Bedtime for Bono

 

 

 

            Already, she misses being Johnny Belinda.  For weeks she inhabited the world of the deaf-mute, wax in her ears, signing, learning to reconfigure her conception of words as hands moving in air. 

            The people of Mendocino kept to themselves, and so the cast and crew became family, roughing it in the old logging camp, singing and talking around the camp fire every night. Jean Negulesco was an able director--and he taught her how to paint.

            Whenever her name was absent from the shooting schedule, she took the company pickup truck out to Russian Gulch.  The silence of the deaf gave way to the quiet of the countryside. The musky smell of ferns, rippled by the breeze.  The crag of canyon with the redwoods towering above it.  And her brush, moving across a rough, blank surface, trying to capture a fragment of the stillness.

            Sometimes Agnes Moorehead painted with her, and sometimes Jean, and often Lew.  Dear Lew.

            It's ugly, being back.  LA blares sunshine and exhaust fumes and gossip and noise.  Ronnie is sullen and pleading by turns.  She knows it isn't right, but when she sees her husband, or their two children, it makes her want to spit.

            He came out and haunted the location shoot, spoiling the last week in Mendocino.  He's been on the set in LA as they filmed the last interiors.  Always hovering--always dashing off to the phone, conducting urgent SAG business.

            Maybe he suspects that there was something going on between her and Lew?  But it was nothing really, no affair. Only long walks and talks.  Lew Ayres is everything that Ronnie will never be.  He's opposed war since making All Quiet on the Western Front.  He angered everyone as a conscientious objector, and they sent him to a conshi camp--until he asked to be made a front-line medic.  Now everyone knows just what Dr. Kildare is made of.  A man of courage, who held dying soldiers on battlefields in the South Pacific. Even Hedda has called him one of the finest characters in Hollywood.

            At the cast-and-crew wrap party, Lew throws her a discreet, sympathetic smile.  Ronnie is lecturing Agnes Moorehead, explaining that the American Veterans Committee is really a Communist Front organization, and that's why he got out--but quick!  "And I am told there are many unions that have been infiltrated in this town.  And that's why we need a loyalty oath in the SAG.  If people really believe in America, they shouldn't mind coming right out and saying so."

            "Mmm," poor British Agnes politely demurs.

            Jane knows she should rescue her friend.  She ought to address a few words to her husband; a little wifely effort and perhaps Ronnie will get down off his soap box.

            "You should try the cake, Ron," she manages, but it comes out sharper than she intended.  "And there's a candy dish full of jelly beans over there--did you notice?"

            "No, I didn't.  Say, this is a pretty spiffy affair."  He smiles at her in gratitude, as much for her acknowledging his presence as for the tip about the jelly beans.  Then he heads to the table against the back wall to investigate.

            Lew is at her side, touching her arm.  "How we holding up?" he murmurs.

            She forces a smile.  "Oh, it's the same on any picture, isn't it?  You can't quite believe it's over.  You feel as if you've lost a little part of you . . . " Her voice falters. She realizes she is speaking of more than just the picture. The baby she lost in her six month.  Christina.  Work helped her to stop thinking of it, but now . . .

            Lew knows all about it.  "We conclude things as best we can, and we move on," he says simply.  His voice is comforting.

            Ronnie returns carrying a paper plate on which there is a thin slice of pie and a small pile of brightly colored jelly beans.  "Quite a spread you folks have laid on.  We didn't get anything like this after Voice of the Turtle."  The last picture he made.  It is not doing well.

            "I guess Jean can take the credit," Lew says lightly.  "I always figure a director is responsible for how a picture ends."

            "I guess you're right."  Ronnie is standing proprietarily close to her.  He pops a pink jelly bean in his mouth, and chews and swallows with a smile on his face.  But then his mouth becomes a tight, thin line.  Jane knows this is a sign of anger.  "By the way, Lew, are you a union man?  I mean, ever take an interest?"

            Lew takes a step backward.  "Now, Ron, we're all so wrung out right now, I don't know that anyone is up for talk about politics."

            "I'm talking about your personal interest--and looking out for your brother actors.  After all, Lew, you are a man of strong beliefs."

            "Yes, I am," Lew replies quietly.

            "And even if I don't go along with your pacifism line," Ronnie continues, "I guess I've got to respect you for your convictions."

            "Thank you," Lew says curtly.  And turns, and goes to sit with Agnes.

            Jane closes her eyes.  Christ.  Maybe her husband wasn't even trying to drive Lew away.  Maybe he has no idea what a boor and a bore he has become.  And he seemed so strong and smart, when they were making Brother Rat.  Sunny, warm, so good to his mother.  The protective father figure her dads and Myron had never been.  Ronnie wouldn't even date her till her divorce came through; he was that old-fashioned.  And even then, she had to pursue him.

            He grabs hold of her elbow, and she jerks it away.

            "Are you feeling all right, Janey?"

            "Fine.  I just need to sit down."  She moves to join Lew and Agnes.  But the pest follows her, and pulls over another chair.

            "You really do look quite wan, my dear," Agnes observes, lighting a cigarette.  "You need to take the phone off the hook, and stay in bed for a few days."

            "Oh, don't worry.  I'm going away for a rest--a real vacation."  She has said it louder than she intended, and several people glance over.

            "That's swell!  With Ronnie and the kids?"  A friendly chorine-turned-make-up-girl enquires.

            "No," Jane snaps without thinking.  "By myself."

            Then she sits and watches him eat his jelly beans, a puzzled, hurt expression on his face.

            They dine that evening at the Beverly Club in Beverly Hills.  Ronnie's theory is that a romantic dinner a deux can make up for months of neglect, for deferred arguments and undiscussed issues.  He makes a great show of taking her wrap before the waiter can, of pulling out her chair and pouring her wine.  He is courteous and friendly to the waiter as he is to all subordinates--and, of course, he orders for her.

            She watches him spoon up his avocado.  Her husband's time in the army has changed him.  Not like Lew--all the suffering Lew saw in battle aged him, but he never lost his generous heart.  Ronnie tried to avoid the draft, and then spent the war at the old Hal Roach studios, making training films and documentaries.  But, just as she sometimes gets the feeling that he has rewritten history, forgetting his college days warming the football bench, seeing himself instead as the Gipper, Ronnie almost seems to think that he served overseas; he narrated newsreels and starred in a few war pictures, and half-believes he was in combat.  He came home to her hardened and detached.  So then, why does he blame her for the new distance between them?

            "I know it doesn't seem like we've had much time for necking and spooning," he is telling her now.  "And I know that I jaw about SAG business too much.  But, Janey, once  these Commie-inspired strikes are settled, I promise you

things will get back to normal.  For our whole family," he wishes aloud.

            So, then, he does dimly sense how obsessed he's become since Bob Montgomery turned over the presidency to him.  She takes a breath, and tries to be honest.  She owes him that much.  "Ronnie, don't you see?  It's not only the lost time. It's--well, don't you see a conflict of interest in what you¹re doing?"

            He looks puzzled.  "Between being an actor and looking out for other entertainers through the Guild?  Why, it's as natural a combination--"

            "No.  Between being president of the Guild . . . and naming names."

            "Shhh!" he hisses.  No one at the neighboring tables could have heard her.  But Ronnie enjoys the cloak and dagger aspect of the whole thing.  His code name: T-10.  Clandestine meetings with the FBI, secretly informing on Guild members he suspects of belonging to the Party.  ("If there's a blacklist," her husband often says, "it's the Communists that have it.  Their plan is simple--they just want to control all of Hollywood.")  Jane doesn't like the Reds either, and she's tried to go along with him--but somehow, it doesn't seem right.

            "It's just that, as you say, you are there to serve other entertainers," she persists.  "To serve the people who elected you.  Not HUAC and not J. Edgar Hoover--"

            "For Pete's sake, be quiet!"  He slams down his fork. His mouth is, again, the hard, thin line.

            So, she's quiet.  It makes a certain amount of sense, she thinks nastily, flipping her food around, Ronnie fingering his colleagues when his own career is almost washed up.  He escapes from lousy pictures into politics.  He's been in one bomb after another, and she's been moving from strength to strength.  She didn't win an Oscar for The Yearling--Olivia de Havilland robbed her of it--but no one's going to rob her this year.  She'll get it for Johnny Belinda.  It's in the air, everyone says so.  She can practically feel the weight of the golden statuette, shiveringly cool in her hand.  Ronnie is jealous of how well she's doing, but she has arrived at last, and neither he nor the kids nor anyone will take it away from her.

            Ronnie pays the waiter and mutters, "We'll talk more in the car."

            Abruptly, she rises.  "No, we won't.  You were right before--there's nothing more for us to discuss."  She gets her wrap and marches out to the parking lot, where he catches up with her.  "Get away from me!" she yells loud enough for         

the attendant to hear.  Ronnie hates scenes, fears the columnists--well, too bad. "Go on with your meetings and your backroom deals.  I got along without you before, and I can certainly get along without you now!"  She slams the door and drives off.  Let him take a cab home, she thinks with satisfaction.

            She hears him enter and head into the den as she's checking on the kids.  She knows what he'll be doing in there, for hours: taking his gun collection off the wall, piece by piece, polishing the metal, oiling the parts, weighing each weapon in his hand.  His taste for guns developed during the War.  She forbids him to keep them loaded, but she has instructed the nurse to keep Michael and Maureen out of the den; she does not trust her husband.  And she is constantly aware of the loaded .32 Smith & Wesson he wears in a shoulder holster, under his jacket.

            Maureen's face barely crests the covers as she sleeps. She looks more like Jane every day--but somehow the sight of her living daughter makes Jane think of Christina; she now feels an odd aversion.  Little Michael sleeps in his tiny bed and draws in rapid, rabbitty infant's breaths.  Poor Michael. His adoption was supposed to save her marriage.  What is she to do with these two children?

            She is already tucked in on her side of the bed when Ronnie enters.  He places the revolver on the bedside table as usual, turns out the lamp and climbs in.  She assumes he knows better than to try any funny business with her tonight --good, he does.  She drifts off, thinking of her solo trip to New York.  She can see old friends.  Perhaps she'll leave in the morning . . .

            Jane awakens to find Ronnie sitting up in bed, the revolver in his hands, cocked at the door.  It has happened before.  Each time, it terrifies her.  "For God's sake, what are you doing?"

            "I thought I heard a prowler," he whispers, not looking at her.  The moonlight holds the silhouette of her husband and the gun.  Going back to sleep while he sits like that is out of the question.  Perhaps he heard Communists under the bed.  Or perhaps there are Fellow Travelers breaking in downstairs.  Jane's head sinks back into the pillow.  She closes her eyes.  When can you say that enough is enough?  How do you know, she wonders, closing her eyes, that the marriage is truly over?

 

 

            All morning she avoids making eye contact with him.  The very sight of him depresses her.  The director and all the supporting cast, she is sure, can sense the tension between them.  She rehearses the songs and the sketches with him; when they are not rehearsing, she gets as far from him as possible.  She tries on wigs in her dressing room, or plays with her daughter.

            She is not especially thrilled about starting the second season, although touring has been a drag, as usual.  Acid

music blaring on the bus non-stop, and her husband wouldn't even let her hang out with the musicians in the front.  Maybe

he thought they'd corrupt her.  Or that she'd find them attractive.  Whereas he could make it with a million groovy chicks backstage, and she wasn't even supposed to know.

            It's strange to think how much she dug him at first.  A gangly zit-faced sixteen year old, she just wanted out of her mom's house.  And he was in the industry.  He worked with Spector (and learned from Spector how to lock up his woman) and he seemed so with-it and wise.  He promised to make her a star--and he did.  So, why is she so miserable?

            Showtime.  The stage is white circles set in a black background, surrounded by glowing orange balloon lights decorated with their cartoon faces.  Her threads this season are as hip as last year's; Bob Mackie has come through for her again.  She steps out in a long white skirt with a light blue and a light green stripe rolling across it.  Her white halter top barely covers her boobs, and shows off her deep tan.  Her giant silver hoop earrings shine beneath the long cascade of black hair. 

            Sonny is wearing a matching outfit, but still doesn't look very together.  Typical.  His white vest has green shoulders and blue stripes.  The pointed collar of the shirt

underneath flares over the top, and his white pants are cuffed wide over his shiny white platform boots, which don't

come close to making him as tall as she.  She sways as she       

sings into the mike: "If you're gonna let me down, let me down easy."

            "Or baby, please don't let me down at all," Sonny sings back--or tries to.  He can barely reach the notes, and he's pointing his finger and doing his weird hipster dance, trying as always for some kind of Ringo Starr loveable jive turkey image and not quite making it.  For all his clowning, on some level he really does want to be a swinger.

            The song stops, and he launches into his shtick.  "I am back, folks.  It's a new time and a new day.  Sonny Bones is back!  Mr. Excitement is here."

            She stares at him, disinterested, deprecating.  She is very good at this.

            "I have arrived, lady.  My train is on the track--woo woo--and I am back.  Woo woo!"

            The gag is that he spits on her as he makes train noises.  Unfortunately, he really does.  He wipes it off, and then she does it properly, and they trade barbs.  "I can't believe I married the whole thing," she deadpans, and the audience laughs.  It is the first Alka-Seltzer joke of the evening.

            Some of the jokes about how boring, unattractive, stupid and talentless Sonny is seem too close for comfort.  He spends hours at home fussing over his mustache.  He never tells her she's beautiful or pretty.  He's dull and repetitive in the sack.  His solo records bomb, and hers do okay.  She reassures him now: "Everything's gonna be beautiful and romantic and love, everything's gonna be peace this year.  Honestly, I don't know how to say this, but I told your mother to expect the patter of little feet around the house."  She wonders what Chastity, backstage, makes of this part of the routine.

            "Aw, you're kidding, Cher.  Y-you mean--"

            "That's right, that's right.  You're sleeping at her house tonight."

            During the commercial break, she changes into a glittering black evening gown, and Sonny gets into a tux. They say a tux can make any man look good, but still . . . Their special guest Michael Jackson of the Jackson Five joins them on stage, visibly nervous, his 'fro bobbing above his orange suit.

            "Gosh, Michael," Sonny says.  "You sure have accomplished a lot for someone so young.  What are you going to be when you grow up, anyway?"

            "I can't make up my mind whether to be a jet pilot, an astronaut or the Governor of Georgia," the kid says stiffly.

The director has been working with him all week, trying to

get the grim adolescent awkwardness out of his posture and delivery.  Still, the line gets a laugh. 

            "Well, Michael, you're so young you have plenty of time to decide."

            "I guess so, Mr. Bono.  You've done pretty good yourself."

            "Aw, shucks."

            "You've been a big hit on television, and in the movies and on records."  No, the kid cannot act.  Even off-stage, he can barely carry on a conversation.  But all week during rehearsal he has been studying Cher when she is singing, drinking in her every gesture and inflection with an intensity that disturbs her.  She gets a very weird vibe off of him.

            "There's only one thing I'd like to ask you, Mr. Bono. What are you going to be when you grow up?"

            Sonny puts on an angry warning scowl, as the audience roars approval.  The old notion that Sonny is just a kid at heart.  When he was an old fogey from the day she met him.  He packaged the two of them as hippies to make a buck, but he's really Mr. Establishment.  Hell, since they've been together, he's never even let her smoke a joint!

            He was going to take on a bunch of controversial topics, (incest, prostitution, lesbianism), in her second film, Chastity--and then he sold out, chickened out, kept watering

down the script until it was almost as safe and bland as their clowning, sketch-filled movie Good Times.  Safe and bland as the show.

            The cameras cut to a segment of Michael performing with his brothers.  In white satiny suits, they belt out a lousy song, something about "Looking through the windows of love," that Michael almost makes sound like a legit single.  When he sings, the kid is magic.  Damn.  He shouldn't be studying her--she has nothing to teach him about working a song.  The J5 move in synchronized motion, stamping and then stepping behind, then stamping and sliding their feet together.  Their slacks bounce and flair, sprouting high white platforms that make their legs look rubbery and long, like on their cartoon show.  The number ends.

            And the beat goes on, as Sonny would say.  Cher clambers up on the piano in an orange slut dress and does the Vamp number.  Little skits about Cleopatra, with her in a headdress and Sonny as Mark Anthony in a black tunic, and Sadie Thompson seducing missionaries.  "She was a scamp, a camp and a bit of a tramp, she was a v-a-m-p vamp."  Always a crowd pleaser.
            After the break, Sonny, in his tux, is visibly nervous.

Cher has changed into a shoulder length black wig with bangs, and a gown of insipid pink.  She is still ignoring him

offstage.  He'll probably lay a really heavy guilt trip on her later for the way she is acting, but she doesn't care. The next guest was all his idea; he still can hardly believe it's going to happen.  She doesn't really share his excitement.

            "Ladies and gentleman," Sonny says.  "It's our honor to have with us on our first show of the season, from the great state of California, Governor Ronald Reagan."        

            The old boy comes out--and there is something intimidating about him up close, she has to admit to herself,

as he thanks them for all the enjoyment of the previous season and wishes them luck.  She whispers "Thank you."

            Sonny says, loudly: "Gee, thanks, Governor Reagan."

            "Aw, you can call me by my first name."

            "Governor?" Sonny asks wonderingly.

            It's not entirely an act.  He has been gazing worshipfully at this guy during rehearsals the way little Michael Jackson has been staring at her.  This old coot is Sonny's role model, Cher realizes suddenly; he is everything her husband would like to become.  Hell, maybe Sonny should try a career in politics when show biz dries up for him . . .

            "Do you really like our show?" she asks.

            "Oh, Cher, it's one of my seven favorite variety shows."

            Sonny puzzles.  "There's only seven variety shows on television."

            "I know.  That's one of the first things I learned in this business--not to play favorites."

            It gets a big laugh.  The Governor is a natural--a much more relaxed actor than the kid.

            "Governor," Sonny starts, "I just wanna say--I got a surprise for you.  Cher doesn't know anything about this either, and I know the whole world is just going to be thrilled by what I'm about to say."

            "You're retiring from show business," she sourly suggests.

            "Not in front of the Governor, Cher."  He sounds genuinely wounded.  Too much of the show is almost real, especially the putdowns.  She remembers talking to Tina once in the dressing room, when Ike and Tina were guests on the show.  Tina said: "The higher the throne you put your man on, the louder the crash when he falls off."

            "Governor," Sonny continues now, stumbling over his words even more than usual, "I wanna tell you that I've been a fan of yours for years, I have seen all your movies, and Governor, as a matter of fact, I like nothing better than watching your movies on the Late Show, nothing."

            "That's funny, so do I," Reagan says, and nails the laugh.

            "Governor--I just wanna say that I was personally shocked when I found out that you never got an ac--an a--what do you call those things?"  Far out.  Sonny truly seems to be in trouble.  How could he fuck up this badly?  "I was shocked

to find out that you didn't get an Oscar, one of those things."   

            Reagan smiles at the flubbed cue.  "You couldn't understand that?"

            Sonny, half-panicking, bedazzled by Reagan, laughs at himself as the audience gets what's going on.  "No, I couldn't understand it.  Besides being shocked, I couldn't understand it."            
            "Well, neither can I."

            "Well, I wanna settle the score for you right this minute by presenting you with this."  Sonny brings out the

misshapen, beaky gold spray-painted statuette he has been holding behind his back and places it on the podium.  "This little number right here.  Not only for your great acting, but for your tremendous achievements in all fields, and as a fine dresser and an all-around swell guy."

            Reagan peers at the gargoyle.  "What is this?"

            "That's the first Sonny Bono Show Business Award.  It's the coveted Bono."

            Sonny prevails on Reagan to give a speech, to use one he has on him for the dedication of the Kukamonga County Fair.

"Never argue with a tax payer," Reagan says, shaking his head, and gets a big laugh.  He launches into the speech: "On my left, I see a luscious tomato."  He smiles and nods at Cher.  "And on my right, the world's largest vegetable."  The

laughs come on cue, and Sonny looks glum.  Reagan runs through a series of unflattering county fair metaphors for the show, ends up saying "this is unquestionably the biggest turkey I have ever seen," and leaves the stage.

            "The Governor's Bono," Sonny says, looking down at it. "I guess he forgot it."       

            "Wanna bet?" Cher sneers.  And gets a big ol' laugh.     

            Mocking her husband on TV is the last thrill left in the relationship, she thinks while changing into a sparkling gown for her solo torch song.  Any serious moments, any real music has to be done without him.  He's just a square little

tin-plated loser.  She hangs her head as she sings.  She is so tired of this crazy scene.  Could they get divorced and keep on doing the show together?  Would the network go for it?  Could she make it in show business if she tried performing on her own?   How can you tell that it's time to split?  When do you know for sure that the marriage is over?