A MOVING LOVE STORY FROM AN UNLIKELY SOURCE
Back in the 1960s and 1970s a handful of male authors struck gold with relatively short, quirky first-person love stories. The most famous of these, of course, was Erich Segal’s 1970 mega-bestseller Love Story. It was quickly followed by Herman Raucher’s Summer of ’42 (1971), John Jay Osborn, Jr.’s Paper Chase (1971), and a handful of others. One of my favorite works in this vein is You and Me, Babe, published in 1974, and written by Chuck Barris, who would soon become famous as the host of The Gong Show, a silly TV talent show for people who were only moderately talented or, in some cases, decidedly untalented.
Most of the novels in this category involve what you might call “odd couples.” In Love Story, the boy is the scion of a rich and prominent family while the girl is from a working-class background. In Summer of ’42, the boy is only 15 and the woman he loves is in her early 20s. In Paper Chase, the boy is a Harvard law student in awe of one of his teachers, the godlike Professor Kingsfield; the girl is Kingsfield’s daughter, and thus seemingly out of the boy’s league. Barris’s novel is also the story of an odd couple who fall in love. The main character/narrator is Tommy Christian, a middle-class Connecticut kid whose father is a chiropodist. When Tommy is twenty, his little sister’s 14-year-old friend Samantha Wilkerson develops a crush on him that he doesn’t requite. Later, when “Sammy” is eighteen and Tommy is 24, the attraction becomes mutual. But Sammy is the daughter of a very wealthy business tycoon and his socialite wife. Her family wants nothing to do with Tommy who, by this time, is an aspiring novelists living in New York and barely eking out a living as a clerk at the Doubleday Bookstore (where William Faulkner once worked). Nonetheless, after a fairly stormy courtship, Tommy and Sammy eventually tie the knot. When this happens, Sammy’s family essentially cuts her off financially. To make ends meet, Tommy takes a job as a traveling salesman. His job requires him to drive all across America, visiting one TV station after another, trying to sell a device that makes live news broadcasts easier to direct. Sammy joins him on his cross-country trek and the two young lovers have a relatively pleasant time. Eventually, however, Tommy is fired from his job for incompetence and neglect, and the couple must return to the cheap apartment they rent in a decidedly unglamorous section of New York City. Whenever things go bad like this for Tommy, he recycles a favorite phrase of his younger sister: “Shoulda, woulda, coulda.” He will have plenty of opportunities to use this phrase.
In the long run, the loss of the traveling salesman position turns out to be a good thing for Tommy. Unwanted in the job market and forced to rely on his own ingenuity and creativity, Tommy comes up with the idea for a TV game show called The Cinderella Game. He manages to get a major TV network to air the show. It becomes a big hit and Tommy becomes rich. He creates a few more successful game shows and gets even richer. Alas, wealth strains the relationship of Tommy and Sammy much more than poverty ever did. By now they have a daughter, Caroline, whom Tommy rarely sees because he is always flying out to the west coast to oversee his game show empire.
If you know anything at all about Chuck Barris, you will recognize that his novel is very autobiographical. Barris was the son of a middle-class dentist. In 1957 he married Lyn Levy, whose uncle was one of the founders of the Columbia Broadcasting System. Levy’s family was wealthy and socially prominent. The marriage produced Barris’s only child, a daughter named Della. In the mid 1960s, Barris himself became hugely successful after creating the game show The Dating Game. The company he founded, Chuck Barris Productions, went on to produce a variety of other game shows, including The Newlyweds (the last network TV show to debut in black and white) and the aforementioned Gong Show. But wealth and success spelled doom for Barris’s marriage to Lyn. They divorced in 1975.
Had Barris ended his novel on page 144, it might have been a bestseller, the short happy tale of a young couple that struggles with poverty for awhile but eventually triumphs over it when the boy becomes a fabulously wealthy game-show producer. It’s true that Love Story and Summer of ’42 have downer endings, but those endings are melodramatic, the stuff of Hollywood tear-jerkers. Alas, Barris is too good to deliver a Hollywood ending. Instead he gives us, in slow motion, a marital trainwreck. Even sadder, we see how Tommy’s success pulls him away from his daughter and his fatherly responsibilities. Barris doesn’t spare himself in these scenes. Reading about Caroline begging her father to cancel a business meeting so that he can attend her birthday party or take her to the zoo is excruciating.
“Where are you, Daddy?”
“I’m in Los Angeles, California, sweetheart.” The telephone connection was terrible. “Can you hear me, Carrie?”
“Yes.”
“Happy birthday, honey.”
“When are you coming home?”
“Soon,” I lied.
“Good.”
“How was the party, sweetheart?”
“Fine.”
“That’s good.”
“Daddy, why did you have to go there on my birthday?”
“”I had an important business meeting,” I answered, wondering if I sounded as silly and as guilty as I felt, and if a four-year-old could detect that sort of thing. “Carrie,” I said quickly, “did all your friends come?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Did you like the present your mother and I bought you?” I didn’t know what Sammy got her. She should have told me.
“Yes.”
“That’s nice.”
“Daddy, when did you say you were coming home?”
“Soon. Carrie, who’s my favorite little girl in the whole world?”
“I am.”
“I’ve got to run sweetheart. Give me a big kiss and a big hug.”
She gave me a big kiss and a big hug.
“Good-bye, sweetheart.”
“Good-bye, Daddy.”
I hung up the phone and felt lousy.
Variations of this scene will play out over and over again as the marriage crumbles and Tommy’s business empire demands more of his time. His conversations with Sammy are even more painful. Finally Sammy demands a divorce. When Tommy asks her why she tells him, “You turned out to be just like my father. Mergers, acquisitions, board meetings, stockholder meetings, sales meetings, public relations meetings, legal meetings. Meetings, meetings, meetings. Never any time for anything but business. Everything in your life now is business. Accounts payable, accounts receivable, profits, losses, earnings, shares.”
What’s heartbreaking about this is that, when he was writing the book, Barris was still married and his daughter, technically at least, still lived in a two-parent family. But the year after You and Me, Babe was published, he and his wife divorced. Two years later, The Gong Show made him a nationally recognized celebrity. He used to bring the teenaged Della on the show frequently, allowing her to introduce him to the audience in much the same way that Ed McMahon would introduce Johnny Carson. This may have been his way of keeping her involved in his life and out of trouble. If so, it didn’t work. Della died in 1998, at the age of 36. She had tried to fill the father-shaped void in her life with sex, drugs, and alcohol and eventually they all killed her. Barris, understandably, was devastated by this. His final book, published in 2010, was a work of nonfiction called Della: A Memoir of My Daughter. In it, he tends to blame her problems on just about everyone but himself. But 36 years before it was published, he seemed to know just how bad a father he was, at least judging by the arc of Tommy Christian’s story. He foresaw it all coming – the lure of fame and fortune that pulled him away from his wife and daughter – and still he couldn’t prevent it from happening.
It’s a tragic story, but it makes for a very good novel. Alas, it could have been a great novel. When you read You and Me, Babe and then follow it up immediately by reading Della: A Memoir of My Daughter you get a much fuller picture of how Barris’s first marriage fell apart, how Della became collateral damage in the divorce, and how Barris’s success made it almost impossible for him to be a decent father. If he could have combined the two books into one much more detailed semi-autobiographical novel, he might’ve struck literary gold. Well, literary silver, at least. Even in 2010, towards the end of his life, Barris still didn’t seem capable of understanding the extent of his own failings as a father and a husband. For one thing, he comes across as fairly self-centered and unwilling to delve into his own faults too deeply. His wife — whom he usually refers to somewhat coldly as “Della’s mother” — is described as crazy, a ditzy woman, born to great wealth, who nonetheless fashions herself a hippie and an anti-establishment figure. To protest the election of Richard Nixon she moves to Switzerland and takes Della with her. She puts Della in a boarding school so that she (Della’s mother) can spend time hanging out with the jet set and complain about how awful America is. If this woman had an ounce of feeling for her daughter or any mothering skills Barris doesn’t mention it. Barris seems to think he is portraying himself heroically in scenes where he comes across like a dick. Here’s an example:
The second day after Della was born I went to the hospital to visit my wife and new daughter. When I looked through the maternity nursery window, I saw Della in her crib, her little arms pinned to her sides. My daughter was laced up to her neck in a white straitjacket.
The first thing I did was bust into the nursery and check the tiny beaded identification bracelet on Della’s wrist to make sure it was my daughter. It was. Then I demanded to see a nurse. The nurse I demanded to see was standing behind me. The nurse placed her hands on my back and pushed me out of the nursery.
In the hall she yelled, “Who do you think you are walking into my nursery like that?” Do you know the amount of germs and disease you could be carrying? I could have you —”
I yelled back, “Why is my daughter wearing a goddamn straitjacket?”
The nurse yelled, “You just watch your language, sir. Your daughter’s wearing the little white coat because she’s scratched her cheek with her sharp fingernails. She’ll have a scar on her cheek for the rest of her life, and more scars if we —”
“First of all that’s not a little white coat, it’s a straitjacket, and second of all cut her fingernails.”
“We cannot cut the baby’s fingernails yet. She’s only two days old.”
“Then I’m taking my daughter home.”
“Oh, no you’re not,” said the nurse.
“Oh, yes I am.”
And that’s exactly what I did. I went down to my wife’s room, told her to get out of bed and pack her things, she and the baby were going home.”
My wife said, “What?”
I went back to the nursery, walked in, and bundled Della up. The two of us went to collect my wife and another blanket for Della. Then the three of us walked out of the hospital’s main entrance and hailed a cab. We took the taxi to our apartment on East Fifty-fifth Street.
It was minus two degrees outside that morning.
Barris seems to think that this story portrays him in a flattering light but, to me, it makes him seem like a jerk. He talks about how business keeps him away from home for days on end, so that Della ends up spending a lot of time being looked after by a family friend named Judy Ducharme, a sort of unofficial nanny. Then he blames Judy for Della’s problems with drugs:
Della looked upon Judy as her second mother. Judy thought of Della as the daughter she never had. They fought and argued and made up. They did all the things mothers and daughters do. Judy wasn’t as bright as Della. My daughter could do drugs behind Judy’s back she couldn’t do with me. Della could get whacked out of her mind on drugs and Judy would just look perplexed and say ridiculous things like, “You’re something else, Della.” The two would remain best friends for Della’s short life.
He even comes close to blaming Della’s death on Judy:
After waking up Thursday morning, the day before her death, and seeing what she saw, Della cried out for help. She called Judy Ducharme. Della was sure Judy would come to her apartment and comfort her. Judy was the only “family” Della had in Los Angeles at the time. Judy Ducharme was a like a mother to Della. She was someone Della could talk to, and Della needed to talk to someone. Judy would have been able to console her. Judy was good at that.
But Judy was sick and couldn’t come.
Della was gone the next morning.
Judy never forgave herself for not coming. It wasn’t Judy’s fault. She had the flu and was unable to come. Also, Della’s immune system was so weak, Judy would have given Della her flu, and that might have killed Della. I’m sure Della’s death and Judy’s inability to get to Della because she was sick when Della needed her, will torment Judy for the rest of her life.
I’m told by friends that Della was very depressed just before she died. Of course she was depressed. She was sick. She was broke. And she was burdened with a low-life lover who provided her with drugs that aided and abetted her depression.
Even ten years after her death, when he was writing his memoir, he’s still pointing the finger mostly at other people. If he’d had more self-awareness, this could have been a brutally beautiful memoir. But if he had more self-awareness, he probably wouldn’t have been such a shitty father to begin with. A self-aware person would never be able to write “I’m told by friends that Della was very depressed just before she died” and not be able to see just how clueless it made him seem. Maybe Judy should have gone to her on the day before she died. Maybe Della’s boyfriend was a low-life scum. But the damage to Della seems to have been done before those two entered her life.
In the mid 1970s, Barris is living the good life of a wealthy bachelor in Malibu. Della is living in Switzerland with her mother but spends every summer with her father in Malibu. He owns a small beach house with only one bedroom, so she has to sleep on the couch. When Della is thirteen, she arrives in Malibu and finds that her father has a live-in girlfriend named Eva Raintree, who sounds as though she is closer to Della’s age than to Barris’s. This, understandably, is very upsetting to Della, but Barris can’t seem to fathom why:
According to Della, her summers were ruined now. I had begun dreading Della’s visits, and now my girlfriend was being blamed for ending all the wonderful times the two of us had at my house in Malibu. But Della had to get a grip. Our lives were simply moving on. She was getting older, and I was becoming lonely.
Della detested Eva on sight. She called her Eva Braun. Della never lost her distaste for her, or her ability to make Eva miserable, a skill she would deploy with all my girlfriends. Eva Raintree-Braun was, according to Della, ugly as mud and dumb as dirt. Actually Eva was very pretty and extremely intelligent.
It was the beginning of a long era of me yelling at my daughter behind my girlfriends’ backs for not liking various traits of theirs. It was also a time when my young daughter would ruin dozens of my relationships. It was a terrible period of my life. I didn’t know how to handle my daughter’s insolence. It marked the beginning of our toughest times together. One day, when Della made a face once too often at Eva Raintree, I dragged her away from the dinner table by her arm.
It’s difficult to read that and not want to slap the man. In this period of his life he has, by his own admission, dozens of girlfriends sharing his bed, and he’s wondering why his thirteen-year-old daughter feels uncomfortable? Dude, your daughter is crying out for some love and you are a colossal slut who is more interested in bedding young babes than giving your own child an ounce of attention!
The memoir almost reads like a darkly comic novel whose protagonist is an unreliable narrator of his own life. But that would take more cleverness than Barris apparently had by this time in his life. You don’t have to be very psychologically astute to read between the lines of this memoir and see just what a shitty husband and father Barris was. Subconsciously, he probably knew it himself, which is probably why he wrote this somewhat self-exculpatory memoir. If he could have been a bit more honest with himself (and his readers) in the memoir, it would have made an excellent companion piece to You and Me, Babe, almost a sequel. But as clueless as the memoir often is, reading it still manages to deepen the experience of reading the novel. The two books ought to be read back-to-back. Then use your imagination to picture just how good a novel could have been made from Barris’s life if he’d only been a little more open and honest about his own shortcomings.
You and Me, Babe may not be a classic of so-called serious literary fiction, but it is an excellent piece of popular fiction and it deserves to be better known than it is. In a fair world, it would have outsold Love Story, Summer of ’42, Paper Chase, and all the rest. There were elements of melodrama in all of those. Barris’s novel, on the other hand, was even more truthful than the author could have known at the time he wrote it. It leaves the reader gravely concerned about the fate of the main character’s young daughter. The book remains an excellent cautionary tale about the wages of fame and fortune. But it has been seriously forgotten. In January of this year I bought an autographed hardback first edition of the book for a paltry $20.
In 2005, Da Capo Press brought out the first new edition of the book in decades. According to the publisher the new edition was “substantially rewritten and expanded” by Barris. I can’t tell you how that new edition differs from the original. Reading it the first time was painful enough. Knowing that he wrote an expanded edition just a few years after Della’s death suggests to me that the new edition may be even more painful to read. Especially if it employs the same self-exculpatory mode as the memoir.
Chuck Barris died in 2017 at the age of 87. I don’t know what is written on his tombstone, but given his acerbic sense of humor and the fact that he seems to have had a lot of deeply suppressed regrets about the way he lived, I wouldn’t be surprised it it read: Shoulda, woulda, coulda.