Is That All There Is? by James Gavin

Author:James Gavin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

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IN INTERVIEWS AND PUBLIC appearances and on first meetings, Lee seemed gracious, bashful, and sweet. “She led with that,” said playwright William Luce, her future collaborator. Those who knew her better saw what hid behind the mask: a volcanic brew of restlessness, anger, touchiness, fear, and growing eccentricity. “I think a big part of Peggy’s makeup was that she was a Gemini,” said Robert Strom, her assistant in the 1990s. “She had two sides. There was the little girl you wanted to protect, and the tough-as-nails lady who could destroy you with a few words.”

The woman who had grown up feeling so dwarfed by Min sat propped up under a blanket in her bed, ruling her kingdom as imperiously as if she were on a throne. All employees had to address her as Miss Lee. Robert Richards, who would later move in with her to collaborate on a design project, saw her in action. “If Peggy had had a staff of a hundred and fifty people,” he said, “she could have kept every one of them on the edge of a nervous breakdown. The thirst for ordering people around, for having people do her bidding, was frightening. She would consume you and have no respect for who you were, what your previous life had been, for your accomplishments. You were just in the service of.”

He also saw her flipside. More afraid than ever of being alone, Lee did whatever she could to hold employees after hours. She asked them to meditate with her, to join her for dinner; she told countless jokes and stories. So many secretaries had quit that employment agencies refused to send anyone else. In the past she had transformed family members like Nicki and Marianne into personal assistants; now she had begun asking friends such as Angela Levey, the wife of her former drummer Stan Levey, to work for her. Stan warned Angela that she’d be sorry if she did. But she said yes, with the proviso that she would work from eleven to five and not a minute later. Perhaps resenting Angela’s happy home life, Lee ignored that rule from the first day, while drawing her into a web of domestic intrigue. “She played everybody in the house against each other,” said Angela. There was no telling what innocent remark might set Lee off, but to bring up age was risky. “Don’t mention her grandchildren,” her publicists warned journalists. Lee insisted that David, Holly, and Michael call her Mama Peggy. “I don’t think that was a happy thing for her daughter to hear, because she was their mom,” said Brian Panella. “But Nicki would say, ‘I’m your mama and she’s Mama Peggy.’ ”

One day Angela asked Lee how old her dog was. The singer turned to steel. “How old are you, Angela?” she snapped. “When are you gonna die?” Levey just stared at her. “I thought, ‘I gotta get out of here.’ ”

Next Lee called upon Betty Jungheim, her friend for twenty years. Jungheim had

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