• 15 •

The Emerald City of Madrid

Leon pridefully led me to the front door of the handsome apartment house on Avenue Generalissimo Franco. In a letter to me when he had rented the flat, he had written: “It is a lovely, three-bedroomed apartment (in an elevator building) with a modern kitchen (even including a garbage-disposal unit) . . . immaculate, completely equipped . . . on the fifth floor . . . with a swimming pool on the roof. . . . I got this large a place with your coming in mind. . . . It is waiting and I am waiting.” Leon did not lean toward extravagance, so I knew that securing a place of such luxury in a high-rent section of the city underscored his wish to have me back. The gesture moved me, and I waited anxiously as he opened the front door to the building and we entered into the colorful Spanish-tiled hallway and made our way to the lift (the driver having deposited our suitcases just inside).

A note—in Spanish—was taped to the door. Leon translated. The management was sorry for the inconvenience but due to the recent power outage, the lift was not working and tenants would have to use the stairs. We both glanced soulfully at our luggage. It would have to be carted up five flights! Leon said we should just take the lightest (my makeup case and his briefcase) and he would get the superintendent of the building to manage the rest. So up we climbed, and as all the apartments had high ceilings, it was a mighty climb. When we reached the fifth floor, we rested a moment before he turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open.

We were greeted by a fetid stench and dense darkness.

The electricity was off and apparently had been for at least forty-eight hours (gathered from the note on the door of the elevator). Leon took out his trusty old Zippo wartime lighter and led the way to the kitchen where he knew there were some candles and a window to let in some fresh (if steamy) air and the strong light of the afternoon sun high in an azure blue sky. The garbage disposal had backed up. When we turned the water on in the sink, it sputtered out and was the color and consistency of coffee dregs. All the drapes and shades in the apartment had been drawn to keep out the heat. With the power outage, the air conditioning was not functioning. The place was stifling. We opened all the windows and I went from room to room spraying each with the small cologne dispenser I kept in my purse. Still, the place did not smell like the house of Chanel.

Leon was red faced with despair.

“It doesn’t matter,” I tried to assure him. “New York and LA get plenty of power outages.” I heard someone pounding on the door.

“Señor Garcia!” Leon said gratefully and let the gentleman in with our baggage. Unlike Lennox Gardens, at least there was a superintendent to mount the steps with heavy parcels! Señor Garcia was an imposing figure, not much taller than me but surely weighing well over two hundred pounds. He took out a large patterned cloth from his pants pocket and wiped the sweat from his jowly face. “I get fan,” he beamed, his two upper front teeth noticeably missing. Down he trudged again to return with the fan, which we assumed must be battery charged, and then, as he put it down when he returned, shook his head and made a hopeless gesture. “No electricity,” he said.

Luckily, by evening, a cool breeze had risen. We were both so exhausted from the travel and the heat in the apartment that we fell asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillows. Some time during the middle of the night we were startled awake by the sound of multiple motors—dishwasher, air-conditioning, garbage disposal all starting up at the same time as the lights came on. By morning, Aurora, the maid Leon had hired, arrived. Leon was right. She was a gem and a very nice woman. She promised to have the apartment in order by the end of the day. Observed in daylight, it was quite comfortable and attractive despite the furnishings being what I had named “postwar Moderne,” seen in newish French apartments as well. Fabrics were in glaring patterns, woods were light. But the rooms were large, the two bathrooms modern, and the view looking across the Avenue Generalissimo Franco intriguing with its fine old buildings.

Leon took the day off so that he could show me around “the neighborhood.” We had a long, leisurely lunch at a charming cafe. We drank a full carafe of red wine. He seemed happier, more lighthearted than I remembered him being. His dark eyes shone. His voice had a lift to it, and when he smiled (which was quite often) the shadows so often clouding his face disappeared. He took my hand and held it across the table. “Thank you for coming home,” he said. He thought our troubled past had been obliterated, and for the time I decided to let it go at that.

He had hired a car and after lunch we took a tour of the city. I was more impressed with the sound of Madrid than its architecture. Madrid was the noisiest, most boisterous of the cities I had known. Pop music blared through open windows. Cars honked their way through traffic. Tires screamed as motorists stopped short, or revved up. I did become infatuated with the Madrileños. They were people of a joyous nature who had a sense of individual importance, of self-dignity. A majority were poor. All of them had suffered much in the course of their civil war, World War II, and the long road to recovery, to which Anglo-American film companies had greatly contributed.

A Talent for Loving was being made at the Estudios Sevilla in Madrid, with some location work in nearby sites. There were three more studios in Madrid, and they were as busy as Hollywood’s motion picture factory once had been. Anthony Quinn was shooting a movie on a nearby stage to Talent; Orson Welles (whenever he showed up) on another. For fifteen years Madrid (and Spain) had been the center for American/European production. Bob Rossen was credited with its debut and the growth that had resulted from a deal that he had made with Franco in 1952 to shoot Alexander the Great in Spain. American production companies with large-scale dramas to shoot followed suit. There were vast, fairly unpopulated areas a short distance from Madrid that were perfect for filming war, western, and adventure movies. Except for technicians and laborers, many of these early companies had employed American expats in key posts (except for actors whose careers had ended with the blacklist for, as they were recognizable, they could not get a pass by taking an assumed name). How odd was it that men and women who considered themselves dedicated liberals could have so easily done business with Franco’s Spain? Extremely! For the American dollars that were paid to the Spanish government for the right to film on their land and in their studios were, during those years, being used to prop up the generalissimo’s dictatorship.

I was sorry to never have asked Bob about his feelings and motivations in being in business with Franco when he had been such an outspoken critic of the regime, especially during the time of the Spanish Civil War, when he considered fighting with the Lincoln Brigade against Franco (as some American writers had done)—not that he had ever been in the physical shape to participate in any army! By the midsixties, grand Anglo-American epics like Alexander the Great, Spartacus, Lawrence of Arabia, 55 Days in Peking, and others of their genre had tapered off. Still, filming in Spain saved American dollars and—as the rationale went—Franco’s influence in 1969 was also waning, as was his health, and he was preparing to “step back and let his protégé Juan Carlos, grandson of former King Alfonso XIII, take over in the event of his death.” (On Franco’s death in 1975, Juan Carlos became king, restored the monarchy, and successfully oversaw the transition of Spain from dictatorship to parliamentary democracy.) However, there was no way to avoid the fact that while the generalissimo was alive, Spain was a dictatorship. I don’t think Leon felt any more comfortable with this than I did. But the film colony appeared exempt from much government control. In fact, with divas like Quinn and Welles afoot, the production companies had their own disruptive power figures to deal with. I was never on those sets, but I am sure they could not have been as troubled as was A Talent for Loving, nor Welles or Quinn as outrageous as Topol, the Israeli actor who recently had been a big hit in the lead role of Tevye in the London musical production of Fiddler on the Roof (played by Zero Mostel on Broadway). After Topol had agreed to do Talent, he was signed to appear as Tevye in the film version of Fiddler. Not yet a household name, proximity to such acclaim had already turned his head, for it was to be his next film. By the time of my arrival in Madrid, it was evident that the director, Richard Quine, had lost the power battle between them. The cast included the actor Richard Widmark (who appeared as though he walked onto the wrong movie set, so quick were his exits when he completed a scene); the fine stage actress, Genevieve Page; the elegant, dashing Cesar Romero; and Quine’s third and current wife, singer Fran Jeffries.

As happens with film companies, the participants—actors, director, producer, cameraman, and their families—form a tight group, which can often be quite pleasant. Aside from Widmark’s indifference and a hopeless script, the major problem in Talent was that Topol was a loose cannon. Despite his wife’s constant attendance on the set, he chased after every young woman who had a bit or extra role (the younger they were, the better he seemed to like them). Angry mothers and threatening brothers, uncles, or fathers appeared at the gates of the studio wanting to have at him. It was Leon’s task to pacify them. To add to this, the Quines were constantly quarreling. Fran Jeffries was a singer, not an actress, and did not like her role, especially the scarcity of her scenes. By the end of shooting, she had filed for divorce (they had been married about a year). At one point, Quine went missing for five days and the assistant director and Leon took over. Widmark, at fifty-six one of Hollywood’s most durable stars, appeared on the set when called for and then made haste for his dressing room to remain behind a locked door until required to return to the stage. That left Cesar Romero who was a “peach of a man,” if one dare use such an old-fashioned phrase. He was warm, fun, intelligent, a truly good human being and, with his classic Latin good looks, a joy to behold. He remained unruffled by the chaos around him, and I never saw him even once lose his cool or his professionalism. Cesar was the one light in the entire holy mess that was the making of A Talent for Loving. When he was not scheduled to work, the ambiance truly got dark on the set.

Walter retreated to London shortly after my arrival, leaving Leon as negotiator and peacemaker, attempting to keep things rolling in what must have been the most dysfunctional film set in cinema history. I was present almost daily as Leon thought I might be helpful (mostly to keep Fran Jeffries occupied, I suspected). I greatly respected his diligence and understood why he was never between jobs. Leon could be counted upon, and his knowledge of so many facets of filmmaking was a great asset when producing a movie of wide scope, with star players, on a tight budget. Working hours in Madrid were controlled by the sun, custom, and a need to save energy (physical and artificial). Temperatures in Madrid can rise dramatically midday. The whole city seemed to shut down between noon and four p.m., including the studios. At four, work would commence until nine or sometimes ten p.m., when restaurants and nightclubs really came alive. Very often members of the company (excluding Mr. Widmark) dined out together. Cesar Romero (who often was addressed as “Butch” but not by me) and I clicked. We shared an offbeat sense of humor and an overview of the mad happenings on the set (never, I must add, involving his participation). In the parlance of society, Cesar was a confirmed bachelor. Remarkably, perhaps due to strong studio control (he had been at 20th Century-Fox for much of his film career), his homosexuality, though well known in the industry, was not public knowledge. Frequently called upon to escort a single female star to a premiere or other publicity function where he would be photographed with one of these glamorous ladies on his arm, his fans viewed him as a sophisticated man about town. Nothing in his attitude or appearance hinted at his sexual orientation.

At sixty-three, when he appeared in Talent, he was well over six feet, his posture remarkable, his physique that of a man twenty years his junior, his dark, thick hair handsomely streaked with gray. Both his hair and his famous mustache were always impeccably trimmed. What you saw first, however, was his wonderful smile, which said “I’m a happy man and I’m glad to be alive.” Suave and sophisticated though he was, there was not an ounce of pretension about him. He had Cuban parents, but he had been born in Manhattan and had started his career as a ballroom dancer. He loved music, and when he chose where we (the members of the company who had joined for an evening) were to go, it was always someplace where there was good Spanish dance music, establishments that did not always serve the best food.

I still loved to dance and often attended dance classes for exercise. But my leg problems made me fainthearted on a public dance floor. I politely resisted when Cesar first asked me to try the tango with him. He would not take no for an answer and swept me onto the dance floor. His hold was strong and supportive, and I knew I could trust him not to let me fall. The next day on the set, he drew me aside and helped me to master the basic tango steps while avoiding placing too much pressure on my bad leg. Between takes, when I accompanied Leon on location, Cesar would sit with me and talk.

His great love had been the actor Tyrone Power, who had died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of forty-five a decade earlier in Madrid while he was filming Solomon and Sheba (he was replaced by Yul Brynner). I knew that Power had been married several times so I assumed he was bisexual. But the odd thing was that Judy Garland, as a very young woman before her first marriage to David Rose, had been madly in love with Tyrone Power and followed him to Mexico where he was making a film, only to find him with Lana Turner in “a love nest.” Of course, when the studios ruled Hollywood, the sex lives of their stars (their properties, really) were whitewashed by teams of publicists, hired for just that purpose.

Cesar had his own curious faith called “liberation theology,” a combination of Marxism and Christianity, which held that religion and communism were compatible (although Marx wrote most famously that “religion was the opiate of the people”). He tried to explain this to me, but I admit I found understanding it daunting. He believed in a utopian society and that what Christ would have created, if he had lived, would have been a kingdom that bore a strong similarity to Marxism.

Despite, or maybe because of, the problems with Talent, my reunion with Leon had been successful due largely to my involvement with his work. I had put my writing aside. I was there for him when he needed to let off some steam or discuss the day’s latest snarl. The picture was not going well, and he knew it. The original concept had been geared to satiric comedy (which is perhaps why Topol, who spoke with a distinctive Israeli accent, was cast as a Mexican general). But Quine was not comfortable with the genre, so the satire was not funny and the script was so twisted that it was hard to get the story or characters straight. Leon’s hope was that it might come together in the cutting room as had happened to the Beatles movie Help!, when he and Walter had thought it should have been called Helpless. (For the record, A Talent for Loving did not obtain a theatrical release for twenty years and was dismissed with sharp criticism and departed abruptly from theaters.)

What did I learn about Spain and its people in the short time I was there? Well, they drank more beer than wine. The Prado was so badly lighted that the great art that hung there could not be fully appreciated. Spanish women were more powerful in business than one would expect, especially in a country that was a dictatorship and where men seemed to rule their households. I was amused to find painted on the door of ladies’ lavatories in several restaurants a woman’s gloved hand holding a red rose, men’s room doors decorated with a black top hat and a silver-topped black cane—à la Fred Astaire. I refused invitations to the barbaric bullfight contests (which received full coverage on the government-controlled television, the gore not censored for children). In fact, there was little else to watch on television other than bullfights. The generalissimo’s portrait remained prominently displayed in both private and public buildings (including the hallway of our apartment house). The workers with whom I spoke to at the studio were more materialistic than I expected. There were soul-crunching slums in certain districts (but then, as I had spent time during my first marriage in the southern states, Alabama and Mississippi, as well as Texas, I was no stranger to the inhumanity of slums).

“Viva la Muerte!” had been the strident battle cry of Franco’s Falange Party in the civil war (paradoxically translated “Long live death!” in English, but surely meant “to the death”). However, Franco’s rule was dying, as was the man. Madrid (which is the only Spanish city on which I can comment) seemed to be celebrating the wake before the death of their generalissimo and of his national party.

Before I departed, Leon and I made short-range plans. His secretary Leigh would work with a real estate company in Switzerland to find us a small chalet in Gstaad on a six-month rental, the lease to begin in June. Gstaad had been a compromise choice of residence. I would miss Salka in Klosters, but I would be close to Chillon and to the library in Montreux, which had a fine archive on the period I needed to research. Gstaad was also a short train ride from Leysin, the university to be attended by Cathy (now desiring to be called by her full name, Catherine, an invigorating wake-up call that my daughter was no longer a girl but a young woman with a strong identity of her own).

In Gstaad, Leon would have the pleasure of rekindling his years-long friendship with Yehudi Menuhin, who had a full-time residence there and had also founded a music festival held during the summer in a church in nearby Saanen. Talent would be wrapped up by June and Leon would have the best part of the summer with me before heading to Denmark, the location of his next project.

Tax laws in Britain had grown progressively difficult with an enormous chunk of one’s earnings (if either a British citizen or a legal resident) being eaten away. There was a loophole that lessened the bite if the taxpayer spent six months plus one day out of the country. This is what Leon desired us to do. The way he configured it (or his accountant had done), we could achieve this by one or both of us spending the time required in Gstaad and for the lease to bear Leon’s name. Never clever in such matters, I had no idea how this setup might affect my own tax situation, except for the fact that I could not be subject to double taxation. What I knew instinctively was that a marriage should not be regulated by tax considerations or for one’s life to be measured in dollar bills. After an emotionally testing afternoon of disagreement on this matter, I gave in to Leon’s scenario and therefore cannot blame him for what became a rocky start to the reconciliation that my time in Madrid had engendered. Once again we would be apart for long periods of time, which I felt was not a foundation for marital harmony. What sweetened the plan was that Cathy could come “home” on weekends, I was deeply involved in my novel, and had Jay, who was most enthusiastic about being in Europe, to help me in my research and transcriptions.

I returned to Beverly Hills and, with Jay’s help, packed up the apartment ready to be placed in storage. Cathy left California directly after her graduation for London where she was to spend several weeks at Lennox Gardens to see friends before joining me in Gstaad. By that time, with Jay’s help, I would be set up in our new—if temporary—home. I did not fly across the ocean unaccompanied. Our three poodles rode in the cargo section in the lower half of the plane. (They presented still another problem for me to ever return full-time to London, as Britain had a six-month quarantine for all dogs entering the country and I knew I could not subject our pampered pets to such a trial. “Oh, well,” I thought in a cavalier way, “I’ll have to deal with that later.”)

Leon’s company took care of my flight ticket and, as they received a substantial discount from Iberia (the Spanish airline), I flew on one of their new jumbo jet carriers from Los Angeles to Barcelona where I was to transfer to a smaller craft taking me to Geneva (a distance about equal to that of LA to San Francisco). I had two hours between planes. The first thing I did was to check with the airline how my dogs were doing and to make sure they made the connection with me. I was informed they were fine. About thirty minutes before flight time, I was paged. Somehow Air Cargo had misplaced the crates with my animals in them. But they wanted to assure me that if they weren’t found in time for my flight, they would be placed on the very next available one.

“Then they are here at this airport?” I said, trying to keep my cool.

“Si, si.” In Air Cargo, it seemed, but they were not sure which crates they were in.

I tried to remain calm as I knew the Spanish anger hotly when they are confronted, a situation that could only make matters worse.

“Take me to Air Cargo,” I managed with some control.

Oh, that was not permitted.

Unable to contain my anger a moment longer, I raised my voice. “I want to see the agente de policia immediatamenta!” I shouted in my limited Spanish, with visions of my three dogs suffocating in their crates and possibly being sent to some foreign shore where they might never be found—or worse! to be eaten!!! I turned away and shouted again, “Policia!”

“Señora! Por favor!”

A representative of the airline, a short, square, flustered gentleman with a ludicrous Groucho Marx mustache, was swiftly by my side. “Take me to Air Cargo!” I managed in my best deep-voiced, dominatrix imitation. I think the man had visions of my pulling out a whip from my over-the-shoulder bag, for he grabbed my arm and with a stammering of Spanish—not one word of which did I understand—steered me out a side door, across a field, and into a large Quonset hut–style building. “Air Cargo, señora,” he announced, glancing up at me with utter disdain as we entered the steaming interior. There were hundreds—maybe thousands—of crates piled up one upon the other. I took a long step forward and called out—loudly!—“SANDY! BIBA! CHRISSY!” Immediately, I was answered by a chorus of barking dogs, their barks familiar to my ears! Still, I could not yet tell where the sounds were coming from. I stepped forward several more paces and then started to stride down the center aisle between the crates and suitcases. “SANDY! BIBA! CHRISSY!” Closer now, the barks accompanied by pawing on wood. Very close. And then I saw their pink noses poking at the airholes in three crates of various sizes (to accommodate their different sizes).

I insisted on walking them across the field to where my connecting plane now sat, ready to be boarded. The airline allowed me to fly with Biba (who was so upset she seemed to be having a fit until—once in flight—I was able to calm her) on my lap. Sandy and Chrissy, still barking their indignity, were put into cages in the cargo section. When the plane landed in Geneva they were brought to me (now out of their crates) and we boarded the charming mountain train that travels from Geneva to the villages above. The Swiss seemed to have no problem with dogs riding with their families.

In the late 1960s, Gstaad in the summer was a small Alpine village of about two thousand residents, not yet invaded by supermarkets, elegant boutiques, souvenir shops, and hordes of tourists, although once the ski season started after Christmas, its inns and small hotels required early reservations. I had loved Klosters, but Gstaad immediately took hold of my heart and robbed me of my breath. Set like a gem in a valley of the Bernese Oberland, surrounded by mountain lakes, lower mountains with towering mountains behind them, and the awesome Diablerets Glacier, its frozen tip blinding in the summer sun and a beacon in the winter, one became overwhelmed with the natural beauty that abounded. The Swiss as a people, although churchgoers, are not religious zealots. I attribute it to the magnificence of the terrain. How much closer can one get to heaven than the peaks of its glaciers and the gently sloping lower mountains carpeted in the summer—when I arrived—with a brilliant display of wildflowers? When church bells pealed, the clearness of the air gave them a pleasing, echoing sound like a chorus of well-tuned sleigh bells.

The town’s one, long commercial street banded the lower mountains. On it was a fabulous bakery, a grocery, a unique multilanguage magazine-newspaper-bookstore and stationer, Cardineau’s, which was operated by a red-bearded, eccentric, intellectual Englishman, John (whose selection of reading matter would have pleased Voltaire), his charming Swiss wife, Monique (who worked while he read), and her elderly mother, Madam Cardineau (wife of the original founder and a fixture behind the cash register). As they carried books and newspaper in many languages, it was a meeting place for all foreigners living in or near Gstaad. Main street also contained several ski, shoe, and clothing shops, two banks, the post office, and a number of outdoor cafes (some fronting an inn or small hotel of which there were several). At that time, the ski runs were beyond the business section. (There was also the limited membership Eagle Club at the top of the ski run as well as a gemutlichkeit indoor/outdoor cafe.)

The house that Leon’s secretary, Leigh, had leased for us was two blocks from the heart of the town and in what might be called “the flats.” The mountain train ran about two hundred feet behind us: quiet, no black smoke, a musical whistle that could well have inspired Rodgers and Hammerstein. The small cafe backing the train station was a favored gathering spot, and watching the trains arrive and depart along the winding tracks to upper regions was a form of genuine entertainment; one would not have been surprised to hear the Trapp family from The Sound of Music singing an appropriate song as it slowly diminished from sight.

There were no slums or “bad places” to live in Gstaad at that time. Every street was clean, all the houses I ever saw kept pristine—at least their exteriors. In the higher reaches of the village, the chalets were larger and a bit grander and had closer access to the one grande dame hotel—the Palace, perhaps the most elite hotel in all of Switzerland due to the exclusive, highly acclaimed, and famed boy’s boarding school, Le Rosey, which was located just outside Gstaad. Attending the school were the sons and heirs of many world leaders and some of the world’s richest families who stayed at the Palace when they came to either visit, register, or collect their offspring.

Homes in every section of town were built of wood in the chalet style, and ours was quite a handsome new construction. We could watch the trains come and go on our large rear terrace. Built on three levels, the lowest floor (which you walked down to) was set up as a separate (and quite commodious) apartment. This was Jay’s to occupy and he was thrilled with it. The house, which we leased furnished, also had a “cave” for entertaining with a built-in counter bar, a sound system, several pine tables and chairs, and a space that might be called a small dance floor. The upper and main part of the house contained three bedrooms and three baths, a sweet-smelling wood sauna, and a large, open, interconnected space that was sectioned off into living room, dining room, and kitchen.

Our nearest neighbor was Lisette Prince, heiress to the Armour fortunes and a brilliant photographer who had fallen in love with a rather dashing ski instructor. (Their incredible wedding, which I attended, was memorable—rustic Swiss crossed with American high society.) In the higher reaches of town were the homes of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, David Niven, Sean Connery, Julie Andrews and Blake Edwards, Yehudi Menuhin, and Karim, the young Aga Khan who had attended Le Rosey as a boy. What impressed me more was the number of literary talents who lived nearby—William Buckley and John Galbraith, among them. Gstaad had a literary history, begun when Ernest Hemingway, forty-plus years earlier, had written A Farewell to Arms at a table in the small front tavern of the homey Rossli Hotel. This roll call of famous residents might suggest that Gstaad was a stuffy, pretentious place. Gratefully, it was not. Later, that perhaps changed. But when I lived there no one paid much attention to the celebrity of some of its inhabitants. In summer, Liz Taylor strode down the main street in jeans, little makeup, and a scarf tied over her hair. Sean Connery did not bother with his toupee, and Julie Andrews was followed by a gaggle of yipping dogs. There were those starchy characters who liked to align themselves with the rich and famous. I recall a pretentious Greek columnist who could have been cast in an old Preston Sturges movie, so over the top was he. There was also a suspicious-looking American with Hitchcockian resemblance who had the amazing power to turn up at the bank whenever one of the town’s Yanks went in to make a deposit. Most of us were quite certain he was a spy for the Internal Revenue Service.

Leon and Catherine arrived not long after I did, and Michael soon joined us during a short break in his working schedule. It was great being a family again although I had the feeling (later confirmed) that Catherine and Leon had not gotten on too well in London, something to do with her dating choices, I believe. I thought he should have spoken to me first before confronting her, a matter of disagreement between Leon and myself. Shortly after, Leon left for Denmark for work on his current film, Welcome to the Club, a satire about American servicemen and USO entertainers in postwar Japan. The script was not much better than his previous production, but I remained as removed as was possible from making any comments. The short time he had been in Gstaad had not been unpleasant, however. He found some tennis partners and there had been some magical musical evenings spent with Yehudi Menuhin and his family.

A week or so after his departure, I received the tragic news that Judy had died in her London mews house. I was prepared to fly to England when I was informed that her body was to be shipped back to the States for burial. All I could think of was the sad time in London when she had called me in the middle of the night to tell me Mickey was downstairs with a man having sex on a couch. And then, on my last visit with her, how terribly frail she was, her face hollow, her eyes huge, her frame shrunken. I remember coming away, feeling quite ill and thinking that must have been the way Anne Frank looked toward the end of her young life, for Judy had been so small, so shrunken that she had seemed a child. These were hard images to block out. When I was in Madrid, she had gone with Mickey to Copenhagen and I had received a letter from Hans Vanghilde, a Danish radio personality, that followed me to Spain. Mickey had given him my London address as someone who might be helpful. It seems Judy had suffered a breakdown during her concert appearance in Copenhagen. Mickey had gone on the next contracted stop on their tour and left her in Hans and Grethe Vanghilde’s care. By the time I received the letter Judy had returned to London with Mickey.

Toward the end of the summer when I joined Leon in Denmark, I met the Vanghildes and experienced their genteel kindness and felt, that at least for the short time Judy had been with them, she had been in the company of good people. Hans was a sensitive man with a homely quality about him. Of sturdy Scandinavian stock, when we met he was dressed in rough, well-worn tweeds. He spoke fluent English and had a wonderful chuckling kind of laugh. He had met Judy only once, for an interview for his program, before he and his vivacious wife had been made her keepers while Mickey went off and left her behind.

The Vanghildes (with four welcoming children and huge Lassie-like collie jumping about) invited me to their home for tea. We sat talking until darkness was hard upon us. Hans played the entire radio tape he had made with Judy (and that had been edited some time before airing). There was an evident empathy that passed between them.

Halfway through Judy broke off what she was saying and confided, “I’ve worked very hard, you know, and I’ve planted some kind of—I’ve been lucky enough I guess to plant a star—and then people wanted to either get in the act or else they wanted to rob me emotionally or financially, whatever. And then walk away . . . [re her fame]. You’re only surrounded by people who are not truthful and who are using you.” (Her voice on the tape had an unfamiliar sound to it. I made a note in my journal that “the throb is there, but it is harder, more brittle, a dried branch that could crack easily under the slightest pressure.”)

“If you’re unaware as I am,” she continued, “and you’re a woman, it could get pretty rough sometimes.”

Nothing could have been rougher than that week she spent with the Vanghildes, certain that Mickey had deserted her, for he had departed the hotel leaving her an envelope containing fifty dollars and the unpaid hotel bill (taken care of by her sudden hosts). She was having trouble walking, refused to eat, and without her pills must have been going through a disorienting and painful withdrawal.

“Do you know who I am?” she had asked Grethe.

“Yes, of course. You are Judy Garland, a great star—so great that in a couple of moments you can give ordinary people something they will never forget,” Grethe had replied. “Please—say that again,” Judy asked in a wisp of a voice. And Grethe did.

The Vanghildes told me that when Mickey finally returned to collect her Judy was in high spirits, “almost hysteria.” She and Mickey quickly got into the rear seat of the chauffeured limousine he had come in. The Vanghildes waved their good-byes as the car pulled off, but “Judy was so tiny that even the back of her head was not visible in the car’s rear window.”

A few weeks after Judy’s death, and following a very public funeral in New York, Bobby called me. He and Mickey were flying from New York to London the next morning to spend two days there before coming down to Gstaad to see me. They must talk to me. Could I put them up? Frankly, I was not too keen on Mickey as a houseguest, but Bobby was my father’s kid half brother and we were joined by blood and a part of the same dysfunctional family. I had no idea what they needed to talk to me about but assumed it must have to do—not with Judy—but their own topsy-turvy relationship. I said as much and added that if that were the case that I would have nothing to do with it, for I was fearful that Mickey might be trying to lure Bobby into some pie-in-the-sky scheme.

“No, no!” Bobby assured me.

“What, then?”

“We’ll talk about it when we see you,” he insisted and was gone.

Leon was still in Denmark when they arrived a week later. From their attitude toward each other, I assumed (correctly as it turned out) that for now at least they were once again lovers, Bobby very much the protective member of their relationship. In his youth, although tall and big boned, there had not been much flesh on those bones and what there was—was pasty white. Asthma and a rare blood disease had plagued his early years along with the emotional injuries he had suffered as the unathletic son of Big Charlie. My father, with his athletic prowess and his short career as a soldier, had—however briefly—at least won their father’s praise (“love” is not a word one could associate with my grandfather). Bobby was unable to compete in any sport and was rigorously protected by his mother against any possibility of being placed in harm’s way. Yet, except for his spare body, he was undeniably Big Charlie’s son, tall and blond, the same square chin, crooked nose, and deepwater blue eyes. What he possessed, that my father had not, was a true intelligence and a gladiator’s will to survive. He fought and won his freedom by receiving a scholarship to Pomona College, located a short distance from Los Angeles, despite his mother’s attempts to keep him close to home in Portland, Oregon.

His health would never be robust, but his transformation had been almost immediate. We saw quite a lot of each other during his first year at college. He came to Los Angeles whenever he had a free weekend. He had lunch with me at MGM where I was working in the Junior Writer program. Although we were both underage, he escorted me with much élan to the Mocambo nightclub situated on glittery Sunset Boulevard. Along with Ciro’s, the Mocambo was a favorite of Hollywood’s top players. We sat at the bar and sipped fruit-flavored-and-decorated cocktails and danced shoulder to shoulder on a small dance floor with movietown’s famous (and infamous) stars. Giant birdcages containing exotic, wildly colored birds hung from the lighted ceiling. The room was scented by massive floral bouquets. Laughter was high pitched, the atmosphere heady. Bobby was fascinated with Hollywood and its celebrities, but he never cared to become involved in the industry. Social causes, poor people’s needs, the emotionally crippled were of greater relevance to him.

Sometime around his junior year, he had the strength to come out of the closet—not an easy step in a conservative school like Pomona in the 1940s. Quite soon his appearance took on a more macho look. He worked out and added weight and muscle to his generous Swedish frame. Shortly after graduation, he shaved off his blond hair (which he had always loathed) and—bald headed (a look he maintained)—moved to New York and, refusing to take money from his mother (my “aunt” Edith), lived in humble circumstances while employed in a low-level job with the city’s social services, where he was now a moving force. I admired him for what he had accomplished. No two men seemed less likely to be lovers than Bobby and Mickey.

How then to explain Bobby’s relationship with Mickey Deans? The obvious is, of course, sexual attraction. Mickey was a flytrap for lost souls. But Bobby (now self-renamed Robert Jorgen) had found his—or so I had believed. He was a reformist and somewhat of a utopian who believed there was a good person inside everyone (except Big Charlie!). I had concluded that both these elements plus sex had been responsible for the fact that here he now sat on the sun-filled rear deck of my chalet in Gstaad, a consoling arm around his lover’s shoulders, as Mickey—in his slick, con-man glibness—explained his need to see me.

Had I received a letter from a London law firm regarding Judy? he asked. No, I had not. Well, I would, for she had given me her personal papers and writings, the last referring to her poetry and several attempts she had made at an autobiography. I recalled the time she had told me that she wanted to write such a book but that Sid “owned her life.” I had said that was nonsense, no one but she “owned her life” and that she should start by speaking into a tape recorder whenever memories of happenings and people who had affected her life came to mind.

“I should,” she had replied. “You’re right, I should.” She had not mentioned it again to me.

“I have a publisher interested,” Mickey said.

“A publisher?”

“For a book about Judy and our last year together. He has offered a generous sum.”

He leaned forward, edging closer to me. I could not look into his eyes as he wore large, dark sunglasses. “You see, there’s been a problem having to do with Judy’s burial.” He began to explain, one hand now on the arm of my chair. He believed that Judy Garland was the greatest entertainer of her time and should be buried in fitting style. So, upon his return to New York with her remains, he had signed a contract with Ferncliff Cemetery in Westchester County, New York, where other “greats” like the composer Jerome Kern and Broadway producer/librettist Moss Hart were interred. Ferncliff’s manager had assured him that “Judy would be its greatest star.” He had thus agreed for a special niche to be built in the cemetery’s marble mausoleum. The cost was $37,500. Judy’s coffin was transferred from Campbell Funeral Home in New York City to Ferncliff, where she remained in a temporary crypt (actually a file drawer—two bodies above, two below) as work on a permanent resting place was put aside to be completed when he could pay the outstanding bill. He had not been able to raise funds, so Judy remained where she was and this hurt him to the quick (so he said). “It’s wrong. It’s very wrong,” he added as he adjusted his glasses and slid back, and away from me, in his chair.

The publisher was offering him a sum that would take care of Judy’s burial and then some. The problem was, writing was not one of his talents (he played a credible piano and was a master talksmith). He wanted my help and since he had just discovered that I was the recipient of Judy’s papers, it seemed we should collaborate on what “he was sure could be a best-seller.”

Mickey certainly did not lack for gall or swagger. It did not seem to bother him that his grandiose ideas had created this appalling situation. I did not hesitate in telling him that I would in no way consider collaborating with him on a book. He continued his pitch. Finally, to save further confrontation, I got up and walked back into the house. Bobby followed me.

“Poor baby,” he said with a nod to Mickey sitting, brooding, on the deck. “He has all of Judy’s debts to deal with along with this ugly situation at Ferncliff.”

“Judy’s debts!” I countered. “Who do you think created a good hunk of those debts? Mickey used Judy, just as he’s using you and trying to use me. Maybe he can get away with it with you. But you can bet your life on it—not me!”

“You’ve got it wrong. Mickey was trying to help get Judy back on her feet,” he insisted.

“Back on her feet? What? To stand on a stage, a wraith, all alone, like she did in Copenhagen, dying as she performed, badly disoriented? Judy needed someone to take care of her, not someone who would siphon off her last strength to support them! Judy was an American phenomenon. Perhaps the greatest entertainer of the twentieth century. She was also flesh and blood, a woman, a much overused, exploited woman, devoured by leeches like Mickey and all the other tacky men in her life.”

“You’re overreacting,” he cajoled, a familiar vein in his forehead twitching, but his chin set, his voice firm.

“No way, Bobby! Forget it!”

Dinner was disastrous. They departed the next morning. Two days later three large cartons containing Judy’s papers—old contracts, her Screen Actors Guild card, her passport, letters and her writings—mostly poetry—and numerous tapes, arrived. I had no idea what I should do with them. I asked the law firm to contact Judy’s daughter, Liza, who was in Hollywood filming The Sterile Cuckoo, to see if she wanted them. Several months passed before a member of the firm wrote back to say that Liza’s answer was, “No.”

I brought the boxes back with me to the States when I returned two years later, and kept them under lock and key. Mickey collaborated with a writer on a tell-all book. Five years after Judy Garland’s death, I wrote and Simon & Schuster published my book, Judy Garland: A Biography. The first edition concluded with a small section of Judy’s poetry. I don’t know why, but the poetry was pulled from all future editions. It never had been included in the British edition. During my work on the book, I went to Ferncliff and was shocked to find that Judy’s remains were still in that file drawer (so much for Mickey wanting to write his book to pay for her burial. The bill was still outstanding plus steep interest charges). I was in correspondence with Frank Sinatra at the time re his memories and association with Judy. In one letter I wrote about the state of affairs at Ferncliff, whereas Judy remained in a drawer with a nameplate reading—“Judy Garland DeVinko.” Several weeks later the manager of Ferncliff wrote me stating that Mr. Sinatra had paid the outstanding bill and that Mrs. DeVinko would soon be given a proper burial. At Sinatra’s request, I did not include this information—or this disturbing backstory—in my book. Upon the publication of Judy Garland: A Biography, I sent all the material originally in the three boxes to Judy Garland’s legal firm in New York City.