Both of Us Page 15
It took me a long time to understand that a world in which most adults don’t work is an odd place for children to grow up in. Most of the time we didn’t have the discipline of a regular job, that is, having to get up early in the morning, go to a place of business, answer to other people.
And living aimlessly ain’t cheap. Usually, when someone becomes a full-time resident in this oasis by the sea, they don’t have to worry about making a living anymore. That was the case for me. Though Love Story was a modest payday, I received three million dollars for the sequel, Oliver’s Story, a handsome sum in the early 1970s. This was before the Julia Robertses and Jim Carreys of the world were paid twenty million a picture. I also made decent money on other films: The Main Event and What’s Up Doc, both of which I starred in with Streisand; Barry Lyndon, which Stanley Kubrick directed; and, of course, there was Paper Moon. I got thoughtful, conservative advice and invested my earnings wisely. The returns have been handsome.
Though I’m pleased by my financial security, sometimes I wish I’d worked harder for it, taken risks on ventures I believed in, as have many other self-made millionaires. As John Houseman used to say in his famous commercial for Smith Barney, “They make money the old-fashioned way. They earn it.” When that commercial first came out thirtysome years ago, I thought, Why would anyone want to do that if they don’t have to? Now I realize that growing something over time provides the satisfaction of good work well done.
Living in Malibu’s casual opulence has been a multiple-decades-long holiday for me. But it came with a price: it eroded my ambition, clouded my introspection, provided such a seductive distraction from the rude competition of Hollywood life, that instead of its being my escape, my haven, it became my confinement.
I remember the afternoon I bought the beach house. This was not long before Paper Moon was filmed and Tatum and I had both fallen in love with it. The house, which at the time was a modest cottage on the ocean, was owned by director Blake Edwards, who sold it to me for $130,000. At the time, I thought the price was exorbitant. I renovated the house in stages till it became my idea of home. It’s not like one of those huge mansions in East Hampton. It’s an open, airy, three-bedroom, two-story contemporary structure with large windows overlooking nothing but blue ocean and sky. In Malibu, most of the beach homes are built close to the shore, so no matter which room you’re looking out from, all you see is ocean. It’s like being on a houseboat. My favorite part of the house is the master bedroom. Off-white walls, chocolate-colored doors and woodwork, a large bath and dressing rooms, walk-in closets, the Andy Warhol portrait of Farrah over the expansive bed. I love to lie there reading, listening to music. And you can hear the crashing of the surf. Sometimes, while I’m having my morning coffee, I’ll see a whale surface out of the mist, a school of dolphins, or maybe a seal bobbing past. There’s a large terrace and a sauna next to the bedroom. Farrah sure loved that sauna.
I have wonderful memories of this beach. Yet sitting here now, I feel haunted by it. I talk about home and family, but look at what became of my only daughter and me. While I’m not naive enough to believe all our problems were caused by where we lived, it wasn’t a healthy environment for an impressionable young girl, any more than it was for Redmond or Griffin, all three of them limited by their lack of a decent education. Tatum only had two options: marry a rich and famous man—and we know how that worked out—or continue as an actress, but Tatum was never able to make the transition from the appealing child to the accomplished adult.
British singer Amy Winehouse died this week. She was twenty-seven years old and a heroin junkie. I can imagine what her parents must be going through. And there’s still no guarantee with three of my own four kids. As of the writing of this book, they’re all still here on this earth, thank God. But addiction, like the devil, is always waiting for that moment when you’re at you’re weakest, and then he slithers inside and awakens that deadly craving. Patrick is immune to those temptations. I’ve never been addicted to anything either, except maybe Farrah. What is this hollow ache that has so possessed three of my four children? Is it genetic, a consequence of how they were raised, the result of their parents’ failure? Sometimes I wish I’d never started this book. Who wants to face these types of questions, when deep down you suspect you already know the answers.
Looking back, I think that’s why Farrah became engrossed in her art. Everything in her life had become tentative except her art, which she could physically grasp and hold on to. It gave her comfort and relief because she had charge of it. I now realize it’s how she survived our ordeal with Redmond. She poured all her pain into her sculpting the way Judy Garland channeled every hurt through her songs. It was their release, their strength. And Farrah’s art was beginning to generate serious attention. A talented young sculptor who was a fan of hers invited Farrah to collaborate with him on an exhibition. Their joint venture examined the relationship between celebrity and fan, and also between projection and reality. Together they created a pair of sculptures: a reclining marble sculpture of her, done mostly by him; and a standing bronze sculpture of him, done mostly by her. They began working on the pieces in the spring of 2000. I’ve never had a passion for something the way Farrah did for her art. I both envy and admire it. The exhibit premiered at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to rave reviews in 2002; Rizzoli published a coffee table book about it titled Recasting Pygmalion; and a year later the exhibit moved to the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, once again garnering critical applause.
I’ve been rereading Speak, Memory, Vladimir Nabokov’s remarkable memoir. The author of Lolita both inspires me and makes me feel inadequate as I sit here wandering through my own lost time trying to recover images of people and places I adored.
Where were we in our story? Oh yes, the end of year one of the new millennium, when Redmond had just been released from Casa by the Sea. Farrah and I were in a fallow period, having exhausted our emotional and psychological nutrients. It was even taking a toll on my relatively bucolic life with Leslie. Truth be told, I don’t remember how I spent the Christmas holidays in 2000. The year before, I spent them with Leslie and her family in Minnesota. I went there with her a couple of Christmases, which were always delightful. I only know that Farrah and I didn’t celebrate the 2000 yuletide together because I found a long letter I wrote to her dated December 25, detailing my suggestions on how best we might help Redmond acclimate to being home and suggesting how we might make shared custody more manageable for everyone. I talked about possible schools, getting him excited about music again, a dozen and one ideas. It’s not an angry letter. It’s full of hope about the future, though once again, Farrah and I were back to communicating via letters and voice mails. I suppose it was to be expected after what we’d just been through with our child. This is how I ended the letter:
I wanted to call but I don’t really feel we should try to talk by phone yet. I’ll always love you, Farrah, even if I don’t always understand you. My fault, I guess. I’m just too slow upstairs, huh? I wish you a merry, merry Christmas and a happy new year, my darling.
Four months later I won’t even be sure if I’ll see another new year.
It’s April 20, 2001, my sixtieth birthday, and I’m numb. I’ve just been told I have leukemia when Farrah calls. “You can’t die,” she says. “We’ll fight this together; we’ll beat this.” We’ve barely been on speaking terms. I’d actually started to believe her disappointment in me had turned to loathing. But Farrah is weeping and she’s never been a crier. That’s when I realize, this is lethally serious.
I can envision the headline, “Death Sentence for Ryan O’Neal; Life Imitates Art as Star of Love Story Diagnosed with Leukemia.” I’m scared and though Farrah and I are estranged, I’m not surprised by her call.
Nothing makes you question your life more than reading about your own mortality, knowing that for once, the newspapers got their facts straight. While my leukemia would eventually go into remission, thanks to a new drug cal
led Gleevec, which was approved for treatment around the time I was diagnosed, in that moment on the phone with her, I could have listed a dozen reasons why she shouldn’t be there for me, and only one reason why she should: we were still in love with each other.
I’ve never been a New Age kind of a guy. Karma, chakra, abracadabra, it’s all the same to me. But lately I’ve been starting to rethink my perspective. Maybe the New Agers are on to something. Look at my old chum George Hamilton. He’s been enlightened since Jimmy Carter was president. He’s also a genuinely nice guy comfortable with himself and the world. I envy him that. And then there’s Shirley MacLaine, who seemed to grow younger after she discovered her past lives, a concept I must admit I do find romantic. I wonder if Farrah and I were lovers in a past life. Those who espouse the theory believe that in each lifetime you’re given the chance to work out unresolved issues from a previous life. If that’s the case, Farrah and I must have shared dozens together, and they all began to align that spring at the dawn of my sixth decade.
It was four years almost to the day that we broke up, and while admittedly there were good reasons, there were even more bad excuses. Though I didn’t understand it in 1997, it became abundantly clear to me as I began ruminating about our love affair in the days and weeks following my diagnosis. Farrah and I each chose the excuses we thought we needed to flee from each other. We were cowardly, and now we had no choice but to be brave. My first valiant act would be accepting the inevitable with Leslie, whom I had grown to love. Ours wasn’t the soul mate version. Farrah always occupied that part of me. But Leslie was kind and her generosity boundless. As much as I wanted to be back with Farrah, it was still hard letting go of this appealing young woman who embodied qualities I wished that my daughter exhibited. Leslie was with me when the oncologist broke the news. She was in the room when the doctors inserted this enormous needle into my spine to extract a bone marrow sample. They needed cells to confirm the type of leukemia. The pain was excruciating. I almost came off the table twice and had to be held down. They pumped me with pain meds until finally they got what they needed. I couldn’t walk afterward. I went in there a strapping guy and I came out in a wheelchair. Leslie witnessed all of this, and I think it got to her, not that she wouldn’t have been there for me through the long haul. She would have because she was caring and unselfish, but by then she’d met actor James Spader on location for a film. They’d eventually marry and have children. Leslie thought it best to exit gracefully, and I’ve always admired her for that.
My second act of bravery was to occur when I got home from the doctor’s office. Tatum showed up because she’d heard the death knell. I wasn’t expecting much by way of sympathy, but I sure wasn’t ready for what I got. She verbally stripped me bare, recounting the highlights of my failed life and then, before slamming the door on her way out, she said, “Well, at least my mother died with dignity.” I worry that if that episode in our lives comes up on the reality show, I won’t be able to manage it. But then nothing should surprise me. I didn’t get a call on my fiftieth birthday either.
While one of my children was sticking in the knife that spring, another was twisting it. Griffin was back in jail. He had been up to his old tricks: more high-speed car chases, more guns, more violence. Only this time when the cops had him cornered, he attempted suicide by police. I didn’t believe it at first until several months later when I saw it in a letter he wrote me from prison. He was in solitary twenty-three hours a day for thirty-six weeks. His words still haunt me: “I begged the officer to shoot but he didn’t.” Cancer patients often say their illness makes them feel helpless. I can assure you that nothing makes you feel as helpless as your adult children sabotaging their own futures. When they’re little, you can exert discipline, protect them. Then they hit an age when despite how desperately you want to save them from themselves, you can’t. I asked Farrah once, “If we had never separated, do you think Redmond would still have gotten into trouble?”
She didn’t answer. Maybe because she knew the answer was yes.
By the time Leslie and I broke up in 2001, Farrah and I had been driving back and forth to visit Redmond at various facilities for several years, a ritual we would sadly have to keep repeating and that I continue to this day. Some of the places where Redmond was staying were located in isolated areas where there were more tumbleweeds than streetlights. I’d do whatever I could to keep our spirits up. I’d take her to a local movie theater, or we’d find rustic restaurants and cafés. We’d try to see the humor in our bizarre circumstance. And believe me, we encountered our fair share of bizarre. Some of these camps asked parents to participate in group therapy sessions that often included weird rituals led by wacko facilitators. These activities were meant to strip us of our defense mechanisms. It never worked on me. I remember one so-called group leader who insisted that a couple pick another member of the group, lift the person off the floor, and swing him or her around so he or she could experience “flying.” I’m not embellishing. Remember that famous scene from Titanic in which Leonardo DiCaprio holds Kate Winslet as she leans forward on the bow of the ship and tells her she’s flying? That’s what we had to do except there was no wind, no boat, no ocean, and no James Cameron, just green linoleum and gray walls. One time Farrah and I were attending another group encounter and the facilitator, who was a double for Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, told Farrah she had to take off her sunglasses. Farrah was sporting a nasty sty in her right eye that day. The woman was insistent, even going so far as to try to remove the glasses from Farrah’s face. I thought Farrah was going to take the woman down. Instead she smiled demurely and said: “Touch my Maui Jims and your hand will come back without fingers.” The facilitator retreated. I glimpsed Farrah winking at me behind those glasses. It was the tiny triumphs that kept us going. The big ones were much fewer and farther between.
I’d like to believe that it wasn’t the leukemia that brought Farrah and me back together. Farrah had begun to mellow. Gone was the frustrated, angry woman. Replacing her was this patient person who seemed comfortable inside her own skin. Maybe we both had grown up. Still, reconciliation didn’t happen quickly. It would take time for us to trust each other again, something Mia and Frank could never do. This might be a good time to lighten things up a bit and tell you that story.
The year, 1965. The place, 20th Century Fox Studios. Mia and I are on lunch break from Peyton Place. We’re walking to the commissary. We pass the set of Von Ryan’s Express, a movie about escaped prisoners of war in which Sinatra is starring. Fencing designed to imitate barbed wire surrounds the set. The effect is so realistic, it’s as if we’re standing in front of a POW camp. The cast is milling about. Mia asks me to point out which of the actors is Sinatra. “I can’t spot him,” I say. Suddenly a gate at the other end of the set opens and a golf cart piled with six guys in army fatigues pulls out. “Look at the driver,” I whisper to her. “That’s Sinatra.” I watch her face. I can almost hear the lyrics to “I’ve Got a Crush on You” playing in her head. A couple days later back on the set of Peyton Place, Mia pulls me aside. “I had the privilege of meeting Mr. Frank Sinatra yesterday,” she says. I asked her how she found the time. Our production schedule had been grueling the day before. “They were shooting interiors on the next stage and I just walked over and introduced myself,” she answers. I was even more perplexed. “You met Frank Sinatra in a hospital gown?” Peyton Place was shooting hospital scenes that week. “No, I put on a robe and slippers first.”
She was nineteen years old. He was forty-eight. They wed two years later. I was married to Patrick’s mother, Leigh Taylor-Young, at the time. We enjoyed many evenings with Mr. and Mrs. Sinatra. They were wonderful to us. Frank liked having his friends around and what a cast of pals they were: fellow rat packers Dean Martin; Joey Bishop; Sammy Davis, Jr.; childhood friend Jilly Rizzo, known as much for his ties to Mulberry Street as for his eponymous eaterie; comedian Shecky Greene; actor Brad Dexter. And what you have
to understand is that these men were old school, Frank especially. Not always the easiest environment for a serious-minded young bride with a Hollywood pedigree. Mia’s father, John Farrow, was a respected Australian-born film director and her mother was famed Irish-born actress Maureen O’Sullivan.
Don’t get me wrong. I loved Frank. He could be a gentleman. But he had an uncontrollable jealous streak. One night Leigh and I were driving down Sunset Boulevard on my motorcycle. We’d just had a lovely dinner with Jacqueline Bisset and her partner of many years, Michael Sarrazin. He was a wonderful actor. Anyway, Leigh and I are on the bike when suddenly someone whooshes past us in a Dual Ghia. This is an expensive Italian sports car and there weren’t too many of them on the road. I knew that Frank had one. There’s a red light ahead of us and I see the Ghia come to a screeching halt behind another car. I drive up alongside the Ghia, and Leigh and I glance to our right. Sure enough, it’s Frank at the wheel, and sitting next to him in the passenger side is Mia. They don’t see us. Mia’s hands are clasped tightly on her lap and she’s sitting there rigid. She looks terrified. It’s a long red. Frank can’t wait. He wheels out from behind the other driver, nearly sideswiping him, and runs the light.
The next afternoon, Leigh and I are expected at their home for Sunday brunch. When we arrive, there are large pieces of furniture all over the front yard: an armoire, a dresser, a hand-carved desk, custom cabinets, even a piano. It looks as if an absentminded auctioneer started to set up for an estate sale, said “Aw, the hell with it,” and left. I ask myself, At only five foot nine and a hundred and forty-five pounds, could Frank possibly have dragged all this furniture out of the house by himself? The adrenaline must have been really flowing. But I heard he didn’t like the way the owner of the antique shop looked at his wife when she purchased that furniture. And Frank was a very possessive man.