Tragedy is part of life: how very few escape its touch. It’s not tragedy itself, but the degree of it that counts. A family destroyed before your very eyes, within a flash—that’s tragedy with a capital T.
It struck my brother in January 1975. An inferno swept through the home of his ex-wife, Frances, and his daughters, Melissa and Elizabeth, killing them all—sparing only his son, Charles, Jr. My brother was on the phone with Frances when she began screaming. Charles raced to her house to find it in cinders, Frances and his two beautiful daughters, age ten and eleven, burned to a crisp. Crash! A haunted life.
A captain of industry, a dashing raconteur, a charmer of charmers, a ladies’ man, a man’s man, a lost man.
Tragedy brought us closer, until another tragedy all but destroyed decades of envied love.
It was the last week in April of 1980. I picked Charlie up at LAX and we limousined it to Palm Springs. It had been five years since my brother’s horrific trauma and by ritual, every couple of months we’d long-weekend it together alone. Laugh, cry, reminisce, talk about the past, the future—you name it, we shared it.
Ten days earlier, I had been S.O.S.’d back to the States from Malta by Michael Eisner.
“Travolta’s been in the editing room every night with Jim Bridges. Don’t like what I hear.”
“Can’t leave, Michael. If we get one more day of rain, that’s it. Popeye’s Sweethaven is in the sea.”
“It’s your call, Evans. If we change the name to Urban Cowgirl, don’t blame Paramount.”
Thirty flying hours later, I was back at the studio, watching Travolta as our Urban Cowboy.
“Eisner’s right. Where’s the fuckin’ raunch, the sweat, the dancin’? There’s no heat! It’s all been shot. Now I’m lookin’ at a fuckin’ ballet.”
“We don’t have to be exploitative,” bristled director Bridges. “John’s the biggest star in the world.”
“Oh really! Get this straight, Mr. Director; the grit, the raunch, the down and dirty go back in. I’m lookin’ for Saturday Night Fever goes West, not The Red Shoes.”
He got it, but he didn’t get it all in. When director and star lock together, you can win a battle, but the war? Forget it. The editing room floor, not the theaters, ended up with the heat.
Urban Cowboy’s double-album soundtrack was pure platinum. Urban Cowboy, the film, was sterling silver. A summer hit, but certainly no platinum blockbuster.
I took a weekend furlough from battle, Charlie flew out from New York. The two of us lazed around Marvin Davis’s pool in Palm Springs . . . played tennis, swam, laughed.
Successful as Charles had been in his quest for wealth, he was that lost in his quest for happiness. Tragedy haunted his every day. Business kept him alive and his was booming. Whatever Charlie touched, gushed. From clothing tycoon to real estate baron, within a decade, ain’t luck, it’s brilliance.
On our drive down to the Springs, Charlie told me he was in final negotiations to sell half his real estate holdings to a Dutch bank for close to $100 million. Not bad for a guy whose only previous real estate experience was buying an apartment. Was he excited about it? No, when your life’s in shambles, dollar signs come in a distant third.
“Take a fling, try something new. Hey! Make a flick, with your brights, you’ll win an Academy Award.”
Charlie didn’t say no.
“Read something last week, gave me belly laughs. Buddy Hackett sent it over. It’s been around for years, but funny is funny, the title’s even funny—Would I Lie to You? George Hamilton is dyin’ to do it. He’d be good for it too. It’s about an actor who can’t get a gig, so he dresses in drag, and as a broad he never stops working. I’d make it myself, but if you want it, it’s yours. Take a shot, for twenty-five Gs you can option it.”
Charlie took the shot, bought the rights. A month later, Dustin Hoffman, who was preparing a film about Renee Richards, the male tennis pro who had a sex change, then played the female tennis circuit, read Would I Lie to You? He canceled the Renee Richards story. Good-bye, George; hello, Dustin. Good-bye, Would I Lie to You?; hello, Tootsie. Was I surprised? Not at all, it was Charlie all the way. A winner is a winner is a winner is a winner.
Me? I was flying high too. For the first time I had gross points from the first dollar on two of Paramount’s biggest pictures of the year—Urban Cowboy and Popeye.
“Can’t make your kinda bread, Charlie, but Hollywood rich ain’t bad either. It’s my shot at ‘fuck you’ green. The only way I can fuck up is by gettin’ sick, not protecting my back. Flicks ain’t real estate, Charlie, I’ve got to fight for every frame.”
Sick? A week from that very day, I didn’t get sick, I got very sick, terminally sick.
Charlie went back to New York, and I returned to the studio fighting the Bridges-Travolta combine for more grit in the saddle of Urban Cowboy.
A call from my brother: “Ilana called.”
“Ilana who?”
“Ilana Garcia, the shirtmaker. She’s found pure white silk shirts.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Sealed,” said Charlie. “There’s a catch, we gotta buy five. They’re wholesale—four thousand each.”
“Wholesale? Cedars pays twenty-four bucks a shirt.”
“That’s Cedars, Ilana tells me seventy-five hundred is a bargain. It’s ten thousand and up, that’s if you can get it. Get this, she boasts, Mick Jagger would do a concert in Yankee Stadium for zip for this order.”
Would you say the world of toot was crazy in the 1970s?
“She’ll hold ’em for only twenty-four hours.”
Pharmaceutical cocaine was mythical. Manufactured by only one company in America, Merck, it was obtainable to the outside world only by heist. So mythical was its allure that it became the DEA’s most effective bait to entrap schmuck buyers. That was us. I’d met Ilana just twice, while on business in New York, and it wasn’t to take her to the theater. Charlie knew her well, from the social scene around town.
Twenty-four hours later, Charlie was on the horn.
“What do I tell her? She’s called twice.”
“Let’s buy it, we’ll split it three ways, Mike, you, and me.” Mike Shure was our brother-in-law.
“You’re sure?” Charlie asked.
“Yeah, why not? We’ll vault it. Just make sure it’s kosher. This ain’t no kibbitz, be real careful.”
“Careful . . . I’m not like you. Who’s more cautious than me?”
“Yeah, but this sounds too good, and that’s bad. Charlie, promise me you’re nowhere near when the deal goes down. Get a schmuck delivery guy from the Stage Deli, your chauffeur, or anyone to pick it up, but not you, promise?”
“Promise.”
The deal was to go down on Friday. All that day there was no word from my brother. At 7:45 that evening, I was going out the door, on my way to pick up my kid for dinner, when my houseman hailed me.
“A Miss Garcia on the phone, says it’s urgent.”
Leaving the motor on, I rushed to the phone.
“Yeah?”