A Lotus Grows in the Mud (16 page)

But Art Simon committed me to the show for only three years. His genius was that he was right. The film director Billy Wilder spotted me on
Laugh-In
and called Mike Frankovich at Columbia Studios to tell him about me. Columbia offered me a four-picture deal, which meant that
Laugh-In
would—and did—continue brilliantly without me.

Despite my deep personal happiness and my sense of bliss, time breached the moat of my safe little castle and dragged me back into the real world. There would be no going back.

“G
oldie, you’re up.” I reluctantly leave the sanctuary of my dressing room and, bracing myself, walk past Dick and Dan in their big dressing room. Nearing the soundstage where we always start out by banking one-liners, it feels like I am walking the last mile.

All around me is the usual hustle and bustle, but it feels different for me because I am leaving and everyone else is staying behind. George
is standing on the stage, soupy-eyed, and so am I. Our eyes lock. He doesn’t speak. He just takes my hand and barely lets it go for the rest of the day.

I am in a daze. I can barely concentrate on what I’m supposed to be doing. I speak my one-liners like “Poop!” or “He doesn’t look Jewish” methodically. Mostly, I just hold George’s hand. We each cling to the other, afraid to let go.

George tries to lift my spirits by taking me down memory lane. We reminisce shamelessly about Sammy Davis, Jr., and his “Here comes da judge” routine. I fondly recall guests like Nixon and Reagan, who were happy to make fun of themselves with their “Sock it to me!” lines. I remember Carol Channing, who called me her spiritual sister, and who lived on a diet of lobsters and some strange herbal concoction.

“Hey,” I laugh, “what about that time I was supposed to be in
Swan Lake
as a duck, and you had the guys push my head through the wooden ceiling?”

George roars with laughter, a sonorous laugh from deep within his belly. “God, I’d forgotten that! You only went through halfway and got stuck.”

“Oh, and the trapdoor sketch!” I remind him, gasping. “You were horrid to me. How could you? You knew I was scared to death of that damn trapdoor.”

Smiling, I think about Judy Carne’s misguided attempts to reassure me that day. “It’s okay, Goldie,” she said, “I’ve done this a hundred times. You just put your arms by your side and let yourself go. Pretend you’re high.” I looked at her and laughed, thinking, You have no idea how scared that makes me!

George nudges me. “Judy was sweet. She waited for you underneath by the mattress. I could hear her shouting up encouragement.”

“But you made me stand there, trembling and waiting for the drop. I felt like I was standing on air. When I was finally ready, you never even pulled the lever. All I could hear was your laughter ricocheting across the studio. That’s when I realized I was the butt of the joke.” I slap him playfully across the chest and then hug him. “You scared me, George. I hate you!”

I
t is time to go. I squeeze dear George good-bye, and the tears start to flow. My fellow cast members gather around, and we form a circle of love. I kiss every one of them, hugging them with every inch of my life. My dear Ruthie, who I thought would be my best friend to my dying day; sweet Dick and Dan; Jo Anne Worley, who always made me laugh.

“So long, Goldie,” they all cry, “see you around!” as I head back down the long corridor to the real world.

I can’t look back, so I hold up my hand and wave. Door B of Studio One slams shut behind me. It slams shut on that part of my life that was so perfect.

As I walk out of NBC for the last time, I recall the words of the actress Greer Garson when she came on the show. She was so gorgeous, and I remember she lived in Texas, not Hollywood, which amazed me. In her impeccable English accent, she told me, “Goldie, darling, if you want to be really happy, get out of this town.”

I wonder what she meant.

S
omewhere deep in my dream there is a bell. It is ringing incessantly. Oh God, I don’t want to wake up yet. It can’t be time. There must be a couple more hours before I have to get up.

My hand reaches for the telephone in the dark. “H-hello?”

“Goldie? You got it.”

“I got what? Who is this?”

“This is Alan from Columbia.”

“Oh, oh. Hi, Alan. How are you?”

“You got it.”

Half asleep, I pull myself up, rubbing my eyes. Staring at the clock, I see that it is four in the morning. “I got what? What are you talking about?”

“You got the Academy Award.”

Sitting up in bed, I shake my head of sleep. “I what? I got the Academy Award? You mean, I won?”

“You won the Oscar, Goldie. They just made the announcement. You got Best Supporting Actress.”

I hear the words, but they don’t make any sense. I feel them reverberating inside my brain, ricocheting off the walls of my skull. Oscar? Best Supporting Actress? I knew I’d been nominated, but I never thought in a million years that I would actually win. When the words finally sink in, I jump up and switch on the light.

“I did what?” I yell, pacing back and forth beside the bed. “Say that again. I won what?”

“The Oscar, Goldie!” Alan laughs. “You won the Oscar for your first movie. It’s amazing!”

“I won? B-but how is that possible? You mean for
Cactus Flower
? Oh my God! I totally forgot it was last night.”

“I want to be the first to congratulate you, honey. I’m backstage here at the awards ceremony, and everyone is just so pleased for you. The studio asked me to call and let you know.”

I can’t wait to get him off the phone, to call my mom and dad. It all feels so unreal. Sitting on the edge of my bed, in the middle of an unseasonably cold London night, I begin to shiver as I dial my parents’ number.

“Mom? It’s Goldie! I won, I won the Academy Award! I’m in my hotel bedroom in London, Mom, and I just heard. I mean, I don’t understand. I won, Mom!”

What I can hear in the receiver isn’t so much understandable English as a series of high-pitched syllables. She is crying, I’m crying—both of us sobbing into the telephone. “Goldie, Goldie, my Goldie,” is all she can repeat through her tears.

“Oh, Mom,” I cry, “this feels so weird. This is all happening so fast. I mean, I’m not even there to pick it up.”

Daddy comes on the extension, and I can’t tell if he is laughing or crying. Breathlessly, he tells me how he and Mom sat and watched it together on TV with some friends and neighbors. “I wish you’d been there, Kink! It was incredible.”

“But who picked it up for me?”

“Raquel Welch,” Mom chimes in.

“Raquel Welch?”

“Yes, honey. I didn’t know you knew her.”

“I don’t know Raquel Welch!”

My mother begins to cry again. “Oh, Goldie, honey. You made it. I’m so proud of you. We both are. Aren’t we, Rut? Rut? You there?”

I hear a strange choking sound and know my father is crying. “Yes, honey,” he says. “So proud.”

“Thanks, Daddy,” I reply, tugging shyly at my T-shirt. For a moment, I am unable to say anything more, thinking of them sitting in their living room, watching the ceremony on television. I can feel their joy. I made them proud.

T
he telephone never stops ringing for the rest of the night. My producer and father figure Mike Frankovich screams into the telephone at me, “I can’t believe you did this, kid! I can’t believe you pulled this off.”

Telegrams arrive at the hotel and are brought up to my suite on a silver tray, most of them from people I have never even met. One of them is from my childhood hero, Fred Astaire. “
CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR OSCAR
,
GOLDIE HAWN
” is all it says. I hold it in my hands as if it is the most precious jewel on earth.

After taking a shower and pulling on some clothes, I float down into the lobby to wait for my wonderful driver, whom I love. A round-faced Cockney with a broad smile, he is early and ushers me into what I call my “Princess Coach”—the Daimler I literally walk into, it being as big as a living room.

“Congratulations, Miss Hawn, this must be so exciting for you,” he says, handing me a beautiful bouquet of flowers.

“Oh, thank you, Harry.” I smile, burying my nose in their scent.

Sitting in the backseat on my way to Shepperton Studios as my car finds its way across central London, I sip my coffee and look at my flowers and can’t help but feel how hollow it all seems. What would it have felt like to get all dressed up and go to the ceremony with Mom and Dad? To walk the red carpet? To smile and wave and do all the things I used to watch the big movie stars do when I was a child? Once again, I am on the outside looking in.

More than that, this award scares me a little. There is so much inside me that I still want to do, to stretch myself and to do some real drama. I sense that it will probably be a long, long time before I ever experience anything like this again.

Crossing a bridge over the River Thames, I let my mind drift back to
my experiences on
Cactus Flower.
It really wasn’t that hard, I remind myself. It was a very light role, and it was easy for me. Walter Matthau was supposed to be my love interest, but he was more like a father, or a Jewish uncle. “Goldala, my Goldala,” he used to call me affectionately, shortly before spraying the room and himself with disinfectant so he didn’t catch any of my germs.

Walter was strange and wonderful and interesting, but he wasn’t the easiest person to work with. When I couldn’t rehearse with him one day because of a magazine interview I had to do, he punished me. Giving me a withering look when I returned, he put me under such pressure, not trusting that I knew my lines, that he sabotaged me and made me flub them for the first time.

Ingrid Bergman couldn’t have been kinder. She became a mother figure to me, caring for me when I had a cold and worrying about me constantly. She was such an icon, a grande dame of movies. I had always imagined her being delicate and angelic and soft, like Ilsa in
Casablanca.
I was surprised to find that she was incredibly powerful—a tower of female energy.

But despite that strength, she was also extremely nervous about her return to movies after an eighteen-year hiatus. She had led a very singular life, and had been exiled from Hollywood for a controversial love affair. I couldn’t help but think how difficult that must have been for her, and how our industry can be so cruel. She was always cordial and lovely to me, but there was something very lonely about her. She kept to herself, retreating alone to her dressing room every night.

During an intimate scene in the movie where we had to share a listening booth in a music store, Ingrid turned to me and whispered, “Tell me, how do you do it, Goldie? You look like you’ve been doing this for a thousand years. I am so petrified I can hardly speak.”

“I don’t know,” I replied, shocked by her honesty. “I guess my family brought me up to be pretty unflappable. And, let’s face it, this is hardly Juliet.”

“Is this really your first picture?” she asked, wringing her hands.

When I nodded, she said, “Then I think I need to take some tips from you, my dear.” I looked at her askance. All my illusions about her faded.
Underneath it all, she was a frightened and vulnerable human being, just like the rest of us.

Now here I am a year later, halfway through my second movie,
There’s a Girl in My Soup,
and suddenly, at the age of twenty-three, I have an Oscar. Arriving for a regular working day, my driver sweeps me through the big front gates at Shepperton and up the long drive, and I make my way across the set.

“Congratulations, Miss Hawn!” yells one of the cameramen.

“Thank you, Joe.”

“Well done, Goldie!” My director, Roy Boulting, hugs me.

“Thanks so much, Roy.”

“Wonderful news, darling.” Tony Britton, one of my costars, kisses my hand.

“Why, thank you, Tony.”

“Thirty minutes, Miss Hawn.”

“Okay, Charlie.”

I reach the old property at the heart of the lot that has housed some of the greatest actors of all time. I close the door to the dressing room they tell me was once occupied by Vivien Leigh. I throw open my French doors and inhale the fresh English air. Gazing out on the sweeping lawns, with their big cedar trees, I listen to the songs of the birds.

Here in the sanctuary of my room, I don’t have to put up a front anymore. I don’t have to pretend. I can feel it all—the joy and the disappointment and the fear. Holding my head in my hands, I bawl and bawl.

P
ulling myself together, I put on my costume and apply makeup. I brush out my hair and wander back out onto the set. Peter Sellers, my costar, opens his arms wide to greet me.

“Goldie, my dear, sweet girl, my warmest congratulations, this is wonderful news,” he says effusively, enveloping me in his flamboyant velvet jacket.

“Thank you, Peter,” I say, with a smile.

Every day with Peter is like a balancing act. At any one time, he
can be manically depressed, ecstatically overjoyed or just plain mad. He is always tender with me, but it could so easily have gone the other way.

For my first day on the set, I agonized for an hour over what I should wear. It was cold and damp, but I wanted to look my best. I finally selected an outfit I loved—purple bell-bottom trousers, a purple sweater and a long purple cardigan vest, all worn with purple platform boots. I thought I looked
très chic.

As I walked onto the set, the wardrobe lady looked at me and shook her head. “Oh dear,” she said, before hurrying off without saying anything more.

Looking down at my clothes, suddenly worried, I saw a woman rushing over to me, aghast. It was Peter Sellers’s assistant.

“Oh no!” she said, looking me up and down.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Peter can’t stand purple!” she said. “He doesn’t let anyone around him wear it.”

Oh no, I thought. How crazy is this man I’ve heard so much about really going to be? “Why on earth not?” I asked her.

“Well, he died of a heart attack once on the operating table and came back to life. But, you know, all he saw when he was dead was purple. You should have been told.”

I wanted to rip the clothes off my body as fast as I possibly could. “Have you got anything that I can wear?” I asked, panicking and plucking at them uncomfortably. But then Peter walked in and headed straight for me with that devilish smile on his face.

“Oh my God, Goldie,” he shouted from across the room, “but you’re lovely.”

It was a line straight from the script. I looked into his burning eyes and thought, Oh my God, he’s already in character.

“Oh, thank you, Peter,” I said, coyly. “But, listen, I’m so sorry I’m wearing purple.”

“Why should you be, darling?” He grinned, waving his hand dismissively at his assistant. “It is one of my favorite colors.”

But when Peter laughs the world laughs too. He can’t stop, I can’t stop, no one on the set can stop, and we have to turn off the cameras and break for lunch. We break for lunch a lot.

A few days after I won my Oscar, we were given a day off. “I’ll pick you up at ten,” Peter told me. “I want you to meet some friends of mine.” He arrived in his Rolls-Royce convertible and drove me to Windsor Safari Park. There, we were formally introduced to the owners, who were at one time members of the circus. They were all little people, not more than four and a half feet tall. It was more than a little strange to me.

He swept us through the high security gates into the wild animal compound, and, within minutes, we were surrounded by dozens of baboons with big red bottoms. As I squealed, they clambered all over his beautiful Rolls-Royce and began playing with the windshield wipers.

“These are the friends I wanted you to meet,” he said, smiling.

We watched, laughing, as the baboons groomed each other on the hood of his Rolls. Babies clung to mothers with tiny little hands. Fathers strutted around, naked rumps in the air, tails held high.

The largest male suddenly jumped up onto the soft roof of the car with such a thump that I screamed. Above us, I could see the imprint of his huge body. Sliding down the windshield, he picked up a wiper and snapped it clean off, glaring at Peter threateningly through the glass. I glanced over at Peter furtively, taking in his slightly manic behavior. As much as all this was absurdly funny, his reaction seemed a bit extreme to me.

The two of us sat there helplessly, his Rolls-Royce being destroyed all around us.

“Peter, what are we going to do?”

Looking across from me, his eyes full of mischief, he replied, “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

We laughed so much it hurt.

I
t was never my ambition to win an Oscar. The only competition I was ever in was with myself. I never wanted to be number one, and I never aspired to be a movie star, rich or famous. While I am proud of
winning the Oscar, and delighted to have it, the whole experience was so surreal that it sometimes feels like it never really happened.