Once I was up and about, I moved into a condo on one of the lower floors of a Wilshire Boulevard high-rise in West Los Angeles. My parents had purchased it for me as an investment a few years earlier and rented it out, though it had recently become vacant. I didn’t want to go back to my old place in Woodland Hills. I felt like I had outgrown it and needed a fresh start.
Work, the one thing about which I was most passionate, had been sporadic while I was with Eric, and I wanted to get back to it. So I was excited when I was cast in an episode of The Streets of San Francisco. Better still, it shot in San Francisco, giving me an excuse to get out of town. Before I left, my friend Carin, knowing my thing for older men, joked that I’d probably have a fling with the show’s star Karl Malden. She had a point that made me laugh.
As it turned out, I got involved with Richard Hatch, the handsome actor who stepped in after the show’s original colead Michael Douglas won a slew of Oscars for producing One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and left to pursue a movie career. The episode was titled “No Minor Vices,” and I played a teenage call girl who’s the subject of an investigation after some of her johns are murdered. The culprit turns out to be her father. Richard and I started flirting on the first day. He invited me to lunch, which ended up including a full bottle of red wine.
I returned to work with a serious buzz and learned my scenes had been switched while we were at lunch and I had to work with Karl. I hated myself for not being in a condition to work with an actor of his caliber. It was emblematic of so much that was to come. I cheated myself as much as him. But I had other worries, like standing straight and walking without falling down. Our scene was outdoors. I spotted a line in the sidewalk, and after the director yelled “action,” I followed it to my mark.
Later, Richard assured me that no one could tell I was tipsy. Such a relief. We were in his apartment, an amazing little place in the city, where we began an affair lasting several months. He saw me in Los Angeles on weekends and I flew up to San Francisco a few times. I had no delusions about where the relationship was going or how long it would last. All the girls were into Richard and vice versa.
It was a classic rebound fling, except that in addition to being hot, Richard was also genuinely nice. I had fun being with him, and it was a time when I needed to feel good about myself. He was into health foods and working out, something I wish would have had a more lasting influence on me.
Between visits with Richard, I got a part in the movie Pony Express Rider, the story of a young man (played by Stewart Petersen) who joins the Pony Express while searching for his father’s killer. I served as the love interest, Rose of Sharon. The movie was shot in Kerrville, Texas, a beautiful, rugged area of oak-covered hills and green valleys. Again, I enjoyed getting away from Los Angeles even though I ended up with some nasty chigger bites on my legs from wearing a wide hoopskirt.
I relearned how to ride a horse, something I’d enjoyed as a kid when my father was an investor in a Malibu stable. I did my own stunts and got hurt when a horse dragged me a few hundred feet across the ground, but I didn’t complain, not with costars like Slim Pickens, Dub Taylor, and other veterans of great Westerns looking on. Those men like tough women, and nothing made me prouder than hearing them cheer “atta girl” as I dusted myself off.
By the end of that bicentennial summer, I was back in Los Angeles and hanging out with the crowd at Bill’s. Work had kept me away from there, but I hadn’t severed ties and in fact had kept up with the same crowd, minus Eric, who’d drifted away on his own. I was drawn right back into the routine. My use was even more intense than before, and so were my friendships with Bill, Andy, Clark, and Tony.
Life got crazier. One day Clark threw a party at his parents’ home and patched together white bed sheets in the backyard to make an enormous movie screen, then projected the triple-X-rated film Deep Throat. He thought only the people in the backyard could see it, but it turned out passersby on Sunset Boulevard could see the other side of the sheet, and soon hundreds of people, strangers, came streaming into the yard through the bushes and over the wall to watch the movie.
While all this was going on I was upstairs in Clark’s brother’s bedroom, going through his dresser in search of more cocaine.
Without Eric, I worried that my access to Bill might dry up. Why I worried, I don’t know. I hadn’t been given a reason. But I got anxious when I thought about being stranded with no supply, and so I started dating Tony. Tall, light-skinned, with long, brown hair, Tony was the son of a famous Hollywood songwriter. He was trying to make it in the music business, too, though he didn’t need to work. He had plenty of money, which he spent on drugs.
Though Tony and I did not have anything in common, nor did I feel any passion when we were together, the drugs made him attractive to me. Of course I told myself otherwise. Addicts are the best liars on the planet. Ours was a crazy, coke-driven relationship that burned, as we did, for days, then crashed in a heap of singed flesh and synapses, tangled in bed but uninterested in sex.
We were dating in October 1976 when Florence Henderson, Susan Olsen, Mike Lookinland, and I appeared on the Donny and Marie show, one of ABC’s most popular variety shows. Donny and Marie worked with an impressive seriousness. They were everything I wasn’t. But I felt a measure of comfort around my former Brady costars, and the skits we did made few demands.
I was at Bill’s the night it aired. My agent called a couple days later and said the show’s ratings were so huge that ABC president Fred Silverman ordered Donny and Marie producers Sid and Marty Kroft to put together a Brady Bunch variety special. In fact, he’d already scheduled the special at the end of November. It was almost unheard of. Likewise, we had only about six and a half weeks to put a show together.
Marty Kroft phoned each of us to express his enthusiasm and discuss the show. Everyone signed on except for Eve. Having won raves in the gritty issue-oriented TV movie Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway, she was intent on pursuing a serious acting career and putting the Bradys in her past. Several of us tried talking to her, but she was adamant.
Though I was disappointed I wouldn’t be seeing her, I respected her decision. I was even envious.
The rest of us, though, threw ourselves into a frenzied period of meetings, fittings, and rehearsals. Aside from the affection we had for one another, we also shared a genuine enthusiasm for the wacky endeavor itself. Of course the money was good and welcomed, but we were, oddly enough, swept up by a collective hope that the show would turn into something big, like the next Sonny & Cher variety show and we could go on tour and…well, it was crazy.
Crazier still was Bob Reed. After fighting with producers through every season of The Brady Bunch, he was the most excited of all. We joked that it was the first time any of us could remember him wanting to do something Brady-related. But he sang and danced without caring that he was lousy and the show itself was worse. His inner Dorothy had found her calling.
One day, as I stood next to Florence in rehearsal, I leaned in and asked how I could not have seen he was gay. Suddenly it was obvious.
Years later he told Barry that although he knew he was terrible and slow to learn the dance steps, he had fun. Great attitude. Barry, who had recently starred in a Broadway production of Pippin, was also in his element. Florence, the musical-comedy pro, held us together. As for Chris, the poor guy was tortured by two left feet and even less singing ability, but he was game for anything. Likewise Mike and Susie. I fell in between Bob and Barry and Florence. I worked my butt off and secretly fantasized that the show, if it took off, might rekindle a singing career for me.
Fat chance. The Krofts and writer Bruce Vilanch threw together a fractured and downright weird concoction of material, starting with our opening performance of the hits “Baby Face” and “Love to Love You Baby” (yes, our version of Donna Summer’s disco classic). As we worked it onstage, the Kroffette Dancers and Water Follies performed a synchronized ballet in a giant swimming pool in front of us. And that was merely the first couple of minutes.
For the next hour, we mixed the barest bones of a story set in the Bradys’ home with skits and musical numbers. Florence sang “One” from A Chorus Line. Barry and I did a fifties-inspired rendition of “Splish Splash” with Donny and Marie. Bob dressed in a bunny suit. “Peter” and “Marcia” fought over the phone. Barry delivered an overly earnest “Corner of the Sky” from Pippin. And most of the guys were pushed into the pool. Finally, the show closed with all of us onstage, debating what to sing as a finale. Unable to agree, we performed about six songs in different combinations, finally closing with “The Hustle” and “Shake Your Booty.”
Never had a variety show contained such…variety.
But the special was another ratings hit, and ABC ordered eight more episodes starting in January 1977. Lee Majors and Farrah Fawcett provided the sizzle on the first show, and subsequent guest stars included Tina Turner, the Hudson Brothers, Milton Berle, Rip Taylor, Vincent Price, Charo, Redd Foxx, and the Ohio Players.
I did coke throughout those shows. It was the first time I’d showed up for work high. I never should have crossed that line, because once past it, I kept going. One day I showed up strung out after three straight days without sleep. After that, I often showed up late for rehearsals. When no one said anything, I figured they didn’t know. Years later, I found out that all of them knew I had a problem. They just didn’t know how to approach me about it.
Florence knew Chevy Chase, who was making a movie on the lot. One day she passed on the word from Chevy that his friend Steve Martin wanted my phone number so he could ask me out. Of course I gave permission. I was flattered. Steve Martin was like a rock star, not just a wild and crazy guy but a wildly funny and, from what I understood, a wildly intelligent guy, too.
So he seemed on the phone. We arranged to meet for dinner at the venerable Hollywood restaurant Musso & Frank’s. Both of us brought a friend to make it more casual. After dinner, we went back to Steve’s apartment, where we talked and made out. I remember him being a very good kisser. But I was insecure and either high or spaced out (most likely both), and I didn’t laugh at his jokes.
Though Steve was too polite and confident of his talent to say anything, I’m sure my inability to carry on a normal conversation or respond intelligently put him off. We never spoke again after that date. I’ve always regretted my behavior because he impressed me as an extraordinary guy. I would’ve enjoyed a second date. I used to think if the circumstances had been different we could’ve hit it off.
I took my bad habits onto my next job, the movie Moonshine County Express. It was a redneck action picture directed by Gus Trikonis, Goldie Hawn’s first husband. Susan Howard, Claudia Jennings, and I played three sisters who took over the family’s moonshine business after our daddy was murdered. Figure-revealing crop tops, short shorts, and fast cars compensated for a thin plot.
The movie was shot in Nevada City, California, an old gold-rush town north of Sacramento, where we decamped in Victorian-style hotels that hadn’t seen as much action since the boom times in the mid-1800s. It was only a few days before people found out who had coke, who had the quaaludes, and who had the pot. Our crew was more like a pharmaceutical convention than a movie. Aside from John Saxon, Susan Howard, and a few other straight arrows, I could barely go thirty minutes without someone asking if I wanted a bump.
Claudia and I became instant best friends after discovering both of us had a great capacity for snorting coke. I didn’t recall that she had appeared in the “Adios, Johnny Bravo” episode of The Brady Bunch in 1973, which was strange, because she was a hard one to forget. A sexy redhead, she had been Playboy’s 1970 Playmate of the Year, then landed a part in the steamy adaptation of Jackie Susann’s The Love Machine, and worked steadily on TV and in B-movies, including the cult roller-derby favorite, Unholy Rollers, whose editor was Martin Scorsese.
She was disappointed after losing the part of Wonder Woman to Lynda Carter, but, as she told me, that was show business; you had to deal with the bruises. Sniff. Sniff. We traded stories, and I learned she’d started doing drugs after injuring herself on the movie The Great Texas Dynamite Chase. She also lived with songwriter Bobby Hart, his kids, and a bunch of animals. Sniff. Sniff.
As we got to know each other better, I confided that there seemed to be quite a few lesbians among the crew. How did I know? Sniff. Sniff. Several had hit on me, including one woman who had been quite up-front and graphic.
“What did you say?” Claudia asked, grinning.
Sniff. Sniff.
“I said I was flattered, but no thanks.”
Laughing from embarrassment, I told her how I had a close friend who was straight but had recently gone through a phase of dating other women and tried to talk me into experimenting as well. She’d argued that every woman had it in her to make love to another woman. Sniff. Sniff. However, as I told Carin and then repeated to Claudia, I didn’t have a single stirring that would make me switch teams.
“But I’m a terrible flirt,” I admitted. “Guys or women—I just love people.”
Sniff. Sniff.
At one point, Claudia and I got close to the movie’s cinematographer, Gary Graver, who regaled us with stories of his friendship with Orson Welles and even talked about all of us making a movie together. In its own way, the promise of working with the legendary figure was as intoxicating as the drugs that fueled such conversation. All of us would make a great film together! Sniff. Sniff.
Then Claudia and Gary began having an affair. Since I liked him, too, I became jealous and terribly insecure, wondering why he hadn’t wanted to be with me. Everyone was desperate for a special connection that would make them feel desired, pretty, or talented, even if it was only for a night or two, and that applied to me, too.
Well, one night after I dropped a seductive hint, it turned out he did want to be with me, and for a brief time, the lucky guy shuttled between the two of us. Such was life on that movie set. Sniff. Sniff. After returning to Los Angeles, though, I went back with Tony. Claudia stayed with Gary until I introduced her to Bill. Then they had a fling, which changed the dynamic of our friendship.
That happened when everything was about coke, and that’s what everything was about at Bill’s. Friendships shifted and suffered. Jealousy popped up for no reason or because someone misinterpreted a comment when they were high. And we were high all the time there. We were one another’s friends, lovers, and torturers. I slept with Bill, too. I did it only a few times—and always for the same reason: I wanted coke.
The atmosphere at Wonderland Avenue was subject to the availability of cocaine and therefore we were all under the control of Bill to one degree or another. Relationships got even more tangled, and people cheated and stole from one another. Even with all the coke I got from Bill, I scooped up more and took it home with me. Bill’s associates once accused Andy of stealing several ounces. They held him at gun-point and threatened to kill him.
The scene essentially ended when Bill went to jail after getting busted with a van full of Thai sticks. That in itself was a fluke. He’d stopped in front of a liquor store on Sunset Boulevard. While he was inside, cops walked by, smelled the load of potent marijuana, and nailed him when he got back into the van. I also heard Bill’s main coke supplier ended up in prison on Rikers Island.
At various points, it could’ve been me in cuffs. I did an episode of The Love Boat, and I couldn’t have been happier when I found out it involved an actual cruise to Mexico. My manager, Doug, and his wife, Jill, also wrangled a trip. They partied as much as I did, if not more. After my Bill connection dried up, in fact, Jack bought coke for me. The Love Boat turned out to be a nonstop party as we traveled down the coast, somehow managing to also shoot a TV show.
On the day we docked in Puerto Vallarta, Robert Hegyes, who’d played Epstein on Welcome Back, Kotter, Love Boat regular Lauren Tewes, and I arranged to get off the boat and go to the beach. At the last minute, I changed my mind and decided to go into town with my manager’s wife to shop and drink margaritas.
It turned out to be a good move. While we were partying, Bobby and Lauren were busted for pot. As it turned out, it was a set-up by a crooked cop who planted dope on them, hoping to extort cash from the TV production.
The situation was fixed after only a brief delay in production. It was frightening. Later that night, while sitting up on the deck I said to my manager, “Oh my God, that could’ve been me.” In true Hollywood fashion he replied, “What do you mean you? It could’ve been me!”
It seemed like the close calls were getting closer. Sometime after that cruise Carin and I went on a binge with Andy and Clark. We booked a suite at the Century Plaza Hotel for the weekend, and then we obliterated ourselves with coke and quaaludes. At one point, Carin passed out in the bathtub. She appeared to OD. We were too scared to call an ambulance. Instead we yanked her out, stood her up, and kept her awake until she seemed to be out of danger.
It freaks me out to think of what might have happened if she’d died—or more to the point that she could have died because we were too worried about ourselves to call for proper medical attention.
How messed up!
How selfish!
Like most druggies, though, we never considered the danger until it stared us in the face.
And even then…