In My Father's Shadow Page 2

  I stopped listening until I heard a quaver in Skipper’s voice. “There was a sweetness in him, an innocence he never lost, and that’s what I loved about Orson and what I’ll remember, how sweet he could be out of the public eye, when he was alone with the few people he trusted. And that’s what I’ve lost, what we’ve all lost.” He stopped to wipe his eyes. “But the Orson Welles the world knew, the talented actor and the great movie director, that Orson Welles will be more famous and more acclaimed as time goes on. He’ll be larger in death than he ever was in life. I won’t live long enough to see it, but his daughters will.”

  Skipper finally sat down. There were a few minutes of silence before Greg Garrison rose to speak, but I was not able to focus any longer. My mind flew back to the grief I had felt at the memorial service for Hortense Hill, Skipper’s wife. Many years earlier, when my maternal grandfather had died, I had wept so uncontrollably at his funeral that a cousin had jabbed me in the ribs to make me stop. And now, at my father’s funeral, I sat through the blah-blah-blah, refusing to allow so much as a lump in my throat. When was it going to reach me that I would never have lunch with my father again in the privacy of his New York hotel room, or pick up the phone and hear his thrilling voice on the other end?

  (“I just got the most depressing news, Christopher, another one of my ideas for a picture shot down, you know, and I thought it would cheer me up to call you.” He paused while I pictured him chomping on his long cigar. “But please don’t ask me what I’m doing these days, because I’m not doing anything right now that would make you proud of me.”

  “But I’m already proud of you, Father. You can’t imagine how tremendously proud of you I am, and I’m sure you’ll make another picture . . .”

  “Darling girl!” he said softly, gratefully.)

  It was a relief when we finally filed out of the funeral home and milled around in the parking lot while the pine box containing my father’s ashes was carried out and loaded into the trunk of one of the cars. A light touch on my elbow made me turn around. There was Tasca, a courtly, elegant Italian with silver hair, smiling gently down at me. “I was the last person who saw your father alive,” he told me. “We sat up half the night, talking, and he spoke at some length about you and how proud of you he was. He said that even though he hadn’t been a good father to you, you’d been a very good daughter to him. It was very touching.”

  “Thanks for telling me this . . . but wasn’t Oja with him?”

  “No, she was in Croatia, visiting her family.”

  This left me wondering if things would have proceeded differently if Oja had been on hand. A moment later Greg Garrison, another good-looking “Hollywood type” in his designer suit and dark glasses, took me aside. “The funeral didn’t have to be like this. Your father had so many friends in Hollywood, and they all wanted to come. You could have had hundreds of people here.” He bit his lip, on the verge of tears. “Anyway, I wanted you to know a memorial is being planned for your father, and everyone in Hollywood will be there.”

  “Oh, really? Who’s planning it?”

  “It was Dick Wilson’s idea. Do you know him? He used to work for your father.”

  “The name’s familiar. Yes, I must have known him when I was a child, but I haven’t seen him in years.” Nor would Dick Wilson have any idea how to get in touch with me. I had kept such a low profile that most people considered me no more than a footnote in my father’s autobiography.

  “I can assure you the memorial Dick and others are planning won’t be anything like this. I’m really sorry . . .”

  I realized Greg wanted to console me with a vision of a public tribute to Orson Welles attended by thousands. “Thanks for telling me.” We shook hands and exchanged rueful smiles. He had removed his dark glasses and was dabbing at his red-rimmed eyes with a spotless handkerchief.

  “Yes siree, the public memorial will be Hollywood’s grand salute to Orson, and it’s about time, too,” drawled Skipper, who had sauntered up and overheard our conversation. “I’ve been asked to deliver a eulogy. In fact, I’m going to be the first speaker on the podium.” He looked more pleased with himself than usual.

  “You’re going?” I stared at Skipper in astonishment.

  “Of course, I’m going. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  Now I was the one fighting back tears. Why had no one thought to include me? And once Skipper had been invited, why hadn’t it occurred to him to take me along? Skipper who claimed me as his “honorary grandchild,” just as my father had been his “foster son.” Perhaps, like everyone else involved, it hadn’t occurred to him that I might want to attend Hollywood’s farewell to my father.

  It was time to return to my real life. I looked around for the only attractive man in our gathering who was bald-headed, squinting in the sun, wearing a crumpled jacket that had not been bought on Rodeo Drive and pants that bagged at the knees. With Irwin’s warm, comforting hand in mine, I would walk away from the funeral home and drive out of the parking lot where everything looked just as seedy as it had an hour ago. The sky was a mindless blue and the sun beat down relentlessly on the burger joints and pancake houses as he and I made our way to the airport. Already it seemed as though the funeral hadn’t happened yet. Or might never happen.

  1

  Growing Up in Movieland

  THE FIRST TIME I saw Rita Hayworth, my father was sawing her in half. It was the final and most spectacular trick he performed on the opening night of his Mercury Wonder Show. It was August of 1943, the summer we were at war with Japan, and the magic show was for the benefit of our servicemen who were about to be shipped to the Pacific theater. It was held in a big circus tent erected on Cahuenga Boulevard in downtown Hollywood.

  I can still smell the popcorn and the sawdust, still remember my excitement throughout the show, and how, unable to contain myself, I kept climbing up on my seat, ignoring my Scots nanny Marie who kept tugging on my dress and hissing, “Now you sit down again, madam, and behave yourself!” But I had to tell the people sitting in the row behind us, “That’s my daddy up there. My daddy!” I had never seen him on the stage before that night.

  Billed as Orson the Magnificent, he wore a fez and a voluminous black-and-white striped robe. He might look like the genie escaped from Aladdin’s lamp, a genie whose smile seemed to say, “Be careful what you wish for,” but his disguise didn’t fool me, and I made sure, in spite of Marie’s shushing, that it didn’t fool anyone else within earshot. I was five years old that night, the perfect age for the magic arts of Orson Welles, or as he preferred to call them, “hocus-pocus, mumbo jumbo, and hanky-panky.” I sat there enthralled while he swallowed fire, read minds, hypnotized a rooster, pulled a rainbow of knotted scarves out of his sleeve, made a bouquet of yellow roses appear in an empty vase and a white rabbit wiggle out of a black top hat. When a man in a turban and baggy pants marched out of the wings and aimed a rifle at him, I held my breath, then screamed when the gun went off and his head snapped back. Seconds later, Orson the Magnificent turned to face the audience, and there was the bullet caught between his teeth!

  Then came the moment the troops had been waiting for. A shapely young woman with copper red hair appeared on the stage. Dressed in a skimpy harem outfit, she, too, might have stepped out of the Arabian Nights. The moment she was in full view, the servicemen in the audience went wild, stamping and cheering for Rita Hayworth, their favorite pinup girl. Then the dazzling redhead folded herself into a long, rectangular box until only her head and her feet stuck out from either end. At that point, Orson the Magnificent began to wield a horrific saw and presto! The box split down the middle! Rita’s top half went spinning to one side of the stage while her bottom half took off in the other direction. Yet the severed head was still smiling; the feet with the pretty painted toenails were still wiggling. Then bingo, bango, her two halves were reunited and she emerged in one piece! (I never did learn how my father performed this trick. All he would tell me years later about his Mercur
y Wonder Show was that he was as proud of it as anything he ever did.)

  After the show’s opening night, Harry Cohn, Rita’s tyrannical boss at Columbia Pictures, forced her to withdraw. He argued that if she were performing late at night in a magic show, she would be exhausted early the next morning, when she was due on the set of Cover Girl, the movie she was making at the time. Rita pleaded that, after spending sixteen weeks rehearsing for Orson’s show, she couldn’t let him or the troops down. She was sure she could do the magic show and also fulfill her contractual commitment on Cover Girl. (Although she was too modest to admit it, Rita’s star power was the Mercury Wonder Show’s biggest draw and would have ensured it a long run.) But Cohn remained deaf to Rita’s pleas, reminding her that it was not the role of a contract star to decide where she would work but to do as she was told. Not only did Cohn have no intention of letting his studio’s most profitable star stay up late every night, working for free, he was even more opposed to her having anything to do with Orson Welles. (By the time my father met Rita, his reputation in Hollywood had plummeted from “boy genius” to “enfant terrible.”)

  Rita was so furious with Cohn she was ready to walk out on him and Columbia, but my father persuaded her not to throw away her movie career for the sake of his show. Once Rita calmed down, she worried about who could possibly replace her at a moment’s notice. That was when my father thought of his loyal friend, Marlene Dietrich, the femme fatale from Germany with the husky voice and the beautiful long legs. It was said that posters of Marlene were banned in Paris Metro stations because any Frenchman who spotted her legs was in danger of missing his train. In any event, when my father called Marlene about performing in his magic show, she simply said, “Come teach me the tricks, and I do it.”

  Marlene Dietrich replaced Rita Hayworth in the Mercury Wonder Show and also performed magic tricks with Welles in the movie Follow the Boys (1944).

  If Cohn was gloating that he had managed to save Rita Hayworth from the insidious charms of Orson Welles, he did not gloat long. Hollywood’s gossip columnists let it be known that “Beauty and the Brain” had been seen dining at a table for two at Ciro’s, Romanoff’s, the Brown Derby, and other restaurants popular with the stars. They had been caught holding hands across the table and gazing soulfully into each other’s eyes. The only question was when wedding bells were going to ring …

  They rang on September 7, 1943. During her lunch break from Cover Girl, Rita was whisked away in my father’s chauffeured car before Harry Cohn could throw himself in front of the wheels. They were married in Santa Monica in what they hoped was going to be a quiet, civil ceremony. Joseph Cotten, my father’s close friend and costar in Citizen Kane, stood up as his best man. However, outside the judge’s chamber, a mob of press photographers stood ready to dash any hope of a quiet wedding. They had been tipped off by Harry Cohn, who, when he realized he could no longer stop the marriage, decided to milk it for every ounce of publicity he could get.

  So every tabloid in the country ran photos of the newlyweds standing side by side in a happy daze, then walking out of the municipal building on winged feet. In those pictures, just-married Rita beams like a little girl who can barely contain her delight. Yet in her stylish beige suit and floppy picture hat, she carries herself with that natural dignity, that animal grace, I remember so well. As for my father, he looks uncomfortable in his banker’s striped suit and bow tie, as though determined to play a part that he knows is out of character. He gazes down at his bride, his expressions ranging from grave in one photo to tender in the next. In the final shot, holding Rita’s hand firmly in his, he looks overjoyed that he of all men has captured Hollywood’s love goddess.

  NOW CAME THE brightest days of my childhood, which I owe to Rita. Almost every weekend, she invited me to stay with her and my father in their spacious home at 136 South Carmelina Drive. Rita had bought the ten-room house with its spectacular grounds and swimming pool when she realized she was pregnant. The contrast between my easygoing stepmother and my excessively strict mother only heightened my euphoria from the moment I arrived on South Carmelina Drive, the weekend stretching ahead like a round-the-clock party loaded with treats and surprises. I was also free of Marie on these occasions, which added to the holiday atmosphere. Instead of the usual routine of eating in the kitchen with Marie or being led off to bed while it was still light, knowing that downstairs the grown-ups were mixing their martinis and the fun was just beginning, I was allowed to hang around all the time and stay up as late as I liked.

  Rita was everything a child could wish for in a stepmother: sweet-natured, affectionate, fun-loving, and, in many ways, a child herself. While my father buried his nose in a heavy book, Rita read “the funnies,” as she called the daily comic strips in the newspapers. She read them religiously every morning while she breakfasted in bed, snuggled under the covers with my father, who was immersed in the rest of the paper. Their Hollywood-size bed had a padded, pink satin bolster studded with sparkly bits of glass I imagined were diamonds. There was something wonderfully reassuring about my father and Rita kissing and cuddling in the same bed, giggling at their own private jokes. (My mother and her second husband, the screenwriter Charlie Lederer, maintained separate bedrooms and were not physically demonstrative, at least not in front of me.) “Hello, darling girl,” my father would boom in his basso profundo as I stood hovering in the doorway. “Well, am I going to get a kiss this morning?” Soon I was snuggled down between them in the warm, rumpled bed, reading the funnies with Rita and wishing I could stay there for the rest of the day.

  I had no idea in those days that my stepmother was Hollywood’s love goddess, the glamour girl whose pinup picture some GIs pasted on a bomb, which horrified her when she heard about it. The Rita I knew padded around the house barefoot and rarely bothered with makeup. Usually she was dressed in an old shirt and faded dungarees, which took nothing away from her natural beauty. When we played our wild, silly games, she often seemed younger than I was, which made me feel protective. I noticed how gentle my father was with her, careful not to tease her in the same, reckless way he teased me.

  Horsing around the pool with Rita Hayworth and “Orsie,” 1945.

  Early in her pregnancy, Rita delighted in chasing me around outside with the garden hose, especially when I was fully clothed. Finally I would grab the hose and chase her, both of us whooping and hollering, until we were soaked and overcome with giggles. We would then hear my father calling out in piteous tones, “Could the two of you please make less noise? I’m trying to work!”

  For some reason we found this hilarious, and Rita would sing out, “You can’t work all the time, Orsie. It will make you a dull boy.”

  I don’t think the prospect of becoming dull worried my father. He took to hiding in the bushes in a faraway corner of the garden where all you could see of him was the wavy thread of smoke rising from his cigar. When I dared to come nearer, I would catch glimpses of him hunched over in his deck chair, the cigar clamped between his teeth while he scribbled furiously on a yellow pad. Surrounded by piles of books, scripts, magazines, and newspapers, he looked like a man on his private island who had everything he needed to make him happy.

  There were times we did persuade “Orsie” to join us at the swimming pool, although not necessarily to change into his swimming trunks and splash around with us. I had swum in some glamorous pools, but this one topped them all. It had a waterfall at the shallow end, and in the middle was an island with a full-grown palm tree. A rowboat was tied up at the poolside into which, when the spirit moved him, my father would jump, fully clothed, the boat staggering under his weight and rocking dangerously until he settled himself at the oars. Then he would row around the pool, loudly singing a sea chantey in a salty Irish brogue. After this impromptu performance, he would vanish once more into the bushes.

  Gliding around the pool in the rowboat was much too tame for Rita and me. Our idea of fun was to race each other to the waterfall or to the island in
the middle of the pool. Rita almost always won, not that I minded, and when once in a while she let me win, I knew she was deliberately slowing down, but I pretended to be thrilled, yelling, “I won! I won!” just to see her lovely grin.

  Sometimes we played at being mermaids and tried to swim all the way around the island underwater. I could never hold my breath long enough, but Rita could, and in a mock ceremony I crowned her Queen of the Mermaids.

  As Rita’s pregnancy progressed, our hijinks came to a natural end. Now when I was invited to South Carmelina Drive, my father was often away, and I could see Rita was lonely for him. Although she was as sweet to me as ever, she also seemed listless and distracted. I did not learn until years later that whenever they were apart, Rita suspected my father of being unfaithful to her and was racked by jealousy. Not only was she well aware of my father’s reputation as a lady’s man, she also knew it had bewildered him to discover that in real life she was not the luscious, sexy woman she projected on the screen. Off camera she was still Margarita Carmen Cansino, born in Brooklyn to a Spanish father and an Irish mother. As she would famously say, alluding to her best-known screen role, “Men go to bed with Gilda but wake up with me.”

  Rita Hayworth holding Rebecca, born on December 17, 1944.

  To ease her loneliness, Rita acquired a large white and gold cocker spaniel. She named him Pookles, which had been my father’s pet name when he was a boy. While I had nothing against Pookles, I saw no reason to make such a huge fuss over him. I felt the same way about my half sister Rebecca Welles, who arrived in the world on December 17, 1944. She was a cute baby, who smiled, gurgled, and looked exactly like our father, but what did we need her for?

  Although I no longer had Rita to myself, I still lived for my weekend visits with her and my father when he was around. I was more than ready to put up with Becky, Pookles, even the Mexican bullfighter who mysteriously appeared one weekend and monopolized Rita for hours. She pretended to be a bull, pointing her fingers on either side of her head, while he danced around, snapping a red tablecloth. Rita charged, the bullfighter pivoted, and my father and I stood on the sidelines shouting “Olé.” “I’ll take you to a real bullfight one of these days,” he promised me, and years later, when we traveled together in Spain, he kept his word.