Growing Up Laughing_ My Story and the Story of Funny - Marlo Thomas [31]
And then there was Livingstone’s, a sweet, one-story fabric and clothing shop for the whole family. I remember the day Mom and Grandma took me there to buy my first bra. It didn’t have cups—just two triangles—but I was thrilled. In many ways, my everyday childhood memories aren’t really that different from kids in other neighborhoods of that era.
Except maybe for the time we had an Arabian prince over for lunch.
I’m not sure how it happened, but my parents were asked to host a luncheon for a crown prince of Arabia on his visit to Hollywood. I guess the planners felt that because Dad was Lebanese, we were close enough. The prince wanted to meet the A-list of Hollywood—like Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra and Gregory Peck—and my mother couldn’t wait to start planning the lunch. Mom, who was a great hostess, was about to climb the Mt. Everest of parties.
Through the years, Mother had collected many pieces of real beauty for the house, especially for the dining table—some antiquities, some modern, and all exquisite. She even had a gorgeous set of 14-karat gold flatware that she had bought at auction. All of this finery came out of boxes, out of cabinets, out of the basement, as Mom began to envision the great table at which she would receive the prince and the distinguished guests. You couldn’t get her attention for weeks before the event. She was completely obsessed.
As for Terre, Tony and me, this was one of the few parties we were definitely not invited to. But I will always remember what the table looked like. It was so beautiful as to be on fire. The lace cloth, the goldware, the antiques, the flowers. The prince would surely feel at home. It would be like lunch at a palace.
Just before noon on the day of the luncheon, the cars began to line the street in front of our house on Elm Drive. Then the guests started streaming in, and they all swooned as they walked into the dining room. It was Mother’s opening night and they had hung a star.
After everyone had taken their assigned seats, my father gave a toast welcoming the prince, his entourage and the guests. He looked out at the impressive array of extravagance, held his glass high and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is not an indication of my wealth. This is it.” And he sat down . . . to thunderous laughter.
But for all the glamour of Beverly Hills, there was a shadow side that made it different from other neighborhoods. There was a lot of loneliness and unwanted exposure. Most of the kids had high-powered, high-profile parents, many of them working on the road, or on movie locations.
Maria Cooper was in my class at Marymount. She was an absolutely beautiful girl with a disposition to match—an angel, really. I never met her father, Gary Cooper. He was always filming a movie somewhere, so he never made it to any of the Father-Daughter Days at our school. My dad didn’t make so many of them either.
Maria’s father had an affair with the actress Patricia Neal that made it into the press, and eventually led to her parents’ scandalous breakup. As Pat Neal wrote in her memoir, she once ran into Maria, and the thirteen-year-old girl spit at her when she saw her. Beautiful, sweet Maria. What public humiliation and heartbreak can do to the spirit of even the most gracious.
Another schoolmate of mine at Marymount was Judy Lewis. Her mother, Loretta Young, was my godmother, and Judy was Loretta’s adopted daughter. But all of our mothers knew the truth. Judy wasn’t really adopted—she was the illegitimate child from an affair that Loretta had with Clark Gable. The women would always whisper about Judy’s “Clark Gable