On Tour With: Betty Degeneres
by Erin Findlay
I recognized Betty DeGeneres right
away as she stepped from the elevator into the lobby of the Mark Hopkins. She looked
exactly like the charming photograph on the cover of her book, Love, Ellen: A
Mother/Daughter Journey. On a tour which would criss-cross the country five
times, Betty graciously agreed to take some time off and give me a lunch-time
interview...and William Morrow, her publisher, paid for lunch!
Betty was not at all disappointed
at being interviewed by another white-haired mother instead of a young, perky Girlfriends
editor. In fact, when I told her of the similarity in our daughters'
coming-out stories, she warmed considerably.
GF: Just like Ellen, my
daughter was 20 when she came out to me. And it was on a beach, too.
BD:
Well, yes, that's the best place!
GF: I had the same
reactions you did. Maybe all mothers do. In retrospect I had plenty of hints, but at the
same time I was surprised and shocked. I thought maybe it was something I had done, that
it was somehow my fault.
BD:
Oh, see, I didn't do that.
GF: Right. You thought
about the newspapers.
BD:
Engagement pictures in the local newspaper. How frivolous I could be!
GF: I thought about
grandchildren.
BD:
(laughs) Well, it's a good thing I didn't think about that. I don't have anything from
anybody! [Son Vance is divorced. His brief marriage was childless.]
GF: You probably hate
it when I'm supposed to be interviewing you and I ask questions about Ellen.
BD:
No, I don't! No, I'm happy to talk about Ellen and Anne and things. All of 'em.
GF: Well, what are they
up to now?
BD:
We were so disappointed when the show ended. That was a real low point. That was bad. But
that's behind us now and they certainly should have moved on. Of course, Ellen has
"EdTV" out. That's great fun. She loved making that. And then another movie is
coming out this month, Goodbye Lover," and then next month, "The Love
Letter" with Kate Capshaw and Tom Selleck. Then a new TV show is in the works...it's
in rehearsals already, with Barry Levinson. You can't get better then that! It won't be
ready for the fall; maybe as a teaser for the next fall, but ut's going to be fun and
entertaining.
GF: Is Ellen continuing
to be out on screen?
BD:
No, no, it's a whole different thing. But she is who she is. She doesn't want to be just
the gay comdeian, the gay actress. She wants to be the actress who happens to be gay and
everybody knows it and it's okay.
Ann has written and is directing a
movie for HBO. Ellen is in it. And then Anne has written one for Showtime. she's just a
marvelously talented person.
GF: Sounds like their
careers haven't suffered in the slightest. Any more gay themes?
BD:
Yes, the movie for HBO has a gay theme. It's just great. I don't know if the title is out
yet. I have mentioned it a few times, but then I thought, I don't know if I'm supposed to
do that.
GF: When you first met
Anne, when you were dog-sitting...
BD:
My official job!
GF: Anne reorted in an
interview that she came home with Ellen, met mom, and went straight to bed with Ellen.
BD:
I know. Anne is so honest. She tells it like it is.
GF: What did you think
about all this?
BD:
Well, I say in the book my impressions. Of course I liked her right away. In the next few
days I wrote down some things to be grateful for and one of them was meeting Anne...and
their relationship. I think in the beginning Ellen was saying "Whoa, am I ready for a
sexual relationship?" So it took her a little while to see that [Anne] was just as
sincere as she could be. So it's been great. Now I accept her as another daughter. You
know, I call her the "ultimate girlfriend."
GF: As a mom, did it
bother you that they spent the night together on the first date?
BD:
(taken aback) No, it wasn't any of my business. Ellen is a grown woman. I don't know what
goes on behind closed doors. That's the whole point, you know?
GF: Well, I was pretty
strict with my heterosexual daughter...until she said she wouldn't stay with me anymore
when she came to San Francisco with her boyfriend. So I went right out and bought a double
bed for her. But that was 13 years ago. Heather told me that one good thing about being a
lesbian is when the daughter brings a friend home, mother says, "Why don't you girls
take the third-floor bedroom, the one with the big feather bed?"
BD:
[ laughs out loud] Now that's funny!
GF: I'm very curious
about "B" [Betty's third husband who's only named as "B" in Love,
Ellen]. Has anyone tried to find out who he is?
BD:
Unfortunately there's an unauthorized biography of Ellen coming out in a month or so. My
publisher sent Ellen a copy, rather a galley copy. [The author] names everyone. This
little college marriage I had, I didn't name him because we totally lost touch. His
children and/or grandchildren don't know I exist. She names him. Then her book is so full
of outright lies and inaccuracies. Mim Eichler-Rivas, who helped me put the book together,
says this is called "pastiche" writing. She obviously read every interview that
Ellen had ever done and talked to a few people and then just pieced it all together. She
called somebody my best friend and I haven't even been inside her house. Just ridiculous
things. I hate it that somebody...I mean, what gives them the right? Well,
"unauthorized"; nobody gave them the authority.
GF: And why? I guess
she thinks how wonderful it was that she was able to track this person down. Were there
reasons why "B" shouldn't have been named?
BD:
He's dead. I didn't name him out of respect for his children. But the woman that did this
unauthorized thing had no idea that all of these events occurred. From everyone she
interviewed, "B" was a gentleman, just this wonderful, wonderful person. So she
named him. Well, she was wrong.
GF: The purpose of your
book was to inspire other mothers...
BD:
Not so much to inspire...althought if it inspired, that's wonderful...but just to bridge
the gap between parents and their gay sons and daughters. And just to be another resouces
out there. There's not a lot by parents especially. And certainly through my expereicnes
as a spokes person for the National Coming Out project, I've heard every kind of story you
can think of. I had to pick and choose what to put in the book. I could have done even
more, in fact, we did cut quite a bit from the book. so, maybe there will be another book.
GF: I'm sure this
book will bring a lot of resonse. There's a handy address in the back.
BD:
I hope so because here's a lot more to talk about. I got two letters almost immediately,
right after the book hit the shelves at the bookstores.
GF: Accepting this job
for the Human Rights Campaign must have taken a lot of courage.
BD:
You see, it just seemd the most natural thing in the world. I met all these wonderful
people in Washington, on the staff, so there was no other answer but "Sure! Of
course!"
GF: Are you still
involved?
BD:
Yes, I still am. I should be "spokesperson emeritus" by now.
GF: How can you do a
book tour, too?
BD:
Obviously, I'm not doing anything for HRC right now, but as soon as I finish this, I guess
there'll be things coming up. And on the head of that, I'm going with a speakers' bureau
and will be speaking to universities and different groups. WE need to get out there. We
need to be more vocal.
GF: So you think you'll
be writing another book with the responses you're getting from this one?
BD:
I hope so: I love writing. I've had a few articles published. Then some women in New York
encouraged me to write fiction. So I wrote a little story about an incident I had on an
airplane. I really would like to get into that.
Last night I spoke at the Jewish
Community Center in Marin County and on the way we stopped at Book Passaged [in Corte
Madera], a really wonderful booktore. I got their catalogue with all their workshops. I
would love to come back and go to one of those workshops. Actually, I just missed one. It
was turning a first person expereince into a short sotry, fiction...which is what I just
did.
GF: Do you work on a
computer?
BD:
Uh huh, I travel with it. I write everywhere I go.
GF: Well, from all the
traveling you do, you'll soon be turning out novels.
BD:
That's daunting. You know, I've been so impressed with writers all my life and here I have
this book! [The book is enjoying record sales. A "rush" order of 5,000
additional copies is now being printed, and a second edition is planned next month.]
GF: I'm sending a copy
to my daughter's wife's parents because they are still in a state of shock over the fact
that she is gay. And speaking of parents who can't accept their children's sexuality, have
you ever spoken with Ann Heche's parents?
BD:
You haven't heard the story about her father? He was a music minister in a Baptist church
and he died of AIDS. Anne was 13 and the family was living in London. Yes,, he was gay.
Anne says that caused her to live her life in honesty, no matter what. Her mother and
sister are fundamentalists and they don't speak to her...at all.
GF: Have you tried to
contact Anne's mother?
BD:
Oh, we did. Ellen invited the mother to Los Angeles for the premiere of "Six Days
Seven Nights." We had a wonderful time. She loved the premiere and meeting Harrison
Ford and all that. Then Anne tried to talk to her seriously about her relationship with
Ellen, and the mother said, "Oh, you didn't tell me you were going to talk about
anything serious." It deteriorated from there. It deteriorated a lot. So it hurt them
a lot, but that, why I'm Mom.
GF: I can't understand
how mothers can treat their children that way. I have marched with P-FLAG in the San
Francisco Pride Parade and it is tragic to see the young people cry when we pass.
BD:
Yes, that contingent always gets the most applause. I hope I can march with the Los
Angeles P-FLAG group this year, in the West Hollywood parade, moms and dads. Last year I
was in Oklahoma City parade on that day, so I couldn't be with the West Holllywood bunch.
GF: I loved your remark
that if you could sign up to be a lesbian, you would do it.
BD:
Absolutely, In my HRC work, I have made several good, good friends...and gay men as well.
These are beautiful, beautiful people, but we're just friends. I'm so hopelessly
heterosexual.
GF: In your book, you
listed the qualities of your "next mate."
BD:
Which is totally impossible, so that's why I don't mind haing them there. I loved
Katherine Hepburn's remark! [Hepburn once side when asked if she had any interest in a new
relationship with a man, "Well, at my age I 'm not going to attract the strongest
lion in the jungle, so why bother?"]
As we picked up to leave, Betty
informed me that Ellen and Anne have moved to the outskirts of Santa Barbara, and that she
is now living in Ojai. "I love it," she said. "It's only 20 miles from
Santa Barabra so I see Ellen and Anne a lot. Also, Ojai is a very spiritual place, so
there's a large community of artists and writers. I expect to get a lot of writing done
there."
 Erin Findlay
is the publisher of Girlfriends Magazine.
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