Love, Ellen: A Mother/Daughter Journey (23 page)

God works in wondrous, powerful ways. How interesting that Ellen did what was no doubt the most important show of her life and less than one week after that began what is undoubtedly the most important relationship of her life. Anne really seems to have been delivered to her by no accident—“an angel,” as Ellen calls her.

I feel that God has sent me someone special too—my other daughter, Anne.

T
HREE YEARS EARLIER
PrimeTime Live
had done a wonderful feature on Ellen in which Judd Rose had accompanied her back to New Orleans to retrace her humble origins. In conjunction with “The Puppy Episode,”
PrimeTime
decided to do another interview, this one conducted by Diane Sawyer.

This was the first time that Ellen had talked about her own coming out at age twenty. Diane arranged to interview the whole family. Before the day of my actual interview at the Peninsula Hotel, I was going to get a chance to meet Diane when she came to El’s house (where I was living briefly during repairs to my place) to get a few shots of her and Ellen walking through the house and talking.

This had been planned for some time and the house and gardens were shiny and pristine in preparation. I was reading the morning paper at the breakfast table when Anne and El came into the kitchen. Ellen said something about “when Diane Sawyer gets here,” and what happened next I have no memory of. I can only relate what Ellen and Anne told me afterward. Apparently I asked, “Oh, is Diane Sawyer coming here?”

Anne looked at me as though she thought I was kidding, but Ellen knew right away that I wasn’t.

The next thing I remember is Anne sitting next to me with her arms around me and El standing in front of me, with tears in her eyes, asking me questions.

“What happened?” I said, upset and scared.

When they described it to me, it was obvious I had “checked out” for a few seconds. This was serious. Having worked in a hospital with stroke patients, I’m familiar with TIAs (transient ischemic attacks) and I realized that’s what it could have been.

When I felt reasonably calm, I called my doctor’s office to try to get an appointment right away. As I talked about the incident, I became very emotional. In spite of my grave concern, when I was informed that I couldn’t be seen until the afternoon, I opted for another day. Why? Because I didn’t want to miss the last class of the commercial workshop I was taking—if I missed this class, I couldn’t take part in “agent” night, a chance to show what we had learned in front of agents who came to look us over. I already had an agent, but I just couldn’t bear not getting my money’s worth. Never let it be said I don’t have my priorities straight. I went to the class.

In the meantime, however, I did talk to my doctor and made an appointment to see her so she could arrange for a CAT scan and other tests. It occurred to me then that my checking out that morning may have had a lot to do with being more caught up in all the excitement than I let on—even to myself.

A few days later, I had the tests and, thankfully, I’m all clear. Since then I have tried to pace myself and take good care of myself.

In the midst of all this, I had my interview with Diane—who is as beautiful and thoughtful in person as the image she projects on TV, and very down-to-earth. She had on a lovely blouse her mother had made for her, and as she was pinning it at the neckline to make it less low-cut, I said, “Don’t you have people to do that?”

Diane smiled and said, “I am my people.”

We talked about that day on the beach in Pass Christian. Later, when they ran the interview, they used a shot of the rocky Pacific coast for the beach. It worked, except for the people on the Mississippi Gulf Coast who know that there are no boulders on their beaches. I had no idea how pivotal my taking part in this interview was going to be in my own life’s journey. I only knew how liberating it felt to be rid of a twenty-year-old secret.

S
O THAT’S MOST
of the story that led to my sitting in the auditorium at CAA watching history unfold. Everything had built up to this moment as it erupted with
the
show. There were so many special people there that night that my memory is again sketchy. Vance, of course, was there. Reserved though he usually is, that night he was practically euphoric. Oh, and I remember meeting Sir Ian McKellan. How could I not remember that mellifluous voice?

And I know that Shirley MacLaine was there because, before the show she was sitting in an aisle seat and I saw her as I hurried past. I wanted to stop and tell her how much I’ve always admired her work, but I was too awestruck to say anything at all. Ellen’s good friends Kathy Najimy and Dan Finnerty were there—which I know because I captured the two of them in that picture I took of Anne and El.

I know that at the end we all clapped and cheered and stood up and applauded for Ellen. That’s all I remember, like facets of a prism—just wonderful little glimmers of light.

PART III

APRIL 30, 1997, TO THE PRESENT

9

Journeys

O
N THE MORNING AFTER
—May 1, 1997—I awoke to discover that I had gone through a virtual overnight transformation, from being the mom of a famous person to being something of a famous mom. Incredible. And it was all because of the
PrimeTime Live
interview with Diane Sawyer, which had aired the previous night just after the coming out episode.

The response was amazingly positive, immediate—and surprising. Everyone asked how I could be so calm and articulate, wondering if I had known ahead of time what Diane was going to ask me. No, I kept saying, I didn’t know what she would ask; but because I was talking about my kid, I didn’t see any reason to be nervous. Then again, at that point I still had no concept of the magnitude of all that was going on. We knew the show would be groundbreaking, a first. But I don’t think any of us realized how truly historic it would be and how much it would mean to a great many people.

It hadn’t occurred to me during my interview with Diane that my simple statements of love, support, and acceptance would send a message the public hadn’t heard before—or at least had never heard in such a large public forum.

Suddenly, the very next day, and then in the days and weeks that followed, strangers recognized me on the street and in stores and showered me with thanks, wanting to tell me their stories. If their parents were supportive, they were happy to tell me that. If they weren’t, they would say, “I wish my Mom were like you,” and we’d talk about it for a while. And some, even if they weren’t gay and had no gay family members, just wanted to say how much they admired Ellen—and my vocal support for her.

I even received my first piece of fan mail:

At Bloomingdale’s one Saturday, I passed two older women at the jewelry counter and overheard one say to the other, “It’s her. It’s her mother.” Then she grabbed my arm and said, “You’re her mother.”

Of course, I agreed—and we never even said “her” name.

At a party, a young man approached me and introduced himself, telling me that although his mother knew he was gay, she had never acknowledged it. But then, he told me, after watching me on
PrimeTime Live,
his mother called him the next day from Ohio and said, “Well, if that woman can say that on national television, I guess you and I can talk.”

An estimated 40 million viewers had watched Ellen Morgan come out, and many of those had stayed tuned to
PrimeTime Live
to hear Ellen DeGeneres and her family talk about her own coming out nineteen years earlier. When the heads of the network and Disney called the episode’s director, Gil Junger, to report the astonishing ratings, they said it was the equivalent of a movie having an opening-weekend box office of $280 million. A record-setting blockbuster!

And then there were the
Ellen
parties. This was how I first heard about the great work of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest political organization for equal rights for gays. I found out that they had put together party kits, including everything from an
Ellen
trivia quiz to sample invitations to a party poster to a video from HRC. Initially, they anticipated getting requests for a few hundred kits; instead they got, and filled, requests for over 2,500. In Birmingham, Alabama, where the local ABC affiliate refused to broadcast the show, an entrepreneurial young man named Kevin Snow arranged an
Ellen
party in a hotel ballroom for a private showing—via satellite. Nearly 3,000 local celebrators attended. (Since then, Kevin told me, the gay community in Birmingham has become more organized and cohesive.)

On that very morning after, an exuberant Alice Hirson, my dear friend and El’s TV mom, called to tell me about a party she had attended at a nightclub in West Hollywood. It was festive, packed, and noisy. Alice said, “When I got there, I thought, oh, no, we’ll never be able to hear the show. But the minute it started, you could’ve heard a pin drop.” Of course, she went on, there was lots of laughter for the punch lines, but then there would be quiet again for the dialogue.

From what I continued to hear in the days that followed, that scenario was repeated all over the country. I heard from a lot of gay men and women that even as they laughed, they were crying tears of happiness throughout the show. Many said they watched in absolute wonder, not believing that this was finally happening on network TV. Others described a huge feeling of relief—somehow this show was taking away their collective pretense of normality by saying to the world that gay people are normal and that pretending otherwise isn’t healthy for anybody.

This was beyond everyone’s wildest expectations. It seemed almost like a dream, almost too good to be true. I kept wanting to pinch myself, wondering when the bubble would burst. But it wasn’t a dream; it was real. Without bloodshed, Ellen DeGeneres had returned from the battlefield victorious, to find that her personal victory was shared by everyone who had a stake in fairness and equality for our gay and lesbian citizens.

A new day had dawned. That week the actress and gay rights activist Amanda Bearse said in
People
magazine:

I’ve heard it said that the best way to get someone to change or open their minds is first to make them laugh. Maybe, because of her gift for comedy, that’s why Ellen had stepped—pretty much unwittingly—into the role of a pioneer. Thanks to her talents and those of her director, writers, producers, guests, and fellow cast and crew members, the coming out episode probably packed its punch because it was so well done and so funny.

It was thrilling to see praise for the show in all the major media. Just as meaningful to me were the letters I received from several of my family members. “Dear Bets,” Helen began, as she always does, in the note she sent enclosed with a positive local review from Mississippi:

Like Audrey, we were also expecting that, as the weeks passed, life would soon quiet down and return to its regular routine. We were wrong. The excitement and the tide of good feeling continued. And as the days took on a sort of enchanted, inspired quality, they were just as eventful. Every day we heard reports that because of Ellen, lives were being changed for the better; indeed, lives were being saved.

“I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop,” I said to Vance, as we sat down together over a Mother’s Day lunch to which he was treating me.

“I know,” he agreed, and with his typical dry humor he made some funny remark about the first shoe that dropped. As a result of Diane Sawyer’s interview, Vance was being recognized too—as El’s proud, protective big brother who loved his sister unconditionally.

Becoming serious, however, he admitted that he still felt angry about the bomb threat on the set the last day of shooting. “I blame the right-wing rhetoric,” Vance said. “Those extremists—how they can call themselves Christians and preach hate, I just don’t know.”

I felt the same way, recalling how one televangelist had made the absurd comment that he didn’t believe Ellen was really gay because, “She’s so popular. She’s such an attractive actress”—as if only unattractive people could be gay. Ridiculous, derogatory, and unacceptable. Another one, purporting so-called “family values,” said that Ellen was a blond, blue-eyed girl next door who could be Miss America, so why on earth would she
want
to be a lesbian?

And, yet, in spite of the ignorance of some people and in spite of the controversy that was brewing about Ellen and Anne, nothing could stop the momentum. Throughout it all, the bad and the good, El and Anne were the epitome of grace under fire. New media darlings, the two were soon being sought by everyone for television talk shows, magazines, and newspapers, while their professional and social schedule became busier and busier.

Before we knew it, Ellen was being given such honors as the ACLU Bill of Rights Award and UCLA’s Jack Benny Award, and topping all the “Most Fascinating” and “Most Influential” lists for the year. Without planning or intending it, by the summer of 1997 El found herself in the role of—to borrow a phrase from the great Candace Gingrich—an “accidental activist.”

At the ACLU banquet in her honor she spoke about how unexpected this new role was for her:

In living up to that pledge, Ellen soon learned about many issues of gay rights that were new to her. In another speech, she told about getting a thank-you letter from a seventy-six-year-old lesbian, a retired teacher, who said she never thought she’d see an openly gay lead on a TV show done with such “poignancy, taste, and humor.” Ellen joked, “And me being new to this, I didn’t know there were seventy-six-year-old lesbians.”

In my happy role of number one fan and cheerleader, I could not have been more proud. Then one day in late July while I was catching a few minutes with Ellen and Anne to go over their busy itineraries and to tell them of my latest encounters with people saying they wished I could be their mom, a light came into Ellen’s eyes. She said, “You know, maybe there’s something else you can do to help. Why don’t you call Tammy?”

She was referring to Tammy Billik, the terrific casting director on the
Ellen
show—a friend of ours and an active member of the Human Rights Campaign. So I called Tammy. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Through Tammy, I was put in touch with Elizabeth Birch, HRC’s executive director. As we spoke on the phone, her kindness, gratitude, and excitement were humbling.

Elizabeth said that my desire to help felt as if it was coming to their cause by divine intervention; as if, she said, I had come down as some kind of angel. “Betty,” she told me, “your involvement could be so important. There is so much you can do, so many lives you, personally, will be able to touch. There is a real hunger in so many gay people for a parent figure like you.”

In effect, what she was asking me to do was something I knew a lot about—being Mom.

The more we talked, the more excited I became. Then she hit upon the idea of my becoming their National Coming Out Day spokesperson. We were both aware that my taking on this role without any background as an activist would be like jumping in at the deep end. But I was ready to give it a try.

And thus began my new journey as spokesperson and activist. Aside from being a mother, and my early training with Aunt Tillie, little had prepared me for this highly public role in which I would be speaking out. But I wasn’t very nervous. To become HRC’s first non-gay national spokes-person meant that I had a chance to make a difference—to say “enough,” enough of hatred and bigotry and ignorance and fear; to be, simply, a voice of calm and reason amid all the hysteria and hateful rhetoric masquerading as religion.

This was also a chance, I was about to discover, to go out and meet America—in states and cities, large and small, in every corner of the country—and to see for myself that fair-mindedness, tolerance, love, and goodness are alive and well, growing stronger all the time.

Two days after my phone conversation with Elizabeth Birch, I was in Washington, D.C., walking into the offices of the Human Rights Campaign headquarters, where I met the entire staff of sixty—some of the most wonderful, brightest men and women I have ever met. From Cheryl Henson, the warm, friendly African-American woman who answers the phone and greets visitors, to Elizabeth herself, a good-looking, extremely articulate dynamo, I loved them all.

Over the next days and weeks, I would hear more about the personal journeys that had made activists out of all these extraordinary individuals at HRC. Elizabeth had left a high-powered job in corporate law to come to HRC, because, she said, “I decided to spend the next years of my life doing something truly meaningful.”

Along with the several individuals at HRC with whom I would be interacting in the months to come, I quickly became good buddies with David Smith, the handsome, intelligent, friendly communications director and senior strategist. That first morning David put me at ease right away as he brought me up to speed on many of HRC’s current activities—lobbying Congress, providing campaign support, and educating the public—all with the goal of ensuring that lesbian and gay Americans can be open, honest, and safe at home, at work, and in the community.