Charlie & Me: A Memoir

Global eBook Awards Finalist -- 2011

Charlie & Me:

A Memoir

by

Harriett Bronson

"The only things in life that are permanent

are memories." -- Charles Bronson

What Others Are Saying About Charlie & Me

CINDY ADAMS PAGE SIX – NEW YORK POST

A load of yeas ago, movie star Charles Bronson wed movie star Jill Ireland. They’re both gone now. Still with us is first wife (Harriett Bronson)…who met Bronson in acting school in 1947 and stayed married to him for 16 years until, as Harriett says, 'He fell under the spell and into the bed of the also married Jill Ireland.’ Adds Bronson, 'It’s better to be the second or third wife.’

BEVERLY HILLS COURIER – GEORGE CHRISTY Column

"Harriett Bronson’s lately authored book, Charlie and Me, is a poignant remembrance and a portrait of deep love about her marriage to Charles Bronson…No matter their backgrounds, they were irresistibly drawn to one another…"

HUFFINGTON POST -"Charles Bronson Divorce: Ex-Wife Harriett Bronson Writes Memoir:Charlie & Me is the wonderful new book written by Harriett Bronson. In it, Bronson describes her young love affair and 16-year marriage to the actor, Charles Bronson. She takes the reader on a journey from new love, happily married, to becoming ‘Mrs.Famous’ (after Charlie made it big as a movie star and actor), and then shares the pain of being the last to know after her husband’s adultery. It’s also a story about starting over, self-discovery, and learning to make it on your own." – Lu Stevenson, Blogcritics Books

WOMEN’S RADIO with MARY JONES –Harriett Bronson’s Life with Actor Charles Bronson "Her memoir, Charlie & Me, is an honest, personal glimpse into their high-profile marriage and divorce."

WAMG (WeAreMovieGeeks.com) -- by Tom Stockman

"Here was a woman who put her own acting career on hold to focus on her husband's pursuits and suddenly had to reinvent herself and discover her niche in life. Determined not to be known as an 'Ex Mrs. Famous,' Harriett Bronson did just fine on her own. She found her own voice in a rewarding career as a radio talk how host on stations in Los Angeles and as the author of three books, including her newest Charlie and Me, which is the story of her marriage and high-profile divorce with much raw emotion but it’s not an angry, gossipy, or bitter account…but one that really humanizes the famously reticent and reclusive actor…Harriett was wise enough to recognize that it wasn’t Jill Ireland that led to the unraveling of their marriage, but the way her husband dealt with his fame…"

*****

Charlie & Me:

A Memoir

by Harriett Bronson

Published by Harriett Bronson at Smashwords

Copyright 2011 Harriett Bronson

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover photo: Fred Hess & Son, Atlantic City, N.J.

*****

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my children, Suzanne and Tony, who will hopefully understand the why of things that happened in our lives, and to my editor, Sylvia Cary, without whose generosity and help this story would never have been written. -- Harriett Bronson.

Charlie & Me: A Memoir

by Harriett Bronson

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 -- Love at the Bessie V. Hicks School of Stage, Screen and Radio

Chapter 2 -- Helen Hayes, Move Over

Chapter 3 -- Sam Tendler

Chapter 4 -- Radio Days

Chapter 5 -- I Can See Your Face up on the Silver Screen

Chapter 6 -- Pasta Perfect

Chapter 7 -- Emily Street

Chapter 8 -- Aunt Sophye

Chapter 9 -- The Proposal

Chapter 10 -- The Announcement

Chapter 11 -- Scooptown

Chapter 12 -- New York, New York

Chapter 13 -- On the Boardwalk of Atlantic City

Chapter 14 -- I Thee Wed

Chapter 15 -- The Buchinsky Five-Year Plan for Success and Happiness

Chapter 16 -- Location Blues

Chapter 17 -- Red Flags and Green-Eyed Monsters

Chapter 18 -- Hollywood and Bronson

Chapter 19 -- The Wives’ Code of Secrecy

Chapter 20 -- Famous Friends

Chapter 21 -- Mrs. Famous

Bronson Family Photo Album

Chapter 22 -- Charlie’s Great Escape

Chapter 23 -- The Good Neighbor

Chapter 24 -- The Beverly Hills Detective

Chapter 25 -- Christmas in Tinseltown

Chapter 26 -- Sorry is More Than a Word

Chapter 27 -- Loony Tunes

Chapter 28 -- The Devil Made Me Do It

Chapter 29 -- The Ex Mrs. Famous

Chapter 30 -- Motherhood on Trial

Chapter 31 -- Taking My Turn

Chapter 32 -- Woman to Woman

Chapter 33 -- Saying Goodbyes

Epilogue

About the Author

*****

Chapter 1

Love at the Bessie V. Hicks School

of Stage, Screen and Radio

"C’mere."

I couldn't believe he was speaking to me. Nobody had ever talked to me that crudely. I was standing at the water fountain at the top of the stairs of the Bessie V. Hicks School of Stage, Screen and Radio in Philadelphia. It was my second day.

I dabbed my lips with the back of my hand: What?

C'mere! he said again, looking right at me with brown eyes set in a wonderfully intense face. His dark hair was slicked back in a duck tail and he was wearing a gray sharkskin zoot suit.

Then, as though being reeled in, I went over and stood in front of him.

You have the prettiest mouth I've ever seen, he said.

I was flummoxed but managed a reply: Thank you.

He grinned. What's your name?

Harriett Tendler.

He didn't offer his name in return. I had to know. What's yours?

Charlie Buchinsky.

Are you a student here?

Why do you ask that?

You look older.

G.I. bill. He glanced down the hallway where two other students, Honey and Beth, were waiting for me. How come you girls always travel in packs?

They're my friends.

Shake `em. Have coffee with me at Child's.

I was shocked. I can't.

Why not?

I have class.

Bye, then.

With a curt little wave, he headed down the stairs and out the double glass doors to the street.

I joined Honey and Beth and we walked into class together.

Who was that? Honey asked.

He looks like a killer, Beth added dramatically. He gives me the willies.

He asked me out for coffee.

Honey didn't wait a beat. You’re not going to go!

Of course not.

And so began my love story with Charlie Buchinsky, aka Charles Bronson. The year was 1947. I had just turned eighteen; Charlie was twenty-six. We were to be together for the next eighteen years -- and in each other’s lives for a total of fifty-six years until his death on August 30, 2003.

We were a most unlikely couple -- Charlie, one of eleven children (one died) born to an immigrant Lithuanian, Catholic coal miner and his wife, and I, the only child of a widowed Jewish cattle breeder and dairy farmer. I was on my way (or so I fancied) to an acting career on the New York stage when Charlie uttered that magic word to me -- C'mere -- and sent my life off in another direction.

The only thing Charlie and I had in common was a stubborn (my father's word) determination to be together and to make Charlie into a movie star.

Chapter 2

Helen Hayes, Move Over

I loved drama school. Every day when I walked up the steps and read the sign over the entrance, Bessie V. Hicks School of Stage, Screen and Radio, I'd feel a thrill. It had been a struggle to get there. Ever since I’d had the lead in my high school play, Junior Miss, I knew acting was in my future. I could taste it.

My father had fought me every step of the way.

You're not going! Sam Tendler shouted the first time I told him I wanted to go to drama school.

Daddy, I'm going.

You should go to business school. A woman should know how to work.

I'm going to be a star on the Broadway stage and marry a rich man and have servants.

I heard him sigh and mutter under his breath, What am I going to do with this girl? Then louder, Harriett, why can't you just settle down instead of wanting what you can't have?

Next came the inevitable: You're as stubborn as your mother. It killed her and it'll kill you, too.

I knew what was at the root of Sam Tendler's tirades. It was fear. I was all he had and he was afraid of losing me. He was afraid I would disappear into Life and something terrible would happen to me because that's what happened to my mother.

My mother, Frances, had had a passion for riding horses, a passion my father not only didn't share, but hated. Every photograph I have of her shows her in jodhpurs. Apparently her determination to ride was so great that my father finally realized he was powerless over it. He gave up trying to dissuade her.

It was a decision he later came to regret.

One day when my mother went horseback riding in Fairmont Park in Philadelphia, her horse ran away with her, threw her and she hit her head against a tree. It killed her.

She was twenty-eight years old. I was not yet three.

I don't remember my mother, at least not consciously. But I don't think it's a coincidence that all my life I've been terrified that the people I love will walk out the door and never come back.

After my mother's death I was sent to live with her family in their big house in West Philadelphia. There was my grandmother, Gram Katie Fenkel, my aunt Sophye Fenkel (my mother’s sister) and my handsome young uncles, Steve and Morris.

Every Sunday my father would come to visit me. I’d sit on his lap and he’d open his pocket watch and show me a picture of me, which I loved. Then he’d take me to a show. It was Stanley A. (some say he preferred Stan Lee) Broza’s Horn and Hardart's Children’s Hour radio show, broadcast live with an audience. I’d stand on my seat to see and hear every single minute of it. Afterwards, my father would take me back to my grandmother’s house. That was our weekly routine.

The minute he'd drop me off and leave, I'd get a stomach ache, afraid I'd never see him again. When I was married to Charlie the same thing would