Chapter 24
This might be a good time to pause and discuss gossip, because Ethel and I generated a bunch of it when we split.
You may find this difficult to believe, but a lot—not everything, mind you, but a lot—of what’s written about celebrities is bull. You say, “So why don’t you sue?” Well, there are two reasons. First, it’s expensive. Lawyers charge you a grand just to say “hello.” Second, it’s a grueling process. You have to get deposed by the opposing side, which can take days. They ask you all kinds of personal questions that become part of the public record. Very often, people sue the tabloids, then end up dropping the case after a few weeks. They make their big public show, protest that the stories aren’t true, and then everything goes away, booted aside by the next big story.
So many of the women I worked with, in particular, have gotten a bum rap. It’s not true, for example, that Joan Crawford and Bette Davis were enemies. I worked with them both. They had days when they were up and days when they were a little down. They were competing for the same roles. And for women of a certain age, those parts are pretty rare. Of course they were rivals. But enemies? They were both part of the Hollywood social circles and were photographed a lot and—well, newspaper people have to write something to go with a picture. Kate Hepburn didn’t go out a lot and no one ever wrote that she hated, I don’t know, Vivien Leigh or Barbara Stanwyck.
But if Joan and Bette showed up at the same dinner or ceremony, and did a kind of fake snarl for the press, they were written up as having a feud. If they were adversaries in a film, like What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? then people assumed they were battling in real life (an idea sometimes given a little push by overeager studio publicists looking for press). You want to know what I remember most about Bette Davis? Her big, explosive laugh, which was really something, and the fact that she never went anywhere unless she was “put together,” as she described it. If she hated anything, it was the idea that stars would ever go out looking like slobs. But there’s a difference between that and hating the star who does it!
Hey, I’m not saying everyone gets along. I’ve told you several times when that wasn’t the case. But most of the time, we do. We’re all pulling for the same thing, for a picture or TV show to be a success. Some people handle that pressure a little less adroitly than others. Usually, though, that doesn’t last. If it does—or if there’s a problem like pills or booze—they get the heave-ho by the front office.
Most of us are homebodies, actually. After a long day of shooting, you have to memorize lines, go to sleep, wake up, and do it all over again. There are costume fittings and traveling to locations and rehearsals. Who has time to tear another actor a new one? And when I get through with a picture there’s nothing I want more than to just sit around my house and enjoy it. I love being at home, especially when there’s family around.
But the gossips won’t let you do that. They think, “We’ve got to sell some more papers.” So they find a photo where you look a little tired and they say you’re drunk. They have you leaning over to kiss someone and now you’re an item. If it happens to be a guy, you’re gay. They find some smut to say about you and the first thing you know people come up and say, “Is it true that you did so and so?”
Some people handle it better than others. Liz Taylor, for example. All those romances, all those illnesses—the press was after her in a way that makes Paris Hilton look like a hermit. But she stayed above it, all class, true Hollywood royalty. But then you have someone like poor Natalie Wood. She was a star since she was a little kid in Miracle on 34th Street. She hung out with Elvis, James Dean, Warren Beatty, with the press in tow the entire time. But she was basically just this quiet girl who wanted to have a life. When she couldn’t have it, she drank. She retired for a while. In the end, she never did manage to get her feet under her and was dead at the age of forty-three. Shirley MacLaine’s got spunk. She made it on Broadway, she made it in film, and she became a best-selling author writing about past lives and stuff that a lot of people think is nuts. She didn’t care. She had what I talked about before—steel in her backbone.
You need talent or good looks or a great voice or some other distinctive angle or all of the above to break into this business. You need stamina to stay in it…and a real thick skin. Mary Tyler Moore once said something that was dead-on. She said, “Men who want to get ahead are called ‘ambitious.’ Women who want that are called things that are a lot less flattering.”
She was right. That happens a little in the casting offices, but it happens a whole lot more in the press. And it’s wrong.
Hopefully, where my life is concerned, this book will set the record straight. I wasn’t always an angel, but then who is?