Being Hal Ashby. Nick Dawson

to Ashby, he and Shirley met only at the beginning of 1962, but they had both been apprentice editors at the same time, so their paths may have crossed earlier. (Shirley's only editing credit is for the film Invasion of the Animal People [1962]—a version of the Swedish creature feature Rymdinvasion I Lappland [1959] reworked with the addition of a few disjointed new scenes featuring John Carradine—which she had cut for Jerry Warren, a hack filmmaker who regularly bought and repackaged foreign films.)

      Soon after they got together, Ashby wrote his mother that Shirley was pregnant. However, he was quick to explain, “The baby is not mine. Shirley was pregnant before I ever met her. Shirley was not married or even involved with anyone when she became pregnant. It was just one of those things that happen, and when it happens all you can do is make a decision. Shirley made the decision to have her baby. It was sometime later when I came along and we fell in love. I should say we discovered we loved each other.”²

      Predictably, Ashby threw himself into the romance with total abandon. He and Shirley had an instant connection, and there was an irresistible logic to their relationship: she had a child on the way and no father in sight, and Ashby finally felt ready to have a family. It was also an opportunity to rescue the woman he loved and partly atone for leaving Lavon and Leigh. Only the fact that Ashby was technically Mickey's husband stopped him from marrying Shirley immediately, but in all other ways they were man and wife.

      They moved into 9878 Easton Drive, a house on a secluded lane in Benedict Canyon, away from the noise and urban sprawl of Los Angeles. Secluded and peaceful, it was an ideal place to start a family.

      Ashby wrote to his mother that he was “very much in love…unable to find the words that could express why I feel about her as I do.” Yet he acknowledged that their situations—his divorce and her pregnancy by another man—were a struggle, despite the strength of their feelings for each other: “Parts of it have been very rough; we had both our pasts.…But our love has been strong enough to carry us through the hardship of jealousy, fear and anything else you can think of.”³

      The birth of Shirley's daughter brought them together and made them feel positive about the path they were on. Carrie was born in Cedars of Lebanon Hospital on June 23, 1962, and christened with the surname Ashby. Though they weren't married yet, Shirley had already changed her name to Ashby, and so it was a proper family that returned to Easton Drive. A few months later, Ashby reported: “The joy of loving is fast pushing the bad things into oblivion.”⁴

      Though Carrie was not his own blood, Ashby called her his daughter and treated her as such. He was a dedicated father and stayed at home for the first couple of months of her life. However, he soon ran out of money and had to return to work. Once Ashby was back in the editing room with Bob Swink, cutting Byron Haskin's Captain Sindbad (1963), his inability to balance work and family life became apparent. After years of letting his work utterly consume him, he was unable to break the pattern. For the rest of his life, he would be a workaholic. He took photos of Carrie in August, just after starting work on Captain Sindbad, but three months down the line had still not developed them. Shirley, however, was understanding and in a letter to Eileen Ashby wrote: “Men need to take their time when they're doing creative things and we must be patient with them.”⁵

      Life on Easton Drive with Shirley, Carrie, and their two cats, Grey and Sheba, seemed to effect a change in Ashby. He had sporadically stayed in touch with his mother since leaving Ogden but was aware that from his teenage years on he had been far from an ideal son. Now that he had a family himself, he began to feel the urge to put things right. He started writing his mother every month, expressing his appreciation of her, and attempting to apologize for past wrongs. “I may treat you shabbily most of the time,” he confessed, “but don't ever think for a second that I am not aware of what you are. You have given the greatest gift there is to give. You have been able to give love. Nothing is more important than that.”⁶

      Ashby told Eileen that her love was possibly the one constant in his life, the thing he could rely on no matter what. “I have begun to recognize your love as a kind of anchor; a solid base to living…to life,” he wrote. “No matter what tragedies might beset me; no matter how despondent I may become; I know there is someone who wants me to be; you want me to be because I am me.”⁷ Previously, he had felt guilty about the inadequacy of what he had given her in return. Now, however, as he looked at Carrie, he realized that it was the role of parents to give more than they would ever receive back.

      Pondering his troubled teenage years, Ashby acknowledged that he had refused his mother's help and emotionally excluded her, then never properly let her back into his life:

      Perhaps there is a point when the child reaches an age where so many new things are happening all at once; he becomes confused and frightened; it panics him. He withdraws; he starts to close things off. He wants to stop the flow of newness. In his confusion, he shuts off love, also. From this point he needs a constant pressure on the valve from somebody who has the stamina to keep loving him; despite his refusal to accept it. One day he'll get a glimmer of this love and let the valve be opened freely. Love will pour in and, in a sense, he will be born again. He will start to learn what life really is. He will accept responsibility because it is a part of loving; not because it's something forced upon him. Love will be the one basic.⁸

      For Ashby, the valve had been opened by the overwhelming emotions he experienced in the role of father and husband, and his new family helped him see his family back home in Ogden in a different light. He realized that he and Jack had not seen each other in years and expressed an interest in getting to know him once again. And when Eileen sent him a picture of Leigh, along with news of her progress, he needlessly returned the picture but said that he “would be more than pleased and happy” to meet her: “I imagine it would be a little awkward at first, but I'm certain those kind of things can be overcome and I am anxious to see what kind of person she is turning out to be. One of these days, when everything is right, maybe she can come and visit in California. That is if she doesn't have some boyfriend she would be homesick for all the time she's here. We both know how that can be don't we!”⁹

      It was a valiant gesture but fell far short of reconciliation. Ashby may have been ready to be a father again, but he wasn't ready to face his guilt for abandoning Leigh. It's unclear whether, in saying that he would see her “when everything is right,” he was aware that that day would never come.

      Nevertheless, in his newly enlightened state, he was trying to be a better person and reexamining his way of seeing things. “I was so smart,” he wrote to Eileen, “it only took me about twenty-eight years to learn the fact that people are people, and should be treated as such.…Now, I at least try and think before I act. I try to understand how a person could feel hurt; even if I don't believe they should feel that way.”¹⁰

      Now that Ashby and Eileen were writing regularly and had a much greater understanding of each other, he invited her to visit him in Los Angeles and meet Shirley and Carrie. Eileen, however, was seventy-five, suffered from heart trouble and arthritis, and had money problems, so Ashby drove halfway to Ogden (he feared his car wouldn't make it the whole way) to meet her and took her to Los Angeles himself.

      The visit was a roaring success. Not only was Eileen delighted with her new granddaughter, but she got on very well with Shirley, with whom she formed a strong bond over the next few years. In contrast to previous visits, during which Ashby barely saw her, this time they spent a lot of time together. After she left, he wrote to her, saying: “Gee, but did we enjoy you being here with us. I'll never be able to explain the good feeling I get when I see, hear, or think of you. Why don't you come again next week?”¹¹

      In May, Ashby's divorce from Mickey came through, and on July 31, he and Shirley legally tied the knot in a Las Vegas quickie wedding. Again, after a few more months at home, Ashby had to return to work. Because of a paucity of editing jobs, the union was being particularly vigilant about giving priority to their most senior members. As a result, Ashby had to fight to get to work on The Best Man (1964), a Henry Fonda movie adapted from the Gore Vidal play. Bob Swink, however, insisted on having him. Now in the final stages of his epic apprenticeship as an editor, Ashby immersed himself