Read My Lips Page 4

  Our house had railroad bedrooms—you had to pass through Diana’s and my bedroom to get to Victoria’s. So the next morning there was no way Diana and I would not know what was happening.

  The housekeeper came running through our room on her way out into the hall, screaming, “The baby’s dead!!! The baby’s dead!!! The baby!”

  I froze. My father was next, flying into our room from the hall, racing in to see Vicky.

  He staggered back out of Vicky’s room, saying, “Girls, don’t go in there. Stay where you are!”

  As soon as he was out in the hall, I snuck into Vicky’s room. She was just lying there, a little bit of saliva at the corner of her mouth, her eyes still open. I ran into the bathroom with Diana before my father caught me. We could still hear the hysterical cries of the housekeeper. I was furious. I was sure it was somehow her fault.

  “Let me out of here!” I yelled at Diana. “I’m gonna kill her! Let me out! LET ME OUT!”

  Diana was so kind; she tried to calm me down. All of a sudden my dad swooped in and took us down the street to the home of the Greens, our close family friends. Then he left without saying when he’d be back. All we knew was that he was going to see my mother.

  I loved the Greens and was comfortable there. Lori Ann, one of my good friends, was two years younger than I was and had two brothers, one my age and one older. Their mom, Jean, an attractive blond woman, was my mom’s best friend and also a Christian Scientist. She drove a fancy Lincoln with a tire on the back. She’d pull up to our house and give a honk, and then she and my mother would go for lunch. Mrs. Green was funny and kind and used to braid my hair and pull on it like I was one of her own kids. One Sunday, while walking home from Sunday school with my good friend Lori Ann, we found some pamphlets lying on the sidewalk and got the wonderful idea to go door to door and sell them for ten cents each! When we got back to the Green’s house, Mrs. Green was amused.

  “How wonderful, girls,” she said. “But these are pamphlets for the Catholic Church.”

  But even kind Mrs. Green could not tell me when I would see my parents again. I went to school and tried not to think about it. Then one day our car appeared at the curb. Both my mother and father were in it. They packed up our things, making no mention of Vicky. When we got home, everything to do with my baby sister was gone. There was no crib. There were no toys. No photos. Nothing. There was no sign she had ever existed at all.

  From that moment forward, my family acted as if nothing had happened. I don’t know if my ability to pick myself up and start over again came from that experience, or if my willingness to accept new realities or create my own without much of hiccup stemmed from that. But I do know that it was only during the writing of this book that I realized I have never, ever, seen a photo of Vicky or heard her name mentioned since she left us.

  One day, a couple of weeks after Vicky died, I said to Mom, “Didn’t you love Vicky?”

  My mother gasped and turned away and said in a broken voice, “Of course, dear. Why?”

  “Because you never cried.”

  She said, her voice breaking, “I was just trying to protect you girls.”

  I recently talked to Diana, and we both admitted that we felt so sad that our family never said anything about the loss of our sister, and we felt so bad for our mother’s feeling that she couldn’t discuss it because she had to protect her daughters.

  SO MAYBE THERAPY WASN’T SUCH A BAD IDEA AFTER ALL. I trusted Jeff Corey; I looked up to him. On his advice, I began a lifetime of therapy. At the very least, I thought the therapist—a lovely man at the university—could help me lose weight and then I would feel better about myself. That’s how it always works, right? So I went because I thought I was fat and didn’t want to be fat anymore. But the very thing that I did not want to happen—hating my parents—did.

  As soon as I started seeing the therapist, I was blaming my mom and dad for everything. I rebelled against Christian Science. If God is so great, then how come I’m fat, don’t have a boyfriend, and I’m not a movie star? I’d rail. I was having tantrums and shouting and wanting them not to have Victorian values and wanting my mother not to be so proper and wanting my dad not to be tight and jiggle the change in his pocket and be stern and severe and judgmental. He didn’t want me to be in a pair of jeans; he wanted me to be in a dress. But I was a rebel, so he had a hard time liking me. And it seemed as if he didn’t like me unless I was in a dress. But he wanted to like me. I believe he really wanted to like me.

  Woven into my memory was another trauma. One day, while we were still living in San Fernando, my mom had said, “Dear, we’re moving tomorrow and you can’t take your dog Shadow.”

  I almost died. The very next day we drove to the vet. Shadow was shaking all the way there, and I was sobbing. When Mom learned that we couldn’t just leave him at the vet’s and not come back for him, we drove home and left him with a neighbor, who said she’d take care of him. Shadow apparently spent his last days walking the route with the postman. I never saw Shadow again, but I dreamed about him for years.

  On the day we moved to “town”—Los Angeles—in the middle of my sophomore year of high school, I was sure my mother had ruined my life. Los Angeles was big, busy, and full of distraction—everything our little Valley was not. I remember once saying, “Mom, where’s the town?” It seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at once.

  I’d always wanted to be an actress even if it took me a while to admit it. I loved to watch TV with my family—Edward R. Murrow’s See It Now, Jack Benny, Groucho Marx, Jackie Gleason, Dragnet, and, the queen of them all, I Love Lucy. I worshipped Lucille Ball. But I loved my Valley, and Los Angeles never figured in my dreams. In my mind Hollywood had nothing to do with becoming an actress.

  Mom was happy about the move, though. She loved being out of the Valley and closer to my sister, who was attending UCLA. She also believed that she had all the answers. There was one right way to live life, and she was going to teach me—or die trying. She would not let LA ruin me.

  CHAPTER 3

  Check, Please

  MY MOTHER ONCE TOLD ME THAT SHE TRULY BELIEVED I HAD decided to become an actress just so that I could become a waitress. That cracked me up.

  But the truth was that I needed work. I needed money to pay for acting classes with Jeff Corey. So during my early years in Hollywood, when I lived in and around Sunset Boulevard, I spent much of that time dipping down for the cups and dishes at Chez Paulette.

  Before Chez Paulette I had had two other brief and failed attempts at work in the office world. At one job I was a filing clerk at Capitol Records. I could barely read, so filing was not my specialty. I threw up every morning out of fear that I’d be found out (and I was). And for a while I was an elevator operator at Colter’s, a store on Miracle Mile. I lasted two days because I got carsick going up and down all day.

  Like most actors, I spent my share of time on the unemployment line. That was where my friend David Bennett from acting class would often find me, yank me out of line, and force me to go out on auditions. But then I found my true actress’s calling and began waiting tables.

  It was the late 1950s. Los Angeles was beautiful then—all blue skies and puffy white clouds and no traffic or paparazzi. Chez Paulette, a coffeehouse, was on Sunset Boulevard about a block or so east of La Cienega, across from Dino’s restaurant, which was owned by Rat Packer Dean Martin. That’s where the television show 77 Sunset Strip took place, featuring my now ex-boyfriend Eddie Byrnes. At first the hip coffeehouse was a place called the Unicorn on Sunset and started by a great guy named Herby Cohen. My best friend, Luana, and I hung out there every night listening to live folk music. Chez Paulette opened later; it was a place where people came to eat and talk.

  Chez Paulette was long and narrow, with six or seven tables on the outside patio and maybe ten or so round tables inside. The place was packed every night. There was always flamenco music playing on the stereo, wafting out the doors onto Sunset Boulevard, the cen
ter of all things. However, this music did nothing to dissuade me from singing whenever I felt like it as I flitted from table to table.

  My boss at Chez Paulette was Max Lewin. He was short, had a very obvious comb-over, and walked with a limp. But despite all that, he carried himself as though he were Napoleon. Max and his family were Polish—I absolutely adored his accent! He could be gruff and bossy at times but protective at others. His parents did all the cooking in the back; they were very sweet but didn’t say much. Their most popular dessert was the Sachertorte, an Austrian chocolate cake that had a layer of apricot jam, a dish that first became famous at the Hotel Sacher in Vienna. When someone asked me what we had for dessert, I’d say, “they have soccer tortas.”

  One of the mainstays of Chez Paulette was Barry Feinstein. Barry, who was from New York, worked behind the counter, where he manned the cappuccino machine and prepared all the ice cream dishes, coffees, and hot apple cider. Also in charge of prep work, he was usually the first one to show up and the first one to leave. Whenever I arrived early to set up tables, Barry would already be there, grumbling as he sliced and chopped oranges and lemons for the hot cider. I would look at him and think, What a man. He didn’t have but a few wisps of curls on his balding head, and those that were there he wore very close cropped. He was a little stocky—manly, I thought—and he always looked unshaven.

  Barry was a photographer who did a lot of work for record companies. He showed me some of his pictures, which were stunning. He eventually became incredibly successful, shooting album covers for people like Bob Dylan and George Harrison, as well as for my hero Janis Joplin’s 1971 album Pearl. Though he always said that one day he’d photograph me, he never did.

  The closest thing I ever got to a compliment from Barry was “Hey, Sally, you look sorta good tonight.” Gee, thanks. But usually when I came in to work, Barry would greet me with “Oh God, kiss me, sit on my face.” Another one of his favorite sayings was “I gotta get out of this fuckin’ town.” Sometimes, when the place was packed, I’d run up to the counter and say, “Two hot ciders on the double, Barry!” Barry would grab my hand, shove it in the hot cider, and say, “Repeat after me: shit-fuck-tits-piss-balls-suck-cunt-lick-chew.” I would say “No, I won’t! Let go of my hand!” He would repeat the litany while Max, my boss, would be yelling “Sally, get the hot cider!” He knew I was incredibly naive and inexperienced, so he loved to tease me. He was so outrageous, such a little dickens. As for a country girl like me, well, it all felt rebellious and like too much fun.

  Beyond that, we hardly spoke a word to each other. Though Barry may have always acted a little grumpy, he had a great laugh that cut through his tough, crabby exterior.

  An expert at waiting tables I was not, but what I lacked in expertise I made up for in enthusiasm. I loved the physicality of waitressing—swooping in and dipping down to pick up the cups, drop off dishes, and then dashing away to do it all over again. I wore my old wool skirt with the crinoline underneath and kept my hair pulled back.

  Another perk of the job, as far as I was concerned, was getting to talk to everybody. It was better than going to a party—I was invited to every table. Sometimes I’d sit down and visit with one of my pals until Max barked in his Polish accent: “Sally, when you finish talking to your friend, do you mind waiting on the tables?”

  Chez Paulette was my home away from home, but I did have a place of my own. Shortly after getting fired from Capitol Records, Diana took a job in Washington, DC, with the State Department, and I moved in with Virginia Aldridge. We were an odd pair. Virginia was a dancer on the television program Dick Sinclair’s Polka Parade; she would go on to become a writer and work a lot in TV. She always helped me—drove me to work, loaned me five bucks if I needed it. Very sweet. I, however, felt like a schlub. I took twin beds from my parents’ house, then drew a diagram of how our apartment should look. Virginia and I used the box springs for our two couches and the mattresses for our beds. So much for my decorating career.

  At the time I was occasionally teaching at the Crystal Scarborough swim school, and I also got a job wrapping packages at Bullock’s department store on Wilshire near Western Avenue, where I’d once driven with my mom all the way from San Fernando to buy my one good sweater. I was terrible at wrapping; to this day it’s no mystery which presents under the tree yours truly wrapped.

  Beyond that, I would lie on the floor in my apartment, lamenting my lot in life and the fact I wasn’t getting real acting jobs; occasionally my mother would drop by with a little money and a roast. I would still call or visit home, sometimes just to tell my mother how nothing was working out the way I’d planned or how I was fat. My mother would get off the phone in such a state, wondering what she could do to help. Then my dad, not buying a bit of it, would step in.

  Never one for whiners, my dad would say, “Edith! She’s fine! Now that she’s just called and unloaded on you, she’s probably out having a great time.”

  Dad was right. I was having a great time. I’ve always made sure to suffer—but I never let that stop me from having fun.

  EVEN ON A WAITRESS’S SALARY, I COULD AFFORD TO LIVE RIGHT in the middle of it all, just steps from Sunset Boulevard. And I could afford acting classes to boot. Working at Chez Paulette was my first big star turn—mingling with the greats. At that point I was waiting on more movie stars than I would work with over my entire career.

  Carroll Righter, “Astrologer to the Stars,” came in the first night I worked at the Chez. He called out to me: “Waiter!” thinking I was a man because of my height. Psychic? Maybe not. But Max told me I had to be nice to him. I usually found even the grouchy customers fun. The surlier, the better.

  “Can I have some salt?” one regular asked me as I put down his hamburger. And I scooted off to retrieve it.

  I returned, salt in hand, and went about my business. A few moments later he called me over again.

  “Can I have some mustard?”

  Of course. I fetched the mustard and brought it over. Within moments he called me over once more.

  “Can I have some pepper?” he asked.

  “How about asking for it all at once?”

  “Look, lady,” he said. “It’s not my fault you’re a waitress.”

  Will Sage was an older actor who came in regularly and always left me a ten-cent tip. “Buy yourself a new hat,” Will would say. A nickel was the norm among customers. Occasionally a diner at Chez Paulette would be in a good mood and leave a quarter. One time an older man left me a whole dollar, and I chased him down the street, yelling, “Sir! Sir! You left your money!”

  Will was so kind. He’d stop by my apartment, which was always unlocked in those days, and fix little things for us. He always left a note that said, “The bunny was here.” For the handyman work, I should have been tipping him.

  You never knew who else would stop by at Chez Paulette. John Cassavetes, John Barrymore Jr., other producers and directors. There may have been a couple of famous Hollywood women that I waited on, but I mostly remember the men.

  Steve McQueen would stop by with his very pregnant wife, Neile, dropping her off so she could relax and stay off her feet while he took off on his motorcycle.

  The first time I saw Warren Beatty he was with his agent Paul Brandon. Warren asked Paul to find out if I would go out with him. Paul asked. I looked at Warren and thought, “Aw, he’s just a kid my age.”

  “Absolutely not,” I said.

  At the time Warren asked me out, I liked an actor named Harry Guardino, who was older, dark, and Italian. He used to come into Chez Paulette all the time. One night a customer said to me, “You’re really big.”

  Harry leapt to my defense: “No, she’s not. She’s a woman and beautiful!”

  That’s all it took. I had an official crush. Unfortunately, Harry was married. The next year Warren Beatty was being celebrated as the handsomest guy in town and starring in Elia Kazan’s Splendor in the Grass. But then I’ve never been known for my foresight.
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br />   AT THAT POINT I WAS IN THERAPY. I STILL REMEMBER THE first question my therapist asked me: Do you masturbate? I cried for the whole hour, I was so ashamed. But once I got over that—while continuing to pray for forgiveness every time I masturbated—I spent my first half year or so of therapy trying to get over my mad, desperate love for Marlon Brando. Then one night, as we were closing up and I was wiping down the tables, Max came rushing over.

  “We’re OPEN!” he said in an excited whisper.

  I looked up, and in walked Marlon with a tall blond man I’d never seen before. I froze, then quickly thawed myself out and got back to wiping off the tables on the patio.

  The last time I’d bumped into Marlon, I was with Virginia. That had been a short while after my infamous first car ride with him. That night he’d invited Virginia and me up to his house along with a couple of his friends: Christian Marquand, the French actor many will remember from Lord Jim and Apocalypse Now, and Roger Vadim, who would go on to write Barbarella and marry its star, Jane Fonda. At this point Vadim may have been coming out of his marriage to Brigitte Bardot.

  We had all gone to Marlon’s place on Mulholland, where he played the bongos for us. At the end of the night he instructed Virginia and me to drop off Christian and Vadim. Instead of taking the guys straight home, we stopped at the Sea Witch for a snack and then went back our place on Havenhurst. Christian and I hung out in the living room, necking on my box spring, while Virginia was in the bedroom with Vadim. Nobody got laid, or “lost our snowflakes,” as we liked to put it. As morning dawned, we drove the guys back to the Beverly Hilton in Virginia’s Plymouth, which had ratty lining that hung down in all our faces. The guys got out of the car and said they’d call the next day.

  Of course they didn’t.

  Despondent after waiting all day by the phone, we finally gave up and decided go to see . . . And God Created Woman, written and directed by Vadim and starring Bardot and Christian. That just made us sicker than we were before; Christian was so gorgeous and Vadim so obviously talented. We went to drown our sorrows at Cosmo Alley. As we arrived—wearing the same clothes we’d had on the night before—who should we see come strolling out the door but Marlon, Vadim, and Christian?