Unsinkable Read online

  I wanted copies of all the deeds, to help my lawyers unravel exactly what Richard had done. The treasurer showed me notices to Richard from the county, for overdue taxes in the amount of $31,183.10. I’d always given him money to pay the taxes, just like everything else. I shouldn’t have been surprised that he apparently kept it and left the property with a lien. Maybe it was a mixture of shock and fatigue or a sense of doom about this upcoming court case, but I found myself getting emotional about Richard’s treachery. I couldn’t make myself believe that someone who’d said he loved me, who’d married me and put on quite a show for the first few years of our life together, could completely betray me. How long had this been going on? Why didn’t I run and hide when he told me we couldn’t just be lovers because he wasn’t “that kind of guy”? Was he really that patient and calculating as he systematically emptied my pension account to invest in his own companies and numerous other properties, all the while acting the part of a loving husband? It baffled me.

  It wasn’t just the girlfriend, although through the Roanoke grapevine I’d heard about more than one lady who was involved with Richard. Whether it was a toothless waitress from the waffle house or his lady Jane, Richard was never without female companionship of some kind. Hell, my first husband left me for Elizabeth Taylor. At least that made sense.

  Thinking back to our long late-night phone conversations, I wondered if any of these women lay patiently beside Richard while he chattered away with me. Sometimes we stayed on the phone for hours, just shooting the breeze and—I thought—enjoying each other’s company while we were apart. How rude of Richard to make his girlfriends wait through those long chats with his wife. Where were his manners?

  Once we were all packed up, we headed for the airport. As we said our good-byes and thanked Bootie and other friends, I wondered when I would see them again. In court? Would they come to Vegas to visit? I was so grateful that they had helped me expose Richard’s antics so I could hope to recover from all this.

  No one slept on the return flight to Vegas. We had more room because Mark was driving back everything we could load onto the rental truck. After we landed, I headed for the hotel to get ready for my evening performances. My show always goes on. Thank God for my audiences. At least I have always been able to count on them.

  CHAPTER 10

  UNDER THE ELEPHANT’S TAIL

  RICHARD NEVER CALLED ME AFTER my raid on Roanoke. Not a word about my note or retrieving my belongings. I never got back the things I couldn’t take with me (including a chandelier I really loved that was in another house), even though I sent Richard everything he’d left behind in Las Vegas and at our house in LA. The trip had been rough on me. My head was swimming with all the Roanoke information. In spite of his health concerns and fabulous European vacations, Richard had been very busy, thank you. The files and paperwork from his Virginia offices would keep my legal team working for quite some time. And when I was back in Las Vegas, I knew I had to confront the failure of my third marriage.

  A few days after we returned, I had a spell of global amnesia similar to one I’d had over a decade before, in March 1983, when I was performing on Broadway in Woman of the Year. It happened during my Saturday matinee. Five minutes before the end of the first act, I blacked out. I kept performing, but for those few minutes I had no idea what I was saying or singing. And then I collapsed onstage. When the curtain came down, paramedics rushed me from the Palace Theatre to Roosevelt Hospital, where the doctors told me I’d experienced a rare form of amnesia, which might have been caused by exhaustion or stress. I’d replaced Raquel Welch, had to learn the entire show in only a few weeks, and had been performing eight times a week, so it made sense that I was exhausted. The doctor said it was unlikely to happen again.

  Yet here I was, years later, alone in my apartment, unable to remember anything. I knew where I was, but I didn’t know what to do. I could speak, but I made no sense. The disorientation lasted only a few minutes, but I felt weak for a few hours. It scared me that all this pressure was affecting my health. I didn’t do my show for the next few days while I rested, took Valium and aspirin, and prayed that I would heal.

  Hoping that I could relax and maybe even have some fun, my high school friend Paula Kent Meehan invited me on a cruise to the Mediterranean. My friends Margie Duncan and Jerry Wunderlich met us in Nice, in the south of France, and from there we sailed to Saint-Tropez and other wonderful port cities. Paula’s other guests included the president of L’Oréal and a Saudi prince. Everyone pampered me and was thrilled I was aboard. It was a wonderful break from all the stress I’d been going through.

  When I got back to Las Vegas, I had dinner with my piano player, Joey Singer. At the end of the meal, the waiter returned my credit card. It was maxed out. Joey kindly paid the check.

  That was what my life had come to: cruising with royalty one day and dead broke the next. There was no money anywhere, and I couldn’t work any harder.

  It appeared that Richard had been transferring the properties we owned into his brother’s and girlfriend’s names and backdating the deeds so they wouldn’t be included in his holdings when it came to determining our divorce settlement. He’d supposedly done the same thing to his first wife. I felt that he must have had an accomplice at the registrar’s office in Roanoke. Deeds don’t backdate themselves.

  The details of Richard’s deceits were too much for me. Feeling threatened at every turn, I stopped sleeping. I worried about my health. And all of those hotel investors! I was lost in the midst of animals running madly around me and grabbing any funds they could get their hands on. My rage was so deep, even as my heart was filled with hopelessness. I told myself I should be in LA, helping Carrie with my granddaughter, Billie. I felt I was an absolute failure to my children. I had made every possible wrong decision, and I was in deep, almost unbearable pain.

  The legal team advised me that it would take months to prepare the divorce filings. It was so complicated and distressing. This is going to kill me, I thought. But I had to keep going. I couldn’t leave this mess for my family. I told myself I could start over once I got rid of Richard and his dirty tricks.

  In late September 1994, I served Richard with divorce papers. It didn’t take long for him to contact me. He called, acting nice, asking about the status of things. Whose name was the hotel in? Where was all the stock? It took a lot of effort for me to keep my distance and not fall for his lying charm again. I focused on staying calm while he gave me the third degree.

  And then it was time to turn my attention back to the hotel business. We tapped every resource we could think of to keep afloat. I asked all my friends for help. More loans. More contracts. Everyone received stock in exchange for their investments. Todd suggested that we put on a fashion show of items from my collection, to announce that the hotel was going public and pre-sell stock to credited investors. No one had seen the amazing costumes and Hollywood memorabilia I’d been collecting for decades.

  We put on quite a presentation. The fashion show took place on the first floor of the hotel, right outside the entrance to the Star Theater. Models dressed in the costumes I had collected strolled by the folks who might determine the fate of the museum construction. Marilyn Monroe’s subway dress from The Seven Year Itch came to life again as a young model twirled the skirt in the show.

  I took back the management of the hotel’s restaurant. The kitchen was a nightmare, but we managed to hire a chef and several ex-convicts as cooks and kitchen workers. Todd installed hidden surveillance cameras to make sure that we weren’t robbed. The tapes showed our ex-cons working while our security guards hauled big boxes of steaks out to their cars. Everyone was stealing from me except the men who’d been in prison, who appreciated the second chance offered by a job at the hotel.

  I worked through the rest of 1994 holding my breath, hoping that the next year would bring some resolution to all these problems. But 1995 turned out to be what I now call the Year Under the Elephant’s Tail.
/>   There was a bright spot: Todd was creating my long-hoped-for museum in the hotel, and in February, Bennett Management & Development, a Syracuse, New York, firm that had been in business since 1980, gave us a two-year loan for $525,000 to use in the construction of the museum and for general corporate purposes. Kennedy Capital Management in St. Louis lent us the remaining $400,000 we needed to finish everything.

  Aside from the museum, I felt like I was stranded under the wrong end of the elephant without my raincoat and umbrella from Singin’ in the Rain, flooded under a cascade of lawsuits and a shit storm of epic problems from every direction. With Richard finally out of the picture, Todd and I did everything we could to clear the foxes out of the henhouse.

  We hired the vice president of administration for Sahara Resorts to be the president of our hotel, and Joe Kowal to help drum up interest in the hotel’s stock. A former professional hockey player, Kowal had been involved in the successful public launch of the Los Angeles Koo Koo Roo chicken restaurants.

  Desperate for money to pay off the existing mortgage and keep the doors open, in March we sought advice from Bennett Management. They said they would help us with another loan, but only if Todd became the hotel’s CEO.

  Todd and I looked at each other in disbelief. As much as I trust my son, it never occurred to me to put him in that position. He was much better at technical things that required his designing skills.

  When we returned to Vegas, I suggested to Todd that we get another opinion. Todd agreed.

  Steve Wynn is one of the best hotel operators in the world. He had played a key role in the 1990s resurgence and expansion of the Las Vegas Strip by successfully refurbishing existing resorts and building new hotels such as the Golden Nugget, the Mirage, Treasure Island, the Bellagio, the Wynn, and the Encore—all Vegas institutions now. In addition to knowing the business, Steve’s a terrific man. I wrote him a note, asking if he would meet with Todd and me, and reminding him that once at a party when we were talking about my hotel, he’d offered, “If you ever need any help, just call me.” Boy, did I need him now.

  Ever gracious, Steve agreed to see us.

  Todd and I were escorted into Steve’s office on the top floor of the Mirage. I began by explaining that we needed help getting a loan to keep my hotel open. We also needed help to get a gaming license. I explained the trouble with the hotel management. Then I asked Steve to recommend a new CEO. As I told my story of crazy deals at the hotel, I became increasingly emotional, until I couldn’t keep my composure another minute and began to cry.

  “There’s no place for that in business, Debbie,” he said gently. Reaching for the phone on his desk, he pointed at Todd.

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Thirty-four,” Todd answered.

  Steve turned to me and said, “He should take over. You need to throw all these people out. Get rid of all these players.”

  There it was again.

  Todd and I looked at each other, taking a moment to let the idea sink in.

  “I don’t have any experience running a hotel,” Todd told Steve.

  “So what?” Steve responded. “You’re old enough. And you won’t rob your mother like you say everybody else has.”

  He pushed a button on the telephone on his desk. When his assistant answered, Steve told her to get the head of the gaming commission, Chairman Bible (isn’t that a fun name for a gaming mogul?), on the line, and they discussed helping me obtain a license for the hotel.

  When you apply for a gaming license in Nevada, not only must everyone in the company be above reproach, you also have to have enough capital to pay for the license. As I recall, the minimum license fee was around $2 million at that time. I had banks that would lend me money for the hotel if we had a gaming license, but I had no money for the license. It was a classic catch-22. I borrowed money on my house in North Hollywood, and more money from my dance studio. But we had never been granted a license, even though Richard, Todd, and I had flown to Carson City, Nevada, in 1993 to meet with the gaming board at least three times. It may have been because of Richard’s history in Virginia that he had kept secret from me. He’d had felony charges brought against him where he pleaded guilty although the charges were eventually dropped. He explained them away, blaming someone else for giving him a bad deal. I didn’t read the Roanoke newspapers, so I didn’t know about his troubles there.

  It was very frustrating, because I knew that other places got their gaming licenses easily. And I’m not just talking about casinos. I’d drive down the street and see a sign that said SUPER SHOOKIE or PUSSY’S PARLOR or some other little joint had just opened a new gaming room. I’d run in and ask, “How’d you get your license?” “We just applied for it,” they’d say. “Oh? Was it expensive?” “Yes.” But they got it.

  Even with Steve Wynn talking to Chairman Bible on our behalf, our situation didn’t change.

  Todd and I decided to take everyone’s advice and make Todd the CEO, and Bennett lent us another $340,000 for general corporate purposes, to be paid back, like their first loan, in March 1997.

  Meanwhile, Todd was building the new museum in the hotel, working closely with Joe Bianci, a lighting designer with a background in theater who had been my lighting director for many years, and Donald Light, when he wasn’t running the gift shop. They slept on cots in rooms on the ground floor of the hotel. It was a dorm of gifted, talented friends. They broke out a seven-thousand-square-foot space that could have been used for a small comedy room, but my designer friend Jerry Wunderlich said we could make it work. And he and Todd and Joe did exactly that.

  Before they started, Todd had showed me the plans and explained that the museum would be like a ride at Disneyland. “Just build it,” I said.

  Their concept was to display the collection within a 125-seat theater. They soldered together the floors and built stages with 35mm screens that revolved like a carousel and showed clips from the scenes with the costumes in them. Todd got the original movies and installed surround sound. I did a green-screen voice-over that introduced the film clips. The lighting was designed around the screens. While a film clip ran, the lights would come up on a costume or prop from that movie. The sets, the costumes, and the mannequins came alive as the film clips ran. When you entered, it was reminiscent of the old Pantages and Egyptian movie palaces in Hollywood. It was just spectacular—a brilliant little gem of a museum. Todd was so proud of it, and I was so proud of him.

  It had been a long time coming.

  In 1961 a group of people in the motion picture industry began plans to build a museum to honor film history. Legendary silent-film star Mary Pickford (the first actress known as “America’s Sweetheart”), director Mervyn LeRoy, producer Sol Lesser, and many others of us in the industry contributed money and support. As with the Motion Picture Home, we all wanted this to happen. The project was to be called the Hollywood Motion Picture and Television Museum.

  Mary Pickford and her second husband, Buddy Rogers, were an important part of this venture. Mary was a collector. I remember visiting her and Buddy at Pickfair, their Beverly Hills estate that had been named after Pickford and her first husband, Douglas Fairbanks Sr. Buddy gave me a tour of their barn. It was crammed full of costumes and wonderful mementos from the early days of movies. Unfortunately, the barn wasn’t holding up well; I could see daylight coming through loose wallboards.

  The plan was for the museum to be built on Highland Boulevard, on the grounds of the Hollywood Bowl. Stars such as Bette Davis and Fred Astaire and director Cecil B. DeMille donated their papers, scrapbooks, and memorabilia. The planning committee decided the site was too small and proposed moving it across the street. Both of these lots were available, and everything was a go for the construction of a $6.5 million museum.

  Then there was a problem.

  An ex-Marine named Stephen Anthony lived in a rundown shack of a house on the edge of the proposed building site. Using the power of eminent domain, the city condemned Mr. Antho
ny’s property and offered him $11,500 to move. This didn’t sit well with Mr. Anthony, who barricaded himself inside his house and shot at anyone who came near it.

  The standoff lasted sixty-three days. On the night of the Academy Awards, Mr. Anthony was watching the show in his condemned house with his lawyer. As Sidney Poitier was announced the winner of the Best Actor Award for his brilliant performance in Lilies of the Field, two undercover Los Angeles policemen managed to get inside. They jumped Mr. Anthony and put him in handcuffs. The house was already surrounded by dozens of police, who took Mr. Anthony away to jail, where he was held for six months.

  This incident divided the Hollywood community. Most of the public believed that Mr. Anthony was a hero who shouldn’t have been driven from his home just to build a museum for a bunch of dead movie stars. Many actors agreed. The courts ruled that Mr. Anthony was a squatter, living on a property that had been condemned. Faced with a firestorm of controversy, the city’s Board of Supervisors pulled the funding and construction was never begun.

  The City of Los Angeles then put all the artifacts that had been donated in the City Jail (talk about irony), where they remained for many years. Conditions at the jail were horrible. The roof leaked, and no care was taken to preserve these valuable items. Let’s hope Mr. Anthony received better treatment. Fred Astaire tried to get his tap shoes back. Bette Davis called me from her Connecticut home and insisted, “You must go and get my scrapbooks. I gave them my fucking scrapbooks. Where are they?”

  When I went down to the jailhouse, the people in charge wouldn’t release Bette’s property. I told them that since Bette was alive and cursing, she had a right to have her things back until a museum could be built. The answer was still no.