Hello Darlin' (32 page)

After two more days in ICU, I was moved to my own room, which was filled with healing
crystals sent by Linda Gray. I constantly asked people to massage my aching, itching,
swollen feet. Unfortunately I couldn’t request the same treatment for my scrotum,
which was the size of my head.

They told me I was a model patient. I let the nurses poke me, check my pulse, and
keep me clean. They started explaining the complex medications they were giving me
but I was still too woozy to make
any sense of what they said. The next day they got me out of bed and forced me to
sit in a chair, which was really difficult because I was so weak. I wondered if that’s
what it felt like to be old. They wanted me to try to walk, but I didn’t have the
strength.

“It’s going to take a lot of effort,” one of the nurses said. “It’s not easy.”

At some point that day Maj had discovered a paparazzo dressed as a doctor in the hallway
near my room. He’d gotten past the hospital’s security and she recognized him. It
turned out he had a small camera. My own security people got rid of him. But the incident
made me feel helpless and paranoid. That night I asked Maj to sleep in my room. The
nurse helped her pull a mattress in there and she slept on the floor next to my bed
while holding my hand.

Later that night, well past midnight, I had the TV on and was watching Steve McQueen
in the movie
The Hunter.
I’d known Steve slightly, one motorcycle guy to another. But the tenacity, strength,
and will to live I saw in his performance in that movie struck a chord in me that
the nurses hadn’t been able to reach when they’d wanted me to walk. Inspired, I struggled
out of bed and reached for my IV stand. The noise woke Maj, who said, “What the hell
are you doing?”

“I’m going for a walk.”

“Let me call a nurse,” she said.

“No, just help me get ahold of this IV thing and open the door.”

A few moments later I was out the door, walking. It was more like an unsteady waddle
with my scrotum swinging to and fro, throwing me off balance, but at least I was out
of bed and moving into the hall.

“What’s going on?” the duty nurse asked.

“I’m taking a walk,” I said.

I trudged down the hall muttering to Steve, “Thanks, buddy.”

From then on, I improved daily. The only pain that got in my way was psychic. I was
overloaded by the feeling I could read minds and control what happened on television.
I watched André Agassi play in the finals of the U.S. Open and all the action looked
to be in such slow
motion that I could actually help him think about his shots. Lots of good it did,
since he lost. The same thing happened when I watched baseball. I could actually steer
the ball where I wanted it to go. I should’ve been connected to a Vegas sports book,
because I knew all the results ahead of time.

My mind generated an abundance of thoughts and ideas. It was obviously due to having
a healthy, functioning liver. Also because I was taking massive doses of steroids.
But for the first time in years, my body wasn’t full of toxins. The blood pumping
into my brain was good and pure. But it was almost too much for me to handle. I was
on the phone all day long networking people. A friend of mine was a master knife maker
who wanted to retire but had a two-year backlog and couldn’t. So I put him in touch
with Peter Fonda’s stepson, Thomas McGuane Jr., who had a passion for knives, and
I imagined he’d want the job. Wrong. I put a pal in Vermont who knew about tapping
sugar maple trees in contact with a guy in North Carolina whose trees were diseased.
That they were elm trees didn’t deter me. It went on like that nonstop.

I also went on a creative binge, inventing new products. I came up with a fiber-optic
lamp that had fifteen adjustable snake-shaped tentacles coming out of the base, each
one with a lens at the tip and they could be pointed in different directions. One
lamp could handle an entire room. “That’ll be a thousand bucks,” I told Maj, who replied,
“Great idea, honey.”

I also created a traveling suit. One day I asked myself, What does a businessman need
when he travels? The standard blue suit. Also a blue blazer with a pair of gray slacks
and white slacks. And a tuxedo. The tuxedo is always a pain in the ass because you
use it only once but still have to schlepp it around the rest of the time. Then I
got the idea and invented the all-purpose traveling businessman’s outfit—basically
the clothing version of the Swiss army knife: a light Italian wool dark blue suit
with removable buttons. For the blue suit, there were blue buttons. To convert it
to the blazer, you switched to gold buttons,
which inserted like cuff links. For the tuxedo, you used the blue buttons and Velcroed
a satin shawl onto the lapels. With a tux shirt and cummerbund, you’re all set for
a formal event. Now, instead of three jackets, you had to take only one.

I’ve since had it made, it works perfectly, and it all fits into a carryon bag so
I don’t ever have to check luggage again.

I also invented shoes with different-colored outer coverings that just had to be Velcroed.
I haven’t been able to sell that idea to anybody, but it seemed like a great idea
to me. It still does.

They told me to rest, but I kept coming up with ideas for gift packages, belts, and
assorted items from orthopedic canes to coffins. Maybe all that creativity was due
to having a lot of time on my hands. Of course, it could’ve been all the drugs they
were pumping into me—the morphine, the prednisone, and the like. Anyway, it was a
fun, creative time and it was clear to everyone I was doing well.

Finally, after nine days in the hospital, Makowka said I could go home. It was less
than the two weeks he’d originally told me that I’d need to spend there. (Dallas had
spent six weeks in ICU alone.) Ironically, though, on the day I left, Makowka admitted
that during surgery he’d discovered my liver was much worse than he’d thought. Without
a transplant, I probably wouldn’t have lasted more than two more weeks.

*   *   *

Carroll O’Connor and his wife, Nancy, offered to let Maj and I stay in their Westwood
home so that I could be close to the hospital in case of an emergency. We stayed there
for a month. Bebe, who’d kept her nursing license current after retiring from Saint
John’s, was my head nurse and coordinated an around-the-clock nursing staff that included
two others, Frank Horton, one of the gentlest people I’ve ever met, and Rene Marschke,
who superbly filled out colorful and happy sweaters. It was a joy to see her walk
into my room.

Linda Gray and Dallas Taylor visited almost daily. They were part of
a group of friends and family that tried to keep my spirits up, which wasn’t difficult
because I was so happy to be alive. I had a smile on my face all the time. The hardest
part was getting accustomed to the routine of taking all my medications. I was on
steroids, antirejection pills, pills to counteract the pills I took—twenty-six in
all, five times a day. I had to learn how to test my blood-sugar level and inject
myself with the proper amounts of insulin, since a side effect of one of the medications
I took was being a diabetic. I also had to be extremely careful about greeting people
or shaking hands since I had almost no immune system.

But everything went well and after about a month we moved back to Ojai, where we celebrated
the holidays. I was able to attend the premiere of
Nixon.
Two months later, I got clearance to go back to work. The first order of business
was a
Dallas
reunion movie for CBS. The project had been in the works for two years, but had gotten
side-tracked by Patrick’s busy schedule and my illness. Finally, in March, Patrick,
Ken Kercheval, Linda Gray, Mr. Katzman, and I got together in Dallas. “It’s just like
old times,” I said as I waited for the van to take us to the location.

“Older, Lar,” Patrick quipped. “Take a look in the mirror. It’s much older.”

Until then, I hadn’t seen Patrick for months.

“What have you been up to?” I asked.

“The usual,” he said. “Drinking and having fun. And you?”

“Same thing,” I quipped.

Linda described being back together as a happy déjà vu. Mr. Katzman said that when
he wrote the script for the final episode, he thought it was the end of J.R., but
greed and lust were always popular. So was the quest for ratings and money, I cracked.
Indeed, the movie picked up where the series had left off, with J.R. surprising mourners
at his own funeral, explaining he’d faked his own death to snatch his son’s inheritance.
Now the Sultan of Scandal wanted to regain control of Ewing Oil. “Are you telling
me the thought of Cliff Barnes running
Daddy’s business doesn’t make you want to puke?” he said to Bobby in the opening
scene.

It was vintage
Dallas
on-screen and even more so away from the camera. I was constantly busy running my
lines, while Patrick only had to glance at his script to memorize his dialogue. Eighteen
years after I first saw him do that it still impressed me.

“This is such hard work,” I joked.

“Especially when the check comes,” Patrick said, laughing.

When we wrapped in April, all of us were ready to do it again. Linda was on board.
So was Patrick. So was I. Before all of us scattered, I hosted a dinner, where I lobbied
for several reunion movies a year. Especially, as I declared to proper laughter, if
they paid us what we were worth—a fortune.

*   *   *

But a great script, not money, was the primary motive when I signed on for the new
series
Orleans,
a zesty gumbo of colorful characters produced and directed by
China Beach’s
John Sacret Young. It began production in New Orleans five days after the
Dallas
reunion wrapped. Maj flew down ahead of me and settled us into the famed Claiborne
Mansion in the French Quarter which we leased for the two months we were scheduled
to film. The home had been the mayors mansion prior to the Civil War and had a gated
courtyard that gave us privacy from paparazzi.

I had high hopes for
Orleans.
CBS had ordered a tryout of this ensemble drama about a wealthy, politically connected
New Orleans family. I played the clans patriarch, Luther Charbonnet, a respected judge
who mingled comfortably with priests, politicians, and prostitutes. I’d get laughs
by telling locals he was an honest and incorruptible judge.

Though it had been only seven months since my operation, and I still needed to build
my stamina, I felt great. I took a daily three-mile
walk with another gorgeous trainer, Allison Zuber, lifted weights, and gained more
strength every week. I had a harder time striking the right note with my character.
I spent Sundays driving around New Orleans, studying people, eavesdropping on conversations,
and soaking up the atmosphere, of which God knows there was an abundance.

On the first day of shooting, the wardrobe woman was robbed at gunpoint outside her
home. The next day, three people were shot across the street from our location just
outside the French Quarter. I heard the shots from my trailer. Most of the crew witnessed
it. People yelled, “Get down,” and, “Stay inside.” But of course, every one of us
ran out and saw the action.

That really rattled nerves. I remember the wife of Brett Cullen, one of my costars,
was so shaken that she flew back to L.A. with their infant son. I’m sure others also
wanted to jump ship, but for different reasons. The show was done more like a movie,
which made it labor-intensive. John Young was also a perfectionist who wasn’t concerned
with working overtime. Sometimes he shot till sunup, but my cutoff was midnight. I
made it known that, at sixty-four years old, this grandfather of five was long past
dying for a role. The kids had no problem working as long as required. But as Cullen
explained, “We aren’t as rich as Larry.”

None of us got rich from
Orleans.
CBS didn’t pick up the show after several midseason airings drew less than stellar
audiences. It was ironic, since the series got probably the best reviews of any that
I’d ever done. But critical acclaim wasn’t enough to sustain a series as expensive
to produce as
Orleans.

That gave me time to start riding with my motorcycle club, the Uglies. Peter Fonda
had been an Ugly for years and he’d gotten me into the club a couple years earlier.
Oliver Shokouh, the founder of the Love Ride, the biggest motorcycle charity event
west of the Mississippi—it attracts twenty-five thousand riders every year and has
raised millions of dollars for muscular dystrophy—had invited me to go with him and
a couple others from the club to a Love Ride in Zurich, Switzerland. I was going to
be the grand marshal. So Oliver,
his girlfriend, Debbie, Maj, and I, and five other Ugly brothers arranged to go there
and then take an extended motorcycle vacation through Switzerland, France, and Monaco,
where we’d stay on a yacht belonging to my friend Lars Magnuson and watch the Grand
Prix car race. Lars had moored his yacht, as he had for years, on the course’s most
dangerous corner, so we were excited.

We arrived in Zurich on a Friday morning. That afternoon I got a call from director
Mike Nichols, whom I’d known in New York City years before. He asked if I’d read for
a part in his new film,
Primary Colors.
I asked when, and he said, if I got the part, my scenes would start shooting on the
next Wednesday.

I explained how complicated it would be to cancel all of our arrangements and how
I’d be letting down the Uglies.

“What if I send you the script?” he asked. “Read it and let me know what you think.”

“Fine,” I said.

The next day, Saturday afternoon, his secretary from Los Angeles showed up with the
script under her arm and asked me to read it. Maj and I sat down immediately and read
it together. I called Mike and told him that I thought the script was wonderful and
my part in particular was sensational, and that I’d love to do it. There was a long
pause and he said, “Okay, you got the part.”