The Ludmila Confessions

From left: Pavlina Vasilevna, Kim Novak, Sydney, Ludmila, Dale Garric

Mind you, Wilshire Blvd is a very busy area around Beverly Hills, so I looked at the car and with a smile gave the keys back to the sales person. I said in my broken English, “Please just deliver this car to this address,” and handed them my home address. They didn’t ask if I had a driver’s license, and just assumed it was a present for somebody else. I did not volunteer any information and they did not ask.  The insurance was still in their name since the car was not mine until I finished paying for it. Then I went home by bus and when I got home it was already there! Mama was so excited, asking “Whose car is that in our garage? These people came, I don’t understand what they said but they seemed to know what they were doing. I thought maybe the landlord’s car?” I replied, “No mamachka, it is mine– ours!” “What?!” she screamed. “Yes, ours!” She was so surprised and she said, “Luda go to the garage and open the door!” There it was. I was very happy, but then I realized it was a five gear manual with a shifter– how could I get it out? That was a job! But finally I drove it, only making right turns from the right lane until Daud come to visit us in our new place on Kings Road where mama and I lived alone now. Gala got remarried and Vera chose to attend a private nuns boarding school in Anaheim. He showed me how to change gears, and gave me a couple of lessons on how to turn left from the left lane, and shift smoothly.

Ludmila dancing with the belly dancer

After some lessons and a couple of days driving, I felt less nervous. No police stopped me, there were no accidents, now it was just time to get a driver’s license. It had been almost a month since I bought my Renault and I still didn’t know nada about cars! Going to work in it, I learned to drive on the freeway. I taught modeling classes at night and in the day I would go for interviews for commercials, television shows, or movies. Mostly I worked modeling, and with the shots with the different photographers I managed to put together a good portfolio. With that, I got an interview for Mission Impossible, the original T.V. show with Peter Graves. What a glorious moment when the call came from Nina to tell me I got the part! She said to “be at the studio at 6am.”  I jumped up and down like a little girl. There was only one woman in this T.V. series then, Barbara Bain. It was an honor to work with them. My part was impressive but very small: they put me in front, at the opening of the credits of the show, just my face, full screen, pivoting my head throwing my hair back, blown by the air.  It was just an opening credit, that was all, but I could not describe what it meant to me. All my dreams in that old swing in the Island of Margarita were coming true: the friends, the car, the house, the photographers taking my pictures, people with love and interest in me, now was only the beginning of those dreams in a swing coming true. So yes, it was a small part, but to me it was the first step toward what I thought was a new reality for my life. What I did not realize was I was still dreaming a fantasy. In the show I had no speaking part, but my image was beautiful and impressive. After that came many more jobs in television series and films.

Pelagea Vasilivna and Sydney

Thanksgiving was coming up and I was working on a Fashion show with Maria, a 100 percent American girl. She asked me, “Where are you going for Thanksgiving?“ I said, “I don’t know, what is it?” She explained to me that it was a very important holiday to thank God for bringing the Pilgrims to America and for the food they harvested . It was probably the fourth biggest important holiday in America, after Christmas, New Year, Easter, then was Thanksgiving, with pumpkin pies and foods that we could not  imagine: ham with all different recipes, meat and pork stews, mashed potatoes, cranberries, pumpkin pies, and more. So much food, and of course lots of drinking too. Mama and I ate and ate and drank– well, mama didn’t drink a lot, maybe just a couple of glasses of wine. I drank until I could not walk, and that night I paid for it. I was sick to my stomach and gave back the food to the toilet bowl. I was not accustomed to eat so much, but mama was alright.  The holiday Halloween on the other hand was a little pagan, with masquerade balls. The children’s games, knocks at the doors saying “trick or treat!”, the parades, and big football games were all new to us.

This was late 1964, watching the TV shows like I Spy and  Mission Impossible. We lived in a beautiful home, and wrapped presents to take to the children with Bud and mama, to Tijuana. Memories came flooding back to mind of my last holidays with Walter, now it seemed so far away. Venezuela was already almost five years ago, and  ]after five years in America it was already ten years that I had been in a relationship with him, especially in Christmas time.  I always loved December with the twinkling lights and the joyful people. Everybody becomes so nice and happy. There were many good memories with my lover Walter. I could actually say fiance, since on my last birthday in Venezuela under the glass of champagne was the most beautiful ring I had ever seen, like a belt with a buckle of diamonds. I remember the first time we celebrated New Years together, in the Humboldt Hotel up in the clouds above Caracas, where the cable car went up so high that you could see the other side of the mountain and the beach at Macuto. The next working day, we went to the shipping department at the port of Macuto. He had some shipment coming from the U.K. I was just 16 then, and his last child was about to be born any day. After that, he promised we could make plans for our future, either in England on that gorgeous estate that we went to see on the outskirts of London, I believe he said it had belonged to Churchill, or on the island of Grenada where he had property. He said the property would be in my name so that I would have something when I got to be 20 years old; it would be my life security, but I must have an abortion  now, he insisted. How had it been three Christmases that we hadn’t celebrated together? I thought maybe we could celebrate New Year’s together if I could go to San Francisco.

But now was my birthday fiesta in my beautiful Beverly Hills home only two blocks off of Wilshire Blvd with the Wilshire Hotel three Blocks away. I invited many famous people and some not so famous with plenty of cocaine. I didn’t have to put that much effort into getting coke. In fact, I never paid a penny for any of the drugs. They were everywhere. They were free for me and some of the models and actors used them openly. It was not like in Caracas, it was not done discreetly. Sometimes the coke was just out on the table to take as much as you liked. I went to many Hollywood producers and directors parties. I still had some coke that I got from Walter and I put it in the medicine cabinet. That is how stupidly naive I was, so of course it got stolen, but I didn’t care. Richard Dawson arrived at the party with a famous lady, and Daud with his brother, Kim Novak and so many others you could not hear a word. There was music and belly dancers, and soon I was dancing solo, even flamenco. Again, I had too much to drink and soon my head was spinning. I had what I thought was so much fun in those days. The next day mama made me coffee very early, with some orange juice. I woke up just to give her a kiss and go back immediately to bed. At that time a delivery came and when we opened the door, to our surprise, in the entryway was a big beautiful birthday card and a bottle of ice cold Dom Perignon champagne from Richard Dawson. I said goodbye to mama and closed the door to read the lovely note. I thought, “what a gentleman to think of apologizing for coming to my party empty handed,” because he did not know he was going to a birthday party. He was just being driven home by one of his leading ladies from the set where they were shooting a film, and she brought him here. I proceeded to open the bottle and thought, how nice it is to drink something really good. I just love my mama for not saying anything, not a word, about my dancing and drinking. That day I did not think about my obligations or responsibilities, and I honestly don’t remember the rest of the day.