Read The Legs Are the Last to Go Online

Authors: Diahann Carroll

The Legs Are the Last to Go (9 page)

BOOK: The Legs Are the Last to Go
4.52Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

In those last years, we started to have more fun together than ever before. It was almost like our early days in New York, when she could do no wrong. I look at scrapbooks of photographs from my later years as a young senior citizen and find her in every other shot in her tinted glasses. There she is in one shot with Lenny Kravitz. There she is with Roscoe Lee Browne. There she is with Joan Collins. She's like the Forrest Gump of my life. And looking back now, I'm so glad she could enjoy it.

I just loved that we became pals again in her last years. We went shopping at malls in the Valley, and we'd eat dreadful Nedick's hot dogs just like we did on Thirty-fourth Street when she took me to Macy's in my childhood. Only instead of her giving me fashion advice, I was giving it to her. By then I had been on the International Best Dressed list. I was a senior style paragon who understood understatement, the pleasures of minimalism, beige, and black. My mother had a different approach, which I'd have to call “haute carnivale.” When it came to accessorizing, more to her was more. And if you have some sparkle on the sweater, why not have a little on the belt and skirt, too?

“Mother, please,” I'd say when she'd get in my car to go to lunch. “I look at you and I don't know if I'm coming or going. We cannot wear the beads, big earrings, necklace, and scarf all at the same time. It's too much. Really! Something has to go!”

“Diahann,” she'd say as she adjusted those tinted glasses, “I look fine.”

I remembered hearing the advice years ago to always remove one thing before leaving the house, and tried to explain it to her. It went right over her head.

“Just take off the earrings, Mom. Please!”

She just laughed and shook her head. “You know, Diahann, every time you approve of someone's attire, she's dressed as if she's going to a funeral.”

She was right. I, who had been dressed exuberantly in the day by Arnold Scaasi and Bill Blass, had become seriously sedate in my latter years. She, on the other hand, was still having a ball with her colorful clothes, like a girl in a sparkly fantasy.

I sat in that car, grinning, even as I shook my head.

“Okay, Mom, I'll make a deal with you. If you take off either the necklace or the earrings or the scarf, then you can decide where we go to lunch today.”

She never did. But I let her choose the restaurant anyway.

 

It happens eventually: the end. I was lucky it took as long as it did.

In her last years, when she was close to ninety, I'd notice crumbs on her clothes and stains on her sleeves, and I had to find a way to tell her without letting her know how badly she was failing. But she wanted to dress and wear heels right to the end, like me.

Eventually, she was in and out of emergency rooms, because she refused to have full-time help around. “I don't want you,” she'd tell them. “You're making me old before my time!” It became painfully clear she could not live alone in her house anymore. Against her wishes, our old friend Sylvia and I toured a lovely place near my home in Hollywood. And I did something very clever. I spoke with a young lady working there, and I said to her, “You know, I really have a terrible problem. I want my mother to move here so she'll be safe, but she doesn't know a soul in this building, so I'm very worried.” And this young lady smiles at me, and says, “I know who you are. You're Diahann Carroll. You were always so pleasant to everyone when you came to shop at my uncle's antique store, Ferrantes, on Melrose Place in Hollywood. So I'm going to keep an eye on your mother
and see that she gets a perfect room over the garden fountain.” I was so pleased. And I thought to myself, “So after spending all that money on antiques, it finally paid off!”

When we drove her over to look at the place, she was dressed to the nines, and although unhappy, she did enjoy arriving in my Rolls-Royce, just so people knew where she was coming from. Then I saw the look on her face when she saw how deluxe the place was, or perhaps a better word would be
grand
. Dining room was very nice. TV and game room? Not bad at all. I told her, “Okay, we don't have to speak to anyone today about any of this. Let's just go to the Beverly Wilshire for a fabulous lunch.” She pouted all the way through it, still angry about having to move out of her house. But we all worked to make her new room in that rest home as much like her house as possible. And eventually, she started to enjoy dressing for dinner with other well-to-do people in the dining room every night, and I was pleased.

Still, it was sad to see her wane. One day, my dear friend Selbra Hayes asked what did I think would make my mother happiest, and suggested inviting my father out to visit. Immediately, I recognized the importance of that advice. My father was single again. His second wife had passed away several years earlier. So I invited him out to Los Angeles. I told him Mom wanted him to see where she was living.

He arrived, eighty-eight years old, still tall and so handsome. And when I brought those two together, and they saw each other for the first time after so many years, it was the best Hollywood love scene I could imagine. They both looked ecstatic, like there was nowhere else they wanted to be. After a few minutes, we all had to sneak out and allow them to have their
time alone together. My father stayed with me all week. And every morning he would get up and dress impeccably. We'd have breakfast. Then I'd drive him over to see Mom and he'd stay there with her all day. Maybe it was my dream as well as theirs, to have them back together, if only for a week. He came back again a year later, when she was still well enough to sit with him outdoors. And they looked like they'd never been apart. I was having my own problems with Vic, my fourth husband, at the time. But seeing my own parents together like that, so happily together—it gave me the kind of hope I never would have expected at that stage of my life.

One night I couldn't sleep and I went to see her. By that point, she was being taken care of by hospice workers because it was near the end. An aide told me she was having difficulty breathing, and I could tell things were pretty bad. So I climbed into bed with her, careful not to disturb the tubes hooked up to her failing body, and I slowly put my arm around her. She felt so frail. Her breathing was labored. I leaned in to her ear, and kept my nose there for a moment, just taking her in. Then I said very softly, “You do know, Mom, that Dad wants to be with you at the end, when you're both gone, don't you? You're the only one.” I waited a moment, then I said, “Did you hear that, Mom? Did you hear what I said?” Some moments passed. Her IV machine dripped, and numbers flashed on machines that beeped and whirred. Then I saw her nodding. I felt her head move up and down against my chest. And then,
then
she smiled. It was faint, but it took my breath away. She heard me. She understood. She was still in love.

We sat together for a while. Then I told her I was going
home to bed, and that in the morning I had to make a speech at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, and then I'd return to see her in the afternoon. My driver got a call while I was speaking, and he called me with a message to call him. I knew what had happened. I rushed to her. She lay still in her bed, all life gone from her body. The tubes and machines were gone, too. It was the first time I had ever seen a person who was no longer breathing. I rubbed her forehead, and leaned in and said, “Rest now, Mom. You lived a wonderful life.”

She wasn't the only one who was well turned out for the funeral. I wore a stylish Carolina Herrera suit for the occasion, and a big dramatic hat she would have loved. I thought of her when I chose it. I know she would have approved. My mother almost always approved of what I wore. Well, for better or worse, she had my full attention. And when I look back on it now, I'm so glad I was there to give her my love and attention, right to the end. You only have one mother in life, after all.

Not long after she died, I formed a habit of speaking aloud to her. It helped me a great deal to say, “What would you do in this situation, Mom?” It still does. I know that sounds strange, given all the doubts I had about her. But when I was fourteen years old, there was nobody who had more to teach me than my mother. And later, even with all my issues, I always kept in my mind that she only wanted what was best for me. I've had some fans in my time, but nobody could make me feel as special as she did.

She was the first person who made me want to reach for the stars.

Sometimes, when I am listening to certain kinds of music,
particularly the kind she raised me to appreciate—Duke Ellington, Nat King Cole, and Billy Eckstine—I turn it up very loud, and I sing for her. And even though I'm not the best dancer, I dance a little, too.

I dance for my first and most devoted audience.

And on many days I wear tinted glasses just the way she did.

But never with big earrings. Please!

David Frost and Diahann Carroll. (Photograph by Ron Galella/WireImage)

THREE
Men, Take One

NORMA DESMOND HAD HER MAD SCENE AT THE TOP
of the stairs. I, on the other hand, had mine in a condo at the top of a high-rise in Beverly Hills in 1998. It was evening, and the lights were off and the entire city of Los Angeles was spread out beneath my walls of windows. Directly below me was Sunset Boulevard, a streaming river of car lights. I had just gotten off the phone with Vic Damone, who had left me for another woman months before, after ten years of marriage. Our conversation had been icy cold. When I hung up I felt newly betrayed, angry, and, more than anything else, desperately and terribly alone. I was sitting on the floor in the dark, teetering on the edge of confusion and madness. Very dramatic! What was I going to do with the rest of my life? I had not planned to be facing my senior years alone. How did it happen? And why?

At one time I adored Vic. We had some lovely, romantic moments in our ten years together. How could I not be se
duced by a handsome, impeccably dressed man who would call me in the evenings after I had gotten into bed, and softly croon “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” in an old-world Italian accent? When he first approached me in 1981, we were both performing at the Caribe Hilton in San Juan. Late one night, he sent an extravagant meal to my room, unannounced. It was thoughtful, presumptuous, and funny. I paid it little mind.

Upon our next meeting, I found I could not ignore him any longer. We were doing a show for a charity in a hotel in Palm Beach. On the flight down there, my manager, Roy, explained I would be on the bill with Damone, and that he was set as the closing act. That put me in a very competitive mood. One never wants to open for someone else. When I saw him at rehearsal, he said to me, “Hello, Diana!”—mispronouncing my name. I said to my assistant, “See, I told you—nothing upstairs.” Then, while I was performing, he stood in the wings to watch me, which was unconventional, to say the least, and somewhere between flattering and unsettling. After the show, Vic's conductor told me Vic would like to come up for a drink. I thought that would be nice. When he arrived in his tuxedo, I don't know what happened to me, but suddenly I saw his appeal, as if for the first time. He was tan, and his face was handsome, with a strong jawline, lovely salt-and-pepper hair, and dark eyes that seem to suggest the possibilities of something more. I was enjoying his company. Maybe it was the jokes he made—humor is often an aphrodisiac for me—but I was suddenly seeing him in a totally different way. Later, when every
one else had gone home, my assistant asked if I wanted her to stay. I found myself telling her no.

We both went up to New York from there, and we had dinner. I had the impression that he was a hardworking professional who had sustained a strong career for a long time, and I had great respect for that. And it was nice to be with someone who was something of a household name. His suits and shirts were bespoke, and I loved seeing his selection of clothing for dinner or a night out. When he first saw my home in Los Angeles, he remarked how elegant it was, and Cancerian that I am, that pleased me tremendously. Watching him cook was every career woman's dream. On Sundays in New York (I still had my apartment there), we'd go to the markets on Broadway, where he would choose ingredients as obsessively as any chef I'd ever seen. Then, arm in arm, we'd go back to my apartment on Riverside Drive, where he would fly into a happy high gear making the most wonderful pasta. Me? I always took pride in setting a really beautiful table. He loved that. We had a ball. Wherever we'd go, we had fun together.

Sometimes, when we toured, things got a little awkward. Clearly he was of a generation of men (Rat Pack in attitude, I'd say) for whom having a girl in every port was standard practice. Well into my fifties by then, a lady who'd been around the block herself more than once, I was wise enough not to worry about Vic's little lothario history.

When we were performing for a week in Vegas, for instance, this woman would come backstage to see Vic every night after the show with two children. They were dressed for
the occasion, and I was always very polite when introduced to them, but I didn't quite understand their relationship to Vic, or perhaps I knew I didn't want to. I mean, we were both too old, really, to worry about each other's past. It wasn't necessary.

One day the phone was ringing in the suite I was sharing with Vic, and he and Roy were all worked up.

“You answer it,” Vic said.

“Well, what do you want me to say?” Roy asked.

The two of them sounded like mischievous little boys. It was such a commotion that I finally asked them what was going on and if I could be of any assistance. It turned out that the caller was the lady who'd been coming to the dressing room with her children. She was convinced that Vic was their father, and hoped that he still had feelings for her.

The phone rang again. And as it rang I said to Vic and Roy, “I will answer this phone for you and take care of the situation for good. But you really must be sure you want to be rid of this woman, because once I speak with her, she will never call again.”

They told me to go ahead and answer the phone. I did and asked who was calling, and what it was about. “It's not something I can discuss with you,” the woman said.

“Well, if this has anything to do with you and the children you are bringing backstage to see Vic after our show, I'd like to tell you about something I've done.”

“Oh yeah, what's that?” she said.

“Well, I've set up an organization for women like you
called ICVD. That stands for Illegitimate Children of Vic Damone, and I could have some information sent to you about it if you'd like. We always have a lovely dinner for the women and children they believe are Vic's offspring, and it's a wonderful chance to exchange stories and ideas.”

Vic and Roy were choking with laughter as they listened. Maybe I was being insensitive. But on the other hand, was it considerate of this woman to come backstage with her children and constantly call a hotel suite she knew we shared?

“You bitch,” the woman said to me. Then she slammed down the phone.

And we never heard from her again.

There are other notable memories. Some were even on golf courses.

He was a seven-day-a-week golfer, and he was keen on teaching me to play. One day we were in Palm Springs, his favorite place, where he was purchasing a second home, and he took me to his favorite course. He was in his immaculate golf pants and V-neck sweater and I was in one of those adorable little golfing skirts, and he was standing up against me, intently instructing me how to hit the ball, and telling me how difficult it was. I went ahead and swung and hit that ball right into the hole. So I turned to him and said, “There! Now I've played golf, okay? I did it. It's done. And I will never understand how one can derive such a great deal of satisfaction from putting that little ball in that little hole more than once. Do I become happier if I do it a second time?” The boyish and surprised look on his tan, adorable face was one of such delight that I just wanted
to hug him. Later, he kept telling all his friends what happened, and he thought it was hysterical.

“She doesn't want lessons,” he told everyone. “She says she's done it and doesn't have to do it again! Isn't that a riot?” It was a wonderful giddy time.

I remember a trip we took to Hawaii with his three teenage daughters from another marriage. One day he took me in a golf cart high up onto the side of a mountain that seemed to overlook the entire world. We were literally above the clouds and I felt that way with him at that moment, although I will also say that when it started to rain, I insisted we stop puttering around in that golf cart and he take me back to the hotel. Even in the rain, it was difficult to get him to leave the golf course.

But I had my ways on that Hawaii trip. One day, I steered Vic away from the course by herding him and his daughters down to a boat I had rented for the afternoon. He looked worried. “How long are we going to be out at sea?” he asked.

“Not too long,” I promised. But we stayed out for most of the day. The sea was so gorgeous that day, beautiful swells against the rocky, tropical coastline, and occasionally flying fish leaping in front of the bow. I love to fish. I love being out at sea, far from any telephone or fax machine, and looking out at the clouds and the horizon. Something is always happening in the water. It rises and falls and surges, and if you pay attention you can see dolphins or whales, or follow the patterns of seabirds. I was in a big hat and bigger sunglasses, deep in conversation with one of Vic's daughters, when my line went taut, and the next thing I knew, everyone was around me yelling and helping me pull something in. I put my weight into it (and I was
much thinner then) and yanked up a big silver monster of a fish, a tuna, shiny as a quarter. We laughed all the way to shore.

That evening, we were all getting dressed to have dinner in the hotel restaurant, where our fish would be prepared for us. And it was just the most wonderful moment. There's nothing like the feeling you get when you wash the sea off of your body after a day in the salt air, and dress up for dinner. We were all so happy that evening. Although I think Vic would have been happier if he didn't learn that the hotel was charging us two hundred and fifty dollars to prepare the fish I caught.

“That's ridiculous,” he said.

“What are you going to do, Damone?” is all I said.

This was around 1986, my happy
Dynasty
period, when all my worries about my career were at bay and I was submerged in the pageantry of big hair and bigger shoulders. Joan Collins and I had been friends for a long time. In fact, just a couple of years earlier, in 1983, we were at a party at my New York apartment, wondering what the hell to do with our careers. Now all worries were gone. We were in a show so successful and fluffy that nobody on the set could have any serious problems. I'll never forget the day a director said to Catherine Oxenberg, “You know, this is not open-heart surgery. Just say your lines so that we can all go home.” The only problems we ever had were if Joan thought her costume looked too much like mine or Linda's. Then there'd be a gale-force wind of clothing changes that left the dressing-room floor looking as if a hurricane had come through and taken down a dress shop. Hair and makeup? Bring it on, please!

I loved my role of Dominique Deveraux, television's first black bitch. My character was introduced to the series at the end of the third season. I had asked Aaron Spelling to write me into the show. He thought it was a great idea. But it didn't happen overnight. In fact, months went by and I heard nothing about my idea moving forward. I think I actually sealed it on the night of the Golden Globes. I had just sung a love song from
Yentl
at the awards dinner at the request of none other than Barbra Streisand, who, I guess, knew that I am often told I have a half-Jewish soul!
Dynasty
got plenty of awards that night after its second season, and I was in such a great mood after singing to such a powerful room of show-business honchos that I threw caution to the wind along with everything I knew about etiquette. I had heard Aaron Spelling was having a private party with his
Dynasty
cast and crew to celebrate. So I went to the restaurant, uninvited. Happily, Aaron told me he was delighted to see me and had been seriously thinking about a part for me on
Dynasty.
After that, the doors flew open and I was in. Sometimes you have to break rules to get what you need. Although I do feel that it's also important that you know the rules before you break them.

When we started discussing my
Dynasty
part with Aaron's writers, I told them I wanted them to write a character for me as if they were writing for a rich white man. They did, and I had a ball! It was fine with me that race didn't figure into my character. I came out of an era with Bobby Short and Lena Horne, a time in which black performers strove for a kind of acceptability that a large part of the black community still encouraged in their role models. In the late sixties, when I
played Julia, a single working mother who was very smooth around the edges, I was suddenly accused of being a “white folks' nigger” by people who weren't comfortable with the show. (People either loved or hated it.) I always despised that. But I never saw myself as compromising. I sang the music I loved and accepted the roles that appealed to me. And what a relief it was to be able to play a believable black bitch divested of any politics at all.

Dynasty
was shot in the era of old-school network television, with gargantuan staffs and budgets. It was always such a pleasure driving onto the ABC lot to go to work in the morning only to be babied and pampered for hours. Vic could do what he liked best all day—play golf. And I could do what I liked best, work. We had a lot of laughs. One day, we three leading ladies were asked to do an awards show together, and the wardrobe designer wanted all of us in white. Joan was not having any of it. So while she went backstage to commandeer a different outfit, I talked Linda Evans into playing a little trick when she returned. While rehearsing at the podium, we kept shifting places to prevent Joan from placing herself in between us. We completely upset her natural tendency to always be center stage. Joan has a great sense of humor. And we had such a sense of victory during the run of that show. All three of us were deep into middle age, yet ruling the ratings as television stars.

I wonder if that caused problems for my relationship with Vic. Well, I was on a hit television show, and I was performing “one-nighters” (singing engagements) whenever the opportunity arose. I was an incredibly hard worker. Vic was none of the
above. Early on, long before we were married, he was having dinner with me when he started talking about the problems he was having paying for his house in Palm Springs. I thought that was kind of strange, but no major alarm bells went off in my head. Bells didn't go off in London, either, when he decided that despite the fact that we had tickets to the theater, he really wasn't interested in going, just as he refused to go to see Pavarotti with me one night in Los Angeles because he couldn't miss a baseball game on television. I like sports on television, but I wasn't sure I wanted to be married to a sports addict. By the time the alarm bells finally sounded loud and clear, it was too late.

BOOK: The Legs Are the Last to Go
4.52Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Un verano en Sicilia by Marlena de Blasi
Star Struck by Laurelin Paige