Ireland Feisty in the Face of Adversity

Call her a cancer patient with an attitude.

After being diagnosed with breast cancer in 1984, actress Jill Ireland would sometimes introduce herself to audiences saying, “Hi. My name is Jill. I’m the girl who had everything, including cancer.”

Now the cancer’s back--in her lungs--and Ireland doesn’t hesitate to reveal how angry she feels.

“Cancer’s a (expletive) bore,” she insists, explaining that for six days a month she wears a bra with a catheter “leading into my heart down which they pour massive amounts of chemotherapy” to treat the new outbreak of the disease diagnosed this year.

According to Ireland, this time her doctors give her two to three years to live, despite the fact that her breast cancer previously had disappeared for three years. In her opinion, their prognosis is simple rubbish. “I’m gonna hang in there a lot longer than that,” she declares. “They can put everything together scientifically but the one component they cannot judge is myself.”

Meantime, that self is ticked. Asked about her anger, Ireland doesn’t just answer the question. She lightly demonstrates it, right here at the Bistro, at a party Wednesday to celebrate both her birthday (April 24) and the publication of her new book, “Life Lines.”

Ebulliently Alive

“Would you like to have cancer? Wouldn’t you be angry about it?” barks the feisty 52-year-old, who, despite the harshness of her recent treatments, could still pass for “thirtysomething” and looks radiantly, ebulliently alive.

Attired in a sexy sequinned miniskirt, black blazer and short blond wig, she’s come to Beverly Hills to celebrate. Celebrity friends are here: Robert Wagner, Jill St. John, Burt Bacharach, Carole Bayer Sager, Joanna Carson, Ed McMahon, Larry Hagman, Dick Van Dyke, Beverly Sassoon, Fred Hayman, Bea Arthur, Sally Kellerman. And a few bigwigs from the book business: William Sarnoff, chairman of Warner Publishing. Nansey Neiman, publisher of Warner Books. And Michael Viner, publisher of Dove Books.

Betty Ford, Nancy Reagan, Elizabeth Taylor and rocker Joan Jett have all sent written greetings. And, of course, Charles Bronson, Ireland’s husband of 20 years, is here, warmly greeting friends, hanging out by the bar and slyly dodging camera lenses. He’s as determined not to speak with the press as his wife is to squeeze in as many five- or 10-minute interviews as she can to promote “Life Lines.” The book’s not about cancer but a subject equally horrific: the heroin addiction of her 27-year-old adopted son, Jason McCallum, and how he and his family have struggled with the problem.

For those who thought Ireland was uncommonly revealing and honest about cancer in her best-selling “Life Wish,” the new book is an even tougher read, reeling through pain and disappointment like a substance-abuse version of “Nightmare on Elm Street.”

But Ireland knows the press would rather hear first about her life, the crisis still in progress, so she’s ready and game. And though her publicist has said the evening’s mini-interviews (interrupted when necessary by the hugging of old friends and the autographing of her book) may be the last she does to promote the book, Ireland makes it clear she’s not about to die.

In fact, the option is patently unacceptable.

“I don’t want to die,” the British-born actress emphasizes, in pleasant but adamantly clipped, stiff-upper-lip tones. “It’s not an OK thing. Not right now. We all die one day but I am not in the mood to do it yet.”

Personal Agenda

And despite the publicist’s pronouncement on later interviews, don’t look for Ireland to spend all her time at home.

“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life nursing myself and conserving my energy,” she says, responding to an inquiry on why she’s out on the town tonight instead of home taking care of herself. “What do I conserve it for? I conserve it so I can use it sometimes.”

One of the things Ireland is doing with her energy is moving ahead on a third book--writing it on yellow legal pads--about what she’s learned from other people.

She’s also meditating and visualizing (“I visualize all kinds of things, different things apply at the moment”) but she’s not working with holistic physicians as she did the first time she dealt with cancer.

Though she’s still “fighting the inner battle,” she says, her care is being directed by Dr. George Blumenschein at the Arlington Cancer Center in Dallas, where she receives her chemotherapy treatments.

Son’s Candor

If there’s not much good news yet about her condition, there’s considerable relief as far as Ireland’s son Jason McCallum is concerned. He came to the party and, like his mother, opened himself to the press for questions.

After numerous failed tries at rehabilitation, all recounted in unsparing detail in his mother’s book, Jason says he’s been clean and sober for two months, having spent a month in a recovery program he declined to name.

What led him to give up both alcohol and drugs?

“I got fed up with the situation,” he says. “I did eight months of trying to do it (withdraw) myself. It was boring. . . . I’d taper off--and then go on to something else.”

Some Embarrassment

As for having his life’s successes and failures dissected throughout the book’s 358 pages, he acknowledges there are a few things he’s embarrassed about having publicized, but he’s gotten over it.

“I think she did a tremendous job (on the book),” says McCallum, who was adopted after Ireland suffered a miscarriage while married to actor David McCallum of “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” fame.

“Not every kind of mother gets this kind of jolt,” he adds, referring to Ireland’s triple-whammy of having to deal with her cancer, her son’s addiction and her father’s failing health at the same time.

The Spiritual Side

Describing one night in 1987, for instance, Ireland writes:

“I was numb. My father had had another stroke. I was having surgery in two days, and now Jason was drunk and in jail. . . . I felt pushed to the wall. My ears were ringing and I knew the spiritual side of me had to be addressed if I were to make it through this new episode of storms. I was still stuck to my rock, but I needed something to stop me from drowning.”

Says Jason, “I just hope, in the end, it can help somebody.” So does his mother.

“I greatly love and admire Betty Ford,” Ireland says, before moving on to hug another well-wisher. “She was very inspirational to me with her honesty about her breast cancer and then again with her candor about her drug abuse. If anything, if I can help other people feel less alone with the problem, that would be nice.”