My First Five Husbands (39 page)

M
y lovely Celestine was a born feline model, appearing in two animal calendars. Most cats won’t cooperate with cameramen and the lights and all the hubbub. Celestine would jump up on the white sheet spread over the raised hearth and Vogue it like crazy. What a ham. I can’t begin to measure the joy she and Gracie and my many other animal friends have brought to my life, beginning with that happy little bird who lifted me from my depression after Bill Bennett had abruptly turned me loose back in college. (Gee, I wonder what his mother might have to say about the dangers of being a “dreamer” now?)

I went to scores of fund-raisers for various animal societies, and Estelle and I did two PETA jobs together. Bea, Betty, Estelle, and I all attended a fund-raiser for Actors and Others for Animals. At one of the PETA gigs, two puppies were brought in—a brown German shepherd mix and a black-and-white part-Australian sheep dog, both about three months old, both adorable—and when I learned they were going to be returned to the pound, I took them home. Four days later, Betty said Mary Tyler Moore’s brother had thirteen puppies for adoption after an accidental romance between his black lab and his German shepherd, so I brought Jackson to join Ginger and Belle.

All the puppies slept together in a pair of old stuffed rockers, chewing them to shreds. I figured what the heck, I could always get them recovered. At another PETA TV job, I worked with a funny-looking little tan dog with long hair down nearly to her feet. Her bottom teeth extended beyond the top ones on one side, giving her a wise-guy expression, and one ear stuck up all the time, and—yep, you guessed it. Home with me. I suppose some people are thinking, “Enough already!” but there’s no such thing as too much love. Eventually, with Celi’s two shi tzus, we had six dogs and eight rescued cats.

Polly, me, Angie, Ginger, Belle, Winnie, and Jackson, being exclusive, in my yard in Encino, California, 1989.

Bea kept two enormous German shepherd guard dogs. Betty had a little dog (a poodle, as I recall) and a cat, and she adopted a retired seeing-eye dog every few years. She wrote a book,
Leading Lady,
about one of them. For the first three years we were on
The Golden Girls,
Estelle had no pets.

“You should get a cat,” I said, “so you won’t be lonesome when you go home.”

After holding out for months, she got one, but it was rambunctious.

“Get another one,” I suggested. “If he has a pal all day, he won’t be so hyper.”

Again, after months of protest, she got a second cat, and from then on, you’d have thought she had invented cats, and her cats were the only two cats in the world. All was well on her home front.

S
eason five of
The Golden Girls
sped along too fast for Betty and me. Our beloved director, Terry Hughes, whom I always called the Fifth Golden Girl, had left to direct
The Butcher’s Wife,
a film starring Demi Moore. On his last night, I was sobbing too hard to attend his going-away party. The film was excellent but made no box office waves, and Terry returned to television—but alas, not with us. Producers hired him for other shows, including a long run on
Third Rock from the Sun
. We had one director after another during our fifth year, with Bea not liking any of them. They did only one show each, if they got hired at all. One fellow was particularly good, but he wore a baseball cap turned around backward, something Bea couldn’t abide, and she vetoed him. Finally, she liked someone who, in my opinion, was not inspired, but pliable, and he became our regular director.

Most of the brilliantly gifted writers on the show went on to form their own production companies, several of the top ones leaving every year, new ones being hired. Writing for a comedy series is one of the most demanding jobs in television, but despite the turnover, we were consistently blessed with the cream of the crop. Sadly, the prop men who’d been irrepressible in their hijinks, giving us laughs every day, had been let go, and we had a normal, well-behaved prop crew from then on. Without them and Terry, the old set just didn’t feel the same.

Estelle’s loss of memory grew steadily worse. I suspect now that her fluctuating ability to focus was an early sign of the terrible Lewy body dementia that gripped her later in her life. I honestly don’t know, but she and I shared a quick-change room, being the two at the bottom of the totem pole, so I endured the largest share of her black panic, trying to change costumes four or five times a show and stay in an upbeat frame of mind under her cloud of doom. My heart went out to her, but it was a real pain in the butt. I’d always thought Sophia was the best role in the show, with those slingshot insults and perfectly written stories. Now she had to read those stories from the dratted cue cards.

Oh, well. I had the next-best role in the show with some real gems.

“I’ll never forget that night with Benny…or was it Bobby?…Or Billy?…Oh, well, I know it started with a B!”

“She’s a lesbian? What’s wrong with that? Danny Thomas is one.”

Yeah, I did okay.

I
filmed eight TV movies during hiatuses from
The Golden Girls
. No rest for the wicked (thank God). I did those
Children of the Bride
comedies you watch on Lifetime on a rainy afternoon and a few nice dramas, including
The Dreamer of Oz,
starring my old pal John Ritter as L. Frank Baum. On the stage, I played Bananas, the batty wife in
The House of Blue Leaves,
at the Pasadena Playhouse. Didn’t get paid a farthing’s damn, but who cares? Getting to play Bananas was an artistic high point for me—a role I’d always wanted to tackle—and I got some of the best reviews of my life.

I also made some commercials for which I was paid $250,000 each. (In the immortal words of Edith and Archie, “Those were the days!”) I made a Raisin Bran commercial dressed in a gown and peignoir à la Blanche, a bathroom cleanser commercial dressed in a gown and peignoir à la Blanche, and a cold-remedy commercial in a gown and peignoir à la Blanche.

Are we sensing a trend here?

I didn’t mind being perpetually costumed in typical Blanche style. In fact, I loved all those floaty, colorful fabrics, the flattering kimonos over comfy basics, and the silky, sensual nightware that practically rolled a red carpet up to the bed. Everywhere I went, women said, “I want to dress like Blanche!” So with the help of my assistant, Chris Reynolds, and one of my Four Wisemen, Michael Thornton, I started a clothing line, “A Touch of Rue,” for QVC. I selected fabrics I loved and designed Blanche-inspired garments with my own practical spin, making the exquisite Blanche creations wearable in real life and available at affordable prices. Every three or four months, I’d do a guest appearance on QVC, modeling the new pieces. From my fan mail, I knew that Blanche’s gorgeous gown-peignoir sets would sell like hotcakes. But the QVC buyer, Laverne, in her infinite wisdom, refused to include any nightwear in the QVC line, insisting on nothing but daywear, sportswear, and one or two party dresses.

“I know my audience!” she insisted.

“Yes, dear,” says I. “But you don’t know
my
audience.”

We finally talked her into two gown-peignoir sets in a group of twelve items for the premiere offering, and the day my line went on QVC, all the outfits did well, but of course, the gown-peignoir sets sold out in minutes. The handwriting on the wall was so big even old Laverne couldn’t miss it.

“From now on, we want nothing but gown-peignoir sets!” she announced.

“But these ladies who write me also want party dresses, splashy things to wear on cruises, to weddings, to bar mitzvahs, as well as day-wear…”

For three years, we tore out our hair, power-struggling with control freak Laverne and the QVC suits, which made the whole thing more hassle than it was worth. We gave notice, selling the last remaining items. And let me tell you—
never again
! Women still ask me when I’m going to reinstate my clothing line, and I tell them, “Hey, you want to dress like Blanche? Do what I did back in the good ol’ days. Make your own, sweethearts!”

Lord knows, I had plenty to do. During the 1990 hiatus, I shot a funny, charming film called
Modern Love,
written and directed by and starring Robbie Benson, whose real-life adorable wife and child played his adorable wife and child in the movie. I played the wife’s mom, with Burt Reynolds as my estranged husband. I scouted out some fabulous antiques while on location in South Carolina, and when I returned home, the Mexican furniture I was having made started arriving, piece by piece. Finally, my dream house was finished and furnished—and so lovely it was featured in several magazine layouts and TV interviews.

Oh, and during the summer of 1990, I flew to Dallas to accept an award for clothing design.

Hello, Laverne? Eat worms.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

T
he Greek musical farce Norman Hartweg and I had written together and noodled on for years was finally ready for tryouts, and a friend suggested the ideal title:
Oedipus, Schmedipus, As Long As You Love Your Mother
.

We decided to get the play on its feet at the Golden Theater, a ninety-nine-seat house in Burbank, and engaged their temperamental but talented choreographer/director, Gregory Scott Young. His conductor, Jay Bradley, and I came up with a blockbuster opening number. I wrote a song to open Act II in a feverish rush, sitting spread-eagled on the carpet in my walk-in closet one night after I got home from taping
Golden Girls,
and the next day, Jay put it in professional musical shape. I called in Rosalind, the witty, talented costumer from
Mama’s Family,
who concocted forty Greek chitons and capes and whatnot for the cast of twenty. The sets and costumes were gorgeous and practical, and the talented young performers left me in awe.

Opening night of
Oedipus, Schmedipus
was a smash. We had full houses every performance, standing ovations at the end of every show, and mostly favorable reviews. Norman drove me home after a Saturday matinee, and as he let me out in my driveway, commented, “Good show.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “I think we pulled it off.”

“
You
pulled it off,” he answered. “I suggested we write a play just to get you writing.”

“But, Norman,” I said in amazement. “I only agreed to write a play with you to get
you
writing!
You
are the one who should be writing.”

He just grinned and backed out of my driveway. The old smarty.

A
s we neared the end of our six-year contract on
The Golden Girls,
Bea, Betty, Estelle, and I had the option to call it quits or sign for one more year. Of course, I wanted to continue, but I assumed Bea wouldn’t. She didn’t seem very happy on a daily basis, and remembering her decision to lay
Maude
to rest, I knew she would never agree to keep a show going if she wasn’t happy with the artistic integrity and caliber of the writing, or if the production values were not what she felt they should be. Much to everyone’s delight, Bea did sign on for a seventh year. “Slats” (my pet name for Estelle) also signed on. Now Betty and I, the only two who counted the precious weeks that melted away so quickly every season, could look forward to one more glorious year. And I would be earning well over a million for season seven (look, Ma! I’m a millionaire!), which meant I could stay a little longer in my chichi Encino digs.

Late in the season, we did a segment in which Blanche is competing in a singing contest against Dorothy at the Rusty Anchor, a neighborhood bar. Blanche is determined to gain back her star status, which Dorothy has wrested from her by singing at the piano, and devises a spectacular number to sing
atop
the grand piano. I chose the song “I Want to Be Loved by You,” Marilyn Monroe’s sultry number from
Some Like It Hot,
and asked Gregory Scott Young if he’d choreograph it, knowing he could come up with some smashing comedy moves.

Greg, who’d been a temperamental tyrant in Burbank, was a lovable lamb in Hollywood, a little awed by the surroundings, and very cooperative indeed, creating a perfect routine for Blanche. Dressed in a red-spangled tight dress, singing sexily into the mike, she proceeds to make an absolute shambles of the song, accidentally kicking off a shoe, which barely misses the pianist, sliding down onto the keyboard with a bang, slinging the mike cord out of control, and finally running off in tears. The precise choreography had to be perfectly executed, which it was, if I do say so myself, and this turned out to be my favorite segment of the whole series.

Boop-boop-ee-doop!

Ever since that night in 1976 when Brad Davis showed up in a taxi at our house on Doheny Drive, he’d been steadily employed in movies and TV, doing everything from
The Twilight Zone
to big-screen successes like
Midnight Express
. I was utterly staggered to receive a call from one of Brad’s friends in September of 1991, saying, “Susan wanted me to tell you that Brad died last night.”

“What? Wait—I don’t understand.”

How could that be? Brad wasn’t yet forty-three and had seemed perfectly fine the last time I’d seen him, as young and vital as that day we were caught with our Levi’s down in my yard.

“He’s known for a few years that he was HIV positive,” his friend said. “He kept it under wraps to protect his career.”

“He had
AIDS
?”

“Yes. From an infected needle years ago.”

As I tried to absorb this information, Brad’s friend asked if I would be willing to speak at the memorial service, and, shaken, I murmured, “Of course. Of course I’ll speak.”

I called Mark, who was shocked and devastated equally, and got out of rehearsal for an hour the day of the service. At the lectern, shaking and weeping, I said Brad had been an angel in disguise. Yes, he’d been a long time growing up, but had become a good husband and father and had built a solid career on extraordinary talent.

I have a photo of Brad on my office wall, young and healthy, costumed for his brilliant starring role in
Midnight Express,
the movie that kicked off his career and became a cult classic. In the film, Brad’s character, Billy Hayes, says, “To the Turks, everything is
shurla burla,
which means ‘like this, like that.’ You never know what will happen.”

God. That had been some shurla burla year.

T
he seventh season of
The Golden Girls
neared an end, and Bea declined to sign for another season, so the producers opted to marry Dorothy to Blanche’s uncle and have her move away. Then they called Betty and Estelle and me into their offices to propose a spin-off of
The Golden Girls
to be called
The Golden Palace
. Blanche would sell the house and buy an old hotel, which she and Rose and Sophia would run, assisted by manager Don Cheadle and chef Cheech Marin. Our salaries would all be the same, a “favored-nations” agreement. And we’d have the same crew of writers.

“Candidly? It doesn’t sound so hot to me,” I said. “I think we should get a new roommate to replace Dorothy. There are a lot of wonderfully talented comedy actresses out there.”

“That’s not an option,” I was informed, and I understood the reason behind their decision:
The Golden Girls
was already in syndication, which is where the producers make the megabucks. This new show only had to last three seasons to go into syndication. More megabucks. But it was too big a gamble in my opinion—which, of course, counted for a flea’s fart. So Betty, Estelle, and I accepted the offer. At least we’d have one more year of steady employment, and I could count on one more year of living in my amazingly beautiful estate, with its amazing $8,000 monthly mortgage payments and the amazingly expensive yard.

“And hey, who knows?” I told the other girls with true Blanche bravado. “Maybe it’ll be fun working with Don and Cheech. Maybe the show
will
survive three years. Maybe
The Golden Palace
will be a big hit!”

And maybe next July it’ll snow in Wambusi.

Before we started taping the new show, I bought Mark a Toyota Forerunner and we drove across the desert toward Oklahoma and Texas. My high school class was having a reunion, and Mark wanted to investigate Austin, Texas, a hot music town, as a place he might like to live. In the middle of Arizona we drove up a long dirt road to the Hopi Reservation, a small collection of one-story adobe homes with a dusty parking lot and a gift shop. As Mark and I shopped for pottery and art, we chatted with the employees and shoppers. After maybe half an hour, we returned to the parking lot, where a sizable crowd was gathered around the Forerunner. Here in the middle of nowhere were Hopis who recognized me and wanted my autograph. This blew my mind. Just didn’t compute. Then I looked at the adobe houses, and they all had TV aerials sprouting atop them like weeds. What a country.

The reunion was fun. Keel was there, and it was good to see him. He and I drove up to Turner Falls with an old classmate, Sandra, and her husband, Lou. We rented inner tubes and floated down the river to the falls, laughing ourselves silly. Then I flew home, leaving Mark in Austin, which he found to be lovely, artistic, liberal, and definitely to his taste—and does to this day. Keel and I kept in touch. He was studying a course of self-discovery, uncovering valuable revelations. For starters, he’d decided after much introspection to abstain from sex while he continued soul-searching. I was surprised, but had a lot of respect for that kind of commitment. I was celibate, too, but not by choice! I was still hot to trot, just didn’t have a horse. Certainly not a rocking horse.

We started taping
Golden Palace
in early July and learned, to our dismay, that the show would not be aired on Saturday nights at nine on NBC, our former successful slot. No, it would air on CBS on
Mondays
at eight. On CBS. Mondays. At eight. And there was hardly any publicity or hoo-ha to let people know where we’d disappeared to. Now, there’s a recipe for roadkill if there ever was one. A large share of our loyal
Golden Girls
audience never even knew
Golden Palace
existed until the reruns popped up on the Lifetime television network fourteen years later. If our producers were mining for syndication megabucks, they weren’t using very big pick axes. We limped along in the ratings. Thank God CBS had bought an entire year, because the real estate market was drooping down around its argyles, and it looked as if I wouldn’t even break even if I had to unload my swanky address any time soon.

On the bright side, I was right about one thing—it
was
great working with Don Cheadle and Cheech Marin. Even though Don was striving for a serious film career and didn’t really want to do comedy, he threw himself into the role with the heart of a real actor and was quite funny. As was Cheech, who became a good pal. And here’s a remarkable thing—Estelle rarely needed cue cards, handling her lines without panicking! Had she been subconsciously intimidated by Bea (who could do that to some actors), or was it a remission in that damn dementia that had played such havoc with her mind? Impossible to say, but it was great to have Slats back.

While we were taping the new show, the 1992 presidential campaign was in full swing: Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas was running against President George Bush (no, the other George Bush—the one who doesn’t have his picture on my toilet seat). Finally! A Democrat with the marbles to take back the White House! I was eager to help out and did an appearance in New Jersey, introducing the New Jersey governor, who would then introduce Governor Clinton. Waiting offstage, I looked up at Governor Clinton standing close behind me and was awash in that extraordinary charisma. He was dazzling but down-home, friendly as a speckled pup. I attended his inauguration and took videos of the party, everyone exuberant, the president himself offering me a terrific spontaneous close-up. I also became acquainted with his mother, Virginia Kelly, later recording the audio edition of her book,
From the Heart
.