Barry Manilow's ex-wife speaks out
PUSSSYKATT
SINGER Barry Manilow has been a lifelong confirmed bachelor, as far as his
adoring fans are concerned.
But a Star investigation has uncovered a woman from his long forgotten past --
Barry's ex- wife, Susan Deixler, the high school sweetheart he married and then
callously dumped when the bright lights of stardom beckoned.
"I never remarried," she says wistfully, 34 years later. "I've gotten on with
my life. I wish him well and he wishes me well."
Susan Deixler
Today Susan, 55, is a holistic healer, who drives an old Subaru and treats
patients with acupressure and chiropractic methods at her modest home with
peeling paint outside Point Reyes, Calif. Her daughter by another man, Pauline,
26, lives nearby. She also has a son Danny.
And for decades Manilow, 53, has kept her whereabouts a secret from all except
his closest confidants. As the singer's fame, wealth and legions of fans grew,
Susan became a forgotten footnote on a marriage clerk's dusty ledger.
But in the early 1960s they were just two kids from Brooklyn who fell in love
at Eastern District High.
Manilow makes a fleeting reference to Susan in his 1987 autobiography Sweet
Life, but doesn't name her. He remembers Susan as "adorable, small with great
legs and a voluptuous figure."
Then a shy, poor boy from a rough neighborhood, Manilow longed to be a singer.
But the one thing he wanted more was for Susan, with "jet-black hair, dark
brown eyes and a smile that lit up the room" to love him as he loved her.
After many awkward dates and late-night strolls along the East river, just
across from the romantic lights of Manhattan where Manilow hoped to be a star
one day, they fell in love, he reveals in his book, published by McGraw-Hill.
"I couldn't believe it when she seemed to fall for me as hard as I fell for
her."
The two were married first before a justice of the peace and then, at their
parent's insistence, before a rabbi. Susan chose Joan De Santis, who had been
her best friend since grade school, to be her bridesmaid.
Sadly, Joan has since passed away. But her mother Anne De Santis remembers the
happy event like it was yesterday.
"Susan asked Joan to be her bridesmaid because they were such good friends,"
she says. "They were incredibly excited because it was to be the first wedding
in their group of friends.
"They were giggly and so full of life and hope for the future. It was a
wonderful time.
"They went to Lord & Taylor's on Fifth Avenue together to get dresses and spent
just about every penny they had saved. I remember Joan bought a lovely green
velvet dress. She was so pretty and so excited.
"Susan was such a pretty bride. She had beautiful jet-black hair and was so
happy. When I think back, it's doubly sad that Barry walked out on Susan and
broke her heart. I don't think she ever recovered from the blow."
But Manilow says the marriage was doomed from the start. "Even my friends
thought I was rushing into it," he later admitted.
Less than a year after tying the knot, Manilow grew restless. He was getting
work in small off-Broadway theaters.
He decided he was miserable being tied down at age 21 and couldn't bear the
thought of an ordinary life "with a picket fence on Long Island," says a
source.
So he abruptly left Susan, telling her he was going on "this wondrous musical
adventure that I saw within my reach."
With those words, Manilow walked out on the "perfect wife" while she cried in
disbelief.
"She reacted badly, of course," he said. Angry and hurt, Susan filed for an
annulment, which would basically mean the marriage never happened.
When Manilow came back the next day with a pal's truck to clear out the
apartment, he discovered Susan had changed the locks on the door.
When he called from a phone booth Susan was "a very distant and hurt woman."
She said he could have his clothes, but nothing else -- not even his precious
piano, though in the end she did relent and let him have it.
"Joan and Susan talked on the phone all the time during that period," De Santis
says. "Susan told Joan that she was very happy. She had gotten on with her
life."
On Jan. 6, 1966, the annulment decree was signed and they were both single
again.
In the 1970s, Barry's star began to rise after he got a job playing piano in a
gay bathhouse in New York with Bette Midler.
Things used to get so wild during performances at the Continental Baths that
Manilow once stripped nude and jumped into the pool with a cavorting crowd of
gay men in their birthday suits.
"Have you ever seen a thousand naked men with party hats on?" asked Manilow,
recalling his hungry years.
"All during the show, people kept passing drinks and joints up to me."
As the party roared into the night, the spectators beckoned the singer to join
them in the pool.
"I was thinking: 'I'd love to lose my inhibitions and jump in with the rest of
them, but it goes against everything in me.' "
But he finally gave in, stripped off his tux and jumped in.
He went on to top the charts with songs such as Mandy, Copacabana and I Write
The Songs.
Although he's been linked with women, he never remarried.
These days he owns several homes and leads an elegant lifestyle made up of only
the finest foods, clothes, cars and furnishings.
"He's Mister Smoking Jacket and Velvet Slippers," says a friend.
"Barry loves to entertain with small dinner parties in his gorgeous mansion in
Woodland Hills, always elegantly catered and served meticulously by his
longtime staff on the finest china, crystal and silver."
But even though Susan lives a much more modest lifestyle than the one she could
have had as Mrs. Manilow, she doesn't begrudge him and doesn't have a bad word
to say about her first love.
"I bear him no animosity," she says. "It's a wonderful gift that he has, and
he's sharing it with the world."
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His voice was quiet and somber when he spoke of this difficult decision, describing how he told Susan he had to go, leaving with a suitcase of clothes and a pillow under his arm. He said, "I remember leaving. But I don't know how the hell I got the guts to go." Not exactly the statement of a man callously abandoning his wife for a life of glamour, excitement, and romping in gay bathhouse. He had aimed to spend his time making music in studios and was quite shy about performing in public, but life took him in a different direction. Not that publications like this give a damn about the truth.
