Raging Beauty

The Haunting question that lingers at the end of Martin Scorsese's evocative and brutal film Raging Bull is what became of Vikki, the young wife of fighter Jake La Motta, whose astounding beauty became the obsession of his life and drove The Champ into terrifying rages of jealousy and violence.

Not to worry. Vikki La Motta, it turns out, has been doing just fine. Just fine, indeed.

Her (text continued on page 119) head flung back and her dreamy brown eyes hidden behind oversized sunglasses, Vikki La Motta brings her red Datsun to a halt in front of Miami Beach's Doral Hotel, throws the gearshift into neutral, opens the door and flashes a big welcome smile.

"I think I'm in love," whispers the man who parks the cars. His expression suggests he is certainly in heat.

One glance at the real Vikki La Motta and you know that Scorsese got it right. Clearly, this is a woman capable of driving men mad. She has one of the ten great bodies in the world--a real woman's body, firm and curvaceous. Her perfect face is framed with a mass of spectacular golden hair. Her skin is extraordinary--caramel in color. Vikki La Motta is a composite of all the women John Derek has married.

And she is 51 years old. One can imagine what she must have looked like at 15, when Jake first laid eyes on her at a swimming pool in the Bronx, a sultry beauty lolling about in her white two-piece bathing suit. It's no wonder the poor man lost control.

I jump into the car as Vikki winks and waves at the parking attendant, then drives off. We are booked at The Forge, explains Vikki, and she hopes the food is good. She remembers it as being terrific, but it's been a while since she's eaten there. It's been a while since she's been to Miami Beach, for that matter.

There were the trips to New York to help with the script of Raging Bull. Then came the release of the film itself, followed by a ten-state promotional tour she took with Jake. "It was nice at the beginning," laughs Vikki. After all these years, traces of her Bronx accent still manage to sneak their way into certain words. "Jake saw this as his opportunity to romance me. But as we toured, he became the old Jake, expecting me to be the subservient Vikki. He got jealous. He started telling me what to wear and when to sleep. He told reporters not to ask me questions. He yelled, 'I'm The Champ, ask me.' We went to do a TV show and Jake wouldn't let me appear. By the end of the tour, we weren't speaking to each other."

Next came the Academy Awards and a trip to Hollywood and another promotional trip, this time to Europe with Cathy Moriarty (who played Vikki in the film). "The only way to go," sighs Vikki as she maneuvers her car through traffic. "I had two limousines, one for me and one for my luggage. I mean, how much luggage can I take?"

And, of course, there was another trip to Hollywood and a stay at Playboy Mansion West. "It was like a dream," she says. "And you know what happened? I was up in my room one evening and I got a message that Dan Pastorini [of the Oakland Raiders] was downstairs." Vikki rolls her eyes. "What a hunk! But I was exhausted and didn't go downstairs. He came back the next night and we were introduced and flirted a little. The next afternoon, he was waiting for me at the pool. Before I knew it, he picked me up and carried me into the water. I had on my high heels and jump suit and he kept rolling me around and around in circles, telling me how much he loved me. He wouldn't let me out of the pool. And pretty soon," says Vikki, her eyes dancing, "off came the shoes and off came my jump suit....

"There's The Forge," she says suddenly, and, with moves that would put Mario Andretti to shame, she slams on the brakes, makes a U-turn and screeches to a halt in front of the restaurant. And, like the man who parks the cars at the Doral, the man who parks the cars at The Forge cannot keep his eyes off her. "I have to put on my shoes," she giggles as she playfully wiggles her bare feet into her sandals.

"I want to be able to look at you all night," murmurs the maitre de to Vikki as he leads us to a table smack-dab in the middle of the restaurant. The maitre de isn't the only one who wants to gaze at her. So does every man in the restaurant. And, dressed in a tight cranberry V-neck top and tight white jeans, Vikki is something to look at.

"I have always been the center of attention," she laughs as two waiters fight to unfold her napkin. "You get a reputation just by being good-looking. Men started giving me all this attention when I was 13. I didn't do anything and I was a celebrity in my neighborhood." Vikki takes a sip of her white wine. "When I met Jake, I was starting to become afraid of some of these men. This was the Bronx and these guys were tough. Jake was not aggressive like the other guys and he was protective. I wasn't afraid of Jake."

The fear would come later.

"Jake lived for me," continues Vikki. "He was jealous of anyone and anything that took my attention away from him and his needs. He didn't allow me to have girlfriends. He bought all my clothes. He stocked the basement of our home with cases of tomatoes and toilet paper. Cheeses and salamis hung everywhere and there was a big freezer stocked with meat. If I needed anything, I went downstairs.

"And I must tell you," she adds, "in the beginning, I didn't care. I was in love, and so what if he went shopping? And who wanted to be with the girls, anyway? I was busy raising my children. Jake treated me like a china doll."

Vikki's hermetic world began to come apart when Jake's career began to slip. He had trouble training, trouble making his weight. Then he began to drink. And the booze made him nasty and contentious. At that point, Vikki the china doll began to rebel. It wasn't a serious rebellion, mind you; dinners with her family, nights out with the girls. Jake took to the bottle with a passion.

In an attempt to work things out, Vikki and Jake moved to Miami, where Jake opened a liquor store and night club. But everyone wanted to buy The Champ a drink and the drinks made Jake belligerent and the belligerence drove the customers away. Then the violence started.

The first time Jake beat Vikki, she blamed the hard times and the alcohol. The second time he beat her, she decided to leave him. The violence intensified, exacerbated by the separation, and stopped only when Jake was sent to jail for five months on a morals rap.

Vikki La Motta was 26 and broke. She had three small children and no idea of how to deal with the real world. She sold her jewels, her furs, her clothes. She packed up her kids, moved them back to New York and into an apartment in the Bronx, dyed her hair black, started using her maiden name and got by doing odd television gigs: a billboard girl on The Steve Allen Show, spots on The Garry Moore Show, bit parts on The Phil Silvers Show. Vikki was making money, but those day jobs left her no time for her children and once again she packed them up, moved back to Miami and took a night job as a showgirl at a club 15 minutes from home. But despite her black hair and new name, people still recognized her. "I was embarrassed for Jake," recalls Vikki. "And for me. Here I was, 28, a mother, and I thought, Look at me up there."

Eight waiters hover over Vikki, each hoping to be the one to clear away the red snapper, refill her wineglass, bring more rolls. A man passes the table, notices Vikki and actually stops and stares at her. "What are two beautiful women like you doing alone?" he asks.

"What makes you think we're alone?" she teases. The man wilts.

Vikki La Motta is at ease with men the way the Rockefellers are at ease with money. "The first man to ask me out after Jake and I separated was Johnny Carson. I couldn't believe it. He was so nice. He sent me flowers and we went to hear jazz."

Only one man has ever intimidated Vikki, and that was Robert De Niro, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of her husband in Raging Bull.

Vikki cringes when she thinks back to her first meeting with De Niro. She was furious at how she had been characterized in the book Raging Bull (upon which the movie was based), and when De Niro and screenwriter Mardik Martin arrived in Miami, Vikki was sure the hated her. "I was standing outside the terminal and all of a sudden they were there--staring at me. I didn't know what to do. I went like this [she covers her face with her hands]. I wanted to disappear. When I took my hands down, they had turned away. I was sure they thought I was pretending to be shy."

During the drive to her home in North Miami Beach, Vikki regained her composure. But not for long. The men sat at her dining table and grilled her. They were very personal questions, questions she had buried long ago. "They asked me things like, 'Did you fool around?'" Vikki shakes her head. "I mean, why didn't they just sit arounds and insult me? It was awful, but I kept my cool." She screened home movies--of her courtship with Jake, of their marriage, of the birth of their children. "The movies were self-explanatory," says Vikki. "They showed love."

Vikki takes a long sip of her wine. "De Niro wanted to sleep at my house." I didn't know what to do. Should I let him sleep in my bed? I was so shocked I just threw a sheet and a pillow on the couch in the spare room." She takes a (concluded on page 268)Raging Beauty(continued from page 122) deep breath. "I couldn't sleep and I went into the room and sat on the floor by the couch. He was snoring just a little bit. I kept thinking, This is Robert De Niro on my couch, the face from Mean Streets and The Godfather, Part II. Then I got up and moved closer and watched him sleep."

De Niro returned to New York but would call Vikki often with questions. Is this how Jake talked? Is this how she behaved? Did she remember any jokes Jake had told her? And then Vikki was summoned to New York. De Niro and Scorsese sat in her hotel suite and, with De Niro playing Jake and Scorsese playing all the other parts, they read her the script from beginning to end. "They wanted the truth," she says.

Vikki was now completely absorbed in the film. She stopped going out and broke off all her romantic involvements. "I didn't want anyone to interfere," she explains. "I wanted to be prepared, in case I got a call from De Niro."

De Niro's obsession with detail, truth and getting it right is legendary and, as he got more and more into the role of Jake, things got very confusing for Vikki. Where did De Niro end and Jake begin? Just how far does one take this? To the logical end?

"I wanted to," she recalls. "In fact, for a time, I thought, How could I not? An affair seemed the most natural thing to do. But Bob," smiles Vikki, "wanted things to be businesslike." She smiles again. "I should have just attacked him or something. But I got shy. If I were just attracted to him sexually and didn't like him, I would have known just how to make it happen. But I was intimidated and did everything wrong."

Like the night she and De Niro had dinner in New York and he returned to her hotel suite to look through some family books and pictures. It was very late and De Niro was due back at her hotel the next morning for a meeting. "Anyone else," sighs Vikki, "I would have just said, 'Stay here...I have room.' Or I would have at least offered him a drink, a cup of coffee, some water. He's so sweet and so easy to be nice to." She grimaces.

"Instead, I sent this man out into the streets. When he came back a few hours later, he brought his own container of coffee."

The number of waiters buzzing around Vikki keeps growing. But it's more than her fabulous body and gorgeous face. Vikki La Motta loves men and it shows. She knows how to make men feel good. She smiles, bats her eyes, cocks her head, winks. Vikki is an old-fashioned flirt. Pure and simple.

But even more seductive is her excitement about life. In an age of cynicism, Vikki La Motta is a romantic and just a whole lot of fun to be around. "I think of myself as a little girl," she says, "so everything and everyone is fresh and new. I have absolutely no memories of the past, nothing to inhibit. I put no importance on suffering. I don't think suffering is a necessary thing in your life and I don't believe that it leaves a permanent scar on your soul."

It's late and Vikki drinks the last of her wine. "People walk around, crying, 'Oh, what I've been through, what I've suffered!' Well, big deal. Years later, they're still living it. I don't mean that I didn't suffer, that I didn't feel pain. But so what? Next case.

"The key to remaining sexy," Vikki emphasizes, "is to remain passionate; about life, people, everything. Age doesn't matter."

"But it's more than her fabulous body and gorgeous face. Vikki La Motta loves men and it shows."