Here's the Story LP: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice (13 page)

To me, this was the epitome of the good life: talented people, great music, and lots of coke. It wasn’t real life, which made it even more attractive. I almost hated to interrupt the fun by going off to work on the movie
Texas Lightning,
kind of a redneck love story about a macho truck driver who decides to turn his son into a man by taking him on a hunting trip. Then the son fell in love with the waitress at the local honky tonk—my character—and the notion of manhood took on an unexpected twist.

It was a difficult role for me. I’d never tackled such a sexy or adult role. I had to bare equal amounts of skin and emotion, and both caused me anxiety.

My friend Gary Garver was the director. He helped give me the confidence I needed to set aside my inhibitions and good girl image. I took risks that still shock me when I think about them, just the way I allowed myself to cross a line emotionally in front of the camera. As a result, I think that movie still has some of the best work I’ve ever done.

But I was emotionally raw when I did that film. I didn’t realize the high wire act I was living. I wasn’t acting as much as I was letting everything show.

A
fter the movie, I returned to Colin’s with a sense of relief of being spirited off to the land where nothing mattered but getting high. He wasn’t involved with any projects at the time, and so we locked ourselves up in his house and stayed awake for days. Colin liked to do coke and have sex. As long as there was coke around, I didn’t care what we did. I just wanted to maintain the buzz.

During this period, my agent arranged for me to audition with Steven Spielberg for his new movie
Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Although Steven was looking at many actresses, it was still a big deal to get a meeting with him. However, I was so messed up that I missed my appointment with him. I don’t know what excuse my agent gave them, but he managed to set up another meeting and made me swear to show up.

I managed to get there, but I was pretty messed up when I sat down across from Steven. It’s amazing how I deluded myself into thinking I was prepared. I’d been up for several days. I probably looked drawn and tired, but thought makeup covered it. What no amount of makeup could conceal, though, was my inability to function like an actress who cared about her craft.

It was obvious I was fried. At one point, as I struggled to answer his questions, he gave up, pointed to a bowl of fruit, and asked if I wanted an orange. It was a polite way of saying you need to take better care of yourself.

And he was right, of course.

But I didn’t pay attention. I wanted to keep going even when Colin went out or fell asleep. I snuck through his house, looking for more dope. I remember searching his coat pockets for coke. I rifled through the clothes in his closet, his desk, and even his bathroom drawers. I knew all of his hiding places. It’s funny to think back and realize he had hiding places from me.

It’s worse to realize I spent time looking for it.

It was inevitable that Colin and I would graduate to a more powerful high, and we did. We started to freebase, meaning we cooked our coke into a potent concentrate, let it harden into a rock, and then smoked it in a pipe. A few months earlier, Richard Pryor had set himself on fire while freebasing. Lucky to escape with his life, he joked that he’d caused an explosion by dipping a cookie in two different kinds of milk. It wasn’t funny. Basing was extremely dangerous—and not just because you could catch yourself on fire. Once I did it, I was hooked. I thought of nothing else but doing more.

Colin’s appetite for the drug was just as ravenous as mine, except he pursued it more indulgently and hedonistically than I did. Whereas Colin liked to get high and have sex, my favorite place to get high was in a closet by myself. Since I only cared about access to the coke, I obliged. It was like we were chasing two highs.

I remember Colin wanting a change of scenery after we’d literally gone into hibernation in his house. He ordered a limo to take us up to San Francisco, and we sat in the back doing base and having sex the whole drive. We checked into the nicest hotel, hung up a
DO NOT DISTURB
sign, and didn’t leave the room for a week. God knows what the people at the front desk thought when we checked out.

At some point during this up and down rollercoaster, I began to suffer from hallucinations. It was always a variation of the same theme: the cops were about to bust into the house. I was convinced they were outside. The time of day didn’t matter; they were always there. Watching every move I made. Even when I sat in the closet, I thought they could see me. Sometimes I was so scared I crawled through the house. Other times I was so tweaked and tired I thought, what the hell, let them come get me.

I shudder when I think about the way I felt back then. Only one thing was certain and I wasn’t even aware of it: I was teetering on the edge, totally crazed—and about to crash.

A Brady Bride Is Fried

W
hen I first heard about
The Brady Brides,
a two-hour movie that had the Bradys reuniting for Marcia and Jan’s double wedding, I said no way. I thought it was stupid. I was a million miles away from the world of Marcia Brady, and, as I told my agent, Sandy, I didn’t consider that a bad thing. It was 1981, and I was twenty-five years old, and I had been through so much—and was still going through so much—that wasn’t Marcia-like that I didn’t want to think about returning to the
Brady
fold.

In a way, it was like facing family, and that scared me in the shape I was in at the time. Colin and I had once spent a weekend at Barry’s beach house and I had rummaged through the house until I found some coke in a kitchen drawer. I did all of it. Barry had never said anything, and I was too embarrassed to risk a confrontation. But Paramount knew NBC saw the movie as a pilot for a potential series and the money they offered kept growing until it was impossible to resist.

I know the same was true for Barry and for Eve, who had married a policeman and lived in a cute old bungalow in Manhattan Beach. Some of us spoke on the phone beforehand. A nice spirit emerged as the entire original cast signed on, including Florence, Ann, and Bob, who surprised the Schwartzes by agreeing to the projects. The money was the motivator, of course, but Bob also reportedly said he wouldn’t let anyone else give away his girls.

Casting our husbands was a top priority for Sherwood and Lloyd. They looked at hundreds of guys. After whittling down the list, they scheduled screen tests for me with more than a dozen actors, the same way they had cast the original
Brady Bunch
in 1968. There was one huge difference, though. Instead of showing up on the set that morning, I blew it off. I was at home, getting high, as I’d done for days.

Around noon, I heard a banging on my door. Someone yelled my name:
Maureen!
I ignored it and moved into the bedroom, closing the door behind me. I sat on the bed and continued to play solitaire, smoke cigarettes, and do coke. I thought if I didn’t answer the door whoever was there might go away.

But they didn’t. The knocking got stronger and more determined. I scooted off the bed and sat in the corner, trying to move farther away. Then the phone rang. I let the machine pick up. It rang again, and rang and rang some more. I kept playing solitaire, trying to block out the disturbances and burrow deeper into myself.

BAM! BAM! BAM!

I thought the door might break down.

RING! RING! RING!

For a few moments, there was quiet. The knocking and the ringing finally stopped. I thought they might have gone away. But then: “God-dammit, she’s not answering…I know she’s in there…Maybe she’s dead…Shit.”

The voice or voices came from outside. It sounded like they were underneath my balcony. I had no idea whether they were imaginary or real. I was on the seventh floor. Although the building pool was on the sixth floor, I couldn’t imagine how anyone could get onto my balcony.

“Maureen! It’s me! I’m coming up!”

I peeked out my bedroom window and saw a long metal ladder extended from the pool deck to my balcony.

Suddenly my agent burst through the bedroom door. He stopped as soon as he saw me curled up in the corner. He was panicked.

“What the hell are you doing?” he said.

I looked up without responding.

“What’s going on?” he repeated.

I shook my head slightly.

“Never mind. I know what’s going on.” He took off his jacket and threw it on the bed. “Everyone’s waiting on you. We have to get you to Paramount right now or else this whole thing is over.”

Sandy picked me up, took off my clothes, and threw me into the shower. I stood in the stall, motionless, still high and freaked out. He turned on the water and ordered me to clean up and then get dressed. When I came out in a towel with my hair dripping wet, he was in the living room, barking at me to put on some clothes and brush my hair—my chestnut hair that I used to brush all day long when I was first on
The Brady Bunch
. Now it was too much of a chore.

Sandy took me straight to Paramount. We barely spoke the whole way. I sat in the passenger seat with my head thrown back and eyes shut or else I stared out the window, feeling sick and unable to focus as the buildings and storefronts whizzed by in a blur. When he gave my name at the gate, I let out a groan.

“Do I have to go in?” I said.

“Yes.”

He marched me into Sherwood’s office. We sat down and I faced Sherwood and Lloyd. I felt like all the air had been let out of me. I was worn out and sick.

And sad.

And ashamed.

And scared.

“I’ve got a problem,” I said, crying. “It’s cocaine. I can’t stop. I’m really, really sorry.”

“Thank God you’re okay,” said Sherwood. “That’s number one. We’re going to get you some help.”

W
ork was always my sanctuary, my safe place. Whether straight or stoned, it was where I could go and feel comfortable. But that wasn’t the case anymore. Going to the set for screen tests that day and the subsequent few days made me a nervous wreck. I was embarrassed and ashamed. I didn’t want anyone to see me and vice versa. I still felt like I’d rather be curled up in a fetal position in the corner of my bedroom.

I saw Florence first. In a way, it was like seeing my mother. She hugged me, and later, during a more private moment, she said, “I know what you’re going through. I’m really, really sorry. If you need me for anything, I’ll be there for you.” Ann B. Davis set a copy of the Bible in front of me and said, “Whatever I can do, whatever you need.” The others also knew I had a problem, but they didn’t say anything. I thought it was better that way. Now I wish they had intervened.

Actually, one day I received a note from Florence. I’d sent her flowers for her birthday. She thanked me for them, and then offered encouragement. “I truly admire you as a human being,” she wrote. “You’ve got guts, compassion, sensitivity, and you’re a real survivor! It’s so hard in this business to retain your sense of humanity, to be forgiving of one’s self and others and not to be disillusioned by all the disillusioned people around us.”

As promised, Sherwood and Lloyd got me help immediately. I don’t know who they asked or what process they went through, but they hired Dr. Eugene Landy, a psychologist who cultivated a reputation as “the shrink to the stars” by treating Rod Steiger, Alice Cooper, Richard Harris, and Brian Wilson. The Beach Boys’ troubled genius was Landy’s most celebrated patient, and later the cause of his undoing when the Wilson family took him to court amid charges of gross negligence. In 1991, the courts finally forced Landy out of Wilson’s life.

Landy practiced a controversial twenty-four-hour-a-day therapy in which he and his so-called therapeutic team assumed complete control of every aspect of the patient’s life. As Landy explained to me, that meant he controlled everything from what I ate to where I went to whom I spoke to on the phone. He even said that if I was in a relationship and wanted to have sex, he had to approve it.

“I’m not in a relationship,” I said.

I didn’t tell him about Colin. The two of us were mostly off by this time, though I had been reluctant to give him up completely.

“You don’t have to be in a relationship to have sex,” said Landy.

“Right.”

“You should know that if you do have sex, I will know about it,” he added. “I may even be watching.”

I had never met anyone creepier than Dr. Landy, who said such things, I’m sure, to get into my head. He did a good job, too. He was a short, doughy man with longish dark hair. His office was on Robertson Boulevard, in Beverly Hills. At our first meeting, he was wearing running shorts, a corduroy blazer over a T-shirt, and a bright orange hat. My parents were also present. Dr. Landy reminded me of a performer as he explained his round-the-clock therapy. It was like he enjoyed listening to himself talk. He mentioned his famous patients. He left out the fact that Gig Young had killed himself. But he could’ve said anything and my parents would’ve been relieved that someone was doing
something
to help me.

He told me to relax so he could examine me. After feeling my wrist and ankle, he said I had a thyroid problem.

“I’ve never had one before,” I said.

“You do now,” he replied.

He asked me a few questions about my family, my career, and
The Brady Bunch,
then explained that I’d been screwed up by both my real and TV families, and so on. There was a measure of truth to his interpretation, but it was mostly madness. Dr. Landy sent me straight to his own personal doctor, who confirmed my thyroid problem, then added diagnoses of anxiety and depression, and issued prescriptions for Ascendin, Descendin, Cytomel, and Primitil.

On top of being looped on all those drugs, I was met at my apartment by one of Dr. Landy’s so-called therapeutic technicians. She introduced herself as Nancy. She was short, blond, and had a thick, athletic build. She followed me inside and searched my place from top to bottom. From that moment on, I couldn’t do anything without her watching me and taking notes.

The next day Nancy supervised as I followed Dr. Landy’s orders and destroyed my address books, and then she shadowed me at work. That night Landy himself made a surprise visit to the apartment, and he did so again early the next morning as I was getting out of bed. I never knew when or where he was going to show up, nor what kind of getup he would have on.

One day he walked in with a two-foot-tall, red-and-white-striped
Cat in the Hat
–like thing on top of his head. He also wore a Hawaiian print shirt and sweatpants. He asked to use the bathroom and left the door open, yelling, “So how’s everything going? How are you doing today?”

I didn’t know how to respond. I thought I was hallucinating.

One day, I heard Dr. Landy and Nancy mention something about microphones they’d planted in my apartment. I didn’t know whether or not they bugged my place, but I believed it was possible. I looked under the coffee table and inside cushions. I didn’t find anything. Either way, where was the therapy? What kind of treatment was this? Between the prescribed medications, the paranoia, Nancy’s ever-watchful eye, and Landy’s surprise visits, I really thought that I was losing my mind.

At the end of the first week, during one of the informal therapy sessions that developed when Dr. Landy seemed to materialize out of nowhere, he told me that I could no longer trust my family. He said they were out to get me. They wanted my money, he said, or else they were so envious of my fame—he mentioned my brother specifically—that they wanted to destroy me.

That was news to me. I’d never seen or suspected any such behavior. It struck me as absurd, beyond comprehension. Even in my state of mind, I knew that I was the one who had abandoned my family. It wasn’t the other way around. All of a sudden Dr. Landy scared me. I feared that either he was brainwashing me or I was about to lose my final hold on sanity.

So one night I went out to dinner with my friends Pam and Bill. Nancy with me, of course. At one point, Pam went to the bathroom. After waiting a few minutes, I got up to go, too. Somehow I convinced Nancy to let me go by myself. It might’ve been the first time I’d gone to the bathroom alone in nearly two weeks. In any event, as soon as I saw Pam, I fell into her arms and cried, “Please, please, please help me!”

It was like a scene from a movie.

“You’ve got to help me,” I said. “I don’t think I should be in this twenty-four-hour therapy anymore. I’m really scared. The guy treating me is saying my parents are out to get me. They’ve got me on so much medication I can barely function. I feel like I’m a vegetable. I’m at a point where I’m going to break and lose it.”

Before I finished, Pam hustled me out of the restaurant and drove me to her house. I hid out there for the next couple days, until Sherwood and Lloyd, after realizing my anti-twenty-four-hour-therapy hysterics were for real, fired Landy. I immediately quit taking all the medications he’d put me on. Going cold turkey like that made me terribly sick for about a week. But at least Landy was out of my life.

I
don’t know how it was decided, but I moved in with Lloyd Schwartz, his wife, and their young son. They converted their TV room into a bedroom. No one wanted me living by myself while we worked. They figured they could still keep a close watch on me, maybe not in a Landy-like way, but still close enough; Sherwood and Lloyd also assigned their secretary to watch me every minute I was at the studio.

Away from the studio, I sensed my TV husband, actor Jerry Houser, might have also been instructed to keep an eye on me. But such paranoia lasted only while we worked on the movie, which NBC reorganized into three half-hour shows that ran on consecutive Fridays. By the time we were shooting the series, which the network ordered after the initial episodes proved ratings winners, I realized Jerry’s interest in me came from his heart.

Jerry was a solid actor who’d worked steadily since making the leap a decade earlier from Valley Junior College to the movie
Summer of ’42,
in which he played fifteen-year-old Oscy. He hadn’t been my first choice as Marcia’s husband, but we became good friends. If Jerry had had his way, we would’ve been more than friends. We dated several times and made out once, but I didn’t feel the right chemistry was there. To be fair to Jerry, I didn’t know how to feel anything at that point.

Nor was I ready to open myself up like that. By the time we began shooting the series, I had relapsed again. The emptiness inside me was too great and the urge to use again was too strong. I didn’t have the power or resources to mount a meaningful struggle, and that was because there wasn’t any meaning to my life. I tried to find peace in my journal.

Stop!

For just a minute