This Much Is True

Almost immediately, Susan Smith introduced me to Norman Lear, the American television writer and producer who created or developed many of the big sitcoms of the seventies, including All in the Family (the American spin-off of Till Death Us Do Part), Sanford and Son, Good Times and Maude. It was a fortuitous and highly profitable meeting: Norman put me on a retainer of $350,000; that was for a year — and I didn’t have to do a thing. I just had to be. I couldn’t quite believe it.

The most onerous demand Norman made of me was to be introduced to his stable of writers, among whom, I remember, were Marta Kauffman and David Crane, the creators of Friends. That was the way comedy worked in LA: a group of writers was corralled into a room from nine to five and just wrote or tried to write; it was competitive and nerve-racking. I hate comedy: I don’t like anything that’s called ‘comedy’. Let’s just go with LIFE, eh? Norman would gather all these comedy writers in a room and I would go along and talk to them. They were then supposed to think up a character for me. Marta and Dave suggested a series based on the ghastly hotelier Leona Helmsley, who went to prison for fraud. I would have enjoyed that role, but it never happened. I think they were intending to make a TV movie with Anne Bancroft instead of me. She’s dead now so it’s still possible…

Once I had that great wad of money from Norman, the first thing was to find a permanent place to live. When I first arrived in LA, I stayed with Wendy Murray, an old friend whom I met in the health farm in Newport Pagnell, who had become a personal assistant for various film people. And my old friend, the great director Waris Hussein, gave me his West Hollywood apartment for months, and refused any rent. What a sweet generous man he is; I’ve never forgotten that kindness. Now, however, I had the money to get myself a swish apartment and I found the perfect place on iconic palm-lined Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica.

My apartment was on the twelfth floor, and my balcony overlooked the beach, Malibu, the Santa Monica mountains and, most importantly, the ocean. I loved watching the sun set over the Pacific. There were two bedrooms, a huge central living room with a sliding wall of glass onto the balcony, and there was even a swimming pool in the building. The pool was too small for me, however, so I joined the Palisades YMCA pool in Temescal Canyon, and the locker room of that lovely pool became my social centre. The other swimmers were my friends; I’m still in touch with Cassidy, who ran the place. She and her girlfriend Michelle were forgiving of my hopeless swimming ability. I did my forty laps every morning, stripped naked in the locker room and that’s where we had the best chats. All the women were bright, friendly and funny; I miss them.

Back at the apartment at Santa Monica Bay Towers I felt like a film star; I believe Julie Andrews now lives in the same building. It was across the road from the Fairmont Miramar, where Bill Clinton always stayed when he came to LA. On one of the presidential visits, snipers were deployed on the roof of our building: one afternoon, I looked up from my balcony to see a man with a sub-machine gun up there, lying in wait. Terrified, I said, ‘What’s going on?’ To which he replied, ‘Oh, don’t worry about it. We’re just here for the President.’

LA is not my favourite place in the States; I much prefer San Francisco. LA is a strange mix of the exotic and the naff. It’s not a city: it’s a collection of neurotic neighbourhoods. But it does give you the opportunity of reinvention. They say you can be whatever you want to be there; I embraced that freedom wholeheartedly, but I had no intention of adopting any of the Californian lifestyles or fads: I don’t believe in all their New Age nonsense. I might have dyed my hair once or twice for parts when I was in LA, but I never had any plastic surgery or tooth-whitening. I tried to steer a course between the Yiddisher Momma and the Venice Beach Girl — between Shelley Winters and Jane Fonda. I would say, on the whole, Shelley Winters won.