Both of Us Page 5

  Farrah’s divorce is finalized in 1982, and as the weeks turn into months, we ease into the rhythms and routines of living together as a couple. She is living in the Antelo house. I sell my Beverly Hills home on the old John Barrymore estate to George Harrison’s manager. And Farrah and I split our time between her house on Antelo and mine on Malibu Beach, with occasional romantic sojourns to my place in Big Sur, which I’ll also sell several years later. Ted Turner will buy it. Whenever I see Jane Fonda, she always talks about how much she liked the Jacuzzi there. Farrah and I spent many wonderful nights in that Jacuzzi.

  At this point, Tatum is living in her own apartment. I recognize now that at seventeen she was too young to have that degree of independence. It’s one of my life’s greatest regrets that I didn’t establish stricter boundaries with my children. I was one of those fathers who placed too much value on being a friend to his kids and not enough on being a parent. How I wish someone had sat me down and warned me about the consequences of Malibu-style domesticity. Farrah would try but I could be one stubborn SOB, and all of us would pay the price.

  The first deposit on that bill comes due in the new year. Griffin’s behavior is growing more unpredictable and his demeanor more surly and secretive. He’s also experimenting with drugs and alcohol, and I begin to fear the worst. Tatum will be next. She’s always had a self-destructive rebellious streak, resenting any kind of authority or discipline from shoplifting laws to schoolteachers. During a brief stint in boarding school, she was nearly expelled for stealing jewelry from other students. She was eight. And her need for attention and affection is bottomless. It worries me. But at this point, she’s distanced herself from Farrah and me, and my main concern is getting Griffin back on track. My other son, Patrick, thankfully seems to be doing okay. I have to give my second wife Leigh Taylor-Young credit. Though I may not understand her New Age philosophies and bohemian sensibilities, she’s always been one hell of a mother, and it shows because of all my kids, Patrick is the one who was able to sidestep the temptations.

  Though concerns about Griffin and Tatum are weighing heavily on Farrah and me, we also have careers that require constant attention, and if you take a breather in this industry, someone can knock you out of the game. As another Easter approaches, Farrah receives a call from the producers of Extremities, the hit off-Broadway play about a woman who turns the tables on her rapist. They’re interested in having her replace Susan Sarandon. I take Farrah to New York, it’s a rough play, a lot of work for an actress, and I notice that Susan is all banged up from the fight scenes. Farrah elbows me and says, “I can do this.” So we return to Los Angeles and start preparing her for the role, learning the lines, practicing the dialogue, and blocking the scenes. We haven’t made any commitment yet to the producers. I want to be sure she’s ready. I know so much attention will be paid to Farrah that I don’t want anything to go wrong, especially in New York, where the theater world can be uncompromising.

  So picture this. I’m scrunched inside my fireplace in my bedroom in Malibu because Farrah and I are rehearsing that famous scene in which the rapist is trapped in the hearth. Farrah is deep in character. She’s glowering at me and hurling obscenities, lost in the reality of the character she’s portraying. Meanwhile the phone is ringing. Sue Mengers, who will soon be managing Farrah, keeps calling to tell me she can’t keep the producers at bay much longer. I reach for the receiver, and I hear this huge grunt coming out of Farrah as she pulls a log out of the stack and lunges at me. I duck and press the phone to my ear. “She’s ready,” I tell Sue. “Messenger the contracts.” That was the thing about Farrah. She was fearless, hungry to take on the hardest roles. Beneath that big blond mane of hers was a steely will and courage to spare. She would come to need it in ways neither of us could have imagined on that afternoon of rough magic, me covered in soot, marveling at my girl, who was about to show everyone what she was made of.

  While Farrah is in New York rehearsing for Extremities, I’m back in LA filming the comedy drama Irreconcilable Differences with Shelley Long and Drew Barrymore. Sharon Stone is in it too, one of her first movies. One day she asks me if I’ll run off to Las Vegas and marry her. I tell her, “Can we do the honeymoon first?” I always liked Sharon. A graceful and determined woman, she was fun to work with. Director Charles Shyer was easy to work with too. He was nothing like Stanley Kubrick, whom I worked with on Barry Lyndon. Stanley’s directorial method was to film a scene fifty times or more. He never explained why after, say, forty-one takes the next do over was needed. I once said to him after repeating a scene so many times I’d forgotten my name as well as my lines, “Stanley, you act my part in the scene. I’ll watch and then imitate you.” I was sincere. He thought I was trying to be funny and perceived it as insolence. My best guess is that he wanted to fatigue the actors and see what became of their performance when they were exhausted. In spite of being one of those worn-down actors, Stanley and I shared a mutual respect.

  Stanley was less extravagant as a producer. He would continually review the schedule and the budget for Barry Lyndon, the two documents that Stanley the director often ignored. But in his role as producer, Stanley was acutely aware of costs. He’d count the rolls of toilet paper and ration them; only so many would be available per day.

  During the production of Irreconcilable Differences, I was staying at Farrah’s house on Antelo. I come home one night and see Griffin pulling out of the garage, his car loaded with Farrah’s belongings, end tables, antique lamps, knickknacks. He can’t even see out the back window. I run up to the driver’s side and yank open the door. “What the hell are you doing?” I say. “Put it all back!” He makes a smart-ass remark and then gets out of the car. He’s violent and irrational. He’s got this empty look in his eyes. I can feel years of resentment radiating off his skin. He swings at me. I block. Then he dives and knocks both my feet out from under me. I hit the pavement elbows first. I get up. He comes at me again, this time following me into the house. We fight and knock over the curio cabinet. I fall into the broken glass, cutting my elbows and knees. “What are you doing,” I keep yelling at him. “Stop!” Some nineteen-year-old sons think they can take their dads, and he wasn’t going to stop until he did. He again goes for my legs, this time tripping me. I don’t remember hitting him in the mouth. But by then, my survival instinct had taken over.

  Twenty minutes later we’re on our hands and knees together, searching for his lost teeth. That night, I hold my child in my arms while he sleeps, wondering how this once sweet boy, who comforted me when I gave up the lead in The Champ because he hadn’t been cast as the son, could be the same young man who hours before was primed to maim me.

  I call Farrah to let her know what happened. I hated dragging her into my messes with my kids. But she had become the person whose judgment I relied on most, the only one who could give me a sense of balance when chaos was threatening to spill over me. She doesn’t complain about the damage to the interior of her beautiful home. She just listens with compassion and understanding. A little less than two years later, after our son Redmond is born, I’m sure she must have recalled that conversation—me out of my mind with anger and sadness, she, exhausted from rehearsals, desperately trying to calm me—and wondered, What have I brought this innocent new life into?

  The next morning I have to go back to work. I must shoot a scene shirtless that day, and in the film, if you look closely enough, you can see the evidence of the previous night’s brawl on my arms, which are decorated with cuts and bruises. Making matters worse, while I’m on set, Griffin calls his mother. She picks him up and brings him straight to a photographer. She sells the story to People, and the celebrity magazines feast. Soon after, I send Griffin to Habilitate for rehab. He’ll stay for a year.

  During that time, People will run another piece, this time a feature on Griffin, and to my surprise, their coverage of me is okay. Early in my career, the press treated me fairly. I got good reviews for good performances, poor reviews for poor
performances, and press interest in the women I dated was more respectful than salacious. It was my lack of parenting skills that inspired their ire.

  Whenever Irreconcilable Differences runs on cable I’m reminded of this shameful episode with my child. The debacle will further sour my relationship with Tatum, who thinks I’ve turned my back on her brother by sending him to Habilitate. I can’t make her understand that the opposite is true. This is one of the foremost drug rehabilitation facilities in the Western world, and besides, it’s located in idyllic Hawaii.

  When Farrah opens in Extremities, I can’t be there because I’m still shooting Irreconcilable Differences. Though it couldn’t be helped, it still bothers me that I wasn’t by her side opening night. And what an opening night it was! When I telephone Farrah, she says that a man in the audience, who we later discover had been stalking her, rushed the stage, angry that she’d never signed his poster. “What did you do?” I ask. “They dragged him away and we started the scene over.” She’s telling me all this as if it were just a glitch. I’m amazed by this girl. Most actresses I know would have been rattled by something like that. There would come a time in her life when that sanguinity would abandon her, but that’s all in the future. Now she’s still the Farrah I fell in love with, the one I’ve never stopped loving. After the scare with the crazy fan, the producers hire two security guards, one for each side of the stage, to make sure nothing like that happens again. It’s a clockwork production from that night on. Farrah receives rave reviews and packs the house every performance. She is an actress now.

  Once I wrap on Irreconcilable Differences, I hurry to New York to stay with Farrah. She’s at her most radiant, soaking up the long overdue respect from an industry that had once considered her only that blonde in the bathing suit from Charlie’s Angels. It’s wonderful to be spending time in New York together. Though we’re not night owls, every once in a while we’ll go dancing at Studio 54. We went there out of curiosity. Bianca Jagger had her birthday bash there in ’77 or ’78. I knew the building. It’s where Johnny Carson’s show was broadcast. Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager converted it from a theater. The space was huge. I used to think that if Farrah wandered away, it could take all weekend to find her. We always danced. Farrah could float across the floor. I should have let her lead. There were a number of songs we claimed as our own and always got up to move to them. More than thirty years later I can still remember the words to Donna Summer’s “Last Dance.” Farrah and I also spent a lot of time in the balcony, where there were tables and a great view. Above the balcony was terra incognita. The third floor housed the infamous rubber room, so named because it could be hosed down after all the open sex and drugs. I was intrigued. Farrah had less than no interest so we never went up there. Not quite never. I peeked once: it was like something out of a Brueghel painting. We never had to use the main entrance. There was a VIP door around the back where we’d invariably meet people we knew: Andy and Liza, Michael Jackson and Liz Taylor. I think Salvador Dali was there one night with someone who strongly resembled Elton John. When owner Steve Rubell is charged with tax evasion, most of his friends desert him. Farrah and I take him out to a very public dinner.

  Though Farrah’s schedule is demanding, when she does get time off, we sometimes go to Montauk, the most distant Hampton, and stay with Andy Warhol. Farrah loves the beach and the sun. I enjoy Andy, as odd as he sometimes is. He acts as if he adores Farrah so they get on famously. And she loves art. Andy’s place has five classic clapboard houses designed by Stanford White. He bought it in partnership with Paul Morrissey, director of many of Andy’s early avant-garde firms. (They paid $225,000; the compound was recently on sale for $50 million.) The Rolling Stones took breaks from their tours and rehearsed their albums there in the seventies. It was comfortable and refreshing, with an astonishing view of the sand dunes and the ocean, and the company was never less than invigorating. Bianca Jagger without Mick, Yves Saint Laurent opening clams in the kitchen, the fashion designer Halston dishing the divas, and, of course, the neighbors: Edward Albee, Bobby De Niro, and Paul Simon. For reasons I never understood, Dick Cavett insisted on playing Frisbee sans clothing. Maybe he was working up an appetite.

  It was there I learned that even the famous can be impressed by the somewhat more famous, as certain people never ceased mentioning that they were there that memorable weekend Liz or Liza or John Lennon visited. The first time we go we encounter Bianca. Farrah never warms up to her. She ran with a more cultured, artistic group than we knew in LA. Farrah felt threatened by her, though she had no reason to be and my behavior was as proper as an English butler’s. Maybe it was because Bianca was always topless, and Farrah knew she and I were once lovers. Bianca and I remained friends and I still think of her that way even though we haven’t spoken in ten years.

  Later that year Farrah does another made-for-TV movie, The Red-Light Sting, in San Francisco with Beau Bridges. I visit her on set and even manage to squeeze in a quick trip to see my son Patrick, who’s living in Carmel and attending the Stevenson School. The Red-Light Sting is a fourteen-day shoot for which Farrah has an A-list payday. Though the movie itself is forgettable, it’s important to her in that she’s finally starting to know what it feels like to have money and a career without someone taking a cut. The three decades Farrah and I are together; I honor her need to remain in control of her own finances. We maintain separate bank accounts, and of course I’m traditional in that I pay for whatever she’ll allow me to—dinner, travel, presents—but when it comes to her income, I respect her privacy and her independence. Though Farrah and I would argue about a lot during the turbulent years of our relationship, one subject we rarely had words over was money. It is said that statistically the two biggest issues that destroy marriages are money and kids. Perhaps God gave us a break on the former because he knew the latter would be so sad.

  The 1983 holidays are a welcome respite, though I miss Tatum and continue to worry about Griffin. Farrah and I fly to Hawaii to see him at Habilitate, and while he seems to be trying hard to turn his life around, it’s as if he’s been severed from his own soul, and like the headless horseman, he’s trying to find the top of him and put it back on.

  I immerse myself in loving my girl and working with her to further develop her craft. Inspiration strikes from a surprising source. Farrah has a subscription to Texas Monthly. One morning over coffee, I’m scanning the latest issue and there’s a piece on Candy Barr, the famous stripper who had an affair with the notorious Mickey Cohen and performed in Jack Ruby’s Dallas nightclub. She shot her second husband, a crime for which she served three years in prison. I’d always been intrigued by her story. A star in burlesque, when she was sixteen years old, she appeared in the most famous stag film of all time, Smart Alec, aka Smart Aleck. It’s a memorable performance for those of us men who saw it in our youth. It ranks right up there with Rita Hayworth in Gilda. Years later, history would remember Candy Barr as an unlikely feminist. I point out the article to Farrah and suggest that this would be a perfect vehicle for her. There are some striking similarities between the two of them, both having had to overcome implacable misconceptions. Farrah’s excited by the idea and we go to San Antonio to meet Candy. She’s a tougher broad than I thought she would be and Farrah is fascinated by her. In fact, when we return home, Farrah insists that we watch Smart Alec together. She’s never asked to watch a porn movie before and I must admit I’m excited. We were both self-conscious for the entire eleven minutes but not embarrassed. And I can tell you that Candy Barr had nothing on Farrah. We were still glowing when we woke up the next morning.

  We enter into a development deal with Atlantic Pictures. We already have one enthusiastic investor who once saw Farrah dance and thinks she would be perfect for the burlesque scenes. It’s my first time playing producer and I want to get it right, so I hire George Axelrod to write the script. He’d written Bus Stop and The Seven Year Itch for Marilyn Monroe, Breakfast at Tiffany’s with Audrey Hepburn, The Manchu
rian Candidate; his credits read like a graduate course at the USC film school. Unfortunately, George and I disagree vehemently on the screenplay. I want to tell the story of Candy Barr as a young woman, and he insists on writing the story of her as an old woman. The project is stillborn. The experience gives me new appreciation for the responsibilities and challenges of being a producer. Putting all those elements together ain’t easy. Could it have been a great start vehicle for Farrah? Might it have begun a new career for me as a producer/director?

  Spring 1984 arrives, and with it big news. Farrah is pregnant. I’m surprised and delighted. Though I know she had always wanted children, it’s not something we ever discussed. While I’m overjoyed, she’s veiled, ambiguous. My problems with Griffin and Tatum have taken their toll. She’s afraid to bring another O’Neal into the world. That fear has been simmering for years and we’ve avoided talking about it. We avoid it again now. As the months pass, the slow expansion of her belly will ease her fears. But that first trimester will prove challenging.

  The pregnancy proves more difficult than we anticipate. Morning sickness saps Farrah’s energy. I spend many hours holding her head over the toilet. Farrah and I attend birthing classes together, a new experience for me. I’m the modern father-to-be, rubbing cream on my girl’s tummy, massaging her calves, and tending to her needs. I’ve been an expectant father before, but I never loved Joanna or Leigh the same way I love Farrah. The traditionalist in me says that Farrah and I should make things legal now, but with three failed marriages between us, there’s another part that says why change something that’s working? After the baby is born, Farrah will ask me to marry her. I’ll foolishly sidestep the question and she won’t press me.