Betty Marvin - Tales of a Hollywood Housewife: A Memoir by the First Mrs. Lee Marvin

Tales of a
Hollywood
Housewife

A Memoir By The First Mrs. Lee Marvin

Betty Marvin

With Gila Sand

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Bloomington

Tales of a Hollywood Housewife

A Memoir by The First Mrs. Lee Marvin

Copyright 2009 by Betty Marvin

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ISBN: 978-1-4401-9827-4 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-4401-9828-1 (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-4401-9829-8 (hbk)

iUniverse rev. date: 2/23/10

Contents

And thanks to their father, Lee, for the adventure.

This is not just another Hollywood story. Bettys marriage to Lee Marvin will take you on a sweeping journey, from rags to riches and back to rags. To be able to emerge as a survivor from those tumultuous Hollywood days is remarkable. It takes guts to keep marching forward. Betty does just that in her entertaining, humorous, and poignant memoir.

Tab Hunter

To my poet friend Shirley Windward, for encouraging me to write and showing me how; Kathryn Harrison, for her support; and Gila Sand, for her invaluable assistance.

Except for seeing very few movies when I was growing up in the small river town of Sedro-Woolley, Washington, and imitating the Judy Garland songs and dances seen in those movies, I had no knowledge of or interest in Hollywood. I was taught to play the piano and given an appreciation of all the arts by my Grandma Ebeling, In 1945, after graduating from high school at sixteen, I ran away to find my father in Los Angeles, with the dream of majoring in music at UCLA.

Getting to know Daddy was an education in itself. But it was pure serendipity that my room mate Joanne took me to her cousin Lauren Bacalls home to have Christmas dinner with the family, including her husband Humphrey Bogart. It was also a stroke of fate that my school friend and singing partner, Jerry, should introduce me to Roger Edens, head music producer at MGM, who became my coach. I was set for a career as a singer, but I needed to make money. I got even closer to the Hollywood life by becoming the nanny to Joan Crawfords four children. That crazy experience lasted for two years.

I was certainly not prepared at twenty-four for a whirlwind courtship and marriage to Lee Marvin, who was just getting started as an actor in Hollywood. I put aside seven years of voice training because my husband declared there would be only one career in the family. I had been taught as a young girl that marriage and family were the only important goals in life. Lee and I were madly in love, and that was enough. We were completely optimistic about the future, sharing a little apartment sparsely filled with secondhand furniture. I had never been happier. By the time the marriage ended, four children and fifteen years later, we were living in a large beautiful home full of priceless antiques and I was miserable.

For much of my married life I appeared as a tall blonde in a mink coat, attending premieres on the arm of a move star, famous for my fabulous Hollywood dinner parties, acting the life of the Hollywood wife to the fullest. Few knew about the roller-coaster ride of my marriage to Lee, a Jekyll-and-Hyde husband who ricocheted between a life of devotion to me and the children and periods of binge drinking and womanizing.

As miserable as I was, I was afraid to cut the cord. What would become of me and our kids? Leaving was so frightening, leaving and not knowing what I was walking into, particularly with Lees threats to destroy me if I dared to walk away. But I had to get out. I put that tumultuous life behind me. My days became a juggling act, as a single mother back in school, pursuing a career as a painter.

After earning a BFA and MFA in visual art at the Otis Art Institute in 1976, I was enjoying an exciting life in my studio in Venice, with a career full of travel and exhibits. In 1990, I innocently signed away my Venice building and my home, in a bad investment. Suddenly I was homeless, once again forced to employ all my skills to survive. At the low point, my only possessions were my old Chrysler, my dog, and my typewriter. I drove up and down the California coast finding food and shelter by working odd jobs. It was very cathartic, banging it all out on the typewriter keys, trying to understand how I got myself into such a mess.

I have gone from early nothing, to being rich, then being homeless, and on to the real wealth that comes after being cured of the money disease and discovering the true value of a joyful life.

My guide for making art has always been having enough courage to run the high risk of grand fun. Now, at eighty one, I apply that to life, having as much fun as possible.

I love words and enjoy telling stories. Having a trained eye and ear has been invaluable in envisioning scenes and characters and hearing what they have to say.

As I learned from those experiences and was able to distance myself from my past I became interested in putting my stories in to a book. It has been a rewarding endeavor.

Finding Daddy in the Land of Milk and Honey

T HE G REYHOUND BUS pulled into the Hollywood station. I was a rumpled mess, exhausted from thirty-six hours of trying to shut out the noise of two drunken sailors and curl my long, young body into a comfortable position. I carried my Samsonite suitcase into the waiting room, hoping to recognize the man in the photo, now older and out of uniform. Before running away from my grandparents house in the small river town of Sedro-Woolley, Washington, in June 1945, I had phoned him at his office, collect, to say I was coming. He was out, so I had left a message. But no one was there to meet me.

My heart sank. Had my father pulled another disappearing act? I searched in my pocket, found his home phone number, resurrected my courage, and called.

Hello, a sweet-voiced woman answered.

Is this Hollywood 9141?

Yes.

Is Mr. Ebeling there?

Whos calling?

Betty his daughter. Who is she? I wondered. I tried to pick up pieces of the long, muffled discussion in the background. Finally she returned to the phone and I told her where I was.

Wait there, honey. Ill be right down.

An hour later a big, buxom, bleached blond in a red-and yellow-flowered jersey dress with plunging neckline, her heavy makeup obvious in the noonday sun, walked in, spotted me, and came right over. We looked at each other in disbelief. I was shocked by her appearance, and she probably had never confronted a skinny, six-foot teenager in saddle shoes and letter sweater. Finally she broke the ice. Hi, honey, Im Faye.

Following Good trip? and Fine, we lapsed into an awkward silence. She picked up my suitcase and led me out of the building to a sleek, black Lincoln Continental, double-parked.

My shyness was quickly superseded by fear when Faye, without warning, pulled into heavy traffic. Horns honked and drivers shouted. The car lurched up Sunset as her right foot spasmodically jumped from accelerator to brake, barely avoiding rear-ending the car ahead. Amazingly, we made it to the turnoff for Hollywood Hills without a scratch. The Lincoln swerved up a winding road and pulled into the driveway of a stately Mediterranean mansion.