To celebrate the success of my CBS prime-time special, Tony Scotti had a party at his house. The minute I walked into his Beverly Hills home, I couldn’t help but notice that, in my opinion, it was a total reflection of his personal style: lots of tacky nouveau riche excess in red and gold—bold, loud, and gaudy.
It wasn’t a big party, just the inner circle of Scotti confidants, with the addition of Brooke Shields and her mom, Teri. Brooke had been terrific on the show. Even though she was just fourteen, she wasn’t just beautiful; she was funny, she had good timing, and I think the sketches she and I did were some of the highlights of the show. The mood that night was celebratory; the show had received lots of positive attention, and I think it was being viewed as a big career boost for me. But as the party was mostly adults, Brooke and I naturally gravitated toward each other. Even though she was a few years younger than I was, I still found her to be super pretty and sweet, and she seemed to have more than a little bit of a crush on me. We were talking by ourselves at one point, and I asked her, “Why don’t you and I go out and have dinner one night?” I had recently gotten my driver’s license, I had my new Porsche 914 2.0, and I was feeling more confident and footloose than ever as the world had begun opening for me like the oyster it was.
Her eyes lit up, and she said she’d ask her mother. Teri’s reputation in the business as a hyper-protective mama bear was both well-earned and well-respected. She fiercely guarded her daughter’s career, and looking back, I can honestly say, as strict as she may have come off to some, I wish my mom had done the same thing. That said, I should not have been too surprised when later in the evening, with a death-ray stare and more than a little alcohol on her warm breath, Teri whispered to me, with disarming calm, “You touch her, I’ll kill you. If there are any photos taken, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?” I nodded slowly, expressionless, quite confident in her promise to deliver (I will add that, for some strange reason forever lost in the mists of time, this conversation took place under a table, just the two of us).
I pulled Tony aside that night and said, “Look, I want to take Brooke out to dinner this week, but it needs to be very discreet. Teri means business. I don’t want to die. I need you to help me out.”
My idea was to take her to Ma Maison over on Melrose. The restaurant had been opened several years earlier, in 1973, by a Parisian named Patrick Terrail, and it was the place—so exclusive that its phone number was unlisted. As the saying went, “If you don’t have the number, we don’t want you.” Well, Tony had the number, and he discreetly told me he would set up a reservation for me for a few nights later, which he did.
When I picked Brooke up for our date, she looked beguiling, and wise far beyond her mere fourteen years. We were both dressed to the nines, and I will say, we made a killer-looking couple. Teri gave me that death stare once more as I walked Brooke out the front door of their home. She didn’t have to even say it. We now had a simple, unspoken understanding: I violate policy, I die.
On the ride over to the restaurant, we were both a little giddy. It was rare for us to have time like this without adults hovering all over the place, and we were going to make the most of it. But then as we approached the restaurant, we both saw it: a gaggle of maybe ten or twelve paparazzi photographers who all trained their lenses on my car just as I was about to pull up, like big-game hunters scoping out elusive, precious prey. Word of our grand arrival had obviously leaked, and I learned later, it was the Scotti brothers who had done the leaking. PR mavens that they were, it was always all about the photo op, usually at the expense of my privacy. As I imagined Teri Shields in the middle of the mob with a shotgun, Brooke freaked out. “If pictures of us get out, my mom will kill me! And then she’ll kill you!” She said this with zero irony as I nodded but stayed calm. I didn’t want this young damsel to be in any distress (me either!), so I came up with the quick idea. I avoided the restaurant and cut into a back street about a block away. I had been to Ma Maison, and I knew it had a back patio that butted up against a cinder block wall, maybe six feet high, that bounded someone’s residential backyard. Offering the radiant Brooke my hand, we snuck quietly down the dark street and along the path adjoining the wall, avoiding all contact with anyone. “Allow me,” I said to her as I helped hoist her up and over the wall before gallantly vaulting over myself, much to the shock and dismay of the exclusive patrons dining on the patio. As both jaws and forks dropped, I whisked my date through the restaurant on a beeline to the maître d’ and inquired (with Bond-like savoir faire), “Garrett, party of two?”
We talked and laughed and became even better friends over dinner. Brooke was young, so I didn’t have any expectations beyond enjoying her company in the seductive light of the restaurant. I was already drinking, doing drugs, having sex—I was indulging a lot by this point. So we simply talked about our lives, the increasing craziness of it all. When it came time to leave, we exited the same way we had entered, with drama and a sweep back over the wall, through the dark, and into the safe, powerful cocoon of my Porsche. Then I delivered her safely back to the protected sanctuary that was her home. It was our only date—a stolen moment, two stars in the making, streaking past each other in the night toward far different futures. But that night, we were able to be innocent teenagers living out a simple fantasy, an escape that to this day still glimmers like the fleeting fairy tale it was.
I wouldn’t see Brooke again for twenty years. She was starring on a show called Suddenly Susan, and there was an episode built around the idea that Susan, with her thirty-third birthday approaching, realizes that there are things she hasn’t done that she had written in a letter to herself that she would have accomplished by the year 2000. So she sets out to do them, and one of those things is to be kissed by Leif Garrett. The producers, noticing how torn and frayed I looked, were concerned about my drug use, but I convinced them I would be okay. I was good at that.
I never saw Brooke until we shot the episode. It was good to see her, but there was no strong connection from the past. Still, seeing her reminded me of different days. Heading out into the night, I felt hollow. I missed the 1970s, I missed being in a healthier state, and I missed innocence, even though I was never really that innocent.