While we were living at the Pool House, I was offered a film in Italy called Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell. It starred Gina Lollobrigida and was directed by Mel Frank.
“Cunt?” asked Eddie Bondi, my agent at William Morris, his term of endearment for his female clients. “Do you want to do this?”
“Yes, yes,” I said.
Joey and I sat in our big sunny living room in the Pool House on the yellow plaid sofa and took Italian lessons from a French friend. We flew to Rome with twelve-year-old Dinah and a dog and a cat. It was almost unbelievable sometimes, this second life of mine was so rich and sweet and charming.
The cat yowled all the way to the Hotel De La Ville. Joey, Dinah, and I threw ourselves onto the bed, exhausted. Our room faced the Spanish Steps. The noise outside was deafening—the clop clop of horses and carriages, the yells of revelers, the hum of traffic, were all with us in the room even when we closed the balcony doors. Inside the cat paced and complained, the dog whined. We threw open the doors to the life in Rome at two in the morning and ran down the wide marble staircase into the roaring nightlife outside, where Joey hailed a horse and carriage and he and Dinah rode off into the Roman night.
The next morning Joey tried to order breakfast in our newly acquired Italian and became so frightened by the rapidity of speech on the other end of the phone that he slammed it down, totally intimidated.
We looked for and found a great apartment near the bridges. A nice lady of royal descent from Jordan rented us her wonderful flat, filled with antiques. I desperately kept her attention on me as I signed the lease, while behind her my cat defecated on her Persian rug.
My cat knew very well where his cat box was. It was a test of wills; he wanted to be sent back to Malibu. Dinah was set up in the American school. Fremo arrived. Easels were set up; the living room became an artists’ studio. Joey and Fremo took out the oils. Dinah sat for a painting. We were home.
• • •
There was a cat, Louie, around the corner from us. Louie was an experienced professional beggar. Half of his body lay in the gutter, half on the curb. Black and scrawny, he looked like a dying accident victim, his meow a soft, sensitive plea for help. We’d pass him, Dinah and me, on our way to our favorite trattoria. The first time, I pulled her away sharply. “Don’t look,” I said, “he’s dying. There’s nothing we can do.” On subsequent visits to the trattoria, I realized that he kept dying in the same spot all day. Older women would leave their kitchens and bring Louie whatever they’d been cooking, murmuring nice things in Italian. They’d set their offerings on the curb so that they wouldn’t disturb his twisted body position.
When Fremo arrived, Fremo having collected cats all her life, the first thing she did was rush up from the street and say, “There’s a cat on the street. I’ve got to help him. Please let me bring him here.” We formed a common front. No, no, no. Fremo joined the women who brought him food every day. One night, a young female cat sauntered down our street, and Fremo saw Louie rise from the curb, straighten out his twisted body, shake his fur, and take off after the lady like a young stud.
Far from being discouraged, Fremo decided to feed all the needy cats in the Colosseum. There were hundreds. She brought shopping bags to the Colosseum every day, made new friends, animals and human.
In the meantime, I was being introduced to Italian cinema. We shot at Cinecittà. It was there in the cafeteria that a wagon of steamed artichokes rolled by and I saw a look of sexual yearning in Joey’s eyes I’d never seen before. His eyelids closed, the better to inhale the steam. His head turned, and I realized that though I was ten years older than he, my real competition was his appetite for beautiful food. Yes, there would be a woman or two, but basically, food and I would fill Joey’s need for passion. Except for one excruciatingly painful time, that’s been true.
Cinecittà Studios has all kinds of secrets for making their actors beautiful. They used lots of hairpieces and wigs, because under them were transparent lifts that attached to your ears and pulled your face up so that it was perfect and smooth. Sometimes they braided your hair at your temples so your eyes slanted up at the sides.
I was sent to a small store on a side street where three elderly ladies patted my breasts, took careful measurements, and made beautiful brassieres just for me, giving me that plump cleavage so necessary for Italian movie stars.
Of course, my nemesis Shelley Winters was in Buona Sera. As the cast ate lunch outdoors for the first time, at a wooden table in the warm Italian sun, Shelley turned to me and said, “The reason you didn’t work wasn’t because you were blacklisted. You didn’t work because you don’t have what it takes to be a star!” It was all downhill from there. Shelley was like a huge dinosaur, its tail thrashing someone out of the way while its head was nodding up and down.
Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell was the sixties version of Mamma Mia!, the exact story the musical was based on. There was the young girl raised by her single mother, Gina. Shelley and I were the wives accompanying the husbands who had slept with Gina when the Americans fought in Rome during World War II. Gina was gorgeous and funny, though she learned her English lines phonetically. I was making an entrance with her when she picked up a razor blade and shaved under her arms. Just the blade, scrape, scrape, and made her entrance.
Telly Savalas played my husband. He was easy and fun. His young cousin was his assistant. Before a scene, Telly would walk around the set singing Sinatra songs. “Fly me to the . . .” He’d snap his fingers, his assistant would fill in “moon,” and Telly would go on with the song. “I’d sacrifice anything come what may for the”—finger snap—“sake of having you near,” the cousin would jump in, on his toes. And so on. Maybe it was Telly’s way of preparing for a scene. He was a crooner. He loved performing a song, loved being Sinatra. Peter Lawford was the other husband. A charming guy with a deep need to please, not to rock the boat.
As time went on, Shelley and I started to hang out a little. She was so much fun—when she wasn’t throwing her weight around. The two of us were sitting at a table for ten talking. Peter passed by and started to sit down. Aside from Shelley and me, the seats were empty. “Somebody’s sitting there!” she barked at Peter.
He looked confused.
“The table’s empty,” I said to him. “Sit.”
“I’m saving that chair for a friend!” Shelley barked again.
And Peter, instead of sitting down and saying “Fuck you, Shelley,” slunk away, hurt. It was odd.
Mel Frank was directing. Suddenly Mel burst onto the set. Shelley had broken a tooth, he said, her front tooth, and was insisting on going to New York to see her dentist. It meant holding up shooting for a whole week. Since there were dentists in Rome—and the actors there had beautifully cared-for teeth—neither the studio nor apparently the insurance company would cover the costs.
Later that day we were filming in the church of a village outside Rome. When we drove over the cobblestones up the hill leading to the town square, there were broom makers sitting in the doorways of small cottages, putting straw together, and fresh-faced children in school uniforms trooping down the hill to go to school, all ironed. The air made you breathe deeper, the smell of straw was so sweet. In the town square, older men in caps and belted trousers were comfortably talking at outdoor tables at the café. We set up camera inside the church.
I sat on a front bench sketching, in costume. I wasn’t in the first scene. On the other side of the church near the door I saw Shelley. She was trying to get my attention and she was laughing. She pointed to her smile, and there was a black gap where her front tooth should have been. Then she pointed to the statue of the saint she was standing next to. The saint was slightly elevated above Shelley, her eyes cast upward, appealing to God, and in her outstretched hand she held an ancient tooth. Apparently this saint had her teeth extracted as punishment for her Christian beliefs, and just when Shelley needed a tooth, this saint happened to have one.
I laughed out loud, was shushed by the AD, and tiptoed over to Shelley and the saint. I had to hug her. Twenty years later, she told me the temporary tooth she got in Rome was still in her mouth.
As a parting present, one of the actors gave Joey a block of hashish for us to get stoned on. Tinfoil over a glass with water in it. Set it smoking with a match. Inhale. Black out. Drowning in heat; the least touch sent liquid through the body. We lay on the red coverlet for hours, able to feel, unable to move. No wonder people have so many partners on drugs, I thought. Just feel me, touch me, lick me, I don’t care, I’m floating, gone.
The next day we had almost a whole block of hashish left, and we were feverishly trying to figure out how to get it back to Malibu. Malibu was home to grass and cocaine. Only in Rome was hashish available. Joey’s eyes settled on my velvet diaphragm case. “No, no, no,” I said. “Are you crazy? I’ve just started to work again. You want ‘ex-commie caught with illegal drugs’ to throw me out of work this time?” Frantically Joey looked at every piece of luggage, his painting stuff. He finally decided to open the lining of his jacket and sew it in there. Fine. On the plane, about an hour outside of LAX, he started to sweat. If there was one thing that scared him, it was jail. He went to the toilet a couple of times to rip up his jacket and throw it in, but he couldn’t do it.
I spotted Senator Javits on the plane, Jake Javits from my wonderful weekend with Billy Rose.
“Introduce me,” Joey hissed.
I did. Standing in the aisle. “Um, Senator, if someone brought in, um, a substance—something that wasn’t allowed, um . . .” I said.
“You mean drugs?”
“Yes,” Joey jumped in. “Yes, something like that.”
“Very harsh,” the senator replied.
“Jail time?”
“Yes.”
Joey said, “I have a friend with that problem—”
The pilot’s voice: “Take your seats . . .” We were landing.
By now Joey was sweating. The beads of sweat on his upper lip had been joined by small streams from under his hair, which was plastered to his forehead, and trickling by his ears onto his neck. He strapped himself in, doomed and covered with flop sweat.
He also acted transparently guilty.
We both quietly prayed as we went through customs. Our dog was delivered in his crate. As I let him out, he had an attack of diarrhea, which splattered over the whole area. The smell was so offensive and so sickening, everyone nearby ran for fresh air, and the customs officer screamed at us to take our luggage and get the hell out of there. As I was trying to mop up the poop with two Kleenex, apologizing, Joey grabbed my arm, grabbed Dinah, clasped the leash on the dog, and rolled the luggage out the airport door, leaving an attendant’s soapy mop to clean up behind us.