Elke

The Photos I've taken of Elke for this family album consist mainly of nudes--for a very good reason: It's almost impossible to catch her with her clothes on. She rarely wears anything around the house, and she paints nude by the swimming pool. When the doorbell rings, I have to scramble madly to find her a towel or a dressing gown, because I'm quite sure this would never occur to her; she's proud of her body and unashamed of displaying it.

As I write this, Elke is sitting cross-legged on the floor, wearing only a bikini bottom and listening to Leonard Cohen singing tunelessly, for the fourth time this evening, a song about Suzanne, who takes you down to the river and feeds you tea and oranges. She is painting while listening and asking me for the dozenth time today whether I think her painting is good, do I love her and why don't I write a song for her like Suzanne or maybe (concluded on page 166) Bridge Over Troubled Water.

I look up from the typewriter with annoyance, which fades quickly into admiration, because, in any pose, my wife is so much more beautiful than her pictures. If I were to write a song for Elke, it would celebrate her childish simplicity and devilish innocence, qualities that make her an occasional torment when I'm playing husband to her wife.

Before we met, married and truly loved each other, in that order, I was convinced that any man wed to a film star, especially a sex symbol, could expect to be emasculated and squeezed emotionally dry. Files kept over the 18 years I chronicled Hollywood for the New York Herald Tribune proved that most film actresses remained married an average of less than two and a half years, or about as long as a new toy interests a bright child.

"The simple truth is that actresses shouldn't marry and any man who marries a film star is an idiot," I wrote in 1963, just before I met Elke, who was in Hollywood to promote The Prize, her first American film. It was at a cocktail party given in her honor by MGM. I made notes such as, "She is astonishingly beautiful ... makes Bardot look like a schoolgirl and Loren like a hawk ... try an outline for S. E. P. profile."

Given the Post assignment, I suggested to Elke's press agent that I do an unusual story about his client. Rather than base the article on a few interviews, I wanted to spend a couple of days with Elke, who was a foreigner, noting her reaction to Americans and their reaction to her. We had lunch that first day. My notes read: "She speaks seven languages ... is intellectually cold as an IBM machine but says she has 40 stuffed animals in her bedroom and sleeps in the nude with a Teddy bear named Brumm Brumm, whom she has had since childhood.... She's a study in contradictions ... lucky bear, that Brumm Brumm."

Obviously, I was falling in love.

Our courtship was a thing to remember: dramatic, beautiful and unbelievable. An ex-suitor wanted to kill me in Los Angeles; we raced in a Porsche together at the Nürburgring. She rolled the car over and protected my face with her hand; we went skindiving off the island of Kvar in Yugoslavia, where she picked up the language in less than five weeks; in London, we visited the fishmonger and his wife who had hired Elke as an au pair girl three years earlier to take care of their four kids; she took me to the small café in Viareggio, Italy, where she had been crowned Miss Viareggio (her first and only title) and De Sica had signed her for a film; we fought in Paris because I was jealous after seeing one of her early films in which an actor had a hand on her breast; we walked for miles in the Alps, seeking the rare blue Enzian flower. We found it hidden in rocks covered with snow; she cried. And every night, I had to tell her a fairy tale or she couldn't go to sleep.

It was Hedda Hopper who announced we were going to get married when my divorce was final. "I'll wait ten years for him," Elke said, defying Hedda, who publicly berated us for falling in love without her permission. My friends were caustic. "Marry Elke and you'll end up as the tail of the dog," said director Eliot Silverstein. Otto Preminger, who has always taken a dim view of his fellow countrymen, solemnly told me, "You'll never write anything worth while again if you marry that actress." (It pleased me when he asked for galleys of my most recent book, but it had already been sold to films.)

I was 17 years older than Elke, who was only 21. As if the age difference wasn't hazard enough, I was broke at the time, with little more than a credit card, a typewriter and an old Rolls-Royce salvaged from my divorce. The Trib was folding and I would soon be out of a job. Elke's career, meanwhile, was rising along with her income. She was a sex symbol, an exhibitionist and an optimist, while I am by nature shy, jealous and cynical. In short, I foresaw disaster; but I told Silverstein not to be concerned.

"Our marriage won't last a year," I said.

"Then why get married?"

My answer was honest. "I figure it'll be a helluva good year, and at my age, one great year is to be desired."

I believed then, as I still do, that any marriage is nearly impossible. Also, I had no illusions about the difficulty of being married to a film star. "Profiles of Disaster" I called the 250 case histories I had collected about film-star romances that bloomed into marriage and died public deaths in the divorce courts.

My ability to predict problem areas in Hollywood marriages was awesome. I had underestimated one factor, though. Elke doesn't like to fail in anything. She had made up her mind she was going to be married only once. From the beginning, she seemed instinctively aware of the unique difficulties that face any Hollywood couple.

Problem: The film-star wife's earnings often dwarf her husband's. The usual controls a husband maintains over the family budget don't apply when a wife can counter, "All right, I'll use my own money." Financial independence means emotional independence. And because the wife earns so much money, the tendency is to live on her income in a style befitting her standing in the film community--which means that the husband is often the guest in his wife's home.

Our solution: Elke buys her own clothing and jewelry. She invests most of the money she earns from films. I give her a household allowance and she manages on it. Thanks to her childhood, when she walked five miles from her home in Erlangen, Germany, to the American PX to pick up butts for her father (a sixth-generation minister) to roll into cigarettes, she is frugal and will not throw anything away if it can be eaten, worn or salvaged.

Problem: Because the film-star wife's career is glamorous and lucrative, many husbands tend to involve themselves as managers, agents, producers or hustlers. When the careers go well, so do the marriages. But career problems mean marriage problems when the wife needs a scapegoat.

Our solution: I don't read Elke's scripts, nor do I project myself into her career. She has people who are paid to make decisions for her. If a film doesn't work out properly, their heads are on the block, not mine.

Problem: Whatever the husband of a film star does for a living, his own success is likely to be overshadowed by his wife's, so he puts her down in an attempt to build himself up. Before the California divorce laws were changed, lawyers called this popular game Hollywood people play "mental cruelty."

Our solution: When I was having a difficult time free-lancing, I fell into this trap, but Elke was patient and understanding. Now we complement each other. When she does interviews, she makes it a point to mention my current book, thus building up both my ego and my work.

Problem: Location romances are responsible for most Hollywood divorces. As one divorce attorney said, "By and large, most actors are little more than barnyard roosters." Without the restraints of home, family and society, film people tend to view locations as excuses for drinking and debauching.

Our solution: Elke insists I go on location with her. Luckily, as a writer, I can take my work with me. I think nothing is more degrading to a wife than to have her husband appear to be a policeman, so I rarely visit the set. I trust my wife to tell me if she's interested in another man.

Having predicted that our marriage would die within a year, I'm delighted to have been proved such a lousy prophet. We celebrate our sixth wedding anniversary this November.