Mark B. Perry Screenwriter & Novelist

Katherine LaNasa’s recent and much-deserved Emmy win for HBO’s The Pitt took me back to July, 2008 when I worked with her on Ghost Whisperer, and from there I spiraled down Memory Lane to April, 2000 and the origins of the character I wrote for her. The episode was called “Save Our Souls” and was filmed almost entirely aboard the venerable 1930s Queen Mary ocean liner in Long Beach, just half an hour from my home (without traffic, so that means at least an hour). Ghost Whisperer was a huge Friday night hit for CBS, and revolved around Melinda Gordon (Jennifer Love Hewitt), an antiques dealer who can see and talk to ghosts. Each episode found her trying to help some lost soul resolve their unfinished earthly business so they could “go into the light.” I joined the show toward the end of their third season, brought in with the specific mandate to add more humor to what had generally been a very serious, sometimes maudlin, show.

At the beginning of season four, a huge fire broke out on the Universal lot where we filmed. It destroyed many of our standing sets–like the Back to the Future/To Kill a Mockingbird town square where Melinda’s antiques store was located. As a result, we had insurance money to cover the additional expense of shooting on location while our sets were being rebuilt. I seized the opportunity and pitched an episode about an old ocean liner, the SS Claridon (so named as a wink to the fictional ship in The Last Voyage), which was embarking on a “last voyage” of its own before it was to be scrapped and all its art deco furnishings and fittings sold at auction. Antiques dealer Melinda would drag her husband Jim (David Conrad) along in hopes of acquiring treasures for her store. Trouble is, the ship had been in service for many decades so there was a boatload of ghosts wandering around with their unresolved business keeping them on the doomed ship and pressuring Melinda to help them.

One of those ghosts was named Betty, and she was portrayed with flawless sass and genuine pathos by Katherine LaNasa. And Betty’s origins story was inspired by a real person I had once had the great good fortune to encounter.

A self-avowed ship geek, I’m enamored of the glamorous old passenger liners of the 20th century. Not their machinery and construction and so forth, but their aesthetics. This is why I was so anxious to set an episode on just such a ship. Many years ago, in April of 2000, I discovered a 1959 mid-century modern gem that was still in service–and completely intact no less. I jumped at the chance to book the first cruise available, and my husband and I traveled to meet the ship in Port Canaveral, Florida. Not the most convenient or busy passenger hub, but this was to be a “repositioning cruise” meaning the ship was headed to northern waters to begin her summer itinerary and was accepting passengers for the trip to help pay the expense of moving. Added bonus: it would take two whole luxurious weeks to get from Florida to Quebec City, with stops in many east coast ports along the way.

The liner was in service under the now defunct Premier Cruise Lines. She had been renamed the Rembrandt but everything about her save for the dark color of her hull, the linens, and the upholstery on the exquisite furnishings was original to her days as Holland America Lines’ Rotterdam V. I could enthuse on and on about her interiors, but I’ll let the pictures replace my bartender’s heavy pour of words. Suffice to say, she was truly a portal to another time.

My husband, also named Mark (it’s a thing) and I were each hovering on opposite sides of 40, and as it turns out, with the exception of some of the crew and entertainers, we were among the youngest passengers aboard. We noticed on the first night out that by 8PM or so, most everyone else had turned in for the evening, meaning the shows and lounges and decks were virtually empty. There were only a handful of hale and hearty souls, and Betty was one of them.

Betty.

We never learned her last name, and so “Betty” has become a one name legend in our house like Cher and Madonna. We never actually met her, only said a “good evening” or “good morning” here and there, but she made an entrance into our lives. And not just an entrance, but what the French call la grande descente, a term specific to ocean liner history. It refers to the dramatic staircases in public spaces aboard ship’s like the art deco masterpiece, Normandie, when women dressed in Erté-like couture would literally descend the stairs in a grand way, all eyes in the room upon them. When we first saw Betty, she wasn’t coming down any stairs, but she did sweep into the room like her homophone Bette Davis strutting about in All About Eve, though in our Betty’s case sans fumer. Let me set the scene.

As our voyage began, Mark and I set out to explore the ship, oohing and aahing with each new discovery. Two of our favorite spaces aboard were the Ocean Bar and the Ambassador Lounge. As the sun began to set, Mark and I dressed in traditional “first night out” attire, meaning jacket and tie (not tuxes), and hurried to get a good table in the Ocean Bar as the deck rose and fell in slow motion beneath our feet.

As it turned out, we needn’t have hurried. When we arrived, we were the only people in the joint save for a rather bored bartender who was listening to top 40 on an AM radio. As we would soon learn, the older passengers were more interested in food than cocktails, so we had the place to ourselves. Until a woman, perhaps in her seventies, came flouncing in. Her hair was done up smartly, and she was wearing a gorgeous, tailored 1950s Lucy Ricardo goes to a fancy party outfit entirely in subtly patterned emerald green. Full skirt, pinched waist, and a matching jacket with an upturned collar. Two sashays in, she froze save for her head which swiveled from one end of the room to the other like a periscope, barely registering our presence, before she enunciated like yet another Betty (this time Bacall as in Lauren), “My god! When this ship was the Rotterdam, this room was packed!” With that, she gave her pals a disappointed look, spun on her heel and curlicued out of the room, her entourage in tow.

“Who was that?” Mark and I said in the same breath.

From that moment on, we were on the lookout for Betty, and every time we caught sight of her, she didn’t disappoint. We imagined she must have boarded with old school steamer trunks stuffed with her jaw-dropping vintage finery. Her swim attire for lounging on deck looked like something Ava Gardner might have worn in a CinemaScope romantic comedy. Her day wear and dinner ensembles were all part of her own personal fashion show, each outfit outdoing the one before. I’m sorry to say we never thought to take a snapshot. After all, it was still some years before we’d all have HD cameras in our pockets.

One night in the first week, Mark and I were among a handful of people in the ship’s huge theater to see a wonderful Judy Garland impersonator whose name we’ve both forgotten. After the show, we headed off for a nightcap in our other favorite room, the Ambassador Lounge where the top drawer duo Patty and Dale performed nightly. As we sipped our drinks and listened to their soulful rendition of “Moonlight in Vermont,” a susurration of petticoats and soft laughter announced the entrance of Betty and her friends, now accompanied by one of the male dance hosts employed by the cruise line to keep the single ladies entertained. They settled into a nearby table, ordered drinks, then Betty and the “escort” got up to dance. I swear she’d chosen that night’s outfit specifically for dancing. It twirled, snapped, floated, and twisted around her slender frame as she dipped and dervished.

Mark and I might have been the “kids” on this cruise, but we were no match. Their party was still going strong when we finally retired to Cabin 175 to get some sleep.

In the middle of the night, we were awakened by an announcement on the ship’s PA system. A woman’s voice repeated softy, exactly twice: “Code blue to the Ambassador Lounge. Code blue to the Ambassador Lounge.” We fuzzily wondered what it meant, then rolled over and went back to sleep. Later, we were again awakened when the steady rocking of the ship came to a stop mid-ocean. We thought about getting up to see what was the matter, but we were groggy, a little buzzed, and figured if it was anything important, we’d be alerted (good thing we hadn’t struck an iceberg).

The next morning, we learned that Betty–our dear Betty–had died from a heart attack in the Ambassador Lounge, not long after Mark and I had gone to bed. We got the story from Patty and Dale who told us Betty had danced a mean jitterbug with her companion, returned to her seat laughing with exhilaration, but after she plopped back down her head slumped forward and she died. In a finger snap. Later, after the ship’s doctor had pronounced her dead, the Rembrandt stopped so the coast guard could take her body ashore.

That night at dinner, we were seated with some other passengers, one of whom turned out to be in Betty’s inner circle, and had been a guest in Betty’s stateroom for her nightly cocktail soirees. Turns out in addition to her steamer trunks filled with clothes even Edith Head would envy, Betty also traveled with a portable bar! The friend told us Betty had died exactly as she’d planned. When her doctor told her some months ago that her congestive heart failure was progressing rapidly, she gathered her medical records and legal papers, packed her beloved wardrobe (and bar!), and started booking one cruise after another so she could live her last days doing what she most loved: defining elegance and joie de vivre while at sea. What a way to go. To this day, Mark and I both regret making no effort to befriend her, to get invited to one of those cocktail parties!

So that’s the backstory (with some minor alterations) I gave to Katherine LaNasa’s Betty. In her case, she was a vintage clothing dealer who’d died from a coronary aboard the Claridon in 1999. In the episode, Melinda succeeds in getting the Claridon’s host of other ghosts into the light, save one: Betty, who has no intention of leaving the ship she loves. It was an honor to tell Betty’s story to millions of viewers, and a thrill to have her played by the incomparable Katherine LaNasa. Here she is in one of my favorite moments. As we used to say down south, I think Katherine did Betty proud:

While writing this post, I dug out my travel journal from our time aboard the Rembrandt. After jotting down the events surrounding Betty’s departure, I had presciently scribbled the question: “Will Betty haunt this ship?” Personally, I like to think she’s still aboard her beloved Rotterdam which is back in its namesake port, fully restored to its original glory as a stunning hotel and convention center.

Sometimes art imitates life. Sometimes it pays tribute. Rest well, Betty, you cut quite a figure and one hell of a rug.