Goodbye, Lambchops and Plumpudding, Brian Keith and Daisy Keith

By Victoria Y. Y Keith

Say it isn't so, but it is true. I had mixed emotions about writing this book. It is truthful, heartfelt, tragic, tender, at times humorous, and ultimately a story of happiness, survival, and resilience. After many sleepless nights of struggling with thoughts and recalls, I decided to put my sorrows and emotions on paper, yes on paper to realize that this was so. How strange to see my feelings and emotions in words, it made me want to even remember more. I became a hungry, insatiable person with the appetite of a hungry bear. I'm wiping my eyes and blowing my nose while writing and tears dropping on my chest. I was a mess. I was not a serene writer but like a wild dog chasing after my master. Believe it or not, I felt calmness like after the storm, so relaxed that I finally went to bed content knowing that I exhausted the hidden threads ready to bounce on me again. This is a tribute to my beloved husband Brian Keith and our lovely daughter Daisy Leialoha Keith. My very own Lambchops and Plumpudding. Love, your sweetheart and your mommy, VK.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781642980615

Book preview

Chapter 1

July 18, 1997

The outside garden looks the same. The roses have bloomed and need to be trimmed, and the birds are eating the seeds under the rose arches. The hummingbirds are in the white stephanotis vines that you planted; they are the littlest flowers, blooming in full clusters, giving off a fragrant scent that has filled the garden with an aroma that brings back memories of you, my Lambchops.

It is just another ordinary summer day in Malibu. Nothing unusual, just another lovely day, except you’re not here, but then I think you are. Everything here is here because of you. All of the roses that you planted, all of the hundreds of plants and trees that you took care of, sprayed, nourished, and trimmed and got scratched by the draping of the climbing roses that framed the windows and the Dutch door. It’s like a picture postcard. All of your roses are blooming—Eden, climbing Edens too, double delight, peach, Chicago peace, those lovely English roses, weeping China doll, Yves St. Laurent, tropicana, simplicity, climbing America, violeta, bibi busan, Cecile Brunner, white lightning passion flower, Intrigue, Circus, Mr. Lincoln, Mary Rose, Dublin rose, white knight, Olympia, Tiffany, sweet surrender, and many, many more, including the sweet miniature roses from England. All your rose arches are blooming, especially on the statue of St. Francis and the Virgin Mary, with the loop of white pikake. All the light yellow roses on one side and the middle part of the arches have pink roses, and on the right side, there are ruby red clusters of velvet petal-shaped roses that form bouquets. What a lovely garden you made for us to enjoy and be surrounded by. I remember you told me about your mother’s garden party and that someone asked your grandmother what her favorite rose was and she said, Four roses, honey, and don’t you forget it! Ha! Ha!

*****

I know Brian loved roses, and he planted over three hundred and more every year. I think Brian would be so proud and happy to have a rose named after him. He played a gardener in Da on Broadway, and I can still remember a scene when he was rambling names of roses, and then he said, A rainbow of roses. That’s what he always said about his roses, and that their time is short and their purpose is to beautify and give us joy and the secret is that all things on earth are temporary. And even when we, too, are only here for a short time, what we do and how we live our lives can only be a test of our own self with God’s help, indeed.

From the start, my dearest Brian showered me with all of his love and kindness. He took care of me and my parents; they lived with Brian and me the rest of their lives. How lucky for me! Brian was thoughtful beyond words. He did so many sweet and wonderful things, like placing a tightly closed rosebud on the table next to our bed, a bud just on the brink of opening. This was significant to Brian because he said the rose petals release their sweet fragrance and reveal their true beauty when they open. He wanted me to experience that magical moment. Every opening is special, even if it’s only a rosebud. When I opened my eyes in the morning, it was the first thing I saw. He would bring me my coffee and vitamin pills for me to take each morning. Just sorting all the food supplements took a long time. What a guy! He stood over me, watching me swallow and grimace, choking down the pills. I must have looked ridiculous. So laughable to recall now, but he didn’t trust me to take them by myself. They were so big and tasted so awful.

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Once upon a time I lived a very quiet and sweet

life by the sea.

My garden and house were all-consuming …

Hours and years filled with my family and

pets and friends …

Hobbies, cooking, and shopping.

Shared love shared thoughts shared likes,

shared pain shared loss.

And we lived happily ever after! Not!

But, oh, so much Love.

Love,

Love,

Love and more Love,

Brian …

Your love made me feel so strong I could do anything

I put my mind to …

Your truth always shamed me to be more honest and

simple and happy for it …

Your courage I admired and respected because I knew

what God meant to you …

Your love was so true and straight, just one look from

you and I knew I was safe and loved …

The exhilarating joy of all of our extraordinary moments together and with Bobby, Daisy, Grannygirl and Grandpa, and our dearest pets: Fluffy, Tuffy, Kaikoo, Tiger, Salt and Pepper, Lancelot, Wolfgang, Orpheus, Wendell, Paris, Marilyn, and my sweet Coco! And our dearest friends and our dearest family filled our lives with many happy moments well-lived … well-blended with recollections of love and kindnesses.

This precious time together with each other and each other’s wants and desires; the feelings and emotions, satiated by rich and priceless beauty of our kindred souls, united and joined by an invisible bond, L o v e.

The year was December 1966. I went home to Hawaii for Christmas vacation. While I was sitting, waiting for my date to pick me up, my family was watching Family Affair. There stood Brian Keith leaning against the door looking at Buffy and Jody, with twinkling eyes, smiling and not showing teeth. I said out loud, That’s the kind of man I want to marry!

God heard me! When I returned to Los Angeles, I went for an interview for a Cinerama movie, East of Java; the name of which was later changed to Krakatoa East of Java. My agent told me that Brian Keith, Rosanno Brazzi, Sal Mineo, Maximilian Schell, and other actors were in the movie. When they told me I got the part, I was so thrilled to think that I would be working with Brian Keith. Who knew that what I said to my father and mother would come true. How wonderful life is when something like this happens—a wishful saying could actually be.

My life changed the moment I stepped off the plane and someone said, Victoria Young, welcome to Spain.

Can one control one’s destiny? I guess we can if our thoughts are intangible, not yet realized, flowing through our heads making sense of what we think … I think … I think so.

Chapter 2

Spain

Thirty years …

To say thirty-five years is a long time to be married … to be with a man you love … thirty-five years is not a long time. It seems silly to say, but it was too short! Our love for each other was so explosive and great that we could not have enough time just being alone together. Precious time just slips by.

Of course, when I met Brian, he was already a famous movie and TV star. He was still filming Family Affair, and on hiatus, he was in Spain to do a Cinerama Krakatoa. I was so thrilled to be in Spain. I didn’t speak a lot of Spanish, so my translation book was always on hand. In a hotel in Majorca, all of the actors and crew had assembled in the bar with the director Bernie Kowalski, Brian Keith, Rosanno Brazzi, Maximilian Schell, and Sal Mineo. After a short hello to everyone, Bernie led us into the dining room, which was enormous like a football field, and the tables were full of people. Brian looked so handsome, all lean and tan. He wore a blue polo shirt, a royal blue linen sports jacket without a tie, corduroy jeans, and his Irish cap. He walked behind me into the dining room and gently pulled out my hair pin. It was very humid, so I had twisted my long hair up and pinned it. I was taken aback; he smiled and said, It looks better that way. Oh, my goodness, I was embarrassed, but I found myself and my roommate sitting next to Brian Keith. Wow! Wow! Wow! I felt my heart flutter and I acted like it was nothing at all, smiling to myself and trying not to show any emotion … La de da … like it was the most natural thing. We all ordered and Brian suggested that I try calamari, a rice dish with squid. It came with a black sauce on the rice. Just like Uncle Ben’s rice … flaky. I was almost sick, and he said it was the ink and that it was tasty. Well, that was what he thought but yuck!

I knew after that first night while eating dinner and all the excitement that what I felt for Brian was very special and very scary, too. I could hardly look straight into his baby-blue eyes shining and twinkling at me. I thought that maybe he also felt a warm, familiar feeling; it was meant to be. It was like déjà vu almost every time I saw Brian on the ship that we were working on called the Batavia Queen. I would see him climbing up the stairs of the ship, and I would go down the other side to avoid seeing him face-to-face, even though I knew I wanted to be with him. I felt my face and eyes would give me away, and I knew my blushing face showed an attraction that I couldn’t hide. My body was tingling and my heart seemed to pound out of my chest. We began this roundabout way of just happening to be at the same place at the same time and all those side glances to see if each of us was there. So began our friendship, a sort of hide-and-seek … just being, but not being together, working on the set and not working, eating, sightseeing and all of it. I must say how strange it seems I can recall everything, just as if it happened now. How strange this seems. Who is playing a trick with my memory? Time is so elusive. We talked about things with so much importance—and yet I have wasted so much time—what I would do if I was granted that time again to be with Brian.

Every day in the makeup room Brian would pass me and leave me a flower, sometimes a wild flower or even a pretty weed and ask if I’d had my coffee. While we were waiting to board the ship just sitting around having another cup of coffee with a Spanish donut, harder than an American style donut and sometimes covered with powdered sugar, Brian would put a fork in each donut and start making them dance on the table and then would pick up the donut and powder his face with it like it was a powder puff. It was fun to pass the time away with antics like this. We laughed and told jokes and got to know each other better. I think back on all those sweet mornings and realize now just how precious all those pieces of time were that we shared. A warm feeling and love of life—those were our gifts to each other that are now only a memory passed. I never met anyone who knew so many stories, and he would tell us whenever we were waiting to board the ship or sitting around waiting for the next shoot setup. It was amazing to me how Brian never had to stop to remember a joke, a poem, or a story. It was so easy for him to tell one after the other; and when someone else told one and got mixed up, Brian would help out by finishing it. He seemed to know the origin of every tale and how it came about, so I learned the word raconteur.

We actors were so independent and as soon as the shoot was over, we all dispersed to our havens and never saw each other until the next day of shooting. Geoffery Holden invited Brian and me to dinner at his apartment. He had cooked an enormous spicy curry chicken. The opera that was playing filled the room with the singing of Anna Moffo, a voice as if something special was about to happen. On the sofa, he had a canvas painting that he was working on and it looked great. I later bought it from him. Diane Baker also bought a painting from Geoffery. He had so many paintings. That was how he spent his free time. Actually, after a day’s shooting, I don’t think I ever ran into any of the actors and most of us had moved out of the hotel into apartments. I must admit that I wrote many letters to my mom and only said nice things about Brian, not to alarm her about my feelings for him.

I was very lucky to have a truly best friend who always listened and never passed judgment on what I was doing and again listened to me like no other person … that was my dearest mother, Daisy. She was my soul keeper. My mother had the best taste and the most incredible patience of Job. She taught me so many things and the most precious gift she gave me was all things were possible. She, like Brian, had no siblings and not missing the unknown, found inner strength in themselves, being alone but not lonely, they both found peace and comfort loving God.

Seeing Brian every day was wonderful, but aside from hellos and smiles, it was platonically perfect. We began to talk about our lives, and Brian said, I saw you once before in LA at a little market on Highland Avenue. I did recall seeing Brian in a little market buying something, probably cigarettes, and we just glanced at each other for a split second and he left the market. Brian looked at me and I could feel we both remembered. Suddenly, I had a flashback; I remembered seeing him in Honolulu. I just chatted on, saying, In the International Marketplace in Waikiki, I saw you walking through very quickly. I even remember what you were wearing. Brian seemed to be thinking as I started describing his clothes. Yes, oh my god, it was you! You had a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up twice! At this point, I saw his eyes and head turn to look at me closely. Then he said, I do remember being in the marketplace and I do wear my shirt like that.

Then I added, You had on medium brown slacks, no coat and tie, and he smiled again, about to say something, but I keep on talking about his fast walk and how I thought he was on his way to the Pan American Airline ticket office on Kalakaua Avenue, which was in front of the market place, the shopping area. Well, it seemed inevitable we were to meet one day and the third time was a charm. My agent back in Los Angeles had an appointment for me at 20th Century studios for an interview with Robert Wise, for the movie Sand Pebbles. I later found out that Brian also was interested in doing the part of Frenchy in the film.

Our paths were destined, I like to think.

*****

Early one dark morning when the rest of the hotel guests were still sleeping, only coffee and toast were available at that time, so I went to get my coffee. It was dark, and suddenly the lights went on all the way down the room. Ta da! Brian came out of