The Messy Life of Peter Lawford

It didn't start off well and it didn't end well. It was more or less a messed-up life from start to finish and to his credit, he probably would have agreed.  He made it to the extent that he did as an MGM contract player because the big-name actors were off fighting the war.  He didn't appear to take his career any more seriously than he did anything else.  He was good-looking, had some aristocracy in his bones and lived as a rich playboy... whenever he could.  After his glory years with the Kennedys came to a sorry end, he hit the skids.
His mother told him early on that he was not wanted but she did more than tell, she showed, too.  She put him down, called him names, told him he better well learn how to take care of himself with his limited abilities.  He grew up feeling less than, there was a problem of feeling little self-worth.  And that little boy looked in the mirror.  He liked what he saw.  And he smiled.  And that handsome face simply illuminated.  Yes, that would be his ticket to ride.  And because those looks and that engaging manner would open doors, the handsome, young lad just stopped trying to improve himself.  There was nothing more to do... oh maybe, toss the hair, wear the best clothes and out the door.

But unfortunately he felt like a fraud but it got him through years of colorful films.  It was those pesky but charmed years at Camelot that changed everything.  Those years are when the fraud was exposed.  The Kennedys exposed it... at least to one another.  They would laugh things off with an oh you know Peter.  He did, however, have the time of his life.  He laughed... they laughed... and then it was over.  And then...

His parents were married to other people at the time of his birth in 1923 London.  They divorced their spouses shortly after Peter's birth and married one another.  There was that touch of aristocracy in his background but not as much or as current or as important as the Lawfords would have others believe.

The scandal of his parents' relationship caused the family to move to Paris where young Peter spent much of his childhood.  It was not a good time there either, at least for the youngster.  He cut his arm up pretty badly going through a glass door and it would never be the same although the nerve damage that it caused remained undetectable in his films.

He was molested at least three times as a child while living in France.  Two involved other men and the third was a female governess.  None of the episodes went nearly as far as they could have but Peter was badly shaken and claimed he was greatly affected by them his whole life.

May Lawford was a terrible snob, a heavy drinker, an obnoxious name-dropper and in general not a very nice person.  She was not a good mother, never claimed to be, never wanted to be.  She hated babies and never warmed to any children.  She picked on Peter, called him horrible names and paid little attention to him until he became a movie star.  Then she still picked on him and called him names but she paid a whole lot more attention.  She may not have cared for him but he hated her.  He was insecure with little self-esteem as a child and it would always be lurking until his final day.

Peter never had a formal education.  All his young life he was taught by tutors.  His education included ballet and tennis lessons.  When he didn't fare so well with the curriculum his mother had selected for him, she switched things to include dramatics.  In his young adult life he liked to brag about what a glorious upbringing he had and how educated he was but those closest to him knew better. 

In 1938 he was noticed by an agent in Los Angeles who thought he had the good looks to work in movies.  He had some bit parts in a few but then the Lawfords somehow found themselves stranded in Florida at the start of the war.  Peter scrimped and saved from some odd jobs to make enough to return to Los Angeles.  He decided to pursue that film career after all.  Soon May would be there as well.

He would make 26 films, some of them big, but he never caught on until he signed a contract with MGM in 1943.  They assigned him 1943's The White Cliffs of Dover to play a soldier (Roddy McDowall is the same character as a child).  Van Johnson was also in the film and he and Keenan Wynn would become lovers in a complicated and bizarre relationship.  They welcomed their new friend Lawford.

It wasn't too long after MGM signed him on that his mother showed up at L. B. Mayer's office to inform him that her son was homosexual.  Mayer, homophobic to the max, didn't believe it because Lawford was already dating every actress on the lot.  She wanted Mayer to keep an eye on him.  That would be no problem.

The nerve damage in his arm would keep Lawford out of the military.  A horrific car accident would also keep Johnson out.  Both of their careers would gather much momentum (particularly Johnson's) because all the big-name male stars were off fighting.  

In 1945 Lawford had a rare lead role in Son of Lassie where the collie and master are caught up in WWII in Norway.  It was nearly as popular as its predecessor.  That same year he had a good role in The Picture of Dorian Gray.

A night out with Lucille Ball & Van Johnson

He would costar a number of times with June Allyson, Janet Leigh and Elizabeth Taylor and with all three of them in 1949's immensely popular Little Women.  He played Laurie.  Two years earlier he had appeared as Allyson's leading man in the cornball but popular Good News and was petrified at having to sing and dance.  Some of his other films of the period were Easter Parade, The Red Danube, Julia Misbehaves and Royal Wedding.  In these films and countless others, he was usually the second male lead.

He made the pages of many a movie magazine with some actress holding on to him... Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, Judy Garland, Rita Hayworth, Marilyn Maxwell, Evelyn Keyes and others.  Things got a little testy around MGM when he not only started dating black actress-singer Dorothy Dandridge but said that they were going to get married.  

It's been sad that Turner dumped him cruelly and that he never forgot the slight and began treating women callously.  She (and others) also claimed he was a lousy lover.

Maureen O'Hara said in her autobiography that when they were filming Kangaroo in Australia in 1949, Lawford and another costar, Richard Boone, were arrested in a gay brothel.  Richard Boone?

Like many others, his time at MGM came to a halt in the early 50s.  His wit and charm and fun-loving ways had graced many an MGM feature but times were changing.  And times were changing more so for Lawford and in fact, would never be the same.

In 1954 after a courtship of a couple of years, Lawford married Patricia Kennedy and he settled into the role of a lifetime, the one he always wanted to play.  And play he did, just like all his male in-laws.  He cheated on his wife from the very beginning until the end of his 12-year marriage and four children.  He high-fived with them all when discussing female conquests and kept his male sex to himself.  He developed a taste for S/M sex and his alcohol and drug consumption increased.  He didn't know for some time how they all made fun of him behind his back.  Lawford tried but he never truly entered their tight family circle.

The Lawfords divided their time between Hyannisport and Santa Monica where with Pat's money they purchased the old Louis B. Mayer estate on the beach.  Lawford probably had to pinch himself to be fully cognizant of the fact that he bought his old boss' former stately home. He loved it when people mentioned it to him and he could get all goosebumpy when gossip columns teased about it. The Lawfords threw elaborate parties with most of Hollywood attending at one time or another.  He was at the top of the heap.  Who needed to make movies?

And Lawford made none between 1954-59 but he did star in two TV series.  (Ooops, that was a slip.)  For one season in 1954-55 he and starlet Marcia Henderson did Dear Phoebe.  It was not a great success.  For two seasons (1957-59) he costarred with Phyllis Kirk in The Thin Man.  It had its moments but Lawford/Kirk were hardly Powell/Loy.  They also didn't get along and Kirk, at least, was delighted when the show was not renewed.

Around 1958-59 Lawford renewed his acquaintance with Sinatra.  They had known one another for years around MGM and had costarred in one film together.  Sinatra invited Lawford to join his well-named Rat Pack and Lawford, who had a strong sense of needing to belong, eagerly accepted.  The group had once included David Niven, Judy Garland, the Bogarts and a few others but now it would belong solely to Lawford, Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Joey Bishop.

Sinatra, of course, had a bigger plan and that was to meet Kennedy whom he idolized.  He sweetened the deal by offering Lawford a role in his Burma WWII film, Never So Few (1959), costarring Gina Lollobrigida and Steve McQueen.  I like this one a helluva lot more than the critics did.

Ocean's 11 (1960), however, didn't light my fire but it allowed the Rat Pack to star in a Vegas heist film in the time they had left after drinking, gambling and whatever else they did.  This wasn't filmmaking, this was getting together with the buds in Sin City and having a good time... for months.

Lawford began doing a lot of pimping for his brother-in-law who, like his father, had a thing for movie stars.  JFK would leave Jackie at home while he visited Santa Monica for one tryst after another.  While many of his paramours were famous (and some still living), the most famous, of course, is Marilyn Monroe.

After JFK became president these assignations were fraught with danger but that was part of the fun.  What no one reckoned for was that MM would fall hard for the Kennedys, who by this time include brother Bobby and then just Bobby.  No matter what went on, Lawford was never too far away.  I always enjoyed his acting but he was a better pimp and an even greater keeper of the big secrets.

In early August of 1962 he finally got the starring role he was looking for.  I call it The Mysterious Death of Marilyn Monroe.  And he is partly responsible for the mystery.  I recall him as being  the last person she spoke to.  He was more than aware of what was going on with her and while he spoke to authorities about it he likely cut and pasted his response.  It's also said that he left his Santa Monica home to arrive at MM's Brentwood home (not a long distance) and swept it of any signs of Kennedys.  He was, after all, the family's west coast operative and he had his job to do.

Intro'ing MM who will sing Happy Birthday to JFK

His name had more allure after he moved in on the Kennedys and more yet after Monroe's death.  Producers thought his name in the credits and on movie posters meant more dollars at the box office.  I'm not totally convinced of that in Lawford's case but he did return to movie-making and, in my opinion at least, made some of his best.

Noting that Otto (the Terrible) Preminger hired Lawford for his next two (!) films suggests, to me, that he was going for name value rather than his admiration for the actor.  Preminger hired some of the best actors around when he made his films and I'm offering Lawford was too lightweight to strike Otto's thespian fancy.   

Exodus (1960) is from Leon's Uris' great novel about the 1948 founding of the state of Israel.  This film evokes many different opinions, I've found, but I'm on the side of it being an epic.  I love stories of courage, whether true or not, and this one surpassed my expectations.  It didn't hurt that it starred Paul Newman, Eva Marie Saint, Ralph Richardson, Lee J. Cobb, Sal Mineo, Jill Haworth, John Derek and a character actor I always admired, David Opatoshu.  

Lawford enjoyed playing a bad-guy British major and he enjoyed the sexual times he spent with Mineo.  According to Mineo their liaisons throughout Israel and Cyprus made a long, hot, dusty shoot more enjoyable.  And apparently they saw one another for a short time after returning to California.

After Lawford returned from playing a cameo role in The Longest Day (1962), another event picture, he immediately went into Preminger's next film, Advise and Consent (1962), another all-star affair about sex (including gay) and tomfoolery in Washington.  Lawford had no illusions about why he was hired to portray a playboy senator.

In 1964 Lawford and Sinatra had a falling out and would be friends no more.  No more Rat Pack.  Nothing.  It was a silly thing over Kennedy changing his mind about staying at Sinatra's Palm Springs home and choosing Crosby's instead.  Sinatra thought Lawford should have intervened.

I thought Dead Ringer (1964) was just a whole lot of fun.  If one likes Bette Davis flicks, one would like her more as twins.  She went that route in a 1940's hit, A Stolen Life, but here one of them murders the other and then assumes her sister's identity.  Karl Malden keeps pace with her all the way as a suspicious detective and Lawford plays her sleazy, hanger-on boyfriend.  A number of his roles were on the sleazy side and I must say, he did it well.  We could make a joke of this, but dammit, he did it well.

This scene probably came easy; he didn't like Davis

Sylvia (1965) is a forgotten movie and should not be confused with Gwyneth Paltrow's 2003 movie of the same name about poetess Sylvia Plath.  Lawford plays an eccentric gazillionaire who hires private eye George Maharis to investigate the past of Lawford's future bride, Carroll Baker.  Baker and Maharis have most of the screen time but sprinkled among a large cast are Joanne Dru, Edmond O'Brien, Viveca Lindfors, Aldo Ray and Ann Sothern.  I liked it. 

In 1966 the Lawfords were divorced.  He now wanted people to think he was the playboy of the western world, a little older but wiser.  Boy, how those Kennedys rubbed off.  He entered his second childhood... heavily into drugs, drinking and kinky sex.  His life would enter into its messy final phase.  

I've always loved Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell (1968), the frothy  comedy about a military reunion in a small Italian village where a woman will meet up with three former paramours, from whom she has been collecting child support for her one and only daughter.  Lawford, of course, is one of the men.  Unfortunately he walked through the whole thing. The film and its star, Gina Lollobrigida, are worth your time.

From 1971 to his death in 1984, Lawford was married... to three women.  Drug-taking ruined his marriages although there was a lot more to say.  Drugs also ruined Lawford's career and his reputation.  He lost friends.  The first of these three wives was comedian Dan Rowan's daughter.  One of his wives he'd known for only three weeks when they married. The last one would write a book about their relationship and detailed what had become of him.

He had badly mishandled his finances and was often just plain broke.  A story regarding his old pal Elizabeth Taylor is a good reminder for how things had become.  She called Lawford one day to tell him that she would be incommunicado for awhile because she was entering Betty Ford's clinic.  She asked him to keep it under his hat.  He went out and sold the story to The National Enquirer for a few thousand dollars.  He would one day have his own stay at the clinic.

In the last 10 years of his life, he had few public appearances.  Occasionally the paparazzi would snap some unflattering picture of him that would make the front pages of supermarket tabloids.  It was tough to see for someone who cared so much about appearance.  Lawford died on Christmas Eve in 1984 from heart failure brought on by liver and kidney diseases.  He was 61 years old.

He was buried in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery, the same location as his pal Marilyn and scores of others.  But apparently no one paid the bill and his remains were given to his widow who had his ashes scattered at sea.

He once mused... I was a halfway decent-looking English boy who looked nice in a drawing-room standing by the piano.  He was also a halfway decent actor... well, okay, a little better than that... and certainly not as good as he could have been if he'd truly taken it all more seriously.  And there was always his raging insecurities.  He always liked the money and the attention.  He liked the doors that acting opened for him.  He liked rubbing up against the glitterati.  He was fortunate to have appeared in some good films. 

A much more detailed look into Lawford's life comes via James Spada's compelling Peter Lawford: The Man Who Kept the Secrets, published in 1991 by Bantam.  I'm guessing it's still available.  If you were just thinking of reading a bio, this one may be for you.


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The Directors