When I was very young, growing up in South Dakota, some of the first words I learned to say were, "Come up and see me some time." By the time I was in grammar school, the regular family thing when company came was: Hey, Joanie! Come in here and show us your Mae West imitation!

I'd put my hand on my hip and vamp around a moment before delivering the line over my shoulder. Come up and see me some time.

By the time I moved with my parents to Los Angeles during WWII, I already had my sights set on being a movie star as glamorous as Mae West. We had barely unpacked from the long trip to California before my mother spotted an article in the newspaper about a gala party and one of Hollywood's most glamorous nightclubs, the Mocambo. Right after dinner we drove over and joined the crowd waiting to catch a glimpse of their favorite stars as they entered the club.

Clutching a brand-new autograph book, I squeezed my way to the front of the closely packed crowd behind the barricades. My eyes popped as the stars climbed smiling and waving out of their cars and into the bright lights, past the cheering gauntlet of fans.

Bette Davis hurried in, so small she looked like a young girl.

A collective sigh escaped the crowd as a giant Packard limousine pulled to the curb and disgorged the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. Mae West.

Clad in a black gown with silver sequins that appeared to have been sprayed on, and with her blonde hair encircling her hair like a halo, she was escorted by an entourage of half a dozen tanned and well-built young men.

I wanted desperately to ask for her autograph. "Go on, Jo, ask her," my mother urged, reading my mind.

"But what if she says no?" I asked in a quavering voice.

A strange woman nearby spoke up. "Go on, honey. She won't say no to someone as cute as you are."

I looked from the woman's eyes to my mother's. She nodded.

My knees shook as I slipped under the barricade and solemnly held out my autograph book and pen. "May I have your autograph, Miss West?"

She stopped and looked down at me. Her eyes were clear, crystalline blue. Her smile was like a bank of lights.

"Sure, sugar. What's you name?"

"Joanie…" I managed to say through a dry throat.

She made flourish and I heard the pen scratching on the paper. "There you go, Joanie," she said with that unmistakably throaty voice as she handed back my autograph book. She swept past with her entourage trailing in her wake.

I looked at what she had written. "Best of luck to Joanie, a very pretty girl." I stood in the walkway looking after her until my mother pulled me back behind the barrier.

That night before I drifted off to sleep with my autograph book tucked safely under my pillow I had definitely made up my mind. I would be a glamorous movie star just like Mae West-or nothing.

Fast forward a couple of decades.

I teamed up with producer/director/writer Albert Zugsmith to do a string of pictures for MGM. Among them was "The Beat Generation" in which I starred opposite a burly, rough-hewn hunk named Steve Cochran. Steve and I had a steamy on-screen chemistry that was equally matched by our off-screen chemistry.

I was recently legally separated from bandleader Ray Anthony, and on the prowl for someone to match my raging hormones. Ray had a small role in the movie, which had been arranged before we were estranged. Steve and I launched into an affair that had the cast and crew of "Beat Generation" whispering behind their hands. No sooner would we finish a scene than we would disappear into my dressing room for a quick fuck while they set up the next shot.

(Ray got the surprise of his life snooping around my dressing room one afternoon. When he opened the door without knocking, he found me sitting astride Steve having sex in a chair. Location never mattered much to me. If I had the urge to do someone in an elevator or a taxi or the swimming pool, that's where it happened.)

Steve and I had dated for a short time when I found out that he was also seeing Mae West on a regular basis. Steve had been a young actor in one of Mae's Broadway shows when she "discovered" him. (Mae always had a yen for younger men. Of course, I did too.) At first he told me that they were working on a script together, but as time went on, it became clear to me that there was a good bit of other work going on too. Steve finally admitted that he and Mae had been lovers for some time.

It has never been my style to share a lover. If someone isn't willing to be with me exclusively, I feel they should move on. But I made an exception in this case. It was, after all, Mae West.

Hey, Joanie! Come in here and show us your Mae West imitation.

Come up and see me some time.

Steve explained that whenever he was called to service Mae, he had to show up with a recent (and negative) test for venereal disease. Mae always liked a man who was dark and dangerous-looking, and equipped with a large cock. Steve fit the bill perfectly.

There was no question of romantic love with Steve. Our attraction was purely physical. So, I asked myself, do you really mind?

The answer, of course, was no. If I ever would have participated in a menage a trois, it would have been with Steve and Mae. I was never asked.

Mae West was the founder of the franchise. All of us who aspire to the mantle of "sex symbol" or "glamour girl" build on the foundations that Mae laid down. At a time in our history when a glimpse of a woman's ankle was thought of as maddeningly erotic, Mae was arrested for indecent behavior in a Broadway show that she wrote and produced. When the scripts she received from the studios were not up to her standards, Mae wrote her own. And at the time when she was of an age that most women sought out the rocking chair and knitting needle, Mae was strutting her stuff in Las Vegas and recording rock and roll records.

You go girl!

Mae has always held a special place in my heart. I was told that, of the Three M's, Mae liked Mamie the best. And she was kind enough in later years to give me cart blanche to use a song of hers in my night club act. When her long life was finally over, she had accumulated more myths, rumors, and legends than any three Hollywood stars. She lives on in our hearts and on our late movies. When I see one, I am always struck by how good, smart, and ahead of her time Mae West was. I like to think that Mae is smiling down on the rest of us carrying on in short skirts, plunging necklines, and thong bikinis. And I like to think that she is waiting for the rest of us.

Come up and see me some time.

Elvis:
Almost Love Me Tender

There is no place like Las Vegas. It is the locus of the collective American Fantasy. It is the beginning and end of people's dreams. It is a separate dimension where time is endless, and where games and greed, shows and sex are its chief commodity. The heat in summer, the cold in winter, the glitter and sleaziness of it in all weather combine to make it a world like no other. It is the Middle-Earth of sin. I love it.

I starred in the Latin Quarter Revue there one summer. In New York, the nightclub known as the Latin Quarter had long been world-renowned for great entertainment. Now the Las Vegas version of the Latin Quarter Review was also a hit. For me, it marked the beginning of a long and successful association with Lou Walters (papa of ABC's Barbara). I was booked for a four-week run in the show so I brought my son, Perry, and his nurse to stay with me in my suite. My husband, bandleader Ray Anthony, stayed in L.A. during the week to work on his Plymouth-sponsored television show, and returned to Vegas to spend the weekends with Perry and me.

But, as always in Las Vegas, temptation is never far away. You may try to hide from it, but it can find you the way a drop of water finds the leak in your roof. One Thursday afternoon the phone rang, and there was a familiar deep Southern drawl. Temptation was about to make a puddle on my floor.

"Hi, Mamie. This is Elvis Presley."

Elvis Presley! I remembered the first time I'd seen Elvis on television. He was making an appearance on The Tommy & Jimmy Dorsey Show. We had a big color television (one of the first color sets around-Ray was a fanatic for new electronic toys) and I flipped when I saw Elvis. I was like one of the teenagers squirming and screaming in the audience as he gyrated and crooned his songs. I loved his voice and the way he looked. Ray, one of the last of the big band orchestra leaders, was becoming increasingly bitter about the growing popularity of rock 'n roll music. He stamped angrily out of the room as I squealed over Elvis. (Another time Ray and I were meeting in New York during a hiatus in our work schedules. I took a suite at the Hampshire House, expecting Ray on a midday plane the next day. Someone had given me a poster of Elvis and, thinking that he was the hottest thing I'd ever seen, I pinned it up over the bed before going to sleep that night. Ray caught an earlier plane, however, and came in the next morning while I was still sleeping. When he saw the poster over the bed, he went through the roof and made me take it down.) To me, Elvis was magic. I'd imitated him in "Untamed Youth," wiggling my hips as I sang Eddie Cochran's songs. In fact, my imitation had been so good that the movie and I drew heavy fire from the movie censors. They refused to give the film their seal of approval. (Time has healed the wound. "Untamed Youth" is now firmly entrenched as a cult classic.)

"Well," I said, pulling myself together, "this is a surprise."

"How're you doin', Mamie? I understand your show is great."

"Thanks, Elvis, I'm fine. The show's a lot of fun."

"I'd like to come see you tonight. But I'd like to be sort of incognito, okay?"

"I'd love to have you as my guest. I'll reserve a table for you, okay?"

"Yeah, but tell 'em it's for Mr. Smith. I don't want anyone to know it's me. I'll call you after the show, Mamie. 'Bye."
I hung up the phone, the blood racing in my temples. Zowie! Elvis was coming to see my show! The little girl from Rowena, South Dakota had arrived.

That night, Elvis and two other men came to the show. He arrived after the showroom had darkened, and left a few minutes before the end. Backstage, I hadn't even had a chance to get out of my gown before I heard a knock at my dressing-room door.

"It's Elvis," the voice on the other side said. I let Elvis in while his friends waited in the hallway. Elvis was young and virile and handsome. He exuded a sort of barely-reined-in energy that immediately overheated the room, making the walls close in and the air seem thick. He wore dark pants and shirt and a dove-gray sport jacket. When I saw him in "Love Me Tender" his hair was dark blonde. Now his hair was dyed black, slicked back in a pompadour with a few locks hanging over his brow. I could have sworn I saw a hint of dark mascara on his lashes, but who cared? It was Elvis. On him it looked great. His eyes were a penetrating blue, and I was stunned by their power.

"Great show, Mamie!" he said.

"Thanks. I'm glad you could come."

"Oh, I wouldn't have missed you. I saw "Untamed Youth" in Memphis and I loved it. You don't happen to have a picture you could autograph for me, do you?"

Here was Elvis, the hottest new singer in the country, and he wanted my picture.

"I copied your wiggle in that movie," I said as I gave him a photograph of myself.

"Yeah? I like your wiggle better. Listen, Mamie, are you free to go with me and my friends to have a couple of drinks?"

"I've got another show to do."

"What about after your second show? We'll come back and get you. We'll do this town up right."

I thought about it for all of an instant. It has never been my style to cheat on a husband. If I want to go out with someone, I'll come straight out with it and let the chips fall where they may. But Ray was in Los Angeles. How could I tell him? And he wouldn't be in until tomorrow night. And, after all, this was Elvis.

"Sure."

In addition to his outward charisma, there was something shy and countrified about Elvis that was very charming and appealing. Something he knew how to use. He smiled as he turned the knob.
"See you later."

When Elvis opened the door, pushing and shoving people spilled into the room. The hallway outside my dressing room had quickly become a mob scene as word spread that Elvis was backstage. His friends grabbed him and formed a flying wedge to get him through the crowd.

Elvis was alone when he picked me up after the show. Even though it was after midnight, heat radiated up from the pavement as if from an open oven as we got into his big white Cadillac. We drove with the windows down and the wind blew our hair around like blasts from the front door of Hell.

Our first stop was the Frontier Hotel, where Elvis had worked a few months before. He insisted we stop at the long bank of dollar slot machines. With a flourish he produced a one-hundred-dollar bill and came back from the cashier's cage cradling a bucket of silver dollars in the crook of his arm.

"When I was growing up, my whole family could've lived for a month on half this much money. Now I can afford to throw it away." He gestured toward the line of one-armed bandits.

"C'mon, Mamie."

We ran through the two-month's worth of silver dollars in a few minutes, laughing and whooping like a couple of kids. Elvis suggested we go see Louis Prima and Keely Smith, who were headlining at the Sahara. Afterward, we went upstairs to the Starlight Room on the roof of the Desert Inn, where we sat in a cozy corner booth and had drinks.

Driving around later, I slipped across the Cadillac's broad front seat and into the crook of his arm. "Mamie, can I ask you something…personal?"

"Sure."

"That dress you had on tonight-were you wearing anything under it?"

I smiled demurely. "No."

He hit the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. "I knew you weren't wearing anything under that! Damn, but you looked great up there, Mamie." He pulled me closer and added, "And you look even better here at close range."

I had the designer Norman Norrell make copies of some of Marlene Dietrich's sensational gowns in nude-colored see-through soufflé chiffon with strategically placed beads. I was backlit on stage to make the effect of being nearly naked complete. Effect, Hell! I was.

As Elvis barreled the Caddy through the late night traffic, the conversation turned to the movies. His ambition to become a good actor was evident in his almost child-like fascination with the business.

"I fell in love with you when I saw you in "The All American" with Tony Curtis," he said. I just can't believe you're here with me now. Tell me, what was Tony like? He's my favorite actor. Him and James Dean."

"Tony's a great guy. He helped me get my contract at Universal. And he's sexy. Not as sexy as present company, of course," I said, "but a very sexy guy. James Dean I met once and I went for a motorcycle ride with him." (Coming soon to the next Bedtime Story!)

We pulled into the parking lot at the Riviera and stopped in a pool of darkness off to one side of the entrance.

"Mamie, would you like to come back to my hotel?"

I thought about Perry upstairs with his nurse, and Ray back in L.A.
"No, I'd better not."

Elvis kissed me softly but insistently. A world-class kiss. He French kissed me deeply and I responded passionately to him, barely able to hold myself back.

"Are you sure you don't want to go back to my place?" Elvis asked with a chuckle when our lips parted.

We necked some more. I had never been kissed with such ardor and emotion before. His hands caressed my breasts and my nipples stood out hard. My passions were about to boil over as I groped for his growing erection. I took a deep breath and pushed him gently back. "I'd better not."

We took some deep breaths of the hot night air and straightened our clothing.

"Whew! I've sure enjoyed the evening, Mamie. I'd like to come see your show again tomorrow night and bring some friends along. Maybe we can all go out on the town again."

Ray was coming from L.A., but I didn't say anything.

Who knows? I thought, maybe I can get away.

"That sounds like fun," I said, feeling a twinge of guilt.

We were both a little tipsy and having a great time. I was not willing to go to bed with him, but we were enjoying each other's company too much to say goodnight. As we looked through the car's windshield at the desert night, Elvis began to softly hum the melody to "Love Me Tender." We ended the night singing it together. I got into bed as the sun was coming up over the desert.

As I pulled the drapes to block out the early morning light, I told myself halfheartedly that I was a married woman and a mother. Certainly Elvis must have known that. But there was a part of me (a warm, throbbing, unfulfilled part, for sure!) that cursed me for not succumbing to Elvis' magnetic sexuality.

The next evening, Ray was in town, though he didn't attend the show that night. Just before I went onstage one of the showgirls ran up to me breathlessly and said: "Mamie, Elvis is in the audience again!"

I only had time to say, "Oh, shit!" before the orchestra started playing my intro music. I walked on stage and saw Elvis with at least fifteen others at a long table next to the stage. For a moment, I completely forgot the lyrics to my opening number, "'Deed I Do." I just stood there trying to smile until the words came back to me, and the band and I caught up with each other.

During my act the showroom was a madhouse. People in the audience constantly got up while I was singing and snapped pictures of Elvis.

Throughout the show, Elvis' eyes seemed to send an unmistakable message to me. He came backstage again after the show and invited me to join him for drinks. I didn't want to say no, but I had not figured out what to tell Ray. I told Elvis I had to go upstairs and change.

Ray was watching television up in the suite. I peeled out of my sweaty gown and began to freshen up. Before I had a chance to say anything to Ray, the phone rang.

"Mamie, it's Elvis. We're all waiting for you downstairs."

"Oh, yes," I said, trying to hide who it was from Ray.

"Are you coming down or what?"

"Yes, yes. I am."

Ray asked, "Who's that?"

"Oh, it's just a friend," I said, covering the mouthpiece. "We were going to go out for a little while."

Ray looked at me suspiciously. "A friend? Who?" Ray grabbed the telephone out of my hand and barked into the receiver, "Who is this?" The color drained out of his face. "Elvis who?" he croaked. He listened a moment more and slammed the phone down. "Elvis Presley said he and his friends are waiting for you downstairs. What's this all about?"

"I was going to tell you. Elvis and some of his friends invited me out to have a drink."

Ray looked at me in astonishment. "Are you out of your mind? Mamie, you're a married woman. You've got a child right there in the other room. How can you go out with another man?"

"We weren't going out exactly, Ray"

"Then just what exactly were you going to do?"

"Have a couple drinks. We might go see Louie Prima and Keely Smith at the Desert Inn-." I stopped myself just in time from saying "again."

Ray shook his head in disbelief. He walked over to the couch and sat in front of the television. "Mamie, you go on if you want. But I promise you that if you do, I will not be here when you get back." He turned and looked over the back of the couch at me.

I hung my head. Of course I knew that going out with Elvis was not exactly proper behavior. But most of the female half of America would've died for the chance. Elvis had the kind of magnetism that could derail a marriage. I tried to explain it to Ray. I think he understood at least a little.

What Ray did not understand, and what I was only beginning to understand myself was that I had to have my own life, my own career. I wasn't able to be a supporting player in a script designed by and for Ray Anthony or any other man. I had to be free to live my own life, without answering to someone all the time.

But on that night, I did not go downstairs to meet Elvis. I opted to maintain a stable married life on Ray's terms-for a while. For the time being, the field I was playing in had another set of ground rules. But I couldn't resist one parting shot.

"Of course, if Marilyn called and asked you to come downstairs for a drink…would you go?"

He began nervously twisting a button on his shirt.

Fast forward to February 1971. I was invited to Las Vegas to do the Merv Griffin show, which then originated from Caesar's Palace. Elvis was opening at the International Hilton Hotel, and got a message to me at Caesar's inviting me to see his show that night. It was a gala event because Elvis was making his comeback after years of relative obscurity during the Sixties music revolution. Sonny Bono was in the audience that night too. During the show, Elvis introduced Sonny and me, and the follow-spot illuminated each of us in turn. I blew kisses to the crowd. Sonny waved a cap he was wearing. (This was in the days when people still dressed up to go out in Las Vegas. Sonny looked like he should have been selling newspapers on the corner.) Not yet the grotesquely bloated Elvis of his final comeback, it was still not the Elvis of old onstage, but his performance retained the spine-tingling energy of the early rock and roll days. His show left me with the impression that Elvis had matured as a man and a performer-an impression that was confirmed when I saw him backstage afterward.

Sonny and I arrived backstage at almost at the same time, and we were ushered into the bar of Elvis' star-sized dressing room. Elvis came in a few moments later, a large towel wrapped around his neck.

His familiar crooked smile was unchanged, but he was thin and pale, and there was world-weary look in his eyes as he embraced me warmly. We exchanged pecks on the cheek, and he turned to Sonny who he greeted cordially. When he tried to introduce me, Sonny turned away sullenly. At that point in the Seventies, Sonny and Cher were wildly popular and just beginning their television career. But it appeared that Sonny was in an angry snit because Elvis had greeted me first. Sonny stayed only a few moments before ducking out the door.

Elvis excused himself and went into the other room to change. His father, Vernon, who traveled with him in the capacity of manager and confidant, showed me to a chair. While we waited for Elvis to return, Vernon and I talked about his son's comeback and career. When I complimented Elvis' show, a smile crinkled across Vernon's face. "That's mighty good to hear, Mamie. Elvis is real proud of his new show and he'd like to know how much you liked it."

When Elvis came back into the room clad in a thick terrycloth robe, he held me at arm's length. "Mamie," he said, "you're just as pretty as ever."

"You're looking good yourself, Elvis," I replied. "Your show was fabulous. I can't thank you enough for inviting me."

"Thanks for coming, Mamie," he said, the exhaustion clearly etched on his face. We chatted a few minutes more before Elvis finally said, "I'd like to talk some more, Mamie, but I've got to lie down and rest before the next show. I've had a touch of the flu..."

We embraced again, kissed lightly on the lips, and I left. Elvis couldn't have been sweeter to me. By then I was no longer under the tyranny of my marriage to Ray Anthony, but Elvis' path and mine had diverged, and there was no question of any personal involvement. We were on different roads to different places, though I like to think that he may have looked back fondly on that night as I did, as a pleasant interlude that might have taken us both to a better place.

I left Las Vegas the next day. Back in L.A. I sent him a telegram thanking him for the evening. Looking back on the events now, it is tempting to say that the "flu" Elvis was suffering from that night may have come from the hard drugs he was just beginning to use. But he was still powerfully attractive offstage as well as on. But there was an undercurrent of sadness about him that had not been there before, and I sensed Elvis' internal struggle with forces beyond his control.

Around 1972 I was in New York to do the Tonight Show when I received a call in my room at the Pierre Hotel that had a familiar voice on the other end: Burt Reynolds. (Burt and I had a mutual friend, James Hampton, who had worked with me in a stage production of "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" in Chicago. Jim told me then that Burt wanted to meet me, and I told Jim that I would like that.)

Burt was at the height of that phase in his career. Like a lot of us, Burt's career went through stages during which he was associated with a certain public image. At this time, Burt was the dashing tough-guy leading man, the diamond in the rough sort of anti-hero hero that the cinema rediscovered in the early 1970's. Burt had also just broken new ground by appearing as a nude centerfold in Cosmopolitan and that had piqued my interest.

After chitchatting on the phone a while, Burt asked if I'd like to come to the set of "Shamus," the movie he was shooting over in Brooklyn with Diane Cannon. He was shooting a stunt scene early the next afternoon in which he was supposed to dive though a window. "After that, I don't have any shots for the rest of the day, so we could have an early dinner and do whatever else strikes our fancy," Burt told me. I said it sounded like fun, and he said he would send a car the following morning.

At the movie set the next day, Burt and I said a quick hello before an assistant director showed me to a seat where I would have a good view of Burt's stunt shot. Someone brought me a cup of tea and I settled into a canvas chair to wait for the excitement.

There was a great deal of fussing about setting up Burt's stunt. And even if it looked to me like a rather minor stunt, the Star was doing his own stunt, something that has always sent a tickle up the spines of movie audiences. Burt had begun his movie career as a stuntman, so presumably he knew what he was doing. There was a final check of camera angles, sound, and a check to make sure that the ambulance crew and doctor were standing close by.

The assistant director called for quiet and the camera rolled. The set hushed and the director called, "Action!"

Burt took a running start and launched himself through the glassed upper half of a door. He crashed through on the side facing the camera, did a quick little roll when he hit the ground, and bounced up onto his feet.

The set broke into applause and cheers. Burt smoothed his hair and grinned at everyone. He came over to my chair.

"What did you think, Mamie?" he asked

"Terrific, Burt. Wonderful."

"Exciting, huh?"

My mind flashed quickly back to the fresh memories of Vietnam. That had been exciting. This was make-believe-a stunt on a movie set-but I agreed that it was exciting anyway.

"Right," Burt said. "I'll go get changed and we'll go to dinner."

We ate at a dark little Italian place with checkered tablecloths and sauces that made everything taste the same. Burt was an extremely funny date, always wisecracking and joking. But as the champagne we were drinking took effect, he waxed romantic.

"Mamie," he said shining his bedroom eyes on me full force, "you're an Aquarian, right?" I nodded. "Ah, Aquarians. I'm an Aquarian too, you know."

"Really?"

"Oh, yes." He smiled a wise, understanding smile. "I know exactly what you want, Mamie. I know exactly how to please you."

"You do?"

It was his turn to nod. "You know, Mamie, you get the feel sometimes when it's the start of something."

"How's that, Burt?"

"Just the feel. This is the beginning of a relationship, a great love affair that will last and last, don't you think?"

"Last and last? You really think so?"

"One of the great ones. No doubt about it. It's something that happens only a few times in a person's life. There's no question that this is one of them."

Well, I told myself, you wanted to go out with Burt Reynolds. Your head is swimming with champagne of questionable vintage, and it's so damn dark in here that you can't see across the room, and it's not often lately that you've been quite so deep in such oozy bullshit, but, what the hell, Mamie, how bad could it be? This is Burt Reynolds, star of stage, screen, TV, and minor stunts. Why not live it up a little?

Burt suggested that we go to Candice Bergen's apartment where he was staying while working in New York. Burt's driver dropped us at the Park Avenue address, Burt still cracking jokes a mile a minute. We held hands as we made our way to the apartment, laughing merrily at Burt's jokes. Burt was laughing harder that I.

"I tell you, Mamie," he said huskily as he opened the door, "this is the start of something big."

I was too tipsy to remember my own advice about guys with the biggest hype being the guys who deliver the least.

"I hope you're right, Burt," I slurred. "Champagne always makes me so… so… amorous."

"I'm glad we had that extra bottle. Did I ever tell you, Mamie, that I consider myself the male Mamie Van Doren?"

I recall trying very hard to focus at that point. "No, you never told me that."

He proceeded to give me a list of reasons why he thought of himself as the male me. It is certainly the most unusual statement that has ever been made to me before I went to bed with someone.

As we undressed there was a windstorm of clothing flying through the air. We didn't speak-there was only the sound of our breathing as we revealed ourselves to each other. A few caresses and Burt and I were between the sheets doing the pony ride.

I was just getting into the spirit of the moment when Burt began to thrash wildly. His voice cracked and he moaned, "Ohhhh! Ohhh! Judy! Juuudddy! He collapsed and that was it. Fade to black.

We, I thought, could this be the American heartthrob? Mr. Cool? What happened to the burning, thrusting, penetrating desired of something big? And what the hell was "Judy" doing there? I realized that he must have been calling out the name of his former wife, Judy Carne of "Laugh-In" fame.

"Burt?" I whispered. "Burt? Are you there?"

The sound of soft snoring echoed through the apartment. I suddenly felt very clearheaded and sober, brought abruptly to my senses by that coldest of showers-corked-up, unsatisfied passion.

I hopped out of bed, dressed, and caught a cab back to the Pierre.

My brief romance with Burt-the start of something big-was like to passing through a major city and eating in only one restaurant-and a fast food restaurant at that.

Not long after that I was asked in an interview about Burt's nude layout in Cosmopolitan, with a hat discreetly covering his crotch, I could only laugh. "That was an exaggeration," I said. "A cigar would have covered it nicely."

To be fair, Burt Reynolds is an excellent actor, notwithstanding his "Smokey and the Bandit" movies and other forgetables. Last year his performance in "Boogie Nights" was as fine a piece of work as I've seen on the screen in a long time. A role suited perfectly for a particular actor. On Oscar night I think Burt believed that he was going to get a Best Actor statue for his role as a porno director with a conscience. And it's a tribute to Burt's acting ability that when the choice was read and it wasn't him, he acted like it didn't matter.

The rockingest place on the Hollywood nightscape of the 1960's was the Whiskey à Go-Go, a smallish nightclub on the corner of Sunset and Doheney. The Whiskey was the epicenter of Rock and Roll music during the sixties, hosting such seminal acts as the Doors, the Yardbirds, the Turtles, and the Mamas and the Papas. It was the place for everyone who was hip or wanted to be. They came for the rock and roll, for the drugs, and for the sex-not necessarily in that order. It was my favorite hangout. I had my special table, right at the edge of the dance floor-the perfect spot to check out the action-because it was always alive with loud music and writhing, dancing bodies.

One night I was there with my best friend and hairdresser, Don Morand, when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I found myself looking up into a familiar set of icy blue eyes.

"Hi, Mamie," said Steve McQueen with that familiar smile.

"Wanna dance?" he shouted over the music.

I had turned down several men already that evening, but I slid my chair back and stood up. "You're on."

After Steve and I danced several fast songs, we made our way back to my table. Don, who is the soul of discretion, sensed the sexual energy radiating between Steve and me, and excused himself.

"Mamie," Steve said as we finished our drinks, "are you sure you don't want to go somewhere else?"

I knew he was married, but it was night at the Whiskey. And, hell, it was the SiXties. "My house."

I climbed Sunset Plaza Drive in my white Jaguar while Steve followed in his Ferrari. I thought about how handsome he was and what a racy, adventurous façade he projected. I was excited to find out what was behind that devil-may-care attitude of the public Steve McQueen, even if it took breaking my unwritten rule against dating married men.

At my house, with the living room's sliding glass doors open to the cool night breeze, Steve and I sipped beers and watched the lights shimmering in the city below. We spoke little. Our communication was on a more primitive level. I circled his neck with my arm and we held each other. We kissed and I felt his passion growing.

Suddenly I heard a sound that made me push away from his embrace.

"Perry," I whispered. I left Steve standing in the darkened living room and went down the hall to where my son slept. Perry had recently begun having nightmares.

I put my hand on his forehead. "Shhh, sweetheart," I said. "It's okay." Perry mumbled something, turned over, and dove deeply back into sleep.

When I returned to the living room and Steve, my passion had cooled. I got Steve another beer, and he slipped an arm around my waist. "Now, where were we?"

"Steve, can't we talk a little first?"

"Talk? About what?"

"I hardly know you. And you're a married man."

"I'm also very attracted to you. Let's talk in the bedroom."

I led him down the long hallway to my bedroom. Steve sat next to me on the bed as I tried to start a conversation.

"C'mon, Mamie," Steve murmured gently. He pushed me onto the bed and rolled on top of me. He began kissing and caressing me in earnest.

I pushed him away and sat up. "Steve, I'm not ready to make love yet." I looked him in the eye. "You and I are so much alike. We see something we want and go after it. But after we get it, we lose interest in what we wanted so much. I don't want that to happen to us."

Steve took a long drink of his beer. "I guess you're right, Mamie. But I don't think that'll happen to us.

"That sounds suspiciously like a line, Mr. McQueen."

"Yeah, well, maybe it is." There was a twinkle in his eye as he finished his beer. "I've wanted to sleep with you since I saw you with Ray Anthony at the Sands Hotel. I want to now. So why don't we do it and see what happens afterwards, okay?" He put his hand on my breast and kissed me hard.

I stood up and kissed him lightly on the lips. "There'll be other nights, Steve."

"Will I see you again, Mamie?"

"Give me a call sometime and we'll see."

Two days later the telephone rang. Steve invited me to the Whiskey that evening. I said yes. I repeat: it was the Sixties.

After a few dances at the Go-Go, Steve suggested we make the scene at a party in Benedict Canyon. As we pulled into the driveway, I recognized it as the home of famed hairdresser, Jay Sebring. (Sebring would later die tragically in another house in the Hollywood Hills at the hands of the Manson family, a victim of the Tate-LaBianca murders.) Sebring had bought the hulking old-style Tudor mansion that had belonged to Paul Bern and Jean Harlow-the house where Paul Bern had shot himself soon after his marriage to the 1930's sex goddess.

The party was in full swing. People were splashing in the pool and wandering around the house drinking and smoking pot. We got drinks and schmoozed for a while.

"Mamie," Steve said, digging in his pocket, "I've got some of the finest Sandoz sunshine acid here. Let's drop a tab or two."

I had heard about LSD from friends, and I was afraid of it. When I told Steve, he laughed. "No bad trips on this shit. It's not made in somebody's garage. This stuff's pharmaceutical. It's the best. It makes sex a totally new experience."

He put the pale yellow tablet in my hand. He took one himself, washing it down with a beer. I took the other one with a swallow of wine.

For a while I didn't feel anything. We talked standing where we were. Feeling amorous, we walked down the hall to a nearby bedroom, elegantly furnished with a large bed. In one corner of the room was a full-length mirror.

"You know whose room this was?" Steve asked.

There was a persistent buzzing sound in my ears, not unpleasant, but a strangely comforting sound. Steve's voice sounded muffled and far away. "No."

"It was Paul Bern's and Jean Harlow's. This is the room they were in when she found out her husband was impotent."

Steve took me in his arms and kissed my neck and face. I could feel the sizable hardness of him against my leg.

"At least it's not something in the room," I said, responding to him.

I saw a flash of red light, like a skyrocket across the room. Another and another. "I'm seeing all these colors. What is it?"

"The acid. Don't worry," Steve reassured me, "just let yourself go."

We undressed each other slowly and lay on the big canopied bed where Paul Bern had revealed his hopeless secret.

I could feel the crinkle and crush of the bedspread beneath us as we began making love, creating our own frantic rhythms. Through the haze of the acid, I could hear music in the house, the guitars mimicking the beat of our bodies. My own voice, as I cried out, sounded like someone else's. I was a marionette speaking in another language.

I am your dancing Mamie doll. Dancing. I am your you me you you me me.

When it was over, I could see everything around me with extraordinary clarity. Steve was asleep next to me. I could see every object in the room outlined like mountains against a sunrise.

I propped myself on one elbow and looked at the full-length mirror across the room. The eerie image of Paul Bern, middle aged and nude except for a sequined mask over his eyes, materialized. He stepped out of the mirror and I saw he was carrying a gun. He smiled in my direction, put the gun in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. His head exploded in a shower of multi-colored confetti, which rained down over Steve and me. I sat up and screamed. Steve jumped up and grabbed me by the shoulders.

"It's okay, Mamie! Just hold on!"

I could hear and see Steve, but I remained in the grip of my powerful hallucination. Paul Bern's body twitched at the foot of the bed, while confetti poured out of his head like the stuffing out of a scarecrow.

I looked into the mirror again and saw the figure of Jean Harlow smiling back at me. She stepped out of the mirror over the mess made by Paul Bern. She looked from Steve to me.

"Mamie, we're all the same. The blondes the brunettes, the redheads in this town. We're like horses running back into a burning barn. We'll burn up, but we can't stop ourselves. You can come over now with me if you want."

"No! Get away!"

"Mamie!" Steve said, shaking me. "Take it easy!"

"Leave me alone!" I grabbed a vase from the bedside table and threw it into the mirror, shattering it. "Look, dammit!" I screamed at Steve. "There's blood and a body! Can't you see it?"

He rolled out of bed and kicked the body in front of the mirror. It dissolved into a pile of clothing.

It took me weeks to get over the macabre images of that night at Jay Sebring's. Not long afterward, Steve and I stopped seeing each other. Our purely sexual attraction began to wane, though he was a man of great charisma and imagination who was wonderful in bed. But in the end, my dislike of drugs won out over passion. I was not comfortable with the experience of my faculties being out of control, and I always feared a return of those bizarre hallucinations. I again adopted my rule to avoid romantic entanglements with married men. Mostly I stuck to it.

The excitement of the Whiskey à Go-Go continued to exert a gravitational pull on me that year and the next. It was an era that I thought would never end. I prayed that it would, because it was at the same time exhilarating and terrifying. When it did end, I was still going so fast, I barely noticed.

In the summer of 1962, I was staying at the Salisbury Hotel in New York while doing the musical Wildcat at the Meadowbrook Theater in New Jersey. Every mid-afternoon, before a limo drove me to the theater, it was my habit to have an early dinner, take a nap, and put on most of my makeup before the car arrived. Often I ate at the Russian Tea Room across 57th Street from the Salisbury. The maître d' was nice enough to serve me in the hours between lunch and dinner when the kitchen was usually closed.

One rainy afternoon I was eating at my usual table in the back of the Tea Room, near the kitchen. It was a quiet and secluded spot, and the stragglers from lunch didn't notice me in dark glasses and no makeup, with a scarf tied around my head. My waiter quietly approached the table.
"Miss Van Doren," he said, "I thought you might like to know, we're serving Miss Marilyn Monroe up at the front table."

I turned and saw a stringy-haired blonde sitting alone—like me, wearing sunglasses and a scarf, and sans makeup. Her face had a hint of puffiness beneath the glasses, but her cheeks were gaunt and her mouth slack and weary.

I got up and crossed the room.

"Hi, Marilyn," I said quietly, easing into the seat opposite her. She looked at me uncertainly.

"Oh, please...I don't feel like...Oh! Is it...Mamie? Hi!"

 I reached across the table and we clasped hands. "Did you get the statue?" I asked. I had been in Italy filming The Beautiful Legs of Sabrina three years before, and made a side trip at Marilyn's request to the Italian Film Festival in Taormina, Sicily to accept her David Award for The Prince and the Showgirl, the Italian equivalent of the Oscar. (I've always felt that she should have at least had an Academy Award nomination for Bus Stop.)

Left to right: me, Anna Magnani, Gina Lollobrigida, and Elsa Martinelli

She blinked behind the dark glasses and smiled. "Yes...yes, I did. Thanks for accepting the award for me. It was the one award I wanted to pick up myself, and I was too busy." There was a rueful tone in her voice and she knocked back the vodka-rocks she had sitting in front of her. She motioned to the waiter for another. "I guess I've got plenty of time now. You heard, I suppose?"

Marilyn had been fired in May by 20th Century Fox while filming Something's Got to Give, and the publicity had been huge and embarrassing for her. There were rumors that she had become increasingly hard to work with. She was often late getting to the set or absent with mysterious illnesses. That she was addicted to alcohol and drugs was given credence by displays of temperament that came all too frequently, exposing the raw emotional strata of Marilyn's psyche. It was becoming obvious that Marilyn was unraveling, and the Hollywood vultures were beginning to circle.

"Yes, I heard."

She took a long swallow of a fresh drink.

"Well," she said, her lower lip quivering, "there'll be other movies." There was an almost childish challenge in her voice, as if daring me to say there wouldn't.

My heart went out to her. There was a kind of helplessness that Marilyn displayed to the outside world that made it like watching an animal suffer. As the Sixties got into full swing, the popularity of the blonde sex goddesses of the screen as we had known them was waning. What did I have to look forward to? At least she was still getting movie roles. I was seven years younger and I was painfully aware that there hadn't been other movies for me in quite a while.

Is it happening to all of us? I thought.

"Always other movies around the corner," I agreed as cheerfully as I could. Then, as an afterthought, I said: "If not a movie, there are theaters and nightclubs. That's what I've been doing."

"That's something I couldn't do, Mamie. It'd scare the shit out of me."

"It did scare the shit out of me. I used to spend an hour on the toilet before a show."

"I'd die if I had to do that, I guess."

"I've got a mouth other than my own to feed. That's why I do it."

Her face really brightened and suddenly she appeared to take an interest. "Your son! Oh, I'm sorry, what's his name?"

"Perry."

"Perry! Yes, I remember seeing his picture in the paper when he was born. How old is he, Mamie?"

"He just turned six in March. Growing like the dickens."

"I envy you so having a child. Who looks after him while you're gone? A nurse? It must break your heart to leave him behind."

"I need to work, so what can I do?"

Marilyn nodded and looked lost in her own thoughts for a moment. When she spoke again, it sounded like an utterance in a church. "I would love to have a child. I'm trying to adopt, you know. But all the agencies look at my...me... Well, these men in blue suits say, oh so very logically: ‘What kind of a life would that be for a child? Marriages, divorces, the men in your life, Miss Monroe...' I don't know what to say to them, Mamie."

My son was still suffering through the aftermath of my divorce from his father, Ray Anthony. The disapproval of the "suits" at Perry's private schools and the like over my lifestyle was still in the future. I didn't have any suggestions for her. Marilyn had been recently divorced from playwright Arthur Miller. They had split up after he had met a still photographer on the set of The Misfits. The wounds were still fresh.

"No divorce is easy. You can agree to disagree all you want, but in the end each one hurts the other. Usually on purpose. There were times when I wanted to die, Mamie. The pain was so bad."

The Hollywood rumor mill had been very specific about Marilyn's replacement for Arthur Miller. She was, it was said over business lunches and at cocktail parties, in love with a Kennedy. There was talk about assignations with Jack and even sex in the White House. And when, after he had tired of Marilyn, rumor had it that Jack had handed her down to his industrious younger brother, Robert, like an old suit that no longer fit but was good enough for the next in line to use.

Was she here to try and cultivate that love affair? Was she dreaming of the second Kennedy's White House while waiting to lure Bobby away from his wife and sizable pack of children?

She downed her third drink. The ice cubes clinked and she set the glass aside. She slipped off her sunglasses and looked at me hard. There might have been hundreds of stories flashing behind her eyes. When she spoke at last, it was a tipsy slur.

"Do your best, Mamie, not to fall in love with anybody in government. Because after they fuck you—they fuck you."

There was a violent thunderstorm underway when I hurried out of the Russian Tea Room a little while later. The hard rain pounded on the pavement of 57th Street and steamed into the late afternoon air as I dreaded the long drive I would have to make to New Jersey.

My last sight of Marilyn had been of her at that lonely table, staring back at the white table cloth and three empty glasses, a fourth vodka-rocks waiting to blot out her private horrors.

In August she was dead. 

My close friend, the late Sam Yorty, former mayor of Los Angeles, had told me many stories over the years about the affairs of Marilyn and her Kennedys. After Marilyn's death, Sam told me of the wiretap tapes and other surveillance done by the Los Angeles Police Department showing that Marilyn not only had a phone conversation with Bobby the night of her death, but a visit from him. With Sam's death a short time ago, I feel released from his request for secrecy to tell some of what he said about the days when the King of Camelot and the Heir Apparent were frolicked in Hollywood. There'll be a new Bedtime Story soon, featuring my close friend and almost lover, flamboyant Mayor Sam, in which I'll tell some of it. The re-issue of Playing the Field in a new Collector's Edition next year will have more details as well.