I'll Cry Tomorrrow Read online

  Or:

  “Harry Carlote thought one day he would so much just like ‘one,’ and after a lot of fiddling about, he went into a bar and one of his old cobbers said, ‘Good old Harry-have a drink?’ He said, ‘No, thanks,’ and walked out before he realized what he was doing. For a time he just couldn’t make out why he had done it. ‘Where’d I get the guts to say “No, thanks?”‘ he keeps asking me. He can’t understand it, but he accepts it.”

  And one letter from a young Australian writer with whom I had discussed, rather doubtfully, the idea of writing a book on my life. For again I was torn: a book would open the door to the accusation that I was glorifying my drunkenness, that in some perverse manner I enjoyed the ignominy of it. My friend wrote:

  “Lillian, you must get started on that book! The sooner the better. The literary critics mayn’t rave over it, but that doesn’t matter. If it lifts just one person out of the abyss of alcoholic mire, it won’t have been wasted. Maybe this very minute some poor unfortunate is waiting, in desperate need of help. In some distant country, or perhaps just around the corner from where you and Burt are reading this, there may be someone, maybe a lovely young girl, perhaps a fine, otherwise decent and respectable young feller, or perhaps even a grizzled two-bit bum, in need, in terrible need, of you both, but in particular in need of the thoughts and experiences you have locked in your heart. Don’t let anybody defeat your purpose, Tony. Remember when you gave me that message in my darkest moment? I made use of it, and now I give that message back to you, Lillian. Write your book, for good or for bad. That’s all that counts now.”

  At Los Angeles Katie greeted us. “Baby, I’m so glad to have you back!”

  Burt and I took a little house in Santa Monica. Burt obtained a job with an advertising agency and I received my first booking—at Ciro’s, in Hollywood!

  Now, I thought, things are beginning to work out. I looked up the addresses of the stars I’d worked with, those who had seen me climb to the heights and tumble down again. To each I sent a wire: “I am opening at Ciro’s. I haven’t been among you for a long time and I’d be so thrilled if you’d come to my opening.”

  The big night arrived.

  But the stars were not out that night….

  The critics were highly complimentary. My evening was “a triumphant return.” One wrote, “We came to sympathize, we remained to cheer.”

  One night Mary Pickford and Buddy Rogers came to see my show. Mary said simply, “You know, Lillian, I rarely go to night clubs. But the minute Buddy heard you were playing at Ciro’s, he got all excited. He’s admired you for years and I must say, so have I. And after hearing your wonderful performance, I’m so glad we came” Another night Gene Raymond and Jeanette MacDonald were on hand to see the show—Gene, with whom I’d gone to school, Jeanette, with whom I’d worked in “The Love Parade” so long ago. Others who came were Alice Faye, Phil Harris, the Ritz Brothers, and Jimmy Durante.

  There had been a time when Jimmy had rather rough going, too. When I was married to Mark Harris, Jimmy was working at the Earl Carroll Night Club in Hollywood. The beautiful girls received first billing—not Jimmy. Mark and I came to see him.

  “Thanks for coming,” he said, then. “So few have shown up” Now he kissed me: “I’m returning your visit, kid,” he said, flashing that inimitable grin. “Good luck. I’m telling you, you’re going to make it again.”

  My hopes were high. I was coming back.

  I bought new gowns, new musical arrangements, and a big ad in Variety, and waited.

  Again, nothing happened. No calls from agents. No offers. Three months passed. I was booked to replace the ailing Tony Martin at the Biltmore Hotel at Lake Tahoe, Nevada. The press reviews were good. One critic compared me to Ethel Merman. Then weeks passed without a call.

  We did the best we could to make ends meet on Burt’s salary. Mother, who had enjoyed me at Ciro’s as she had not enjoyed her Lilly for many years, found her health improved by midsummer. She felt it was time to return to New York to see Ann and her baby—and she knew our finances were low. Burt and I saw her off. “Don’t worry, darlings,” she said. “We’ll be together soon. We’re never separated for long.”

  CHAPTER XXVII

  DURING these first few months back in the States, I had much time on my hands and read a great deal. I was particularly impressed by Lecomte du Nouy’s Human Destiny, and its emphasis upon collaboration with God to achieve personal dignity. I also read carefully an article by Clare Boothe Luce, who had recently been converted to Catholicism, entitled, “Apologetics For the Convert.” My reading encouraged me in the search for a way of life that would meet the needs of the Lillian Roth who had experienced what I had experienced, who had come the road I had come.

  I spoke to several priests, each time in some embarrassment, for my motive was not always understood. They tried to be helpful, but they were not too encouraging. “Your case is difficult. And the Church looks on these matters very seriously.”

  Burt’s mother wrote me frequently. In one letter she enclosed a gift of two rosaries, and passing the Church of the Blessed Sacrament in Hollywood of an afternoon, Burt and I went in to have them blessed.

  The priest who performed the ceremony was a dark-haired, dark-eyed man whose calmness struck a responsive chord in me. I felt he was a man who would understand my problem. “Father, there’s something personal I’d like to discuss with you, if I may,” I told him.

  He invited me into his study. He looked at me for a moment, a smile playing about his lips, then said surprisingly, “Mrs. McGuire, was your maiden name Lillian Roth?”

  I stared. Had he recognized me from photographs? How would a priest know the name of a nightclub entertainer?

  “We received a letter some time ago from Father Richard Murphy in Sydney,” he explained. “We thought you’d be along one of these days.” Father Murphy had written to Father Joseph McCloy, pastor of the Hollywood church.

  I spoke later with Father McCloy. “Anyone who has knocked so often deserves to have the door opened,” he said. He suggested that I begin instruction in Catholicism. “If, after studying it, you find it is your will to enter the Chinch, then it will be so. When you become a Catholic, we shall present your case to Rome for a ruling as to whether you can marry in the Church.”

  From whom was I to take instruction?

  From the Rev. William Swager of St Monica’s Church, Santa Monica—my parish church.

  “Why do you want to be a Catholic?” Father Swager asked.

  He was tall, bespectacled, enormously learned.

  “I just feel—well, I just know that God wants me to be a Catholic.”

  He looked at me quizzically.

  “How do you know there is a God?”

  This overwhelmed me. Wasn’t this a question he should answer for me? I believed in God, but I had never tried to define how or why. I looked about almost in confusion. My eyes fell on the window of Father Swager’s study, looking out on the church lawn. It was a bright, sunny day: the world outside was green and lovely.

  “I just feel it,” I said. “Everything’s that made, all the beauty about us-the trees, the grass, the birds-why, the entire universe, you and I—we just couldn’t have happened! I read Lecomte du Nouy and he speaks of chance and anti-chance.’ He explains God as anti-chance. It’s hard for me to believe that everything about us, all this beauty, all the growth and birth and wonders about us—that all are chance. There must be a God.”

  Again, in the same quiet, schoolmaster’s way, Father Swager asked:

  “Do you have any proof?”

  Once more I searched for words. “Well,” I said lamely, “in school I learned that there is a cause for every effect I was taught that the greatest scientific minds, who can tell you all the mysteries of cells, are baffled trying to explain how life began, or what it really is. But life exists —and there had to be a cause—and the cause is God.”

  He shook his head. “That is not enough proof,” he sa
id. He looked out the window for a moment, then turned to me. “Do you know why God made us?”

  My answer was childlike, but I could think of no other at the moment. “He must have been lonely,” I said.

  The priest smiled. “God made us to love Him and to serve Him and to be happy with Him eternally.” He rose and put out his hand to me. “I believe you are sincere, Lillian. We will begin our course of instruction at once. There will be books for you to study. We will move slowly. You must have proof that convinces you there is a God. You must learn, too, how to defend your belief through the proof you have.”

  Through the long, hot summer of 1948 I took my instruction. Four afternoons a week I sat in Father Swager’s study for sessions which lasted from two to three hours. I pored over books on science, history, theology. When I found it difficult to understand, or to accept, Father Swager was patient “You must not accept anything unless you believe it,” he repeated. “Otherwise, it is hypocrisy. You are not forced to believe.”

  Burt called for me each afternoon.

  One sweltering day he arrived quite early. Our session was only half-completed. I asked Father Swager if I might invite my husband into the cool of the study.

  “Certainly,” the priest said. Burt came in, a little diffidently, and took a chair in a curtained alcove. “I’ll just read a magazine until you’re finished,” he said.

  Next day he called for me a little earlier, and the day after still earlier. “You might as well sit in the room with us,” I suggested. “You’ll get more air.”

  As he drove me home later, he said suddenly, “I’ve been listening to your lessons.”

  I smiled. “I know,” I said.

  He grinned sheepishly. “You know, I never realized the logic in Catholic doctrine. After all, I stopped studying as a youngster. All I knew were the childhood fears of hell and damnation. I never really grew up in my religion.”

  Presently we were taking instruction together, and it seemed strange, yet inevitable, that I, a Jewess, entering a faith which was based upon my own Judaism, should be instrumental in bringing my husband back to the faith into which he had been born.

  For that is how Burt returned to his church.

  On August 14, 1948, I was baptized.

  “Father,” I said, “I am frightened now. I will have to go to confession. And, Father—I have so much to confess!”

  He took my hand in his. “No, Lillian,” he said, “there is no confession for you. With your baptism you have been reborn. In the eyes of the Church you are without sin. All that is in the past. Put it out of your mind. It is as if it has not been.”

  On August 15, the following day, I took my first communion.

  I prayed to God. Help me to love You and do Your will.

  Later that afternoon, I sat meditating; and it occurred to me that all my life I had lived with anxiety, so great that until this moment I had carried sleeping pills with me, fearing that some unexpected crisis might upset me beyond control. In my mind sleeping pills substituted for the drink I might take if something too overwhelming to endure came upon me.

  Now I felt an inner peace. What was there to be frightened of? Whatever happened, there was God to go to, to understand you, to give His love to you. I knew, with this peace I had found, that I would have no need for the pills: and by doing away with them, I would destroy all the subtle, unknown fears that had been my companion for so many years.

  I missed Mother. I wanted to return to New York and see her. She had not been feeling well. Burt and I worked our way eastward, Burt taking any job he could obtain to pay our train fare from town to town. Then, finally, we were in New York. When we introduced our mothers, they threw their arms around each other, and Mrs. McGuire cried, “Oh, my dear, the Irish and the Jews have always got along well, haven’t they!”

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  IT WOULD NOT be honest to say that my conversion to Catholicism did not puzzle many friends. When I had first written the news to Katie, her reply had been characteristic: “You know I don’t know too much about religion, Lilly, but if it makes you happy, then it’s right for you.”

  But many friends accused me of forsaking Judaism. I had to confess that though Mother and Dad believed in God, we had no religious ritual in our home. Looking back, I can say that I felt I was a spiritual person, that I had even a sense of the mystical, that I was convinced of the existence of good and evil, and that I wanted to be good, but I knew no chinch.

  I am not an authority on Catholicism. I am ignorant of many of its profound aspects. I can not say to others: do as I have done. I am only telling my story as I lived it. I hope that those who will, will understand. As to the others, I leave it to God.

  We were now living in the McGuire home in Southampton, which Burt’s mother had loaned us for the winter. Katie, living with Ann, was not too well. We had little money, but whenever we could, I gave her small sums. It seemed to me that she was more delighted when I gave her $2 for Bingo than when I had given her $10,000 to play roulette at Monte Carlo. I was well again, and that was the important thing.

  Each time I saw her, however, she seemed more frail. Ann and I took her to a physician, who reported that she had a mild heart condition, but would be all right if she took care of herself.

  The night of February 6, I awoke, as I had years before, the night Arthur died, with a strange sense of foreboding. I went downstairs and wrote a letter to Minna:

  “You know how worried I am about Katie. I’m going into New York tomorrow to bring her back here. Please, Minna, come down to Southampton and stay with us for the weekend. I am going to lose Katie and I will not be able to stand it. You must stay with me.”

  When Burt and I brought Katie to Southampton we put her to bed in a large upstairs room. She was in wonderful humor, confiding in Minna that she could not understand “why Lilly is fussing so.”

  Sunday morning Minna and her husband decided to return to New York. I begged her to stay one more night.

  “Now, don’t be silly,” said Minna, hugging me. “You just love your mother so much and you’re crazy with worry, but there’s no sense to it. Your mother feels fine.”

  The moment she left I became panicky and hurried upstairs. Katie was reading “John Brown’s “Body.” Oh, I thought, she must not read that: it is full of graveyard scenes.

  “Let’s talk, Mom,” I pleaded.

  “All righty,” she said. She put down the book and smoothed the folds of a blue bathrobe I’d ironed for her earlier. It seemed to me that with her fresh face and the lipstick she had put on, twenty years had dropped from her.

  “We could pass for sisters, Mom,” I said gaily. “Did you fix yourself up for me?” And I kissed her.

  I had to say what I had to say, and now was the moment. “You know, Mom,” I began. “I suppose you’ve often wondered how I came to join the Church. How do you really feel about it?”

  She shook her head. “Darling, you know whatever makes you happy is what I want for you. Naturally I wonder sometimes what our friends think, but you know I just believe in God. I’m sorry I don’t know more about religion, but whatever people believe that gives them happiness, then that’s it.”

  “Maybe you’d like to hear the story, anyway.” I told her how I had listened to the broadcast about the Lady of Fatima as I lay in my hotel room in Australia, and all that happened afterwards. She listened quietly. “Do you really think there is a heaven, Lilly?” she asked.

  “Don’t you, Mom?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes I think that when you die you die, and that is the sum and substance of it. You have lived—and you die. I know I wouldn’t want to be too old when I go.”

  “For goodness’ sake, Mom,” I said. “I’ll be gone before you. In fact, I’d better tell you about heaven now. Whoever gets there first will prove it.”

  “I’d like to believe that,” she said wistfully. The urge was strong in me: you must tell her there is a heaven. I told her as eloquently as I could. If I were
not certain there was an eternity, a hereafter, I would have been unable to come out of the particular hell I found myself on earth. I wanted to be always with those I loved. There was a heaven. “You’ll see,” I said. “It will be just as I said. I’ll get there before you and make arrangements.” And I laughed, holding back my tears, and hugged her.

  She said, “Well, if you say so, it must be so. You know, Lilly, you’re the boss. You’re always right”

  I kissed her again. “I’m going downstairs now, Mom, to see about dinner.”

  When I came up a few minutes later, she was reading a newspaper article on heart disease. How can I get that paper away from her, I thought. I served her dinner, and quietly took the paper downstairs. I made myself a cup of tea, and read the graphic description of a coronary attack.

  Suddenly Burt screamed, “Lillian! Lillian!”

  I rushed upstairs. She had suffered an attack. I whispered frantically to Burt, “Get the doctor!” I knew what it was. Hadn’t I just read all about it?

  Then the doctor was there, and an ambulance, and she was taken to the hospital.

  I remained at her bedside, hour after hour. As in the old days, I became hysterical. “If they don’t save her, I’ll kill myself. Don’t talk to me about God!” I screamed at the priest. “What is God doing? She’s dying!” But a moment later I was on my knees, praying. Why could she not be spared a little while longer? I had so much to atone for, I wanted so much to make her last years happy and proud…

  They placed her under an oxygen tent. I sat with her. A nurse brought a Sunday newspaper and said, “Would you like to read it?”

  I opened the papers and the comics were on my lap. My mother, under the oxygen tent, opened her eyes. “You have your funnies, Lilly?” she asked. “That’s good. You always liked them. I used to read them to you as a baby, do you remember?”