I also accompany Dad to the sets and locations for productions he is filming. Going to the studio is so surreal and magical. It is like watching a group of adults play dress-up like it’s a real-life Mickey Rooney–Judy Garland Andy Hardy movie unfolding before my eyes. The sets are built and the cast members are in their costumes and makeup, ready to put on the “big show” and help save Farmer Tom from losing his farm.
Even then, I never quite understand what my father does for a living. He rarely talks about acting or moviemaking to me when driving us to the studios. Instead, he is like some kind of wise man on the mountaintop. He readily dispenses his wisdom to me on just about anything and everything, even though I am far too young to understand most of what he is saying. With the bravado that made him famous as an actor, he starts the same way every time: “Lorenzo, you’ll be happy someday; I’m telling you this,” and thrusts his forefinger into the air as if he is acting in a serious melodrama. I become a fast learner in the art of nodding.
I never knew then as I would later that Dad is the kind of person who always puts a positive spin on things. It is his nature. In June 1960, an Associated Press reporter sits down to interview my father and asks him to comment on his marriage to my mom. He famously proclaims that although it has had its share of rough sailing, their marriage is “succeeding” because “too many people in Hollywood forget that they are men and women first, and actors second. They bring their roles home from the studio and try to live them at home. A man is a man and a woman is a woman. No matter if he wins an Academy Award, it means nothing if he does not have understanding at home.”
Father adds, “Women especially are emotional. That is their nature. An actress deals in emotions in her work. If she continues playing the part at home, the result is chaos. Man was meant to be dominant. When an actress’s career zooms higher than her actor husband’s, it is an impossible situation. Soon she starts paying the bills. He cannot stand by and retain his self-respect.”
Because they are in step with the societal norms of the time, including male superiority in the household, Father and Mom have a very traditional marriage. As head of the household, he sets ground rules from the first day. He pays all the bills and lets Mom do whatever she wants with her earnings. Even as a married man, however, he remains the free-spirited individual he has always been, doing whatever he wants when he wants. So twice a week, he goes to the fights—boxing is one of his true loves. Sometimes he tells Mom; other times not. I am sure most men reading this love the fact my father lived such a footloose and fancy-free existence. But even back in that day, not every woman was as patient and subservient as my mother. In fact, she wasn’t either.
The AP interview runs nationally, and once again, to the world, my parents appear happy in their marriage. As that two-year-old, wet-behind-the-ears, snot-nosed kid who still pisses in his pants, I never suspect anything to the contrary. Of course, my parents are actors.
Five months later, Mom suddenly flies off to Mexico to get a quickie divorce. On October 10, 1960, she files. Five days later, she marries wealthy Texas oilman Christian R. Holmes III, after he has finalized property settlement details of his divorce with his ex-wife. Mom and Christian are wed at a private estate in Cuernavaca in front of invited guests that include his business associates and socialites from nearby Mexico City. It is the third marriage each for Mom and Christian, a Marine captain during the Korean War who has oil interests in Texas, Louisiana, and South America. The following February, Mother’s desire to have a church wedding prompts her and Christian to exchange vows again in the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd in Reno, Nevada.
Just like that, a new man suddenly moves in to live with us, while the man I have come to love and admire as my father, the one who whisks me off in his fancy convertible to Hollywood meetings, vanishes. My world shatters into a million pieces. I feel a huge loss, a huge void. The whole thing is like a bad movie I cannot get out of my mind. I cry myself to sleep many nights. It is all so confusing. The father I have grown to love in such a very short time is no more. My life, as I know it, is not the same. Nor will it ever be. My parents’ divorce traumatizes me in ways that will not become evident until much later.
I do not ever remember Mom really talking to me about Dad, the divorce, or her marriage to Christian. Perhaps she thought I was too young or would not understand. Whatever the reason, it is as though that part of her life and my life with Dad is simply swept under the rug and forgotten. With her new man and new husband in her life, Mom carries on. I am expected to do the same. It takes a long time for me to warm up to Christian. He is not my father, despite his best efforts to fill his shoes, and I long for the day when I can see Dad again and be in his company.
In August of 1961, Mom and Christian welcome a baby daughter into the world: Carole Christine. Mom and Christian arrive in style, in a limo from the hospital, carrying her in a beautiful bassinet.
That same year Father reunites with his former flame and MGM screen star Esther Williams. The two of them pack their bags and move to Italy, where they work and live together for almost three years. Devoting her life to my father, Esther leaves her children in the care of her alcoholic ex-husband, Ben Gage, a decision she later pays dearly for. Naturally, the news Dad is moving far, far away devastates me. It is yet another reminder of the loss in my life: that Dad is not only not part of my life anymore, but he is now in a place halfway around the world where I will never see him. My separation from him and longing for his return dominate my existence. I miss him so much.
Meanwhile, Mom does everything to make her third marriage work while providing me with a safe and stable environment in which to grow up. My childhood home for the next eight years is a stunning one-story, rambling five-bedroom California ranch-style house with a shake roof and white stucco siding in Pacific Palisades, nestled between the Santa Monica Mountains and Santa Monica Bay, with a backyard overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
After divorcing my father, Mom bought the house in 1960 for $64,000. The home was originally built in the late 1950s by a local developer as part of two neighborhoods, or tracts, he developed near Will Rogers State Park: Villa Grove and Villa Woods. We are the last house at the end of the cul-de-sac in Villa Grove. As the only housing developments in Pacific Palisades at the time, we are completely isolated and protected from the rest of the world. It is a magnificent place to live. There is no crime, and my friends and I play ball until nine o’clock at night during the summer because it is so safe.
Because my first name is hard for them to pronounce, my playmates settle on calling me “Lucky.” The nickname sticks. After I become an actor, a fan has a T-shirt made for me with “Lucky Lamas” emblazoned across the front. As my life plays out, I start to believe “Lucky” is my real name.
With so many oil interests to manage, my stepfather Christian is frequently on the road on business. Mom is always super-busy working, too. She is either headlining a stage show in Vegas or going to New York to talk about her cosmetics business. She is hardly home herself. And even when she is, she is always too busy doing something. Most days I feel lost and lonely. I become a deeply troubled fat little boy who eats a lot out of frustration. I long for what my friends have and what every kid wants: normalcy. My friends all have normal lives with normal parents not in show business. They function and do everything like normal families. I do not have that. I have a mother who leads a fashionable jet-set life. Then, when she is home, she invites society and famous people over for dinner and requires me to dress up and sit there smiling like a dummy. Not only that, I have a father who lives far away, a father I never see and hardly know.
After school, I spend my time at friends’ houses just so I can have a normal family dinner rather than help Mom entertain her adult friends, people I do not even know. I’m frequently wishing for what I do not have: wishing my parents were David’s parents, or Jeff’s parents, or Sally’s parents. Dealing with such tumult and confusion is hard, especially for a kid my age.
When Mom flits out of town, she usually
