Ryan O'Neal Stories

I had gone to their home for dinner that first night, but the next night I was supposed to travel to Las Vegas for a boxing match. I have a friend, Andy “the Hawk” Price, who was fighting Sugar Ray Leonard. I’m a fight fan as well as an ex-amateur boxer.

And Farrah says, in this lilting, ever-so- slight Texas drawl, “Well, isn’t that fight on TV?”I say, “Yes, it is.”And she says, “Why don’t you see it here? You can play racquetball and watch it with us.”“Hm,” I think, “hm . . . okay.” I’ve just come back from Canada. I don’t really need to get on another plane, so I return a second night. She greets me at the door with this winsome smile and says, “Aren’t you glad you didn’t go?”

And that night there’s drinking. She doesn’t drink but he does. I drink a little. I’m watching them, and after dinner they start to talk about their relationship. He’s a man of few words, a monosyllabic cowboy type. He’s not naturally funny. Farrah is more natural, open, and she doesn’t have any compunction talking about their problems.

She says when they were staying in Nevada, he had a boat on Lake Mead. He was a TV star at this point, not the Six Million Dollar Man, but he was in a successful Western series with Barbara Stanwyck and Linda Evans called The Big Valley.

This was before Farrah’s fame from Charlie's Angels and the poster that had made her the fantasy of every teenage boy in America. Lee would call her from a bar near the hotel and say, “Get undressed, I’m coming home.”“So I’d get undressed,” she tells me. “I’d wait for him, and wait for him. He wouldn’t arrive so eventually I’d get dressed again.” She says this more in resignation than bitterness.

Oooh, OP, this gonna be good, lemme grab a snack and settle in. I love me some stories about this man with skin-colored lips. Thanks, hun!

“That’s the kind of man I am,” he responds. “You knew that when you met me.”

I can see that the marriage is not the happy mating it once was. If reality shows had existed back then, this relationship would have been perfect fodder. The one I’ve agreed to do now with my prodigal daughter, Tatum, is alarmingly fraught. But that’s all in the future.

Back in the fall of 1979, I’ve just met the woman who will become the love of my life. Two days later, I’m at my house in Malibu, and Lee pops over for a visit. We walk on the beach for a bit, and then he says, “Let’s go see Farrah.”“Where is she?” I ask.“She’s shooting' a Charlie's Angels. She’s at Disney Ranch.”

By this time, Farrah was no longer a regular on the show. She had quit Charlie's Angels three years before after a bitter dispute with creator Aaron Spelling over percentages on merchandising. Spelling sued and it was settled out of court. As part of the settlement, Farrah agreed to appear in four more episodes, one a year for four years, one of which she was shooting that afternoon.

Although she was now being paid one hundred thousand dollars for each of the episodes, compared to five thousand dollars per episode when she was a regular cast member, she didn’t escape unscathed. Spelling Productions tried to have her blackballed in Hollywood. It would take some time before the studios and production companies were willing to take a chance on her again.

But that was the Texas country girl in Farrah. It wasn’t the money; it was the sense of fair play. She was a stickler for traditional values, which appealed to me, especially after the unconventional women in my more recent past.

Disney Ranch is a long haul on the 405 freeway. We drive out there about five in the afternoon and when we arrive, there she is on horseback. She rides beautifully, confidently, and she gallops over to us. We chat for a while and offer to drive her home. She has a scene to finish so Lee and I go into her trailer to wait.

Once inside, he starts looking through her things, determined to discover some secret.He doesn’t mind that I see him doing this.More evidence that everything isn’t exactly perfect for them.

On the way back home—and this is when I get my first true sense of her—she’s in the backseat, Lee and I are in the front, we’re in my Mercedes, I’m driving, and I put on this tape of a musician I like named Ry Cooder. He’s a wonderful guitarist and blues singer. As the music plays, she leans forward and I can feel her behind me, her clean, fresh fragrance, her aura, the warmth of her breath on my neck.

I’ve known her for several days now, have experienced her at her most delicious, happy and smiling. I can tell that she likes me—she doesn’t love me, she likes me—and she keeps moving in closer, and I get this helpless sensation. I didn’t feel it with Ursula Andress or any of the other women from my past, but I do feel it with her and it’s unnerving.

We drive all the way back to Malibu because Lee’s car is parked at my house. I introduce Farrah and Lee to my fourteen-year-old son, Griffin, Tatum’s brother. He’s thrilled at the chance to meet the TV star whose poster is a favorite among his friends.

ENOUGH

It’s evening now and we decide to have dinner nearby at Orsini’s. Now Lee drinks and pees all the time, so he’s 'constantly getting up and leaving the table, which gives me long moments with Farrah.

I try to be funny, and then mix in some anecdotes from my years in television. I just get rolling, and he’s back. “Here, Lee, have another beer.” He’s gone a long time, Farrah talks about throwing him a surprise going-away party at their commodious house in the hills.

He’s departing for Canada again in several days to start a movie with Robert Mitchum, and I volunteer to help.We finish dinner and go back to my house. By now, I’m nervous. Lee drives a Porsche and he’s been drinking all night. As I’m watching him and Farrah climb into this sports car and drive off, I say to myself, I hope he's okay to drive.

Looking back now, I shudder because I didn’t take his keys and insist they spend the night. Thankfully, they arrived home safely.

Farrah’s party for Lee is a big success! She’s a relaxed host. She puts people at ease. The vittles are surpassed only by the interesting guests. It’s an intimate group: Robert Mitchum, whom I’ve admired and secretly envied ever since I saw Out of the Past , the best noir film ever, and his son Jim, with whom I’d attended University.

Farrah is wonderful and we tease each other and flirt. We’ve initiated something. It seems to me we’re obvious but no one, including Lee, seems to notice.

R5 Just Ignore the thread.

[quote] Lee’s a heavy drinker, kind of a sad drunk.

Excuse me, not that I have any reason to doubt the veracity of Ryan O'Neal , but given Major's TV track record during those years (Big Valley, The Virginian, Owen Marshall, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Fall Guy) I am finding the idea of LM being a drunk hard to believe.

At one point he was working on 2 series at the same time.

Does that seem likely for someone who was a drunk?

I don't recall any gossip about this either.

Anyone?

The only thing that keeps it from being a perfect evening is the absence of my daughter. Tatum is still in Canada making the film, but I’ve been regaling her over the phone about my dinners with Lee and Farrah. She’s electrified, can’t get enough.

I remember that a few years back, Tatum and I were staying at the Pierre Hotel in New York, and she overheard the bellman mention to someone that Farrah was also a guest. My daughter camped out in the hotel lobby half the night waiting for a chance to meet her. They never connected. Maybe this should have been a premonition of things to come, but of course none of that occurred to me at the time.

Tatum had always gravitated toward sophisticated women, cool characters whose chic exteriors did little to hide their neuroses. When I dated Bianca Jagger, she became Tatum’s fashion model. Tatum even emulated her characteristic hat and walking stick when she went to the podium to accept her Oscar as Best Supporting Actress .

And Ursula Andress never minded Tatum slipping into bed between us. It worried me, but I allowed it to go on. I guess I recognized that Tatum was the primo female of the house, a role she would be loath to relinquish to Farrah.

Lee’s now back in Canada, phones me, implores me to call Farrah, make sure she’s okay. “She’s all alone up there,” he says. “Why don’t you take her to dinner one night?” I swear I can’t believe it.

Why don’t you take her to dinner one night?” I swear I can’t believe it. “Don’t worry, I’ve got Tatum here in Toronto,” he adds, thinking he’s being witty.

A week goes by. I don’t call Farrah. I feel uncomfortable about it. Lee’s an okay guy and she seems susceptible to any emotional offer; plus I don’t want to look like a predator. I hold out, hoping maybe she’ll call me. She doesn’t.

As I’m leafing through the newspaper I notice an ad: “Santa Monica Civic Auditorium Sunday night Ry Cooder.” A reason to call. That’s all I need. I pick up the phone and dial. She answers.“I thought I’d hear from you,” she says, with more self- control than I can muster.

“Well, I have a reason to call you now. Your husband asked me to take you to dinner. I will if you’ll see Ry Cooder with me.”

“Can I call you back?” she asks.Not what I want to hear. Who does she have to get permission from? I’m intrigued as it’s usually the women who wait by the phone for me to call and not the other way around.

She does phone me later in the week as promised and says she’d love to go. In the interim, Swifty Lazar, the talent agent, invites me to a party he and his wife, Mary, are hosting a couple of days before the Cooder concert.

He always has memorable parties, And I think, I wonder if Farrah would like to go to that? Do I want to push it? So I call and tell her who’ll be there: Gregory Peck, a fine gentleman and almost as suave as Cary Grant; Ann and Kirk Douglas; Burt Lancaster; and other stars of that era.

“Is it dressy,” she asks?“No, no,” I reply. Well, of course it is but I badly want her to go, and I don’t want her saying to herself, “Oh, do I have to buy a gown?” Farrah is not a gown person. Not yet.

She arrives at Lazar’s fabulous home in jeans and boots and a snakeskin jacket. She sparkles in jeans, exquisite, but everyone else is wearing bespoke suits and couture dresses. It’s an older crowd, and she’s miffed that I hadn’t made it clear to her what people would wear.

To my surprise and delight, she’s the hit of the party. They’re fascinated by her. She’s famous because of Charlie's Angels. And, of course, her poster. But she’s not well known to this group. They recognize her. They just don’t know her.

I watch this room full of the truly illustrious gathered around her while Swifty asks her questions and Kirk Douglas tries to get her attention by broadening his smile till we can see his molars. She’s quite taken with the attention. Farrah, I should realize, is an icon of young American womanhood. I don’t fully grasp that at first.

I worked with Streisand. Now she’s an icon, but of a different sort: a woman who conquered the entertainment business by sheer force of will and talent. When we were shooting What's Up Doc?, Barbra had “kill approval,” meaning she had the final word on which still photos the studio could use in its publicity and marketing campaign. That’s harder to get than final cut.

I remember sitting there with her, watching her review these thick stacks of photos one at a time ..

.“Gee, that one looks good, Barbra.”

“Kill it.”

“But I like—”

“Kill it!”

“Barbra, it’s hard to achieve the perfect shot, and I look good in that one!”

“Nope, nope,” she’d say, flicking one discarded photo after another onto the floor.

She’s never satisfied with how she looks. But that’s not unusual in Hollywood. Some of the biggest stars carry the most burdensome insecurities.

One of the few people I know who is consistently self-confident is Ron Reagan, now Governor Ronald Reagan....I worked with Nancy way back, 1959, in a General Electric Theater production. She played my mother. He was always on the set supporting her....

Farrah and Barbra will meet at the house of my agent, Sue Mengers. Sue is a powerhouse, There’s a party every weekend at Sue’s house, always with a wonderful cast. I bring Farrah to one of these parties.

Gore Vidal is there, and he and Farrah talk about the movie based on his novel Myra Breckinridge, which she was in with Raquel Welch, the only woman I can think of whom Farrah ever had a problem with. (Once, at an event, Raquel complimented Farrah on her beautiful white teeth, then added demurely, “Of course all the ones in the back are yellow.”)

We talk politics with Warren Beatty, Gene Hackman, Blake Edwards and his new mate, Julie Andrews. My instincts are liberal, like most of the people I know, maybe because we can afford to be. But we have problems here that no one wants to be honest about. Southern California is not the paradise it was only a dozen years ago. You can’t see the mountains most days for the smog, and the 405 threatens to become a parking lot rather than a freeway.

I remember another gathering at Sue’s, which would happen later, after Farrah and I have been long together. I’m agitated that night because Mickey Rourke is monopolizing Farrah. He isn’t coming on to her, just keeping her to himself. I’m actually jealous.

Farrah notices, leaves Rourke, grabs my arm, and says, “Come with me.” She marches me up the stairs to a bathroom and, without bothering to even lock the door, straddles me on the toilet and makes love to me. “Feel better now?” she says. I certainly did.

When Sue asks to manage Farrah, she whispers to me, “She’ll be as big as Streisand.”

Barbra sees the future in a different way. When she meets Farrah at another of Sue’s gatherings, her casual comment about our relationship is “I give it three weeks.”

But now, at the beginning, the night of the Lazar party, I wonder: What’s with this Texas girl. We hesitate, then finally kiss for the first time. She is a great kisser. She has such sweet breath. I knew by the way she was kissing me that she had made up her mind.

JOURNAL ENTRY, OCTOBER 9, 1979

"I’m still in a state of tranquility. Could this be love?I mustn’t do anything to harm it. My little family needs someone of grace and goodness. Farrah and I talked and kissed till past 3 a.m. (no real lovemaking yet). She said that since the moment Lee left for Canada she’s been desperate to see me. I was stunned. This woman has kept herself in check for many years. Being fair to Lee is not the least of our problems.

When I am sure, I’ll tell him. Tate will be both puzzled and thrilled. She’s never really found a girl she could turn to, confide in, be a sister."

Reflecting, I remember the insecurity that would take hold of me while waiting for her phone calls, worrying I wouldn’t be able to hold on to this extraordinary creature.

She once told me, with a wink and a smile, that she was maybe the most recognizable person in the world, and I said, “What about Muhammad Ali?” She answered, “Well, okay, the most recognizable Texas girl in the world,” and we both laughed because it was true.

JOURNAL ENTRY, OCTOBER 10, 1979

"This is the part I hate most. The waiting. All right, she called and Lee had been on the phone with her from Canada for that long hour. She’s concerned about him, trying to be decent. I admire her more and more. Now I’ll dress nicely and go to see her. She’s sad about her situation. And while I occasionally fee a wave of guilt, I keep telling her she is in fact a happy woman and she should act like it. No tears. I can make something out of her and she me. A kind and generous Catholic girl with morals and clear thinking. I’ll disrupt that but only in part. I quite like it in her."

Two nights later, we see Ry Cooder. I take her home and we make love for the first time. She has her period and she’s shy because she thinks it might offend me. I tell her that I’ve never been as excited.

JOURNAL ENTRY, OCTOBER 11, 1979

Tonight I’ll take her to dinner, tomorrow the Jights, Friday J. J. Cale and Saturday the beach, followed by a Dave Mason concert. Dave called today and asked me to come. I wonder if she’s up to such full schedule. She’s an exciting lover, at once innocent and uninhibited. There is no one in my life to compare her to. I Went to my jeweler today and found the most beautiful garnet ring. It turns out to be her birth- stone. Maybe I’m crazy for such impulsive actions"

Lee is not happy. He has a right to be sore. Farrah telephones and says he’s been talking to her from Montreal and that he’s clearly upset she went to a party with me. He doesn’t deny telling me to call Farrah. He just didn’t think I’d go out with her.

Later he relents and admits that he did suggest I take her out but that he didn’t think I’d actually do it. Who wouldn't go out with her? I feel like flying with her to the moon, to borrow a lyric patented by Sinatra.

I’m ready to call him myself. She wants to wait for a decent and delicate way to confirm that the marriage is over, but I doubt that’s possible. That part of her life has become disheartening. When she’s with me, she’s a different person, happy and full of cheer."

As the days become weeks, my relationship with Farrah deepens. I’m like a schoolboy, calling her every day, telling her how desperately I love her. I’m forever bringing my darlin’ flowers, surprising her with little presents, spending long, lazy nights making love. This earth-daughter has touched me like no other woman before her.

Our blissful romantic bubble will be punctured by reality soon enough, but for now, I’m luxuriating in every minute of this feeling.I’m not the only one who’s been struck with Farrah fever.

My sons Griffin, fourteen, and Patrick, twelve, adore her too. Griffin is Tatum’s younger brother from my first marriage, to Joanna Moore, and Patrick is from my second marriage, to Leigh Taylor-Young, both actresses.

I get the boys every weekend. Patrick is serious and respectful. With Grif, you never feel that one day he’ll be a model citizen. He is already defying authority at every juncture, whether in school, on the playground, or with me. He has an angry wall around him that seems to become more impregnable every year.

I have a sauna at the beach house, and Farrah loves to take saunas. The boys start hiding under the bench in the hopes of getting a quick peek, but she’s always running so late that by the time she finally gets into the sauna, they’ve been poached and have to be pulled out and doused with cold water.

Farrah is always patient with them and kind. I’m especially pleased for Griffin, who can use all the attention and affection he can get. His and Tatum’s mother, actress Joanna Moore, has battled addiction and depression all her life, and it’s damaged the children.

I know it’s only a matter of time before I’ll have to face what I call the third-date conversation, which I’ve managed to avoid until now. You know what I’m talking about: that meaningful exchange every woman who’s starting to fall for a man inevitably initiates, in which she wants to know more about his exes and his children. Not my favorite subject, but at least I’m ready for it when Far rah finally asks.

Are you almost finished with this book, OP? You don't read much, do you.

As we’re confessing to our mutual attractions, there’s a scene with Leigh Taylor-Young on Peyton Place. Farrah is watching in earnest, then turns to me and says, “How long did you know her before you were married?” I tell her it was only a few months.

“Why so fast?” she asks. I decide to skip the details and get to the heart of the matter. “Because she was pregnant and I was still a good Irish Catholic boy under the sway of his parents’ morality.”

Farrah looks perplexed, then says, “But isn’t that the same thing that happened with Joanna Moore?”

“Pretty much,” I respond. “I felt responsible and I was too young to know any better. difference with Joanna is that I wasn’t married to anybody else when we got together.”

“Do you mean you were still married to Joanna when you started to see Leigh?” she says.“Technically, but the marriage was already over.” I’m trying to be honest here without incriminating myself.

“Did you love them?” she says.

“I did love Leigh and I tried to convince myself I loved Joanna.”

Fortunately, Farrah’s best instincts kick in.“That must have been really hard for you,” she replies. “Knowing about your marriages makes me feel better about what happened with Lee, and now I get why you’ve been so understanding about him.” I say to myself, That was easy.

Then, as if on cue, she says, “But what about the children? It must have been tough on them.” I take a deep breath and explain.

“Patrick’s fine, and I think will stay that way. It’s been much more difficult for Tatum and Griffin, but now that she’s with me full-time and Grif is here on weekends, I know they’re going to be okay. And professionally, Tatum is already on her way and Griffin may be even more talented, so both could have big careers.”

Farrah doesn’t press me, but I sense concern and a certain knowledge that we’re going to have this conversation again. But in that moment, I really did feel confident about my children’s futures, especially now that Farrah had entered our lives. In all honesty, it did occur to me that there could be problems.

Though Farrah and I don’t flaunt our affection for each other in public, and by now Lee, who’s still in Canada, has acknowledged our union, we both know that soon the tabloids will start commenting, and we’re lucky it’s Liz Smith, the doyenne of New York celebrity gossip, who first reports on us in her column in New York’s Daily News.

While part of me is bursting with pride that this fair-haired goddess actually loves me, another part feels bad about all the publicity because it’s humiliating for Lee. Though I want nothing more than for each of us to be open about this love life of ours, and not let the world learn about it through the tabloids, it would be heartless for Farrah and me to rub it in Lee’s face by declaring publicly how much we love each other.

JOURNAL ENTRY, NOVEMBER 1, 1979

Starts slowly for both of us. The sun is already warming our old souls. The beach has never been so appealing to me. We ran and threw Frisbees, and played with our pups. Farrah brought her dog Satchel with her today. It makes me feel young when we’re together. Christmas is beginning to draw near and so I’m trying to get it organized properly and with these new additions to the family it becomes ever more complicated. And there’s the question of where Lee will be."

Reading these journal entries today, I marvel at my determinedly frivolous judgment. And to be fair, everything really did seem okay. I was in love and very, very distracted.

By now, Tatum is on her way home from Canada and all I’ve been hearing on the phone from her is how delighted she is that Farrah and I have found each other. Lee has never mentioned anything to her. She even hints that we should marry if Farrah divorces Lee. So I decide to surprise my daughter and take Farrah with me to the airport to pick her up, thinking she’ll be thrilled. I’m wrong.

After our telephone conversation, I’m surprised that Tatum seems uncomfortable, defensive. All of a sudden, it’s almost as if she’s the jealous other woman. I begin not to trust Tatum with Farrah. Tatum is too talkative around her. I had known a few women. Tatum had been around them. Some she liked, some she didn’t. Not that there were hundreds, but there were a few and I’m still friends with most of these women.

It’s out of respect for them as well as for Farrah, who knew about my past, that I don’t feel comfortable discussing my previous relationships. For somebody who’s been the center of an avalanche of publicity for fifty years, I live an unusually private life, always s have, and I’d be a traitor to one of my few guiding principles if I changed now.

And so the next day I plead with Tatum, “Please, let’s not remind Farrah. Let me be this virgin that she’s found, let me keep the illusion alive just for a little while.”

Tatum will have none of it.

One day, several months after Tatum’s return, Farrah and I are in the car, and she points to a street corner we’re passing and says, “That’s where your daughter told me about you.”

“Oh, really, what did she say,” I reply, slightly sick to my stomach.

“How hard you are on women, that you’re not always a nice man, that I should be wary of you.”These were the ways that Tatum, who was living with me, tried to undermine my love affair with Farrah. She couldn’t help it. She suspects mixed motives because everyone in her life has always had mixed motives.I knew what was happening with Tatum: she was angry and confused.

I just felt powerless to stop it. I was spending more time with Farrah than with her, and she saw it as a betrayal, that I was abandoning her. I adored Farrah, and felt I deserved this chance at happiness.

In my defense, when Farrah came on the scene, Tatum was pretty independent, had her friends and her life, and didn’t need me like she did when she was a little girl.

And so, to me, it didn’t seem that I was spoiling the situation. I was just happy with Farrah. Alas, the happier I was with Farrah, the less Tatum appreciated it. She believed I was withholding something from her and giving it to Farrah.

Tatum and I still retained our daily routine. We’d run or take long walks on the beach. If either of us was up for a part, we’d read each other’s scripts.

It was the evenings that were different. Tatum was no longer my regular dinner companion nor did she accompany me to parties. The evenings belonged to Farrah now. That was tricky for me, and I can’t say that I handled it particularly well.

I wasn’t sophisticated enough to know what to do to get over this hump. I had a habit of making molehills out of mountains. I had allowed my daughter to become too close to me and now I had somebody I wanted closer.

Farrah reacted in all the right ways, which moved me deeply because I suspected, even though she never said anything, that Tatum unnerved her, that she was afraid of her.

Farrah was so loving and supportive, continually reassuring me, “It’s okay, we’ll see more of her.” She’d encourage me to bring Tatum with us to the movies, to dinner, anything to try to break through.

Tatum turned sixteen on November 5, and we had her birthday party at Farrah’s, at the big house in the hills, and invited all her friends, including Michael Jackson, Melanie Griffith, and Andy Gibb, who was one of Tatum’s great crushes. I was upset when he died, so young and so mysteriously.

As best I recall, at the party the kids kept listening to Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones. They didn’t play pin the tail on the donkey or spin the bottle. But I saw the way Tatum was looking at Andy and I think they played something called "Truth or Dare,” a game I didn’t understand then and don’t now.

The Diane Keaton look from Annie Hall made its appearance on two or three of the girls. The only thing I remember about the boys is that they all wanted to get close to Melanie.

I give my daughter not one but two cars—a brand-new BMW and a classic MG sports car. I had them brought to the front of the house. Each had an enormous ribbon with a bow tied around it.

The entire party escorts Tatum outside. I expect an ordinary teen response from her, a squeal, a big hug for her old man. Instead there’s nothing. She just looks at the cars and then at me. I can’t tell whether she’s confused or disappointed. “Thanks, Dad,” she says as she turns and walks back into the house.

By this point it’s clear I’m not going to able to console my daughter with fancy presents. The stronger Farrah believed in me, the less Tatum did.

When I met Farrah, I felt that she was a godsend and that my only daughter would agree. It wasn’t fair assuming my daughter could think like an adult.

I had treated Tatum as if she were a grown-up since she was nine, not a healthy approach to a child. Farrah can only enhance us, I thought then, which under normal circumstances should have been the case.

I now realize “normal” had long since been an impossibility for Tatum and me. I truly believe that if Tatum and I had not made Paper Moon, she would be dead, because she would have been with her mother and she wouldn’t have had the escape route that I gave her. She would have been a teenager in that erratic life with the worst of all adult behavior to imitate.

First, I saved her, made her my whole world, and then I pushed her out.I remember once, out of frustration, actually trying to explain to Tatum: “You’re asking me to choose the girl I don’t sleep with. You can’t ask that of a man. You’re missing one of the chief ingredients of a relationship. I love you, you’re my daughter, but there are certain aspects of my life you cannot fulfill.”

The words came tumbling out of my mouth before I realized what I’d said. I’d inadvertently complicated our relationship. It was utterly inexcusable. I was blinded by love and in my naivete I expected my child to sympathize with me.

I kept telling myself that everything was going to be okay, that we could step blindly into that blue yonder of the faultless American family. Except there was already too much spoiled fruit on the family tree.

My mother saw what was happening and understood I would have to leave Farrah to get Tatum back. My mother didn’t want to say that. She also knew I wouldn’t do it. Both my parents did.

My dad, Blackie O’Neal, was a well-known screenwriter and my mom, Patricia, a respected if occasional actress. They were familiar with the impermanence of Hollywood relationships. They knew my first two wives, and saw Farrah as an oasis of calm and responsibility. They also realized that the more I fell in love with her, the more Tatum would retreat.

It might have been different had I enforced healthier boundaries beginning with the filming of Paper Moon, where father and daughter were equal partners, but we acted like adult friends, and it would prove our undoing.

But at the start, Farrah and I are still confident things will work out with Tatum, Also that November, trouble is brewing on another front.

Lee calls from Canada with an apparent change of heart and tells me to stay away from his wife, or else. I tell him I can’t do that because I love her. He repeats, “Stay away from my wife and stay out of my house!”

We hang up and my adrenaline is pumping. I share this news with Farrah, who says that Lee wrote her a note about how I am only after publicity, trying to exploit her fame. He has no clue how much she means to me. He calls me back the next day, I suspect prompted by Farrah, to apologize for threatening me. I can see why Farrah was once in love with him.

Farrah and I go to New York together before Christmas. We would make one of our lasting memories on this trip. I've booked us into the Pierre Hotel, on Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park, my favorite hotel at the time. After we unpack, I tell Farrah, On the top floor of this building there’s a deserted ballroom, and all the plaster of Paris cherubs that must have been on the ceiling are now just lying on the floor.”

The Pierre was about to undergo an extensive renovation. I see her eyes light up with angelic anticipation.“Let’s have a look,” I say. “We have to take the elevator as far up as it will go, and then climb a staircase. I don’t think we’re allowed up there, so we’ll have to sneak around.”“Let’s go,” she whispers. We do and we find the cherubs. They must weigh twenty pounds each.

And there she is, bending over, picking up these ornaments, and trying to balance them in her arms.

I have the flashlight.“What are you doing?” I ask.

“That one, and that one,” she says, pointing. “Oh, there’s another good one behind you!”

These are not tiny keepsakes, mind you, they’re big and heavy, each one like a miniature chubby Buddha. We take as many as we can carry downstairs and then have the bellhop deliver boxes that we pack with our loot.

We take four home with us and they remained in our family room for years. I still have one at my beach house. Farrah and I would often reminisce about this trip—her struggling down that flight of stairs making loud banging noises as she wrestled the fat, unwieldy statues.

That was my image of her forever: hunched over, sweating and laughing, moving those things in the dark. For years I would imitate her, bending over, pretending to be carrying something enormous, trying to get down the stairs with too many cherubs.Though I smile looking back on Farrah’s formidable display of physical strength that day, she wouldn’t always have such vibrant health.

Worrisome things would crop up from time to time that would be successfully treated and go away. But back then, neither of us gave them a second thought. We were young and full of life, eager to begin our future together.

The first of these scares comes right before our first Christmas together, in 1979. Farrah develops a group of benign cysts on her breasts, six of them, that must be surgically removed. (Over the years, she’ll end up having many more.)

She goes home to Texas for the procedure. While I stay in LA at her request, Lee reasserts himself, racing to Houston to support his wife, and then returning with her to LA to nurse her back to health. It’s clear that Lee is making a final attempt to win her back and she’s too weak and too tired to resist his care taking.

Though I’m deeply annoyed, Farrah keeps reassuring me that our love is safe.

JOURNAL ENTRY, JANUARY 5, 1980

"Lee has gone to Houston and has returned home with her. I’m hurt and confused. Farrah called and said not to worry because she loves only me. Not very consoling when I know they’ll go back to the same house and with the captive eye of her mother, who’s come with her."

JOURNAL ENTRY, JANUARY 6, 1980

"My girl is back but can’t talk to me because Lee is in the house and watching her closely. Why is he still there? I spoke to her briefly and she sounded conflicted. I have lots of questions for this girl.Definitely not yet my idea of an independent woman, although I recognize her sense of propriety. She still feels an obligation to Lee, but is not sure how to honor it. I'll be patient with her. It seems I have no real choice short of firing her before she fires me."

"She finally called. It was sweet, but slightly hurried as Mr. Majors was in the shower. I was abrupt and she quickly called back pleading for understanding and professing never before finding love as she has with me. I believe her and it made me feel relieved."

It turns out Farrah’s mother will not soon be my ally. Lee doesn’t stay at the house long. He’s doing a movie and has to go back on location, so now Lee’s gone, and I’m here in Los Angeles.

I meet Pauline for the first time. She’s staying with Farrah until she’s fully recuperated. She has a very deep southern accent. She’s a quarter Choctaw Indian, high cheekbones, an older woman but striking. She’s strong and stoic, not at all impressed by Hollywood fame and glamour.

Farrah depends on her for advice and emotional support. Farrah also has an older sister, Diane, who lives in Texas. She and Farrah, though loving sisters, share few interests and so they seldom chat. Diane sometimes helps Farrah with PR, without ever breathing the air of Southern California. Her doing Hollywood PR from the Lone Star State always amused me.

I’m up at the house with Farrah. Lee’s moved out and they’ve filed for divorce. We’re watching television in her bedroom, and the doorbell rings and it’s Jay Bernstein, with his fiancee. Jay’s a too slick character. He was Farrah’s manager for a while until she finally gave him the boot because he treated her like a dull-witted child who also happened to be a meal ticket.

Farrah told me how Jay used to think nothing of doing her newspaper and magazine interviews, telling the stunned reporters, “You don’t need to talk to Farrah because I know exactly what she would say.” Jay had always been close to Farrah’s mother. He was smart. Flowers on her birthday, that sort of thing. And he was always working the mother because he knew Farrah listened to her. So Pauline had some affection for him.

Farrah lets him in the house with the fiancee, and I can hear them going into the kitchen, already arguing about late, unreliable financial reports.

Farrah sounds furious. I’m still in the bedroom. There’s this long hallway with photographs lining the walls, and I hear Pauline saying to the fiancee, “And this is Farrah when she was three years old, and this is her when . . .” Suddenly there’s a terrible crash in the kitchen.

I bolt down the hall, go flying past Pauline, who keeps on pointing out pictures to this woman, “. . . and this is Farrah making her first communion,” she continues, never even looking up, as if this sort of thing happened all the time.

As I run into the kitchen, Farrah is throwing a frying pan at Jay. Now these are the kinds of frying pans you have to grip with two hands. I yell, “Stop, you’ll tear your stitches.” It’s a lethal throw that fortunately misses. I say to the man, “I don’t know how you riled her but you better go before she picks up another pot.”

It’s my first glimpse of Farrah’s temper. I’ve been careful so far to keep that part of me disguised. I try to tell myself that truly passionate people are like that; it’s what makes us who we are.

I want to win Pauline over, so I take Farrah and her to Chasen’s, and invite my mother to join us. Farrah always loved Chasen’s chili. Fred Astaire is in the entranceway when we arrive; he escorts us to our table and does a few dance steps, a dazzling start to our evening.

Chasen’s is the gathering spot for Hollywood’s elite. Hitchcock is there that night. Though dinner goes well, and both mothers are polite to each other, it’s hard not to see that they have nothing in common. My mother is cultured and Pauline has a third-grade education.

Don’t get me wrong: Pauline isn’t dumb by any stretch, but she’s limited. She also has no interest in show business whatsoever, thinks Farrah should come home to Texas. I can tell Pauline doesn’t like me. I think it’s because she doesn’t approve of Farrah’s being involved with another man before she’s divorced.

She never does warm up to me, though Farrah’s dad, Jim, and I will become the best of buddies in the coming years.

All the women in Ryans life came out batshit crazy. Much like the person behind all these constant Ryan O’Neil threads.

JOURNAL ENTRY, JANUARY 14, 1980

"So far it’s a little bit of heaven. We’ve had a relaxed evening by the fire with Van Morrison playing in the background. We talk at length about assorted problems like husbands and wives. Lee is packing at their home as I write this, probably for the last time.We talked long into the night and finally slept.

That we are still together amazes me. I guess it’s because I’m just not used to having such a pure beauty like her and it still makes me wary. I feel a lot of power urges and I want to make sure that I act only on the good ones. I’m sorry we’re leaving so soon tomorrow"

JOURNAL ENTRY, JANUARY 17, 1980

A sad spot was the call from Tatum. She’s fought with her mother again. I listen to her story and know it’s beyond me. I turn to Farrah for help. "

Farrah’s visibility is on the rise. She’s shot another cover for Vogue , is completing the last of her Charlie's Angels appearances, which she’ll be talking about with Barbara Walters, and she’s beginning to get some interesting made- for-TV movie offers. Meanwhile, my career is in a slump.

The follow-up films after Paper Moon, including the entertaining comedy The Main Event , with Ms. Barbra, did nothing to bolster the industry’s respect for my acting.

I am enjoying all of this Ryan O’Neal gossip. Thank you, OP.

But the great lost opportunity was The Champ. A huge success, it made Ricky Schroder a star and revitalized Jon Voight’s career.

That could have been Griffin and me. I was cast as the father, Griffin was promised the son’s role, but the studio changed its mind about him so I walked. I was proud of how my son dealt with such a severe disappointment. He took it much better than I did. And now I’m reading the script for The Hand, and Sue Mengers is convinced I’ll get an offer. I’ve also been given the script for The Thornbirds. In the end, I won’t get either role. Michael Caine will be cast as the lead in The Hand and The Thornbirds , instead of being a film, will be turned into a television miniseries starring Richard Chamberlain.

I wanted to work, but the offers aren’t coming. I find myself increasingly interested in Farrah’s career, which is at a turning point. She wants to extend herself but doesn’t know what form it should take. She doesn’t realize what her gifts are, thinks they’re just her hair and smile.

All she needs now is the chance to play a role that has nothing to do with beauty. The opportunity arrives that spring of 1980 with a made-for-TV movie called Murder in Texas.

R31 You're Welcome

For those who aren't interested in neutral Ryan O'Neal thread, Ignore this one.

I wanted to work, but the offers aren’t coming. I find myself increasingly interested in Farrah’s career, which is at a turning point. She wants to extend herself but doesn’t know what form it should take. She doesn’t realize what her gifts are, thinks they’re just her hair and smile.

All she needs now is the chance to play a role that has nothing to do with beauty. The opportunity arrives that spring of 1980 with a made-for-TV movie called Murder in Texas.

This is a true story about a doctor with a mistress who loses interest in his wife and slowly poisons her to death—the wife, not the mistress. We pull Farrah’s hair back into a ponytail. She has these tiny ears that are adorable; they’re endearing. We downplay her makeup and wardrobe, and voila, the actress emerges. She’s brilliant in this part, so believable.

It would mark the beginning of many similar successes. I enjoy coaching her, helping her run lines and hone her craft. I’ve surprised myself.

This was the love I had not known before. I had known the kind of love that children have for their parents, but that’s expected; this was very different.

I liked smart, unpredictable women, such as Anjelica Huston, but I never fell in love and I had no intention of getting married again.

Farrah and I enhanced each other in ways I’d never experienced. I grew up a Catholic, but I had fallen away. I had two ex-wives when I met her. You’re not supposed to get divorced in the Catholic Church and I did it twice. I didn’t have a parish; I didn’t have a priest whom I could speak with. Farrah wasn’t lapsed. I started going to Mass again because I could accompany her.

We’d get dressed in our Sunday clothes and go to Mass together every week.It’s the spring of 1980 and for me a season of endings and beginnings.

Farrah’s divorce from Lee enters its final stages. She has to buy him out of the house, but at least he’s gone. He knew the marriage was over and eventually allowed their uncoupling to be largely amicable. And Farrah and I are free.

We’re launched. I’ve won Farrah. I’ve lost my daughter. It’s as if Tatum has moved to a very strict boarding school that doesn’t allow telephone calls or visits from parents. A letter a month at most. This girl was a chatterbox as a child. We’d exchange 1,000 words an hour; 950 came from her.

There’s this emptiness in my life now; that musical voice, that comforting background presence that helped make my house a home is gone. My old Catholic soul finds it ironic that Easter, the season of renewal, is just a week away.

Tatum never blamed Farrah. She blamed me. That spring, Tatum moves out of the beach house into an apartment in Beverly Hills, across the street from her mother, who is dangerous for her, a complex and bitter personality still struggling with addictions and depression.

I enjoy my wine and an occasional toke, and have for years, but I have never known the hell of addiction.

It will be twenty-five years before my daughter and I will reconcile. And now all of America will be able to watch us struggling with our history on a reality show . . . dear Lord. I’m doing this because Oprah is a friend and Tatum needs a job. These are not career decisions; they’re about repaying a loyal supporter and soothing my ancient anguish of having lost my daughter more than two decades ago.

There’s a famous 1981 photo of Farrah, Tatum, Griffin, and me at a Rolling Stones concert that’s always reminded me of an Ultrabrite toothpaste ad. It was the first picture ever taken of us together, the proud single father with his beautiful girlfriend and his talented, adorable children, arm in arm, laughing and happy, a perfect image of what was becoming a new version of the modern American family.

I remember the photographer introducing himself and then politely asking my permission before he snapped the photo. While such respect from a paparazzo was not commonplace then, it would become even rarer in the months and years ahead, but I wasn’t thinking about any of that then as the four of us smiled for the camera. It was a glorious day.

Farrah has just finished shooting Murder in Texas, the first movie in which she’s recognized as a serious actress. It was shot on location. I visited the set as often as I could.

Though my own schedule is hectic, my career isn’t what it once was, but Farrah’s is about to ignite and I want to contribute to her growth and success. She responds well to my coaching and it solidifies us as a couple. It’s also more rewarding than trying to restart my own career. Though I’m getting work, the scripts are mediocre and the films forgettable.

When my old friend Freddie Fields offers me the lead in a movie he’s producing called Rambo: First Blood , I turn it down. I tell him it’s because I don’t think the role is a good fit for me

It turns out to have been the right decision. Sylvester Stallone does an effective job. Though I do wonder where my career might have gone had I told Freddie yes.

Around this same time, Farrah has also completed work on the screwball comedy Cannonball Run with Burt Reynolds. I’m not there. I know Burt well and I expect him to make a play for her, but surprisingly, he doesn’t, not until he casts her in Butterflies Are Free at his theater in Florida.

She tells me that one day he’s climbing all over her and he says, “I know Ryan, he’s great, he’s funny, but if somebody pulled a gun on you, Ryan wouldn’t throw himself in front of the bullet, but I would.”

I make light of it for Burt’s sake as well as for my own. He’s a friend. I know that he honestly can’t help himself and who could blame him? When the situation was reversed, I wasn’t able to resist Farrah either.

I feel most alive whenever I’m on set with Farrah. The energy of our collaboration is exciting and constructive. I remember a scene in Murder in Texas in which she has to sing, and she’s nervous; so I tell her to throw her leg up on the chair like Mae West and belt it out. It works.

Her nervousness transforms into moxie, and if you look at the scene closely, you can see . the moment it all clicks. Though I try to be subtle whenever I’m on set, usually communicating my suggestions through a series of hand signals that we’d devised, every so often it causes a problem.

One time a director will attempt to have me removed. At Farrah’s insistence, he’ll be replaced.

Though both of our schedules are challenging, often putting us on opposite coasts, we seize every opportunity to be with each other on location. While I’m doing the action/adventure movie Green Ice with Omar Sharif and Anne Archer in Mexico, near Acapulco,

The whole enterprise ends up being an embarrassment. Though working with Omar Sharif is a joy. He’s touched by Farrah’s warmth and sincerity. A genuinely kind man, several years later when Farrah and I are in Paris and she’s hospitalized with a bad case of food poisoning, Omar is very helpful to us both.

Omar is also a wonderful raconteur. One evening over dinner after we’ve wrapped for the day on Green Ice , he tells Farrah and me about meeting Rita Hayworth for the first time.

Poor Farrah, Ryan treated her death as an Oscar performance.

This happened long before he was a star, when he was a young actor from Egypt and new in LA. Hayworth takes a liking to him at this party and says, “Do you have a car?” He’d hired a car and driver for the evening so he answers yes.

“Then you may take me home,” she says. She lives high up in the hills of Beverly and it’s a long, dark drive through steep winding roads lined by dense foliage. Omar keeps telling the driver to slow down. In Egypt, the houses aren’t perched on the edge of cliffs. When they arrive, Hayworth turns to him and says, “Dismiss the driver.” He gladly obliges.

They go into her house, an exquisite bungalow beautifully furnished. It smells like gardenia and woman. Now he’s wearing a tuxedo and she’s in an elaborate gown so he’s delighted when she politely excuses herself to slip into something more comfortable. While she’s out of the room, he begins to take off his tux.

He’s down to his boxers and obviously excited. She emerges in loose pants and a gray sweater. “What are you doing?” she says.

"Is that what you thought?” And she escorts him out. This is decades before cell phones and he has no way of contacting his driver to come back for him. He walks home.

Omar had been led to believe that women of the California variety were straightforward and understandable. He’d obviously been misinformed.

Rita Hayworth was suffering from Alzheimer’s long before anyone knew what it was. I remember being at a party at David Selznick’s when he was married to Jennifer Jones. It’s a formal dinner. There are about sixty of us, and I’m seated next to Rita.

There are wine decanters on the table so I offer to pour her a glass. “Ms. Hayworth, which would you prefer, red or white?”

She tries to answer, but her speech is so hesitant I’m not sure what she’s saying. Everybody around us thought she was drunk, but she never had a single drink.

I listened to her the rest of the evening. I didn’t have to hear what she was saying. I just kept looking into those beautiful eyes, grateful and happy merely to be there.

Rita represented a Hollywood era when the major studios ruled. If you were an actor, they reinvented your past to suit their publicity machine, they defined your present by assigning you films, and they held your future hostage because without a studio contract it was almost impossible to get work.

While people of extraordinary talent and irrepressible personalities such as Bette Davis fought back—occasionally to her detriment—actresses such as Rita and Myrna Loy flourished in the system.

I would have been perfectly happy with a long-term studio contract, but some guys from my era, such as Warren Beatty and Peter Fonda, natural-born independent filmmakers, would have revolted.

To be continued.

R35 ["I’m doing this because Oprah is a friend and Tatum needs a job. "]

What a selfless, wonderfully considerate guy!

I remember as a kid being dragged by my mom to see The Main Event. It’s still so clear in my head. Squirming in my seat, being very uncomfortable with what I was seeing. Reading one of these many threads on Ryan, I actually came upon what caused my discomfort. Ryans lips. I couldn’t see where his face ended as his lips began. The Main Event and Killdozer are the horror movies that have stuck with me till today.

R42 But It's True, though. Tatum said in her 2nd book "Found" that the reality show was her idea and she just kept pushing her dad to do it, He wasn't thrilled by the whole thing. She kept saying in the book that she was afraid he will back out (because he was the producer) , she said, her dad basically agreed to do the show to please her.

You may say it" inconsiderate" but it's the truth. Also, Tatum wasn't shy about saying "inconsiderate truths" about her dad in her books and interviews for about 20 years.

R43 For me, the distraction in The Main Event, was Barbra's butt that she kept flaunting.

R45 lol - I was looking for the clip on YouTube but it's not there. Yeah - it was stomach-churning.

Thank you OP for your efforts!!

O’Neal comes across as a self absorbed prick. It must be absolute hell to live in a world populated by similar ego maniacs.

What a narcissist Ryan is! Imagine coaching Farrah on set.

Nobody ever expected Barbra to have a nice ass and decent legs. I think she liked the surprise of it. Besides, as we can see, better flaunt it when you're younger, cause those things don't stick around. I was so sorry to discover what a giant ass O'Neal was, I had idolized him in my youth. He had a good run of time where he was absolutely beautiful, many photos attest to that in these threads. But he is about aa vile as you can get as a human being.

Ryan is not vile , he's a very complex man with many sides to him, good, bad and ugly. A narcissist, Yes, but most of actors/actresses are narcissists and poor parents. People are acting like Ryan is the only celebrity like that to the extent of totally dehumanizing him and treating him like he is a pure devil with no redeeming qualities.

Thanks to his mentally ill kids particularly Tatum playing the eternal victim with her one sided, biased stories.

R49 Ryan didn't put a gun to Farrah's head and forced her to take his coaching., She could have said No, if she didn't want to. she wasn't a child or a weak woman.

Also, Farrah's acting improved in the 1980s and she started to be respected as a serious actress. So Ryan coaching didn't harm her at all.

“She started to be respected as a serious actress”. That’s just sad. For one thing, that’s not an accomplishment, and second, it’s not true. She did TV movies and that failed TV show with Ryan. She should’ve stuck to art. She was actually quite talented.

R53 The flop TV show with Ryan was in 1991. and Yes, Farrah started to be respected as an actress with real acting talent since the early 1980s. It was all TV movies but they were successful and nominated for Emmy several times. If anything, Ryan was useful to her career or at least didn't harm her as an actress.

Also, Farrah film career was a flop before meeting Ryan. She didn't become successful again until she started doing serious TV movies (after she got with Ryan.).

It all went downhill for Farrah in the 1990s, She had a very hard time with aging and the good work offers stopped coming.

OP keeps insisting that people should see the bad AND the good in Ryan O'Neal. But the bad is so horrific that it completely overshadows any good there might be. Not just Tatum and Griffin but Angelica and Allegra Huston have spoken and written about how he straight-up ASSAULTED them. He head-butted Angelica, fondled Allegra (who was around 12), slammed Tatum's legs with a car door, knocked out Griffin's teeth and shot at him. The fact that he also sometimes gave people money or did them a favor here or there does nothing to mitigate such brutality. Hitler loved his dogs, but nobody thinks that means he was a complex guy with a lot of good in him. Nobody who's sane, that is.

I’ve read all the Ryan and Tatum threads and I just have to ask: what is his problem? Is he a drunk? Bipolar? Personality disorder? A man who goes around head-butting girlfriends and hitting his kids— seems like that sort of person would have a long history with law enforcement and be a frequent flyer with the court system. Has he even been arrested?

Ryan O'Neal went out of his way to trash Farrah's mother Pauline saying she was limited. Oh no Ryan, she was smarter than everybody she was on to you from the start. She was kind of like Whitney Houston's mother disapproving of Bobby Brown but not being really able to do anything about it.

I love the way Ryan pats himself on the back constantly and humble brags about helping her with her acting career. Like he was her sweet-natured Svengali or something.

His career was in a lull and had nothing better to do at this point.

I say all this is as a fan of Ryan's who doesn't see him as either a devil or an angel but rather a fascinating narcissist we can all psychoanalyze together.

Coke and meth rages. Drugs wearing off rages.

[quote] I’ve read all the Ryan and Tatum threads and I just have to ask: what is his problem? Is he a drunk? Bipolar? Personality disorder? A man who goes around head-butting girlfriends and hitting his kids— seems like that sort of person would have a long history with law enforcement and be a frequent flyer with the court system. Has he even been arrested?

Ryan O'Neal and Redmond were arrested in 2008 for drug possession. I'm not sure what the outcome was.

R56 Comparing him to Hitler is just off the charts ridiculous.

One of the least interesting stars of his generation unless you like to read about petty bullies. He was pretty.

With all Ryan's faults. He was Not criminal. but people are treating him like one. In the same time, people have no problem with Marlon Brando (who hit his women, was a bad father and molested his daughter). Or John Lennon. Double standard is obvious.

R58 Ryan didn't trash Farrah' mother. He said she didn't like him and commented on her low education. Harsh but True.

Why nobody says anything when Ryan is trashed in other people books because they saying the truth?! Ryan has also the right to say his opinions in his book.

He said she wasn't cultured like his own mother. That was trashing her to me.

R65 So, all people are trashing him in their books and interviews, but it's a big deal if he said his opinion freely or "trashed" someone?!

What do you think Farrah Fawcett would have thought of him denigrating her mother in his book and also commenting on her feminine hygiene while they were having sex for the first time? She would be appalled and you know it!

R67 Like Ryan being appalled when his kids (Tatum and Griffin) trash him in public for decades. Why you don't say the same thing about them trashing and humiliating their father. Again the double standard is obvious.

Simple. Because he is still here to defend himself and he does quite frequently.

People are worshiping someone like John Lennon who was an abusive drug addict and a bully, who hit his women, people on the street and bullied his kids. Still nobody has any problem with him. Marlon Brando is the same.

But treating Ryan as if he is the 2nd Hitler, like some one ridiculously implied in one post.

R69 BS.

When Ryan's kids continue to trash him after his death, people will cheer them up and nobody will care he's dead and can't defend himself.

[quote]"But that was the Texas country girl in Farrah. It wasn’t the money; it was the sense of fair play. She was a stickler for traditional values, ..."

Well, aside from fucking her husband's friends, sure.

Well I don't think he's Hitler but I will tell you a personal story. One time he was doing a chat online about his book and promised everyone who participated would get a book mark sent to them in the mail sent by him Just for participating in the chat and I never got one so there's my Ryan O'Neal story and yes I'm still bitter.

I'm laughing as I type this. But it is a true story. LOL

R56 All of this still makes him a complex person like Brando, John Lennon or Steve McQueen. NOT Hitler. Not Bill Cosby or Michael Jackson (who is still worshiped by many).

More from the book:

That same year I make Green Ice , I have to be in New York for three months to shoot So Fine. Farrah wants an apartment with a sauna, so I find this place on Fourteenth Street, a loft, that has both a sauna and a Jacuzzi. We live there while I’m shooting the film.

My ex-wife Joanna Moore is in no shape to care for Griffin, who’s sixteen, so we take him with us to try to get him into the music school at Juilliard. We realized it was a stretch for a drummer but we wanted the best for him.

By this point, Griffin has been in and out of numerous schools, and I’m worried for his future. But at the time, all I wanted was for my boy to be able to pursue his dream of becoming a professional musician. Though Juilliard doesn’t accept him we’re able to find him a music tutor while we’re there.

It’s a wonderful time for us. Griffin and Farrah like each other and she gives him all her support. Farrah so wanted to love my children and have them love her in return,and the more Tatum withdraws, the more Farrah tries to funnel her love to Griffin and Patrick. Griffin doesn’t always make it easy. Patrick glows from her attention.

Farrah loved New York pretzels, the ones street vendors sell out of carts. They cost fifty cents back then and she would always keep two quarters in the front pocket of her purse so if she wanted to buy one she’d have exact change ready. One day, Griffin steals the fifty cents and, boy, does she ever chew him out!

Diana Ross:

It seems drama follows Farrah and me almost everywhere we go during that summer of 1982 in New York. One afternoon we’re walking past the Russian Tea Room near Carnegie Hall, on Fifty-seventh Street, and a producer I know, Lester Persky, comes out of the restaurant, insisting that Farrah and I join him for tea.

We agree to join him, and when we get to the table, the last person in the world I would want to see is sitting there: Diana Ross.

We had a brief fling years earlier and unfortunately things did not end smoothly. The moment Diana spots us she bursts into tears and runs into the ladies’ room. And she doesn’t come out.

Farrah is sympathetic and I don’t have to explain. Farrah and I had had that conversation.She’d asked around about me. She was neither shocked nor surprised that there had been beautiful women in my life before her and a few hearts were broken.

“I never expected you to be celibate,” Farrah said. “That would have shocked me. But I sure was relieved to learn you have a reputation for never cheating. I can’t tell you who told me. She’s a good friend of yours. She said not to worry. And I trust her.” To this day, I don’t know who my fairy godmother was.

Long before I met Farrah, Diana Ross and I were signed_ to costar in The Bodyguard. John Boorman, who made Deliverance , was the director. Diana was difficult and opinionated.

All she did was complain about the script. We went through three screenplays. It would have been one thing if none of the scripts were good, but they were excellent.

I eventually got fed up with her imperiousness and we never did do the picture. More than a decade later it would be made into a box office smash with Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston.

And yes, Diana and I did have a brief fling during preproduction for the film. But she killed whatever spark there was between us when she put on her diva act.

I remember taking her to the airport one day. I had a Rolls-Royce at the time, and we ran out of gas. I made her help me push the car to a gas station. I thought that was funny, this big star pushing a Rolls-Royce down Century Boulevard, cars whizzing past us. She didn’t.

[post redacted because independent.co.uk thinks that links to their ridiculous rag are a bad thing. Somebody might want to tell them how the internet works. Or not. We don't really care. They do suck though. Our advice is that you should not click on the link and whatever you do, don't read their truly terrible articles.]

R63, Ryan O'Neal's behavior [italic]was[/italic] criminal. Let's put aside the personal drug offenses, because those are too easy. Putting Tatum in a car with a drunk driver on Thanksgiving constitutes child endangerment. Doing drugs with his kids constitutes contributing to the delinquency of a minor and might constitute distribution. And beaning Anjelica Huston was assault and battery. Those are just off the top of my head.

R78 So 90% of Hollywood actors are Criminals, to name a few, Tony Curtis who gave his kids drugs, Brando who molested his daughter, beat the shit out of his women and harassed strangers. People are not treating these celebrities like criminals.

Stop the BS.

R73, I would attribute that to a flaky personal assistant. I can't picture Ryan personally boxing up dozens of books and taking them to a Malibu post office.

Farrah and I would travel back and forth to New York often in those early days. There are stirrings of trouble to come in our relationship, but like any couple in the grasp of romance, we ignore the clues.

We make a special trip for Andy Warhol. I had met him several years earlier at a bar- restaurant popular with the downtown New York avant- garde crowd, Max’s Kansas City, and to my surprise, we hit it off even though Andy was a man of few words, to say the least. I introduce Farrah to him at his legendary studio, the Factory.

ABC’s 20/20 is doing a story on him and they want to film him manufacturing a portrait of a pop star. Andy asks if I’d do him a favor and persuade Farrah to pose. I tell him I will if in turn, as a kind of payment, he gives me two copies of the portrait. He’s happy to agree.

One of those copies Farrah wills to the University of Texas. The other still hangs over my bed in Malibu. I’m currently in a dispute with the University of Texas over its ownership.

We bring Tatum with us to Andy’s studio, one of our many attempts to win her over. So we’re at the Factory and Farrah’s in this little dressing room area getting ready.

All Andy needs from her is a series of Polaroids. She’s taking forever so I open the door and she’s upset at being interrupted. Righteous anger.

Still, her response rubs me the wrong way. We’re staying at the Pierre, and on the cab ride back I’m silent. I don’t even go into the hotel with her and Tatum.I take a walk around the block to calm down. I didn’t like being talked to as if I were a minion.

Ryan O'Neal Defender. Are you his publicist or something? Are you Redmond posting from the prison Library? Why are you so invested in the subject? Furthermore, why the hell am I?

R80 True, It's not like Ryan was going to send these copies himself. But of course, the blame is put always on Ryan.

R80. That makes a lot of sense. I won't blame Ryan O'Neal for that one.

R78, in the 1960s and 70s there was not the same stigma associated with drunk driving as there is now. Tatum O'Neal is my near-contemporary (she's one year older than I am). When I was a kid in the 70s my alcoholic stepmother scared the hell out of me during a booze-fueled drive from the country club back to the house. This doesn't make my stepmother's behavior or Ryan O'Neal's behavior remotely okay, but to a certain extent drunk driving was normalized (or at least minimized) back then.

R82 Thanks for the laugh!

But I'm Not Ryan's publicist Nor Redmond. I just don't like people hypocrisy and double standard regarding Ryan O'Neal.

Wouldn't it be fun if Greg Lott joined in on these threads as Counterpoint to the Ryan O'Neal Defender? I would freaking love that.

Farrah’s divorce is finalized in 1982, and as the weeks turn into months, we ease into the rhythms and routines of living together as a couple. She is living in the Antelo house. I sell my Beverly Hills home on the old John Barrymore estate to George Harrison’s manager.

And Farrah and I split our time between her house on Antelo and mine on Malibu Beach, with occasional romantic sojourns to my place in Big Sur, which I’ll also sell several years later. Ted Turner will buy it. Whenever I see Jane Fonda, she always talks about how much she liked the Jacuzzi there. Farrah and I spent many wonderful nights in that Jacuzzi.

At this point, Tatum is living in her own apartment. I recognize now that at seventeen she was too young to have that degree of independence.

It’s one of my life’s greatest regrets that I didn’t establish stricter boundaries with my children. I was one of those fathers who placed too much value on being a friend to his kids and not enough on being a parent.

How I wish someone had sat me down and warned me about the consequences of Malibu-style domesticity. Farrah would try but I could be one stubborn SOB, and all of us would pay the price.

The first deposit on that bill comes due in the new year. Griffin’s behavior is growing more unpredictable and his demeanor more surly and secretive. He’s also experimenting with drugs and alcohol, and I begin to fear the worst. Tatum will be next.

She’s always had a self-destructive rebellious streak, resenting any kind of authority or discipline from shoplifting laws to schoolteachers. During a brief stint in boarding school, she was nearly expelled for stealing jewelry from other students. She was eight. And her need for attention and affection is bottomless.

It worries me. But at this point, she’s distanced herself from Farrah and me, and my main concern is getting Griffin back on track. My other son, Patrick, thankfully seems to be doing okay.

I have to give my second wife Leigh Taylor-Young credit. Though I may not understand her New Age philosophies and bohemian sensibilities, she’s always been one hell of a mother, and it shows because of all my kids, Patrick is the one who was able to sidestep the temptations.

As another Easter approaches, Farrah receives a call from the producers of Extremities , the hit off-Broadway play about a woman who turns the tables on her rapist. They’re interested in having her replace Susan Sarandon. I take Farrah to New York, it’s a rough play, a lot of work for an actress, and I notice that Susan is all banged up from the fight scenes.

Farrah elbows me and says, “I can do this.” So we return to Los Angeles and start preparing her for the role, learning the lines, practicing the dialogue, and blocking the scenes.

Thanks for posting OP.

R86, we need people like you to present the other side so thank you for providing some balance here.

We haven’t made any commitment yet to the producers. I want to be sure she’s ready. I know so much attention will be paid to Farrah that I don’t want anything to go wrong, especially in New York, where the theater world can be uncompromising.

I’m scrunched inside my fireplace in my bedroom in Malibu because Farrah and I are rehearsing that famous scene in which the rapist is trapped in the hearth. Farrah is deep in character. She’s glowering at me and hurling obscenities, lost in the reality of the character she’s portraying. Meanwhile the phone is ringing.

Sue Mengers, who will soon be managing Farrah, keeps calling to tell me she can’t keep the producers at bay much longer. I reach for the receiver, and I hear this huge grunt coming out of Farrah as she pulls a log out of the stack and lunges at me. I duck and press the phone to my ear.

“She’s ready,” I tell Sue.“Messenger the contracts.” That was the thing about Far- rah. She was fearless, hungry to take on the hardest roles.

Beneath that big blond mane of hers was a steely will and courage to spare. She would come to need it in ways neither of us could have imagined on that afternoon of rough magic, me covered in soot, marveling at my girl, who was about to show everyone what she was made of.

OP Is the entire book written in the present tense? It’s like reading the travel column in the Sunday paper.

There are fine people on both sides of the O'Neals!

R90 You're Welcome.

R91 Thank you.

Jesus. Griffin literally points out that his first taste of cocaine was given to him by his father to get him to sit through Barry Lyndon. He was 11 years old! How dare this waste of oxygen prosthelyze about they turned out. Bitch by your own admission, the only one who isn't deeply scarred is the one you only saw a few hours over occasional weekends. And that bullshit about being besties with Oprah...go home ho. No sane person believes your self aggrandising bs.

While Farrah is in New York rehearsing for Extremities, I'm back in LA filming the comedy drama Irreconcilable Differences with Shelley Long and Drew Barrymore. Sharon Stone is in it too, one of her first movies.

One day she asks me if I’ll run off to Las Vegas and marry her. I tell her, “Can we do the honeymoon first?” I liked Sharon. A graceful and determined woman, she was fun to work with.

Director Charles Shyer was easy to work with too. He was nothing like Stanley Kubrick, whom I worked with on Barry Lyndon.

Stanley’s directorial method was to film a scene fifty times or more. He never explained why after, say, forty-one takes the next do over was needed.

I once said to him after repeating a scene so many times I’d forgotten my name as well as my lines, “Stanley, you act my part in the scene. I’ll watch and then imitate you.” I was sincere. He thought I was trying to be funny and perceived it as insolence.

My best guess is that he wanted to fatigue the actors and see what became of their performance when they were exhausted. In spite of being one of those worn-down actors, Stanley and I shared a mutual respect.

Stanley was less extravagant as a producer. He would continually review the schedule and the budget for Barry Lyndon , the two documents that Stanley the director often ignored.

But in his role as producer, Stanley was acutely aware of costs. He’d count the rolls of toilet paper and ration them; only so many would be available per day.

Can the tiresome poster with a case of but-what-aboutism shut it. Lennon and Tony Curtis and Brando and Burt Reynolds are scum too. Notice nobody here has argued on their behalf. Now will you concede that your daddy Ryan is scum as well? Or are you off to Google for a new whataboutism??

It's possible that Griffin, Tatum, and their dad are all unreliable narrators.

During the production of Irreconcilable Differences , I was staying at Farrah’s house on Antelo.

I come home one night and see Griffin pulling out of the garage, his car loaded with Farrah’s belongings, end tables, antique lamps, knick- knacks. He can’t even see out the back window. I run up to the driver’s side and yank open the door.

"What the hell are you doing?” I say. "You Put it all back!” He makes a smart-ass remark and then gets out of the car.

He’s violent and irrational. He’s got this empty look in his eyes. I can feel years of resentment radiating off his skin.

He swings at me. I block. Then he dives and knocks both my feet out from under me. I hit the pavement elbows first. I get up. He comes at me again, this time following me into the house. We fight and knock over the curio cabinet. I fall into the broken glass, cutting my elbows and knees.

“What are you doing,” I keep yelling at him. “Stop!” Some nineteen-year-old sons think they can take their dads, and he wasn’t going to stop until he did. He again goes for my legs, this time tripping me.

I don’t remember hitting him in the mouth. But by then, my survival instinct had taken over. Twenty minutes later we’re on our hands and knees together, searching for his lost teeth. That night, I hold my child in my arms while he sleeps, wondering how this once sweet boy, who comforted me when I gave up the lead in The Champ because he hadn’t been cast as the son, could be the same young man who hours before was primed to maim me.

I call Farrah to let her know what happened. I hated dragging her into my messes with my kids. But she had become the person whose judgment I relied on most, the only one who could give me a sense of balance when chaos was«threatening to spill over me. She doesn’t complain about the damage to the interior of her beautiful home. She just listens with compassion and understanding.

A little less than two years later, after our son Redmond is born, I’m sure she must have recalled that conversation—me out of my mind with anger and sadness, she, exhausted from rehearsals, desperately trying to calm me—and wondered, What have I brought this innocent new life into?

The next morning I have to go back to work. I must shoot a scene shirtless that day, and in the film, if you look closely enough, you can see the evidence of the previous night’s brawl on my arms, which are decorated with cuts and bruises.

Making matters worse, while I’m on set, Griffin calls his mother. She picks him up and brings him straight to a photographer. She sells the story to People, and the celebrity magazines feast.

Soon after, I send Griffin to Habilitate for rehab. He’ll stay for a year.

During that time, People will run another piece, this time a feature on Griffin, and to my surprise, their coverage of me is okay.

Early in my career, the press treated me fairly. I got good reviews for good performances, poor reviews for poor performances, and press interest in the women I dated was more respectful than salacious. It was my lack of parenting skills that inspired their ire.

Whenever Irreconcilable Differences runs on cable I’m reminded of this shameful episode with my child.

The debacle will further sour my relationship with Tatum, who thinks I’ve turned my back on her brother by sending him to Habilitate. I can’t make her understand that the opposite is true. This is one of the foremost drug rehabilitation facilities in the Western world, and besides, it’s located in idyllic Hawaii.

R99 Except that the kids narratives are corroborated by people who were around them at the time. Both Houston sisters confirm in their autobiographies that Ryan got off on terrorising people. That he was extremely volatile and also violent. That he was unable to process the needs of a child so he turned his daughter into his caregiver and saw his son as a rival. That by 11 Griffin was so neglected he was openly on drugs in the house and not in school. That despite being shunted off to the servants quarters, Griffin was still a loving giving child who they recognised to be depressed from living in constant terror. That Ryan did have sex with Tatums underage friend Melanie Griffith aka "the playmate". And on and on. I think we would be hard pressed to find Ryan positively mentioned in anybodys memoirs.

When Farrah opens in Extremities , I can’t be there because I’m still shooting Irreconcilable Differences. Though it couldn’t be helped, it still bothers me that I wasn’t by her side opening night.

And what an opening night it was! When I telephone Farrah, she says that a man in the audience, who we later discover had been stalking her, rushed the stage, angry that she’d never signed his poster. “What did you do?” I ask. “They dragged him away and we started the scene over.” She’s telling me all this as if it were just a glitch.

I’m amazed by this girl. Most actresses I know would have been rattled by something like that.

After the scare with the crazy fan, the producers hire two security guards, one for each side of the stage, to make sure nothing like that happens again. Farrah receives rave reviews and packs the house every performance. She is an actress now.

Once I wrap on Irreconcilable Differences , I hurry to New York to stay with Farrah. She’s at her most radiant, soaking up the long overdue respect from an industry that had once considered her only that blonde in the bathing suit from Charlie's Angels.

It’s wonderful to be spending time in New York together. Every once in a while we’ll go dancing at Studio 54. I knew the building. It’s where Johnny Carson’s show was broadcast. Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager converted it from a theater.

The space was huge. I used to think that if Farrah wandered away, it could take all weekend to find her. We always danced. Farrah could float across the floor.

There were a number of songs we claimed as our own and always got up to move to them. More than thirty years later I can still remember the words to Donna Summer’s “Last Dance.” Farrah and I also spent a lot of time in the balcony, where there were tables and a great view. Above the balcony was terra incognita.

The third floor housed the infamous rubber room, so named because it could be hosed down after all the open sex and drugs.

I was intrigued. Farrah had less than no interest so we never went up there. Not quite never. I peeked once: it was like something out of a Brueghel painting.

When owner Steve Rubell is charged with tax evasion, most of his friends desert him. Farrah and I take him out to a very public dinner.

This fucking guy can't keep his stories straight.

"The debacle will further sour my relationship with Tatum, who thinks I’ve turned my back on her brother by sending him to Habilitate. I can’t make her understand that the opposite is true."

I distinctly recall him saying both on the show and in interviews that he doesn't believe in rehab. That he believes "people should help themselves". He said it constantly and I assumed it was a dig at Griffin who he had shot his gun at just a year prior because Griffin had convinced and was now taking Redmond into rehab.

R99 I agree

It's just people blindly believe what Tatum and Griffin say, though they are not reliable as well and can't keep their story straight and changing it all the time.

The truth is somewhere in the middle between all of their stories.

R105 Tatum and Griffin can't keep their stories straight either, they contradicted themselves and lied many times before.

Stop picking on every little thing Ryan says and leaving out the rest. The guy knows he fucked up and admitted it frankly many time in the book. Your bias is obvious and stop repeating what Allegra , Anjelica or Tatum said in their books because I'm the one who posted these threads and know what they said.

I watched a clip from Tatum and Ryan's venture into reality TV and Tatum seemed hellbent on getting her dad to say mea culpa on camera. She just seemed incredibly angry and sad at the same time, while he appeared clueless. As R107 says Ryan does admit to royally fucking up as a dad and he (or his ghostwriter) expresses remorse multiple times in his memoir.

Though Farrah’s schedule is demanding, when she does get time off, we sometimes go to Montauk, the most distant Hampton, and stay with Andy Warhol. Farrah loves the beach and the sun. I enjoy Andy, as odd as he sometimes is. He acts as if he adores Farrah so they get on famously. And she loves art. Andy’s place has five classic clapboard houses designed by Stanford White.

It was comfortable and refreshing, with an astonishing view of the sand dunes and the ocean, and the company was never less than invigorating. Bianca Jag- ger without Mick, Yves Saint Laurent opening clams in the kitchen, the fashion designer Halston dishing the divas, and, of course, the neighbors: Edward Albee, Bobby De Niro,and Paul Simon.

For reasons I never understood, Dick Cavett insisted on playing Frisbee sans clothing. Maybe he was working up an appetite.

The first time we go we encounter Bianca. Farrah never warms up to her. She ran with a more cultured, artistic group than we knew in LA.

Farrah felt threatened by her, though she had no reason to be and my behavior was as proper as an English butler’s. Maybe it was because Bianca was always topless, and Farrah knew she and I were once lovers. Bianca and I remained friends and I still think of her that way even though we haven’t spoken in ten years.

The 1983 holidays are a welcome respite, though I miss Tatum and continue to worry about Griffin. Farrah and I fly to Hawaii to see him at Habilitate, and while he seems to be trying hard to turn his life around, it’s as if he’s been severed from his own soul, and like the headless horseman, he’s trying to find the top of him and put it back on.

Give it up, OP. We ain't buying what you're selling.

R108 Yes, Ryan admitted Many times in the book, interviews, reality show with Tatum that he is flawed, made mistakes and fucked up. And in the book he expressed his regret. What more he can do?! Still people are picking on everything he says, overlooking any positive thing he might say or do and only fixated on his flaws.

R110 Selling?!

The ignorance is showing in your comment.

R108

Tatum seems like she wants to nail Ryan to a cross and leave him to suffer before he is forgiven. In her 2nd book, she recounts how her dad welcomed her back and her son Sean in 2010, helped her when she was sick twice and introduced her son to people in the business because her son wanted to an actor, agreed to produce reality show at her request and appear with her even though he didn't want to, but she kept pushing him.

Tatum doesn't find bad things about her dad lately so she just keeps digging in the past that can't be changed.

Farrah has a subscription to Texas Monthly. One morning over coffee, I’m scanning the latest issue and there’s a piece on Candy Barr, the famous stripper who had an affair with the notorious Mickey Cohen and performed in Jack Ruby’s Dallas nightclub. She shot her second husband, a crime for which she served three years in prison.

I’d always been intrigued by her story. I point out the article to Farrah and suggest that this would be a perfect vehicle for her. Farrah’s excited by the idea and we go to San Antonio to meet Candy.

She’s a tougher broad than I thought she would be and Farrah is fascinated by her. In fact, when we return home, Farrah insists that we watch Smart Alec together. She’s never asked to watch a porn movie before and I must admit I’m excited. We were both self-conscious but not embarrassed. And I can tell you that Candy Barr had nothing on Farrah.

We enter into a development deal with Atlantic Pictures. We already have one enthusiastic investor who once saw Farrah dance and thinks she would be perfect for the burlesque scenes. It’s my first time playing producer and I want to get it right, so I hire George Axelrod to write the script.

He’d written Bus Stop and The Seven Year Itch for Marilyn Monroe, Breakfast at Tiffany's with Audrey Hepburn, The Manchurian Candidate; his credits read like a graduate course at the USC film school.

Unfortunately, George and I disagree vehemently on the screenplay. I want to tell the story of Candy Barr as a young woman, and he insists on writing the story of her as an old woman. The project is stillborn. The experience gives me new appreciation for the responsibilities and challenges of being a producer. Putting all those elements together ain’t easy.

Could it have been a great start vehicle for Farrah? Might it have begun a new career for me as a producer/director?

TL;DR but damn Ryan O'Neal was hot back in the day.

Oh please. Ryan only admits to what is clearly indisputable and even then presents himself in victim terms. He still doesn't understand that grown men don't bitch that "they needed support and didn't get it" from a 16 year old girl. Especially one who was evidently breaking down

And you know what else, OP? Fuck off with your little tantrum about us recalling that others who have nothing to gain have indeed confirmed the kids stories. I'll raise the corroborating stories every single time the kids are gaslighted. Get ready

R116 Kick rocks.

"Fuck you Redford! I have my own DL Troll!!"

--RO

[R117] That definitely put me in my place, I'll be quiet from now on.

In 1984, Griffin talked about his father, the punching incident and being sent to rehab by his father (for the poster who didn't believe Ryan sent his son to rehab). Even though the details of what led to the punching incident is different. Griffin still portrayed his father as human with good side/redeeming qualities. Not the monster dad, Tatum (and Griffin later) portrayed.

Spring 1984 arrives, and with it big news. Farrah is pregnant. I’m surprised and delighted. Though I know she had always wanted children, it’s not something we ever discussed.

While I’m overjoyed, My problems with Griffin and Tatum have taken their toll. She’s afraid to bring another O’Neal into the world. That fear has been simmering for years and we’ve avoided talking about it. We avoid it again now. As the months pass, the slow expansion of her belly will ease her fears. But that first trimester will prove challenging.

Farrah and I attend birthing classes together, a new experience for me. I'm the modern father-to-be, rubbing cream on my girl’s tummy, massaging her calves. I’ve been an expectant father before, but I never loved Joanna or Leigh the same way I love Farrah.

The traditionalist in me says that Farrah and I should make things legal now, but with three failed marriages between us, there’s another part that says why change something that’s working?

After the baby is born, Farrah will ask me to marry her. I’ll foolishly sidestep the question and she won’t press me.

After Redmond’s birth, she begins the made-for-TV movie The Burning Bed. It’s based on the true story of a battered wife who after being brutally raped by her husband kills him in his sleep by setting the bed on fire.

Though her recent run off-Broadway with Extremities was a success, theater doesn’t have the same reach as television. All during the production of The Burning Bed I could feel it. This would be the one. I watch Farrah abandon herself to the role.

Farrah is nominated for an Emmy, but she doesn’t win. She didn’t expect to win so she didn’t prepare a speech. Her satisfaction has come from knowing she played the part well. Farrah doesn’t need public affirmation the way I do.

Joanne Woodward gets the Emmy that year for Do You Remember Love. In truth, Farrah’s performance was more nuanced. I remember sitting with Farrah that night at the awards ceremony, squeezing her hand, both of us listening to the list of nominees being called. I was so sure she’d win. When they announce Joanne Woodward’s name, it’s a kick in the chest. She’s not even there to accept.

“Let’s go, honey,” I tell her. “I’ve got to get out of this place.” I start to rise, and Farrah gently touches my forearm and gives me this wan smile. “No, that wouldn’t be fair to Joanne,” she whispers.

It’s always bothered me when the media depicted Farrah as unsophisticated. They couldn’t have been more wrong.

Farrah is also nominated for a Golden Globe for The Burning Bed, but you know who wins one? Paul Le Mat, who played the part of the guy who beats her. He wins while she carries the movie, although Paul is excellent.That night we skipped the Emmy parties and drove back to Malibu.

We took a bottle of Cristal Rose with us down to the beach, sat on the sand, and watched the moon rise over Catalina Island, and for once thought about how fortunate we were.

On the family front, the situation with Tatum is tentative at best. She reminds me of a jungle cat, graceful, commanding, and yet always wary.

She started dating tennis bad boy John McEnroe a couple of years before. It will not be a match made in heaven.

She managed to steer clear of addiction all those years living with her mother and brother, not to mention having a father who didn’t always set the best example where drugs and alcohol were concerned, and then she falls for a famous athlete who you’d think would be squeaky clean, and instead they do drugs together.

Farrah and I meet John for the first time when Tatum brings him for a visit to the beach house. There I am sitting in the living room, looking at him and thinking to myself, Dear Go, he’s thin. He’s the number one tennis player?

He’s watching my face and he’s perceptive. He lifts his left wrist, twists it, and says, “It’s all in here.” Like everyone else, I knew his reputation for arrogant bursts of adrenaline both on and off the court, but seeing him with my daughter, her face beaming with adoration, his arm wrapped protectively around her shoulders, I’m relieved that my baby’s finally found someone.

Maybe , I tell myself hopefully, he’ll settle her. I was wrong.

As the birth of our child nears, Farrah and I are buoyant about the future. Patrick is delighted. Grif wonders aloud, "Why do you want one more of us?”

Our commitment deepens. That isn’t to say it’s perfect. When you live with someone, eventually that person will see the unvarnished you.

While I’m learning to accept her idiosyncrasies, she, too, is becoming familiar with mine.

Irreconcilable Differences opens and doesn’t meet box office expectations. The reviews are mixed and while some actors may feign nonchalance when it comes to the critics, we’re all too human, and when someone whose opinion carries weight has less than flattering things to say about your work, it can hurt.

JOURNAL ENTRY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1984

We’ve opened lukewarm. I stop for the trades,Variety and the Hollywood Reporter, to read their box office numbers. I got so disgusted that I went to Dutton’s on San Vicente to get my mind off my most recent box office flop. I bought the new Le Carre and a bio of Teddy Roosevelt by Edmund Morris that was recommended by Doug Dutton.I also picked up a copy of The Leopard, an Italian novel made into a movie by Luchino Visconti, starring one of my idols, Burt Lancaster. When I get home, Farrah’s talking on the phone with her press agent and can’t be bothered. I pace back and forth until she finally pays attention to me."

Reading through my journals, I wince at some of my childish behavior. I’m aware of these extreme ups and downs in my life. One day I love someone to death; the next I’m wishing that person were never born. This emotional immaturity explains why I’ve always struggled with close relationships. And it was no exception with Farrah.

OP is so dumb posting that People's article. It's a perfect unveiling of Ryans lies. For example in his book he claims that HE made Griffin go to rehab and thats why Tatum resented him. I immediately clocked that as unlikely for multiple reasons. The People article which is sourced from Griffin states this is how Griffin ended up in rehab;

For a year Tatum, who is one year older, had been urging him to get treatment. A friend of hers had recommended Habilitat. He was ready.

If Tatum resented Ryan for abandonment it was because his son spent over a year in rehab and he didn't engage with the process much less speak with him for that year.

Also, the disparity in what caused the fight isn't a small thing as OP suggests. Theyou are so different that you can't even argue that one person misrembered it. Griffins takes responsibility while also laying out a Ryan quality that Tatum and even McEnroe go into in their books. Ryans requet ball fixation and his addiction to the thrill of humiliating opponents.

Ryans story meanwhile is crafted to be as outrageous as possible. Even predictably dragging in his little attention grabbing machine, Farrah Fawcett.

OP needs to get it in her fish brain that narcissists are very able to wear masks particularly to placate a situation. The problem is that they can't maintain the mask for very long which is what Anjelica, Allegra and Tatum say in their books

Sometimes she would humor me during an outburst. Other times she’d chastise me. More often she’d just laugh. If I was having a meltdown, she’d watch me storm out of the room without saying a word because she knew in twenty minutes I’d come back in fine spirits.

We learned the ebbs and flows of each other’s moods and became adept at intuiting what was needed to get through a rough patch.Later that fall, I begin shooting Fever Pitch on location in Las Vegas. It’s being directed by Richard Brooks, Brooks is old school and known to brandish his walking cane when an actor doesn’t hit his mark.

I liked listening to his stories, especially about Humphrey Bogart. Brooks wrote the screenplay for Key Largo, which John Huston directed. I knew John Huston.

His daughter Anjelica was one of the great dalliances of my postadolescence. And my adolescence lasted longer than most. Marriage and parenthood may have ended my childhood, but nothing has ever interrupted my adolescence.

So Brooks tells me how one day he’s having lunch with Bogart. This is when Bogart is in the advancestages of esophageal cancer. Most of his stomach has been removed. Remember, Bogart was a smoker. Almost every scene he’s in, you see a cigarette dangling from his lips, and when he does get cancer, it will ravage him quickly. So they’re eating and Brooks says he can hear the faint thud of food dropping into Bogart’s lower abdomen.

Now Brooks is an ex-marine who’d fought on Guam and Guadalcanal, places few survived. Bogart looks at him and says, “Can’t you take it, kid?”

Brooks’s reverence for Bogart is apparent. He tells me about the time he, Bogie, and Bacall were in the limo en route to the Academy Awards. Bogie had been nominated for Best Actor for The African Queen , which he made with Katharine Hepburn. Brooks asks him if he’s prepared something to say, just in case. Bogie laughs, saying that he hasn’t because he’ll never win.

Brooks hastily scribbles comments on a piece of paper for him, which Bogie doesn’t take, insisting he won’t need it. So Bacall takes the note, and when Bogart’s name is announced as the winner and he stands, she slips it into his tuxedo pocket and says, “Read this.” Of course he doesn’t, and he stumbles through his overlong acceptance speech.

Brooks says it’s the only time he ever saw the great Humphrey Bogart flub. “But that was Bogie,” Brooks says. “He was humble. He really didn’t think he had a chance.”

I begin to feel optimistic again about my career, hopeful that this will be my comeback vehicle. And like any man, when things are going well at work, the benefits are also manifest at home, especially in the bedroom.

But back to Fever -Pitch. I enjoy working with Brooks, though I don’t always like the way he treats his crew. It can become easy for actors and directors to take for granted the valuable contributions of these men and women to the moviemaking process, and I’ve always tried to give crew members the respect they deserve.

When the fine actor Christian Bale went off on a rant recently against one of the crew during the shoot for Terminator ; and it went viral over the Internet, for once I was grateful to TMZ and Radar Online for giving Bale, and every other actor who was shocked by all the adverse media coverage, a lesson in humility. I’ve had more than my share of those, one of which will come with the release of Fever Pitch.

It will make my disappointment over Irreconcilable Differences seem silly by comparison.

Though I don’t know it then, Brooks’s final film will earn less than six hundred thousand dollars and be nominated for four Razzie Awards, including Worst Picture. The Razzies, which are handed out the same week as the Oscars, are meant to be in good fun, an example of Hollywood’s winking at itself, and at the time, I, too, laugh it off.

Over the next several years, these disappointments will have a corrosive effect on Farrah and me.

At least Ryan had good taste in bookshops (Dutton's, may it RIP)

Farrah visits me on location for Fever Pitch in Las Vegas. Tatum slides in for a visit. I get the feeling that my daughter will never trust men.

One moment she’s sitting with Farrah discussing baby names; the next she’s telling Farrah that I’m going to throw her away when I grow tired of her, the same way I did all the other women in my life.

Farrah considers the source and isn’t worried, but I am. With Farrah pregnant, the last thing I want is a confrontation between these two. While they never actually fight, on set I’m distracted, concerned about them spending time together.

I thought Tatum’s first serious relationship would change all that. I know now her wounds were much deeper and more complex than any of us understood.

But back then she didn’t seem moodier than any postadolescent woman in love with a bad boy. Little did I know that John McEnroe would aggravate those wounds.

As I was going through my journals for this book, I found an entry from that New Year’s morning that gave me pause. Tatum and John had come to LA to attend a party. They brought Patrick to the party with them. They all stayed at the beach house with Farrah and me.

JOURNAL ENTRY, JANUARY 1, 1985

"John and Tate have left for the airport to fly to Las Vegas so he can play tomorrow against Conners. Tatum’s first match. After they left, Patrick told me something unusual. When they got home last night at four a.m., Tatum wanted to continue to party, which included tequila shots and pool until sunrise.Patrick finally put her to bed after she started to see the pool balls two at a time."

More Ryan Lies

"That’s also where I pointed out, Frank Sinatra to my costar Mia Farrow. I never played Cupid again."

Bitch Mia's mum was Maureen O'Sullivan and her dad was Oscar winning director John Farrow. She didn't need no hick on a soap opera to point out family frenemy Frank Sinatra. Her dad literally had an affair with the love of Franks life, Ms Ava Gardner. He called the house frequently and in fact by Mias own account, Franks first flirtation with her was when he rang to speak to her dad and found Mia instead.

I was so relieved to see Tatum and Farrah getting along for a change that I didn’t worry that my daughter, who’d never been a drinker, who would confiscate my glass when she was a little girl, had gotten wasted the night before.

Farrah had admitted to me two months earlier, when she was seven months pregnant, that Tatum and John had offered her cocaine. I was surprised because at the time Tatum was still proclaiming her objections to drugs and alcohol. I assumed John was the instigator and Tatum just went along.

What I didn’t understand back then is that every day you’re a parent is another chance to make things right, no matter how old your children are. That’s why I’m still trying with Tatum even as I write this.

But back to January of 1985. Our first trip to the hospital is a false alarm. I still chuckle about what happens next.We return home and the moment we walk in the door, Farrah asks me for her special blanket. I have no idea what she means. I’d never heard her mention any blanket before, so I skip to the linen closet and grab the first one I see.

"No, that’s not it,” she says. “I want my blankie, get me my blankie"

She’s near tears and I still haven’t a clue what she is talking about. I say, “Farrah, I don’t know which one that is, you’ve never asked me for a blankie before.” She replies,

The one in the bag!” She must be referring to the suitcase we’d packed for the hospital, so I lope to the garage to retrieve it. Pleased with my quick thinking, I hand it to her. “No, that’s not it either!” she cries.

Suddenly I see a cab pulling into the driveway and Farrah’s mom, Pauline, getting out. Relief washes over me. Momma soon retrieves her daughter’s sacred bit of burgundy cloth.

The next trip isn’t a false alarm. Farrah is determined to have an all-natural birth: no drugs and no epidural.

We’d decided on the alternative birth center at Valley Presbyterian. Farrah’s room looks more like a deluxe suite at the Four Seasons than a hospital room. They hook her up to a machine to monitor her contractions. This is all brand-new to me. I wasn’t present for the births of my other children.

Back then, fathers were banished to the waiting room. An hour goes by; nothing’s happening and Farrah starts to get bored. “Let’s take a walk around the maternity ward and see who else is here,” she says.

“With all those wires?”I ask. Next thing I know, Farrah is out of bed and on her feet, tiptoeing down the hall, peeking into the other rooms, waving hello to people, while I’m behind her pushing the monitor.

The dial starts to beep and it’s getting louder. “Honey, don’t you think we should go back?” I say. Just then she’s hit with her first big labor pain. “

Now she’s in full labor, Our son enters the world on January 30, 1985. I’m elated. He’s blond except for a bright red shock of hair at the nape of his neck. We decide to call him Redmond, which was also the name of the character I played in Barry Lyndon.

Motherhood completes Farrah. All of her natural maternal instincts are on display. She’s attentive and calm. Farrah and Redmond are inseparable. We spend happy, lazy days with our new baby, relishing every early milestone, the first smile and the first crawl. We cocoon ourselves that spring and summer, somehow both of us knowing we may never again experience such simple joy in our lives.

Autumn brings new challenges and opportunities. Griffin leaves Habilitate vowing to stay clean, and Tatum will soon be pregnant with her second child. She and John buy Johnny Carson’s house down the beach from me. And Farrah is about to start shooting the film version of Extremities.

I’m holding down the domestic front and reviewing scripts in search of my next film project. I’m eager to get back to work, and though I miss acting, being a stay-at-home dad fulfills me.

Feeding and changing Redmond, rocking him to sleep, bathing him, listening to his musical cooing, all remind me of my sweetest memories of Tatum. When she was an infant, we shared a private world. I couldn’t get her to fall asleep one night and I’d tried everything, so out of desperation, I placed her on the dryer after I’d just put in a load, hoping the warmth of the machine would lull her to sleep. Within moments she was comatose. It worked every time.

Tatum continues to be unpredictable. One day she’s effusive and warm, coming over to visit Farrah and me, offering to babysit her little brother; and two days later she’ll be distant and stormy, refusing to return our phone calls.

I suspect some of it may be at John’s request. I can only imagine what Tatum has said, and if I were he, and the mother of my unborn child had been telling me what a bastard her dad had been all her life, I’d be inclined to put distance between my family and the father too.

Tatum continues to be unpredictable. One day she’s effusive and warm, coming over to visit Farrah and me, offering to babysit her little brother; and two days later she’ll be distant and stormy, refusing to return our phone calls.

I suspect some of it may be at John’s request. I can only imagine what Tatum has said, and if I were he, and the mother of my unborn child had been telling me what a bastard her dad had been all her life, I’d be inclined to put distance between my family and the father too.

Tatum and John make an effort to include Patrick in their life, and gradually he begins pulling away from me. Not anything overt, just a subtle, quiet shift in his affection. I can’t blame him.

Patrick has always loved sports, and John, whom Patrick idolizes, is generous with him, taking him to tournaments and celebrity events, treating him like a younger brother. I pass John and Tatum’s house on my daily beach run. If Patrick’s there, he’ll join me for a mile or two, but I can sense he’s uncomfortable, as if he’s being disloyal to Tatum.

He shouldn’t have to choose between his dad and sister any more than I should have to choose between the woman I love and my only daughter.

Sometimes when I’m passing the house, the curtains are drawn, but I see Tatum’s silhouette in the window, watching. She doesn’t invite me in or even wave hello. I tell myself it’s okay, that in time things will get better for all of us.

R125, what is your problem? This thread is Ryan Stories. We are not here to debate, litigate or redeem. OP is doing us a favor. Would you and the other contrarian filth kindly just shut it?

On those afternoons when I return from my run, Farrah will ask what’s wrong. Too often I’ll snap at her, not wanting to explain because I’m embarrassed.

She’ll gently coax the truth out, then keep trying to reassure me that this is an adjustment period for everyone and that I must be patient. I wish I could believe it was that simple.The rest of the year goes quickly.

When Farrah was shooting the made-for- TV movie Nazi Hunter: The Beate Klarsfeld Story on location in Paris, We brought a nanny with us, which allows me to spend a few hours on set each day. I’ll usually have the nanny bring Redmond by late in the afternoon, so that Farrah can see him while he’s awake.

Though I’m the one able to enjoy Paris with Redmond, watching her practice her craft with such abandon, despite the difficult circumstances, is making me wish the situation were reversed.

It’s hard on both of us. We pretend it’s just temporary. If we’d talked out our feelings, resentments might not have accumulated. At times I felt impotent. Great roles and parts parts I was ready for, were passing me by.

I’d become James Mason to Farrah’s Judy Garland: it wasn’t my star aborning. I stopped reading the trades and the International Herald Tribune.

Once I was an insider. Now I’m a mere observer. I’ve become a bouillabaisse of steaming feelings. As much as I detested the paparazzi, the day they lowered their cameras when they saw me alone forced me to realize that whatever magic I’d once had was gone.

R135 Thank you. I've already put this poster on Ignore.

I can’t pretend my dwindling career hasn’t affected me. There’s a possible role for me in a movie about professional bicycle racing. I agree to do it, and then just as I start to look forward to the project, the deal comes apart. The film is never made.

Meanwhile, Farrah’s mood isn’t bright either. When you’re an actor and have internalized the character, by the end of filming it’s sometimes difficult to know where the character ends and you begin again.

Though I hate to leave Farrah and Redmond, Tatum is due around Mother’s Day and she’s extended me an olive branch. She wants me there for the birth of my grandchild. Farrah cries when I leave, but I know I’m doing the right thing, and I tell myself I’ll be gone for only a few days.

When I’m on the plane and the fasten-seat belt light goes off, I take my favorite book of the moment out of my carry-on, A Confederacy of Dunces. I open it to where I had finished reading last night and discover that what I thought was my bookmark is actually a folded sheet, a letter Farrah must have written and slipped in this morning before I left, knowing I wouldn’t begin to read it until after my flight had departed. I open it.

MY DARLING,I already miss you terribly. And don't be mad at me, but knowing you re a thousand miles away at thirty thousand feet in the sky makes it easier to tell you what I need to say. Ryan, I'm scared. I know your career isn't where you want it to be right now, but you and I both know that's only temporary and will change. Though you've been wonderful to me in Paris and terrific with Redmond, please tell me I shouldn't be afraid of losing you because of my career. My life with you and our son is more important to me than any TV movie. I'd walk away from all of that if it would put the light back in your eyes. I think this trip to see Tatum will be good for you both. Please call me as soon as you arrive and tell me you're safe. I love you with all my heart.

FARRAH

I call Farrah from the airport in Los Angeles and tell her not to be afraid, that I’m proud of her success and with her help, I’m sure I can get out of this funk I’ve been in.

When I arrive at the hospital in Los Angeles, my daughter is glowing. On May 23,1986, she makes me the proud grandfather of a baby boy, Kevin McEnroe. Four days later, Tatum and the baby are back home in Malibu and I’m visiting with them. John has returned to New York to get the house ready. She and the baby will be joining him soon.

The phone rings. Tatum answers and I watch her face turn ashen. "Dad, there’s been a terrible accident.”

Tatum puts her hand over the mouthpiece and repeats to me what she’s hearing. “They were in a boat on the Chesapeake Bay. Griffin cut between two slow-moving boats. He didn’t know that one boat was towing the other. He saw the rope at the last second and ducked. Gio was practically decapitated.”

It’s beyond my worst fear.

Griffin was on location in Maryland working with director Francis Ford Coppola on the Vietnam picture Gardens of Stone. He was starring in the film and Coppola’s son Gian-Carlo was on the crew. Francis had worked with Griffin on The Escape Artist several years earlier and liked him.

He knew Griffin was having a rough time and wanted to help him restart.

Gian-Carlo Coppola was twenty-two when he died, a year older than Griffin. At first Griffin denied that he was driving the boat and tried to place the blame on Gian-Carlo.

The truth eventually came out. I imagine the scene over and over. He’s had a few too many, he’s feeling invincible. He spots these two slow-moving craft up ahead, and can’t resist. He guns the engine. Thinks he’ll have some fun. Adding to the tragedy, Gian-Carlo’s fiancee was two months pregnant.

After a short trial, Griffin will be charged with reckless boating, fined two hundred dollars, and sentenced to eighteen months probation.. They won’t be able to convict him of a felony because police never tested his blood for alcohol.

Sometime after the trial, Gian-Carlo’s mother, Eleanor, calls me. I never saw her in the courtroom. She expresses sympathy for what I’m going through with Griffin, and suggests he might benefit from therapy.

Here’s a woman who just lost her son, and she’s consoling the father of the person responsible for his death, offering support. It takes me a moment to find my voice. “I wish it had been me and not your son,” I tell her. “I mean that.” And I did.

Griffin never worked in the movie business again. To my surprise, Francis replaced Griffin and Gian-Carlo and continued filming.

But that’s all later. I’m still listening to Tatum relaying the details of the accident and my mind is racing. I’ve also got Farrah and Redmond in Paris waiting for me, and the night before when I talked to her, Farrah didn’t sound good.

“And you’re absolutely sure your brother wasn’t driving?” I ask Tatum. “Dad, he’s saying no, and I believe him.”

A part of me knows it had to have been my son behind that wheel. Griffin feeds on danger. But like Tatum, I was desperate to believe he was telling the truth.

So after doing what I can for Griffin, I leave for Paris on the Concorde. I bring along Patrick, who’s on summer break. The tabloids are feasting on the story about Gian-Carlo’s death and I want to protect Patrick, who’s already been approached by reporters hoping he’ll give them some headline quote about his brother.

When Patrick and I arrive at the hotel, I’m surprised by Farrah’s appearance. She looks haggard, and making matters worse, our son is cranky. So much for the return of the conquering hero.

Tensions soon mount and will come to a head over a piece of chewing gum. Farrah is in the bathroom taking a shower. I’m groggy from jet lag, sitting on the bed with Patrick watching the World Cup on TV to relax. Patrick is chewing gum. Redmond, who was a toddler in 1986, wants some too, and like a fool I give him a piece.

When Farrah comes out of the bathroom, she’s incensed. It was beyond irresponsible of me. I obviously wasn’t thinking. She rightfully becomes apoplectic.

“He could have choked,” she shouts. Patrick and I decide to give Farrah some space, so we go for a walk, hoping she’ll have calmed down by the time we return.

Though we manage to get through the last couple weeks on location without further incident, this event colors the rest of the trip for all of us.

Our plans are deterred at the last minute. Tatum and John insist that on the way back to California, we stop over in New York for a visit at his parents’ Long Island estate.

I’d met his mother only briefly, at the hospital when Tatum was in labor, and I’d never met his father, so with Patrick and little Redmond in tow, the four of us take a car from JFK to Oyster Bay.

When we arrive, Tatum and John aren’t there and his parents greet us with perplexed expressions.

Soon I’m waiting for Alan Funt to pop out from a bush and say, “Surprise! You’re on Candid Camera”

To this day, I remain convinced that John’s parents were not expecting guests that afternoon.

Despite the awkward start, thanks to Farrah’s unerring social grace, we spend a pleasant few days there, and then politely make our exit.

And it’s not only desperately missing home that’s got me eager to leave. Several witnesses have come forward putting Griffin behind the wheel at the time of the accident, and my son needs his father.

Two decades later, in her first book, Tatum will accuse Farrah and me of deliberately insulting John and his family with our abrupt departure. But that afternoon, as we’re exchanging goodbyes with the McEnroes, we think everything is hunky-dory.

Three months later an old boxing friend of mine calls and asks if Farrah and I would like to ride with them to the wedding.

"What wedding?” I ask. “Tatum’s” he replies. Now I know how John’s parents must have felt when they saw us standing on their doorstep.

Tatum had mentioned the possibility of marrying John. She and Farrah had even discussed wedding dresses. Sometimes they would sit on the stairs that led to the beach and talk and laugh.

Tatum would range between the girl asking advice from her big sister to a peer discussing men, marriage, and babies.

“John’s parents want a big church wedding, but I’d rather do it on a surfboard on the beach,” Tatum says.

“It’s usually the other way around; it’s the girl who wants the traditional celebration and the guy who wants to get it over with as fast as possible,” Farrah replies.

“Maybe that’s because he’s a New Yorker and I’m a California beach girl,” she answers.

“I’ve only known you a few years, but you’ve always been your own person, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.”

“It’s been hard for me, Farrah.”

“I know, Tatum, I know.”

Over the past year, Farrah and Tatum have had talks like these, and never once did my daughter say anything about an actual wedding date.

I tell myself it isn’t true, that there has to be some mistake, that my daughter would never get married without her dad walking her down the aisle, without her grandparents sitting in the front row, proud of their only granddaughter and unable to imagine a more beautiful bride.

I saw Farrah in Extremities off-Broadway. I had previously seen it with Susan Sarandon. It was a packed house. When Farrah came out for her curtain call, she was given a standing ovation. Problem was, she wasn't that good. She was okay. She got thru the performance. A performance mostly of grunts and grimaces. I kind of felt bad she got a standing O because it was telling her she was wonderful when, clearly, she had a long way to go! It's like telling her, "Okay, you don't have to work any harder." (and she could have).

Sarandon was electrifying. Real stage presence.

I didn't find the play itself to be all that good. Had it not been for the interest in Farrah, it probably would never have been made.

I never thought Farrah was much of an actress, until near the end. She had supporting roles in the independent movie The Apostle, opposite Robert Duvall, then she played the bipolar wife of Richard Gere in Altman's Dr. T and the Women. I thought she was great in both. It took a long time, though.

I tell myself that, yes, Tatum and I have had our struggles, but she’d never be that callous, she’d never hurt her family that way. And I can think of nothing to precipitate such hateful behavior. There haven’t been any blowups, no huge arguments, unless there was something smoldering beneath the surface, festering in that willful head of hers.

I try to think of something I might have said or done, berating myself, then alternating to denial, convinced this is not so. I call my daughter and the machine picks up. I leave several messages. No response.

And then, The Telegram. It’s dated August 1, 1986, 9:30 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time. And it reads: I’M GETTING MARRIED

TATUM 1132 EST (HTE BEVERLY HILLS CA)

I hold the yellow slip of paper in my hand, and the images begin flooding my memory: tossing a fifteen-month-old butterball into the air and catching her, delighting in her giggles; a ten-year-old Tatum meeting Sir John Gielgud in London, and curtsying when I whisper in her ear that he’s a knight; that same girl watching me chat with Marlene Dietrich on an airplane and asking, “Daddy, who’s that old lady?”.

I can hear Tatum and me rehearsing for Paper Moon , and her asking me to stop because she didn’t want to get stale. She was nine years old. I see the two of us perched together on that yellow cardboard cutout of a half-moon, posing for the photograph that would illustrate the movie poster. Everyone assumes the photographer instructed her to pout for the photo. He didn’t. She couldn’t stand that itchy red taffeta dress.

I can still see little Addie Pray standing on that dusty country road, watching Mose drive away, and as the camera pulls back, she becomes smaller and smaller. In Paper Moon he comes back for Addie. Did I abandon the real girl on that dirt road? Or has she abandoned me?

When I found the telegram as I was reading some old papers refreshing my memory for this book, it made me relive the depths of disappointment all over again. A door inside me locked the morning that telegram came. I never knew which Tatum I was going to encounter, the warm, affectionate girl or the chilly worrisome young woman.

Lol. Wow! I didn't know Ryan was such a theatre critic dressing Farrah down!

A telegram? Was this the 1980s? or the 1880s?

R146 What are you talking about?!

R144 is Not from Ryan's book. It's one poster's opinion who saw the play. On the contrary Ryan is always praising Farrah's performances and talent.

R147 Ask Tatum, She's the one who sent a telegram to her father informing him she's getting married.

R144 is Not from Ryan's book. It's a comment/opinion from a poster who watched the play.

What still bothers me most was Tatum not inviting her grandparents. It’s one thing for my daughter to want to punish Farrah and me, but it’s another to do that to her grandparents.

My mom and dad adored Tatum, were a loving, supportive presence in her life, and for them to be treated that way severed a bond between my daughter and me that has never been repaired.

Over the years, I often expressed my anger and frustration with Tatum to Farrah. She was never cold or unsympathetic. Early on she would listen to my woes about my children and offer reassurance, but eventually she would grow aloof. She had to in the interest of her own survival as well as our relationship. One day she sat me down and said:

“Ryan, I can’t be your whole world. It’s not healthy. It’s also not possible. We’re both too dependent on each other, but I have a few close friends I can confide in. We shop, we gossip, we do lunch. You don’t have anyone like that. The only grown-up men in your life are Freddie Fields and your father, and you can go to them for practical advice and they’re helpful, but you don’t talk to them about feelings, hopes, dreams. I love it that you trust me enough to tell me everything, but I’m not a sage and at times I feel overwhelmed, inadequate, and I resent the fact that you ask too much and I’m only able to give too little.”

She was right and just as I didn’t know what to say to Freddie or my dad when I was hurting, I didn’t know what to say to Farrah then. I didn’t want it to be different. I didn’t want to need anyone but her. The two ends of our rainbow were no longer secured.

Farrah is busy preparing for Poor Little Rich Girl, the made-for-TV bio about Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton, who had vast wealth and seven husbands but never found love. It’s an elaborate production. They’re shooting in London, Morocco, Los Angeles, and finishing in New York.

As soon as the holidays are over, Farrah, Redmond, and I, and Red’s nanny, are on our way to London, ready for our next adventure. Before we even get out of the country, there’s a Dickensian twist to our departure. We’re in the air. We’ve just left Los Angeles International Airport. Suddenly, I feel the plane turning around.

The pilot gets on the intercom and announces that we’re rerouting the flight back to the airport for an emergency landing.

By now people are on the edge of hysteria. The plane makes its final descent and the wheels screech to a halt. The flight attendants pull open the emergency hatches, inflate the slides, and begin hustling everyone to the exit doors. I ease myself onto the slide, tuck Redmond firmly between my legs, and Farrah sits behind me, her arms and legs wrapped around me, and together our little family descends to the tarmac. “Again, again!” shouts Redmond. He thinks we’re in Disneyland.

We’ve been instructed to run as fast as we can to the ditch at the end of the runway. We’ll read about the reason for the emergency in the newspaper. Apparently the IRA notified police there was a bomb on board.

This was during the Troubles in Belfast. A terrible business, but at least the Irish occasionally warn you first.

The bomb threat has upset Farrah. It’s the first time I’ve seen her concerned about flying. So I take out the travel-size chess set that I’d brought along and teach her how to play, hoping it will keep her mind occupied. Not only does it distract her, but by the time we’re making our approach into London’s Heathrow Airport, she’s checkmated me.

I try to be a good loser. She loved that. Farrah was cunning, but when you’re that pretty, people rarely give you any credit for your intelligence. Farrah had a keen mind. When she’d be handed a contract to sign, she’d review every line, and her questions would impress some of the best attorneys in the entertainment business.

There was so much more to her than gleaming teeth and a bountiful head of hair. Farrah Fawcett wasn’t beauty with brains, she was brains with beauty.

R144 here. I'm on the fucking floor laughing my ass off. Two posters thought I was Ryan? LOLOL

It doesn't say much about his writing ability, does it?

R153 More about the "Ghostwriter" writing ability.

In London we’re staying at Claridge’s, a classy hotel near Hyde Park. The first night we’re running through the TV channels when, to our surprise, we come across Love Story. With Redmond asleep beside us, Farrah and I watch it together for the first time, neither of us knowing how surely it predicts our future.

It doesn’t take long for our family to return to our routine on location, though we do have an unexpected challenge the first few weeks. The nanny, a wonderful woman whom Redmond adores, injured her leg during our terrorism scare, and has to be excused for a while. When Redmond, who’s teething, has kept us awake until the wee hours, I know as I watch Farrah leave our room in the morning that it’s going to take everything she’s got to hit her marks that day.

So while Farrah’s filming, I watch Redmond and bring him with me to the set as often as possible. Farrah owns her craft now, and I’m moved by that newly confident girl who still wants my judgment and opinion.

But now Farrah is the consummate pro. No matter how hard she’s struggling, she shows up prepared and ready to work. Then she sheds the persona of Farrah Fawcett with all its burdensome complications, and slips into character, allowing the person she’s portraying to enfold her, become her.

It’s one of the reasons she’s so good in this part, and will be nominated for another Golden Globe. I’m glad that one of us can enjoy a respite from the train wreck I’ve made of my life.

To be continued.

I didn't think Farrah was that good in all her miniseries and mows. She was fine but not awards-worthy. The one exception was Small Sacrifices. I always found Farrah kind of aloof and colorless, yet those qualities worked perfectly in her favor when she was cast in the true story of the mother who killed two of her children when they became an inconvenience for her. I found her genuinely chilling.

Maybe John Mcenroe forbade him from being at the ceremony. Did we ever get Tatum's take on the whole thing in her book? Meanwhile Ryan is more insightful in the last chapters that I was expecting. I too was fooled thinking that Ryan was dissing her performance in Extremities. I saw the movie and thought she was excellent I was kind of freaked out by the scene where her her attacker licked her nipple that was kind of horrifying to watch. She also hocked a loogie at him at one point. Yuck ! I remember Rex Reed said if she didn't get nominated for Extremities there was no God or something like that.

I wish Ryan had coached her on how to do comedy maybe he did but that kind of performance was never really within her arsenal as far as I know. I wonder if she was even offered many comic roles. That things she did with Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Chevy Chase was kind of flat and lifeless. But it was no excuse for the director to beat the s*** out of her.

I thought Mia first saw Sinatra at the studio while he was sitting around on a break from "Von Ryan's Express" and she went up to talk to him but didn't know who he was.

[quote] We decide to call him Redmond, which was also the name of the character I played in Barry Lyndon.

Enough said.

R160 I despise Ryan personally, but naming his son Redmond I thought was actually kind of sweet. Besides, I suspect it was Farrah's idea and he just claimed it as his, like most everything else.

He said "WE" decided to call him Redmond, He didn't claim it was his decision only.

Even if it was his idea/decision, So what?!! I'm inclined to believe him rather than some stranger on DL.

I supposed their combined IQs were normal, better together than apart! Two of the dullest personalities in Hollywood.

Surprised he didn't name the kid Oscar

I'm guilty of reading many of these Ryan threads, but what a vacant life he describes.

When he isn't dropping names, he's disparaging people close to the woman he is fixated on (Lee was a sad drunk, her mother was an ignorant, uneducated, uncultured person who couldn't compare to HIS mother). And when he isn't disparaging these people, he's claiming to be oh, so, puzzled as to why his children, for whom he appeared to have significant, if not primary custody, are so messed up? Occasionally the reader might be fooled into thinking there might escape a faint glimpse of self awareness as to his role in their lives, but then, 'ol Ryan gets a grip and manages to stick his head back in the sand.

Apparently, he thought his minimal talent and good looks would last forever and that the photographers would be forever snapping those pictures.

Are people in Hollywood really that deluded? Wait...what am I saying???

Did he write about how well he got along with notorious perfectionist Shelley Long? Even the nicest actor in the world Henry Winkler said he had problems with her. I can't remember what show it was at the moment where he said it though.

OFF TOPIC

For people who blame Ryan for ruining his kids and giving Griffin drugs, and believe everything Tatum and Griffin say, It's Wrong.

Their mother Joanna Moore was far WORSE, the main reason for fucking these kids up, Griffin admitted to Private investigator Don Cruthfield that his mother started him on Cocaine. Also Tatum Never mentioned (in her book or interviews) that her father tried to help her/stood up for her when she was fighting with her husband. Still they gave their crazy so called mother a pass and crucify their father.

Tatum and Griffin are not reliable but people are taking their world as gospel.

From Confessions of a Hollywood P.I. by Hollywood Private investigator, Don Crutchfield:

There are times when a parent is clearly responsible for a child’s problems, like when a mother foists her drug habit upon her kids. What chances does any child have to grow up whole under such circumstances? I got to see some of the tragic results of this situation when I worked on a case involving the actress Joanna Moore and her children, Tatum and Griffin O’Neal.

When I entered the scene, Tatum O’Neal and her then-husband, tennis star John McEnroe, had returned from Wimbledon to LAX and were met at the airport by Joanna Moore. Tatum loaded most of the luggage into her limousine, but inadvertently put a couple of bags containing valuables into her mother’s Mazda, a car that had been purchased by Tatum. The next morning, Tatum realized her mistake and phoned her mother, who had a very unusual story to tell.

Joanna Moore claimed that the car had been stolen overnight and that she didn’t know anything about her daughter’s valuables. Tatum knew this story was a fabrication, so she called me into investigate. Tatum told me right off that her mother had a serious drug problem, and expressed no doubt that Joanna had stolen the bags Tatum was missing a piece of Louis Vuitton luggage that held a smaller Cartier bag containing passports, $160,000 worth of jewelry and $15,000 in cash.

Tatum’s skepticism about her mother’s story turned out to be well founded. Joanna Moore lived in a Sherman Oaks apartment building with a security garage. She claimed to have parked the Mazda on the street that night because the garage gate wasn’t working. I contacted several of Joanna’s neighbors, all of whom stated that there was absolutely nothing wrong with that garage gate. “How do you want this handled?” I asked Tatum.

“I want my mother to admit she did it,” my client instructed. “I want her to go into rehab and get some help for her drug problem. If she doesn’t go for that, then I don’t give a damn if you put her in jail. I’ve just about had it with her taking advantage of me.” I immediately placed surveillance on Joanna Moore and applied myself to retrieving Tatum’s belongings. I wanted to meet with Joanna, but knew that would have to wait.

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From Confessions of a Hollywood P.I. by Hollywood Private investigator, Don Crutchfield:

Joanna had already reported the Mazda stolen to the police. She was going to be hard to nail, but I had an idea. Maybe I could get to Joanna through her son, Griffin O’Neal. In 1986, I had worked on the defense team for Griffin when he’d been accused of manslaughter in a Maryland boating accident that took the life of Gio Coppola, the twenty-three-year-old son of director Francis Ford Coppola. Griffin, who was twenty-one at the time, was indicted on six counts, including boat manslaughter.

Griffin told police the Gio was piloting the fourteen-foot boat when it ran into a tow line connecting two power boats. But eyewitnesses swore under oath that Griffin was at the helm when the collision occurred. To make matters worse, Griffin’s blood-alcohol count was far beyond the legal limit. Apparently, the two-year drug rehab program he completed in 1985 didn’t work.

Before the trial, we took Griffin to Hawaii to get him cleaned up. He was supposed to spend two weeks at one of those rehab places where they shave your head and put you through a kind of boot camp. We hoped the judge would be favorably impressed that Griffin was trying to turn his life around. Naturally, Griffin wouldn’t cooperate. I had assigned a PI named Cliff Stewart to put Griffin on a plane to Hawaii, accompanied by an attending psychiatrist. When Griffin tried to bolt, I had Cliff fly to Hawaii with him and deliver Griffin to the rehab center personally. Shortly after he returned from rehab, Griffin faced a court trial with no jury. Fortunately, the judge threw out the manslaughter charges. Griffin was found guilty of negligent boating and sentenced to thirty days of community service.

Griffin was lucky. The Maryland judge even consented to allow him to do his community service in Los Angeles. Instead of thanking his lucky stars that he was let off easy, Griffin ignored the sentence. That was his pattern. Griffin had been busted numerous times for driving under the influence. Eventually his license was taken away, but he kept right on driving. However, this was a far more serious matter. A young man was dead because of his negligence. The Los Angeles authorities grabbed Griffin and extradited him to Maryland, where he did thirty days of hard time. That should have taught him a lesson-but it didn’t.

Griffin is the kind of guy who doesn’t learn from his mistakes. Furthermore, he can’t be trusted. Tatum confided that she once invited Griffin over for dinner. John McEnroe and the kids were there, and they were all having a nice meal. Suddenly Griffin excused himself to go to the bathroom. When her brother didn’t return, Tatum went to look for him-only to find Griffin in the bedroom rifling through her dresser.

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From Confessions of a Hollywood P.I. by Hollywood Private investigator, Don Crutchfield:

Griffin is a kid who has never answered to anyone. Whenever the chips are down, Griffin’s dad always bails him out. After Griffin sold a tell-all story about his father to the National Enquirer, Ryan cut off his funds. But he eventually allowed the boy to get back on the gravy train. Maybe if this kid had been forced to sink or swim just once, he’d grow up. Meanwhile, I needed this flake to help me retrieve my client’s valuables.

When I found Griffin, he assured me had had cleaned up his act, was off drugs, and was about to marry his girlfriend, Rima. He also informed me that he didn’t want to have anything to do with his mother and therefore couldn’t help me.

“I can’t be around her,” he said, because she turns me on to cocaine. She’s always been a bad influence on me.”

When I first started dealing with Hollywood celebrities, a mother’s pushing drugs to her son would have seemed as heinous a crime as incest. But in this modern-day Babylon, there aren’t many taboos left. I still thought it important to enlist Griffin’s cooperation-even though I had a feeling he would repeat my every word to his mother.

“Tatum and I are convinced that your mom stole those bags,” I told the son. “On top of that, she has filed a false police report, which means that she’s in pretty deep. But I’m on the case now, and I’m pulling all the strings. I can make the police go away, but I need to have those bags back, with everything that was in them.

“The worst thing that can happen is if I leave this case, because then the insurance company will get involved, and they’ll hound your mother forever before they pay out all that insurance money. Or I can call the dogs off now. Then everyone will write the whole incident off as a big mistake. Tatum just wants her stuff back. And she wants her mother to deal with her drug problem.”

As I spoke, Griffin O’Neal just nodded his head in agreement. I didn’t trust him-not for a second. In fact, I strongly suspected that Griffin might have been in on the heist. I left Griffin’s house without anything solid. But hopefully I’d given him enough motivation to try to convince his mother to talk to me. In the meantime, I continued my surveillance.

At one point I spotted Joanna trying to ride a bicycle while walking her dog. Unfortunately the dog pulled so hard that Joanna fell off the bicycle. She proceeded to get back up and ride a few more feet. Then the dog pulled on the leash again, and Joanna came crashing down off her bike. I felt as if I were watching a Charlie Chaplin film, observing this crazed subject continue her bizarre cycle of riding, getting up, and falling down again. I was getting some good laughs on the job.

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From Confessions of a Hollywood P.I. by Hollywood Private investigator, Don Crutchfield:

Unfortunately the situation was no closer to being resolved. I grew more nervous with each passing day. As time slipped by, the probability increased that Tatum’s jewelry was being fenced for pennies on the dollar. My best hope was to keep pressuring Griffin to set up a meeting with his mother. Eventually that’s what happened.

A meeting was finally arranged to take place in his apartment on a steamy Tuesday afternoon. Griffin and his girlfriend, Rima, lived in a dive in a decrepit North Hollywood neighborhood. The instant I walked through the doorway, the overpowering odor of dog crap nearly knocked me off my feet. The couple had a Doberman pinscher and a pit bull. It was painfully obvious that those dogs went to the bathroom whenever and wherever they pleased. I thought I was going to pass out.

Rima was embarrassed and started to mop up some of the excrement. But it was going to take more than a mop to get that place in shape for anyone other than a couple of whacked-out drug freaks. Joanna arrived a few minutes later, and I asked her to sit in a low, straight-back chair. I then proceeded to drop onto the sofa. I mean that literally, because the sofa didn’t have any springs. All of a sudden, my butt hit the floor, just what I needed, a Griffin O’Neal trick couch. Now Joanna was sitting about two feet higher than I was. Not the greatest configuration for interrogating a subject.

I finally managed to hoist myself up, when I noticed Griffin fidgeting in the kitchen. I observed him as he walked over to a tape recorder and casually flipped it on. I raced into the kitchen, turned the recorder off, grabbed Griffin by the shirt, and threw him onto his springless couch.

“Sit down, stop fidgeting, and don’t move until I tell you,” I said. Griffin seemed shocked that I had laid hands on him. But for once he obeyed. I was finally ready to begin my interrogation. I hammered Joanna with questions for nearly an hour, warning her of dire consequences if she continued her deceit. Joanna was nervous, but she held fast to her story, as I had expected. “I wish I could help,” she said again and again. “You will help,” I told her. “I’m not here to hurt or embarrass you. But I’ve been hired to get your daughter’s things back, and I intend to do just that. Lady, you’ve got a real foe and your hands now.”

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From Confessions of a Hollywood P.I. by Hollywood Private investigator, Don Crutchfield:

I didn’t expect Joanna to confess, but I could tell I had gotten to her. When she walked out of Griffin’s house that day, Joanna knew I wasn’t bluffing and hounding her until I got what I was after. The only remaining question was what she would do about it. I didn’t have to wait long for my answer.

The day after my meeting with Joanna, a mysterious call came into the Screen Actors Guild. A woman claimed that her son had stolen Tatum O’Neal’s car. She wasn’t willing to give her name, but wanted to help Tatum get back the car. SAG called Tatum’s business manager, and someone from his office contacted me. It wasn’t hard to figure that Joanna was behind this little scheme.

The mystery caller referred to the missing vehicles as Tatum O’Neal’s car-even though the car was registered in Joanna Moore’s name. I found the Mazda unlocked, exactly where they mystery caller had said it would be. The rear seat was folded down, providing access to the trunk. There I found the Cartier bag, full of jewelry. A few hundred-dollar bills were scattered around the trunk. The Louis Vuitton bag wasn’t there. Neither were the $15 thousand or the passports.

As I drove away from the scene, a dark thought crossed my mind. Joanna had left the car unlocked. Anybody could have come along and stolen those jewels. If that happened, I would have been the prime suspect. Now I was fuming. This drug-crazed thief had tried to set me up, and she nearly succeeded. I‘d worked too long and hard to have my reputation ruined by a stunt like that. It took me almost half an hour to cool off.

Finally I felt composed enough to call Tatum on the car phone. “Any progress?” she asked.

“Absolutely,” I answered. “I’ll be at your place in about ten minutes with some of your goods.” Tatum was glad to recover the jewelry, even though most of the cash was still missing. I stepped out of the room for a minute. When I returned, Tatum was sniffing one of the crumpled hundred-dollar bills I’d found in the Mazda.

“That’s my mother’s scent,” she announced.

Tatum’s investigative technique was a little weird, but she was convinced. “These bills have been in my mother’s possession,” she repeated. I couldn’t very well dispute my client’s conclusion, especially since I believed she was right.

At this point Tatum seemed satisfied. She was ready to let the matter go, but I wasn’t. After all, she was still missing her Louis Vuiton bag, the passports, and most of the cash. “Just tell your mother I want to talk to her again,” I advised, “though I seriously doubt that she’ll be willing to go through another encounter with me.”

Tatum heeded my advice, and Joanna made it clear that the last thing she was wanted was to face me again. Eventually, Joanna confessed to Tatum and returned $12,000, of the money plus the missing passports. She also agreed to get help with her drug problem. At that point, my involvement in the case was officially over-although the family’s problems have apparently not abated.

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From Confessions of a Hollywood P.I. by Hollywood Private investigator, Don Crutchfield:

Griffin O’Neal’s continuing propensity for violence was evidenced by a 1992 arrest for assaulting his ex-girlfriend and firing a .44 magnum in her parked car. He also violated my commitment to Tatum to keep the story of her mother’s thievery out of the tabloids. Although the headline story in the Enquirer did not specify Griffin as the source, my investigation proved that he was indeed the “source close to the family” who had sold the story, probably to obtain money to support his ongoing drug habit.

Griffin’s treachery came as no surprise. I’ve been around too many druggies and dopers to expect anything else. A guy like Griffin cares only about getting the next fix-even if it means dropping a dime on his own mother.

Still, if that mother is the person who turned you on to drugs, doesn’t have a right to expect better. Shortly after Griffin sold his family out to the tabloids, Tatum and John McEnroe ended their six-year marriage. Although Tatum had won an Oscar for Paper Moon as a youngster, her movie career had been stalled for years.

With her marriage on the rocks, she fell into a deep depression. Before long, Tatum was spotted partying in New York, and rumors of cocaine use abounded. Tatum had always impressed me as a stable person, so those rumors were troubling.

Still, I was hardly surprised. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that drugs are part and parcel to the Babylon lifestyle. If you add to the mix a child growing up with an addicted parent, it’s hard to avert disaster. In September 1995, Tatum checked into an exclusive drug rehab center in Connecticut for a twenty-eight day cleanout.

Shortly after her release, she was again spotted hanging out with a high-rolling, coke-snorting crowd. A few weeks later, reports had her checking into New York’s Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center for another round of drug treatment.

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From Confessions of a Hollywood P.I. by Hollywood Private investigator, Don Crutchfield:

By now John McEnroe had seen enough to convince him that his ex-wife was an unfit mother with a drug problem that wasn’t likely to go away. When they first split, the couple shared custody of the kids. It eventually became clear that Tatum was unable or unwilling to perform her parental duties.

“Mac has been assuming almost all the parental responsibilities for the past several months,” a close friend of his told a reporter. “He takes the kids for haircuts, to the doctor, to school, and out for fun. He’s maintaining a family life for them.” “I’m fighting to protect my children from a sick woman,” McEnroe told the friend.

“Kids need a full-time mom they can count on twenty-four hours a day. A nanny can only do so much. Tatum can’t be trusted to take care of the kids. When they’re with her, I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat worrying about them.” At this writing, John McEnroe has filed for sole custody of this and Tatum’s three children. He seems serious about doing whatever is necessary to realize that goal. “Get me all the evidence you can,” the tennis star told the private detectives he hired to follow his wife. “I’m taking those kids away from her-even if I have to spend years in court.”

Given Tatum’s behavior and family history, one can hardly argue with the man’s concerns. If I were in John McEnroe’s position, I would probably do the same thing. Like many other unstable parents, Tatum seems determined to hang onto her children, however much it might hurt them.

At one point, Tatum enlisted her father, Ryan O’Neal, to intercede on her behalf. “What do you want to do, kill her?” Ryan reportedly screamed at his former son-in-law during a heated phone conversation. “Those kids are all she’s got to keep her sane. You take them away, and nobody’s going to be able to put back the pieces again.”

Excuse me, but I always thought that parents were supposed to be there to support their young children, not the other way around. Once a parent is under the sway of drugs, she may desperately want and need her kids. Unfortunately, she is probably the last person who should be given the responsibility for raising them.

R165 "Occasionally the reader might be fooled into thinking there might escape a faint glimpse of self awareness as to his role in their lives, but then, 'ol Ryan gets a grip and manages to stick his head back in the sand."

Ryan frankly admits his flaws and regrets as a parent multiple times in the book. He took responsibility for fucking up as a parent. (though their crazy mother Joanna Moore was far more responsible and the main reason for ruining her kids but no one likes to admit that.)

"Apparently, he thought his minimal talent and good looks would last forever and that the photographers would be forever snapping those pictures."

He's not the first not the last actor to believe that. There are many actors with good looks and minimal talent who are still going strong, like Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise. Even though, Ryan was far better actor than them.

Continued:

From Both of Us: My Life with Farrah book by Ryan O'Neal:

I’m glad that one of us can enjoy a respite from the train wreck I’ve made of my life. We both entered this relationship with baggage, but she brought a carry-on, and I came with a trunk.

To offset some of the stress, Farrah and I make the most of our time together on her days off: splashing with Redmond in the pool in Morocco; giving him his first swimming lesson; shopping at the casbah in Tangiers, Farrah relishing the market’s exotic offerings, and me seeing her light up like a teenager when she successfully bargains a reasonable price for an intricate handwoven rug.

I also take pleasure in doing little things for her. An inevitable reality of living in hotels is the exorbitant price of laundry. In some of these places, having underwear washed is more expensive than room service champagne. Neither Farrah nor I are cheap, but that feisty Texas girl in her doesn’t like being taken advantage of.

It’s another of her qualities that I respect. I remember once she told me she got into a taxi in New York, and the cabbie tried to take the long way around to her destination. She demanded he stop the car and when he refused, she threatened him with her stiletto heel.

So one day, while Farrah is on set, I gather all her delicates and wash them by hand as a surprise. When she gets back to the room and sees her bras and undies hanging neatly across the shower rod drying, she gives me an Eskimo kiss, then whispers in my ear why she loves me. It’s one of the sweetest moments of the trip.

Afterward, I would always pack a bottle of Woolite whenever we traveled.

In the years to come, I’ll learn to string together those moments like a strand of pearls that I can remove from the box and admire when I need to remind myself why this love is worth fighting for.

. After we return to London from North Africa, Farrah and I attend a fashion show, and the following morning, as I’m reading the paper over coffee, I come across an article that stops me cold. Here’s an excerpt:

“The 39-year- old former Charlie’s Angel hopes the £10 million mini-series Poor Little Rich Girl will make her a TV star again. Ryan, whose career is in the doldrums and who looks after their two-year-old son Redmond while Farrah is filming, earned his keep this trip.”

as I’m reading the paper over coffee, I come across an article that stops me cold. Here’s an excerpt: “The 39-year- old former Charlie’s Angel hopes the £10 million mini-series Poor Little Rich Girl will make her a TV star again. Ryan, whose career is in the doldrums and who looks after their two-year-old son Redmond while Farrah is filming, earned his keep this trip.”

Farrah is unfazed by the article and unsympathetic to my distress. Mean-spirited press doesn’t affect her the way it does me. Not yet.

The article sets me off. It magnifies something I’m already dealing with privately: feeling emasculated. That night I’m supposed to join Farrah and some friends for dinner, but all I can think about is getting the hell out of London. So I pick a fight with my woman, hoping I can piss her off just enough that she’ll insist I leave. Instead I find this on the dresser:

DARLING RYAN,

I am terribly sorry that you're depressed but I feel you are reacting to many things and the article just compounds them. We are so strong together, things like this shouldn't touch us at this point in our love affair. Your not wanting to come tonight has greatly affected me. You are the life of any party and most certainly always of mine. Tony's dinner at Tramp's is at 10:00, and the theater isn't over until io:jo, so why don't you go ahead and enjoy yourself without me until I arrive. I seem to be the one depressing you and you'll have more fun and I'm sure be greatly appreciated. Just be happy and know that I love you more than ever, so does Redmond. I thought we were the happiest family ever. Am I wrong? Please don't leave me.

FOREVER,

FARRAH

After reading the note, I stay. Wouldn’t you?

Ouch!

By midsummer we’re back in LA. Griffin is in trouble again, this time for leading cops on a sixty-five-mile- per-hour car chase through Beverly Hills. He’s also remanded to jail for violating the terms of his probation on the Gian-Carlo Coppola case, not having completed the court- mandated community service hours.

And my daughter informs me via post that she isn’t ready to see or talk to me yet (I wasn’t aware that we weren’t speaking; this was news to me) but will continue to send photos of my grandchild.

Two months later, on September 23, 1987, she gives birth to another son, Sean McEnroe. I never knew she was pregnant. The presence of her absence haunts me. With material like this, perhaps instead of being an actor, I should have become a playwright. Eugene O’Neill, stand clear.

Thank God I finally get a job to distract me from this long day’s journey into despair. In Chances Are , a quirky romantic comedy about past lives, I play the new husband of Cybill Shepherd, whose dead husband, reincarnated by Robert Downey, Jr., falls in love with his own daughter, or something like that.

Anyhow, it’s a cute movie. Robert is a warm and engaging fellow and I take an immediate liking to him. I witness his affinity for partying during production, and today I have reams of respect for him for having been able to turn his life around. If only my son Griffin could have done the same.

Looking back, I think it was during the filming of that picture that I began to recognize how much Farrah had changed me.

We were staying on Antelo Road, and we were disagreeing about something, I don’t remember what. I retreated to the beach house in a huff. That evening I went out with Robert and his friends. Drugs and girls were everywhere. It was anything goes. I couldn’t wait to get back to Farrah.

I didn’t want that life. I didn’t want to be free. I didn’t want to chase women anymore. They were too easy to catch. So I called her and said, “May I come back?” And she said, “Of course.” And when I pulled into the driveway, she was standing outside waiting for me.

The old Ryan O’Neal would have dallied with every skirt in the place. Farrah was bringing out the better person in me, the man I wanted to become.

Years later, I’d watch Robert being interviewed on ABC, confessing that his wife, Susan, had saved his life. I knew exactly what he meant.

Farrah and I also had a lot in common. For one thing, we were both athletic. Farrah’s body-sculpting method was calisthenics. That woman could do one hundred deep side bends, push-ups, sit-ups, all the exercises that might be considered old-fashioned today. The results sure didn’t look old- fashioned. I’d always been an active guy too, even owned a gym in Brentwood .

I’d always been an active guy too, even owned a gym in Brentwood ,a place where I enjoyed spending time and still do. We were also avid racquetball enthusiasts. Farrah’s house on Antelo had a court. We’d spend hours playing racquetball or squash

I often believed the teamwork we shared on the racquetball court would translate well on camera. That’s why I accepted a surprise offer.

Farrah is on location in Canada with Redmond. She’s in production for Small Sacrifices , a television miniseries based on the book by Anne Rule about a mother who tries to murder her children in a twisted attempt to win back her lover.

I’ve just flown in from Vegas, where Griffin, surrounded by two or three dozen of his closest friends and former cell mates, got hitched, all expenses paid by yours truly. You may be wondering how Griffin could go from jail to marriage in a few short pages. If you’re bewildered, try to imagine how it was for me.

Farrah and I have rented a sprawling ranch outside Edmonton, Canada, with rolling hills and rural views. One evening after work we’re playing Ping- Pong (I put up a table and she’s beating me every game), and she tells me, in between serves, that the producers still haven’t cast the role of the lover, and would I be interested in playing him.

Next, she places her paddle on the table, walks over to her purse, pulls out the script and hands it to me, and then leads me to the bedroom. Come morning, I’m learning my lines.

There’s this intimate scene where we’re supposed to be engulfed in uncontrollable passion, so Farrah yanks off my belt and starts pulling my pants down. I fumble my lines. The crew can’t contain their laughter. She laughs, she flashes that heavenly smile, cocks her head, and says knowingly, “Too Texas for y’all?”

About a month later we’re up at the house on Antelo, and Farrah is teaching me how to make chili. She’s written out a list of ingredients without proportions. I’m standing there with an open can of chili powder in one hand, a quartet of measuring spoons in the other, and asking her how much to put in, and she says, " great cooks improvise; they make the recipe their own. You’re going to have to learn to trust your taste buds; it’s a little bit like acting.”

“Well, I don’t like improvising,” I say. “It’s why I never took an acting class and why I always preferred to hang out with Bill Holden rather than James Dean.” Farrah rolls her eyes.

"I’ve been thinking about taking classes,” she admits. “Because almost everybody else we know, especially the ones from New York, take classes. They all feel it deepens their craft. It’s the same way I feel about my art.”

Farrah was an art major at the University of Texas and that’s how she thought of herself, as a sculptor and a painter.

“I stumbled into acting because a publicist saw a photo of me when I was in college and thought I could make a living as a model,” she continues. “I never wanted to be an actress, and now that I’m successful I just wonder how much better I’d be if I actually got some training.”

Neither one of us had been conventionally ambitious. We cared without being driven. We took advantage of the opportunities that came along but rarely sought them. Mostly we just winged it. It almost always worked for us until it didn’t.

When production wraps on Small Sacrifices, both Farrah and I are eager to work together again. So when Saturday Night Live alum Alan Zweibel and producer Bernie Brillstein approach me about starring in a new CBS sitcom parodying sports chat shows to begin production the following year, in 1990, I suggest Farrah for the female lead.

I negotiate a good deal. The name of the show, with its dual meaning, is Good Sports.

Farrah portrays Gail Roberts, a former supermodel turned sports journalist. I play Bobby Tannen, a woebegone gridiron hero who couldn’t resist the temptation of women and booze.

Writing about Good Sports brought it back to me, this conversation Farrah and I had.

It was right after we had taped our last show. Farrah and I were vacationing in the Bahamas. We were having dinner at a highly recommended little restaurant on the water. A handsome couple was sitting across from us. And Farrah says to me, "I’ve been watching those people since we sat down. They don’t even look at each other. Who has dinner and doesn’t speak?” I said, “Married people.”

I got that line from somewhere, and though I didn’t remember then, I do now. The dialogue was from the 1967 movie Two for the Road with Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney. I rented the movie today and I’ve been sitting here watching it. The last time I saw Two for the Road was with Farrah. We laughed at all the witty parts. I’m not laughing now.

Just like those couples in the movie, at some point the conversation between Farrah and me stopped. It’s as if our love was put on mute.

We could see and touch each other, read each other’s moods like fingers tracing across braille, but our mechanism for reconciling, for flushing the toxins out of the relationship, had atrophied. stopped that autumn of 1990 when Good Sports started taping its first and only season.

Pushing Farrah beyond comfort; convincing myself it’s for her own good, like a personal trainer so focused on results that he doesn’t realize he’s put too much strain on his charge’s joints; an insecure Farrah, whose hands are sweating and whose throat becomes tight trying to be funny on cue; the endless production meetings; the rigid rehearsal schedules and strained performances; the live studio audiences; the conflicts with producers; the constant scrutiny of the press; the flat scripts; the nagging questions: Will we be picked up for another season? Will the network give us a better time slot?

Returning home in LA after fourteen hours on the set of Good Sports , climbing into opposite ends of the Jacuzzi and reviewing next week’s script in silence, then retiring to separate bedrooms, where one will escape into sleep, and the other will write in his journal all the things he should be telling her but doesn’t.

JOURNAL ENTRY, NOVEMBER 7, 1990

"There is this thin, impenetrable veil between us. We’re professional and considerate to each other on the set; cool, almost aloof at home. Farrah told me today that we remind her of Jack and Anjelica. They loved each other but it wasn’t enough for Nicholson. She accuses me of being bored. Maybe she’s right. Sometimes our love just doesn’t make up the differences. I constantly hesitate. I feel like the guy who wants to prove he can go over Niagara Falls but is afraid to get in the barrel."

Yes, we were sleeping in separate bedrooms by then, but not for the reasons you’re thinking. When Redmond was a toddler he’d come into our bedroom at night wanting to sleep between us. Redmond has strong legs like his mother, and he would burrow into the bed, decide he didn’t have enough room, and then start pushing with all his might, until I had no other choice but to sleep on the floor or in the other room.

Eventually he outgrew this, but by then, Farrah and I had grown used to our privacy and it stuck, and even when we traveled after that, we’d often get adjoining rooms. I always thought of our arrangement as terribly mature of us. Now I wish I could have back every one of those nights we slept in separate beds.

Farrah saw herself at everyone’s mercy: me; the network; audiences; our family; my children; her own body, which was beginning to rebel with recurring maladies: headaches, sinus infections, strep throat. And then menopause. It was nature unleashed, and Farrah was headed toward the eye of that storm.

Of course neither one of us understood it at the time. You’d think we would have been aware of the change in temperature between us, but we’d always been and remained a passionate, volatile couple. Even when we weren’t speaking to each other, the sex was tender and satisfying, perhaps because we never used it as a weapon, never punished one another by withholding affection. We were as much alive when we fought as we were when we made love.

We assumed it was our nature, that fluctuations in the atmosphere had become a normal part of who we were together. Farrah and I had been a couple for more than ten years at this time. We’d weathered Hurricane Tatum, Griffin the tornado, my career drought. The question I ask myself now is at what point should a couple say to themselves: the way in which we survive these assaults isn’t healthy.

Sitting here is making me realize that it wasn’t just Farrah edging toward losing control, though she was the one bearing the brunt; we were both untethered. We navigated our way past the turmoil through notes, letters, racquetball, sex, and I had my journal. All those devices are perfectly fine to enrich communication, but none of them are substitutes for an open conversation.

During production on Good Sports, Farrah was more amorous and adventuresome than ever. I had forgotten about that until I saw a reference to it in one of my journals, and it gave me pause.

JOURNAL ENTRY, FEBRUARY 21, 1991

"I'm waiting for my poster girl. My most perfect lover.She is so willing to experiment lately. I have to reach back for retired fantasies."

I suspect she became more sexual because that was the one area where she had complete confidence. I’m not sure I’d agree that we didn’t communicate at all. We did, but it was like playing connect the dots with a pencil whose tip kept breaking.

Dear God I hate to say this but as she became more sexually adventurous is that when she picked up the HPV virus that eventually killed her?

I also overstepped my role as her mentor, and what started out as a mutually rewarding exchange evolved into something harmful.

One morning I’m making my way downstairs from my bedroom and I hear Farrah on the phone in the living room. I stop and listen. I’m not sure whom she’s talking with, but it’s got to be a friend or a confidante.

“He’s giving me too many instructions. It’s too much. He even tells me when to blink my eyes. I know he wants to help, but I can’t handle two directors at once. I’m afraid to say anything because it’s so important to him.”

I retreat to my bedroom unnoticed.In my defense, I had only Farrah’s best interests at heart.

I've lost sight of that it was one thing to encourage Farrah to take on challenges she was excited to try and another to push her into a situation that made her desperately insecure. Good Sports must have made her feel, like a spectator in her own life. No wonder she rebelled.

Friday night, January n, 1991, 10 p.m., Good Sports premieres. The critics are dissecting our “surprising lack of on-air chemistry.” Worse, the ratings are dismal.

Doesn’t anyone remember that Small Sacrifices was nominated for an Emmy and a Golden Globe? But that’s how this industry works. You’re only as good as your last success, and as far as the reviewers and the network are concerned, that miniseries is ancient history.

The public is fickle too. Consider Charlie Sheen. One day he’s the sitcom leader in television land who becomes a hero across America; the next day he’s a nut making a spectacle of himself spewing nonsense on prime time who can’t give away tickets to his Torpedo of malar- key tour. Six months later everyone loves him again after a brilliantly self-deprecating interview on Jay Leno. Good for you, Charlie!

While Farrah and I are still trying to catch our breath from the disappointing premiere, we’re hit with another setback. This time, it’s not Tatum; it’s her husband, John.

The producers of Good Sports thought I could persuade McEnroe to appear in an episode. They’d already roughed out a script that they asked me to give to him.

Though Farrah and I did see John and Tatum on occasion, it was always awkward, and by the middle of an evening everyone would be making excuses about why it was time to go (sadly I rarely saw my grandchildren and I wouldn’t really start to know them until years later when Tatum and I began our reality show).

I never even hear back from John, not a word. I call, I leave messages. I send Patrick, who’s staying in New York, to hand deliver the script. To this day, John has yet to acknowledge the offer. On a personal level, it was hurtful. Professionally, it was humiliating.

One of the bright spots of the winter is our darling son’s sixth birthday, on January 30, 1991. We give him a golden retriever puppy as his present. We name him Davey Dog. He becomes a member of the family. Davey lived a happy life with us until old age finally took him at fifteen. He was my friend and constant companion.

I grew up with dogs. To me, the love of a pet is an essential part of life; without it, something important is missing. I have Mozart now. He’s a mixed breed. I adopted him from Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. He’s all fuzz and personality.

Farrah was a dog lover too. When her beloved Afghan, Satchel, died, she called me from the vet’s. She was sobbing. I said, “I’m on my way.” She said, “No, we’re coming home, wait for us.” I said, “We?” She replied, “Satchel and me.” The vet wanted to dispose of him, but Farrah wouldn’t hear of it. Instead, she wrapped him in a blanket and brought him back to the house on Antelo, where we buried him together.

Mariah Carey is living on that piece of property now. I wonder if I should warn her not to dig a garden in the northwest corner of the lot.

As the year progresses, there’s a steady, subtle decline in Farrah’s demeanor. She’s moody and restless and her headaches have graduated to migraines. She’s showing up late to the set and is easily distracted. I have the network discontinue the live audience, thinking it will make her less self-conscious about her comic timing.

JOURNAL ENTRY, MARCH 4, 1991

FF isn’t her best today. Another difficult period. Bleeding. Hurting. Forgetting her lines. Although she manages to look smashing through it all. I’m still in love with Ms. Texas. Redmond is at the movies with the babysitter and I’m waiting patiently for his return. He now only wants to snuggle with me. His mother said, “Life is shit.” Maybe she just needs some room to breathe."

We’d have arguments about how to set boundaries for Redmond: bedtime; food; respecting adults; and most vital, why rules must be obeyed. I’d defend myself by saying that I’d raised three children, that I was the experienced parent, not her. And that’s exactly what worried her.

Griffin must have been a specter haunting her peace of mind, and if she was too tough on Redmond sometimes, if her voice did go shrill when she saw him doing something he shouldn’t, it was because she wanted to protect her son from a fate like his brother’s.

The problem was that the stricter she was with Redmond, the less influence she had over him. A therapist could have figured this out, but Farrah and I never consulted one.

My only experience with a counselor had been with Tatum when she was a teen. It was such a disaster that it soured me on the entire profession. And Farrah was a private person, reluctant to reveal herself to any stranger.

Our clashes escalate and our fighting takes a revelatory turn. It’s not so much that’s it’s getting more severe as it is stripping us psychologically naked, removing all pretense from our relationship.

We’re discovering that those same two people who once brought out the best in each other also have a frightening capacity for bringing out the worst.

I remember one afternoon when we’re in the car. I said something that set her off and she starts yelling at me, so I simply ignore her. Next thing I know, her foot is in my face and she’s pushing it into my cheek as I’m driving up Benedict Canyon.

I was no Mahatma Gandhi either. Once, she locked herself in the bathroom and I punched my fist through the door. A piece of wood hit her in the face, cutting her above the eye. I broke a knuckle. she’s bleeding and I’ve got an ice pack on my hand. We’re both apologizing and trying not to cry.

I should have recognized that none of this was normal.

It was now fall, and we were swatting away disappointments like picnickers harassed by mosquitoes: Tatum gives birth to a daughter but says nothing;

Good Sports gets canceled; Griffin is arrested again. And the elementary school we want for Redmond rejects our application. Aaron Spelling is on the board of trustees. We start taking it out on each other.

To be continued.

R165 "When he isn't dropping names"

Ryan was/is a famous person, it's very logical and normal that he would recount some anecdotes about other famous people he encountered in his life, at least he wasn't trashing them like Tatum who constantly dropped every famous name she met left and right with embarrassing stories. No one said Tatum was dropping names!

Also, If Ryan was the sleazebag as everyone is portraying him, he could have easily written a tell all book about his intimate adventures with all the famous women he fucked, ( We all know he fucked almost every famous woman in 1970s), But Ryan didn't and still, people can't stop complaining about and picking on anything he says, If recounts some harmless anecdotes, he's dropping names. If he expresses his regret and flaws as a parent multiple times in the book, he's sticking his head back in the sand!!

Ryan's in a no-win situation. The only way he can defend himself against the terrible things Tatum accused him of doing is to call his own daughter a liar or to discredit her as a crazy drug addict (or both).

I assume that Ryan had a ghostwriter so it's difficult to discern to what extent the remorse he professes in print is genuine. As I posted earlier it's entirely possible that everyone involved is an unreliable narrator.

Judging from what people have posted in this thread and in the other recent spate of Ryan O'Neal content on here there seems to be a lot of schadenfreude at Ryan ending up as a sort of showbiz pariah, so I can only assume that in the course of his life he managed to alienate many more people than just his exes and his kids.

R193 I Totally Agree with you.

Davey Dog seems to have been treated better than anyone else in the O'Neal family.

Good dog, good dog.

This is an interesting interview.

She looks so sad here when asked about her sister and her son , trying to put a brave face on the horrible things she's going through.

R196 Surprised no one blamed Ryan for Farrah's sister and mother illnesses!!

Griffin is finally admitting that that his early drug/alcohol introduction came from his Mother (contrary to the popular belief) and the root of his problem is much bigger than Ryan:

Last year, 52-year-old Griffin - whose sister is Tatum O'Neal - admitted he had to "walk away" from his famous family.

He said: "My whole family has been absolutely destroyed to smithereens from drug addiction and alcoholism. The common denominator is drugs and alcohol and depression and it's a never-ending cycle. I had to walk away from all of it. I'm done."

“My mother was an alcoholic and she took weight-loss pills, speed and other drugs,” says Griffin. “The combination of the two, along with her not being emotional stable because she was orphaned at age 6 and lived a rough life – was heart-wrenching.”

Griffin’s long battle with addiction began when he was just 9. (while he was still living with his mother). “I was the family joint roller,” he says. “My life has been a reign of drug and alcohol degradation. There were drugs everywhere in my family all day, every day. It was the ’60s and ’70s.

[quote] Did he write about how well he got along with notorious perfectionist Shelley Long? Even the nicest actor in the world Henry Winkler said he had problems with her. I can't remember what show it was at the moment where he said it though.

Henry Winkler & Shelly Long were on "Night Shift" together.

It says A lot that Ryan's kids (Patrick and Griffin) got along fine with Farrah except Tatum. Even though Tatum portrayed Farrah in her self serving book as a distant and uninterested and left out any encounters she had with Farrah (like going to movies, to Andy Warhol factory, Tatum baby shower, Tatum trashing her dad to Farrah, talking about baby names and wedding plans).

Griffin and Patrick always talk fondly about Farrah and how nice she was to them. The only one with a problem was jealous Tatum. It's clear she was the one who didn't want anything to do with Farrah out of jealousy and bitterness, not the other way around.

Tatum still breaks down when Farrah's name is mentioned. She had done that in the reality TV show with her dad. They both attended a party honoring Farrah, everything was okay between Ryan and Tatum then out of nowhere, Tatum started to cry, attacking her father again, blaming him for her heroin addiction!!

Tatum is mentally ill.