Barbara Marshall - One Way Ticket to L.A.: How A Nurse From Ohio Found Love in Hollywood

ONE-WAY TICKET TO L.A.

How a Nurse From Ohio Found Love in Hollywood

Copyright 2020 Barbara Marshall with Lori Marshall

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without the express permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews.

For information, contact Barbara Marshall

The views expressed in this book are solely those of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-7354995-0-5 U.S.A.

ISBN: 978-1-7354995-1-2

Published by Sarah Street Press, Los Angeles, Calif. sarahstreetpress.com

Cover design by Todd Gallopo of Meat and Potatoes, Inc. Interior design by Jacqueline Gilman, Gilman Design, Larkspur, Calif.

Photo credits:

Cover: Mike Eliason @eliasonphotos

Inside flap: courtesy of the Marshall Family Collection

Back cover: Ron Batzdorff, courtesy of ronbatzdorff.com

Michaela Lincoln

Dave Allocca/Starpix/REX/Shutterstock (9778066f) Barbara Marshall and Julia Roberts, Garry Marshall Tribute performance of Pretty Woman: The Musical, New York, USA 02 Aug 2018

All other photos courtesy of the Marshall Family Collection

In loving memory of my husband, Garry,
and the family we created together:
Lori, Kathleen, Scott, Lily, Charlotte, Sam,
Ethan, Emma, and Siena

CONTENTS

AUTHORS NOTE: I have tried to recreate events, settings, and conversations to the best of my ability from my memories of them. In a few instances, I have changed the names of individuals to maintain their anonymitythis is only to protect their privacy, not to alter the intent of my story. Not everyone wants to be in the limelight. Welcome to Hollywood.

PROLOGUE

THE FIRST PERSON TO call me the morning we announced that my husband, director Garry Marshall, had died, on July 19, 2016, at the age of 81, was Bette Midler. The phone rang, I picked it up, and I recognized her voice immediately. I said, Hello, Bette, and then we both started crying.

Garry had directed Bette in his movie Beaches almost 30 years earlier, but they had remained friends. More recently, he had directed her daughter, Sophie, in an off-Broadway play called Billy & Ray at the Vineyard Theatre in New York. Garry was, quite simply, a wonderful man, and I knew it. Many other people were fortunate enough to have known it, too. Finally, I stopped crying long enough to talk to Bette.

Will you do something for me? I asked.

Whatever you need, she said.

We are planning a celebration of Garrys life on November 13, which would have been his 82nd birthday. Will you come? I asked.

Ill be there, she said.

Will you sing a song? I asked.

Yes, Bette said.

Just a few months later, she stood before more than 2,000 people at the Valley Performing Arts Center, at Cal State University Northridge, and sang Wind Beneath My Wings for my husband, Garry. There was not, as they say, a dry eye in the house. It was the perfect song for a man who had brought love, laughter, and joy to so many people.

The fact that Garry was a public figure was sometimes stressful for our children. They had to share him with so many others, people we often called FOGS, for Friends Of Garry. Some were talented up-and-coming actors, and others were, honestly, just related to his dentist and wanted a cameo in a movie. When it came time to plan his funeral, just days after his death, my children asked that we keep it small, with only immediate family. I felt the same way. Our whole lives wed had to live with their dad surrounded by actors, actresses, writers, and producers who wanted Garry to give them a job. When it came time to bury him, we wanted it to be just us, his family. We were the people who loved and supported him most, and we had to take our time and say goodbye in our own way.

It is not a mystery how Garry died. He had a stroke on June 27, in the week after a near-perfect Fathers Day weekend. The stroke was complicated by pneumonia and possibly a second stroke. He survived in Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank for three weeks. The doctors and nurses there were nothing short of outstanding. Garry was alert and responsive, and we were all able to tell him that we loved him, that he would be safe, and that he would be okay. We even showed him old episodes of his TV shows Happy Days and The Odd Couple, and he laughed. When we showed him a snippet from Laverne & Shirley, he made a grouchy face, because that had been a stressful show for him. Typical Garry Marshallmaking jokes with his eyes just days before he died. He was always an excellent patient. We were making plans to bring him home. And then, on that final day, July 19, he simply closed his eyes and died, holding my hand and the hands of our three children, Lori, Kathleen, and Scott.

The minute after he died, I picked up his shoes and dirty clothing and said, Lets go, kids. I grew up the oldest of five children in a Cincinnati family that barely got by, and Im not one to wallow in tears. Im a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps kind of woman, and that is one of the things Garry loved about me. I am a nurse with optimism running through my veins, and he was a hypochondriac who worried all the time about every cough and sneeze. We were the perfect pair, and at that moment I felt so lucky to have been his wife for 53 years. I felt so sad, but I was also so grateful to have been with him for so many wonderful years. We definitely had our difficult times and dark days, as in any good marriage, but in the end, we were still together, laughing and doing the Jumble puzzle in the Los Angeles Times together every single morning.

Four days after Garry passed away, we held a small service for him in a chapel at Forest Lawn cemetery. The group included our children and their spouses, our grandchildren, Garrys sisters, Penny and Ronny, and their daughters. The group was so small that only two people signed the guest book, so I threw it away. Garry had wanted to be buried in a coffin, so we chose one with a purple tint, because purple was his favorite color, for his alma mater, Northwestern University. We buried him with some of his favorite things: his St. Christophers medal, a small red DeWitt Clinton High School duffle bag (which he carried all the time for years!), and his baseball glove. The children wrote notes that they put in the bag. The day he had the stroke, he would not let the emergency room nurse take off his wedding ring. So I let him be buried with it, too.

The children and his best friend, Harvey Keenan, said a few words at the service, and then we followed the coffin to the cemetery plot that Garry had picked out himself several years earlier. There was a fire north of us in Canyon Country that day, and the sky was a brilliant orange as I watched my son, my daughters husbands, my two grandsons, Pennys grandson, Spencer, and Harvey lower Garrys casket into the earth. The plot he had chosen was under a shady tree, with a bench he had designed and a plaque that read Sit on it, a phrase from Happy Days.