Wishful Drinking

Anyway, my concerned and caring mother called Cary Grant and told him that her daughter had a problem with acid. You know, like I was mainlining the stuff. You have to admit though, on a certain level, it was an incredibly darling thing for her to do—especially when you factor in the fact that I loved Cary Grant. I still do—only now at more of a distance. He’s probably the only famous person I was ever really in awe of. Having two celebrity parents, and a few celebrity boyfriends, it was extremely rare for me to get star struck. Not that I was blasé about famous people—I just wasn’t bowled over and tongue-tied and staring, as if I’d just undergone more electroshock therapy or stuck my finger in a socket.

But Cary Grant, well, he just killed me. I mean, I was completely blown away by him. He had it all—an easygoing class, quiet confidence, wit—all in this beyond-handsome package. So when the phone rang and a familiar voice informed me that he was Cary Grant—even a Cary Grant that was gonna maybe give me a “just say no” drug lecture—well, initially I was, in fact, totally tongue-tied. Normally, I wouldn’t have believed that the person on the other end really was Cary Grant—but when he told me my mother had asked him to call, well that sounded eerily like some bizarre thing my mother would do.

In a way, there was actually a precedent for this Cary Grant intervention call.

Some years prior, I was in London en route to my mother’s wedding (I don’t like to miss any of my parents’ weddings). She called me at the hotel where I was staying, and when I didn’t answer the phone she became understandably concerned. So she let the phone ring and ring and ring—until finally she panicked. She knew I was in the room so, in her mind, probably the only reason I wasn’t answering the phone was that I had overdosed. So she did what any normal concerned mother might do when troubled about her daughter’s well being.

She called Ava Gardner.

And she asks Ava to come to my hotel and get the concierge to let her into my room to make sure I’m not dead.

Anyway, the reason this relates to Cary Grant—if it isn’t obvious—is that the Ava Gardner Rescue Squad (good title for a rock band) is the reason I would even begin to believe that someone telling me that they were Cary Grant might actually in fact be Cary Grant. So initially when I got on the phone with Mr. Grant, I was incredibly nervous seeing as how I was on the phone with no less then my fucking hero, but once we began to discuss my acid addiction, after a freakishly short time I found myself chatting gaily with what might as well have been a Cary Grant impersonator. (Because let’s face it, there was no actual visual confirmation that this was, in fact, Cary Grant.) So I think I finally convinced him that, despite my mother’s insistence, I didn’t have an acid problem (which, for the most part, was true). What I did have was an opiate problem, but frankly that was none of Cary Grant’s fucking business. No matter how much I admired him.

Anyway, though we chatted for about an hour or so, I have basically no memory of what we discussed. Oh yes, there was one thing

Chevy Chase and how he had insinuated on some talk show that Mr. Grant was bisexual. Now, as it happened, I was working on a film with Chevy at that time (a marvelous film called Under the Rainbow—a riveting film about the making of the Wizard of Oz—starring Chevy, me, Eve Arden, and three thousand dwarves), and Chevy and I were getting along somewhat less than a house on fire. So on top of our LSD chat, we had that in common. Poor Chevy Chase relations. So when our hour-long chat was up, I bid Mr. Grant a grateful goodbye, gleefully told all my friends, and end of story. Now, I thought, I had a Cary Grant story to tell my children and grandchildren for years to come. Right?

Well, as it turned out, actually no—not right—because my Cary Grant story continued and this time from an unexpected direction.

A few years later my father went to Princess Grace’s funeral in Monaco.

Please ask me if he actually knew the princess. Of course he didn’t. My father had never even met the woman—either prior to her ascent to the throne when she was “just” plain old Grace Kelly, the Oscar-winning movie star or after she became Monaco’s very own royal highness.

But I learned that you don’t actually have to know the person whose funeral you’re attending. In fact, sometimes, depending on the person, it’s better that way, but my father had his own reasons for going to the funeral for this very famous, beautiful woman. Publicity.