Shattered Love

by Richard Chamberlain

  Jock and Betty lived in a handsome old stone colonial manse outside of Nairobi. Two “pets”—young Rothschild giraffes—cavorted around their extensive property. One of these majestic animals, Daisy, was made famous by a charming book Betty wrote about her to help finance their animal protection work. Daisy would sometimes lean down and give you a kiss if you approached her with a piece of carrot in your mouth. Martin bravely did this and said the smooch was rather French and sexy.

  The five horned Rothschild giraffes were vulnerable to illegal poaching as well as encroaching villages and farms. Jock and Betty had promoted and organized the transfer of these rare animals to a vast national park where they’d have room to thrive. We went along and watched the dangerously tricky operation of rounding up and loading wild giraffes onto trucks that would carry them to their new home. For weeks prior to our arrival they had been fed in the back of the truck beds of several disguised trucks so the animals were accustomed to them. The trick was to lure these beautiful giraffes to their prickly meal of acacia branches while anticipating the wranglers’ signal to quickly uncover the truck gate and enclose them. Giraffes are lethal fighters—the flick of a hoof can kill just about anything—so they have to be coaxed along with great skill and care. Thanks to Jock and Betty this complex forced migration was a success, and the Rothschild giraffe continues to flourish in Kenya.

  The Melvilles took us on camera safari through a game reserve teeming with wildlife. Once we stopped our open jeep to photograph a couple of rhinos grazing up ahead. Suddenly a lounging lion not six feet away from us lifted its huge head from the tall grass and roared with such awesome power that our vehicle shook and rattled. It scared the daylights out of us, but Martin kept his wits and managed to get a great photo of the beast.

  Years later in the mid-1980s Martin and I returned to Africa to act in two films in Zimbabwe—a tongue-in-cheek remake of King Solomon’s Mines and its sequel, Allan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold. We worked for eight and a half months in the fantastic countryside around Harare, and then we shot at the unbelievable Victoria Falls where the Zambezi River cascades over towering cliffs like a hundred Niagaras. At night during a full moon one can see an extraordinary moonbow over the falls.

  Filming these two comic epics was at times a waiting game, hanging around the set while the assistant directors set up huge action sequences with thousands of extras—and at times savage crocodiles! Once in a while I amused myself during these interludes by writing loosely constructed haikus:

  Surprised by joy

  a mockingbird

  cracked the night with song.

  Opalescent tide:

  quieter

  than silence.

  Our love

  like raindrops splashing:

  endless circles.

  Wind rustled leaves,

  dancing, dancing,

  till autumn.

  We were spellbound by this dark and magnificent continent for eight and a half months. One of the more amusing moments in our African adventure was a balloon ride over the vast plain of the Masai Mara in Kenya. Being in a balloon afforded us the possibility of viewing the wild animals without their notice, for our human scent would be undetected from the air. The basket under the bright yellow balloon held twelve lucky participants, all eager to photograph the young lion cubs of spring that had been reported to inhabit the area. Once airborne, I removed my dark glasses and hat to facilitate my own picture taking. Unfortunately, this caused a stir among the passengers. Instead of filming the traipsing giraffes, scavenging hyenas, and languid lion dens below, I became the caged animal of the moment. It must have been hilarious from the animals’ viewpoint to see this balloon basket rocking in the air, as tourists jostled for position to photograph not them but Father Ralph!

  We were grateful that we were able to see Bali, Nepal, and parts of Africa before their ancient splendors were gobbled up by the voracious mechanics of our modern world.

  For the ultimate in culture shock, our next stop after the heady exotica of Africa and the Orient was the cool, clean decorum of Finland. Martin had spent a year as a high school exchange student in Finland with a wonderful family named Gulin. Martin’s family life before his visit had been difficult, and his experiences with the Gulins were like awakening from a troubling dream to the sunshine of uncomplicated affection, harmony, and fun. Martin has an affinity for languages and learned Finnish within a couple of months. After almost a year of this newfound family bliss, he foolishly wrote to his parents in Hawaii saying that he wanted to stay with the Gulins forever. By return mail he received a one-way airline ticket and the order to return home immediately. With a heavy heart he did. When the Gulins tearfully saw Martin off at the airport, his Finnish mother said he’d always be welcome, but if he ever returned it would be wise not to expect everything to be just the same.

  But when we arrived at the Gulins’ so many years later, everything was the same. The whole family happily gathered around Martin as if he’d never left. Juhani, the head of the family, said, “We welcome our son home.” The Finns are a very shy people, but once you are admitted into their hearts you are a part of them forever.

  Summer in Finland is a revelation of endless daylight. Late at “night” the sun dips briefly below the horizon, only to bob up again and begin its twenty-three-hour day. Filmmakers long to shoot outdoor scenes in the magical, golden, long-shadowed light that precedes sunset, but in most areas those gorgeous moments last only about twenty minutes—hardly time to set up the cameras. In the Finnish summer this golden light lasts for hours.

  The sauna is almost a religion in Finland—every home has one. And many families, including the Gulins, have small mountain cabins on the country’s more than sixty thousand lakes. These cabins usually have a detached sauna right on the water so you can cook yourself in the extreme heat, make a naked dash into the freezing lake, and then race back to the sauna. A few rounds of this, perhaps with an excellent Finnish beer or two, and you’re so relaxed you can barely stand.

  Curiously enough, I had a “second family” not unlike Martin’s. Now that I’d met the wonderful Gulins, I wanted Martin to meet my wonderful Harveys in England. So off we flew to London.

  I had met Eric Harvey, a retired wine and spirits salesman then in his early sixties, on the Kildare set at MGM Studios in 1963. We had mutual friends in Los Angeles who introduced us, and Eric, a man of tremendous curiosity and British charm, was fascinated by all aspects of moviemaking. We chatted often on the set for two or three days, and when Eric departed for home, he left a note inviting me to spend the coming Christmas with him and his family in Beckenham. At this point in my life I had never been abroad. I liked Eric and had heard glowing accounts of his wife and kids, so I leapt at this chance to broaden my horizons.

  MGM paid for my first-class ticket, and a week before Christmas I flew off into a wonderful adventure. Kildare was very popular in England so I took along various disguises and started growing a beard in an attempt to arrive incognito. The attention of media and fans might complicate my brief visit.

  As we settled into our seats on the plane the stewardess who served me the mandatory orange juice whispered in my ear that I was sitting across the aisle from the Duke and Duchess of Bedford who were returning home to their immense palace, Woburn Abbey.

  Midflight, the duchess, an elegant French woman and the duke’s second wife, came over to me and introduced herself. Apparently my disguise wasn’t working. She commented on my new beard, saying it was quite attractive, and to my surprise she invited me to come visit them at Woburn. I said I’d love to, never thinking it would really happen.

  Eric Harvey picked me up at Heathrow airport and, at his modest home, introduced me to his wife, Cecil, and their three children. I was a bit nervous and staggering from jet lag, but I could see right away that we were all going to get along, although the daughter, Margie, found my American ways and accent very odd and rather funny.

  The next day Cecil a
nd Eric were discussing all the places they wanted to show me in their ancient land, and they mentioned that Woburn Abbey was high on their list. I told them about meeting the duke and duchess on the plane and they were thrilled.

  A few days later we did visit Woburn with the Harveys’ friends the Paddons, and their children and dog, all ten of us piled into a vintage VW camper. Upon arriving, Eric felt it would be rude not to tell the gatekeeper that I had entered the estate.

  We drove around the vast grounds awhile and then stopped and set up our picnic lunch under a grand oak tree. As we were eating, a butler drove up in a small car and invited us to afternoon tea at the palace. We warned him that we were ten, eleven with the dog, but he said not to worry, there was plenty of room in the great house for us all.

  Everyone but me called the duchess Your Grace (although I was dazzled, as an American I found it difficult at first to kowtow to aristocracy). She met us and gave us a personal tour of her legendary abbey and then led us to a vast but comfortable sitting room and introduced us to the first duchess, who had returned to spend the Christmas holidays with her children. With two wives in residence for the holidays, the duke had understandably taken to his bed with an undisclosed malady.

  Several other family members were present. I remember a young lord holding his two-year-old son. The child already had the haughty bearing of an aristocrat and observed us intruders with disdain. The others were quite charming and friendly. Halfway through our tea several young Bedfords danced into the sitting room spattered with mud from go-carting on the palace grounds. They managed to look glam and chic despite their mud and disarray.

  Among the rather casually displayed treasures in the room were two excellent Rembrandt portraits tucked shyly behind other objects. And the huge dining room was hung with perhaps a dozen superb Canalettos so precisely lighted by tiny spotlights hidden in the ceiling moldings that these priceless paintings looked like photo transparencies. The duchess told us with a slight smile that on a recent visit Queen Elizabeth had grudgingly admired this fabulous collection as “better than hers” at Buckingham Palace.

  When we reluctantly took our leave from this rarefied tea party, Her Grace the Duchess (I finally caught on) escorted the ten of us (doggie had been entertained downstairs) outside the grandiose front doors. It was twilight. As the duchess told us how delighted she was to have met us all, Nicky, the Harveys’ eldest boy, stepped toward her out of the descending darkness and said with the cheeky candor of youth, “Yes, but if it hadn’t been for Richard we wouldn’t have been invited, would we?” After the tiniest of pauses the duchess cheerfully replied that the Harveys and Paddons would always be welcome at Woburn. The lady had class.

  I’ve been dining out on this story ever since.

  Eric Harvey was considerably older than Cecil, and in his previous marriage had fathered a son he dearly loved. The son had died tragically of cancer when he was about my age. I felt that Eric transferred some of his love for his deceased son to me, and I tremendously enjoyed his fatherly affection and advice.

  Cecil was an absolute gem, bright, loquacious, great fun, subtly sexy, and a wonderful mom. Along with her wit and exuberant humor, her prime attribute was her innate goodness. She did good things for people not to gain their love and approval, not to win entrée into heaven and outsmart hell, not to please her God. Cecil did good for no reason at all, just because she was good. Goodness and virtue are non-transactional; they aren’t bargaining chips, nor are they in any way related to reward and punishment.

  We all remained close friends, family really, for decades. I’ve watched their three children grow up, marry, have children, and succeed in business. Cecil was proud of them all and loved being principal baby-sitter at their various homes.

  Eric died first, about twenty years ago, and I missed him more than I did my own father when he passed away. Some years later Cecil, who had always seemed robustly happy and healthy, surprised everyone by succumbing to cancer at the too young age of seventy-three. At Christmastime and when I visit England, I still anticipate the warmth of their presence and can hardly believe they’re gone.

  Though our romp around the fabulous world was as much fun as it was enlightening, flying back home to the excitement of New York was a welcome respite. Martin’s Finnish father, the lead pilot for Finnair, flew us home, and allowed us to sit in the cockpit of the spanking new 747 for the landing. We were like little kids earning our junior pilots’ wings. When Juhani touched that massive machine down on the tarmac, his piloting skill made it feel like a piece of goose down had just descended to the earth from the heavens.

  Travel, with all its pleasures, is hard work. Upon reentry into the Big Apple we relocated to a great apartment on the East Side looking right down Beekman Place. If you leaned way out the living room window, you could see the East River. We even had a working fireplace. It was wonderful finally to have our own home. It wasn’t long, however, before I received an offer that would severely strain our still new partnership.

  THE FIRST MINISERIES

  My agent, Flo Allen, called and said NBC was planning a mammoth twenty-five-hour miniseries dramatizing James Michener’s bestselling historical novel Centennial, which described America’s tumultuous early westward expansion. They wanted me to play Alexander McKeag, a Scots trapper who would dominate the first four hours. McKeag was a hardy, capable fellow who combined masculine prowess with a degree of sensitivity unusual on the frontier. The huge production was to be shot pretty much on location around the actual Platte River in Colorado, a far piece from New York.

  I dreaded telling Martin about the job because it would mean leaving our home for months just when we were really getting close. And as I’d guessed, Martin was dead set against my going.

  I agonized over the decision, but in my gut I knew I had to go. At that time I was my career, my career was me. It wasn’t clear to me then, but looking back I can see that nothing could stand between me and a great job. Without my work, which I had always felt was a kind of destiny, I simply wouldn’t exist.

  Young Martin felt abandoned and hurt, but he didn’t bolt as I feared he might. When I returned home months later, he was there. Luckily, in New York he had his own career to pursue.

  It’s my guess that underlying many highly successful careers is a kind of focused mania, a whisper of madness that requires constant achievement to stabilize severe inner imbalance.

  At Pomona College, a professor of medieval art once interrupted his lecture to deliver this incisive pronouncement. Referring to the world’s most renowned artists, he warned us never to wish to be great. Greatness, he said, results from such severe emotional and mental distress that the artist has no choice but to achieve extraordinary creativity in order to balance his precarious inner anguish and remain sane.

  I am certainly no Picasso, but I balanced the dark forces of my fears with the bright lights of creativity and success in a similar way. My career was ninety percent of my identity, leaving about ten percent of me for the rest of my life. By sailing off to do Centennial, I quite willingly jeopardized a relationship that was destined to enrich my entire life. And yet, given my love of acting and my intensely neurotic need for continual success and celebrity, I’m not sure I could have chosen differently.

  Michener was not known for being terse. His novel covered nearly the entire sweep of American history. It began with the early frontier stories, and my character of McKeag advanced from young manhood to ripe old age in the first four hours. Near the end of shooting the fourth hour my fellow actors Robert Conrad and the beautiful Barbara Carrera, who played my one love, Clay Basket, began to be replaced by new stories and younger characters. We sort of faded from the future just like aging folks in real life. It was a bit eerie to feel the production continuing on without us, leaving us behind.

  For a good deal of the shoot we were stationed in the town of Greeley, Colorado, which was convenient for both the river and the plains scenes, and for mountain locations. Along w
ith its country charm, Greeley had one worrisome problem: It was situated between two of America’s largest stockyards. No matter which way the wind blew, the place stank. I asked some of the locals how long it would take to get used to the overpowering bovine aromas and they said, “Oh, a couple of years, maybe.”

  One day on location I was sitting around in my trailer waiting to work when something peculiar happened, peculiar and unnerving. The assistant director knocked on my door and said with barely disguised trepidation that the local police would like to talk with me. I opened the door and in climbed two serious-looking, badged officers carrying what looked like briefcases full of evidence. I asked them to sit down, which they did, one facing me and the other behind me. The cop facing me had a beer-and-burgers belly, a Buffalo Bill mustache, and beady black snake eyes. The one behind was thin, wiry, and deadly serious. I instantly felt like a very guilty suspect on Law and Order. Without telling me why, the officer facing me asked with considerable intensity (just like Law and Order) where I had been and what I had been doing on several nights the past week. I answered with as much casual charm as I could, considering my ever-deepening guilt. What the officer was doing behind me I did not know—probably preparing to shoot me if I drew a knife or a hidden pistol from my surreptitious ankle holster. Apparently my shaky answers to their probes jibed with information they had already garnered from my fellow workers because the guy behind me stashed his weapon and came around front. They both lightened up and became almost chummy. It seems they thought I might have been the local serial rapist who had killed several young women in the vicinity. The victim the previous night had survived and gave the police a vivid description of her assailant. The resulting police drawing, which they pulled from one of their briefcases, looked exactly like a fan photo of me from Dr. Kildare days. I was dumbfounded.