Shirley Jones (25 page)

Flashback to the summer of 1974
. Jack and I were on the verge of divorce, a divorce that, although I accepted it intellectually, I was still unable to accept emotionally. I was depressed, feeling lower than I’d ever before felt in my life, and all of a sudden Marty Ingels crashed into my world. Literally. Though I was in the midst of one of the worst periods of my life, I had reluctantly agreed to attend an art exhibition in aid of a worthy cause that was to be held on the front lawn of Michael Landon’s Beverly Hills house.

Given my black mood, I didn’t intend to linger at the exhibition. I said a brief hello to Pat Boone, to James Garner, and to Betty White, who were all on hand to support the art sale, then I spent the minimal time viewing the pictures. As soon as politeness decreed that I could slip out without causing too much of a fuss, I made my apologies and left. As I walked toward my car, Marty hared around the bend and bumped straight into me.

He apologized profusely, then introduced himself. I’ve always had a weakness for comedians, and I knew exactly who Marty Ingels was—the Brooklyn-born star of the sitcom
I’m Dickens, He’s Fenster
, and a very funny man indeed. But like so many comedians, his great sense of humor cloaked a hidden sadness, and I knew that he had had a nervous breakdown right on prime time, during Johnny Carson’s
The Tonight Show.

That day, until then a bad day in a bad week in a bad month in a bad year, for both of us, Marty threw me a penitent smile, and his large brown eyes twinkled at me. All of a sudden, much against my will, something deep within me was triggered. So I threw him back a smile, accepted his apology, and moved on toward my car.

As I did, Marty yelled after me a stream of words that tumbled out at the speed of lightning. A little unnerved, I kept on walking and only paused for a second to yell back, “Later, Marty, later.” Then I got into my car, drove away, and didn’t give Mr. Ingels another thought.

Although I didn’t know it at the time (and if I had, I might have been alienated by Marty’s obsessive nature and relentless will to win, no matter what), Marty spent the next six weeks trying to get in touch with me. Aside from that, he also devoted his every waking hour to researching my life and my career in libraries all over town. He also assembled a mountain of photographs of me and created a collage out of them.

His persistence in trying to find my telephone number finally paid off. He slipped a secretary at my agent William Morris’s office $20 to get my phone number for him, and she did.

After that, he showered me with telephone calls, all taken by my maid, none of which I intended to return. Then one day when I was particularly depressed and had spent most of the day driving around LA aimlessly, I answered the phone myself. Marty was on the line, and I listened, amused, as he introduced himself again and asked me out to dinner.

I thought for a second and decided that it might be worth spending an evening with him, as he might be good for a laugh. Before I had time to respond yes, Marty launched into an intricate, rambling speech, which I later discovered he’d spent weeks crafting and polishing, and he made me a love declaration about how he longed to present me with a flawless corsage and to escort me to the prom, how he felt about me, and a myriad other prepared charming sentiments. In the end, I cut in and said, “If all this is a prelude to asking me out to dinner, the answer is yes.”

Stunned to receive the answer he’d been longing for, Marty still didn’t want to be diverted from his prepared speech. “I just have one more paragraph to go. Shirley, would you mind if I finished it?” I tried hard not to laugh and said that I wouldn’t mind at all. And he finished reciting the last of his speech: more charming sentiments, more clever comments. Once again, I was both amused and beguiled by him.

From that moment on, till the present day, Marty has never really gone away. He was now in my life, and he was there to stay. Despite that practically everyone close to me—my friends, my family, fans, and even strangers—thought that I shouldn’t be with him, not even for an hour, never mind married to him for an entire lifetime.

Part of the problem, I suppose, was that when Marty and I first met, although I was separated from Jack, Jack was still very much alive and in the public eye. To the outside world, glamorous, dashing Broadway star, matinee idol Jack Cassidy was streets ahead of Marty Ingels in every aspect. But the outside world didn’t get the measure of Marty from the moment they first met him, as I did. And the outside world didn’t get to know him as well and as quickly as I did, or to fall in love with him almost from that first meeting.

So that while everyone else—even to this day—asks himself, and other people, what I see in Marty, and why, ultimately, I chose him over Jack, this is my answer: Both men and women adored Jack. But not as much as Jack adored himself. Marty’s major problem was always that he didn’t have any self-worth. In contrast, Jack had too much. Besides, what the world doesn’t see is that Marty has always taken good care of me.

On a less positive note, through the years I’ve learned that one of Marty’s primary qualities is that no holds are barred with him, but the good thing is that you know exactly who he is the first moment you meet him. He craves attention constantly and will do anything to get it. He is bright, but because he is a comic and yearns for applause, he wants to come over as crazy. He likes to be underestimated by everyone.

Unlike Jack, who would have died rather than display any jealousy toward the many men who attempted to woo me, Marty has always worn his heart on his sleeve. Emotional self-control is alien to him; so is tact and subtlety. But I don’t mind. I’d rather know what I’m getting into. That way, I can be sure that there will be no hidden surprises.

Talking about surprises, two of the many things the disapproving world doesn’t know about Marty Ingels: he is a magnificent dancer, and more to the point, he is also a great lover. He was never as sexually oriented as Jack was—but that was just as well, because Jack’s high-octane sexuality meant that he indulged in sex with everyone under the sun, whereas Marty is a one-woman man.

He is also extremely romantic. After we first met, I was making the TV movie
Winner Take All
, in which I played an alcoholic gambler (a part I loved), and filming took place in various locations all over town. Marty bribed an executive at Universal, which was producing the movie, to slip him a copy of the shooting schedule.

He then rented a thirty-eight-foot motor home and, every morning at eleven, drove to one of my favorite restaurants, the Brown Derby, in Hollywood, and picked up my favorite Cobb salad, and a bottle of vintage champagne.

Then he drove the motor home to wherever I was filming that day, waited for the lunch break, then got out of the motor home. Imagine my surprise to see him standing there, dressed in a pure-silk smoking jacket with an ascot round his neck, ready to lead me into the motor home, where he would serve me a candlelight lunch with my favorite song, “An Affair to Remember” (from the Cary Grant/Deborah Kerr film of the same name), playing romantically in the background.

After he learned that my favorite color was green, he presented me with a dozen green carnations, accompanied by a photograph of himself, which he’d had tinted green!

When he discovered that I was dating a producer, a much older man, he flared up in jealousy. But never one to suffer in silence, the scent of competition set his competitive nature ablaze. And—although, to this day, I can’t work out how he managed this—he snared copies of the producer’s various X-rays from his doctor’s office. And I don’t mean of his teeth. Of every single organ in his entire body—his bones, his muscles, everything!

After which, Marty went to work. He pieced together all the various X-rays, so that they formed a picture of the producer’s entire body, and pasted it onto a large card. Then he painted large arrows pointing to health problems from which the producer was suffering, from gout to sterility to ulcers. Then he had it delivered to me, anonymously, complete with a note informing me that, given Mr. Producer’s health, there wasn’t much point in planning a future with him.

Another time, years later, on one of my birthdays, Marty threw a party for me at a Hollywood restaurant and, beforehand, placed a red phone next to where I was going to sit. Little did I know that he had devoted weeks to researching every aspect of my past and had called everyone who had touched my life through the years.

Consequently, all evening, at prearranged fifteen-minute intervals, the phone would ring and a voice out of my past—Ralph Lewando, my aunt, a cousin in Canada, a friend whom I hadn’t seen for twenty years—was on the line, primed to wish me happy birthday. All because Marty had taken the trouble to contact them and arrange for them to call me on this very special evening.

During our courtship, my past with Jack sometimes reared its head, particularly while Jack was still alive. One time, soon after Marty and I first started dating, while we were away together on a romantic trip in San Francisco, Jack showed up at my apartment in a moving van and somehow let himself in and removed many pieces of my furniture, including the bed and the credenza, and many of my paintings.

True, he had selected the furniture and remodeled it and had alerted me to the beauty and the value of the paintings and the antiques. So he simply assumed that it was his prerogative to reclaim ownership of them and went right into my home and took them, just like that. I didn’t mind too much. I understood Jack’s reasoning. Besides, I never cared about possessions. Marty, however, was incandescent with rage, and I did my best to mollify him.

Unlike Jack, Marty was always an archromantic. Whenever I went to his apartment, he always placed my favorite flowers by the bed and had my favorite music playing in the background. None of Marty’s overt romanticism meant that he was averse to moments of rampant sexuality, though. One night, he took me to see an erotic movie at the drive-in theater, and when the lights went up, he looked at me, I looked at him, and we rushed home and had sex right there on the floor of our living room.

Of course, Marty can be difficult, but he can also be extremely charming. And he’s never ever boring. On our first date, he picked me up in a motor home. On our second, he booked a luxurious hotel suite and ordered a gourmet dinner for the two of us to be served directly on the stroke of nine, only for us to arrive at the door of the suite and find it barred. Apparently, his credit card had been declined on suspicion of fraud.

Ever resourceful, Marty switched to another hotel and talked himself into a suite by invoking the name of his uncle Abe Beame, who had been mayor of New York.

Like many creative, mercurial geniuses, Marty always had psychological demons to fight. Ten years ago, he was diagnosed as bipolar, just as Jack was before him. Strange, I suppose, that I ended up marrying two men who were bipolar. Then again, I was never attracted to the norm. I guess I always wanted someone who was the opposite of me.

If anyone still wonders why I married Marty Ingels, this quote from Marty himself is my answer: “Who would be my dream woman on Valentine’s Day? I would get Linda Evans and Daryl Hannah and Joan Collins, put them in one room, lock the door, and go and have dinner with Shirley. Shirley is the world to me.”

Marty truly feels that way about me, and believe it or not, I feel exactly the same about him and always will.

On November 13, 1977, Marty and I were married in a beautiful ceremony held at the Hotel Bel-Air.

Our new life together began in earnest at last.

THIRTEEN

The End of the Road

By 1977, Shaun had followed in David’s footsteps and become a rock star, and it was Shaun’s turn to be in the spotlight, but he didn’t much like it. Even as a child, he was shy, an artistic loner who preferred to paint or watch TV than play with his school friends.

Out of all my sons, Shaun is more like me, rather than like Jack. Shaun is definitely a Jones, as opposed to being a Cassidy. From the time that he was a small boy, he was always his own person and followed his own path in life.

When he was six years old, I gave a huge party for him and his friends in a park, complete with pony rides and long tables filled with hot dogs and cakes. But the moment Shaun arrived at the park, he turned to me and said, “Mom, I want to go home now.”

“Why, Shaun? This is your birthday party and all your friends are here.”

“I want to go home now, Mom.”

I didn’t take him home, I made him stay at the party, but he obviously hated every minute of his own birthday party.

As Shaun grew older, and less shy, unlike David, who was always seriously intimidated by his father, Shaun never was. By the time he was thirteen, he had morphed into a complete rebel who refused to listen to his father at all. Despite Jack’s oft-expressed disapproval, Shaun kept his hair shoulder-length and practiced for his rock band each night at full blast.

When Shaun was older, Jack and I were worried by the bad influences he might encounter growing up in Beverly Hills. So Jack decided to take Shaun out of Beverly Hills High School and, in the hope that he would grow up more normal by going to school in a more normal environment, send him somewhere more stable. So Jack found Shaun a private school in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, instead.