The Men in My Life Read online

  Disclaimer

  This is a work of nonfiction. The events and experiences detailed herein are all true and have been faithfully rendered as I have remembered them, to the best of my ability. Some names, identities, and circumstances have been changed in order to protect the privacy of those involved.

  Though conversations come from my keen recollection of them, they are not written to represent word-for-word documentation; rather, I’ve retold them in a way that evokes the real feeling and meaning of what was said, in keeping with the true essence of the mood and spirit of the event.

  Dedication

  For my beloved brother, Bart

  Contents

  Cover

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE: WAKING UP Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  PART TWO: FOCUSING Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  PART THREE: MAKING CHOICES Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  PART FOUR: CHANGING Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  AFTERWORD

  Acknowledgments

  Index

  Photos Section

  About the Author

  Praise

  Also by Patricia Bosworth

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Author’s Note

  FOR MOST OF my life I’ve been able to hide my feelings; indeed, I’d have to say I’ve been virtually defined by my ability to hold back. Until now.

  I call this memoir The Men in My Life because two of the principal characters are my father, the lawyer Bartley Crum, and my brother Bart Jr.; they were the first men I cared for passionately and who passionately cared for me. When I was very young and struggling to be both an actress and a writer, my brother shot himself in the head, and six years later, my father took an overdose of sleeping pills. How did I survive their deaths? By shutting down completely.

  Over the years I filtered my emotions through the biographies I wrote of Diane Arbus, Jane Fonda, Montgomery Clift, and Marlon Brando. I gravitated toward these subjects for good reason. One died by her own hand; another was a suicide survivor. All of them engaged in extremely self-destructive acts. Writing about them was one of the ways I coped with and tried to understand why the two men I loved most in the world had decided to kill themselves.

  During the most traumatic years of my early life, I connected in person with three of the artists whose biographies I would eventually write. I was introduced to Montgomery Clift because he happened to be my father’s client. I never forgot his enormous dark eyes or his strange hooting laugh. I suspected he had secrets and I wanted to find out what they were. The same was true with Jane Fonda; we were in classes together at the Actors Studio. I’d heard she had issues with her father, but then so did I.

  Diane Arbus would be the most mysterious of my future subjects. I modeled for her when I was eighteen. She’d be barefoot, and with her husband, Allan, would duck under the focusing cloth of their heavy eight-by-ten view camera and start whispering conspiratorially before they photographed me. They were a shy young couple, symbiotically close. Their relationship reminded me of mine with my brother. I longed to find out if this was true, and these remarkable people stayed with me in my subconscious as I proceeded on my journey.

  I often don’t recognize the self I was back then, a skinny girl in leotards and an old duffel coat wandering around New York City. This book is set during a ten-year period in the fifties and sixties (1953–1963), which on the surface was dark and puritanical, but underneath was a seething ferment of creativity, with painters, poets, photographers, writers, and actors all clamoring to be heard. I longed to be part of that ferment, but I was so spoiled and privileged and in such a daze, it’s a miracle that I accomplished as much as I did.

  Suicide survivors are usually workaholics. I certainly was; I worked nonstop. Many different kinds of men helped me evolve, in many different ways. They were friends and colleagues—in some cases, lovers and husbands—and they were mentors too, like Gore Vidal, Elia Kazan, and Lee Strasberg.

  Looking back on it, I can’t figure out how I did everything I did because I seemed to be doing everything at once in those days. Before I turned twenty I’d earned my first paycheck, opened my first bank account, was in college and auditioning. I loved my independence and reveled in my vagabond existence. The problem was that part of me felt pressured to conform so as to be accepted as a woman; it was the fifties, after all. The push-pull of so many forces, especially from my parents—their demands and their needs versus my demands and my needs—is also very much a part of this story. Slowly but surely I learned how to stand up for myself personally and professionally, and my ambivalence and confusion lessened.

  One of the high points of my life—maybe the highest—was being accepted as a member of the Actors Studio (not to be confused with the TV series Inside the Actors Studio, hosted by James Lipton). At the time the Studio, the birthplace of “The Method,” was the most influential and talked-about workshop for actors in America. Passing my final audition was a singular honor. I was one of five to be accepted that year—five out of five hundred.

  However, I couldn’t participate in classes at first. Since my brother’s suicide I’d hidden behind a silent, detached facade. Instead I’d sit in the back row of the brick-walled theatre, writing down everything I was observing, listening to the Studio’s master teacher Lee Strasberg as he challenged actors to dig for “internal truths.” Back then I was a watcher more than a doer. Lee was the first person to encourage me to write. Once he came by as I was scribbling into a notebook and murmured, “Darling, maybe you should do what you are doing instead of acting. You seem to be enjoying it more.”

  Did I hear what he said—really hear him? No, not yet, because I wanted to prove to him that I could act.

  By then I had worked for Lee and he’d been surprisingly gentle with me, although we both knew I’d been awful. He got tougher with me as time went on. He wouldn’t let me get away with faking. He was always talking about behavior, behavior, behavior. Truthful, genuine behavior. Real behavior. I was already acting professionally when I got into the Studio, so I knew how to project externally, but working at the Studio forced me to open up and tap into my inner self. For the next ten years I appeared on Broadway and off, directed by Garson Kanin and Harold Clurman; on TV with George Roy Hill; and then I was featured opposite Audrey Hepburn in The Nun’s Story. The memories of these experiences in theatre and film remain vivid to me decades after the fact. I’ve always wanted to share them.

  But in the end, what I’ve needed most is to share the bittersweet recollections I have of my beloved little brother, Bart. He is at the heart of this journey. We were as close as twins. I confided in him, depended on him, adored him. But I can’t explain what he did. I refuse to be an armchair shrink.

  I don’t think I’ve been self-indulgent in these pages. I dislike sentimentality. Instead I truly believe I’ve shown how the glories in my life outweigh the bleak and terrible. Writing this book has been cathartic. It�
��s finally caused me to feel. I’ve cried and cried as I’ve written it, but that’s good. My emotions were rock-solid for so many years. Now, as I finish The Men in My Life, my body feels lighter. I walk with more of a spring in my step. I’ve been carrying around a huge burden of grief and guilt for much too long.

  Now it’s almost gone.

  Prologue

  I HAD LEARNED the news in the middle of a dance rehearsal at Sarah Lawrence College; I was choreographing a piece to the tune of Frank Sinatra’s exuberant “I’ve Got the World on a String.” The studio I was working in was walled with mirrors so I could see the dancers from every angle, twirling and bending, and I could see myself too, skinny then, freckle-faced, serious. Suddenly my teacher Bessie Schönberg was pulled almost bodily out of the studio by the dean of students, Esther Raushenbush, who ordinarily didn’t attend dance rehearsals.

  Bessie returned moments later with a strange look on her face. She told me I had a phone call I must answer immediately. I ran out into the foyer and the next thing I heard was my father on the line saying, “Your brother, Bart, has killed himself with the .22 rifle Granddad gave him for his birthday.” He had died in his room at Reed College. He was eighteen.

  I didn’t react. I couldn’t cry. I found myself shivering uncontrollably because it was cold in the hall and I was barefoot and wearing only a leotard. “Go home to Mama right away.” “Yes, Daddy, of course I will.” Someone put a coat on my shoulders, and then, as if I were in a dream, someone else led me across the snowy campus to my dorm, where I dressed. My best friend, Marcia Haynes, had appeared out of nowhere, saying she would drive me to New York so I could be with my mother.

  We didn’t speak in the car. Marcia turned on the radio so we could listen to the news. Something about Sir Winston Churchill winning the Nobel Prize for Literature and Sir Edmund Hillary searching for the Abominable Snowman in the Himalayas. I couldn’t absorb anything. Instead I stared out the window at the banks of trees glittering with ice that lined the Saw Mill River Parkway. It was December 13, 1953.

  I kept thinking of Bart at target practice. That previous summer at our weekend home in Garrison, high on a hill overlooking the Hudson, Bart had practiced shooting tin cans set on a crate. The incessant crack of gunfire was so unnerving I’d run into the woods a quarter of a mile from the house and beg him to stop. He would be standing there in jeans and a T-shirt, emaciated, his head shaved. He would glare at me, take aim at his target, and fire. On those afternoons he’d go on firing that .22 rifle for hours. He never missed. He was a crack shot.

  MY HEAD STARTED to ache; it was as if somebody was squeezing my brain very, very hard. There was a tightness around my eyes. I panicked. I had always been disgustingly healthy. Could I be having a stroke? A heart attack? I was twenty years old.

  My head throbbed more the minute Marcia and I entered the so-called family brownstone on East Sixty-Eighth Street and I faced my reflection in the smoky mirrors that covered the halls of the foyer. (“So-called” because we had lived in so many places and never remained in any of them long enough to call them home.) My mother blamed her “restlessness.” “I need to change my settings constantly!” she’d exclaim. But the moves invariably occurred after some crisis in my father’s fast-paced, ever-changing career.

  His name was Bartley Crum and he was a high-priced left-wing lawyer who dabbled in politics. His wealthy corporate clientele virtually disappeared with the advent of McCarthyism. Since we’d moved from San Francisco to New York in 1948 he’d been hired and fired by two Manhattan firms because he kept on defending communists. His luck changed briefly when he secured a partnership in a Wall Street office. The main reason: He had been able to bring them movie star Rita Hayworth as a client. He had been asked to negotiate her divorce from Prince Aly Khan.

  At this very moment he was in Los Angeles meeting with Rita. I wondered when he’d be home. I imagined the three of us flying out to my brother’s funeral in Portland—my mother, my father, and me, how we’d rush to the plane and might even be holding hands. Maybe for once we’d be a family. Together we’d grieve over the inexplicable death of someone I loved more than anyone in the world.

  As Marcia and I climbed the stairs to the second floor, my heart beat rapidly, as it always did when I had to confront my mother. We found her pacing the floor of the living room. I was always surprised by how tiny she was because she had such a huge presence. Big protruding eyes, thin scornful mouth, trim little body—she had been a champion golfer long ago. My father often told her she reminded him of Bette Davis because of the brisk way Mama clipped her words, then paused between syllables. That evening she sounded exactly like Davis as she intoned, “Lamb-pie, what are you wearing?” (Skirt and sweater over my leotard) “When did you last take a bath?” The tone was affectionate yet mocking, and her shoulders twitched impatiently. Those Davis mannerisms drove me and my brother crazy.

  I didn’t answer, so she stopped pacing and offered me some hors d’oeuvres. “Delicious cheese ramekins.” Another long pause. Marcia moved to the bar. “I’ll fix us some drinks. Okay, Mrs. C.?” I think we all had vodka on the rocks.

  So far there had been no mention of my brother. The Christmas tree was up. As always, Mama had done an amazing job of decorating; the branches were heavy with ornaments and twinkling lights, presents piled about. I tried to think of something to say. “Everything seems ready for the holidays,” I murmured.

  The phone rang, but Mama let it ring. Marcia picked it up. “Long distance from L.A.” It was my father calling. “He wants to talk to you,” Marcia said, handing the receiver to my mother, who grabbed at it. Silence for a moment and she began crying out, “No! No! No, I won’t go . . . I can’t go . . . I don’t believe any of this. Bart was murdered, you fool! He was murdered.”

  I ran into the adjacent room so I could pick up the extension and hear what my father had to say. He was telling her sorrowfully, “No, Cutsie [her nickname—pronounced ‘cutes’], it was not murder. Bart . . . killed himself.”

  “No!!” Mama repeated angrily. “No, I do not—will not believe it. He would never do that to us. He would never hurt us like this. He loved us too much to do this.” Only then did her voice break.

  “The funeral will be in Sacramento tomorrow,” my father said. “You and Patti will fly out. I have made all the arrangements. We are booked into the best hotel. Bart will be buried in the family plot.”

  Another silence, and then Mama announced very coldly, “Well, I am not going. I am not going. Funerals are . . .”

  “My darling,” I heard my father say very softly, “this is our son.”

  No answer.

  “Gertie. Gertrude.” For once my father addressed her by her real name. He was trying to be stern and commanding. It didn’t work.

  “I will not change my mind.” And then she hung up and began her pacing again. I came back to the living room and faced her. “Mama, I want to go to the funeral. I think we should all go to the funeral.”

  “You are not going to the funeral. You are going to stay right here and be with me. I cannot be alone now.” She was glaring at me.

  Marcia stood by the fireplace, observing, implacable.

  I DIDN’T ARGUE or fight back. At the time my mother was angry at me for not “living up to my potential” or appreciating my “privileged life” (a life I had been born into but was choosing not to live in). Even so, I couldn’t bear her being angry with me. I agreed to stay with her and not go to the funeral. I knew even then that I would regret this decision for the rest of my life.

  I gulped down my vodka and then poured myself another. Suddenly I imagined I could hear my brother’s soft mocking voice in my ear. You could be a drunk like our father if you don’t watch out. I heard myself answering back, “Daddy is not a drunk. He knows how to hold his liquor—he’s under a lot of pressure.”

  Sure, sure, my brother singsonged. How many times do we have to hear about him being blacklisted and losing all his money when he bought th
e newspaper?

  “Our father is a brave, gallant man.”

  Spare me your sentimentality, Attepe, Bart said in our private language. We’d invented it when we were kids and thought we were the only ones who could speak it. It was Pig Latin, and we spoke it so fast it used to drive our parents wild.

  MARCIA AND I spent the night on the fourth floor, where my brother and I had a suite of rooms. I couldn’t sleep, so I got up and wandered into his room. A single bed covered with a blue spread. One book on the desk, a copy of Einstein’s biography, and next to it Frisky Jr.’s leash. He was our cocker spaniel who’d been run over by a car.

  I felt numb, inconsolable. I wondered how I could go on without my brother. We’d been as close as twins, although we were as different as night is to day. I was agreeable, talkative, curious about everything. Bart was silent, moody, detached. He had a genius IQ. I was a lousy student, failing my classes, especially when we were in grammar school.

  “Why? Why? Why?” I found myself choking out the words in the empty room.

  What a stupid question, Attepe. Again I heard my brother’s voice mocking softly in my ear.

  I sank down on his bed. “I want to know. Why did you do it?” I heard myself talking to Bart as if he were still alive.

  Mama says I was murdered. That’s one way of putting it.

  “I want to be with you.” I’d begun to sob.

  “Patti! What are you doing?” It was my mother, pulling open the door to my brother’s room and marching in. “Who are you talking to?”

  I turned to her, tears streaming down my cheeks. “I had to be in his room. Had to.”

  With that, Mama let out a groan and folded me into her arms.

  OVER THE NEXT decade my brother and I would go on talking to each other, and each time I heard him, it would be a comfort. Oh yes, it was eerie too. He’d show up when I least expected it and then I’d whisper, “Are you here or everywhere now that you’re dead?”