction
11. Dreaming of Jeannie
12. LSD Trips of Another Kind
13. A Trip with Dad to Nowhere Land
14. Malibu
15. Finding Work, Dallas, and Fame
16. Real Life
17. Parents
18. The Miracle of Medicine
19. A Double Life and Alzheimer’s
20. Forgiveness
Acknowledgments
Photos
About the Author
Copyright
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.
THE ETERNAL PARTY. Copyright © 2016 by Kristina Hagman. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.thomasdunnebooks.com
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by Olga Grlic
Cover photograph © Nancy Ellison and Polaris Images
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Hagman, Kristina, author. | Kaye, Elizabeth, 1945– author.
Title: The eternal party: understanding my dad, Larry Hagman, the TV star America loved to hate / Kristina Hagman with Elizabeth Kaye.
Description: First edition. | New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015051258 | ISBN 9781250076762 (hardback) | ISBN 9781466888340 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Hagman, Larry. | Actors—United States—Biography. | Hagman, Kristina. | Fathers and daughters—United States—Biography. | BISAC: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Entertainment & Performing Arts. | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs.
Classification: LCC PN2287.H17 H34 2016 | DDC 791.4502/8092—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015051258
e-ISBN 9781466888340
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First Edition: June 2016