Bette, Rita and the Rest of My Life: Gary Merrill

The age difference between us may have caused the directors of Eve some qualms, but it meant nothing to me. Bette had a few character lines around those incredible eyes, but she was a dynamic, attractive woman who knew what she was doing.

As I had noticed with Mercedes McCambridge, here was a magnetic woman, with a compelling aura of femininity, but who might also be willing to confront dragons. I was irresistibly drawn to her.

My first feeling of compassion for this misunderstood, talented woman was quickly replaced by a robust attraction. Before long we were walking about holding hands, going to the movies, and doing other things together. From simple compassion, my feelings shifted to an almost uncontrollable lust. I walked around with an erection for three days.

Sometime during the next few weeks, Bette hosted a party for the cast at a famous San Francisco restaurant. Marilyn Monroe was seated next to Hugh Marlowe. The party went on quite late but Marilyn excused herself early because she had to work the next morning.

We all knew that the scene Marilyn had to work on the next morning was really Bette's scene, and that Marilyn had only a few lines. After she left, we all wondered what was going to happen to the dumb blonde. (My judgment, as far as predicting success goes, is invariably bad. When I was in England years later, I was asked about the Beatles and I said, "They won't make it in my country because we're into folk music.")

The next day Bette and Marilyn played their scene. I recall that Marilyn had four or five lines. Bette had more, but she was an experienced actress and accomplished the scene with little bother. It had to be done in ten takes, however—Marilyn kept forgetting her lines. Obviously, this problem did not injure her career

At the end of filming in San Francisco, I got permission from the studio to drive back to Bette's home for the weekend, along with Bette's sister, Bobby, and B.D., with the bodyguard in tow. Our affair was becoming more serious.

Shortly afterward, Barbara and I were asked to attend a dinner party at which I had a drink or two beyond the far side of prudence. In my alcohol haze, while talking to the other guests about Davis, I stated that I'd marry Bette if she'd have me—not exactly the sort of thing to say in front of one's own wife. When we returned to the beach house, the dishes began to fly.

Barbara and I had been playing "make believe" with our feelings. Our marriage wasn't made in heaven, but came about because I needed someone to hold onto, and we happened to fall in together. Barbara was sexually independent all along, but I was too dumb to notice. However, when I began to follow the dictates of my appetites, trouble followed. Amongst the ruins of the china, we decided to get a divorce.

At the very beginning of our acquaintance, Bette and I discovered that we had both spent our childhood summers in Maine—I at Prout's Neck, she at Ocean Park, a summer community quite close by. Because of her early introduction to the coast of Maine, we found that our love for it was similar—a happy discovery, common ground. As Barbara vacated the house at the beach, my relationship with Bette deepened.

One Monday, after Bette, B.D., and B.D.'s nurse had spent the weekend at my house, the phone rang. Hedda Hopper, the gossip columnist, was at the other end of the line, and opened the conversation: "I know Bette spent the weekend with you ..."

She continued to prattle on about what a great person Bette was, what she had gone through already, and ended with: "If you treat her badly, you'll be in for a great deal of trouble."

Hedda had spies everywhere and let me know in no uncertain terms that she was powerful , and that dire things would happen to me if I didn't behave. After a fairly onesided conversation, I hung up and Bette, who was still there, said, "I thought you were talking to an old friend." I figured it was better to have Hedda with me than against me. Somehow I managed to tame her, and eventually we became friends.

Damned if I didn't get another call straight off—this time from Louella Parsons, Hedda's archrival. We had the same general conversation. The news was out: Bette and I were gossip column "items." Gossip was Hedda's and Louella's livelihood, and, though sometimes they could be quite vicious, I felt they ought to be able to earn a living, though not at my expense.

I was extremely agreeable to them, which resulted in a fairly good press—although both wrote in their columns that I was basically a slob who lived with unmade beds and dirty dishes in the sink. When Bette and I adopted a poodle—a small, neat pet that B.D. might enjoy—they focused on the fact that poodles need clippings, combing, and proper care. I responded by saying I planned to let the poodle become a bum—and they loved it. Such is the substance of gossip columns

My mother followed my career with keen interest, clipping everything she read that included my name. She had seen the gossip columns, and I got a call. She was upset. I at first had no idea what was wrong, but, as she talked, I understood. She pictured Bette as a typical Hollywood siren, with a long cigarette holder, luring her poor little boy to his destruction. I reassured her by saying, "But Mother, she loves lobster."

Finally Bette's divorce came through, and I asked her to marry me. Her response was to tell me that she couldn't have any more children. I said that was okay— we'd adopt some. She had a girl, so we would get a boy, and it would work out fine. She agreed to marry me. This was in 1950. I was thirty-five and she was forty-two.

Bette rented a house in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and sent her sister Bobby and B.D. on ahead. Our plans were to drive across the country for a honeymoon in Maine. But first we had to stop in El Paso and cross to Juarez, Mexico, where I was divorced in the morning and remarried that afternoon—without even a coffee break.

It was a lark: The two of us piled into Bette's black Cadillac convertible—I had unloaded my yellow Olds—and took off across the country For five long days I drove that damned car. It felt more like horsing a truck around, and added nothing to our equanimity. There wasn't the contemporary convenience of having one of the motel chains available in every town. It was a rough trip all around. Each time we checked into a place, something was wrong with it, and out we'd go. I'd be tired, saying, "What the hell, it's a bed." But no, it had to be better. Before the trip was over, my normally easygoing attitude was wearing thin and I began to wonder.

We were happy to arrive in Gloucester, and stayed for a few days to see Bobby and B.D., and to reassure them that we were still in one piece. We then left for Westport Island, Maine, where we had rented a camp on an ocean point. It was quaint, all right, including the oil lamps and an outhouse. We chartered a boat to sail to a grocery store for food and five-gallon jugs of water—which I lugged up a ladder in order to get them into the camp. Bobby and B.D. joined us for a few days, at my invitation, and we all had a good time. Luckily, they enjoyed the great outdoors as much as I did

After the honeymoon, we rented a house adjoining the Black Point Inn on Prout's Neck, so Bette could meet the in-laws—Mother, Aunt Marion, and my brother Jerry and his wife. There was a slight apprehension on Bette's part, which disappeared quickly after the meeting. And Mother and Aunt Marion were surprised to discover that they liked Bette.

They had pictured what the magazines and gossip columns dredge up to work on the readers' imaginations: glamor, sin, nonsense. The two ladies knew that Bette had had three husbands prior to this marriage and were ready to do battle. Instead, they found a New Englander much like themselves.

Like many others, they were a little in awe of her, too, though they appreciated her practicality and down-to-earth qualities, and were proud of her Puritan work ethic and energy—all the qualities Yankees most admire. However, these very qualities, combined with her compulsive perfectionism, also intimidated people.

Her perfectionism helped give Bette the reputation of being a bitch to work with, and all these personality traits, as well as her intelligence, made for trouble with the second-rate directors and actors of which Hollywood has had more than its share.

When I found myself being badly directed, I let some suggestions go in one ear and out the other. I'd do what I felt was right, the director be damned. No discussion. More often than not he would say, "Fine. That's just what I wanted," not really knowing what it was he wanted until he saw it. Bette, on the other hand, would have at them—tell them they were idiots. She seemed to feel confrontation was necessary to protect her reputation on the film.

She was the star, and, as such, the picture was a reflection of her abilities. She would be blamed for any failure because, at that time, the star carried the picture. Today, the director's character comes through more clearly, and he or she is equally responsible. A director can't just sit by and let the star carry the picture, as Bette often was called on to do. She worked hard for her successes

Not long after my return to the Malibu house, Bette received a script in the mail from an English producer, Daniel Angel. Neither of us thought it was particularly good. Then Daniel Angel appeared on our doorstep. He walked with canes because he had been afflicted with polio; this made him seem "Rooseveltian," which quite affected us. He was completely charming, and in order to persuade Bette to do the film, he said that Emlyn Williams had already agreed to play in it and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., would be involved in the production. Bette had visited England but had never worked there, so if she agreed it would be quite a feather in Angel's cap. He offered her nearly the whole world, plus a part for me if the Fox Studio would loan me or rent me.

........We'd been asked by the Oliviers to come for the day and had dressed for a romp in the country, but the romp extended to dinner—and that was black tie. We hadn't brought a proper change of clothes, and when I mentioned this to Peter Finch, he admitted that he hadn't either. So, although it was a rather formal dinner, some were dressed and some undressed, so to speak, but no one seemed to mind

That Sunday was our last day in England, and it was one hell of a day During our few weeks there, I had met "royalty"—the cream of the English theater. The advantages of being married to the Queen of Hollywood were obvious. I had hobnobbed with the Lord Chancellor, Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Alec Guinness, Vivien Leigh, Robert Helpmann, Noel Coward, Emlyn Williams—people whose accomplishments make an average American feel giddy, especially one who enjoys English actors and English theater.

We also had seen some American theater royalty. At the Palladium, Judy Garland had been performing to a standing-room-only crowd. Danny Kaye was in our box, saying how great Judy was, and carrying on.

"Quiet," I said. "We came to see Judy."

Bette and our whole entourage left England to return to Malibu. I was to start Phone Call from a Stranger.....As the family settled back into our Malibu beach house, Bette decided to throw a clambake. We weren't particularly social, as many others in Hollywood were—in fact, we were usually the opposite. We enjoyed our privacy and casual style of living, so this clambake was an exception.

Some of the top echelon of Hollywood arrived: MCA chief Jules Stein, producer Lou Wasserman, Hedda Hopper, the Widmarks, and Ray Middleton, to name a few. Extra rest rooms on the beach had to be built. One was painted pink, one blue, and guests were encouraged to leave graffiti on the walls.

I often wondered what happened to those "outhouses," because, shortly afterward, Bette found a terrific, old, wooden California-style house at the corner of Camino Palmero and Franklin Avenue in Hollywood, just above Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards, and we relocated

.......Michael was about seven months old, Margot twenty months, and B.D. was five years old. Because Bette was working, we had more help than usual. Bette's sister, Bobby, came with us, bless her heart—always reliable in emergencies. In times of stress, Bette had a tendency to take out her frustrations on whomever she ran into first. Frequently this was Bobby, who, by her presence, enabled the children to be once removed from Bette's short circuits.

For some reason,Bette treated children as miniature adults, so they weren't exempt from her blistering tirades. With her nervousness and apprehension about being back in New York, and about doing a show in a medium that was new to her, the tirades were heightened. As a perfectionist, she concentrated on her work, and the fact that everyone else wasn't as single-minded drove her to distraction; she made bystanders feel guilty as hell for not working as hard as she. She'd let you have it—words flying like balled fists, right between the eyes

Why couldn't she have any more children?

Shortly after our arrival in New York, I was sitting on the terrace of our Beekman Place apartment, twenty-odd floors above the street, engrossed in the Times. I thought I heard the whisper of my name in the air (an eerie sensation), but I ignored it and continued to read. Seconds later, I heard it again and thought, "This can't be happening. I must be going crazy." But I heard it again, this time in a more normal tone of voice. I looked around and saw, in a nearby hotel window, Mary Harding's face. She was a friend whom I hadn't seen for several years. I shouted our apartment number to her.

"Come on over. Meet Bette and the kids."

It was a joy to see her and, as I answered the door, I asked, "What in the world are you doing here?"

"I'm at the tag end of my divorce," she replied. "I consider him an ex-husband. I'm on my way to Italy to get away from him. He's a brute."I was shocked that anyone could mistreat this charming, tiny woman.

She met Bette, but Bette's tension upset her. Mary was sailing the next day, and I accompanied her to the boat. As she was boarding, she took my hand. "Poor Gary, you are in for trouble with your wife. So are the children. Be careful."

The theater was packed. I was standing at the back when the overture began and the curtain went up. Within seconds there was Bette, alone on the stage for her opening song. She had only appeared on stage, but people were applauding her.

The applause went on for what seemed like five minutes; the orchestra vamped; finally, Bette began. I realized that something was wrong. She was fumbling her words—very unlike her. Then she dropped to the stage as though she'd been poleaxed. There was a gasp from the audience as she lay there, and, as a stagehand walked on to drag her off, I hurried to the wings. I thought she had had a heart attack and had died. The curtain dropped.

When I finally got backstage and saw her, I began breathing again. I could see she hadn't died. I mumbled something inane, then said, "Don't worry, she'll go on."

Someone gave her smelling salts to help her revive and she looked up, rose to her feet, and walked back onto the stage. As the curtain rose once more, she said to the audience, "Well, you can't say I didn't fall for you." And she went on with the show.

She had never been ill in her life and I couldn't imagine what was wrong except sheer fright, though nothing like this had happened before. The play went as smoothly as an opening night on the road usually does, and at the end of the performance the audience gave her another ovation. Bette told me in the dressing room afterward that she had played the entire show by rote, hadn't been aware of any audience reactions, not even the ovation at the end. The next night she was back on stage

R13 She was 42. Not impossible but not likely to have more children in the era before IVF and fertility treatments. There may have been other factors but her age alone made having more children improbable.

I remember reading somewhere that Bette was surprised she was able to have B.D. Bette was afraid her prior abortions might have done permanent damage.

Within a couple of days she began to lose her voice, forcing the cancellation of two or three performances. Doctors were flown in from New York. Josh Logan came for a look at the play, to see if he could help firm it up. As for Bette, he felt that she should just get on the stage. I think he felt she was simply overanxious

During the entire time on the road, doctors were in and out to see Bette. Finally the show opened in New York. The reviews were bad, but the box office couldn't be stopped. I think the show could have run for as long as Bette stayed with it.

.......Bette's problems occurred around the time Walter Winchell, the New York gossip columnist and broadcaster, was raising money for his pet philanthropic effort, the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund. The night of Winchell's weekly broadcast—I believe it was a Sunday night—the phone rang. It was Stanley Behrman and he was pretty upset. "Did you hear the Winchell show tonight?"

"No. What's going on?"

"I was afraid you might have been listening and just wanted you to know that what he said isn't true."

"Jesus, Stanley, what did the guy say?"

"Now, Gary, don't get mad yet, but if I heard him right, Winchell said that Bette's operation was for cancer. Fie must have gotten wind of the surgery I've done and just assumed ... at least he implied that she had cancer."

"My God/' I said, beginning to get riled, "that man will do anything to get money for his project. Telling stories to get people to contribute to his fund."

Stanley went on to say he'd been called by the head of surgery at his hospital, who had given him a hard time. He told him that it had been the first thing he had looked for, but there was no evidence of cancer. Stanley was more concerned about our welfare than his being called on the carpet. He wanted to reassure us

Again the phone rang and this time it was Bette's mother. On and on and on she ranted. I got madder and madder and told her I'd take care of it.

It was now my turn to use the phone. I called Dorothy Schiff, owner of the New York Post , who had had trouble with Winchell in the past. "What the hell can we do?" I asked her. She set about giving me some pointers. I then called Winchell and screamed at him for spreading lies about Bette's illness to his listeners, and warned him that if he harmed her career. I'd sue.

"I'll print a retraction and mention on the air that I had misinformation," he said. "As far as suing goes, you'll have to stand in line."

He had accomplished his ends. Few people see retractions, and although we were able to reassure our close friends, the whole world believed Bette was stricken with cancer. I subsequently heard that Winchell's cancer appeal had been very successful. I assume something good may have come from a lie just this once.

GM was HAF in 1950, but he hit a wall even faster than Davis did.

While Bette was recuperating at Beekman Place, she heard that Anna Magnani, the great Italian actress, was in New York for the first time and had expressed an interest in meeting her. Bette couldn't have been more excited at the prospect. The meeting between these two dynamos was tremendous, a real scene as they communicated in fractured French and Italian with a bit of English thrown in.

They admired each other's work; and the passion that Magnani displayed on the screen was magnified in person. A friend said that if Con Edison, the power company, could have plugged into that meeting, it could have lit the city for a couple of days.

.......Bette was as pleased with the house as I and felt she could manage, but help with the children was most important. We found Elsa Stokes, ..... The children called her "Coksie." I've had my share of luck in life, but Coksie was one of the high spots, and though she no doubt took a psychological beating during the years she spent with us, she gave Michael much of the mothering of which he was deprived.

Some adults cling to small cuddly babies. Not Bette, she didn't have much patience with them. She preferred the four-year-and-up age group, though she was convinced that as soon as children could speak they should be dealt with on an adult level. As Bette and I had more and more difficulties, she was apt to take out her frustrations and disappointments on Michael.

In retaliation, I used B.D as a target for my discontent. In my defense, I must say that B.D. needed a great deal more disciplining than she had received. Though she was a hardheaded, stubborn little girl who was prone to come up with stories not based on fact, Bette rarely found fault with her, saying she had an active imagination.

Coksie said she couldn't understand girls. Fortunately for Michael and me, she did understand men and boys, which offered security for Michael when I was away from home.

When Margot had been just a tiny thing, she had cried a lot and wasn't easily mollified. I'd said, "All kids are different— don't worry, she'll grow out of it," and we just went along. But she didn't grow out of it. She had amazing stamina, refused to take naps, and seemed never to sleep. I couldn't imagine where such a small child could find the energy to just go on and on.

Our pediatrician suggested she be taken to New York to have some tests done. After a number of tests, the conclusion was that she was brain damaged and would be a retarded child, though the doctors were unable to determine how far she might progress. I discovered later that her mother had been an alcoholic, which may well have been a contributing factor to her condition, but we hadn't known anything of this when we adopted her.

The doctors suggested a home for her, the Lochland School in upstate New York, but I resisted, thinking we could manage by ourselves. A little vest was made for her, which could be attached to the bed, to keep her in, and when she finally understood that she was secure, unable to climb out of bed, she began to nap. We got along with that for a while, but, placed as she was between two very bright children, her deficiencies were magnified.

She wasn't able to keep up with them, and her frustration resulted in temper tantrums that were difficult to control. She was quite strong—though never strong enough to hurl furniture about, as B.D. suggested in her book, My Mother's Keeper. But she did manage to knock things over.

When she was about three the doctors again suggested we look into the Lochland School in Geneva, New York, which was run by Florence Stewart.

We were by then devastated by Margot's misfortune. We also realized that if anything happened to us (flying back and forth across the country as we did), there would be no one to care for her. It should never be B.D.'s or Michael's problem to cope with, but ours, and we decided to visit the school.

The setting was lovely, a big old Victorian house on a sloping lawn near a lake—but, God, it was depressing. Miss Stewart had about twenty kids there, one or two of them with Down's Syndrome, and all of them quite handicapped in some way. Our Margot was a beautiful child, a doll, with no outward signs of anything amiss. We didn't know what to do. We talked with Miss Stewart and she said, "Let me take your number. I'll call you."

Weeks went by with no word, but finally we got a letter from Miss Stewart in which she said, "I don't take anyone until I visit their home. I would like to spend a few days with you.

The visit was arranged and Miss Stewart came to stay with us. We had long talks that convinced me she was a caring person who could take Margot in and give her what we weren't trained to do. After she left, we heard nothing for a while. Bette became upset and said, "What the hell is going on?" Finally Miss Stewart got in touch to say that she would take Margot.

We agreed it was the best thing. "I can't drive her to the home," Bette said. "It's an eight-hour drive from Portland."

.... Bette dressed Margot in an exquisite little dress, and we flew to the small airstrip near the home. As I looked at her, after saying goodbye, she looked so pretty, so normal—but, of course, she was not. Leaving Margot at her new home was extremely difficult. Miss Stewart said, "Remember, it's tougher on you than it is on Margot. We'll do what we can. She'll be fine."

That was in 1954, and Margot has been living there since then.

In 1957 Bette, the children, and I left Maine for California, letting it be known we were on the scene. Our professional lives were enhanced by this move, but our personal lives weren't. Our marriage was having a rougher and rougher time. We thought we'd be civilized—have a trial separation, break it gently to the children. We were sure they would understand.

I went back to Maine after a while, but Bette stayed in California with the children and began the search for suitable living space. While she was being shown a house by a real estate agent, she opened a door which she thought was a closet, stepped in, and fell down a steep set of cellar stairs—twenty feet onto a concrete floor. She broke her back. When I heard about it, I convinced her she should recuperate in Maine. That was the end of our trial separation.

It was an extremely painful time for her, but she was a tough lady. Six months later she was in New York appearing on a television show.

The following year, we were together again back in California, intent on mingling once more, and again in search of a place to live. Beverly Hills was where the best schools were. We started out in an apartment in the "rich man's tenement district" between Santa Monica and Sunset Boulevards, but, with kids, we realized we had to get a house. While we trailed behind a realtor, going from room to room in one Beverly Hills mansion, I had the eerie feeling that I had seen the place somewhere before.

Eventually, as we looked around, it began to dawn on us that indeed we had. Photos of some of the rooms had been in all the newspapers. This was Lana Turner's house, the place where Lana's daughter had shot and killed her mother's lover

only three days before! The real estate agency had been so anxious to rent it that the bloodied mattress hadn't been removed before people began to troop through. "Let's get the hell out of here!" I said.

We looked at another place on Hanover Drive, a great old mansion, done in Art Deco style, which had once belonged to a silent movie actress. Apparently, Art Deco was no longer in vogue, reflected by a rent of only seven hundred fifty dollars........My friends were delighted with the tennis courts but wouldn't let me play because I wasn't good enough. They felt no remorse about making me sit and watch. I got in some practice on my own.

But we were here to mingle—something neither Bette nor I had cared about in the past. One night Bette went off to a producer's party and returned about midnight. "They're all fatter and richer and stupider than ever," she announced. So much for her mingling!

As the fifties drew to a close, Bette and I increasingly became aware that a big change was on the way for us. Maine was still as sweet as ever, and our home was delightful, but our marriage was opening at the seams. We had tried too hard to take the make-believe of our romance in All About Eve and transform it into daily reality. Bette got wrapped up in her roles. When she decided to become "the little woman," she threw herself into it with energy, wanting everyone else to play their parts in her drama.

When that didn't happen, her temper would blow everything apart. Some of our arguments were whoppers, the noise level so intense that I'm surprised we could speak the next day.

Once, she threatened to call the police, and I told her to go ahead. When they arrived I was sitting at the bottom of the stairs, laughing, while she screamed at them to do something. They said they didn't get involved in domestic quarrels.

Another time, when we were in Westport, Connecticut, Bette and I were walking along a snowy path. Somehow an argument started. I don't recall what it was about, but I do remember that I just got tired of having her scream in my ear. She slapped me, so I pushed her into a snowbank. I am not a wife beater, but ours was not a smooth marriage.

One night, at a time she was in Hollywood doing her next movie, I was staying at home with the children. It was winter and the snow was falling steadily, with the drifts piling up. We were about the last on the route to be plowed out. The men who drove the plow arrived fairly late in the evening. Since it was their final sweep, I invited them in for a drink, a token of appreciation. The two men came in and, as I was rummaging around for a beer, one of the fellows looked around and asked, "Where's your wife?"

"She's in California, working."

He said, "I wish my wife was in California, working."

I concurred. It was peaceful

Money problems between us cropped up quite often. Bette had made large amounts but didn't save any, preferring to buy things for her family. Jules Stein, the genius producer and agent, had offered to invest some of her money for her, but she responded, "You can handle my jobs. I'll handle my money." If she had listened to Jules, I believe she'd be a wealthy woman today.

He had a feel for making money and could see the possibilities from every angle. For example, he was one of the first to see the importance of television when Hollywood was still resisting. Many studios and agencies thought TV was going to be small-time, like radio, and said, "Let the television people have it!" Not Jules. He bought a special studio to begin producing TV shows. He had a feeling that it was the coming thing. Universal Studios is a monument to his foresight

By the summer of 1959, Bette and I knew, for sure, finally, that we weren't going to stay together. I hadn't been that eager to get a divorce. It had seemed to me we might be able to work out a way to live without blowing the whole design. But tension escalated rapidly during that summer, and finally I moved into the cottage at Prout's Neck, which Aunt Marion had left me. It was as though my aunt had seen the blowup coming and wanted to provide me with a place of my own.

One afternoon, I came home to find a man standing in front of my door. He was a sturdily built, middle-aged gentleman who looked as though he might be a night watchman at a factory. He had some papers in his hand, and as I approached he shoved them toward me. I realized that he was an officer of some sort, and I was baffled until he explained that he was a sheriffs deputy. 'These are the papers for your divorce/' he said. "You're being divorced in Maine."

All I could come up with by way of response was, "Well, it's about time."

When Barbara Leeds and I had been divorced, I had agreed to a thousand-dollar-a-month alimony until she remarried. She was smart and lived with her friend, receiving her alimony, until I discovered what was going on and consulted a lawyer. We came up with the agreement that she would receive the thousand for three years, even after she married, and then the alimony would cease. She married her companion

One of the major difficulties of our marriage was that I was Bette's opposite, and there were no grounds for compromise. If it wasn't her way, it was nothing . . . period.

With her fierce convictions and uncompromising stubbornness, as a child she would have been difficult for two bright parents. But, since her father left the family when she was only six or seven, Bette pretty well ran the household, including her mother Ruthie and her sister Bobby. When Bette got married, her mother got married, and when Bette got divorced, her mother did too.

In her work, Bette's attitude paid off, but in her private life it didn't. Whatever else marriage means, compromise and an interest in a partner's welfare are basic to it.

Joe Mankiewicz said, "Bette, on your tombstone will be engraved, 'Here lies Bette. She did it the hard way'.

And Bette was too much one way, I too much the other. She would empty an ashtray before the cigarette was out, knowing full well there would be another to follow; she had the bed made before my feet hit the floor. Instead of tiptoeing through misunderstandings, we tromped hard with both feet. Her good health might be explained by her ability to get everything out at the moment of anger and frustration, no matter at what decibel. I tried many approaches to deal with this, but usually settled for a try at outdecibeling her— which, of course, failed.

I sometimes tried the silent routine. But sooner or later, after a few martinis, the shouting matches began again.

She was a doer and I wasn't. I was a player, she a worker—so much so that she was unable to relax. She refused to play games, such as golf, at which she didn't excel, because she was unwilling to have others see her doing something imperfectly. She was twenty years old when she rode a bicycle for the first time. Until then, the fear of an injury (and the resulting inability to act) had held her back.

A few years after our divorce, a friend commented, "Do you realize you're drinking a lot less lately?" I had used alcohol when I was younger to loosen my many inhibitions and to overcome a shyness that often blocked communication. Later, I had resorted to booze to avoid a lot of unpleasantness in our marriage

It's difficult to understand what another person is like, since we are each born with such different qualities. I knew I was very, very different from Bette. I had never been a competitive kid. If I won this or that, if I outplayed an opponent, it was not because of my need to win. I can remember feeling sorry about winning, lest the kid I bested suffer over the loss. I felt I'd rather lose myself, since it caused me no suffering, than to see him suffer. Then we'd both be happy— right? It's still hard for me to understand, possessing this attitude, how well I've done.

The divorce rolled along through the legal machinery without a hitch. In the fall of I960, Bette rented a huge brownstone in Manhattan. The World of Carl Sandburg was opening in New York, and I suppose she thought it would run forever. But when it quickly closed there she was with a high rent and no job. That's when she wrote her first book, an autobiography she called The Lonely Life. At the time, I didn't understand the title. For ten years with me she had had her family around her, along with the hundreds of visitors who came to Witch Way—all those parties and bright times.

I recalled a surprise birthday party Bette gave for me in Hollywood. She knew I hated birthday parties, but she had invited Ray Middleton, Jim Backus, and a few others for a cookout. The party was in full swing when a huge, intricately decorated cake was brought out: The inscription, instead of the usual "Happy Birthday," read "Fuck You!" And instead of a sweet confection, the cake had been made of cardboard by a prop department. I think that was the party where Jim Backus and I wound up in Margot's playpen

I remembered the time Eaton Tarbell and I attended a reunion at Bowdoin. I became boisterous, knocking off the marching band's hats, and wound up in the jug in Brunswick. When I got home to Witch Way, Bette had hung a brightly colored banner across the door lettered, "Welcome Home Bowdoin 15th Reunion." She liked "fun." How could she be so lonely?

The advance Bette got for her book saved her for a time and gave her a grace period until she got a part in the remake of Lady for a Day , a film first done in 1933. This time around, they called it Pocketful of Miracles, and it was a box-office success

........I walked over to the fence to let the parents know how they had gotten home, and when I looked over the fence, there, sitting by the pool, was Rita Hayworth, talking to an agent friend of mine.

Rita got up, walked over, and said, "Thanks so much, Mr. Haber." I had a beard—not that she would have recognized me, anyway.

"Hey, that's not Mr. Haber," my friend said. "That's Gary Merrill."

Rita laughed, and thanked me again for driving Yasmin and Rebecca home.

As I drove away, the image of Rita sitting by the pool was passing through my mind. I figured she must be about forty, but neither the passing of time nor the troubles she had endured seemed to have altered her appearance, and except for the short wavy hairdo instead of the long, flowing tresses she had worn in her earlier films, she was simply a little older and just as beautiful.

When I got back to Toni's, I said, "That's a very attractive lady, your neighbor. Why don't you call her and ask her down for a drink—maybe she can stay for dinner?"

"Well, sure," Toni said, and went off to make the call.

In about an hour, I was having my first drink with Rita Hayworth. She was charming, lovely to look at, but also very gentle. Walter and I were both enchanted.

I had seen Rita once before, a few months earlier, across the fairway while playing golf in Bel Air. I looked up to see her making her swing—a graceful, flowing swing that was beautiful to watch. I thought to myself then, "Wow! What a lovely golf partner."

The day after the dinner at the Habers, I called my agent friend and asked, "Do you think Rita would play golf with me?" He laughed. "Why don't you call her yourself and find out, you nut?"

I did call, and a couple of days later we played golf. That was the beginning. After that, we started going around together.

She wasn't doing much work in those days. Twenty years before, she and Betty Grable had been known around the world as America's loveliest movie stars. Their two posters—Betty Grable in a white bathing suit, looking over her shoulder, and Rita's, first published in Life magazine in 1941—were the favorite pinups of World War II. That picture of her in a black silk-and-lace nightgown with a low-cut bodice hung in submarines, bombers, and barracks all across Europe, the Pacific, and in every basic-training camp in the United States

In many ways, that publicity hurt Rita more than it helped. Hollywood had typed her as the glamor girl of the forties, a sex symbol rather than an actress. She did what the studios asked, but she never stopped thinking of herself as an actress. Inside, quietly, she resented being perceived as a mere beauty with no real talent. She knew she was brighter and more sensitive than was revealed by the smiling face and perfect body everyone saw in those studio photographs.

She was a lost beauty with a fragile psyche, and she spent the fifties trying to break the 'dove goddess" image, trying to find a good film that would make the studios take her seriously as an actress.

She had just turned forty when we met, and she was still one of the loveliest women I had ever seen. The best part was that she knew how to have fun, wasn't overly serious about life, and accepted whatever the day had to offer. I'd never met a woman I really enjoyed playing golf with, and all of a sudden here was this lady who not only liked golf but seemed able to enjoy being alive. Rita soon became the best companion I ever had

That first summer went by in a hurry, and in September she was going to Europe to take Yasmin back to school in Geneva. Rita smiled as she said, "Why don't you come along?

I did what anyone in his right mind would have done, and replied, "Sure, why not?" So the three of us got on the plane together.

Yazzie was dropped off in Geneva, and after she had settled in, Rita and I walked around the beautiful old city. At dinner I said, "Rita, why don't we travel around a bit? I've never been to this part of the world. We don't have to be anywhere, and we could go where we please—stay in the small places, the village hotels, and really see some of this country."

The idea appealed to her sense of adventure, and we immediately rented a convertible. We folded the top down right away, which expanded our sense of freedom. I got behind the wheel and began to drive, not bothering to look at a map. I was almost giddy with the excitement of this "let's pretend" journey

Merrill was hot as fuck in All About Eve. Total man's man, just the type to push my buttons.

............In L. A. I was seeing Mike as often as I could on alternate weekends and sometimes after school. The Sound of Music had just opened, and though neither Rita nor I was excited about seeing the play, we thought the children might have fun. I picked up B.D. and Mike, and Rita collected Yazzie and Rebecca, and off we went. We had fine seats, right down front. The children were delighted, their faces bright with enjoyment....

When I dropped Mike and B.D. at Bette's, the upstairs window flew open with a bang. Bette leaned out, saw Rita with me, and commenced to scream and yell, using language a hardened sailor would have thought music to his ears. "That's not a fit woman for my children to be with . . . You and that whore shouldn't be together with young children ..." and on and on.

She kept it up for about five minutes. I thought, "Isn't that just like Davis! She wants everything her way. She doesn't want me, but she doesn't want me to be happy with anyone else either!"

I yelled right back and told her to shut up. But the shit had hit the fan again

The following day, Bette went off to see her lawyers to try to get my visitation rights with Mike revoked. And she did. All of a sudden, I was barred from seeing my own son.

So I made an appointment to see my lawyer. I had "reasonable rights" to see Mike: That's what the divorce agreement stated. B.D. then wrote me a letter saying that she no longer wanted to see me, and though I wrote back to let her know that I loved her and would be available if she ever needed my help, she had basically divorced me when her mother did. So now all I had, in addition to Margot at the Tochland School, was Mike.

Bette had previously gone so far as to call the mother of one of Mike's friends, telling her that Mike couldn't visit if Rita was there.

That was pretty heavy-handed, but we had done our best to ignore her edicts. When Bette refused to let me see Mike at all, however, when she tried to say she alone would decide when and where I could see Mike, that couldn't be ignored.

"What does 'reasonable rights' mean legally?" I asked my lawyer. He launched into an explanation and suggested Bette and I get together to work out a friendly arrangement. "It would save going into court, with all the ensuing expenses," he said. We composed a letter. But the Queen did not like it.

Mike was only nine or ten at the time and I didn't want him dragged into court. Also, Rita had had enough trouble in her life, and I didn't want to add to it. I was tempted, in despair, to drop the whole thing. But a good friend advised me to make the effort. He said that if I didn't go to the wall, for the rest of their lives Bette would tell the kids that their father had never given a damn about them. I decided to go to court.

Bette and I were both working, which made it difficult to find a suitable time for us to appear in court simultaneously, so during that fall of 1961 there was a series of no-shows in court. I'd appear with my lawyer and Bette wouldn't, and the case would be postponed. The domestic relations courts were in Santa Monica, and, because of the many postponements, five judges heard the case.

Ed Mosk, my lawyer, asked what I wanted for a judgment. There was no problem answering that. I believed every parent should spend as much time as possible with his children, and when the mother had custody the father should at least share half of the child's free time—which meant that I wanted to see Michael every other weekend and half of all vacations. Ed doubted that the judge would agree to my demands, but I pushed for them.

Because it was so difficult to get us together, one of the judges finally made a temporary ruling, until both Bette and I could appear simultaneously. He stipulated that I should have Mike every other weekend; and that I could pick up Mike at eleven o'clock in the morning the day after Christmas, and he could spend the remainder of the Christmas vacation with me. This was what I wanted, but it was not to Bette's liking. Each time I arrived to pick up Michael, the front door would open and he'd rush out—almost as though he'd been ejected.

I'd wrap him in my arms and away we'd go to Dodger games, or to his Little League games, and sometimes to dinner and the movies. And, as I now lived again at a beach house in Malibu, we swam a lot.

I realized that he must be getting a third degree each Sunday night when he returned home—about where we'd been, what we'd done, and whom we had been with. I reassured him that if things were too rough, I'd be willing to forgo my visits. He assured me that it was okay. To me, this meant that he was willing to take some guff so we might have our times together. Over the years many people remarked on what a handsome boy Mike was, to which I always replied, "Yes, and he's just as beautiful inside, which is more important."

We later discovered that these two fellows were detectives Bette had hired to follow us.

During a party, the detectives took a picture of Mike in my room at the inn. It showed a bottle of scotch in the foreground. This was later used in court, "evidence" to prove that I was a dissolute father. They also testified that I'd turned left on a red traffic light, and that I'd gone out one evening and left Mike alone at the inn. I had had an arrangement with the person at the front desk, who acted as a babysitter—a point overlooked.

My weekends with Mike were going along beautifully, but on the day after Christmas, when I drove up to Bette's house at eleven o'clock in the morning to pick him up for our holiday together, I noticed a Bel Air patrol car parked in front of the house—a disquieting omen.

I went over to ask what was up and the patrolman said he had been told to be there, that was all he knew. I thought that strange, but went over to the house. A maid came out and said, "You wait here."

"What?"

"You're to wait here, that's all I know."

This was strange! I waited. A few minutes later a young lawyer from Ed Mosk's office drove up and said that Bette, B.D., and Mike were at court in Santa Monica, had been there since nine o'clock that morning, and that Bette had gotten some warrant or writ. He went on to say that Ed had been trying to find me for a couple of days, to let me know what was going on.

All I could think was, "What a lovely Christmas present for Michael." I guessed Bette had been plotting this little surprise all during the Christmas holidays. When I reached the court, Ed greeted me and explained that Bette had planned to take the kids to Palm Springs for a few days and had brought the whole thing to court to get permission.

Ed suggested that we let Mike go to Palm Springs and have him spend time with me later. I was appalled—hell, she'd known that Mike was to be with me! She was always rough when she didn't get her way.

"Ed," I began, "the last judge said that I was to pick Mike up and have him for the rest of the vacation. Bette's had her time and now it's my turn. Now, where's the court? Let's go." I walked into the chambers, and, as I passed a door.

I saw the name of the judge—Judge Lynch! I thought, "Oh, shit. Here we go!"

This was the first time Bette had appeared in court. When being sworn in, she was asked to state her name. "Bette Davis," she said, and took her place in the witness box. The judge looked at the papers in front of him, then at her, and finally said, "It says here that your name is Mrs. Gary Merrill."

She was a bit startled, turned crimson, but restated her name as Bette Davis. There had been a lot of ink in the papers—some that very morning—about how she was her own woman, going her own way, and about how she hated men. At this point, I believed it all. (When I later discussed her anger with my business manager and said I couldn't understand why two years after the divorce she had gone on such a tear. Tucker said, "Look Gary, she's probably still in love with you. Here you are, going around with one of the world's most beautiful women, and it probably hurts her pride.")

The judge, for some reason preoccupied by the issue of the way her name appeared in the papers, told her she was still listed as Mrs. Gary Merrill, and it was then I began to think I might not get lynched after all.

Judge Lynch continued studying the papers in front of him and asked Bette about Palm Springs. He then asked me what my wishes were, studied the papers on his desk again, and said to Bette, "It appears that you and Mr. Merrill have joint custody and you don't like the rulings. Do you think I'm an oracle, that I can decide things of this sort to please everyone equally?" He shuffled the papers around and then said, "Do you have any objections to my having a little talk with Michael?"

There were no objections, and he looked right at Bette as he said, "There will be no discussion with Michael as to what is said in my chambers." He nodded to me, "The same goes for you.'

Michael marched down through the courtroom and into the judge's chambers. After a few minutes the judge came out, looked at me, and said, "Would you like to talk to Michael?"

My first inclination was to say no because I thought Mike had been through enough, but then I realized that this might be misunderstood. I said yes, and went in to Mike.

He looked so vulnerable sitting there. "Jeez, Mikey, I'm sorry to have to put you through all this. How are you doing?"

"I'm okay."

"Would you be heartbroken if you didn't go to Palm Springs with your mother?" I asked him.

"Nope."

I went back into the courtroom and told Ed, my lawyer, I wanted to stay with the original ruling. He presented my request to Judge Lynch, who thereupon proclaimed that I would pick Mike up one hour from the time court was dismissed.

I had regained my rights and learned a lesson about lawyers. Your lawyer is your employee. I said to Ed, "You lay out the cards. I'll play them."

But our session with Judge Lynch was hardly the final match between Bette and me. She hired Murray Chotiner, the toughest lawyer in Hollywood, and went to court to prove that "reasonable rights" meant I would see Mike only when she said I could, and at no other time.

The custody trial came up several months later. It began at nine o'clock in the morning and continued, with an hour out for lunch, until five o'clock that afternoon. It was the longest, toughest day of my life—to sit for all those hours without being able to cry or laugh, to act completely emotionless all day long.

During the previous months, I had asked myself many times if I was doing this for Mike or to get at Bette. I had decided I really was doing it for both Mike and me.

As I drove into the courthouse parking lot that morning, I ran into Jean Leon, the owner of La Scala Restaurant in Beverly Hills. "What the hell are you doing here?" I asked him.

"Hey," he said, "I got a subpoena."

Murray Chotiner had apparently arranged for this. Good old Murray, the man behind Richard Nixon's entry into the political arena in California; the same fellow who had backed Nixon with his attack on Helen Gahagan Douglas—some lawyer. Now he had subpoenaed Jean Leon and I couldn't figure out what the hell for. After two hours of back and forth between Bette and me, Jean took the stand, and I realized what was going on

Months before, Rita and I had been at La Scala for dinner. It was the night of our visit to The Sound of Music with the children, when Bette had launched into her tirade. Upset with Bette's insults, Rita had made a scene in the restaurant, waving her arms and talking pretty loudly while I tried to persuade her to leave. My attempts at persuasion got fairly spirited for a while, because Rita definitely had not wanted to leave.

A newspaper columnist had been on the premises, and, as is usual in Hollywood, the story ballooned once it got out of the restaurant and into the papers. Eventually, the item made Time , with a gossip item about Rita being drunk and me falling on my face, also drunk. The way Chotiner saw it, the incident demonstrated my unsuitability as a father.

Jean took the stand and Chotiner began boring in: "Did this happen? Did that happen?" And Jean kept saying, "No, that's not the way it was." Chotiner's frown deepened, and he repeated the same questions—rephrasing, but asking the same questions. Jean consistently gave the same answer: "No."

Carried away with his performance, Chotiner stormed over to his table, picked up a copy of Time , opened to the People section, shoved the magazine under Jean's nose, and exclaimed: "Read this!" Jean complied and told him one more time, "That is not what happened."

Then Chotiner put his face right into the witness box and asked Jean if he was telling the truth. That tactic upset the judge so much that he leaned over the bench and said, "Counselor, are you trying to impeach your own witness?"

Finally Jean gave his version. "This is what happened: Miss Hayworth was having a problem and Mr. Merrill was trying to solve it. He tried to quiet her—tried to avoid trouble, not start it."

Chotiner could see he wasn't making any progress, so Jean was excused. But then he brought out his other "evidence."

I had been dabbling at monologues in San Francisco at a nightclub, the Hungry i, where beginning performers sharpened their skills and had a chance to sing, dance, or do comedy routines before a live audience. It was owned by Enrico Banducci, who became a good friend. Many now-famous performers got started at the Hungry i, including Mort Sahl, Woody Allen, Barbra Streisand, and Robin Williams.

One night Vaughn Meader—whose name became familiar to many Americans because of his ability to imitate so closely the speech and mannerisms of President John Kennedy—was due to play He didn't show up, so I volunteered to replace him: talk to the audience, read poetry, tell stories, find a way to express my ideas, and get some response. I had thought it would be nice to have a TV talk show of my own, and the Hungry i was a terrific proving ground.

I lasted two or three nights. While I was sitting at a table one evening, I noticed a woman at a neighboring table whose companion had obviously passed out from booze, her head resting in her folded arms. Her friend was trying to waken her. "Here, let me help. I'll show ya how to do it," I said, and thought the heat from a lighted cigarette, held close to her, would get a reaction. Like a fool, I went too far. I burned her. She woke up all right, and was so wide awake that the next thing I knew she had contacted Melvin Belli, the famous San Francisco lawyer.

Fortunately, nothing serious came of it, because I also contacted a good lawyer, my friend Jake Ehrlich

But during the custody trial, Chotiner brought up that episode along with the driving infraction (the left turn on a red light), and the bottle-of-scotch picture with Mike in the room. It was getting tough for me. If you want to have all your sins paraded before the world, have a court battle with Bette Davis.

I countered their evidence by introducing a photograph of my own.

As a U.S. senator, Ed Muskie had come to California on behalf of his antipollution efforts. I decided I would have a party for him at the Newporter Inn and introduce him around, in case he wanted to go further with his political career. So I flew in some clams and lobsters from Maine, and invited about forty or fifty people, including some well-placed Republicans.

An old friend, Phil Stern, was one of the guests; he is a photographer with enormous talent. During the party, Phil took pictures—at the same time Bette's detectives were skulking about taking their pictures. The photographs I showed the judge included Senator Muskie, State Senator Phil Burton of California, and Mike. Same party, different scene.

It was around this time that Teddy Newton, my first actor friend, whom I had known since my Loomis days, was dying of cancer, and Mike and I had gone to visit him.

Chotiner brought that up, saying he thought it was terrible for a father to take his son to visit a man dying of cancer.

By the time the long day had ended, the judge appeared to have had enough of Chotiner. The court decided in my favor, granting all that I asked for: visits with Mike every other weekend, plus half his school vacations

Two weeks later, at my house in Malibu, I got a phone call from Ed Mosk, who had been instructed by Bette to tell me that Mike would be delivered to me in two hours. I couldn't figure out why. When Mike got there, I learned he wasn't just coming for the afternoon, he was coming to live with me. Bette hadn't gotten her way in the trial, so she threw Mike at me like a loaf of bread. The limo drove up, and there was little Mike with his bags.

Instead of leaving for New York as I had planned at that time, I stayed in Malibu for four months until Mike finished school, I drove him to school every morning and picked him up in the afternoon. About the time school ended, Bette had pulled herself together and took Mike back to live with her.

Rita and I generally weren't bothered by Bette's shenanigans, but played golf and kept seeing each other fairly steadily for the rest of 1962.

That year, Herbert Bayard Swope, Jr., came to me with a play called Step on a Crack . There was a rather small part in it for me, and I felt that Rita was right for the part of the mother, a lead character, and asked her to read it. Swope was delirious. Any play with Rita Hayworth would pull in an audience, no matter how bad it was. He went to talk to Rita, she agreed to do it, and off we went to New York

After a couple of days of rehearsing, Rita realized that Swope couldn't direct a two-car funeral. She pulled out of the show then and there and went back to California.

I stayed with it as it went on the road and Swope kept trying to fix things, rewriting during the rehearsals. "Herb, this mess isn't going anywhere," I finally told him. "Why don't we pack it in?" But he wouldn't quit. "We're going to take this show to New York!" he said, and that was that.

We did make it to Broadway. Rita's original understudy, Pauline Flannagan, was now the lead, poor girl. The show opened and what a turkey! The critics were rightfully merciless—it was a supreme flop. I went to the theater the next day to pick up my things, convinced the play would close with a whimper, but the stagehands appeared to be getting ready for another performance.

"What the hell? What's going on here?" I asked, unable to believe what I was seeing

They told me Swope wanted to keep the thing going for another week. "To hell with that," I said, and called everyone together—got the stage manager, the cast, and everybody else on the stage. "This thing is a disaster! It's not going to make a cent. We've got to close this fucking calamity!"

Everyone agreed. Swope was called with the message that we weren't going to make believe another day— enough was enough. One night! That's how long Step on a Crack lasted. It was the worst—actually, the only—flop I was ever in. Rita was right to have left when she did

Ah, Rita . . . She had been born in New York City, her father a Latin dancer. His dance studio failed in the Depression, and he had Rita dancing in Tijuana at twelve years of age. She said, "He had me dancing before I could walk." At first she was just a member of the family dance group, but by the time she was sixteen Eduardo Cansino had made his daughter Margarita his partner and had her dye her hair black so she would appear more Latin. They did twenty performances a week.

She had no life of her own. She was constantly under the watchful eye of her father. When she was eighteen, she eloped with an older man—mostly to get free of her father.

It didn't help. Her new husband had plans for her, too. He recognized the potential of her special beauty and talent and now had her hair dyed to strawberry blonde. He changed her name to Rita Hayworth (a form of her mother's maiden name, Haworth), and introduced her to Harry Cohn of Columbia pictures.

From small parts in B movies she quickly rose to become America's number-one glamor girl. By the time I met her, she had been through five marriages. All her life, she had had someone telling her what to do

With me she let go, and for the first time in her life did what she wanted, when she wanted to, and seemed to revel in her sense of freedom. Evidently, she thought I was responsible for this change, and felt that if she were to lose me her freedom might disappear. So, paradoxically, she clung to me quite tightly.

However, our work continually took us our separate ways such as in 1963 when I was called to England to do The Woman Who Wouldn't Die , a spook movie......

During this London visit, I also saw Jean Simmons one weekend. I'd met her in Los Angeles. She had recently divorced Stewart Granger. I envisioned the possibility of forming a closer friendship with Jean I rang the bell and introduced myself to the maid, who was just taking a breakfast tray to Jean's room.

"Allow me," I said. "This will be a little surprise."

I carried the tray up to the room, knocked, and when she answered, went in. She was delighted. We had an enjoyable visit—but the next surprise was mine. She told me she was about to marry writer-producer Richard Brooks, and wasn't I pleased? Of course I said I was, but my heart wasn't in it.

I went back to California, where I got parts here and there in some of those horseshit movies of the sixties......

During this period I also did a movie in New Orleans titled Clambake , in which Elvis Presley played around with at least fourteen beautiful young girls while I ran an old boat along the Mississippi. The movie was terrible, but I liked Elvis. "Success is wonderful," he told me. "I never knew there were so many Presleys in the world, and they all turn out to be kin."

Despite Mike' thirteen years of turbulence, he was a fine, intelligent, normal boy, ready to begin life as a teenager in the company of his peers. Our relationship was firm and steady. On one vacation in Maine, when Mike was eleven, we had been visiting friends who lived just a short distance from Witch Way. As we were leaving, we looked across the cove at our old house. I glanced at Michael and saw tears in his eyes. It really got to me and I said, "Let's cry together." We cried our way to the main road and then pulled ourselves together. We shared a basic trust in each other—not only could we laugh together, we could cry together as well. I think we had an intimacy unusual for father and son.

When Michael was settling in at Loomis, I was in New York, where I had leased a small penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park West, just large enough for me. Although Mike and his friends would arrive once in a while, and we'd go to the theater, essentially I was alone

Rita was ever on my mind. I became engrossed in contemplating my capacity for self-delusion, not just in my two marriages, but perhaps now, with Rita. I wanted to make her happy—but she wasn't. I had heard her history of pain, and I had thought, "Well, let me make it all right—I'll make everything turn out right for her." I had tried, but failed. Now I was forced to deal with the reality of my limitations— which, for the first time, I felt with great force. My self-confidence, I discovered, lay over a bed of quicksand.

Rita came to New York and settled into a hotel within walking distance of my apartment. We went to the theater and to restaurants, but now there was something missing: The mysterious, vital ingredient necessary for real joy was no longer with us. We began to see less and less of each other, although neither of us could cut the cord completely. We telephoned back and forth for almost a month, as if talk could resolve our mutual anxieties

One winter weekend I drove alone to Connecticut to see Mike at school and take him skiing. When I got back to the city on Monday I learned that Rita had left for Los Angeles.

In my small New York apartment, I was completely alone for the first time in my life. I'd always had a family, or roommates, or a wife. I wasn't even alone in my mother's womb, but a twin. I was at a crossroads. I had no idea which path I should take or what life might present to me. I didn't care. I sat on my terrace for days, doing nothing, seeing no one but the pigeons I fed. I sent out for food or cooked myself an egg, drank coffee, and ate raw vegetables. I had no desire for alcohol—or anything at all, really

After a while, I felt an enormous, intimidating anxiety. I looked at my past performances with the women in my life, and at my career—all of it. 1 hadn't tried hard enough, or I had allowed others to push me around, I concluded. I berated myself for my lack of drive. When I thought of Bette and the children, my memories horrified me. And then I began to feel as though my few talents were disappearing.

I kept telling myself, "Okay, it's over. You're rid of it. You have a wonderful son, now get on with your life." But, like people who have been in an automobile accident, the expectation of future disasters hung over me. I couldn't think clearly or make decisions. I was so unable to cope with my thoughts that I seemed to be paralyzed.

I didn't shave, answer the phone, or go out, and I couldn't even lose myself in reading. I just sat around feeling sorry for myself. I'd had lows before—my life had been a series of ups and downs—but this was a deeper depression, one by which I could gauge the insignificance of all the rest

[quote] t I do remember that I just got tired of having her scream in my ear. She slapped me, so I pushed her into a snowbank

That scene wasn't in All About Eve it should have. It would have been a perfect fit.

All About Eve was playing on the late show. I sat and watched it unfold. I hadn't seen that movie since it had first come out, fifteen years before...

Margo could cry out was: "I demand unconditional surrender!"

Never in the history of motion pictures had an actress been so perfectly cast!...Bette Davis had played out the role in our marriage—and Gary Merrill had gone right along. Then she had shattered all his dreams, with her disdain for everyone's feelings but her own, her insensitivity, and her often humiliating insistence on having her own way. She did not care who was cut down with the sharp scythe of her tongue, she was self-righteous in her desire to be the queen, and she demeaned everyone who opposed her will. She had totally cut herself off from others. I finally understood why she had chosen The Lonely Life as the title of her book—and she was welcome to it. I began to laugh at the marvelous joke. I felt a sense of liberation when I realized that Bette had been as big a fool as I

It was indeed time to get on with my life, and the first thing I decided to do was to return to Maine to live. Carl Sandburg had taught me that life ought to be spent doing what felt right, not what one thought he ought to do. I was always happier in Maine than in New York or Eiollywood. What felt right was to "go home" to Maine—to lie around and do nothing. I would travel to do a movie or a show, but Maine would be my home base.

So I went back to Maine once again. I also decided to see if I could convince Rita to live in Maine, too. I did persuade her to try it on a visit

Director Vincent Sherman claimed to have screwed Davis, Hayworth and Crawford.

We played golf at the country club just down the road from the house I rented in Falmouth. One day I called Hank Payson to ask if he and his wife, Joan, would play a round of golf with us. By the time we got to the last hole near the clubhouse, a huge crowd had gathered, mostly women. I said to Hank, "What's happening at the club today?"

He looked at me as though I'd turned simple: "You idiot! They found out we're playing golf with Rita Hayworth."

It was a good weekend, but when it came to an end and I drove Rita to the airport, she told me she didn't want to live in Maine—she was a California girl, she explained. As the plane took off, I knew the affair was thoroughly over.

But I also knew that from now on we would be friends. It was a good feeling. A big improvement over my despair in New York. I felt that already Maine was mellowing me.

I went to California some months later to make another movie, and stayed with Rita. She asked me to live with her, and I truly made an effort to picture myself in California on a permanent basis, trying to imagine what that would again be like. It didn't work

"I'm a guy in his fifties trying to make some sense out of his existence," I told her, "and Maine is the only place where I think I've got half a chance." I once again left California and returned to Maine—home

I had never thought about what the future might hold when I had first seen Rita sitting near her swimming pool that afternoon when I'd driven Yazzie and Becky home from the Haber's. All I knew was that I had to see more of her—I couldn't have held back if I'd wanted to. I'd felt the same way when I'd first met Bette on the set of All About Eve. I had always followed my cock, not my head, with the ladies. Now, I thought, at my age, I should use my brain.

Another thing I'd picked up from Carl Sandburg was that a person had to go his own way, and if someone didn't want to follow—good luck. I loved Rita, but I couldn't sell her on my way of life. So, sadly, we said good-bye. Maybe I was wrong: She was the best companion I'd ever had.

Maybe I was just no good at female relationships.

At this time in my life, I hoped, too, that the long battle with Bette was finally over, that we could retreat to acceptable positions that would make reasonable sociability possible. But this assumption was short-lived. Margot, our little girl in the Lochland School, was the catalyst for another battle

I had often visited Margot at the school over the years, and she had visited both Bette and me for holidays. Her condition had become more apparent as she grew more mature in appearance. We all loved her, but it was Miss Stewart who had given Margot her real home.

Over the years, Miss Stewart had become a good friend with me, too. She had helped me in dealing with Bette's attitude toward Mike. When Bette had been too hard on him. I'd give him a wink—Miss Stewart told me to keep on winking. One day she said, "Keep that little boy away from his mother as much as possible."

I returned from several weeks in Europe and, as usual, called Miss Stewart to find out how Margot was doing. "She's not here," I was told. "Bette came and took her away."

When this bit of information finally sank in, I realized how typical it was of Bette to wait until I was far away, then take it on herself to make decisions about Margot. I was told that Bette had consulted a psychologist, who, without any real understanding of the matter, had convinced Bette that Margot would be better off living with a family. So Bette had found a family on a farm outside Philadelphia and had taken Margot there

"They didn't even take any of the records we've kept over the years," Miss Stewart noted.

They had just spirited Margot away. I asked for the address and set out immediately. I didn't call. I just went. This was my daughter. I didn't want anyone putting on an act in anticipation of my arrival.

I knocked on the farmhouse door and asked for Margot.

"Oh, yes, that poor little girl..." the lady said. "She left a month ago."

"Left?" My heart sank. "Where did she go?"

The woman said she was sorry, but she didn't know. What the hell was I to do now? I called Miss Stewart. She, too, was stunned. She asked around the school. One of the teachers mentioned a former employee Bette had thought well of, who had moved to a place near Pittsburgh. The former teacher's name and address were given to me

I drove west and, the next day, found the place on a country road. There was no one at home, but on the back porch I saw a familiar trunk with a tag, Two'S COMPANY, on it. I was at the right place.

I waited, and after a while a car drove in. There was Margot—she was fine. I introduced myself to the family and they became somewhat frightened, as though I had come to kidnap her

I took Margot for a drive on back roads and got her talking. She liked living in the country, and she liked the family she was with. "All right," I thought, "perhaps it wasn't such a bad idea. Perhaps the change was good for her." So I told her that I was glad she was there and that I would call her and come again soon.

But when I next went to see her, Bette had again changed her mind! With neither consultation nor warning, she had taken Margot out of Pennsylvania and this time put her in the Devereux Foundation school near Santa Barbara, California—against the advice of the same psychologist who had inspired the move from Lochland in the first place.

A short while later, Bette called to say that Margot was unhappy. I had had it with her. "What the hell are you doing?" I shouted at her. "What's going on in that head of yours? First you want to give your own daughter away for adoption, and now she's unhappy in that school. Margot doesn't need all this upset in her life! She should have stayed at Lochland—we agreed that that was to be her home."

Bette shouted right back. "If you're so set on Lochland, all right! You take her back there, and you pay for it!"

"What were you looking for," I yelled, "a bargain?"

She hung up on me

I called Miss Stewart and took Margot home to her. From 1965 on I have paid the entire cost of keeping her there. In recent years Bette hasn't even seen her; and, sadly, she hasn't seen her grandchildren, either.

In a book about Bette Davis, I read a remark attributed to her about Margot: I owe everything to Miss Stewart for the disciplined way Margot has been brought up . . . She is a beautiful, loving child, able to cope with her limitations. It, of course, has been a heartbreak for all of us, but thank God we found the Lochland School, for her sake and for ours.

Thank you, Bette Davis!

Margot will never progress beyond the mental capabilities of a seven- or eight-year-old, though she is now almost forty. Miss Stewart once said that she was the most pathetic child at the school because she was just bright enough to know what she was missing. She wanted to have babies, hold a job, get married—all the things normal people do—and she knows she can't. A recent Christmas was one of the best for her because she was in a workshop and was able to make some boxes that she gave as gifts

As I got into my fifties, my interest and activism in politics increased. It was a way of getting outside myself. My purging in that apartment in New York had been more thorough than I had realized. I was changing in a variety of ways. For the first thirty years of my life I had remained blissfully unaware of the world outside my most immediate needs. Now I was making up for lost time. The effort would help fill the empty places in my days. I had taken over the care of Margot and Michael, so it was necessary to work when it became available, but during the off-hours I continued to read a great deal: newspapers, magazines, books of all kinds.

I became aware of the troubles in the world as my personal troubles began to recede. I began to question what I read. It wasn't that I'd been totally ignorant in the past. But now, it seemed, I had to understand much more about what was happening, and why.

I became increasingly involved in the who's, the why's, and the how's of the political system. I read everything available on a subject, digested it, and came up with my own conclusions.

...............Although my social awareness was awakening, 1 had to keep on earning money Yet, more and more, all my experiences—perhaps reflective of the times—seemed to have political tones to them.

A few years following my definitive return to Maine in the mid-sixties, I met a young woman with five children whose husband had been stricken with a crippling disease that required him to be in a wheelchair. When he had first been ill, she had virtually lived in a motel near the hospital while bearing the responsibilities for the children. For a variety of reasons, a divorce became imminent, and she decided to move to Washington with the kids. I offered my help in getting them settled and drove with her and the children to the new house.

By the time I got back to Maine, I was helpless. I had fallen in love with this strong, capable woman who filled me with compassion, and, though she was years younger, I decided she should marry me.

Claude Rains had married a lovely woman twenty years his junior, and I'll never forget the anguish he went through when she asked for a divorce. On a visit to Witch Way, he announced to Bette and me, with tears in his eyes, "Frances has left me." "Well, of course," was my response, just barely commiserating, "when little girls grow up, they leave home."

Now I was confronted with the possibility of marrying a much younger woman. To press my suit, I told her that she should marry me so that she could get her life together. Five years was all I asked for. I went off to do a job and, by the time I returned, she had found someone else. That affair ended as abruptly as it had begun.

About four years later, another young woman, this one with two children, loomed large in my life, but some thoughts of marriage were all that occurred

Eventually, my past romances seemed to be revisiting me. In 1985, while searching for reading material one afternoon in a bookstore, I came across a volume. My Mother's Keeper, which had just been released. It was written by B.D. Hyman, Bette's daughter from her marriage to William Sherry. This was the same little girl I had adopted when Bette and I first married.

When I read it, I was astonished. This was not just a bad book, it was unbelievable. My initial reaction was that B.D. was low on money again, and this was her way to get some extra change. It was such an outrageous exploitation that I decided to raise hell about it.

Bette hadn't been well. She'd had a mastectomy a few years back, then she'd had a stroke, and then she broke her hip. With all her troubles, I didn't think she should have to put up with the outrage of having people believe some of the things her own child (for whom she had a deep and abiding love) had written about her.

The book's release was timed to coincide with Mother's Day, of all things! B.D. had portrayed her mother as a drunk and a child abuser. How could this drivel be anyone's idea of a Mother's Day gift?

All her life, B.D. had accepted her mother's money. Bette had bought a farm for her and her husband, had paid the bills at a private school for the grandchildren, and continued to give until there was little left for herself. I surmised that B.D. must have wanted something Bette couldn't afford.

Perhaps, as a family, we were more volatile than most, with turbulent disagreements on occasion, but by and large we were fairly ordinary.

Although most of the time Bette was too permissive with B.D., I was a gratified witness once to a good slap she administered to B.D/s behind. It was Christmastime and we were on a shopping trip in Portland's big department store, which was crowded. B.D. had fastened on an item on display which she thought she must have, but Bette refused to buy it.

Aware that people were noticing her famous mother, B.D. decided a tantrum might help change Bette's mind—and proceeded to perform. Bette yanked her around, gave her a good one, and marched B.D. out of the store. It was a mother's appropriate reaction to an embarrassing scene created by a manipulative eight-year-old. For this Bette was crucified.

Upset by the book, I placed ads in The New York Times and in the Portland newspaper, urging people not to buy it. I made a placard and marched up and down outside a Falmouth bookstore, and explained to anyone who asked what I was up to: "If you feel you must read the book, please don't buy it. Visit the local library instead."

GM was so hot back then, and there was something so sexy about Bette Davis, also.

Too bad she had that horrific daughter. The son turned out fine, and still speaks highly of his mom.

The forgotten "special child" - who knows.

This generated a certain amount of publicity, which I hoped would make B.D. and her publishers the losers. Parade later chose my newspaper advertisement as its "Best Ad of the Year."

And Bette sent a postcard thanking me. After all those years, this was my only contact with her.

Becoming a "senior citizen" has not diminished my protesting. I continually find more to protest about. In recent years, I have been increasingly upset with American policy in Central America. By 1986, I decided to go there to see for myself what was really going on in Nicaragua, as I had done in Vietnam.............

THE END

Thank you, OP. Your posts answered a lot of questions. Bless you!

I knew Mike back in Boston. A great guy. Very generous with all the good things and money that came his way.

Also he always had good pot.

Gary was hung like a bull elephant according to my great aunt, who worked as a TV wardrobe mistress and had the task of retailoring his suit trousers 3 times in order to hide his endowment enough to satisfy the show's sponsor.......... he would have probably been a much bigger star if they had not been so intent to hiding his package. The 50s version of Jon Hamm. You can see his very impressive bulge clearly at :18 n the video.

I somewhat liked Gary Merrill after reading this.

I always get him mixed up with Barry Sullivan.

Merrill played Paul opposite Judy on Broadway in Born Yesterday

Judy beats Bette for the Oscar for.....Born Yesterday

Bette marries Merrill

Judy's last relationship was with Gerry Mulligan

I see a production of Born Yesterday with Merrill (now playing Harry) and Sandy Dennis. This was the same year my high school did....Born Yesterday. After the show Merrill raced outta there in an obviously pissy mood. Sandy stayed to talk with us and was absolutely lovely.

Sandy had a relationship with Gerry Mulligan

I can't think of a Sandy/Bette connection except for Virginia Woolf

In the 70's I see a production

Great stuff. Thanks OP.

R73, what did he say about ma?