"After he was paid $10,000 for a bit part as Talia Shire's boyfriend in 1974's The Godfather, Part II—as an inside joke, the character was called Merle Johnson—he returned to L.A., married Vicki Taylor, a land-development manager, did occasional TV shows and made whiskey commercials for Japanese TV. In those ads, says Troy, "I stood in a speedboat, dressed in a tuxedo, holding a glass and toasting the world." Nevertheless, "whatever money I made I put into cocaine," he says. After his fourth marriage broke up in 1981, Donahue says, "I was whipped. Powerless. But the worst thing, I was in pain. Ironically that helped me. In May of 1982 I decided to get sober."