By Myself and Then Some (63 page)

Jason was to pick me up at the hospital the morning of December 23. I’d called the night before to make certain he’d be there. I hadn’t felt well this time – rundown, emotionally fraught. This had not been marriage as I’d ever conceived of it or known it. My adjustments were many, but the first months had been more down than up. That morning I must have called four or five times – first no Jason, then a drinking Jason. He was on his way up with a big surprise. Just dandy, I thought – our first day home with the baby and him three sheets to the wind. At last he arrived several hours late, and the surprise was that he’d hired a Rolls-Royce to bring me home from the hospital. I couldn’t have cared less – better sober in a taxi. But press were waiting downstairs, and I put a face on for them. I didn’t want Jason holding Sam – afraid he’d drop him. He insisted. To avoid a scene, I gave in, but I was nervous and upset – not an ideal state for a new mother. As we reached the foot of the steps leading to our elevator in the Dakota I started to hemorrhage. I got upstairs. Hedy was waiting and took Sam while I rushed to my bedroom to pull myself together – got into a nightgown and into bed. Nothing had gone right and I was anything but a happy woman. Why was it going so badly? I was in no emotional state to figure it out, but I did know that this was no way to be married. I had a husband whom I loved but with whom nothing went smoothly for more than two days at a time. We were certainly not your average newlyweds starting a great new life. Funny to think of it now – I never analyzed it at the time – I did not know in so many words what Jason
expected of me. He did not object to my working – he did not object to me – he just did what he did, and as long as he was working I knew where he’d be a half-hour before his performance. His habits were the same after Sam’s birth as before. I had just not been so steadily exposed to them before. How long could I last?

Jason was going into rehearsal with
A Thousand Clowns
by an untried author, Herb Gardner. That should help to straighten him out, I thought. We’d talked about his drinking up to a point. He recognized that it was a problem, but he would not go for help. He loved me – loved Sam – all the children. ‘It will all work out.’ So I held on to hope, ecstatic when he didn’t drink, nervous when he drank a little, frantic and miserable when it took over. And resentful – often Jady, Sarah, and David would come for a weekend, and no Jason. I’d be left with the six children. I decided I would not lie to them – if they asked where he was, I’d answer, ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Will he be home for dinner?’ ‘I don’t know.’ I was angry, and it was years before I dealt with the truth of it. It was not malice or cruelty on Jason’s part – drinking was, and had been, a part of his way of life for too long, and he had neither the will nor the strength to do a complete about-face.

It all came to a head in the summer of 1963. He’d had a two-day siege and come home feeling very sick. I had made up my mind by then that he would have to do something positive. Life was becoming unbearable. Success didn’t help – reassurance – love – the children. Nothing did. And I was turning into someone I didn’t like. I’d continually lie to Mother – try to keep her from coming over without telling her why. I’d gathered our friends at home for a surprise party for Jason’s fortieth birthday, telling him only that a couple of people were coming by for a drink after his show. I had a cake all ready. When the clock struck two, it was clear he had made other plans – and who knew when he’d show up? A few stalwarts stayed, the others left. When he finally did walk in, loaded, I was in such a state that I grabbed a bottle of vodka, turned it upside down, and smashed it into the cake. ‘Here’s your goddamn cake!’ When I realized that what I wanted to do was slam it over his head, that I was capable of violence, it frightened me so that I knew I would finally have to act.

Fortunately, the next day he was so sick he acknowledged that he needed help. I must try to get him a doctor. That was the first break in
my black sky. He finally did find a psychiatrist willing to take him on and life became brighter – certainly more helpful.

Then in the spring Jason’s father died – the one member of his family he really loved and had rapport with. That week was filled with sadness – the pathetic funeral that we tried to make a little better. Jason’s mother and her husband came up from the desert. Jason hadn’t been close to her for years, but would become more so from then on. He paid for everything out there. He was the provider; the one with talent, with quality.

And only a few weeks later, in June, my firstborn, Steve, graduated from Buckley School. It was very moving to see my almost adolescent son about to enter his young-manhood phase. Next step, Milton Academy. Four years of living away from home, which we felt would be a healthy, happy experience for him. Watching him graduate, though, brought pictures of fourteen years before flashing to mind, and all the hopes and dreams that went with them. What a lot of terrible things had happened since to cloud those hopes, those dreams.

J
ason signed up with the
new Lincoln Center Repertory Theatre at a great financial sacrifice – Robert Whitehead, Elia Kazan, and Arthur Miller were starting it, a major repertory company in New York. It was something Jason believed in, and only with a star of Jason’s stature involved could it prevail. The first play was to be Arthur Miller’s
After the Fall
, directed by Elia Kazan. They were to open at the Washington Square Theatre, which would remain their home until the new theatre was built in Lincoln Center. Jason and I had discussed it – he would be bringing home little money, but we felt money was not to be considered in this instance. Neither Miller nor Kazan would be making any money either. Rehearsals would start October 1, so he’d have the summer to rest. We rented a house in Malibu.

It was time for me to pick up my career. The only thing producers seemed interested in me for was a television series, which I refused to do. The picture business made me feel like two cents – unwanted, unworthy. Very depressing. Well, I’d turned my back on it all four years before – I’d have to eat a little crow. But I couldn’t beg for work – ‘Look at me, I still look good, I can act. I’m not Bogie’s wife or widow, I’m an actress.’ I made a guest appearance on a
Dr Kildare
segment, a very
popular show starring Richard Chamberlain, everyone’s hero that year – including Leslie’s.

I lowered my professional sights totally to start working in pictures again, and agreed to be in a truly tacky movie,
Shock Treatment
, whose only saving grace was that my friend Roddy McDowell would be in it and we could suffer together. The theory was that once I worked out there, they’d see that I seriously wanted to work and other offers would come.

Jason and I for the most part had a good summer. A few bad days, but he continued talking to the doctor on the phone. He was trying. And Sam was growing. He was beautiful, and he was funny. He made me laugh from the very beginning. His reactions were funny, he had true humor (not all children do). And my mother worshipped him. Actually, it was mutual – they were incredibly close.

Steve and Leslie went back to school in mid-September and Jason to rehearsals of
After the Fall
at the end of the month. I returned to California mid-November for another film,
Sex and the Single Girl. A
very good cast – Natalie Wood, Hank Fonda, Tony Curtis – but not a very good film. At that time it seemed we might move West, as I had been successful in finding work there. It was my only Christmas away from Stephen and Leslie and Sam, and I was feeling very sorry for myself, but there was no way to go East for one day with work on either side of it. I did make it back for the opening of
After the Fall
. Adlai was to take me. The day of the opening he explained that Mrs Johnson, the First Lady, had asked him to escort her – did I mind? He’d have to take us both. Wonderful – how could I mind!

The opening was a theatrical event. Jason’s work was supreme – brilliant. And on January 26 of that year Jason and I were presented with the American Academy’s award for achievement, with Adlai as the presenter – the Academy where I had had my precious year of training more than twenty years before. 1964 started very well, but the Lincoln Center people did not live up to their promise of no commercialism. Miller sold serial rights to the play to a magazine, the television rights too – movies too, I think – making a fortune. Here was Jason working his tail off, getting practically no money for an ideal that was being crashed to the ground. Sam Behrman had a new play,
But for Whom Charlie
, that was put into the repertory. It wasn’t very well received, so there were more and more performances of
After the Fall
.
The theatre was being run like Broadway. Very disillusioning. Jason kept on until his year was up, but he left feeling that he’d been had.

There was a Eugene O’Neill play, a one-acter called
Hughie
, that Jason had always wanted to act. I dreaded that, although he was the greatest interpreter of O’Neill in anyone’s memory. Alas, he had more than a tendency to take on the personality of the character he was playing. It was a bad time for us, what with Jason’s disenchantment with Lincoln Center, and Eugene O’Neill. He became erratic with the doctor – drink took over more and more with
Hughie –
I became more of a shrew. There were always odd children problems cropping up and I would have the responsibility of six thrust upon me suddenly. And there were money problems – never the fault of Jason. He never stopped working. He’d do television specials to supplement his theatre work – he earned a fortune – but alimony ate it up. He resented there never being enough for us, but there was nothing he could do about it.

My fortieth birthday came and went – traumatic for me – and I went to Phyllis and Adolph Green that night. No Jason.

Hughie
only played five weeks. In February, Jason was to take it to California. We booked into the Bel-Air Hotel. I was more rundown than I knew – almost on arrival I began to fade. I felt nauseated, could hardly sit up. Jason drove me to my doctor’s office. The diagnosis was that I needed a lot of rest and fluids – my blood pressure was fluctuating badly, I was overwrought, I had to get into bed and stay there. Jason would be at the theatre nightly. He hated to be around illness, wanted no part of it. Sam had a cold and had to stay in bed also. Too much responsibility at once for Jason – he drank and stayed away.

Katie came over one afternoon, took one look at me, and pronounced me a damn fool. ‘You’re too thin – a wreck – you should be on the beach. The marriage is no good for you – get out, forget it, think of yourself again. You’ve forgotten about living.’ She was dead right. I realized I’d been trying to beat the drink problem by talking logically, or by threatening to leave. Spence told me, ‘No one ever stops drinking because someone asks them to. You can’t make him stop – he will, but only when he wants to, only when he has no choice. I know.’

They were only telling me what I knew but had refused to face. I knew I would have to leave Jason eventually. I’d forgotten to notice the
sky, the trees, flowers, grass – to just enjoy a beautiful day. I’d forgotten how to laugh, to relax, to have any sane social exchange. I had no peace. My only pleasure was my children. My reasons for staying with Jason, for keeping us together, had been them – and perhaps another reason was that I couldn’t face defeat. I loved Jason when he was the Jason I knew he could be, but the other Jason took over too often. No life could be built on that. My physical breakdown had forced me to face it all as it was. No more pipe dreams.

By the time Steve and Leslie came out to California I was able to go out for a few hours a day. I talked to them one afternoon while we were driving somewhere – asked them how they would feel if Jason and I separated. They wanted to know why. I told them that we had problems, that he drank too much, that it wasn’t working out. They hadn’t seen him drinking often – hardly at all. His daytime sleeping had been presented to them as necessary due to theatre hours. If he came home on a Sunday afternoon, they never asked him where he’d been, they were just glad to see him. I didn’t want to paint a black picture for them, didn’t want to dramatize the depressing turn my life was taking, I just wanted to feel them out. And I was able to say it out loud for the first time.

I rented a house in Trancas until the end of the summer. Sam loved the beach, so did Jason, but I was thinking mostly of myself, of my health. A new addition to our family was Nanny, a young Danish nurse who was to devote eleven years of her life to our Sam. I was besotted with my small son – he gave such pleasure – I had to keep myself in shape for him, for all my children. I made no quick irreversible decisions, but I knew I had turned a corner. I had come back to reality and my priorities were clear. I was fed up with the life I led. And in the next months two deaths brought things ever more into focus – Quent Reynolds in March, David Selznick in June. Two men I loved and admired, two widows I felt great love and sympathy for. Each death brought me closer to those left and reminded me never to stop paying attention, never be careless, who knows who won’t be here tomorrow? They also made it clearer and clearer that I would never go back to the early dark life with Jason. I had lost sight of the preciousness of time – had been living from midnight to dawn, sacrificing my own health, both physical and mental. I finally had to face some facts: that I had value as a human being – that alcoholism destroyed families, was not
to be lived with – that I would not be destroyed, nor would I allow my children to be. I would have no patience with anyone who threw his life away. And not for a second would I allow anyone to throw mine away. The values came back – life’s standards. Out of every disaster some lessons learned.

I would have to keep my career going. I was offered a part in
Harper
with Paul Newman – a kind of suspense film patterned after
The Big Sleep
, but without the same kind of part for me. Paul was the detective. I knew him, liked him personally and as an actor, and was more than pleased to have an opportunity to work with him. That would take up a month in the summer.