The Trivial Pursuits of Ed Begley Jr.
WE’RE PLAYING TRIVIAL PURSUIT IN ED BEGLEY Jr.’s living room, and I’m winning. The actor –– Dr. Victor “You’re a Pig” Ehrlich to fans of TV’s acclaimed St. Elsewhere series –– isn’t pleased. After all, this is his game. He tries to psych me out, deceive me, undermine my confidence, anything to win. And all with the polite air of a natural-born innocent. That’s how convincing an actor he is.
But then, Trivial Pursuit is not just a game for Begley. “Trivial Pursuit is my rush,” he says. He’s talking about the heart-pounding sensation one gets from instant gratification of all kinds. Begley knows about rushes. He’s a guy who has, at various times, gotten his from alcohol, poker, even compulsive cleaning.
Today, he’s a changed man: married for eight years, father of two kids, new owner of a rustic 1.3-acre spread in smog free Ojai, California, a ninety-minute commute to Hollywood. “I don’t want to be another boring recovery story,” he says, swigging on a natural grapefruit soda. “They all give me the willies.”
Not to worry. Ed Begley Jr. has life under control, but he still has a proclivity for addiction. This time, it’s Trivial Pursuit, with its instant answers for instant questions. This must be appealing to a man who lives with questions that have no easy answers.
Were his life to be divided into Trivial Pursuit categories, the Ed Begley Jr. Edition might look like this (see answers at end).
History: Who was born at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital on September 16th, 1949?
It is hard for Begley to dig too deeply into his past. When he does, he remembers too many “injustices.” Some are the kind we all remember. But Begley could hardly have been prepared for what befell him when he was almost sixteen.
He was on his way to the speech therapist (he still slurs his s‘s) with his father, the late character actor Ed Begley Sr., who won the 1962. Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Sweet Bird of Youth. Ed Sr. seized that moment to hand his son the birth certificate he would be needing soon to apply for a learner’s permit.
“I opened up this document,” says Begley, “and I saw my dad’s name and signature, but there was no mother’s name and signature. I said, ‘Why isn’t Amanda’s name here? Did they erase my mother’s name when she died?’ And he said, ‘No, Amanda wasn’t your mother.’ In a very matter-of-fact way like that. So I said, ‘Oh. Who was my mother?’ He’s doing his cold thing, and I’m doing my ‘Well, that’s cool, whatever’ thing. He said, ‘Sandy’s your mother.’ “
Begley knew who Sandy was. He remembered her as a “friend of the family” who lived in New York. He and his year-older sister, Allene, had always had a strange and special affection for the tall, attractive blond who sent them Christmas toys and valentines. She was nothing like the sickly Amanda Huff, who was in and out of hospitals till she died of cancer when he was seven years old. Ironically, the six-foot-three-inch Begley resembles Sandy Sanders far more than his stocky father. Not only were he and his sister unaware that Sandy was their real mother, but Sandy was unaware that they were unaware. And as long as she didn’t know, Ed Sr. apparently didn’t think the truth was necessary.
If this seems insensitive, then you have to understand what kind of man Ed Begley Sr. was. Once a factory laborer in Hartford, Connecticut, where he met Amanda, Begley starred on radio and Broadway before finally making it in movies, playing misguided men who were as tough and angry as he was. By the time he won his Oscar, he was sixty-two. Such validation had taken him a lifetime.
He had been an alcoholic before Ed Jr. was born, and he married four times. That’s if you count Sandy’s flawlessly woven tale of a twenty-year-old actress who believed the middle-aged actor she was marrying in 1947 was a widower; when she subsequently learned that Amanda, though divorced from Ed, was indeed still alive, her deep disillusionment and sense of Catholic morality drove her to leave him, and this ended in Ed Sr.’s charges of desertion and a 1952 divorce.
But Begley has never seen any proof of this, nor has he been able to learn honest-to-God answers to crucial questions in his life: Were his parents ever really married? Did Amanda adopt him? Why all the secrets?
“You didn’t question Ed Begley,” says his son. “He had a temper and was very powerful. We had no Father Knows Best heart-to-hearts.” But Ed Jr. also waited eight years before confronting his mother, now fifty-eight and a science teacher at Quintano’s School for Young Professionals in New York. “I spent a lot of time not thinking about it. So it was not unusual not to talk about it. I’ve never really known what to do about anger –– tell someone about it or just hide it.”
So he blocked a lot from his mind. “I think separation from my real mother was traumatic,” he analyzes. “But I was not in a position to figure out this Baron von Munchausen tale about who was who. I mean, I was just trying to figure out how to get my homework done. I had my own kid problems going on. It was easier to tell them what they wanted to hear. But that led to a real confusion about truth and fantasy.”
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