OUR FILM COMPANY made an unexpected return to Ireland, to reshoot some scenes in Darling Lili and to capture a few new shots that had been added. It was a delight to be back at Carton, which was now in early autumn splendor.
It happened to be my birthday while we were there. I was working with Zoë most of that day in a photo shoot, and unbeknownst to me, Blake had planned a surprise party; we were to have dinner in the grand dining room with about twenty guests, mostly members of the cast and crew. Ken’s wife, Kären, garlanded the marble pillars with flowers, and the long table was bedecked with silver candelabra, the finest linen, and the best china, the way it must have been in days gone by.
Blake had arranged for three different groups of musicians to entertain us: a group of minstrels wandered around the table singing old Irish ballads while we dined; a more modern band played contemporary Irish songs during dessert; and later in the evening, another ensemble played popular favorites in the library as we took coffee and occasionally sang along. It was a wonderful evening, and I so appreciated the effort it had taken to pull it all together.
Location shooting finally wrapped, and we headed back to Los Angeles. Having spent the entire summer living together, it seemed unthinkable for Blake and me to go back to our separate homes. Blake moved into my newly renovated house in Hidden Valley, and that was that.
Filming resumed at the studios, and we shot the opening song, “Whistling in the Dark.” Blake’s concept was to shoot the song in one complete take, which required an enormous amount of rehearsal, special lighting effects, and disciplined camera work involving focus changes and cable-pulling. I danced with the camera, moving this way and that, which required that I hit my marks exactly and lip-sync without fault from start to finish. It took the whole day, but Blake and I went home that evening feeling we had achieved something quite special together. It was a beautiful piece of filmmaking on Blake’s part.
Despite the tensions with the studio with respect to budget and schedule overages, Blake and I felt good about the film. We had so enjoyed working together. We agreed that, although we would not be mutually exclusive to each other, we would try to work together as often as possible. Our newly combined family, with the children’s various comings and goings and their adjustments to our shared life, was also a priority. We began to look for other projects to collaborate on.
Although my agent had been discussing other film options for me with various different studios, most of the roles offered felt too close to Mary Poppins, and I was keen to avoid repetition. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was one example. It was to star Dick Van Dyke, and Marc Breaux and Dee Dee Wood were choreographing. Songs were being written by the Sherman Brothers. As tempting as it was to work with them all again, I felt it might seem as though I were trying to recycle my Poppins image, so I regretfully declined.
For some time, there had been discussion of my doing a film for MGM called Say It with Music, featuring the songs of Irving Berlin, but nothing had come of it. Eventually, that project was swapped out for a film adaptation of the Broadway musical She Loves Me, which Blake and I were excited to work on together. Blake began to take preproduction meetings.
Star! had its Hollywood premiere on Halloween, having opened in New York the week before. Alas, when the reviews came in, they ranged from lukewarm to negative. The reception was a huge blow. Everyone who had worked so hard on the film had given their very best, and we had all enjoyed the challenge. Despite the fact that large-scale movie musicals had begun to go out of style, I think audiences were expecting another Sound of Music, and were disappointed that this film was more of a biopic with music, rather than a musical per se. It also seemed that contemporary American audiences had little interest in Gertrude Lawrence. Although the film did poorly at the box office, I remain proud of the work, and I’m happy to say that in the years since, audiences seem to have found it again and are appreciating it more.
I did my best to take the film’s failure in stride. I knew enough to realize that nonstop success in a career is impossible—you can’t stay on a pedestal forever, and from that position, there’s nowhere to go but down. Nobody sets out to make a failure, but you can never guarantee success either. I hoped that Darling Lili might fare better.
WE OPTED TO spend the winter holidays in Gstaad once again, in the same rental chalet that we’d had the year before. We flew via New York, where Tony took Emma back to the heart of the big city for Christmas. I held it together, but I was fairly devastated after she had gone. Geoff and Jenny were to spend Christmas with Patty, and would join us for the New Year, as would Emma. Ken and Kären were with us, as was my brother Chris, who was still struggling with sobriety but made an effort to keep it together over the holidays.
On Christmas Day, we phoned our families, and I discovered that Emma had been in bed with the flu. She didn’t want to leave her dad, and begged for more time with him now that she had recovered. I was disappointed, but I agreed to allow her to stay through the end of the holiday.
Patty then suddenly postponed Geoff and Jenny’s arrival by several days, and was subsequently unreachable by phone. We ultimately gathered that she had been suffering from a deep depression. This made Blake worry about the kids, but they did eventually arrive, and after an initial period of guardedness and tension, they began to settle in. They wouldn’t discuss the situation at home and changed the subject whenever we tried to approach it—but they gave Blake a cassette tape recorded by Patty, filled with paranoia, angry demands, and threats.
Some outrageous and untrue articles had appeared in various supermarket tabloids, alleging that I was neglecting Emma and that she was distraught over my relationship with Blake. One even reported that Blake and I were indulging in “threesomes” with Rock Hudson. Patty had apparently taken the press at their word. She demanded that Jenny and Geoff’s visits with Blake be limited, and that he no longer phone them from our house. Blake was outraged, but after some discussion we agreed that it would be best to take no action and wait until the drama subsided, which it did.
We were able to calm the children and give them a good second Christmas. Jenny and I put on mock ballet demonstrations for the guys, and Geoff reveled in snowball fights, sledding, and snuggles. By the end of the holiday, I found myself wishing that both kids could come and live with us. They were relaxed and seemed genuinely happy in those last precious days in Gstaad, and I so wanted to preserve that for them somehow.
But Geoff and Jenny returned to London, and we returned to Los Angeles, where another vitriolic article about me awaited us. The gossip columnist Joyce Haber claimed that I was having an affair with Sidney Poitier, and that I had been persuaded to terminate it for the sake of my “image” in the South. I had only met Sidney once, when he had presented me with the Academy Award, and I was appalled by the racism implied and the falsehoods generated in this mean-spirited article.
I ended up suing the tabloids in question and was awarded retractions in the same size and type as the original articles, along with a considerable sum of money, which I donated to charity.
I wrote in my diary:
How I wish we were back in Switzerland. I know now that it is where I really want to live. There is a solidarity to those glorious mountains—they aren’t going to be swayed by anyone. I feel a sense of permanence there.
I HAD PROMISED Emma that if she remained unhappy at the Lycée, she could switch schools after the New Year, and I kept my word. She began first grade at University Elementary School, now called UCLA Lab School, at the end of January. She was instantly happy there, and began having regular playdates and sleepovers with new friends. The school’s research into child development and progressive teaching practices was a model for others across the country. They recommended that Emma participate in their unicycle-riding program for physical education, and she quickly became a whiz at it. She spent hours after school wheeling around the garden, a small exclamation point of balance and coordination, which delighted me.
Blake, meanwhile, was having problems with the postproduction for Darling Lili. Bob Evans, the head of Paramount, was furious about the budget overages. He and Blake didn’t have the best relationship to begin with, and when Bob took Blake to task over the issue, Blake lost his temper and challenged Bob to “step outside.” Thankfully, Bob didn’t take him up on the challenge, but tensions were high, and word began to get out that the film was in trouble.
To make matters worse, we learned that Geoff was struggling at school in London. He wanted desperately to come and live with his dad. Patty surprisingly agreed to Geoff’s request. I admired her at that moment; it must have been hard to let her son go.
When Geoff arrived, he was in bad shape. He suffered from nightmares and often came thundering up the stairs to our bedroom in tears in the middle of the night. We found a good therapist, whom he began to see regularly.
My brother Chris was also a worry. He was clearly still on drugs, and he wasn’t seeing the therapist we had provided for him. My own therapist (it seems we had as many therapists as family members!) asked the important question, “Do you want to help him now, or do you want to help him in the long run?”
“The latter, of course,” I replied. He counseled me to give Chris a one-month ultimatum: get clean, get a job, and continue with therapy—or move out. The month passed with no change. With a heavy heart, I sent Chris packing, and he moved in with his girlfriend.
At the beginning of the summer, Blake and I took a much-needed break and made a quick trip to Florida. A beautiful Stephens motor yacht was going for a reasonable price in Fort Lauderdale, and we wanted to take a look at it. (Tempest had been better suited to a bachelor than an expanding family such as ours, and Blake had sold her.) The Stephens yacht was gorgeous, and Blake bought her on the spot. I had a small panic attack about the financial implications—I had no experience with this kind of indulgence, and it felt reckless—but Blake assured me that we would make it work somehow. Aptly, we named our new acquisition Impulse. She needed some repairs, so we left her in Florida and made plans to come back and spend time aboard with the children later in the summer.
On August 9, life in Los Angeles took a dark and terrifying turn. News reports relayed details of the horrific murders of Sharon Tate and four others by Charles Manson and his followers. The crimes were so mind-boggling that they challenged everyone’s reality. Like many others in Los Angeles that week, we installed alarms and tall gates on the property, and took pains to make sure that we were safely locked in every night.
BLAKE AND I took the children for a summer holiday on Michigan’s Lake Huron, where his aunt Thyrza owned a cabin. The kids fished from the dock, or lazily reclined in the dinghy, chatting for hours or writing stories. Blake and I did a lot of cleaning at the cabin to make it habitable, and it took a toll on us both physically. Blake’s back began bothering him more than usual. Because of his chronic pain from the injury sustained in his youth, he had a regular prescription for Demerol. He began self-medicating rather liberally in the evenings, which worried me. When we talked about it, he admitted to being as concerned as I was about overuse and the possibility of getting hooked.
“I’ll keep an eye on it,” he promised.
When we received word that Impulse was in working order, we headed to Florida for the last leg of our holiday. On our first evening aboard, Blake and I sat topside, watching lightning in the sky miles away, and an orange moon—a huge half cheese rising up, with black clouds striated across it. Airplane lights dotted the sky, and warning pylons flashed red across the water. It all felt strange and beautiful.
Blake looked up at the millions of stars and said, “Now you can’t tell me that there isn’t a God. Why all this?” Blake wasn’t a religious man, but at that moment, all of life—the water, the stars, the boat, us—felt like a miracle.
Later, I wrote:
Relief, guilt, happiness—can this last? Is it really ours? Will Impulse suddenly be taken away? Well, perhaps it is like buying a second home. But why me? We’ve certainly worked hard, but my dad worked hard all his life and never got this kind of reward. Though hopefully he’ll enjoy this too, one day.
We are supremely blessed to experience a gift like Impulse at this stage in our lifetimes. How lovely not to have to wait until we’re too old to enjoy it.
The day after we returned home, I began rehearsals for a television special with Harry Belafonte, directed by Gower Champion. Gower and his wife, Marge, were longtime friends of Blake’s—so much so that they had named their youngest son after him, and we often saw them socially. Michel Legrand arranged the music for the special, and it was a pleasure working with those three talented gentlemen. From the outset, Gower wanted something fresh and different; I did some calypso with Harry, and Harry leaned into more classical songs with me. It stretched us both in new directions, and everything about it felt playful and fun. It was a pleasure to go to work every day.
GEOFF BEGAN ATTENDING a new school that fall, very near to Emma’s. The school informed us that Geoff struggled with learning differences that today would be diagnosed as dyslexia, and made recommendations as to how we could best support him. We also wanted to find an extracurricular activity that he might enjoy, and we settled on karate, which Blake had studied for years. We found a young man named Tom Bleecker who began to give Geoff lessons. Tom mentioned that he knew Bruce Lee, and Blake expressed interest in meeting the legendary martial arts master. Bruce came to the house one day and gave a demonstration for us. We lunched with him, and at one point we found ourselves talking about ballet. Bruce felt that dancers could benefit from the strength training of the martial arts.
“For instance, can Nureyev do this?” he said. Bruce pushed back his chair from the table, and from a sitting position, leapt high into the air with a side kick in just one move. He was so many feet above the ground that our jaws dropped.
BLAKE BEGAN A new campaign for us to get married. Because of the craziness of our lives, and my concerns for Geoff, Jenny, and Emma, I was still having trouble committing 100 percent. It was not that I didn’t love Blake—I certainly did, and I couldn’t imagine being with anyone else. But there was still that certain dangerous quality about him. I was aware that he abused pain medication at times, although he seemed to be keeping it under control. He was given to making impulsive decisions, and he was often excessive with spending. He was impatient—quick to anger, even. He was creatively brilliant, with six ideas a day, it seemed, and totally charismatic . . . but he often left me a little breathless. Having been married, and feeling so responsible for that marriage’s failure, I didn’t want to make any more mistakes by leaping into another one.
Blake countered: What was there to lose? We were already living in the same house, we were both divorced from our former spouses, we were sharing our lives in every way. No need to worry about happily ever after—why not simply take it one day at a time? He was very persistent, and finally demanded that I make a decision one way or the other. I realized that I couldn’t procrastinate any longer. We made plans to wed on November 12, 1969.
Blake and I both wanted a quiet and intimate ceremony. Thinking that the children might feel conflicted about it, and hoping to focus entirely on each other in this special moment, we made a decision to be married in our garden while the children were at school. We would tell them about it, and have a celebratory family dinner, afterward.
Present at the ceremony were Blake’s new assistant, Linda; Dr. Tanney and his wife; and Ken and Kären Wales. Ken’s father was a minister, and we had asked him to marry us.
Although we hired a professional photographer, we gave Herb Tanney our video camera and asked him to film the proceedings from the little hill above our back garden. We also set a video camera on a tripod at a side angle, so that if anything failed, we’d have captured something one way or another.
It was a beautiful, sunny day. The garden looked immaculate, and the hillside waterfall was splashing gently. I was trembling with nerves and excitement. The minister stood with his back to the hill, and as he began to intone the wedding vows, Blake gazed into my eyes with such genuine affection that I was moved to tears.
Afterward, Herb came down from the hill, looking at the camera. “I’m not sure I got anything . . .” he said. “All I saw was black. Did I press the right button?”
Alas, he had not. We then discovered that someone had kicked the other video camera’s plug out of the wall.
Blake turned to the minister and said, “Sir, would you mind marrying us again, so we can get it on film?”
Herb scrambled back up the hill, and we re-plugged the other camera. This time, Blake and I were able to focus on what the minister was actually saying. As he referenced “the spherical one-ness of the ring binding these two souls together,” or some such hokeyness, I could see Blake’s mouth beginning to twitch, and we both fought hard to stifle the giggles.
Needless to say, Herb didn’t get any footage of the second ceremony either. Somewhere there may be a video from the side angle, but as I recall, it was so bad that we never edited it. Thankfully, our professional photographer managed to capture some suitable stills.
We had a little reception afterward, and then Emma and Geoffrey came home from school. To my delight, when we broke the news to them, Geoffrey flung himself into my arms and said, “Oh, thank you!” Emma was quiet, but she brightened later when we took them out to celebrate at Hamburger Hamlet.
Later, I wrote of the wedding:
Afterward, there was all the difference in the world between being married and not being married. How surprising to discover that it felt so good, and to realize that just a simple signed document could make me feel that way.
Our efforts to keep the wedding private had been successful, and it wasn’t until a couple of days later that the news leaked out in the press. My parents knew, of course, and were happy for me, since they adored Blake. I was grateful for the lack of fuss surrounding the event, and any lingering anxieties I had about my decision were now put to rest.
TWO DAYS AFTER we were married, Blake and I flew to Oklahoma, where Darling Lili was being screened for a test audience. I waited in the motel bedroom while Blake and the producers assessed the preview cards, which in those days was how one measured an audience’s response. The screening seemed to go well, but in truth, I was more focused on my desire to have a moment alone with Blake—to have some semblance of a honeymoon, even if it was only for one night at a motel.
It certainly wasn’t the most romantic start to a marriage, but I knew we would be heading to Gstaad in December. We would be spending the first part of our time there alone, since Geoff and Jenny would be with Patty, and Emma would be with Tony. Maybe that would feel more like a honeymoon.
By the time we arrived in Switzerland, however, Blake and I were exhausted. I came down with a cold, and our week together was a bit of a washout. In addition to wanting time with my husband, I’d hoped to get on with writing Mandy, and to ski—but was unable to do any of it.
Geoff and Jenny joined us two days before Christmas, as did my friend Zoë. It was so good to see her again. I suddenly realized that I didn’t have a close girlfriend in Los Angeles, someone I’d known all my life and could have meaningful conversations with. My work schedule, my marriage, and my children pulled so much of my focus, I didn’t have a lot of time left to devote to a social life.
Emma arrived just after Christmas, and two days later, she came down with the flu, as did Ken and Kären. We no longer had a nanny, so I did my best Florence Nightingale impression.
On New Year’s Day, Blake took Jenny sledding. I went into town to do some grocery shopping, and when I returned, he greeted me at the door on crutches. Before I could say a word, he opened his robe to reveal nothing but his underwear and a plaster cast from ankle to groin. He had torn a ligament while sledding. That evening it was dinner on trays for Ken, Kären, Emma, and Blake.
During the night, Blake was in considerable pain and could not sleep. I heard him get up, muttering that he was going to work on his screenplay, whereupon he stubbed his toe on the edge of the bed and let fly a stream of expletives. Seconds later, I heard an almighty shriek, and shot out of bed to see what had happened. Apparently, as he sat down at his desk, he had caught a vital part of his anatomy between his plaster cast and the wooden chair. Blake asked me to fetch a bread knife from the kitchen. With some trepidation, I delivered it to him and watched in horror as he proceeded to saw away at the top of the plaster, drawing blood and cursing all the while. It was a classic black comedy scene straight out of one of his films.
The following morning, Jenny woke with a fever. Blake sat at one end of the breakfast table, his leg sticking out sideways. Kären was still coughing, and Ken had developed a cold sore and could only talk out of one side of his mouth. We then heard a mysterious swooshing sound coming from Emma. She was swilling water around her mouth to soothe a loose tooth. When I handed Geoff an effervescent vitamin C, hoping to stall the inevitable day when he got the flu, he lifted the glass and intoned, “Good health to everyone.”
Considering how few of us were still healthy, I collapsed with laughter. Needless to say, Geoff came down with the flu the next day. Thankfully, the great Swiss air and serene environment eventually restored the balance, and the holiday ended on an up note.
Blake and I began to fantasize about moving to Switzerland. We called Guy Gadbois to discuss it further, and he broke the news to us that Impulse’s skipper had incurred astronomical expenses on the boat’s “improvements,” way beyond anything we had commissioned, and had also been sweetening the pot for himself. Blake was livid; I was heartsick. Our savings had been spent on purchasing that lovely yacht, and as owners, we were now liable for every expense incurred. Blake was so angry that he opted to let the bank claim her rather than pay another dime of upkeep. I understood his decision, and realized with great sadness that we would have to let Impulse go. I quietly chastised myself and Blake for being such fools as to allow selfish desire, lack of knowledge, and careless supervision to get us into such trouble.