CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Divorce and Escape

WITH HAYDEN NOW STEADILY WORKING AGAIN, HE RESUMED HIS psychoanalysis, this time with a new psychiatrist. Much to Hayden’s relief, his new therapist was much more talkative and interactive, but also “heavy-handed” and “caustic.” Still, Hayden felt he wasn’t making progress. His therapist quickly discovered the source of his problems. His marriage to Betty was extremely volatile. They had already separated five times, reconciling each time. Why, asked the therapist, did he stay in the shattered marriage? Hayden lamely replied it was for the sake of their four children. If they divorced, he feared Betty would become involved in a new and equally volatile and unstable relationship. “But what chance do they have now?” countered his doctor, “in a home full of hatred.”¹ A divorce seemed like the only logical course, given the totally unsatisfactory situation. Once again, Hayden returned to the subject of his children. He was obsessed with his desire to get custody.

“I was wondering,” he asked, “just why I’m so damn obsessed with this question of custody. Thousands of men with kids go through what I’m involved in. They make up their minds even though they’re sick at the thought of being cut off from their kids.”

“I believe if we knew the answer to that question,” his therapist astutely observed, “you would need no further treatment.”² To assist his patient with his dilemma, he pointed out that Betty did not have custody of her daughter from her first marriage. Hayden should look into those circumstances, his doctor advised. It had never occurred to Hayden to investigate that before. He decided to have his lawyer help him to look into his wife’s previous divorce.

Hayden was no longer working with Martin Gang, but instead with a younger lawyer in the firm. His almost quixotic quest to obtain custody of his children nearly drove his attorney to drink. He had filed for divorce in December of 1951, and on April 24, 1953, the courts granted the Haydens an interlocutory divorce. The movie star harangued his lawyer into accompanying him to the country clerk’s office where they searched the records. After digging through multiple files, they found what they were after. There was enough dirt on Betty in the file to convince Hayden to pursue his custody battle for their children. He laid out his plan to have private detectives tail Betty and obtain evidence to show that she was an unfit parent. As his exasperated attorney listened to Hayden rage on about catching Betty in the act, he finally interrupted him to point out a legal reality: “The fact that you are saddled with an interlocutory decree of divorce. The property settlement is in effect. All of this works in her favor—gives her plenty of latitude to go on with her life.”

“Okay then,” countered his client. “I’ll reconcile and stick around for a couple of months. That will dismiss the present divorce. Then we’ll start over from scratch.”

“You are prepared to do a thing like that?”

“You’re goddamn right I am.”³

With that, the lawyer pointed out the precariousness of such a plan. Hayden already owed the law firm a lot of money. Private detectives would add to his financial burden. Hayden brushed those arguments aside, claiming he would continue to grind out “crap pictures” and “crap television” shows to generate the money. Reluctantly, his attorney agreed to support his client’s somewhat dubious plan. He ended the session with some stern and prophetic advice. “The most important part of the deal is this. Custody is never settled. Matters of custody aren’t like normal litigation. Don’t ever forget I said that. We’re going ahead because you won’t listen to reason.” He also felt compelled to add an editorial comment: “You aren’t the smartest client I have, but you just might be the most stubborn.”⁴

Following his plan, Sterling and Betty reconciled, but not long after, the Haydens once again separated and Hayden again filed for divorce from his wife. This time, he was armed with information obtained by the private detectives that he had hired to follow Betty. They produced evidence that she had had six affairs while she was still married to Hayden. Confronted with this, Betty voluntarily surrendered custody of the children in an agreement signed on June 5, 1955.⁵ On August 28, 1955, Hayden was granted a divorce from Betty. During the proceedings, he told the judge that she “forced the breakup of their marriage by trying to run his life so completely that he could no longer stand it.”⁶ In the media’s coverage of the divorce proceedings, they described the reason for the divorce as given to them by Hayden: “henpecking.” Legally, it was mental cruelty.⁷

• • •

Hayden now had custody of his four children and he was determined to be a model father to shield himself from any further actions by his ex-wife. “If ever a man was obsessed with the challenge of fatherhood, I was that man,” he would recall.⁸ He was determined to provide an idyllic life for his children that would erase the memories of the constant fighting that he and Betty had engaged in throughout the years of their marriage.

Renting a spacious home in the Hollywood suburbs, he settled down to the life of an active community participant, all for the sake of providing stability for his children. He joined the PTA, enrolled the boys in the Little League, and put his daughter in ballet school and signed her up for piano lessons. He even joined the local Democratic Club.⁹ In his own words, “he was the pillar of the town, and none of the neighbors suspected that a large share of his devotion stemmed from his need to ‘create a proper father image’ (to use his lawyer’s phrase) that could, should the need arise, be presented to the judge in the Domestic Relations Court.”¹⁰ Reflecting back to that time in Sterling’s life, Norm Hatch praised his friend’s efforts with his children. “He really did a job on them,” Hatch said.¹¹

He was quick to acknowledge that his ability to pull off his role as “father of the year” was in large part due to his friendship with nearby neighbors Turnley and Flora Walker. Turnley Walker was a television writer who had been stricken with polio as a youth. His wife Flora was a “dedicated homemaker and militant community spirit.” Being a community activist, it was her “sponsorship” of Hayden in the community that allowed him to be accepted as a model father figure. The Hayden family and the Walker family became fast friends.

• • •

In January of 1958, Hayden went to court to have his named legally changed from John Hamilton back to Sterling Hayden. The reason he gave was that Hayden was his children’s name, and he had been using it professionally since returning to the film industry. On January 13, his request was granted by the court.

By early 1958, Hayden was undergoing a personal crisis because of the continuing conflict with Betty, who had initiated another battle for the custody of their children, the mounting bills he was accruing, and his general hatred of acting. He was now forty-two years old. If he was going to make a break, time was running out. He explained his dilemma early in his autobiography: “We are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention from the sheer idiocy of the charade … The years thunder by. The dreams of our youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed.”¹²

His self-denigration continued in earnest. While there was nothing wrong with being an actor, with the exalted status and financial rewards that come with it, he reasoned, simply because one “photographs well,” seemed all wrong. Why, then, did he do it? How did he reconcile these feelings with the fact that he was a highly paid actor? He never really could, and he freely admitted that he hated the work. And why get into the dilemma in the first place? “Simple. The same deficiencies of character that led me into Hollywood prevented my escape.”¹³ Hayden’s advisors kept presenting film opportunities to help him ease his financial burden, but they kept forgetting that he was a man who didn’t care about making money. By his own admission, he had never invested any money because he didn’t believe in accepting unearned income.

After turning down several film opportunities, Hayden decided to act on his instincts. In March of 1958, he began to arrange his break from Hollywood. His first step was to take his schooner Wanderer, which he had purchased on Christmas Day 1955, for $20,000, from Los Angeles to San Francisco. After obtaining photographs of his four children that were passport-suitable, he returned them to their mother for the next month while he worked on his breakaway plan. In June, he hired a first mate, Spike Africa, an unconventional free spirit not unlike Hayden. That summer, Hayden pulled Wanderer into the Anderson and Cristonani’s Shipyard, just south of San Francisco. In order to finance the shipyard work, Hayden obtained a $15,000 mortgage on the ship. Under Africa’s watchful eyes, the ship underwent the much-needed overhaul which was completed by the beginning of August. Hayden admitted that other work was needed, but “what we didn’t have we could do without.”¹⁴

Hayden had actually been contemplating the journey for two years. He would secure financial backing and then take a largely amateur crew and sail from California to Scandinavia, transiting the Panama Canal. They would film the entire voyage, capturing the flavor of the voyage and then break the film into segments suitable for television. He ran into a brick wall in his attempts to obtain financing for the voyage. He approached over eighty possible investors, but each one turned him down. “Why risk capital in such a venture,” he ruefully recalled, “when the sponsor and the network cried for blood and guts and sex?”¹⁵ Undaunted, he proceeded to begin to select a crew for the voyage.

In June of 1958, Hayden had placed an ad in the personal columns of the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Territorial Enterprise, Saturday Review, and Christian Science Monitor. It read:

VOYAGE UNDER SAIL

100-ton ex-Pilot schooner sailing from San Francisco August 15 for Copenhagen Sept. 15, 1959 [sic]. Need six active intelligent young men and women. Send details to Sterling Hayden, Box 655—Sausalito, California.¹⁶

He received two thousand replies within a month of the ad’s appearance. In addition, several people just showed up at the pier, gear in hand and ready to go. Some of the applicants were real eccentrics not fit to take to sea with him. Most were just good people who, like Sterling Hayden, searched for adventure, loved the sea, and were genuine free spirits.

One of the respondents to Hayden’s ad was a nineteen-year-old college student named Dennis Powers. When he read the ad, Powers had just finished his sophomore year at Occidental College, and he and several of his fraternity brothers wrote to Hayden, requesting that they be considered for the voyage. Powers was an art major and mentioned in his letter that his favorite authors were Herman Melville and Joseph Conrad. Shortly after that, Hayden contacted him and arranged a meeting in Hollywood.

Over half a century later, Powers would recall the first meeting with Sterling Hayden that took place in Hollywood in June of 1958. “I was totally intimidated by him at the meeting. I didn’t know much about him.”¹⁷ The interview, which lasted twenty minutes, went very well. Towards the end, Powers provided a detail that he thought would be the showstopper: He didn’t know anything about sailing. Unfazed, Hayden replied, “Well, you’ve read about it and for me that’s very important.”¹⁸ As they parted, Hayden told them he would be in touch. Almost immediately after that, Powers was delighted to receive a card form the actor, inviting him to come up to the San Francisco Bay Area to see the Wanderer.

Arriving in San Francisco later that month, Powers remained in awe of his new acquaintance. “I felt like Ishmael. I didn’t know anything and here I was meeting with Ahab!”¹⁹ There were already several other applicants working on the schooner, performing all the required nautical tasks such as painting and helping to properly maintain the decks. It soon became obvious that Hayden was using the interview process as a way of obtaining free labor to prepare the schooner for the long voyage. It was also a way for him to evaluate qualifications, as well as the potential of each applicant for teamwork. Over the next few weeks, many prospective crewmembers would rotate through Wanderer until Hayden made his final crew selection. Powers was thrilled to be one of the selectees. Having just turned twenty, he was the youngest crewmember selected. Although he had no sea experience, he proved to be an excellent team player, something that was critically important to Hayden. In addition, he loved Hayden’s children, as well as first mate Spike Africa’s three children, and they all responded well to him. Describing the crew of Wanderer, he said: “We became a family.”²⁰

Hayden had no trouble obtaining an adequate crew. All told, his plan called for a crew of thirteen adults and seven children. Hayden would be taking his four children, and Spike Africa and his wife would be bringing their three children. The crew would also have a doctor as well as a teacher to provide schooling to the children. In addition, to provide photographic documentation of the voyage, Hayden brought along famed photographer Dody Weston Thompson, who would act has a filmmaker’s assistant for him.

In preparation for the voyage, Hayden had arranged for ten tons of fresh water, six tons of fuel, a four-month supply of food, and three hundred charts to be brought aboard. In addition, he also brought aboard over five hundred books. There was one item that he did not have and had no intention of obtaining: a radio or even a basic receiving set. This omission would prove to be critical in the legal action that would be forthcoming. One complicating factor that Hayden had not planned on, which suddenly put the whole trip in jeopardy, was his ex-wife Betty. She acted quickly when she learned of her ex-husband’s plan to sail to Scandinavia with their children. On August 25, her lawyers filed an injunction against Sterling Hayden, prohibiting him from taking the children with him.

Clearly frustrated, Hayden had to inform the crew that their departure date was going to be pushed back first to September, then to November 1. The trial was again delayed, with the departure date slipping to November 15 and then to December 1. Finally, the court date was set for December 4. All along, Hayden suspected that Betty’s lawyers were dragging their feet and drawing out the legal process in the hope that he would call off the voyage in frustration. If that was their intention, they truly misjudged him and underestimated his resolve.

In fact, the delay in departure actually seemed to help Hayden from a monetary standpoint. During the waiting period, he was finally able to get financing for the voyage. It came from Republic Pictures, which agreed to finance the filming of the voyage with two promissory notes totaling $50,000. Hayden later concluded that the deal was definitely not in his favor. He would have to agree to sign away 40 percent of the ownership of the finished film. Yet he was so desperate for the money that he instructed his attorney to draw up the papers to consummate the deal. His lawyer was staunchly opposed it. “Suicide,” he said, “you’ll regret it as long as you live.”

“Draw up the papers,” instructed Hayden.

“You’ll be in so deep you’ll never get out—unless you go for a bankruptcy bath.”

But the stubborn client insisted: “Just fix us up with the papers.” His attorney was unable to talk Hayden out of the deal. A few weeks later, Hayden signed the contract with Republic Pictures. Even as he signed the papers, he had misgivings. The contract stipulated that if he failed to produce a film, he would have to reimburse Republic Pictures the $50,000 that they had loaned him. The contract bound Hayden to star in four to six pictures for the company, and he would be obligated to pay the film company 50 percent of his gross earnings until the studio made back the money they had fronted him. Despite his own doubts over the wisdom of obligating himself in this fashion, he decided to proceed with the financially reckless path that was so typical of the way he conducted his entire life. Describing the situation in his own words, he stated: “To hell with it. I’d worry about it later. The only thing to do was battle it out for the court’s permission—then get to Scandinavia as planned and come through with the film en route.”²¹

The financial windfall allowed Hayden to settle the mortgage on the schooner and pay for the provisions for the planned voyage. Much to his relief, none of his recruited crew left despite the prolonged delays. As he waited for his day in court, he assessed his financial status in his mind. The numbers were grim. He had possibly $1,000 in liquid cash, but he owed money everywhere. He was $6,000 in debt, owed his own lawyers over $10,000, plus another $5,000 to Betty’s attorneys.²² It was typical of Sterling Hayden’s approach to money.

On December 4, 1958, the hearings finally began. The crux of the argument that Betty Hayden’s lawyers utilized was the dangerous nature of the proposed voyage in the Wanderer. The schooner, they argued, was old, obsolete, and decrepit. To a master sailor such as Hayden, the arguments were baseless. True, he would acknowledge, the ship didn’t have a lot of fancy bells and whistles, but a real sailor had no need for these things. As far as the claim that the ship was obsolete, Hayden sarcastically observed, “I laugh, for the winds and the seas don’t change. Has the circular storm grown obsolete? Or the heave of a long ground swell?”²³

When he was on the witness stand being cross-examined by his ex-wife’s lawyers, they attempted to indicate the real danger posed by the fact that Wanderer had no radio for communication with the outside world. Hayden’s response was indicative of his confidence in his superb seamanship skills as well as his philosophy of the relationship between man and the sea. “Why go to sea under sail at all,” he proposed, “if you’re so concerned with security? Why not go as a tourist, as a kind of frozen vegetable buying your way across the world surrounded by running hot water, epicurean cuisine, swimming pools, and tiny-tot programs, mommy and daddy programs—designed for your delectation, and designed to quarantine you from the contagion of elemental wonder and awe known only to simple living? For navigation I rely on simple tools: sextant and chronometer, charts and parallel rules, and a precious selection of passage-worn triangles made of celluloid gone yellow over the years.”²⁴ It was an explanation that only a true seaman would understand and appreciate.

When the hearings ended, the waiting began as the judge deliberated the case. Finally, on January 14, 1959, Hayden received a telegram from his attorney Grant Cooper. The judge would be receiving all counsel in his chambers the next day at 2 p.m. to announce his decision. Cooper promised to call Hayden immediately after the session. The next day, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Emil F. Gumpert was lavish in his praise of Sterling Hayden as a father and was very sympathetic to him in his battle with his ex-wife. “In forty-three years at the bar and at the bench,” he stated, “the author of this opinion has never heard a more forthright witness than the plaintiff, nor one who indicated a more zealous desire to be completely honest, truthful, and factual … The uncontradicted evidence … compels the court to express the wish that all children might be blessed with a love and devotion, a concern and care, equal to that which this father has bestowed on his offspring.”²⁵

Hayden would retain custody of his children, but the judge added a stipulation: he could not take the children with him on the proposed voyage on the Wanderer. The judge had ruled that the schooner was not safe for such a long open-sea journey. Sterling Hayden and Wanderer were legally enjoined from sailing with the children aboard. Betty had won that point.

While the legal proceedings were in progress, Hayden sat in his cabin aboard Wanderer, staring at both the phone and the clock. At roughly 2:30, the call came through. Cooper called collect from a phone booth in the courthouse to deliver the judge’s verdict. After his client accepted the charges, the attorney’s initial words were ominous. “Sterling, this is Grant … now listen, fellow, I have some bad news—”

“Don’t tell me I lost custody of the kids?” interrupted Hayden.

“No, God no, nothing like that. But the voyage is off—did you hear me?—the court rules the voyage is off—”

“Yeah, I heard you—you’re not kidding are you?”

“Sterling, I wouldn’t kid about this—why, I’ve never been more stunned or disappointed in my life—” Cooper offered to read his copy of the judge’s ruling over the phone, but Hayden was in no mood to hear it and instructed him to mail it to him. “I’ll be goddamned that’s all I can say just yet,” he angrily explained.

“Don’t be upset,” his lawyer countered. “Let me tell you something’ll make you feel better. There’s every reason to believe that if we wait nine or ten months, then go back to the court, they’ll give us—”

“The hell you say,” exploded Hayden. “I’ve been in that court system fourteen times in the past eight months—that’s enough—”

“Look, fellow, don’t get carried away. I’m trying to help you. Within a year, I promise you, we’ll go back and get permission to take the children out of the country—you can sail the schooner and they can fly from port to port to greet you as you come in—I know that’s not what you want but we have to be practical sometimes—”²⁶

The conversation quickly trailed off. It seemed that Hayden had lost his battle to voyage around the world with his children aboard the Wanderer. But it only appeared that way.

• • •

With the voyage in limbo, Hayden’s agent approached him with another financially rewarding proposition. Warner Bros. was preparing the film version of Sloan Wilson’s bestseller A Summer Place and they wanted Sterling Hayden for one of the starring roles. It would be a six-week shoot in Big Sur and for his co-starring role, he would be paid $40,000. His agent, Joe Grippo, was sure Hayden would grudgingly sign on for the project. His client was broke and needed the money, plus it looked doubtful that the proposed Scandinavian voyage would ever take place. Grippo anticipated that he would have to coerce his complicated client into accepting the role, but to his surprise, Hayden readily agreed to accept the film role. Asking Hayden if he wanted to think it over before committing, Hayden somberly replied, “I know when I’m licked I guess.”²⁷ Filming was scheduled to begin on February 10. It was all a smoke screen. Hayden had no intention of making the film. He was going to be at sea.

• • •

To all observers, it appeared that Hayden had lost his battle. He confirmed to the United Press that he was indeed going to take the role in A Summer Place, as he had committed to. His only plan, he stated publicly, was to sail Wanderer down to Santa Barbara. His planned departure would take place on January 18. But the issue of finances still dogged him. It was one thing to go to sea completely broke. It was quite another to do it while defying a court injunction.²⁸ He had never been so deeply in debt. By his own calculations he would need at least $10,000 to realistically embark on his proposed journey. In addition, violating the injunction would make him a fugitive from the law, rendering him unable to pull into any American port without being subject to arrest. His itinerary had called for Wanderer to transit the Panama Canal, visit the West Indies, and then make Atlantic coast stops at Charleston, South Carolina, Washington, DC, New York, and a number of New England ports, including Gloucester, Massachusetts.²⁹ Then they would proceed to navigate across the Atlantic and arrive in Scandinavia. Now, he told his crew that they would be taking one final sail down to Santa Barbara.

Before leaving San Francisco, Hayden looked over his contract with Republic Pictures. He saw a possible means in which to obtain the $10,000 that he would need. The contract stated that of the $50,000 loan, $10,000 of it remained on deposit to be drawn when he had legal permission to sail. He knew he had to act quickly. He placed a call to his contact at Republic Pictures and laid his cards on the table: he needed $10,000 before the close of business that very day. A period of silence followed, and then his friend spoke. “I think I follow you, Hayden; you’re planning to sail without the kids, is that it?”

“Yeah, yeah, Jack, sure, that’s it,” he replied, lying through his teeth.

“Well, in that case, I don’t see why … All right, I’ll start things moving—take a few days, of course.”

“I need it today.”

“This I can’t understand. Why the big rush?”³⁰

Hayden began to offer a multiplicity of reasons, until his friend agreed to arrange for the money, contingent upon Hayden signing a document attesting to the fact that he would not be taking his children on the voyage. This Hayden readily agreed to.

While the money was being arranged, Hayden grabbed a cab and headed for the Branch Hydrographic Office to pick up navigation charts. None of the charts had anything to do with a route to Scandinavia. Rather, they were all of Pacific Ocean areas. After spending $200, he left with the charts under his arm. Next, he took a taxi to the French consul. There he obtained visas for Tahiti for all of the crewmembers. One thing he could not obtain were the passports for his four children. They were locked up in a federal building as per court order. His next stop was the Custom House, where he obtained a bill of health and listed his destination as Jakarta, Indonesia. After purchasing fresh meat and vegetables, designating a power of attorney, and canceling the insurance on the schooner, he checked back with the Wanderer via telephone. It was lucky for him that he did.

He had received an urgent message to call Roger Davis, a lawyer at the firm of Loeb and Loeb, who handled Republic Picture’s legal affairs. Calling collect from a phone booth, Hayden was able to reach the lawyer, who had some bad news. As counsel for the company, he informed Hayden that he couldn’t approve of Hayden’s request for the money. “It’s not as simple as you seem to think,” he lectured the actor. “I have a copy of the court’s order. It states very clearly, page 6, line 26, and I quote: ‘The proposed ocean voyage is enjoined’ unquote.”³¹

Wanderer was not going anywhere.

He arrived back at the ship while the crew was eating lunch. Gloomily, he entered the cabin and found Spike Africa and his wife Red inside. Eyeing the charts under his arm, Spike assumed they were good to go. Hayden broke the news to them—they didn’t have the money to embark on the voyage. Watching the couple, Hayden realized that he would never be so fortunate again to find such a couple (who were also bringing their three children along on the voyage) who seemed so perfectly suited to work with him on their planned adventure. People who, like him, were willing to walk away from the material world and embark on a bold adventure, to turn their back on money and material goods and to really live life.

At 2 p.m., the phone rang. It was his colleague from Republic Pictures. “Sterling?” he began. “Don’t ask me any questions, but you’re going to get your money. It’s on the way, should be in Sausalito by five-thirty. Bank closes at six. That’s all. Have a good trip.”³² Hayden hadn’t spoken a word. The Africas were not privy to the conversation.

Arriving at the bank five minutes before closing time, Sterling Hayden was able to acquire the funding he needed for his planned journey. He reported back aboard the schooner as the sun was starting to set. Prepare to get underway, he informed his crew. They were going to take their last voyage together—to Santa Barbara. He then placed a call to Norm Hatch in the Washington, DC, area and he revealed his real plan to him. Hatch strongly advised against it, pointing out that if he defied the court order, he could be considered a fugitive from justice. “I can’t pay attention to them,” Sterling retorted. Hatch appealed one last time to his friend but admitted, “That didn’t work.”³³

At 11 p.m. on January 18, 1959, Wanderer got underway with the four Hayden children aboard, allegedly for Santa Barbara, 310 miles south. Hayden guided the ship to a point just outside of the twelve-mile limit. There, he assembled the crew and made an announcement. They were not going to Santa Barbara; they were bound for Tahiti. Explaining his reasons and concluding by saying, “This is what I want to do,” he then asked the crew for their input. As Dennis Powers recalled, “After all we had done together in preparation, were we going to say no?”³⁴ As Hayden would recount to Parade magazine that summer, “There was a moment of silence, followed by a faint cheer.”³⁵ Wanderer set a course west for Tahiti and Sterling Hayden, in violating the court injunction, became a fugitive from United States justice.