Melanie Before Antonio

Melanie's children will not soon repeat her experience with the big cats. As she reported to Redbook (Feb. 92):

I was thinking about that the other day, because my son asked if he could take the kitty to school for show-and-tell," she says. "And I remembered that I once took one of our baby lions to school for that. It was pretty bizarre. The cats are so beautiful, and so wonderful, and my mom still has all of them. My kids are too young to go out there. You have to be eighteen, because of the insurance. The lions love little kids, and would like to play with them, but they would hurt them without meaning to."

Melanie, who was educated at primarily at Catholic schools and at the Hollywood Professional School, had an early acting and modeling career, doing her first television commercial at nine months. She says that she did not enjoy the work because of her shyness. She also disliked show business because of an early unfortunate encounter with the eccentric director Alfred Hitchcock. For Melanie's sixth birthday, Hitchcock gave Melanie a tiny coffin containing a wax replica of her mother outfitted in the clothes she had worn in The Birds. Reportedly, Hitchcock derailed Hedren's career because she rejected his amorous advances.

Melanie admits to being a wild teenager. These were insecure times when she was looking for affection. Her closest girlfriend was and is Heidi von Beltz. Heidi did modeling and stuntwork. In 1980 Heidi was in a stunt car crash that left her a paraplegic. She was only given a few years to live. Heidi and Melanie have remained very close through the years. Heidi has chronicled her life in My Soul Purpose. Coincidentally, also in 1980, Melanie was struck by a car while crossing Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. Intoxicated at the time, she suffered a broken leg, arm, hairline fractures, and a concussion. But this accident only encouraged her in her addictions because the doctor told her if she hadn't been so drunk, she probably would have been killed.

"I had skipped a grade, so all of my girlfriends were fifteen, sixteen," [Melanie] recalls. "Everybody else had at least made out with somebody or 'done it' with a boyfriend. I didn't want anyone to even touch me. But then there was this gorgeous guy. . . . Don was just so beautiful." [Ladies Home Journal, Oct., 94]

"I literally picked him to be my first man. When I returned from a vacation in, ironically, the Virgin Islands, I called him and invited him to lunch--which was not all I had in mind. He was scared to death of me because, as he later said, twenty years in prison for having sex with a minor was not his idea of a good time. So he dodged my advances for a while until, finally, it just happened rather naturally. I really believe in what I did. I was able to make love at fourteen, not just physically but mentally and spiritually too. And making love with Don seemed--and was--a completely normal thing." [Cosmopolitan, June 93]

Redbook says that Melanie's deteriorating relationship with her mother and stepfather was a factor in her moving in with Don. Melanie married Don when she was eighteen. The wedding was a last-ditch effort to save a troubled relationship, says Heidi von Beltz. Explains von Beltz, "They had a lot of love, but they didn't know who they were." [Redbook, Mar. 93]

Johnson once admitted that the evening before marrying Griffith, he "had been with [ex-Miss World] Marjorie Wallace most of the night. Melanie called at about four or five in the morning. We professed undying love and flew to Las Vegas and got married." Six months later, they were divorced [Redbook, Apr 94]. People says that the couple's problems with drugs and alcohol contributed to their quick divorce. But neither cleaned up their act immediately.

Unlike Antonio who had an absolute hunger to act and perform, Melanie did not originally enjoy performing. As a teenager, she modeled simply to make money. She went to what she thought was a modeling assignment and ended up with a part in the film Night Moves (1975). Her early shyness was so extreme that stagehands would hold her legs below camera to prevent her from shaking. Eventually she relaxed. Her initial outing garnered great reviews. Newsweek described her as giving a performance of "touching openness and vulnerability".

Melanie later married actor Steven Bauer, by whom she had a son, Alexander, in 1985. Bauer had encouraged Melanie to take acting lessons in New York with renowned acting teacher Stella Adler. She loved the challenge. The turning point in her career is considered to have been her performance in Body Double (1984). She got wonderful reviews for this role. Newsweek compared her to July Holliday and Goldie Hawn. Something Wild consolidated her new 'major actress' status. Stormy Monday (1988) had reviewers making comparisons with Marilyn Monroe.

While pregnant with Alexander, she was introduced through her acting coach. to Gurumayi, the spiritual leader of the popular Siddha Yoga Foundation "I always thought gurus ripped you off," she says. "Then I did my first intensive with her, and it was wild. She's been a major influence. But I'm a free spirit; I don't live by the rules." [LHJ - Oct. 94] Dakota received her middle name in honor or Gurumayi.

Her marriage to Bauer collapsed. Once again , substance abuse was a major factor in the break-up. Bauer also admits he was unfaithful, "[The marriage] couldn't survive because I was traveling a lot and there were plenty of 'romantic' occasions when the woman at my side wasn't Melanie." [Hello!]. Very telling considering Melanie's history with men, is Melanie's later statement to Ladies Home Journal: in 1997:

"When Antonio and I are apart, I don't worry that he's being unfaithful; I worry that he's all right.

Melanie admits that while she was working steadily in such films as 1984's Body Double and 1986's Something Wild., she was using cocaine and liquor. "What I did was drink myself to sleep at night. If I wasn't with someone I was an unhappy girl." Reportedly she was fined on the set ofWorking Girl in 1988 for drunkeness. At this moment of darkness, she reached out to Johnson, from whom she had never lost contact. For a couple of years, Don encouraged her to get help. Finally, Melanie checked into the Hazelden Clinic in Minnesota. She got herself clean. The following year Melanie and Don remarried and Dakota was born.

Their second courtship may have been complicated by the fact that Johnson was romantically attached to diva Barbra Striesand at the time. Melanie insisted that she and Don did not begin their relationship until Don had broken off with Barbra. "Others claim Johnson ping-ponged between his two very different lovers: Melanie warm and traditional, Barbra powerful and driven. "[Redbook, Apr 94]

Griffith has admitted she occasionally misses drinking. "Some days you go, `Why can some people have a glass of wine and I can't?' It's unfair. You have to change your whole way of life." She also thinks her addictive personality is at least partially genetic. "My father quit drinking last year [1991], which has made an enormous difference in my life," she confides. "I mean, I just can't believe how cool he is. I never really knew before." Her father, Peter Griffith, now splits his time between a ranch in the western U.S. and a home in the Virgin islands [Redbook, Jan. 92]

Ironically, despite the fact that Melanie's substance abuse problems were out of control while filming Working Girl, she won the Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination for her mixture of toughness and vulnerability in her portrayal of Tess.

Melanie spoke about her changed attitude toward her career to Ladies Home Journal: "When I was about twenty-five, I made this conscious decision to be good in my work, and to believe in myself. And I couldn't do that in my personal life," she explains. "I always put men on a pedestal, probably because my parents were divorced when I was really little."

Being Johnson's wife and Alexander and Dakota's mother did not made her more conservative in her choice of roles "If there's a script that calls for nudity and it's appropriate, I'm not ashamed of my body." She also admitted that she enjoyed playing out those fantasy love scenes with Michael Douglas or Harrison Ford. "It's actually kind of fun," she says. "I mean, I figure that this way you don't ever have to actually go and try it, or do anything about it. You get to pretend. [Redbook, Jan 92]

For awhile, Johnson and Griffith appeared to have the ideal marriage. They tried to get away from the pressures of Hollywood by making their primary home outside of Aspen, Colorado where Jesse (Don's son by Patti D'Arbanville) and Alexander could go to school at the Aspen Community School. Family time was packed with outdoor adventure. With the Rocky Mountains as a backyard, parents and children liked to hike, bike, and ski. "The family is the most important part of our lives," Melanie claimed "Don and I are really getting along well. We're working on our marriage and the kids. It's just such a solid base." [Redbook, Apr. 94] "I'm a princess in a fairy tale. Not only do I have my prince, I have the castle that goes with it." [People] There was certainly no rumbling of trouble when she said in 1992, "You know, I've been really blessed for the past three years," she said. "Every day I try to say, `Thank you, God.'" [Redbook, Jan. 92]

The prince and princess did not live "happily ever after." There were a number of factors that precipitated the couple's breakup. The ones that the public are aware of are:

1) Severe substance abuse by Don
2) Reported infidelity by Don
3) Issues of controlling behavior
4) Melanie wanted more children and Don did not

People chronicled Don Johnson's self-destruction and the reasons behind the breakup of his marriage with Melanie Griffith in its June 20, 1994 issue.

Unlike the break-up of Antonio's and Ana Leza's marriage, which took many by surprise, the Johnson-Griffith union dissolution seemed inevitable at least a year before it became official. In 1993, the gossip started that Don was seeing other women. A Toronto woman claimed he fathered her child while he was in Toronto shooting Guilty as Sin. It was while in Toronto that Johnson started drinking again. Johnson on the Arsenio Hall Show would claim "Some people fall off the wagon. I fell off a building." His problems escalated. A series of embarrassing public incidents occurred including a radio show in which he was totally incoherent. He slurred his words, spouted obscenities, and made weird threats. ("I can do whatever I want," Johnson reportedly raved on the air. "I'm rich, I'm famous, and I'm bigger than you.") On June 1st, Don had an automobile accident with his son Jesse, after reportedly partying and drinking margaritas with a blond beauty in her late 20s.

Originally, Johnson had tried out-patient status with a specialist to handle his substance abuse problems. This was ineffective. On June 3rd, 1994, he entered the Betty Ford Clinic. His rehabilitation was considered a success. But his marriage with Melanie was too strained to ever fully recover.

Melanie had moved out of the couple's Aspen home in May, 1994 and resettled nearby with her children. She had started divorce proceedings in March 11th, 1994 but dropped them a few days later. Don "is no angel. He is not easy," Melanie told Vanity Fair. "It is hard for me to imagine life without him. But we are changing in different ways."

Melanie sought refuge in the Hamptons after her separation from Johnson.

"My personal life has really been screwed up," Griffith says. "I tend to lose myself in my relationships. So I'm striving to not be dependent upon anybody else for my well-being. It's painful, scary. But I'm already a totally different person from when I left Don. I can actually turn out the light after reading now and lay there in the dark for a minute before I go to sleep. I couldn't do that before unless I had someone with me, or unless I took a sleeping pill. I just didn't want to face being alone with myself. Now I'm okay with that." [Ladies Home Journal, Oct., 94]

She remained diplomatic about the couple's problems:

"I want a divorce, but I want the door left open--always," she says. "He would have to change. I can't change him. Sure, inquiring minds want to know. But it's nobody's business why we're getting divorced. It's tough, it's sad."

"I have loved Don with all of my heart for all of my life," she says wistfully. "That doesn't just shut down. He will always be in my life. But we both have to change. I feel like I'm recovering from a bad dream."
[Ladies Home Journal, Oct., 94]

The third issue in the break-up besides the substance abuse and Johnson's infidelity was control:

"When I got back with Don I was fresh out of rehab and very vulnerable. I think I allowed him to control me. It's like you go out on a date and he has steak tartare, and you go, 'Yeah, I love steak tartare, too,' but you really don't. But you want to get close to that person so you order it, too. Five years later you wake up and go, 'I hate this steak tartare, never liked it and never want to have it again.'" [Ladies Home Journal, Oct., 94]

Even before the couple's break-up, some friends sensed that Melanie was struggling between her real personality and the personality she put on for Don's benefit:

"When you see Melanie with Don, she's very deferential," says one friend, "and you think wife, wife, wife. But then she gets on a set and she's a strong woman who knows what she wants."

The best-seller The Celestine Prophecy influenced Melanie's decision to leave Don. "Part of the reason why I left was reading this book. It made me face the fact that I was not happy in my life." She cites the book's concept of evolving to ever-high-er "energy fields," adding:

"There are certain people who survive by sucking other people's energy in order to build up their own. I had to get away from an energy sucker. It's amazing how much more energy I now have. If I had stayed, I'd have been miserable."

"I've been a caretaker all my life. Being good to myself was something I never felt I deserved. "Ladies Home Journal, Oct., 94

After her separation and before meeting Antonio, Melanie was seen briefly with 28-year-old Bryan Kestner. But Melanie denied any romantic involvement and certainly was not psychic about falling in love:

"I'm not ready for a romance. I know I cannot be with anybody else until I'm okay with myself. Plus, I haven't met anybody I want to have a relationship with. Prince Charming's out there somewhere, I'm sure. Maybe. Well, maybe not."

Melanie felt "burned" and disillusioned. "I thought true love meant I would do anything for that person, that that person would do anything for me. I was naive. I should have been smarter." Ladies Home Journal, Oct., 94

Despite her unhappiness, Melanie held on to her unstable marriage for nearly a year (which supposedly cost her a great deal of money and property in the divorce settlement since Don's lawyer made Melanie appear the guilty party). Despite Melanie standing by Don during his darkest moments, the issues that led to the separation were never resolved. Hence, the stage was set for her to be swept off her feet by a certain romantic Spaniard. According to Entertainment Weekly :

From the way their lawyers talked at the time, the second split-up sounded particularly unsavory. "Ms. Griffith's behavior outside the marriage was one of the contributing factors to causing my client's latest bout with substance abuse," Johnson's attorney reportedly argued, demanding half of Griffith's earnings during the six-year marriage. Her lawyer allegedly fired back, "Ms. Griffith will not pay another dollar towards her former husband's rehabilitation expenses." In the end, she got the Porsche, the two horses, and a David Hockney lithograph; he got the Beverly Hills and Aspen spreads, a 1949 pickup truck, and the jet.

The claim of "Ms. Griffith's behavior outside the marriage" as being a contributing factor to Don's substance abuse seems absurd unless the lawyer was talking about Melanie's cinematic success as contributing to Don's feelings of inferiority. Having a wife that was perceived as more successful than oneself might have been a factor in his turning to alcohol. However, the reference seems to imply that Melanie was extramaritally romantically involved. There was no talk of Melanie seeing any other man at the time Don had his relapse. All the talk of infidelity in 1994 was limited to Don's possible extramarital paternity and constant flirtations. By the time she met Antonio, Don was long in recovery. Don himself said To EW:

"The reports that we were fighting over money--totally false. [The divorce] was never bitter, never difficult...Melanie's happiness directly relates to my children's happiness. So I pray for her happiness like I pray for my own."

As difficult as the dissolution of a marriage is, it seems to have been the best decision for both parties. Don's name has been attached to several women including a French beauty and the girl that plays his daughter on Nash Bridges since his and Melanie's final breakup in April-May, 1995. His career has been revitalized with the movie Tin Cup and the television series Nash Bridges. While Melanie's recent movie offerings haven't been the envy of Hollywood, her personal happiness with Antonio is self-evident and more satisfying than any plumb acting role.