Neon Angel

  I was taking him to Andy’s apartment, the friend I was with the previous night just before the limousine showed up. It was almost daylight and I was afraid he would be out looking for me. With my purse left behind, they would all be looking. I needed Andy to be there. It was my only chance. When we got to Andy’s apartment building, James pulled into the underground parking lot. “I’ll be right back,” I told him. He just smiled at me, and from his eyes I could tell that he was just . . . lost. He was so wrapped up in whatever fantasy world he was in that he really believed that I would come back in a few moments with my bag, and we would leave for Dallas.

  I made it into the stairwell. Once I was out of James’s sight, I collapsed. I managed to drag myself up to the second floor. I staggered to my feet and pounded on Andy’s door. I wanted to scream for Andy, but thought James would hear and reappear so he could finish the job. As if in answer to my prayers, the door opened, and I saw Andy’s face turn white. I fell into his arms. All I could say was “He’s downstairs. He’s downstairs in the green limousine . . .”

  Andy brought me over to the couch, and then ran to his kitchen. He emerged with a large knife and a flashlight, ready to do battle with the monster waiting downstairs. “Stay here!” he yelled, before he ran out. The tears really came then, and I lay there sobbing in pain and humiliation until Andy returned a moment later.

  “The bastard tore off as soon as he saw me! But I got the fucker’s license-plate number . . .”

  I have foggy memories of what came next. The ride to the hospital. Andy was crying, too. The nurses’ horrified faces as Andy helped me through the doors of the emergency room. When I saw the way they looked at me, I knew I was in bad shape.

  I felt one of them hold me in her arms, calling for a wheelchair. I collapsed against her, my mind drifting in and out of reality. I heard her say, “Dear God! What happened to you, girl?” but I couldn’t respond. Then finally, mercifully, the blackness came. Perfect, peaceful blackness as I sank into unconsciousness . . .

  Chapter 26

  Killers and Clowns

  You want me to do what?”

  “Punch it. Kick it. Anything you want.”

  I looked at the clown again. They’d told me that his name was Bobo. His body was shaped like an egg and weighted at the bottom, so the idea was that no matter how hard you hit it, it would always pop up at you again. I had supposedly been sent to the Santa Monica Rape Clinic to help me deal with what I had suffered at the hands of James Lloyd White. Now I found myself staring at this stupid clown, feeling utterly ridiculous.

  There were several women in the room, all of us victims of rape and sexual assault. The others listened intently to the instructions of the counselor. I stood there unable to move as everyone around me started beating the crap out of the clowns.

  “I’m not hitting this clown,” I said.

  The therapist smiled indulgently. “You know . . . I think that it might help. It may seem silly, but if you just gave it a chance . . .”

  “You know what would make me feel better?”

  “I don’t know, Cherie. Why don’t you tell me.”

  “It would make me feel better to know that in one year’s time, that bastard isn’t going to be walking the streets. That would make me feel better. Or maybe you could just haul his ass in here and let me hit him instead. This fucking . . . clown didn’t do anything to me.”

  With that, I stood up and grabbed my purse. “Thanks for the help,” I said. “I really appreciate it.”

  The tears were coming again. It seemed that they were never far away back then. But these were tears of a different kind. As I watched the other women tearing the Bobos apart, a thought occurred to me. I had made it. I wasn’t a victim. I was a survivor. And nobody could take that away from me.

  I walked through the door and closed it behind me. As I walked the long corridor leading out to the street, I felt myself start to grow from that battered and broken girl that James Lloyd White had beaten within an inch of her life. With every stride, I grew taller and stronger. As I burst through the doors and left the Santa Monica Rape Clinic that day, I would emerge a new and different woman. I felt the sun on my face and I had hope in my heart. I had survived where others had not. And I would not feel ashamed. I swore that I would never feel sorry for myself again.

  It was a powerful revelation. But getting there had been difficult.

  They did catch the man who raped me. Andy provided the license plate number, and the knife wound on his stomach sealed the case. When I told the police about his boast about killing six girls in Dallas, the LAPD’s Hillside Strangler task force interviewed me at my home to see if there could possibly be a connection. There wasn’t, but I did hear through my dad that he had been linked to the murder of six girls back in Dallas just like he’d told me, but he was never charged. Lack of evidence, they said.

  At the beginning it looked like he was going to be tried for what he did to me. But he had a good lawyer, some money-hungry soulless bastard who knew exactly how to work the system. They started plea-bargaining, and he ended up copping to “sodomy by force” instead of kidnapping, attempted murder, and rape. When the lawyers got done working the system, my rapist walked away with a year in the county jail.

  On top of it all, my rapist had some powerful friends in the entertainment industry. He was an old pal of the actor Vic Morrow. Before his lawyers had wiggled him out of a jury trial, Vic had actually called T.Y.—whom he knew casually—and asked T.Y. to “talk to me.”

  “You know how guys are,” Vic had explained to my brother-in-law. “Sometimes they get a little . . . carried away. Can’t you talk to her? There’s no use in going to trial with this.”

  The worst thing about it was that T.Y. actually did it. I guess that he must have been awed by the fact that Vic Morrow was asking him for a favor. T.Y. actually had the nerve to ask me if I’d consider dropping the charges for “his friend” Vic. I didn’t speak to T.Y. for a long time after that.

  If the pretrial hearings were anything to go by, the trial itself would have been a nightmare. Vic Morrow showed up to lend support to his pal James. On the stand, I kept breaking down as I described the horrors that I had experienced that night. The defense lawyer sensed my weakness and went in for the kill. He screamed at me, belittled me, and made it all seem like it was my fault. That I had somehow lured his poor innocent client into kidnapping me and beating me almost to death. That I had wanted it, that I had asked him to hurt me.

  During all this, “he” was sitting there at his lawyer’s table, totally unfazed by it all. I made eye contact with him at one point, and he smiled his evil smile, raised his fingers into a V, and flicked his tongue at me. I knew that given the chance he would do it all over again without a second’s thought. I screamed at them all, “Don’t you see what he’s doing over there? Can’t you SEE?” No one did, though.

  It ended one day when I came apart on the stand. I just couldn’t take it anymore. My body locked up into the fetal position with my fists to my eyes, and I screamed and sobbed. I don’t remember much after that. I was totally unable to move, and it took two officers to carry me out of the courtroom.

  After that, Vic did come and speak to me. After hearing my testimony on the stand, he apologized for asking me to drop the charges. This was the same day that I had to be carried out of the courtroom by the guards. He looked visibly shaken by what he had heard. I stared at him as he walked away. The next time I would hear about Vic Morrow was when he was killed while shooting a film we had both worked on—Twilight Zone: The Movie.

  My family was devastated. My father wanted to literally kill him. When we were in my lawyer’s office, my dad asked to use the restroom. After a few minutes, my lawyer quietly asked one of his associates to go get him. Dad had left the building and had entered the courthouse knowing that the accused would be there. My father had a gun. Fortunately, some guards, accompanied by my lawyer’s associate, stopped my father before he could get close enoug
h. When they arrived back at the office, they claimed they had stopped my dad just yards from James Lloyd White.

  So he got his year in county, and I was sent off for a round of useless rape counseling with the knowledge that this bastard would be out on the streets again within a matter of months. The only thing that kept me going was what you could call my “lightbulb” moment. When my inner voice told me that I had survived, and that nobody could take that away from me.

  That really resonated, and it does to this day.

  I had been attacked and almost killed, but I got out alive. I started to feel that this was something to be proud of. I could hold my head up high, knowing that I was a survivor. Not even that psychopath could make a victim out of me. Now it was up to me not to make a victim of myself.

  I went home that day and ran a hot bath. Just after the rape, I spent many hours in the bathtub. It got to the point where it was bordering on obsession. I was trying to clean the stink of that piece of human garbage off me. I always felt dirty, no matter how hard I scrubbed. Over time, the feeling started to fade, but it was a slow process.

  I remember at one point soon after this all happened reading a People magazine interview with the actress Kelly McGillis. Her picture was on the cover, looking real somber and sad. She was quoted saying something along the lines of “I was raped, and I’ll never recover . . .” I felt furious when I read that. I couldn’t understand why someone in the public eye would ever say that. I felt that if she really felt that way, she should keep her mouth shut. She had a responsibility to her fans to be strong. Strong for them! They looked up to her. If she said that she wasn’t strong enough to recover, maybe they’d feel that they wouldn’t be strong enough either.

  I had done a lot of reading about rape and the law since the attack. I learned that in the United States a woman is beaten every nine seconds and raped every minute. I also learned that my experience of having my attacker walk away basically scot-free was by no means unusual. I tossed the magazine away. The actress wasn’t the only one who had gone through this, but I sure as hell would never say that I wouldn’t recover. I was alive. I was luckier than most.

  I threw myself into work. I did some solo shows around town, and after one particular show, I met a man named Dennis Brody from the William Morris Agency. He told me that I looked “really good up there” and had I ever considered acting. He gave me his card, and before I knew it, he was calling me out for auditions.

  My first audition was for a movie featuring the Ramones, called Rock ’n’ Roll High School. As I was awaiting word on whether I’d got the part, Dennis sent me to try out for a movie called Twentieth Century Foxes. It was a co-starring role, alongside Jodie Foster, Sally Kellerman, and Scott Baio. I guess 20th Century Fox didn’t appreciate the reference—especially as the movie was being made by United Artists—so the title was eventually shortened to Foxes.

  At the beginning I felt that there was no hope of me landing the role. When I walked into the offices of Casablanca Filmworks and looked around at the other girls, I nearly walked right back out of the door. They were all so beautiful, with gorgeous clothes and hair, and résumés that listed dozens of movie roles. I, on the other hand, had walked into the place wearing jeans, platform sneakers, and a small football shirt with my name across it. In a movie named Twentieth Century Foxes, I didn’t think I stood a chance in hell! I already knew that I was up against established actresses like Kristy McNichol, who was very big in TV back then, and Rosanna Arquette, who had just starred in a hit movie, the sequel to American Graffiti. I felt ice cold and nauseous: it was an audition for the Runaways all over again.

  I dropped my copy of the script on a table, turned around, and walked right out the door. I was thinking that maybe I could save myself some humiliation by just going home. Thankfully, that now-familiar inner voice told me to turn around and go back. I listened.

  After the initial audition, I was called back half a dozen times. For a while it seemed like I spent most of my life driving back and forth from the studio, my nerves on edge about the whole thing. First they had me read for the part of a girl named Deirdre. But, after the first reading, the executive producer Joel Blasberg handed me some new sides and sent me back to the waiting room to prepare to read for the role of Annie.

  First I did the reading, and then a screen test. They were calling back so often that my sister Sandie started running the lines with me. She lived in the Sunset Towers, directly across from Casablanca Filmworks, where the production offices were. We worked furiously on the scenes one by one, and it seemed like I spent my every waking hour either at Sandie’s apartment or at Casablanca films. As the callbacks kept coming, I started to feel there was a chance I could get this role, but I still doubted that I had enough experience. Plus I had at least one vocal opponent when it came to getting hired—Brandy Foster, who was Jodie Foster’s mom. Although she didn’t have any official role when it came to casting the film, Brandy was a powerful voice in all decisions. Although I never sensed that she disliked me personally, she obviously feared that I didn’t have the experience and that I wouldn’t be able to pull off an emotional and complex role like the hopelessly, strung-out, and doomed Annie. It was hard to be upset about Brandy’s fears when I secretly shared them myself.

  The casting director, Mae Williams—who was a great gal and a talented actress in her own right—called me one morning to do yet another reading, this time with Scott Baio. By the time I’d arrived back home, the phone was already ringing. It was Mae asking me to return to the office and read the scene again. I argued that I had just gotten back home, but she insisted, and left off with the hint that “this is a good thing.”

  When I arrived back at Casablanca, the room was filled with various producers, the writer Gerald Ayres, and the director Adrian Lyne. There were a few a nerve-racking moments before Scott Baio and I ran through the scene once again. When we were finished I looked over at Gerald Ayres and he was nodding at Adrian Lyne. I’m not sure why I did it, but I stood up to leave the room, and as I did, Adrian in his thick British accent yelled “Annie! Where you goin’! You got the part!” I screamed with joy and jumped right into his arms.

  The first person I called was Sandie. I ran straight over to her apartment, running up the three flights of stairs to her door, so we could jump up and down together like excited children.

  Two days later, Dennis Brody called to say that I had been offered the part in Rock ’n’ Roll High School, but he thought Foxes was a better role. I agreed. I could hardly believe that I was going to be working with Jodie Foster. I had never been so happy. That moment made up for a lot of the horrible things that I had gone through recently.

  In the time that had followed the car accident, I had made good on my promise to stay away from drugs. Not even the rape and the ugly aftermath of that night had pushed me into a relapse. I didn’t drink, I didn’t do coke, and I didn’t even do quaaludes. I was clean.

  Well, almost clean.

  I did do Benzedrine. But Benzedrine was legal, so I felt that it really wasn’t like a drug at all. I mean, if doctors could prescribe it, how bad could it be? Okay, you weren’t supposed to snort it like I did, but that’s just splitting hairs. Just because it was a white powder that pumped me up didn’t mean that it was anything like coke. And it wasn’t as if I did it every day.

  Well . . .

  I did do it every day, but I only did it in the mornings. In the same way that some people have a cup of strong coffee in the morning, I’d have a toot of speed. It helped me to focus, and I needed the extra energy with everything that was going on. Not only was I about to start shooting my first movie, it looked like I was finally going to get to record my next album, this time with none other than Capitol Records.

  After the first couple of showcases for record labels, there were offers on the table, but everybody was balking at the idea of me cutting a record with my sister. Neil Bogart of Casablanca Records, who was doing albums by artists like Donna Summer
, Kiss, and T. Rex, offered me a deal, but only if I agreed to cut a solo record. I turned him down with a heavy heart. I went back to my father and pleaded with him. I told him that the record labels were unwilling to sign Marie and me. They complained about her inexperience, and feared that the “novelty” could cause a backlash. But on this subject, my father was stubborn. I was left with the same stark choice that he had put to me the year before—my solo career or my family. I knew that if Marie knew about this, she would put a stop to it, but Dad would never forgive me. So swallowing my pride, I held out, even when Rupert Perry, who was then the vice president of Capitol Records, called me personally to tell me that he wanted to sign me right away, with one big reservation.

  “We don’t want a sister act, Cherie. We feel it’s a mistake. That’s not why we approached you and we don’t want it, period.”

  There was a long silence as I took this in on the other end of the phone line. I knew I was facing a repeat of the Neil Bogart situation, but there was nothing I could do about it. “Okay.”

  “Okay what?”

  “Okay . . . well, thanks for the offer, but I’m going to have to decline. I need to do this record with my sister.”

  “Cherie, can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “How bad do you want this?”

  “I want this more than anything in the world.”

  “Then why this stubborn thing with your sister? I have producers lined up who want to work with you. I have access to the best musicians, the best songwriters in the business. But you’re leaving me hanging over this. Why?”