I'll Be There (12 page)

“I mean you’re on a list, Cee. I’m not gonna lie to you.” “I’m doing a screen test? Like an unknown?” “Teri Garr is testing. Madeline Kahn is testing.” “So it’s a second banana part.” “Well it’s the part of—”

“The friend. The star’s zany but loyal friend. That’s who those people play.”

“Yeah… but it’s a major —”

“I’m not testing. I’m not testing against those people. I don’t do good on tests. Every time the guy got into my car at the Department of Motor Vehicles, I forgot which was the gas and which was the brake, and I failed, even though before the guy opened the car door. | was Andy Granatelli. No tests.”

“Then how am I gonna get you a job?”

“Larry, that’s why God made William Morris, so you guys could figure it out.”

“Cee?” It was her business manager, Wayne. “Can you come in here next week so we can talk? I’d like to do a tax projection and I need to know what you have coming up so we can figure this out together.”

“I don’t know what’s coming up,” she said. “It’s a little slow for me right now.”

There was a silence and then he asked, “Well, what are you going to do for money?”

“Don’t I have any?” she asked.

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“Not a whole hell of a lot,” he told her. “With a monthly nut like you’ve got, think you ought to be trying to get some steady work if you can, and failing that, start doing some guest shots, commercials.

That kind of stuff ever occur to you?”

“Ycah, sure. It has, but —”

“It would probably make sense for you to take some work like that just to pull in some bucks until something big happens. You know what I’m saying?”

“Sure. Sure. I know.”

“Look, why don’t we schedule a meeting for tomorrow or the next day and in the meantime you can sleep on it.”

Sleep on it. Whoever invented that catchy little phrase sure as hell didn’t have her in mind. Every night for the last few weeks when she put her head on the pillow her brain moved from one fear to the next the way her car radio once moved from station to station because the SEEK button was broken. No money, no show, no man, too flaky, a kid to raise but how to do it, too fat, The Love Boat, too old, a commercial for feminine hygiene, sell the house, Juliet Prowse, and on Dallas they’re going younger.

Nina had started school at Webster Elementary, and she loved it. Some nights Cee Cee would get out of bed and walk around the house, stopping outside of her room and looking in the open door at the peacefully sleeping child, and when she did she’d think, I’ll do a shot on the goddamned Love Boat. That’s not too small for me. On any show, whatever it is. And when I get through they’ll give me an Emmy for it, because I’ll chew a hole right through the scenery. But when she tried to reach Larry Gold to tell him that, Mel said he was in London for the next few weeks.

One night Hal and Nina were conspiring to cook dinner for Cee Cee, who had just come from a meeting with a producer who wanted her to be in his off-Broadway musical, but wanted her to invest

money in it too, when the phone rang and Hal answered it.

“Cee,” he called. “It’s for you. Tim Weiss.”

Tim Weiss. It took Cee Cee a minute or two to figure out who that was. The guy at the network. The one who had worked for Peter Flaherty. Cute young guy.

“Cee Cee,” he said in a very warm voice, “how are you?”

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She felt suspicious. Why the call? “I’m grand,” she said, no emotion in her own voice. “And yourself?”

“Well, I’m great because-I don’t know if you’ve heard Flaherty’s gone.”

“I’ve heard,” Cee Cce said. “And I’ve been promoted.” “Congratulations.”

“I’d like to get together with you, Cee Cee, and talk as soon as possible. Would you be willing to?”

To talk. Flaherty was gone. Maybe things could be turned around. “Sure.” “When?”

“What time is it?” she asked him. “Five o’clock.” “How’s five thirty?”

She could hear Nina and Hal in the kitchen making Hal’s mother’s roast chicken recipe for dinner, while she sat on her chintz-flowered sofa across from Tim Weiss. He was very attractive looking and smelled of some lime aftershave she recognized as the same scent one of her long-ago lovers had worn but she wasn’t sure which one, and his attitude was apologetic and kind.

“Cee Cee, I came here for two reasons. The first is to say that I understand from a very emotional and personal point of view about your leaving the show to be with your dying friend. A few years ago, my own friend was dying too, in Europe, but by the time I had the guts to tell Flaherty that I needed to take some time off so I could get to him, I had missed him, by an hour. I only wish I had had the last few months of his life to do what you did for and with your best friend.”

Cee Cee was stonefaced as Tim went on. “I also want you to know that I wish I’d been able to say what I just did in front of Flaherty at our meeting in his office, but frankly, I was afraid. He was volatile and irrational and I would have been fired on the spot. Now he’s gone. I don’t have his job, Michelle Kleier does, but she and I are very close, and I know she feels as I do that we want to give you a show.”

Cee Cee felt weak with relief and buzzing with joy. Every meeting

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she’d had with producers had come up dry, and even though there were a few products for which she agreed to do commercials, finally none of the clients wanted her.

“Not just a special, but a series if you’d do it. We’ll work out the guarantees with Larry Gold, and your company can produce it. Both Michelle and I saw you a few weeks ago on The Tonight Show, and Michelle called me afterwards and said, ‘There’s no one like her.’ And it’s true. But you’re so unorthodox it took us a while to sell the concept of a series to the powers that be. Now we’ve done it and we think we can pull it all together, and that’s why I’m here.” He bit the inside of his lower lip now that his speech was over, and sat waiting for a reply.

“I’d want my accompanist Hal Lieberman to be my musical director,” she said quietly, not certain she had better put any belief in this turn of events.

“I know Hal and he’s very gifted. I’m sure we can work that out.”

“And I have to have a schedule that’s not so killing that I can’t spend time with my kid.”

“I understand,” Tim said.

“I’ll talk to Larry Gold tonight and we’ll call you in the morning,” Cee Cee found the voice to say.

Tim nodded and she walked with him to the front door where she shook his hand. “I’m sorry about your friend,” she said.

“And I’m sorry about yours,” he said, and when he left, she watched him through the sidelight windows of the front door as he got into his two-seater Mercedes convertible and drove away, then she walked into the kitchen. It was a mess. Garlic and onion and fresh spices and dirty pans and chopped breadcrumbs were everywhere. And then there were the sweet expectant faces of the apron-clad Hal and Nina looking at her.

“I’ve got good news,” she said. “I got a job so we won’t have to eat the dog.”

“We don’t have a dog,” Nina said.

“Well, then, that means it’s better news than I thought,” Cee Cee said.

“What kind of job?” Hal asked.

“Nothing much,” she told him, pulling an apron from a hook and tying it around her waist. “Just my own show. It was a brief but satisfying retirement, but La Bloom is definitely back in la show busi

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hess,” she said doing a little dance step of joy, carrying the dirty pans to the sink and turning on the hot water.

“Oh, and Harold,” she said as the steam rose around her. “I forgot to mention that if you want one,. you’ve got a new job too, as my musical director.”

“()oh, I think I could put up with that,” Hal said. Then he walked over and opened the oven door to look proudly at the crisp, bubbly chicken, whose aroma filled the entire room.

“Now that,” he said, “is what I call entertainment.”

VANITYFAIR

March 1984

“Why doesn’t somebody bring back the old-fashioned variety show?” That’s been the question since we bid a fond adieu to our favorite ones like Carol Burnett and The Smothers Brothers and Sonny and Cher. But it seemed as if the versatile talent who could pull off the jokes, the songs, and the hosting of guests with the sophistication of the eighties didn’t seem to be around. In her many years in the business, Cee Cee Bloom has starred on Broadway and in films, recorded hit singles and albums, has survived as many ups and downs as Wylie Coyote. So this year, when to the supreme delight of her fans, she picked up the variety show gauntlet, by not only starring in one of her very own but by producing it as well, all of us crossed our fingers and hoped for the best. Well, good news. Variety is once again the spice of life!

Cee Cee’s talented, she’s funny, you can’t stop looking at her, and somehow, even though we’ve known her for so long, she’s in a package which works for the eighties! In her first season she’s done every funny turn imaginable, from Camille to Clarabel the Clown, and as if that wasn’t enough, with her newly worked-out and very voluptuous body poured into a sequined dress, she sings so soulfully it can make you cry. In addition to which she has a roster of guests (Michael Jackson, Paul McCartney, Mister T) that would make any rival counterprogrammer shudder.

And as smashing and surprise-filled as the first several shows were, up-and-coming entries promise to be even more exciting (Bruce Springsteen’s already on tape). Isn’t it good to know Cee Cee Bloom, who seems to have more lives than any cat we’ve ever heard of, is back on top again. And so, thank heaven, is variety!

VARIETY

1985

The William Morris Agency congratulates their client CEE CEE BLOOM on her Emmy nominations

Variety, Music, or Comedy Series THE CEE CEE BLOOM SHOW

Variety, Music, or Comedy Special —

THE BEST OF THE CEE CEE BLOOM SHOW

Individual Performance — Variety or Musical Program CEE CEE BLOOM: THE CEE CEE BLOOM SHOW

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Dear Aunt Neetie,

Cee Cee and I are living in Malibu in a house she told me she is busting her ass to keep. I go out on the beach on the weekends and play with Larry Hagman who is J.R. on Dallas. Remember when he got shot? Also I go to school. The first school I went to was in Santa Cruz but I heard Cee Cee tell the headmistress where she could put the five thousand dollars, and we came back here. The co-op school wouldn’t take us because of Cee Cee being unacceptibel and now I’m in the school I wanted which is where my best friend goes who is crippled.

I have met lots of people who are famis, like Michael Jackson and also Richard Pryor who set himself on fire once while he was taking drugs, but he’s okay now. It’s pretty good to live with someone who has her own television show which I guess you know Cee Cee does now, because we get to go everyplace in limosines and the fan magazine guys can’t see into the black windows and that’s important because last year one of them got into our house and took pictures of us in our pajamas.

It’s really lies what they print in those papers. Don Johnson and Cee Cee are not lovers and she did not go with Bruce Willis to Spago. Cee Cee told me those pictures are called paste-ups, a picture of her and one of Don Johnson, and the newspaper puts them together and makes it look like they are what she calls an item, only it’s a lot of bull you-know-what. So far it’s pretty much okay here, except for how much I miss my morn which is so much that some nights I dream she is alive and wake up crying because she’s not.

Love, Nina

I’LL BE THERE

Michael Barron

c/o Barron, Malamud and Stern 1600 Golden Triangle Way

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213

Dear Michael,

This is a very informal request from me to you just to ask if there might be a chance for you to spend even one hour with your daughter Nina. I will fly her to you anywhere in the world if you’ll just say you’ll meet her and say hello.

Thank you,

Cee Cee

LOS ANGELES,, CALIFORNIA

August 1990

FROM THE BACK of a limousine parked at the airport curb, Cee Cee sat looking out of the black-tinted windows watching the people hurry in and out of the automatic doors. The couples, the families, the business types, some of them squinting hard when they looked at her car windows curiously, as if squinting would help them penetrate the one-way glass to see who was inside. When she saw Richie Charles emerge through the doors surrounded by his usual entourage of bodyguards, moving with that famous swagger of his toward his waiting limo, which was parked in front of hers, she threw her door open and called out to him.

“Richieee.” She hoped he would hear her over the bus that was pulling away with a smelly gray puff of exhaust. When Richie turned in her direction, he was wearing a patronizing look she’d seen him give to fans. His new late-night talk show was such a hit, the press was calling him “the black Johnny Carson.” Now when he realized the person who had called out to him was Cee Cee, the stiff smile changed to his real one, and he moved toward her, his arms out to embrace her.

“Gimme one of them big titty hugs,” he said and pulled her close. He was lean and muscular and smelled of some exotic men’s cologne. When she backed up to take a better look, she had to smile at the Armani suit and the sockless Italian loafers he now wore as a testament to his success.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d make it,” she said.

“Get outta here. And miss this? Who are you talking to? I’ve got to stop at my office and then I’ll see you on over there.”

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“Thank you, Richie. Thank you from the bottom of my heart,” Cee Cee said. Richie held her close again and she knew the facade had slipped and he was straining to hold back emotions he liked to pretend he didn’t have. Dozens of airport passersby hurried along the sidewalk, and every now and then one of them, noticing suddenly who they were seeing there, stopped for a moment to gawk.