Deconstructing
Doris
by Pam Munter
Note: As with most historical fiction, the people in
this story are real. Many of the situations, however, are wholly imagined. This
is one of the stories in a series that was inspired by the lives of Hollywood
legends.
She was feeding the dogs in the cook’s kitchen when she heard the distinctive roar of his Porsche breaching the silence as it pulled up in the circular driveway in front of the contemporary house on Crescent Drive in Beverly Hills. She hurried to the front door, opened it and walked to the car to see Terry’s grim face.
“Mom, he did it. You’re dead broke.”
He shifted his feet and frowned. “And you owe the IRS, too. He took it all.”
Doris Day never expected to hear
those words, not in her worst dreams, and certainly not from her son. She
stared into his eyes for a minute, hoping for a disclaimer, a joking response,
anything to mitigate the shock.
“But how…”
“I don’t know yet. But it looks like
they’ve been screwing you over for a long time.”
“They? Jerry and Marty?” She had
barely spoken Marty’s name since his death the year before. She had often
thought back to when they met almost 20 years earlier. She had signed a
contract with Warner Bros. but when she met agent Marty Melcher at a party at
Johnny Mercer’s house, he convinced her they weren’t paying her what she was
worth. Within weeks, they were in bed together, personally and professionally.
Over the years, he had guided her
career, her life really. He was the caring Svengali she never had, someone who
loved and protected her from the show business sharks. It didn’t bother her
that he jumped aboard as an Executive Producer on her films when he didn’t do a
thing but collect his check. She even trusted his opinion about what she should
record. Her precedent-shattering triumph at having been named among the top ten
box office stars for ten consecutive years told her he had done a wonderful
job. She knew people didn’t like him, considering him a bossy moocher, a guy
who needed to order people around. When she heard someone on one of her movie
sets call him Farty Belcher she laughed in spite of herself. The relationship
had always been one in which he made all the decisions. She didn’t care so long
as the money and movie parts kept rolling in and she could keep recording at
Columbia—her favorite place to be. At least he didn’t beat her like Terry’s
father did. And he obviously wasn’t gay like her second husband. Why couldn’t
she get this right? God knows, she had enough practice.
All those years on the road with the
band on the bus, men grabbing her, teasing her, trying to get her into bed.
Sure, she enjoyed some of it but what had it cost her along the way? When Marty
came along, he was strong and sure and just what she needed. She was relieved
and grateful. To succeed in the business, she had left the raising of her only
son to her mother. Having Marty coming into her life as a co-parent gave her a
sense of the family stability she hadn’t experienced since her early childhood.
They were all one family now.
She had trusted him. Loved him, at
least early on. He and Terry didn’t get along, she knew that. But he had
adopted Terry when the kid was young, an angry and rebellious adolescent. It
was what Marty had wanted. Looking back on it now, she could see that it gave
her new husband more leverage over her. For Doris, though, it solved the ache.
There were times when the guilt about leaving Terry behind was almost
unbearable. Marty was a solution to an empty heart in several ways.
“You were right about him, Terry. I
didn’t believe you.”
“His hitting me was nothing compared
to what he has done to you. I want to kill him.”
“Yeah.” She was still trying to put
this together. Could Terry be wrong? She knew he was back into drugs again,
hanging with dopers. She wondered about the influence of his new girlfriend,
too.
“It’ll take a while to figure out
how much is involved.” Terry’s jaw crackled with tension. “Could be as much as
twenty-thirty million. Maybe more.”
The money is gone? How could they
have afforded this posh home, then? The beach house? She had never wanted for
anything. Marty made sure of that.
“Wait a minute. He hit you?”
“Yeah. Lots of times.”
Her mouth fell open. “Why didn’t you
tell me?”
“You were never there when it
happened. You were always working. It wasn’t your fault.” She looked for a
shadow of resentment in his broad, open face so much like hers, and saw none.
“Oh, God, I’m so sorry.” She reached
out and hugged him but the emotions could no longer be contained.
Doris ran into the house and threw
herself into the soft confines of the king-sized bed and started to weep. Without
thinking, she drew closer to the four spaniels nearly buried in the middle of
the comforter. Thank God for them, she thought. She didn’t want to think about
Terry being abused but, if she were honest with herself, she never wanted to
hear anything negative about anything. She was busy working—at being a perfect
performer, a perfect person. Everybody thought she was. Sometimes, even she
thought so. In spite of Marty’s bellicose ways, she knew she was loved by the
people she worked with, by those who worked for her and even more by her fans.
How could this happen?
Reaching for the Kleenex, she smelled
the sweetness of the gardenias floating in the bowl next to the bed. Dear Barry
had sent the flowers just the day before. Barry was a sweet man, not
at all like
the others. When she’d finished dining at the restaurant where he worked as a
maître ‘d, he would bag up leftover bones for her dogs. The ambrosial aroma of
the gardenias offered a faint whiff of hope.
She couldn’t get the glowering image
of her dead husband out of her head. “I won’t let him get to me again,” she
said aloud, surprised at the sound of her own voice. She was stunned at how
real Marty’s presence was in her life even now and how he could still devastate
her. She looked up as her housekeeper walked into the room. “It’s OK, Sarah.”
“Are you all right, Mrs. Melcher?”
Doris recoiled at hearing the
once-loved name but nodded. She didn’t want to upset anyone.
“I can bring you a glass
of…something, if you’d like.”
“I’m fine. Thanks.” She watched
Sarah silently back out of the room.
Doris was almost 50 now, the years
wearing well on her. She had people come to the house every morning to do her
hair and makeup, and to help keep her slim body in shape. These people had been
coming so long that they had become trustworthy friends, people she could count
on. They were good company. Looking in the mirror was sometimes difficult but
that wasn’t new. There were always those damned freckles which seemed to spread
like grains of sand as she got older.
She looked out the window toward the
manicured back yard and stared at the crystal-clear water where the pool man
was energetically vacuuming the bottom of the pool, creating waves that
splashed over the sides.
The memories kept coming. She felt stupid and somehow responsible
for what had happened to her, struggling to make sense of it.
When Terry stuck his head in the door, she continued the
conversation as if there had been no pause.
“But why Jerry? He and his wife
spent all those weekends with us at the Malibu house.” There was a plaintive
edge to her voice. “He even got along with Marty. He was my lawyer, too, for
God’s sake. He handled that last divorce. He was a pit bull. Marty trusted him,
too.”
“I know, Mom. I know. Maybe too
well. But he was the big financial guru, remember. He was the one with all the
advice about investments. He had to know. Maybe he set it all up.”
The mood momentarily brightened. “You
think it might not have been Marty’s fault?”
“I know you want to believe that,
but he was involved. Jerry never made a financial move without Marty’s OK. Dammit,
they were in this together.”
Almost imperceptibly, she stopped
romanticizing him as the sculptor who molded her career, the good guy, the one
who made the best decisions. Up to now, she could separate out the husband from
the agent and manager. Her perceptions of her life with him, however, were
transforming right before her eyes.
Her mind was racing, a collection of
flashbacks and scenes. That conversation with Judy Garland during a
serendipitous meeting on the train to New York ten years ago or so. Why did
that come roaring back now? Judy had loudly complained about her husband, whom
she felt was using her. Doris had defended Marty. He would never take
advantage, at least not that way, and wondered why Judy had laughed. She had
enjoyed the talk, though, glad that Marty and Sid had gone to the club car
hours ago for drinks. Neither man was what you’d call handsome. Both were dark
and stocky, with coarse features. And both had been their third husbands.
It wasn’t often she had the chance to get together this way with
someone like her, one whom she admired in spite of the much-publicized problems.
Doris didn’t do drugs, not much alcohol anymore and didn’t understand Judy’s
addictions. She liked her and that’s what mattered. Judy made her laugh. And
she knew how it was to work for a tyrannical studio boss, the relentless and
dehumanizing pressures. With Judy, it had been Louis B. Mayer; Doris’ nemesis
was Jack Warner. They laughed as they shared horror stories.
“He would actually get on his hands
and knees on the plush carpeting in that huge white office, and tell me he was
begging me…as a father,” Judy chortled. “The poor old guy could get it from
anyone on the lot. It was pathetic. I tried so hard not to laugh. Fathers don’t
try to schtup their daughters.” They both doubled over with laughter, gasping
for air.
Doris had stories, too. “Jack was a total
jerk, always hitting on me. Those beady little eyes. Marty started coming to
his office with me. Protection that I needed. We both learned how to play the
game. And it wasn’t so bad, was it? We got what we wanted, didn’t we?”
Judy paused and looked away. “Sure.”
Doris wondered what she was thinking as she turned to study the speeding
landscape. Doris could see Judy’s face darken in the reflection of the train’s
window. What was Judy not telling her? Was this a warning?
To be fair, she had known Marty was
a cheater and a liar when she married him. He had been married to one of the
Andrews sisters when they met. She remembered one frightening evening when they
were in bed. There was an insistent pounding on the door of her apartment. A
woman was yelling outside. Doris was terrified.
“Shhhh,” he whispered, quietly
reaching for her hand.
“Let me in, you bastard. I know
you’re in there with that slut. Come out here and face me, you asshole.”
Neither of them moved from the bed,
frozen. How did she know where Doris lived? Were they followed? In time, the
screaming stopped and they heard the footsteps slowly fade.
Then there was the recording career.
Marty had his fingers in everything she did. Some said he deliberately
commissioned second tier songwriters to write her songs, saving money. For the
good of the family, she thought. She loved the music and the musicians but now
she understood the money went somewhere else. And those last movies weren’t the
best, either. He had convinced her to leave the safety of Warners and selected
the rest of her films himself. How could she have let that pass? Her career
mattered to her, a lot. She comforted herself by thinking of the warm
relationships with her wonderful costars. The often-inspired pairings kept her
spirits high and her career on track, in spite of the lousy dialogue and
contrived plots.
Her stomach clenched as the realization sunk in: it was all her own
damned fault. She had lived her life on automatic pilot, delegating it all,
riding on her innate talent. Whatever was going on with Marty was in the
background. There were more pressing issues almost all the time.
There had been her mothers’ long
decline into Alzheimer’s, which took its toll on everyone. Then there was Terry’s
increasing drug use and his skanky friends. And the Humane Society that kept
coming around unexpectedly to count the number of animals she had. That made
her angry. It was easy to lose track, she’d claim. She was doing a good deed, after
all, taking care of all her homeless four-leggers. She had been sick, too,
really ill for a long time until she talked Marty into letting her see a
doctor. The hysterectomy done in secret waylaid her for months. All that was
nothing compared to the pressure of maintaining her wholesome and cheerful image,
her stardom and the health of her glorious voice.
When she got anxious about money, Marty always reassured her.
“Everything’s going well, Doris. Jerry and I have this under control. Relax. We
know what we’re doing.”
Yeah, she had been used, but she had
to give herself some credit. She pushed for a separation a year or so before he
died. There had been a long overdue confrontation.
“I know you’re seeing someone. Who is it?”
“Doris, it’s nobody you know.”
“It’s never nobody. I don’t even know what that means.”
“It didn’t mean anything.”
“It never does, to you.” She held in most of her anger. “We’re done.
I’m sorry but I can’t do this anymore.” She glared at him. “You have to leave.”
Within a month or two, she had started to see other men. Her friends
told her not to rush into anything, that she needed to figure out who she was
now as a single person. And while she felt free, she was also afraid—of making
her own decisions, of another mistake, of merely managing her own life. Now she
could spend time with friends and not have to check in constantly. She rode her
bike all over Beverly Hills, resting only briefly in the local park where she
almost always ran into smiling fans. It made her day.
It didn’t bother her too much that Terry had moved out of the house
a few years back, eager not only to start his own life but to get away from
Marty. He was living with his girlfriend on Cielo Drive in Bel Air and life was
good for him. Terry told her he wanted to be a record producer so she got him a
job at Columbia Records. She was glad for his success but she missed him. They
still talked on the phone almost daily, exchanging gossip and sharing the
absurdity of life, almost like friends more than mother and son.
She remembered finishing a guffaw-filled lunch with a friend, an old
Warners colleague (or “inmate” as they joked) at her favorite deli just a mile
from her house. It had been several years since they’d seen each other, but
when they sat down their warm bond was immediately rekindled. They left each
other with a promise to get together again soon.
Wheeling her bike into the slow traffic on Beverly Drive, she heard
her name.
“Doris. Hey.”
Looking across the street, she saw Jerry Rosenthal, their attorney,
waving at her.
Jerry parked quickly and leaped out of his car. He looked agitated.
“Marty’s been taken to the hospital. In an ambulance.”
It had to be serious for that to happen. Marty had more than adopted
her Christian Science beliefs. He had co-opted them, refusing medical treatment
for anything, even with the acute pains he was having. She had no idea.
She stopped everything after his hospital discharge, even taking him
back to the house where they had once lived. She thought she was through with
him, but there was still unfinished business. The cancer had spread and there
was little time left. She hoped they could talk about, well, everything, but he
was too weak and not at all interested in resolution. She persuaded him to hire
a nurse and tried to convince him to eat. He got thinner, complained constantly
and then she watched him die. She had felt guilty only briefly, regretful of
all she had not done for him, could not do. But now she was glad he suffered,
glad he was dead. Even the good memories were gone.
Her reverie was interrupted by the
phone, making her aware that two hours had elapsed since Terry came home with
the news. Time was less important than the ominous events unfolding. Terry
moved to the table by the bed and picked up the receiver.
“It’s Jerry.”
She felt a whooshing inside her
head. She didn’t know what to do. Whatever else he had done, Jerry had been in
cahoots with Marty to commit Doris to that five-year contract for a series at
CBS. She was still angry about that. She hadn’t found out about it until Marty
had died and was devastated for so many reasons. Ironically, though, it would
bring in a much-needed income now.
She turned to Terry, who was still
holding the phone close to his chest. “What should I do?”
It was so hard to break that habit,
that reliance on the men in her life, to make important decisions. But this was
not the time for reformation. She needed time to think.
“You don’t have to talk to him. I’ll
take care of this.”
She sat back down on the bed and
reached for her golden retriever, tenderly scratching him behind the ear. “I
don’t know what to do. I don’t understand any of this.”
Terry nodded to his mother and spoke
into the receiver. “Jerry, don’t ever call here again. Our attorney will be in
touch.”
Attorney? Of course. That would be
the solution. At least, one of them. She would sue Jerry for whatever he stole.
Could she report him to the police? Could he go to jail? How will she live now?
Where’s the money? How could this happen? Marty?
So many questions but she knew two
things. First, she would sue the shit out of Jerry Rosenthal. And second, she
was convinced that the only man she would ever trust again would be her son. Well,
maybe Barry. Such a kind man.
* * * * *
Pam Munter has authored several books
including When Teens Were Keen: Freddie
Stewart and The Teen Agers of Monogram (Nicholas Lawrence Press, 2005) and Almost Famous: In and Out of Show Biz (Westgate Press, 1986). She’s a retired clinical psychologist,
former performer and film historian. Her many lengthy retrospectives on the
lives of often-forgotten Hollywood performers and others have appeared in
Classic Images and Films of the Golden Age. More recently, her essays and short
stories have been published in The Rumpus, The Manifest-Station, The Coachella
Review, Lady Literary Review, The Creative Truth, Adelaide, Litro, Angels
Flight—Literary West, TreeHouse Arts, Persephone’s Daughters, Canyon Voices,
Open Thought Vortex, Fourth and Sycamore, Nixes Mate, Scarlet Leaf Review, Cold
Creek Review, Communicators League, I Come From The World, Switchback, The
Legendary, bioStories and others. Her play Life
Without was a semi-finalist in the Ebell of Los Angeles Playwriting
Competition and was nominated for Outstanding Play by the Desert Theatre
League. She was also nominated for the Bill Groves Award for Outstanding
Original Writing. She has an MFA in Creative Writing and Writing for the
Performing Arts from the University of California at Riverside/Palm Desert.
