“After I left Schary’s office,” Bob said, “fear hit me. I thought about a mental clinic like an insane asylum. I kept asking myself: ‘Is there something about me that others can see and I can’t?’”
But he promised Schary that he’d try Menninger’s. With a studio publicity man as companion, he rode the plane to Kansas wearing a pair of dark glasses, with his hat pulled down over his face, hoping nobody would recognize him. “When I first hit Topeka, I couldn’t bear the thought of people looking at me. It was as if the whole world had its eyes focused on me. Actually, nobody gave a damn.”
Living in a hotel, he drove each day to the clinic for a week of tests. “I hated myself and blamed myself all my life for things I shouldn’t have blamed myself for. I felt that everybody was against me, hated me, couldn’t understand me. I couldn’t even understand myself. I was only moments away from alcoholism, which is a slow form of self-destruction.”
On the basis of the tests, the clinic recommended that he be admitted, warning his father and Dore Schary that Bob would require at least one year of treatment, possibly two. He returned to Hollywood and went to the desert to hide, afraid to see people, until it was time to sign himself into Menninger’s.
“I got the idea that the clinic was something like a country club, so I asked for a single room and bath. First thing I noticed was that all the doors were locked. Then everything sharp, including my razor, was taken away from me—you could only shave with an attendant watching. The room I was taken to had bars on its window. When I was told: ‘You’re rooming with so-and-so,’ I said I was leaving. That first night a patient who understood how a newcomer felt gave up his room and bath without my knowing it, so it would be easier on me.”
For the first four weeks he was under observation only; no analysis. “You have to have a recreational therapist with you even on walks over the grounds.”
He lived in one of several “lodges,” with fifteen patients to each floor, ages varying from eighteen to sixty-five. “We didn’t discuss our illness with each other. Most of the men were wonderful, because it’s often the self-sacrificing, overly kind people who take all the blame on themselves and land up in such conditions.” His one thought was to leave the place.
At the end of that quiet first month he was still a good enough actor to persuade a doctor that he was perfectly capable of going into Topeka alone one night. “Or perhaps the clinic was trying to convince me how sick I was. Anyway, when I went to town I got drunk, landed up taking a swing at another cop, and smashed my fist through a window. I was more determined than ever to get away because I was sure the clinic had driven me to it.”
He contacted his father, begged him to come and take him away, signing to assume responsibility. It was suggested Bob should see one of Menninger’s analysts. “I told them I didn’t want to. Why spend more money on an analyst when he couldn’t do me any good? Even then, I was making excuses to keep from facing facts.”
Soon afterward, a psychoanalyst who had been assigned to him anyway, came to his room, said he knew Bob was leaving, but had just stopped by to say hello. “He stretched himself out on the bed and let me do the arguing. At the end of about an hour I thanked him for coming, but told him I was still going to leave. The next day I found some excuse to ask him to visit me again. I still argued that I was leaving. It was some time before I realized I was doing all the talking—not him. I made up my mind to stay.”