It was an “accident,” my finding this clip.  But of course, there are no accidents.   And when I wrote to the person who posted the clip, he offered to send me a copy of the entire movie on DVD.  I could not be more grateful.

It’s an awful movie.   But that’s no surprise.  The late Richard “Kim” Milford has the dubious distinction of having made some of the worst movies, ever.   One in particular, Laserblast, rivals Plan 9 from Outer Space for sheer…”unwatchability.”  It is so bad that it is a cult film eagerly watched and even sought after by collectors for being so bad.  

It is also obvious to me that the director or producer or…whomever…was in love with him.  The camera loves him just as much or more.  It feels as if the whole point of the otherwise pointless film was to be near Kim.  That happened to him often.   It may, in fact, have been his downfall.

That’s…hard for me to admit.   Because Kim was also…my friend.   The circuitous route to that friendship is legend amongst my friends.   The easiest way to explain it?   Well, he was a Chicago boy (ritzy Winnetka, actually) who’d scored a role in Mark Hamill’s first solo venture, Covette Summer, and when the press kit came my way at the Sun Times, I recognized him almost immediately as the kid from the ABC movie.  What I especially recalled was that me and my women friends called each other having seen it.   We admitted it was pretty cheesy, but we also declared this Kim kid very “watch worthy.”  Oh--and he could sing, too.

And watch worthy he was.  I could always find him in a crowd, like at the airport when I flew in to see him, by following the double takes.   Women and men would turn, and then turn again, to make sure they’d really seen what they thought they’d seen.   Some would then smile to make sure he saw them.   But he would ignore them all, and wind his way toward me with open arms and a relieved expression that told me things the gawkers could never have understood.  

I was, in many ways, a safe haven.   He had long ago tired of the attention and even found it counterproductive.    Men, including many who held his career in their hands, often hated him at first sight, as I would discover whenever we went out.  One guy at a Mexican resort called him an “Aryan wet dream.”   I loved and often use that phrase.  But I hated the guy who said it.   He seemed to blame Kim for the entire Holocaust.  Yes, he was very drunk, but his anger was very real.   And very dangerous.   

It probably didn’t help that earlier that evening Kim had played a practical joke on everyone in the third floor dining room by seeming to fall off of the balcony by our table.  The building  was surrounded by pools, and he had actually corrected the “fall” with remarkable grace, landing in one of them—he’d done stunts.   He knew what he was doing.

But he also had emerged with his white jeans and shirt not only clinging to his body but…well…they'd turned to cellophane.   Even the Mayan maids—who had already taken to sweeping our front walkway a little too long every day to see him come out and take his morning stretch--giggled and gathered by the pool.   The other women enjoyed it, too.

So he used those looks.   They’d gotten him on the Broadway stage fresh out of high school, and into Hair and Rocky Horror and the TV movie.   Possibly Corvette Summer, I don’t know.  

He posed nude for Viva Magazine once.  I loved his mother's response:  "Big deal!  I diapered all that!"  But even if she'd been scandalized by it, it wouldn't have mattered.  He would have done anything to make the “A-list.”   He was addicted to everything that world offered—the “trappings” most of all.   Putting cart before horse, he craved the sex, the drugs, the promise of fame…even the pain and drama of not quite attaining the fame he wanted so badly.   And I believe that is what killed him.  No one can live the way he lived for very long.  He, himself, sometimes admitted this.   He, himself, sometimes said he felt the end was nearer than any of us wanted to think.

In fact, I believe he was ill in some physical way the whole time I knew him.  I didn’t realize how little time he had when I left Chicago on my great adventure, turning my back on the maelstrom.   We turned each other loose—I knew even then it was, for both of us, a sacrifice to save my life.   I knew just as surely that he wouldn’t let go completely.  He didn’t.  He called whenever he had a bit part in something or other…and there’d always be an anxious silence after the announcement.   A little time for me to say, “When will you be home?   Where are you now?”  To ask for contact info.   To throw out that life line.

But I knew if I did, he would pull me under.   I wasn’t ready to go.   He was already gone.

But before he left…he put together a Hollywood night for me that I will never forget.  I cannot remember why he did it.  I remember that he’d been back to Chicago and I’d met his family including his sister who was up for an Academy Award.  He was thrilled to be her date for Oscar night. 

And perhaps in the glow of it all, he had also, not entirely in jest, proposed to me after we’d stayed up ‘til dawn trying to sort out the tangled web his life had become.   I laughed.  He didn’t.  I gasped.  Then he laughed.  It couldn’t happen for sooooo many reasons--reasons  I’m not about to discuss here.   But it seemed, as the saying goes, like a good idea at the time.  For a hot minute, anyway.   There were a few of those hot minutes over the tumultuous time we spent with each other.   You know ‘em.   You’re looking at someone…and just for a second…they’re the only one that makes sense.   Then the moment passes.   And you’re kinda relieved.

I think the night I’m going to describe here was about that.  It was his way of saying something very important to someone very important who needed to know and remember how important she was--no matter what happened later.   So when people ask me how and why and, “Jeezus, what were you thinking?” I tell them this story.  It explains everything.   It even makes them a tad envious.  Here it is.

It began with a wee hours phone call demanding that I hop a plane to LA at the end of the week.  Which…wasn’t as unusual as all that.  I flew around a lot as a reporter.   I had a bag always packed and ready.   But he was unusually persistent and used every trick in his very thick book to make me believe that he would just die if I didn’t.   It worked.

There was, of course, more to it than that.  But…I’m going to cut to the chase.  One of the evenings I was there, he took me to the home of a record producer where he spent most of the afternoon making sure I got very, very “mellow.”  There was champagne…and other stuff.   Something I did not often do, because of what I knew not just about him but about the fast lane life in general.  A girl needed to have her wits about her at all times.   That time, I relented.  The house was palatial, the company, pleasant.  And I could tell there was a special reason why he thought I needed to do this.

I found out a little bit of it after night fell.   The house also had a heated pool, surrounded by a glass walled aviary full of exotic and beautiful birds.   But I, as he well knew—some of you do, too, because I have written about literally drowning as a kid--was terrified of water.  He was determined to change that.   So we changed into bathing “attire” and he waded out into that warm pool…and waited.  I gave him one of my stares.   He smiled and said, “Would I ever let anything happen to you?”

That was the right response.

I walked as far as I was willing to go.  He swam over and told me to turn away from him, close my eyes and just lean back.   I cannot believe I did it, but I think the alcohol and…other stuff…allowed me to.  He placed a hand beneath my shoulders and another a bit lower…and began to glide me gently through, with my face above, the water.   I want you to imagine being just tipsy enough, being held up just so…and moving slooooowly through a pool of warm water.   Way to get over a phobia, right?  I wanted to live in that pool for the rest of my life.  If he promised to keep doing that the whole time, that is.

But he had other things planned.   In a rented sports car, we went flying out…somewhere…who knew…who cared?   I had my eyes closed.  He was singing.  I didn’t need to know anything else.  But then he pulled into a studio lot—which studio, I’m not sure.   But we stopped in front of what looked like an airplane hangar.  Where a sphinx from the Elizabeth Taylor version of Cleopatra sat glowering into the night.

Freaked me out.  Totally.  Until he explained, and later I would read about this many times, that Debbie Reynolds, who he knew—no big deal, Judy Garland had all but adopted him once, too—had stored a huge collection of memorabilia there.  I believe she later moved it to Vegas or…something like that.  But at the time, it was in this hangar.  Which he had access to for the whole night.   So that I could run around in it, trying on clothes from movies I’d loved since my childhood.

Swear to God…this really happened.   I could hardly believe it myself, but it really did happen.

I learned that as voluptuous as Marilyn Monroe looked and as tiny as I was then, I couldn’t pull any of her clothes all the way up.  Either her waist was unnaturally tiny or they had some powerful undergarments back then.  Hers were the only things I actually tried to put on—and I can’t remember, I wish I could, what movies they were from.  I was running around like a crazy person, because I could see, on every rack—and there were soooo many of them—something I remembered.    So I ran from rack to rack laughing like…the drunken hussy I was… marveling at the wonder of it all.  And looking back to enjoy how happy he was that I was so happy. 

That may have been the best part.  I don’t think many of the people he hung with were capable of such childlike glee anymore.  That I was…touched him deeply.   I’m not sure, in fact, which of us had the best time-- him watching me, or me running around in the fantasy world he offered me that night.  It was a gift for us both, that romp amongst the wardrobe and props.   But he’d meant it to be all for me.

He walked me through some other rooms…and in one very large one…possibly an old sound stage, there was a grand piano.  Wow.  Like…where did that come from I wonder…wink, wink.   He sat.  I sat.  And he sang for a long time.   He could make up songs on the spot.  He could do so many things so well.   I hated that so few people knew this.   Vowed to change that if possible.   Then sat back to enjoy the moment.

But we still weren’t done.   We drove up and up and up to the place where the famous Rebel Without a Cause switchblade fight had been filmed.  I am a die hard James Dean fan.  This was a night to live all of my fan fantasies.    And somewhere up there we parked the sports car, top down, seats ‘way back, and watched the stars as those movie kids had.  Only these were real ones.

Which…began to…move…as I watched them.  Seriously.  Stars were streaking across the sky, or…seemed to be.   I grabbed his hand and said, “Milford…are you seeing this?”  He chuckled.   I squeezed the hand and said, “Even you…couldn’t make this happen—what the hell…?”

“No, this…wasn’t part of the plan,” he admitted.   “But it doesn’t surprise me.”

It was a meteor shower—documented.   One of the best in ages.   So the next night when I was about to catch the “red eye” back to Chicago, I was so totally dumbfounded by the entire weekend that I wanted to say so one more time before I left.   These were the days before email and cell phones, and it was, I thought, too late to call him anyway.   I knew, though, that there was a mailbox in the airport and that if I dropped off a letter before my flight, he might even receive it later the same day.   I was able to buy a little card.  But I had no change for the stamp machine beside the mailbox.

I went to it anyway, rummaging in the bottom of my purse, hoping to find just enough for a stamp.  I needn’t have bothered.  When I got there…there was a stamp, leftover from an earlier purchase, sticking halfway out of the machine.

At that point, it didn’t surprise me.  I jiggled it out of the slot, wrote my thank you note and slid it into the mailbox.   Can’t remember if it arrived that day or not.  I do know that when it did, I got another call, insisting that we meet in New York soon.   I was almost afraid to accept.  You know I did.

So that's the story.   Part of it.   He once asked me to write an unabridged biography, no holds barred.  I don’t think I could have.   I don’t think I will.   Ever.

But…a few days ago, he nudged me, I’m sure of it, to say something, at least, from my new “venue” here, in his memory.

So now I have.   I didn’t know…how painful it would be.   But I am glad I did it.  It was like having him back for one of those hot minutes.  

Watch the clips.   He's only onscreen in the first one for a few seconds, but...it's sooooo Milford and it's the one that inspired this.   The second is all audio, a song he allowed me to record, from a studio session he did with Ike Turner on bass.   It’s the first take.  He’s playing piano and making up the words as he goes along, as he always did.  It’s kinda disco camp, but he loved it.  And it almost got him a record contract.  He blew that deal.  I won’t say how.  Doesn’t matter.  Just…listen to him when he was happy.  

I prefer to remember him that way.

CODA:

THIS figures: A friend of mine wrote today to say, "You know...he died June 18th (1988), kid. That's...about a week ago. What's UP with this?"

I honestly hadn't thought to check that. I had blocked out the date from my memory pretty well, so it just didn't come into play as I began to compose this. But it makes sense to me, now, the sudden urge, JUST now...to write about him.

Still gets me to do whatever he wants me to do, that guy. Even from the Great Beyond...

So, ok, I HEARD you, Milford. Mission accomplished.