Judy & Liza & Robert & Freddie & David & Sue & Me... (8 page)

David wasn't beautiful by any means. He had a large nose, flaccid cheeks (always by 5:00 p.m.), and beady eyes. Somehow all this ugliness came together in its own interesting and gruesome way, distinguishing him from the rest of the ugly powerful men he ran with. He was tall, and his height, coupled with immaculate tailoring, helped to hide his protruding belly. His shoes were hand sewn in Italy, his shirts made to order in London and shipped in boxes from Bond Street every six months, and his suits custom tailored at one of the most expensive Park Avenue ateliers. He loved only the best, most expensive things for himself, and he lived like a sheikh on what he earned, borrowed, and stole.

What did we all see in David? I include myself along with Freddie Fields, Judy, Lee Begelman, and a legion of showbiz friends. We were all so blinded by a little charm that we couldn't see the truth: He was no good. In fact he was worse than that. He was toxic, fatal for all his wives, but most of all for Judy. He took aim and leveled a shot across her bow that filled her with his poison and overwhelmed her. His was the charm of a psychopathic personality: totally flamboyant, witty, intelligent, and intellectual on the one side; a liar, a cheat, a complete fraud, irresponsible, and self-destructive on the other.

He was a world-class womanizer who loved the seduction. Women were enchanted with him because he was a wonderful raconteur, extremely alert, quick witted, and totally attentive. Judy responded to him instantly because he kept her endlessly amused. Her enchantment began on the first day they met, when she walked into Freddie Fields Associates to meet the partner she'd heard so much about. I watched from my desk outside Freddie's glass-enclosed private office until Freddie closed the mechanically operated draperies, cutting off my view. Nor could I hear anyone, but I could imagine David greasing on about how wonderful Judy looked, how lucky he was to be sitting there with her, and how lucky she was to be sitting there with him. She would have laughed politely and perhaps raised a question about the latter, whereupon David would have assured her that she would now become richer and more famous than ever before. It would be the starting point from which, over the next few months, David's professed adoration would grow to unbelievable heights.

It would be easy for Judy, so wanting to believe she was adored, to cross the Rubicon and imagine that this man held her in something more than simple professional esteem. And he was willing to prove that in bed. It didn't take long, however, for Judy to decide she wanted him exclusively to herself.

And so, with David's encouragement, Judy managed to persuade herself that they would soon be husband and wife. The affair had started a few months after she became a client. And perhaps, by bedding her, David was determined to ensure that she, and her income, would remain tied to FFA. The wonderful success that was coming for Freddie and David hadn't yet arrived.

Meanwhile, David's wife, Lee, was a woman who would not be denied. She also wanted her charming husband around all the time, and she demanded all the baubles and perks he could afford—and many that he couldn't. Divorce wasn't anywhere on her radar, and she resented not only the time David spent with Judy but even the mere mention of Judy's name. David let Lee buy the expensive clothes she wanted, allowed her to keep refurnishing their apartment, put up with her need to be seen at every opening, gala, and charity event—all in the interest of placating her so that she would remain silent when he needed to buy some time with Judy. Then he would go on the occasional after-concert honeymoon with Judy in order to placate and silence
her
for as long as he could. It didn't work with either woman. They each wanted it all, and it was all so apparent to me. David seemed to enjoy the enmity he saw growing between the two women. That was his kind of gruesome pleasure.

The Newport concert offered Judy just such a weekend opportunity, and the two “lovebirds” planned a little idyll among the idle rich. (Judy had a long list of society friends.) When the concert was finished she took off with David into the starry night, while I stayed behind to pick up the pieces, literally. I packed a rental car with all the extra clothes, the costumes, the makeup, and the meds, and I left for Cape Cod. By the time I left Newport on the way to Hyannis, it was well past midnight.

As my office's real-estate agent par excellence, I had struck pay dirt. I'd found Judy a house on the water near the Kennedy compound. It was a big old clapboard home with a wraparound porch right across the road from the president of the United States. Judy had been enjoying spending time at the old house when she was not working. My marching orders were to take the car with everything to the Hyannis house. Judy had no concerts immediately following Newport, so after the “David honeymoon,” she would relax with the children and party with the vacationing Kennedy clan until she went back to work.

It was not part of anyone's plan for me to get lost en route. I was traveling on the outskirts of small towns where there was minimum lighting, and on narrow country roads where there was none. It's not a long trip from Newport to Hyannis, but I managed to turn it into one.

Sometime after three I finally found myself in the right neighborhood. The street where Judy rented was pitch black and deserted, and I was anxious and dead tired as I tooled along at about three miles an hour. Suddenly from out of the bushes sprang a half-dozen men with their guns drawn and pointed at me. I was hustled from the car, frisked, and asked to sit on the pavement while they searched the car's contents.

Initially I was too frightened to realize what had happened, but as I sat on the stone-cold road in my thin pink-and-white-checked cotton pants with a gun pointed at me, I realized that my welcoming committee was the Secret Service. I relaxed because I thought I could explain myself, but they didn't know that Judy was renting across the street. How could that happen? I found it hard to believe how deficient their intelligence gathering had been, amazed they didn't know the name and complete background of every neighbor, but there it is. Indeed they were curious about such a large carton of drugs in the backseat of a rented car, all bearing Judy's name. You couldn't find this many drugs anywhere but a pharmacy. And there I was trying to explain what the various drugs were for when I didn't even know myself, but it was a way of trying to make them understand that I was who I said I was. Anyway, my explanation fell on deaf ears. At some point the situation started to strike me as even a little funny, but my armed guard was not amused. Nor at four in the morning was anyone willing to knock on any door, for which I didn't have a key. While the Secret Service kept the rented Chevy in tow, I was taken into custody, where I remained (on the road) until around dawn, when one of the men accompanied me to Judy's house. It was a long cold night.

Only one thought warmed me, and that was my knowing it was David Begelman who was now sitting in some fancy hotel suite holding the gin rummy cards instead of me. Okay, so maybe it wasn't gin rummy; it was whatever game he was playing with her.

The good news was that they didn't confiscate the drugs. And I got terrific mileage out of the story, first with Judy, who thought it was a riot, and then with many lesser lights. But I also realized that life with Judy took me down many dark roads where real danger lurked.

*   *   *

David continued to press his luck to the limit, constantly lying to both Judy and Lee. On occasion he seemed to have fun making me witness his little game. While I sat in his office ready to take dictation that he said had to go out immediately, I would listen to him lying to Lee on the phone about the work he had to do, and then he would put on his jacket and leave to go dine with Judy, and he did so in restaurants for which I made the reservations, most of them Lee's favorites.

Sometimes I managed to rationalize this, persuading myself that both women were unbearably demanding, and to keep his head above water David would of course need to tap-dance around the truth a little bit. But I really knew better. He was a snake. He didn't know how to tell the truth, and it amused him to show me how outrageous a liar he could get away with being. Like Judy, he loved an audience. It's almost as if he needed me to know just who he was.

He didn't seem to care one iota about his wife, and he told everyone that Judy also meant nothing to him. Given the treatment they both received at his hands, this had to be true. I remember the dinner when I was invited to join him and some friends at Danny's Hideway, the famous steak house, where David held court and made his ugly declarations. In fact, on the night I was there he made one of the most disgusting statements about Judy that I've ever heard made about anyone, saying to the group, “A ragpicker wouldn't throw a hook into her!” And this was the man Judy Garland adored. He was a pig.

After working with him for two years, however, it was apparent to me that David was more than just a pig: He was a sick pig. It's easy to say of someone who makes ugly remarks, “That guy is sick.” It's a cheap expression that gets tossed around a lot. But even as naive as I was at twenty-five, I thought David needed psychiatric help. He was always setting himself up to be punished. And no matter how bad the punishment, David raised the ante so that the next punishment would be worse. Las Vegas and London were prime examples.

*   *   *

The stakes for him were always high. In Las Vegas people get punished every minute, but very few plummet into the David class. I couldn't believe what I saw. There for Judy's opening night in 1962, what her on-again, off-again lover set himself up for confirmed my sense that he was sick and in great need of help. But the only help he sought was more punishment.

Watching David at the craps table meant waiting to see just how far he would go, how far he would push the envelope. It was always to a place way beyond his means. Wanting to win but setting himself up to lose, he was a fascinating paradox to observe. One simple example of how this “prospective punishment” worked was when I was with him in the casino at the Sahara Hotel one night during Judy's engagement. He signed an IOU for fifty-thousand dollars. I watched as he successfully gambled and parlayed his winnings into more than one hundred thousand dollars; then he stood there losing until not only were his winnings gone but also the borrowed fifty, as well as the next seventy-five. He did that more than once on that trip alone.

As I think about it now, I can't imagine the casino management lending this person, relatively new to them, those sums unless they made Judy Garland a guarantor. More likely he took the money in her name. The outcome: Strange men in shiny black suits then came to the New York office unannounced, carrying their shiny little black suitcases. I called them “the bent-nose brigade,” and it clearly was more than coincidence that they showed up right after Judy was in Las Vegas. I could imagine, after David closed the drapes and locked his office door, that guns came out of those attach
é
s. What he had to give in return for his life was undoubtedly more Judy engagements. But that was not yet punishment enough. Much more was still to come.

*   *   *

By the time the “London incident” occurred, Judy was employable in Hollywood if not exactly back on top. Freddie and David had gotten her several movie deals, including
Judgment at Nuremberg,
for which she was nominated for an Academy Award, and
A Child Is Waiting
.
I Could Go On Singing
was the third starring film under the FFA management. During all this time—from the end of the concerts in 1961 through the making of the films—I was the go-to person for Judy whenever she was in New York, and always on call no matter where she was. David and I accompanied Judy to England on the press junket for the world premiere of
I Could Go On Singing.
The plane, filled with American press, took off for London, where we had approved a schedule that would require total efficiency. All of the English entertainment press was at the airport awaiting her arrival. Meanwhile, the universe had a different plan. Fog, of the densest kind, socked in Heathrow, making it impossible to land. Although the plane buzzed the runway several times, the pilot finally had to land in Manchester, about which there is little worth mentioning except it was there that I learned the English eat their fish cold and drink their beer lukewarm.

The next day we took the train to London, checked into the Savoy Hotel in the Strand, and I was ready to believe life would return to a schedule as close to normal as it could be when I was on “Judy time.” Instead Lee Begelman showed up, uninvited and unannounced, checked into her husband's room while he was out, rested for a little, and then found out what room Judy was in—which just happened to be right across the hall—and knocked on the door.

Did Lee come to London to confront Judy? I don't know for sure, but I do know she was expecting to be invited in, because she was wearing only a nightgown with a light traveling bathrobe over it. Judy was also in a nightgown when she answered the door, and she had no interest in a little t
ê
te-
à
-t
ê
te. Clearly they hated each other. I couldn't see who landed the first punch from where I was sitting in Judy's living room. And by the time I realized what was happening, a ferocious fight was under way, and I couldn't stop it.

The women were trying to kill each other: kicking and clawing, pulling hair and clothes. Both were bleeding, gowns torn, now almost naked in the fifth floor corridor, which houses the exquisite river suites on the Thames side of the Savoy. Guests came out of their rooms. A crowd started forming. Neither woman was backing down, each fueled by hatred and resentment of the other—loathing that David had allowed grow—and both looked prepared to fight to the death. I was still struggling to break it up when the manager arrived—called up, I imagine, by one of the shocked spectators. With his upper-class British manners firmly in place, and looking beyond horrified, he boldly stepped in, but he, too, could do nothing. It was a vicious battle, and one risked serious injury by getting involved. In fact there were enough spectators for us to have acted in some united way to stop the fight, but everyone was too mesmerized to move. The manager was calling security when, by fortuitous coincidence, David came back and immediately stopped it. He did not treat his wife gently. Taking her upper arm roughly into his two hands, he dragged her back to his room and threw her into it. He then slammed the door behind them.