Don pulled me close and put his mouth to my ear, whispering, “Me and you. We will rule this town.”
We were married for two months before he started hitting me.
SIX WEEKS INTO OUR MARRIAGE, Don and I shot a weepie on location in Puerto Vallarta. Called One More Day, it was about a rich girl, Diane, who spends the summer with her parents at their second home, and the local boy, Frank, who falls in love with her. Naturally, they can’t be together, because her parents don’t approve.
The first weeks of my marriage to Don had been nearly blissful. We bought a house in Beverly Hills and had it decorated in marble and linen. We had pool parties nearly every weekend, drinking champagne and cocktails all afternoon and into the night.
Don made love like a king, truly. With the confidence and power of someone in charge of a fleet of men. I melted underneath him. In the right moment, for him, I’d have done anything he wanted.
He had flipped a switch in me. A switch that changed me from a woman who saw making love as a tool into a woman who knew that making love was a need. I needed him. I needed to be seen. I came alive under his gaze. Being married to Don had shown me another side of myself, a side I was just getting to know. A side I liked.
When we got to Puerto Vallarta, we spent a few days in town before shooting. We took our rented boat out into the water. We dived into the ocean. We made love in the sand.
But as we started shooting and the daily stresses of Hollywood started fracturing our newlywed cocoon, I could tell the tide was turning.
Don’s last movie, The Gun at Point Dume, wasn’t doing well at the box office. It was his first time in a Western, his first crack at playing an action hero. PhotoMoment had just published a review saying, “Don Adler is no John Wayne.” Hollywood Digest wrote, “Adler looks like a fool holding a gun.” I could tell it was bothering him, making him doubt himself. Establishing himself as a masculine action hero was a vital part of his plan. His father had mostly played the straight man in madcap comedies, a clown. Don was out to prove he was a cowboy.
It did not help that I had just won an Audience Appreciation Award for Best Rising Star.
On the day we shot the final good-bye, where Diane and Frank kiss one last time on the beach, Don and I woke up in our rented bungalow, and he told me to make him breakfast. Mind you, he did not ask me to make him breakfast. He barked the order. Regardless, I ignored his tone and called down to the maid.
She was a Mexican woman named Maria. When we had first arrived, I was unsure if I should speak Spanish to the local people. And then, without ever making a formal decision about it, I found myself speaking slow, overenunciated English to everyone.
“Maria, will you please make Mr. Adler some breakfast?” I said into the phone, and then I turned to Don and said, “What would you like? Some coffee and eggs?”
Our maid back in Los Angeles, Paula, made his breakfast every morning. She knew just how he liked it. I realized in that moment that I’d never paid attention.
Frustrated, Don grabbed the pillow from under his head and smashed it over his face, screaming into it.
“What has gotten into you?” I said.
“If you’re not going to be the kind of wife who is going to make me breakfast, you can at least know how I like it.” He escaped to the bathroom.
I was bothered but not entirely surprised. I had quickly learned that Don was only kind when he was happy, and he was only happy when he was winning. I had met him on a winning streak, married him as he was ascending. I was quickly learning that sweet Don was not the only Don.
Later, in our rented Corvette, Don backed out of the driveway and started heading the ten blocks toward set.
“Are you ready for today?” I asked him. I was trying to be uplifting.
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Don stopped in the middle of the road. He turned to me. “I’ve been a professional actor for longer than you’ve been alive.” This was true, albeit on a technicality. He was in one of Mary’s silent movies as a baby. He didn’t act in a movie again until he was twenty-one.
There were a few cars behind us now. We were holding up traffic. “Don . . .” I said, trying to encourage him to move forward. He wasn’t listening. The white truck behind us started pulling around, trying to get past us.
“Do you know what Alan Thomas said to me yesterday?” Don said.
Alan Thomas was his new agent. Alan had been encouraging Don to leave Sunset Studios, to go freelance. A lot of actors were navigating their careers on their own. It was leading to big paychecks for big stars. And Don was getting antsy. He kept talking about making more for one picture than his parents had made their whole careers.
Be wary of men with something to prove.
“People around town are asking why you’re still going by Evelyn Hugo.”
“I changed my name legally. What do you mean?”
“On the marquee. It should say ‘Don and Evelyn Adler.’ That’s what people are saying.”
“Who is saying that?”