You control your decisions. You control your actions. You control your outcome.
—DAVID KEKICH, MASTER LIFE
In 1979, I walked into a recording studio to record some voice-overs. Sitting there in front of the console was Barry Manilow, just finishing up a session. We were next in line. He looked at me and said, “Oh, you’re the other one they make fun of.”
I said, “I know. How come it’s always you and me?” And a friendship was forged that has lasted for thirty-seven years. I adore and love Barry. He had taken the country and the world by storm with his megahit “Copacabana.” It was beyond brilliant. The album Even Now was everywhere—the song was playing in every club, disco, and TV special. No one could sit still when his music came on. I danced to “Copacabana” as Lola, the character in Barry’s song, on a Danny Thomas special and again as recently as last year, on Dancing with the Stars. My tailbone still remembers! Ha-ha.
Barry was often photographed onstage wearing a ruffled rhumba shirt, and it became his fashion statement. I, on the other hand, had worn a chicken suit when introducing Gladys Knight on The Suzanne Somers Special. That became the photo most used of me. There we were, he in his ruffled rhumba shirt and me in my chicken suit.
We were both at the top of our game nationwide. Barry was and is a musical phenomenon, and I was the number-one female TV star in America. It’s comforting to have a close friend who totally understands what you are going through. We both understood the trade-offs. Going out alone is off the table for good. There always has to be someone with you, otherwise you are up for grabs. One of the many things Alan does for me is to provide a “good cop, bad cop” option in these situations. Guess which role he plays? Anyway, I welcomed the trade-off and still do.
It’s comforting to have a close friend who totally understands what you are going through.
Celebrity is what you make it. Over the years, I’ve watched some celebrities in our business change with their fame. I believe it’s a result of believing that all the attention they are getting somehow makes them better than others, or that the world revolves around them. That is dangerous thinking. From the beginning, I always saw celebrity as a gift and a privilege. Interacting with the public is part of the deal. You are nothing without them, and you can never forget that.
I am friendly by nature so interacting with fans and others is enjoyable for me. I like people, and I like being around them, but do I want to be grabbed by a stranger or taken advantage of? No. Would you? Celebrity requires respect on both sides.
As I continued to adjust to my career, my celebrity, and its purpose, I found it comforting to be with Barry. I wasn’t looking for a special friendship outside the incredible rapport I have always had with Alan, but the celebrity that both Barry and I shared was its own animal. There are no schools or books or classes one can take on Celebrity 101. It’s a strange new world that you learn to groove with or not. I have watched so many fall apart, feeling undeserving, who resort to drugs to take away the shyness and then find themselves hooked. So having Barry to bounce experiences off of, and he from me, was invaluable. We are both searchers, fascinated by the human condition; we enjoy discussing what we consider the two big questions in life: Who am I, and what do I want? Most people go to their graves never knowing the answers to these seemingly simple questions.
I will be forever working on it, and I believe it takes at least a lifetime to answer. Yet I find myself getting closer to my own understanding of what it means. Of course, with each decade, I look back and realize how little I knew in the past decade. Evolution is part of the human experience.
I was evolving into this new life and loving it. I enjoyed celebrity because I like people so much. It’s interactive in the best sense of the word. Some of us must come back again and again to finally figure out this thing called life. We humans are comprised of a complexity of emotions that often collide with our intellects. Barry and I have, over the years, had long endless talks about this.
Who am I, and what do I want? Most people go to their graves never knowing the answers to these seemingly simple questions.
We stimulate each other; we make each other laugh. I love to cook for him, and he loves my food. I love his musical suggestions for me, and I take each one seriously. We’ve promised to produce one another’s funerals, because we were both so disappointed at Merv Griffin’s funeral. (We both knew Merv would never have put on an event like that, with a bunch of clergy who didn’t know him and had never met him but did all the speaking about him.) For all of these reasons, my relationship with Barry became my most important outside relationship. Funny, it was all because of yet another chance meeting, as Bette Midler sang, “You Gotta Have Friends.” Not surprisingly, it was a Barry arrangement.
Good Morning America wanted to do a Mother’s Day show featuring the mothers of TV’s hottest stars of the moment. They invited Robin Williams’s mother, Tom Selleck’s mother, and my mother; my sweet, very, very shy mother. Unfortunately, due to my shooting schedule, I was not able to accompany her. Instead, she and my father would make their first trip to New York by themselves, all expenses paid. They would be staying at the Ritz and have dinner at Le Grenouille, the most popular and expensive restaurant in New York. Heady stuff, and a long way away from San Bruno, California.
Evolution is part of the human experience.
Mom was so excited and nervous. We discussed her wardrobe and decided on a couple of her most beautiful outfits, chosen as always with her impeccable great taste. I knew—hoped—she would be okay.
The morning of the show, I was lying in bed before getting up to head to the studio, as I heard her being introduced: “This morning our guest is Suzanne Somers’s mother, Marion Mahoney.” My heart started pounding, and I sat up to see, both excited and nervous for her. She wore her beautiful violet coat, and her great, thick hair was coiffed perfectly. For some women, as their hair grays, it becomes a dead color with an underbelly of dark. But my mother’s hair had turned a beautiful white-blond. Most people thought she colored it, but it was all hers and natural. I was glad the makeup department did her right—she looked gorgeous.
All was going well, but I noticed that her eyes looked a bit stunned, like a deer in headlights. She had never spoken publicly before, and the knowledge that millions of people were watching her was overwhelming. David Hartman, the usual host, was ill that day and was replaced by Mike Connors, an affable guy who played Mannix on the series of that name. My mother couldn’t believe she was meeting Mannix!
Mike asked the first question: “Did you always know, Mrs. Mahoney, that Suzanne was going to be a star?”
My mother just sat there staring at him, and after what seemed like an eternity, she stammered, “Suzanne was always very obedient.”
Mike looked at her, not quite knowing how to respond, so he asked, “Right, but was it inevitable? Did you know early on that her life would take such an incredible turn?”
Once again my mother stammered, “Suzanne was always very obedient.”
I could tell she was losing it. I was afraid she was going to faint from fear.
She had memorized that I was obedient, and that was all she could remember under the pressure. Then she blurted out, “I can’t do this.”
I thought she was going to cry. I pulled the bedsheet up under my chin, saying to the TV set, “Yes, you can, Mom, yes you can.”
Mike took her hand and said, “Yes, you can, Marion.” But her fear was so palpable, so emotional, that to protect her, they cut to commercial.
My mother was mortified. When I called her, she began to cry that she had let me down. But actually she had touched the hearts of viewers. Here was this pretty, very pure and simple woman who honestly could not take the spotlight. It was endearing, and throughout the day, everyone who called me started the conversation with “Your mother is so sweet!”
We humans are comprised of a complexity of emotions that often collide with our intellects.
My mother’s appearance was probably the best thing she could have done for me. No one mentioned Robin Williams’s mother or Tom Selleck’s mother, just mine. People wrote and talked about her saying, “This is where Suzanne Somers gets her sweetness.”
My beautiful sweet mother had saved me in my childhood. While she couldn’t keep us safe from the monster who was my father on alcohol, she built me up in ways that were true and honest. She had always believed I could do anything and told me so often. Whether I knew it or not at the time, she had instilled it in my core. Deep down, when you know you have someone who believes in you, you gain an inner strength. It’s what got me through. She loved me unconditionally. In looking back, I had quite a support system: Alan, my mother, Bruce, my sister and brother. I didn’t know how much I was going to be needing their support a short distance down the road.
Early one morning I woke up to the phone ringing. It was my press agent, Jay Bernstein, and he sounded very anxious: “You’re all over the Enquirer. Playboy found some nude test shots of you, and they’ve published them. Now Ace Hardware wants to fire you on a morals clause.”
“Fire me? Why?” I asked, bewildered.
“They feel you are no longer the right, clean, wholesome image for them.”
I thought back on that horrible trip to Mexico. I thought of the desperation, timidity, and fear that had led me to that waterfall. “But I never shot the actual pictures! I walked away,” I protested.
“Doesn’t matter,” Jay said. “My guess is that someone sold you out.”
When you know you have someone who believes in you, you gain an inner strength. It’s what got me through.
I sat at the breakfast table feeling despondent. Here I was at the top of my game, beyond my wildest imaginings, and now I was being brought down by a silly mistake from years ago. I frantically called Alan, who was in Vancouver taping his talk show. As usual, he found the positive. “This isn’t the end of the world—we can use it and make it work for you. When they ask why you did it, you tell them the truth. You did it because you were a single teenage mother, with no child support; you had a drunken father. You had to fend for yourself financially, and this was a chance to bail yourself out of debt from your child’s doctor’s bills.”
The phone rang again. It was Jay. “Now ABC and Three’s Company are in talks as to whether they should fire you.” At that time, Vanessa Williams had lost her Miss America crown because someone had dug out some old nude photos of her, so I knew this could be a reality.
“Here’s what I think you should do,” Jay explained. “I want you to drive downtown to AP”—the Associated Press—“and meet with Vernon Scott.” He was a powerful entertainment writer back then. “Explain to him why you did this. If it comes from you and not your people, it will mean more to him.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
I drove to downtown Los Angeles and the Associated Press building and went upstairs. “May I speak with Vernon Scott, please?” I asked the receptionist. My heart was pounding. Jay had called him and told him I was coming, but I didn’t know that.
“Suzanne, come on in,” said Vernon. He had a nice manner about him. “This is a surprise. I’ve never had the star of the number one show in America come to me. Normally I have to beg to come to you.” I laughed half-heartedly, then dove in.
“Thank you for seeing me. I’m in a heap of trouble, and I thought if I could explain my story, maybe you’d write about it in a way that I don’t lose my career.”
I sat with Vernon for the next couple of hours. I told him about my childhood and the violence and my father’s crazy nightly rages, I told him about getting pregnant as a teenager, and about leaving home because I was so ashamed that I had embarrassed my family. I told him how on my wedding night, my father drunkenly yelled at me, “I always knew you’d get knocked up!” I told him that I had had no help financially, that I had had a scholarship to college but had to leave in the middle of my first year because I was going to have a baby. That I was a Catholic and abortion was not an option, and that I was so glad I had made that decision. I told him of my life with my little boy and that I did any job available to just try and keep the two of us in the basics. I told him how one day I stupidly let my little boy play outside in the driveway of our little rented house with his new toy, and he lost control of it, and it shot out into the street just as a car was coming over the hill. And that the driver ran right over him. That I heard the screeching brakes and then someone pounding on my front door and I remembered picking up his little lifeless head and not knowing if he was dead or alive.
I told him about the ambulance and the ER and being told by the doctor that he had a fifty-fifty chance of survival, and that I had never in my life felt more shame and remorse, and that I would have gladly given my life for his at that moment. That it was the lowest point of my life. I told him I prayed all night for my son to make it; and that when the doctor came out of surgery and told me he was going to live, I broke down in sobs. I told him how they told me to go home to change my clothes because I had been there for twenty-four hours and I was barefoot and covered in blood.
I told Vernon about my son’s long struggle to heal, and that when it was all over, I had twenty thousand dollars’ worth of doctors’ bills, and no insurance from anyone, and was being hounded by bill collectors. And that that was when I got this job in Mexico, and the photographer said I could make fifteen thousand dollars if I took my clothes off. I told him how nervous I was being naked, and that when I finally was chosen to be a Playmate centerfold, I got all the way to the front door of the Playboy building and decided not to do it. And here we were today. Now they’d printed those awful test pictures, and Ace Hardware was going to fire me, and ABC and Three’s Company were right now in meetings about firing me, and it all just didn’t seem fair. And then I sobbed. I sobbed in Vernon Scott’s office until I was so embarrassed that I stood up, thanked him for listening to me, and left.
I cried all the way home. It had all come flooding back: all the pain, all the fear, all the shit from all the years of hiding in the closet and being the object of town gossip because I had gotten pregnant. The feeling that everyone made fun of me and would again. It didn’t seem to matter that I had done the right thing and hadn’t taken the pictures, or that it had been a breakthrough to turn it down because I finally thought more of myself. It wouldn’t matter that after all I’d gone through, I had made it big. Now I was being brought down, and it was suffocating and just didn’t feel fair.
I was all over the news that night. The phrase morals clause was repeated over and over. The president of Ace Hardware issued a public statement (I’m paraphrasing) that they were very disappointed in me and that I was not the type of person they wanted to represent their company. They were canceling my contract. The advertisers for Three’s Company threatened to pull out if they kept me on the show. The producers freaked and began the process of cutting me loose. I had become a pariah. I was asked not to come to work. Nobody came to my defense. No one from the show spoke out. I was on my own.
Out of every negative comes a positive.
I couldn’t wait for Alan to fly home from Vancouver that night. I needed him to hold me. How had this happened? One moment you were on top of the heap, and the next moment you were the garbage.
I had no more tears left. And then Vernon Scott’s column came out. I’m paraphrasing the column:
How come we don’t take better care of our girls in this country? What did she do that was so wrong? What would you have done in the same position? She was destitute, yet when faced with the opportunity to make the money, she walked away.
And now these people take advantage of her enormous success, and like a meat grinder with no thought of how this affects a career, her son, her family, she is exposed for being something she is not. I spent two hours with her, and I feel nothing but compassion for Miss Somers. She is a fine person who never asked for anybody to take care of her. She did it all by herself and I admire Miss Somers. She deserves another chance.
He explained the entire story, sharing what I had told him in his office. His humanity touches me to this day.
Then the floodgates opened. The public outcry was so enormous that the president of Ace Hardware was forced to make a public apology. He went to Tiffany’s and bought me a very expensive pair of diamond earrings. He made nice and made sure the public knew about it, and the advertisers for Three’s Company all did the same. I was the headline for days afterward. Everyone wanted to interview me about how far I had come.
And Playboy apologized and offered me fifty thousand dollars in restitution.
In 1979 Barbara Walters asked me to be one of three guests on her prestigious twice-yearly special, along with Sylvester Stallone and Steven Spielberg (heady company). Being featured on her show was an indicator of success. The awful episode hadn’t taken me down—instead it brought me to newer heights. A crazy business, but it did show that a heartfelt belief of mine is right: Out of every negative comes a positive. My embarrassment at having those photos published, and the accompanying public support, catapulted me into a new arena. Clearly Jay Bernstein’s advice to pour my heart out had been brilliant.
I went back to work, and strangely no one involved with the show ever talked about it, as if it hadn’t happened. But our ratings skyrocketed. It’s hard to get any higher than number one, but all this new publicity and focus brought in more and more viewers. Three’s Company was a blockbuster hit, and I had a lot to do with it. I had survived and come out on top.
But I knew I’d never be the same. The episode gave me an even deeper appreciation of all I had and the knowledge of how easily it could all be taken away. That week the audience gave me a long standing ovation. They wouldn’t stop clapping. “We love you, Chrissy!” they chanted. I was deeply moved. The producers stood in the wings smiling big smiles, which is why what happened next was so startling.