Growing Up Laughing Page 8

  Well, maybe it was an odd hood to grow up in. Louella Parsons, the famous gossip columnist who, like all gossips, was known to write (make up?) items that could be hurtful—personally and professionally—lived across our alley on Maple Drive. She and her assistant, Dorothy, would take a walk around the block every afternoon at about five. My mother did not want to have any interaction with Louella, for fear of giving her something to misinterpret. So the minute she saw them approaching, she would quickly dart inside. We kids even avoided Louella’s house on Halloween. In our neighborhood, she was the all-year-round witch.

  But that didn’t stop us from going to all the other houses on our street. We’d dress up in our costumes, many borrowed from studio wardrobe, and toddle up and down Elm Drive, clutching our little bags with dreams of candy apples in our heads.

  Some of our neighbors didn’t quite have the Halloween spirit. At Robert Young’s house, we were given autographed 8 × 10 glossy pictures of him—and that’s all. So, of course, we did what any group of right-minded, candy-deprived American kids would do—we soaped his windows.

  Edward G. Robinson always had all his lights off, and never answered the door. But we knew he was home—we could see a TV flickering in a back room—so we soaped his windows, too (and anything else soap would stick to).

  Elizabeth Taylor’s mom was nice, and she gave out good cookies. They lived just three doors up from our corner house on Elm, on the opposite side of the street. So we had a good view of Elizabeth as she came out the door, looking so beautiful, on the day she married Nicky Hilton at Good Shepherd Church.

  Good Shepherd was where everything took place for the Catholics in our neighborhood. We made our First Communions there, we were confirmed there, my sister and brother both had their weddings there, and we had the funeral masses for Mom and Dad there. My father and Ricardo Montalban used to pass the donation basket, pew by pew, to the congregation every Sunday. For all of its legendary status, it really was a neighborhood.

  At Christmastime our house became the place where everyone brought their children to look at the Nativity scene on our front lawn. This was Dad’s creation, and he loved putting it together, with Tony as his loyal sidekick. it was their annual project and every year they would enhance it in some way. They were relentless, those two. They even found hay in Beverly Hills.

  The crèche was beautiful, with detailed carvings of Mary, Joseph and the Baby Jesus; the stable with the hay; the Three Kings, bearing their gifts; and all the familiar animals. Then Dad added music—“Silent Night”—playing so low that you could only hear it when you got real close. It was magical.

  One year, Dad was playing at the Sands in Las Vegas just before the holidays, and they’d put a huge star of lights on top of the hotel sign. Dad took one look at it, loaded it in his car and brought it home to put on top of his stable. It was quite a sight, and the neighborhood families loved the addition.

  Except for Aaron Spelling, who was one of my dad’s partners. Aaron thought my father’s Nativity scene was quite lovely, but just a tad too Christian for the neighborhood. So one year he organized a special procession that marched down the street to our house. At the front of the parade, Aaron led a very large—and very real—camel that was wearing a horse blanket emblazoned with the Jewish star on both sides. It was an incredible sight. Dad—all of us—erupted in laughter. Aaron had put almost as much work into his prank as Dad had put into his biblical tableau. Aaron wasn’t one of “The Boys,” but he had pulled off a gag worthy of the best of them.

  Dad with his crèche

  Dad with Aaron and his camel. That Christmas in Beverly Hills, there was something for everyone.

  Today, Beverly Hills is an ultra-chic shopping extravaganza. But when we were growing up, it was simply “The Village.”

  “I’m going into The Village,” Mom would say. “Anyone want to come?” Terre and I would run to go with her. Tony would hide—in a closet, under the pool table, wherever he’d fit. He once told me that when he was a boy, his definition of hell was going shopping with Mom, and sitting for hours while she tried on clothes and had them fitted.

  The Village’s hot spot was Nate ’n Al’s, the terrific New York–style deli on Beverly Drive. That’s where Dad, Harry and the guys would meet for lunch and laughs, and where our family often went on Sundays after Mass. Next door was Beverly Stationers, and across the street was the Beverly Camera Shop, Beverly Cheese Shop, Jurgensen’s Market and Pioneer Hardware. These weren’t chains. They were mom-and-pop stores, owned and run by the people who worked in them. We knew them by name and they looked out for us—for all the kids and their families.

  The friends we made there would last a lifetime. We all lived just blocks apart from each other amid the swaying palm trees—Camille Cannan on Walden, Barry Diller on Linden, Gary Tobey on Rexford. We grew up rooting for one another, and still do to this day. But back then, we’d ride our bikes to Whelan Drugs on the corner of Beverly Drive for a lime rickey, or to J.J. Newberry’s, where you could buy items for just a dollar then sit at the soda fountain and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a cherry Coke, or down to Will Wright’s on South Beverly for the best hot fudge sundae ever made.

  And then there was Livingstone’s, a sweet, one-story fabric and clothing shop for the whole family. I remember the day Mom and Grandma took me there to buy my first bra. It didn’t have cups—just two triangles—but I was thrilled. In many ways, my everyday childhood memories aren’t really that different from kids in other neighborhoods of that era.

  Except maybe for the time we had an Arabian prince over for lunch.

  I’m not sure how it happened, but my parents were asked to host a luncheon for a crown prince of Arabia on his visit to Hollywood. I guess the planners felt that because Dad was Lebanese, we were close enough. The prince wanted to meet the A-list of Hollywood—like Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra and Gregory Peck—and my mother couldn’t wait to start planning the lunch. Mom, who was a great hostess, was about to climb the Mt. Everest of parties.

  Through the years, Mother had collected many pieces of real beauty for the house, especially for the dining table—some antiquities, some modern, and all exquisite. She even had a gorgeous set of 14-karat gold flatware that she had bought at auction. All of this finery came out of boxes, out of cabinets, out of the basement, as Mom began to envision the great table at which she would receive the prince and the distinguished guests. You couldn’t get her attention for weeks before the event. She was completely obsessed.

  As for Terre, Tony and me, this was one of the few parties we were definitely not invited to. But I will always remember what the table looked like. It was so beautiful as to be on fire. The lace cloth, the goldware, the antiques, the flowers. The prince would surely feel at home. It would be like lunch at a palace.

  Just before noon on the day of the luncheon, the cars began to line the street in front of our house on Elm Drive. Then the guests started streaming in, and they all swooned as they walked into the dining room. It was Mother’s opening night and they had hung a star.

  After everyone had taken their assigned seats, my father gave a toast welcoming the prince, his entourage and the guests. He looked out at the impressive array of extravagance, held his glass high and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is not an indication of my wealth. This is it.” And he sat down . . . to thunderous laughter.

  But for all the glamour of Beverly Hills, there was a shadow side that made it different from other neighborhoods. There was a lot of loneliness and unwanted exposure. Most of the kids had high-powered, high-profile parents, many of them working on the road, or on movie locations.

  Maria Cooper was in my class at Marymount. She was an absolutely beautiful girl with a disposition to match—an angel, really. I never met her father, Gary Cooper. He was always filming a movie somewhere, so he never made it to any of the Father-Daughter Days at our school. My dad didn’t make so many of them either.

  Maria’s father had an aff
air with the actress Patricia Neal that made it into the press, and eventually led to her parents’ scandalous breakup. As Pat Neal wrote in her memoir, she once ran into Maria, and the thirteen-year-old girl spit at her when she saw her. Beautiful, sweet Maria. What public humiliation and heartbreak can do to the spirit of even the most gracious.

  Another schoolmate of mine at Marymount was Judy Lewis. Her mother, Loretta Young, was my godmother, and Judy was Loretta’s adopted daughter. But all of our mothers knew the truth. Judy wasn’t really adopted—she was the illegitimate child from an affair that Loretta had with Clark Gable. The women would always whisper about Judy’s “Clark Gable ears,” but all you had to do was look at her to see her strong resemblance to her gorgeous mother. And she had the same button nose as her cousin, Gretchen, who was also at our school. All the gossiping about her—I don’t know how Judy stood it.

  The four Crosby boys (Bing’s sons) were also part of our teenage crowd. They went to Loyola, the Catholic boys’ school, and they always hung out together, with their nanny and guardian, Georgie, forever hovering nearby. Georgie was tough, the boss.

  With my godmother, Loretta Young. She was ever beautiful.

  Gary and the twins, Dennis and Philip, were older, and Linny (Lindsay) was our age. He was the sweetest of the brothers. All four were fun to be with, always pulling pranks and laughing. But even as teens, they smoked and drank heavily. I didn’t like going up to the Crosby house on Mapleton, and we didn’t go often. Their mom, Dixie, was always in her room “resting.” But everyone knew she had a drinking problem. And their dad was hardly ever there, but even when he was, he was gruff and not so nice.

  The Crosby boys didn’t really talk about it, but they sometimes let it slip that their father treated them roughly. He called them mean names and knocked them around. That made me especially sad, because they were such sweet and respectful boys.

  I ran into the Crosby kids through the years, even after I left Beverly Hills, and they weren’t faring well. They had tried show business, first singing as a quartet, then as a trio when Gary went out on his own. I cried the day I heard on the radio that Linny had killed himself, brutally, by putting a shotgun in his mouth. Sweet Linny. He was 52.

  Some houses had glamour, some had laughs, some had secrets and some had the worst of it. A neighborhood.

  Dancing with Linny Crosby at my eighth grade graduation party. You can see how sweet he was.

  DID YA HEAR THE ONE ABOUT . . .

  Two Beverly Hills women are shopping on Rodeo

  Drive when one of them notices a child in a baby carriage.

  “Oh, look at that beautiful baby!” says the first woman.

  “Aww, how adorable,” says her friend.

  Then the first woman gasps.

  “Oh my God, that’s my baby!”

  “How do you know?”

  “I recognize the nanny.”

  Chapter 16

  My Dad

  He was an old-fashioned dad. For all the fame and money my father had earned, at his core he was a working-class guy, the middle son of a large family from Toledo, Ohio.

  I’ve listened to many sad “dad tales” from some of my women friends—about their distracted, non-demonstrative or simply unloving fathers. These stories have always sounded so foreign. My father truly enjoyed the company of his children. He hugged and kissed us daily, he told us that he loved us, he was emotional. We used to kid him that he cried at basketball games.

  Through the years, whenever I called home, it was always a boost. When he’d hear my voice, I could hear the pleasure in his. “How’s my beauty?” he’d say. I once said something to him that I was sorry about later, and when I called to apologize, he said, “Mugs, you know you can do no wrong with me.”

  In 1965, Dad’s pal, Joe Robbie, asked him to partner with him to buy the Miami Dolphins, the first expansion team of what was then the American Football League. Dad was a big sports fan, so this was an irresistible opportunity for him.

  Dad greets Joe Auer in the end zone. They’d both run 95 yards, Joe with the football, my father with the cigar.

  In their first game, the Dolphins received the opening kickoff from the Oakland Raiders, and running back Joe Auer sprinted an amazing 95 yards for a touchdown. My dad was so excited that he jumped off the bench and ran along the sidelines the entire way with Auer, his cigar clenched in his teeth, his change falling out of his pockets, yelling “Go, baby, go!” When Auer finally crossed into the end zone, my father grabbed him and kissed him. He was a different kind of owner.

  Dad brought that childlike enthusiasm to everything he did. When I was at USC, I got a 3.8 average one semester. He was so proud, he took my report card onto The Tonight Show with him, and boasted to Johnny Carson, “This is my kid—3.8! I have to talk to her through an interpreter.” Dad was a frequent guest of Johnny’s, and spoke to him like he was sitting next door with a friend. It was there that he made the announcement to Johnny (and America) that I had gotten my first bra, the audience howling at his vivid description of it. I didn’t leave the house for a week.

  But most of all he was a storyteller, and he found an audience to tell his stories to wherever he happened to be. I was on a plane once, going from Los Angeles to New York, and the flight attendant told me that she’d recently had my father on a flight, and what a delight he was. She said she saw him get up to stretch, then walk around and talk to a few people in their seats. Before long, he was enrapturing all of First Class with his tales, and they were howling. He had turned an American Airlines flight into his own personal dinner show. Most celebrities board a plane and try to hide themselves for a little privacy. Not my dad. Where else can you find a captive audience . . . for five hours?! He was in heaven.

  And sometimes he couldn’t let go of my boyfriends, even after I had. In college, I was pinned to a boy named Jimmy Pugh, a basketball player on a scholarship who was going into dental school. My father adored Jimmy and respected him for trying to make a better life for himself. I know in his heart, Dad had hoped I would marry Jimmy, but I was restless to get to New York and start studying acting. So that was the end of Jimmy and me. What I didn’t know was that it wasn’t the end of Jimmy and Dad.

  After I had already moved east, Jimmy would still come to our house and have beers with Dad, and they’d talk for hours. After one of these visits, Dad walked Jimmy to his car—but it wasn’t out front. Somewhat sheepishly, Jimmy explained that his car was such a “heap” that he’d parked it near the alley, rather than having it sit in front of our house. When Dad took one look at that awful jalopy, he exploded.

  “You’re going to be a dentist!” he said. “You can’t let anything happen to your hands. You’ll break every bone in your body in this wreck!”

  Dad had just been sent a brand-new pickup truck from a company that he’d done a favor for, so he opened the garage and said to Jimmy, “Here, take this. I’ll never drive it.” I wouldn’t learn about this until years later, after my father died, when Jimmy wrote me a condolence letter telling me the whole story.

  “I was overwhelmed and reluctant to accept it,” he wrote, “but your father got furious with me and made me drive it away on the spot.”

  I read the letter in awe, amazed that Dad had never mentioned this to me. But how typical of him—Jimmy may have lost the girl but he gained a V-8 engine with an automatic transmission.

  WHEN I WAS AT Marymount High School, my best friend, Moya, and I were always up to some kind of mischief. We had to do something with all those unexpressed hormones. Not only was the school girls-only, but all of the teachers were nuns. There was hardly a male presence, except for the gardener—and the prettiest nun ran off with him. And there was the daily visit from FATHER from the nearby parish to say the Mass for us. The nuns were very respectful, adoring—and terrified—of FATHER.

  “Oh yes, FATHER. Oh no, FATHER. Oh, thank you, FATHER.”

  In a regular church Mass, the priest is assisted by altar boys, who bring
him the chalice of wine and place the bells. Back then, females were not permitted behind the altar rail. No female—not even a nun. So when Father came to say Mass at Marymount, he had to do it all on his own. God forbid any female should be let past that rail.

  This really irked Moya and me. So one day, just before Mass, we decided to remove the altar bells. These bells are used at a very important part of the Mass. They are rung three times, one after each “Lord, I am not worthy.”

  The service began, and while all of the other girls were focused on the Mass as they should have been, Moya and I waited excitedly for the moment when Father would reach for the bells—which were always placed directly to his right. When the time finally came, we watched his hand reaching in vain, fumbling for the missing bells.

  And then he did something that made us choke to keep from laughing. He called out in a loud voice, “Ding-a-ling-a-ling.” We couldn’t believe it. And then again, “Ding-a-ling-a-ling.” And then a third time, “Ding-a-ling-a-ling.”

  The two thirteen-year-old girls doubled over in the back row were promptly suspended.

  My father was summoned to a conference—“about your daughter”—with Reverend Mother Emmanuel. Unfortunately, I was invited, too. I was terrified of Reverend Mother. She was tough, no-nonsense. Her face squeezed by her binding, starched white habit, she looked out at you with severe green eyes.

  On this particular day, that look was aimed at Mr. Thomas, as she told him in very strong words what a very bad girl I had been. She then rose proudly, determinedly, to her feet and pronounced her final sentence—the death sentence for Mr. Thomas’s daughter.

  “I’m afraid, Mr. Thomas, that Margaret does not have the poise for a Marymount girl.”

  Then my father rose. “I know, Reverend Mother,” he said humbly. “That’s why I’ve given her to you.”