L.A. Confidential
An hour into my interview with veteran Hollywood columnist James
Bacon, it hits me -- I can't name one legendary star he doesn't
know like a close relative. I throw him a question about actor
Robert Blake, who's behind bars awaiting trial for killing his
wife. "It's hard to call that case," muses the 88-year-old Bacon.
"You really don't know whether he is telling the truth or not.
I met Blake when he was 16 years old. He talked like a young Richard
Burton. Years later he got the television series, Baretta,
and began talking in real life with 'dees' and 'dems.' That floored
me because he had wonderful diction and a great voice."
Okay, let's hear about Richard Burton: "I started drinking with
Burton in 1949. He could outdrink anyone but Elizabeth Taylor.
I have always thought that is why their marriage broke up. Who
wants to be a legendary drinker married to a wife who can drink
you under the table?"
To test him further, I ask about silent screen star Buster Keaton.
"I knew Buster very well," he shoots back. "I once saw him in
a film where he dangled from a 500-foot cliff. I later asked him
why he didn't use a stunt double. Buster replied gruffly, 'Stunt
men don't get laughs.'"
James Bacon is a Stargate into the hidden worlds of Hollywood.
He stepped through the surreal cords of Tinsel Town in 1948 as
a brash reporter for the Associated Press. Since the A.P. fed
his stories to more than 8,000 newspapers in the world, Bacon
didn't stay a stranger in a strange land. He not only got interviews
but also invitations to A-list parties
He joined Humphrey Bogart's infamous Holmby Hills Rat Pack,
a drinking club that included Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, David
Niven and Spencer Tracy, among others. Named for the area where
Bogart lived, the Holmby Hills Rat Pack drank cases of Jack Daniels
"thanks to Sinatra, who got us hooked on the stuff," Bacon recalls
today, relaxing at his Northridge, California, home. "One night
Sid Luft, Judy Garland's husband, got so drunk that he brushed
a row of books off Bogart's bookcase, climbed into the empty shelf,
and passed out. The next morning Bogie called me at home and said,
'What the hell am I going to do with Luft? He is still in that
bookcase!' I told him, 'Let him sleep it off, he's a frustrated
bookend, I guess.'"
Since Luft couldn't drive Judy Garland home that night, Bacon
did. "I knew her for years. No one would ever know she had drinking
and financial problems by talking with her. She masked everything
with a sense of humor."
Bogart had a sharp wit, too, even while dying of cancer. He
became so angry over morbid rumors of his impending death that
he summoned Bacon to his house and gave him this press statement:
"I have heard that both my lungs were removed and replaced by
a pump salvaged from a defunct Standard Oil Station. I have practically
been on the way to every cemetery in town, including several where
I am certain they only accept dogs." At the end, he snarled, "You
bastards."
Bogart's opposite was Luft, who was so ill-tempered he once
tried to punch Don Rickles for insulting him during his nightclub
act, says Bacon. After spotting Luft in the audience, Rickles
taunted, "Laugh it up, Sid! Judy has written you out of the will!"
An enraged Luft stormed the stage, but security guards hauled
him back.
Bacon claims he launched Rickles's career one night when he
convinced Sinatra and Lauren Bacall to attend the struggling comic's
act with him. "When we arrived at the nightclub, the owner didn't
sit us ringside, he put a table on the stage for us," Bacon remembers.
"Near the end of his act, Rickles got brave and said to Sinatra,
'Remember the good old days, Frank, when you had a voice?' Suddenly,
the world stopped. Every eye in the place turned to Sinatra. No
one dared to laugh unless Frank laughed first. After a pause,
Sinatra broke out laughing. The audience, as if on cue, laughed,
too. Rickles was made that night."
Bacon enjoyed a close friendship with Sinatra, who was notorious
for waging legendary feuds with the news media. How did he do
it? "It was easy: I just treated him like any other god," Bacon
jokes. "Seriously, in all the years I knew Sinatra, he was always
the most charming guy you would ever want to meet. He was never
mean to me." Bacon's most vivid memory of Sinatra is touring with
him and landing on a remote airstrip in southern Africa and seeing
hundred of natives emerge from the jungle foliage chanting, "Frankie!
Frankie!" "Those tribesmen couldn't speak much English, and I'm
sure they didn't own many radios, but they had heard Sinatra's
music somewhere and fell under his spell like the rest of us,"
Bacon recalls, shaking his head.
Today, Bacon and his wife, Doris, are just as eager to attend
a birthday party for their grandchildren as a star-studded party
with close friends Bob Stack, R.J. Wagner and Red Buttons. "I'm
a member of the 'old school' of Hollywood," he proudly admits.
"I don't think any living actor today can rival Clark Gable or
John Wayne. I've never met Brad Pitt, and the closest I ever got
to Julia Roberts was at the premiere of Ocean's Eleven.
I'm amazed at her beauty. She is a hundred times more beautiful
in person than on the screen. I like Jim Carrey, he's a great
comedian, but I don't think he'll become a legend like Cary Grant.
I haven't spent any time with contemporary directors like Martin
Scorcese. I knew John Ford, Howard Hawkes and Frank Capra in their
later years when they couldn't get work. They were old-fashioned
directors, which means they went over budget."
The reels of time have been kind to Bacon. His gray hair is
thick and rakish; his eyes are a vivid soft blue; his facial wrinkles
conspire to give him a ruddy look. He still hits the links twice
a week, where he shot a 125-yard hole-in-one in 1996. TV and documentary
producers consult him for authentic details on "old Hollywood"
stars or locales. Radio talk show host Larry King invited him
twice last winter to join panel discussions on legendary stars.
He might do a solo interview with King. In the 1970s, he published
two best-selling books of memoirs, Hollywood Is a Four Letter
Town and Made in Hollywood. Reviews in The New
York Times and Variety for the first book were so
great that "I honestly could not have written them better myself,"
says Bacon. Such celebrities as Sinatra, Lucille Ball and Clint
Eastwood crowned Bacon as "one hell of a newspaperman" (Frank's
words) who lived his stories alongside the stars. But he is not
through yet. He is thinking of publishing a collection of his
columns.
There's a framed photograph of Bacon and Marilyn Monroe on his
wall. He met Marilyn when she first arrived in Hollywood and quickly
became her confidante. "She was soft and sweet," Bacon says, gazing
at the photograph. "That was her charm." She also was insecure.
"Marilyn never finished high school, so she had a great desire
to better herself intellectually. I once told her I had attended
Notre Dame for three years, and she thought I was God. She called
me all the time to ask what she should read."
The actress was promiscuous, he continues. She slept with directors,
photographers, columnists, anyone whom she thought might advance
her career. She told Bacon intimate details of her sexual trysts
with John F. Kennedy before and after he became president. "She
was very much in love with him, but Kennedy didn't care how she
felt. There were no niceties in sex with Kennedy. . . . For Kennedy,
Marilyn was just another girl. He had so many of them." Contrary
to popular belief, Marilyn Monroe never had an affair with Bobby
Kennedy, says Bacon. The only time she saw Robert Kennedy was
when he tried to dissuade her from pursuing his brother.
In August 1962, Bacon was the only reporter who got into Marilyn's
bungalow on the night she killed herself. He arrived at her Brentwood
home nearly as fast as the police, after being tipped by an AP
photographer who had heard the report on a police scanner. He
slipped by the cop at the door by claiming he was from the coroner's
office. "I took a quick look into the bedroom and saw her nude
body sprawled on the bed. I don't know how long she had been dead,
but she was sure as hell dead. There were empty vodka bottles
and empty pill bottles everywhere. I got out right away before
I was discovered."
To this day Bacon doesn't believe Marilyn committed suicide.
"I was with her five days before she died, and she was drinking
champagne and vodka and popping pills. I said, 'Marilyn, the combination
of those things will kill you.' She took another drink, and popped
another pill, and said to me, 'It hasn't killed me yet.' Five
days later she was dead. It wasn't suicide -- she took one pill
too many and one drink too many."
The most beautiful woman he ever saw in Hollywood was not Marilyn
but Elizabeth Taylor. "In her prime, no one touched her beauty,"
he states emphatically. The biggest scoop of Bacon's career was
his 1958 interview with Elizabeth Taylor the night her husband,
producer Mike Todd, was killed in an airplane crash. Bacon says
he was scheduled to ride on the private plane with Todd to New
York that fateful night, but the stormy weather spooked him. He
begged off at the last minute. His intuition proved right. The
storm took down Todd's plane over New Mexico.
Elizabeth Taylor had also stayed behind because she had a cold.
Bacon was alerted to the tragedy in the middle of the night when
a fellow AP reporter called him from New Mexico after reading
his name on the plane's passenger list. He went with Taylor's
secretary and doctor to her house to break the news. Opening the
door in her nightie, Elizabeth's first words were: "He's dead,
isn't he? He was supposed to call me from Tulsa at 2 o'clock this
morning. He didn't call." She then became hysterical, Bacon recalls,
running and screaming through the house until her doctor tackled
her and gave her a shot that knocked her out. Bacon remained in
the house while scores of reporters waited outside. Later, Elizabeth
called him upstairs and gave him a story. It made Page One all
over the world.
He sees Elizabeth occasionally. Both are friends of pop star
Michael Jackson. "I knew him when he was black," Bacon quips.
"He has always been a very nice kid, but his recent behavior has
become more and more bizarre. I attribute some of that to the
fact that he never had a childhood. He went to work when he was
about 6 years old, performing with his brothers in the Jackson
5. Now that he is grown, Michael is living out the childhood he
never had. It's a common tragedy for child stars."
