Judy & Liza & Robert & Freddie & David & Sue & Me... (10 page)

He would not allow an inexperienced nonentity of an assistant talk him out of confiscating the drugs that had caused such an awful accident, an accident that had come within inches of blinding or almost killing the great Judy Garland. But then, he did not seem in the least impressed with the fact that he was treating Judy, and I could see that he was dealing with her as he would any other patient. I reasoned that he must have been Stan's go-to guy for all star problems, and his been-there, done-this manner made me understand that this Judy could have had any other last name and his response would have been exactly the same. He was unlike the doctors, listed alphabetically in major cities, in my little black book whom I could call upon for late dates.

Now what remained was to finish up the business at hand. There was always that. Business. Judy Garland wasn't just a person: She was a franchise, first and foremost! Stan called David Begelman, and they quickly agreed that Stan would indeed have to find some big star to step in for Judy until she could perform again. A proper press release about vocal strain would be prepared. The public would be assured that with a little rest, Judy would be fine. She would then give the Sahara an additional two weeks by doing a 2:30 a.m. show every night. Two thirty in the morning? Omigod! Perfect for Las Vegas, and easy for those who slept all day. I dreaded it, but I said nothing. I sat on the couch, numbed, and waited for Stan to end the call. When the arrangement was completed, Stan was about to go back to work. I could see he felt sorry for me. Still, he found a way to suggest that I do something about the stain on the carpet before he was out the door. “We wouldn't want the maids to see that,” he said.

So the main event of the night is now over, and I am once more dealing with Judy's blood, this time trying to disguise the stain, to make it look more like coffee was spilled. That is the best I can hope for; there is no way of getting the complete bloodstain out of the carpet. I am feeling bitterly sorry for myself. I am crying and asking myself, Why? Why am I doing this? Why do I care what the maids think? Suddenly I am sobbing hysterically, my tears falling on the carpet and mixing with the rest of the bloody mess. ‘Is this only about ambition? What is wrong with my life? Who matters to me more? Me? Judy? I am cold and angry and sad.

At sunrise I passed out in the second bedroom and couldn't have been asleep more than an hour when Judy was standing at the foot of my bed pulling on my leg to awaken me. Regardless of the sunshine streaming in, Judy had turned on all the lights lest I miss something. “Look at me!” she screamed. And I had to. Dare I use the clich
é
“It was worse than your worst nightmare”? She was a ghoul. The Phantom unmasked does not come close. She was the Elephant Man, a total grotesque. Her lips were the most awful part, huge and discolored. One whole side of her swollen face was blue and green. “Let me call for some ice packs,” I said. “The doctor said you should use them constantly until he can get back here.”

“Fuck the ice packs. Where's my medicine? I need my pills, and I want them right now! Where the fuck did you hide them?”

“Me?! No! Not me. I swear it. The doctor took them. He didn't want you to hurt yourself again.”

“Then call the fucking doctor, and get him back here right now. And I want my own doctor flown out here by this afternoon.” It wasn't yet 8:00 a.m., and I didn't have a clue about how to reach this doctor at his home. He wasn't listed. I awakened Stan and begged him to make the call, but an hour passed and nothing happened. Judy was going berserk. She demanded I call all the area hospitals. I did so and got nothing. At nine I was able to reach the doctor's office and was told he was on rounds, the receptionist assuring me he would call as soon as he returned. It was a formulaic response, and no call came. Judy made me phone all the hospitals again. She was pacing, she was screaming, she was crying—and none of it was about the way she looked. It was only about her drugs.

By noon I had called the doctor's office at least a half-dozen times, now understanding that I was intentionally being put off by his staff. I was frantic, and the women I spoke with could surely hear the desperation in my voice; they did their best to calm me, but there was no way they could have imagined what I was going through, nor was there a way I could attempt to explain it to them. In their lives they surely had never felt as threatened as I did at that moment.

Finally they got a dose of it. Judy came out of her bedroom and was hovering over me, screaming in my ear, screaming into the phone. At one point she grabbed the phone and yelled out every obscenity she'd ever heard, probably many more than those on the other end had ever heard. In addition to using “fuck” every other word, “cunt” and “cooze” were two of her favorites, and I doubt the doctor's receptionist had ever been called either. Whoever was listening remained calm and acted as if they had heard it all before, for when Judy handed the phone back to me, the woman on the other end didn't seem rattled at all. But then, what could they do? I could only imagine the doctor not responding because he had not yet found a nurse.

By midafternoon Judy convinced herself that I was the one who had hidden her drugs. She went into the kitchen, took a large black-handled knife out of the drawer, and came after me with it. Would she have stabbed me? I don't know. She was a raving lunatic at that point. But I was younger, stronger, and way healthier. I wasn't going to get into a fight or try to take the knife away. I didn't want to risk either of us getting hurt. Terrified, I barricaded myself in the second bedroom. There was no lock on the door and I put my whole weight against it to keep it closed, while she did the same thing on the other side. Where did her strength come from? Was it fueled by some demonic adrenaline? I was managing to prevail, but how long could I keep this up? It was madness. I needed to get out of there. I needed a plan, and I formulated one. I would jump away from the door and let her rush in. I could only hope she wouldn't fall on the knife. I would then rush out the moment the momentum took her. And I did! I got out the door to the hall, ran down the stairs to my room, got the maid to let me in, and collapsed crying on the bed. It was over. Fuck ambition. I was not ever going back. One would have to be crazy even to contemplate it.

*   *   *

Of course I went back. In the late afternoon I was awakened by a call from David Begelman, who spent twenty minutes on the phone telling me how sorry Judy was. He assured me that she was feeling better now. He told me a new doctor had been in to see her and had given her some medication for her pain and some for her nerves. That was shorthand for “She's drugged,” ergo everything's okay. David surely knew how to find those kinds of doctors. He said that Judy desperately wanted to call me to apologize. Wouldn't I just speak to her? He was actually begging me. I savored that. Although I had cried myself to sleep, now with seven hours in the tank, I was a new person; that is, the old me was back.

An hour and a two-hundred-dollar raise later, I agreed to have a conversation with her. I thought David's offer was generous, and I decided it was okay if I returned purely for the money. Not for him, not for her. I also thought that if I refused to go, I might be replaced. By late in the afternoon, losing my job again seemed like a bigger threat than losing my life.

Within two hours I had moved my clothes into Judy's suite, adamantly refusing, however, to give up my own room key, and for the next ten days I remained there with her. Of necessity she would not allow anyone else to see her looking the way she did. I was the waitress, the maid, and the doorman, always there to make sure that no one put so much as a toe inside. All management keys were disallowed. The days dragged on. Our boring routine hung on us like a curtain that admitted no light. Nothing went wrong, but then nothing was good either. In spite of my staying up late, my interior clock never changed. I awoke at the same ghastly hour of seven every morning, regardless of having played cards until three. I ordered room service and read. I looked out the window a lot, staring at people enjoying their freedom, wishing I had mine. It was obsessive.

At about noon I would hear her moving around in her room, but she rarely showed herself before three or four. Then she demanded everything at once. Breakfast might be French toast and a hot fudge sundae. Being indisposed was her opportunity for more than a bit of sweet self-indulgence. I encouraged it. Anything to keep her in what I called “a harmless place.” I received the linens at the door and made up a fresh bed for her each day by five. I changed all the towels and wiped up the sink and tub. I vacuumed. We played endless card games and listened to her records. She had Frank's and Nat King Cole's sent in, but we mostly listened to her own. She admired her own ability above all. Sometimes she would sing along. Would that there had been TVs in the suite, we might have watched all day, but that amenity didn't yet exist. (It's somewhat hard to believe, but the early sixties were a time when shampoo in hotel rooms was just becoming a must.)

We talked about her affair with David Begelman ad nauseam because he was the common denominator in both our lives: her lover, her manager, and my boss. We talked about what she wanted in the future—how she and David would travel and enjoy life together. This was far better than hearing her talk about the past. For although the past was more interesting, revisiting it could send her into a tailspin that often led to a plaintive diatribe directed at Louis B. Mayer. Mayer, the man who, as she had admitted on television, had had the greatest influence on her life, but also the monster who was responsible for overworking her, underpaying her, and starting her down the yellow brick road to ruination.

*   *   *

Trust me, I did not feel as though I was in on something divine, listening to the “voice of greatness.” I was a prisoner yearning to be free. While David had turned the suite into a drugstore, guaranteeing that Judy had everything she needed, not a single one of my needs was fulfilled. No Vegas sunshine would touch my skin. Instead I learned more about who she was and more about who I was, and I didn't much like either one of us. She was willing to do anything to satisfy her habit, and I was willing to do anything for success.

 

CHAPTER TWELVE

Back in New York

Surviving a catastrophe has a way of making you realize your own worth. It was the end of 1962 and, after having lived through Judy's Las Vegas disaster and getting more than a few raises, I started to feel I was irreplaceable. Who would put up with the things I had? No one I spoke to. Certainly none of my friends! My mother thought I was crazy. My husband was beginning to believe the same. But it worked for F&D. Not having to be with Judy all the time had allowed them to build a business. I patted myself on the back and was a little cocky. I believed I was worth every penny of the $450 they now paid me every week. I was no longer expected to take dictation or type letters for anyone but myself.

Freddie Fields Associates had grown significantly. Freddie called it “the Tiffany” of management agencies. While talent agents were restricted to commissions of 10 percent, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Henry Fonda, and Lauren Bacall were now clients and willing to pay FFA 15. There were two more agents squeezed into our space. FFA was well on its way. And Judy? She had done her job. The concert tour had been a huge success.
Judy at Carnegie Hall
was heralded as one of the best concerts ever in the entire history of entertainment. Hollywood was back in Judy's corner. Television was calling. The press was clamoring. Everything changed but Judy.

By then Judy and her children had been living for slightly more than a year in a lovely home in Scarsdale that I had found for her in in my role as FFA's real estate agent.

I'd originally put them into an apartment at the Dakota, a dark, dank, dreary eleven-room pad owned by John Frankenheimer, the brilliant and prolific film director best known for
The Manchurian Candidate.
All its apartments surround a quad that was eerie at four in the morning, which is when I usually showed up at least several times a week. “Wuthering Gothic,” with a courtyard into which no sunlight ever filters, is the way I still think of the Dakota. The place scared me. I was delighted when Judy wanted to leave it.

She had no desire to replace it with sunny California. She seemed finished with her life there. This was a new chapter. She definitely wanted to stay on the East Coast. Would that she could have chosen a home in New York City! She said, however, that she always felt better in the country, so she had sent me out to find the ideal bucolic retreat for the family, a house large enough so that each of her children could have a room of their own. She needed something furnished because from all her homes over the years, Judy had salvaged nothing. Not a stick of furniture. Not a single memento from her brilliant career. No linen, no dishes, no silver. No precious possessions from all the homes she'd lived in in Los Angeles. She did carry a few pictures in her suitcases—like a homeless person. She came with nothing else. Nothing.

Once I identified a place in Westchester, Judy asked me to make the moving arrangements. She didn't ask to see the place first; I think she couldn't have cared less. But I cared. This was a real family home, like a family home in the movies. It had a staircase and bedrooms upstairs. If this sounds silly, so be it. It fulfilled my idea of the way things were supposed to be. It made me feel as if I'd done something good. After the family moved in, she asked me to buy new furniture for the children's rooms, but she took no interest whatsoever in what I bought. It mystified me. How could one not care, but the Judy I knew seemed not to care about things! Stuff wasn't ever important to her. Once all the arrangements were taken care of, I had to deal with a new realization. Instead of running across town to the Dakota, I now had to travel up to Scarsdale at four in the morning.