I Hated to Do It: Stories of a Life (6 page)

A few years later John Emery died. After the funeral service there was a meeting of some friends at the apartment of Joan’s daughter Stephanie Wanger. Annie, always anxious to help, asked Mr. Steinbeck, who was also attending, if she could get him a drink. He took both of Annie’s hands in his and said to her, “Am I going to have to call you Mrs. Farber, or will you please call me John?” Annie returned with a drink for John. What a kind gentleman.

Our Friend the Chancellor

Harvey Perlman was our friend who had been the youngest dean of a law school in the country before he became the chancellor of the University of Nebraska. About twenty years ago, we took Harvey to dinner one night and he noticed I was limping along in pain. After dinner we were in front of the restaurant on 79th Street near 2nd Avenue at about midnight, and Harvey said that I didn't have to limp around in pain. The chancellor of the University of Nebraska took off his shoes under the lamplight and pulled out his orthotics to show me what an orthotic is. I got orthotics after that and could walk. I have been indebted ever since to the chancellor whose contribution to my education allowed me to walk pain-free. Don't ever underestimate the knowledge of our educators.

Shepard Traube, Zia in Boston, and Alan Alda

Shepard Traube, a film and stage producer, wanted to produce a play in 1963 and wanted to hire Zia Mohyeddin for the cast, since Zia was hot at the time, having received the rave reviews for
A Passage to India
. Zia really didn’t want to do it, so he asked for an outrageous fee about three times the offer, and he got it. Traube had become somewhat well-known in the business for having produced
Angel Street
, a play that also became a movie entitled
Gaslight
that starred Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman, who had previously gained real fame for her role opposite Humphrey Bogart in
Casablanca
. So Traube engaged Pippa Scott, a sought-after ingenue, Zia Mohyeddin, an overpaid hot performer at the time, and a young aspiring actor, Alan Alda.

The play previewed in Boston and was a total flop. We were in Boston to see Zia perform. It was such a lousy play I don’t even remember the name of it, and as confirmation of how lousy it was, I can’t even find it on Google. The play closed even before opening, or right after opening, and again I am not sure when, and we were on a train from Boston to New York. There was a bridge game going on with Zia and this handsome young guy Alan Alda, and Annie and I were kibitzers. We became friendly with Alan and in a few weeks invited him and his charming wife, Arlene, for dinner and continued to associate with them for some time.

Alan got busy, we were busy, and we did not see them for some years. He had landed a part in a television series called
M*A*S*H
and became one of the biggest stars in the business. Lots of stars “forget” their friends. Not Alan.

We had not seen Alan and Arlene socially for about twelve years; we all just got busy. Annie was demonstrating by marching in the street and pitching our liberal cause, probably concerning the Vietnam War (back then some of us did that kind of thing), and Alan was out protesting too. Alan, now very famous, saw Annie in the mob, ran over to her, and started reminiscing with her about old times. One nice guy.

Alan’s father, Robert Alda, was an established actor in film and stage and was the star in the original production of
Guys and Dolls
on Broadway. Frank Loesser composed the music and wrote the lyrics of
Guys and Dolls
and Abe Burrows and Jo Swerling wrote the book, which was based on two Damon Runyon short stories. Since I had developed a friendship with Frank Loesser, we were invited to the opening of the play, which at this time starred in addition to Robert Alda, Vivian Blaine, Stubby Kaye, and Sam Levine.

I saw the performance in its entirety. I don’t know how much of the performance Annie saw because this guy Clark Gable, the megastar of
Gone With the Wind
, sat down beside her. She spent much of that evening gazing at him. I don’t know of a woman in the world who would blame her. Probably some men also.

Tamara Geva

Tamara Geva was a client and a friend. Yes, we met Zia through her, and indirectly Joan Bennett when Tamara’s ex-husband moved in with Joan. But we were also friendly with Tamara, though we saw a lot less of her. She who was an incredibly talented, determined, strong-willed woman.

In 1936 Tamara and Ray Bolger created a Broadway sensation in the Rodgers and Hart musical
On Your Toes
, for which George Balanchine choreographed both the dramatic “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” sequence and a balletic parody. Reviewing the show in the
New York Times
, Brooks Atkinson wrote that Miss Geva “is so magnificent as the mistress of the dance that she can burlesque it with the authority of an artist on a holiday.”

In addition to dancing, she acted in many well-known films and stage productions. Tamara was so fixed in her ways and knew a great deal about theatre, which was what I helped her with the most. What was remarkable about her was the fact that, in spite of her strong feelings on every subject, she was always ready to listen to my advice about theatre producing and to actually utilize the advice that I gave her.

I was thrilled to be associated with this world of theatre, film, TV, and ballet. When our daughter, Pat, was young, she got herself into the American School of Ballet, without our help, and at the age of nine or ten was dancing as one of the fairies in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
at Lincoln Center. Of course we got to the theatre early and wanted to see Patty after she went on.

We got on the backstage elevator, and to my surprise there was a handsome gentleman there in a tuxedo. I said to myself, “My goodness, because it is opening night, how chic, even the elevator operator is in a tuxedo.” I then asked the gentleman in the tuxedo to take us to the third floor. I was told when we got off the elevator that I had just asked George Balanchine to take us to the third floor.

Kurt and Music

It’s not fair, but I have discovered that some people who have talent are talented in more ways than one. Kurt was a writer, an artist, and more than that, a musician. Most people knew that he would jam with a group that included Woody Allen at a place called Michael’s Pub. Kurt, we all knew, played the clarinet. What we didn’t know was that he also played a mean, wild ragtime piano. He didn’t like to talk about it, but on one or two occasions he just sat down at our piano and it all spilled out, traces of that Scott Joplin stuff.

Kurt and I would speak music. I let him know that when I was growing up, after six years of classic piano training, I gave up and taught myself to play the drums and then the tympani. A Gene Krupa drum book helped. At the age of fifteen, the local tympanist left town and I was invited to play with the local symphony. They got me dispensation from the union, and I played my first concert with Jascha Heifetz. What is ironic and sad is when I tell young people now that I played with Heifetz, when I was fifteen and he was thirty-six, they often ask, “Who was Heifetz?” When I tell them that Isaac Stern said that Heifetz was the greatest violinist of all time, they usually ask, “Who is Isaac Stern?”

Kurt and Ping-Pong

Kurt really loved the game of Ping-Pong, and there was this Ping-Pong parlor run by Marty Reisman at the Riverside Table Tennis Courts at 96th Street and Broadway in the 60s that we would go to on occasion. Marty Reisman was a real hustler who competed in the game in China and was world renowned. Marty said he was a millionaire three times and an ex-millionaire three times.

When we arrived there one day with Kurt, Marty said to Kurt that he would bet one million dollars against one dollar of Kurt’s that he could beat him. To make the game interesting, Marty immediately threw away the first twenty points deliberately, so the score was Vonnegut twenty and Reisman zero. One could never ever predict what would happen next, but it did in fact actually happen. On the next play, Kurt, without knowing what he was doing, hit the ball into the net and it fell onto the other side of the net, landing on Marty’s side but impossible for anyone to get to the ball, let alone to return it. Kurt won the game twenty-one to nothing, with the twenty points Marty gave him and the fluke that landed on Marty’s side of the net. Kurt, generously, did give up his claim to the million dollars he was owed, but not without a sound berating of Marty.

Dell Publishing

It was a comedy of errors. Only we were not making the errors. My office at the time was located on 3rd Avenue between 50th and 51st Streets. Dell Publishing Company, Kurt’s publisher, had its office on 3rd Avenue at 46th Street. There was a little café, a sort of clam house, located on 3rd and 49th Street where I often had my lunch. This same café was also the local eating spot for many of the Dell employees.

It was in the early seventies that I was negotiating a bunch of agreements for Kurt. George Delacorte, who was the founder of Dell, had retired, and his secretary, a very accomplished woman, Helen Meyers, was now running the company. In the negotiations, Sam Lawrence, who was Kurt’s early publisher with Dell, was in on all the negotiations. We would meet at Helen’s office, and after batting around the ideas, I would end up at the little café for lunch.

I had a lot of things going for me and Kurt, namely his tremendous success with
Slaughterhouse-Five
and his popularity with the young readers who had found Kurt’s work and had their own cult around him. Dell wanted Kurt to continue to write books for them, as he was a very valuable asset to them. I was negotiating a five-book contract that involved a good deal of money. When you are negotiating this kind of deal, there are a number of significant but important details to settle, like how the advance will be spread out, whether the books will be cross-collateralized, the amount of the advances and the royalties, etc., etc., etc.

There was always a contingent of Dell workers at the café waiting to pounce on me to hear how Kurt was winning in the negotiations. Of course, I could not in good conscience disclose what happened in Helen’s office, but they were all so glad to hear someone was holding their own in negotiating with Mrs. Meyers and Sam Lawrence, and it satisfied them enough if I simply told them not to worry, that Kurt was really doing very well. And Kurt was doing very well because, as I said, this was the time that his career was hot.

Fan Mail

What made my relationship with Kurt very special was the fact that we had mutual respect for each other and total trust in the other person’s honesty, loyalty, talent, and abilities. It felt awfully good when I would negotiate a big or little deal for Kurt, and after explaining it to him, he would always ask what I thought. Without hesitation or questioning, he would say, “Do it.” Then I would sign everything, except autographed items, with the power of attorney, which Kurt gave me.

No matter where my office was, Kurt would walk to my office every week or ten days, sometimes twice a week. He loved to walk and it was all the same to him if the office was three blocks from his 48th Street house or twelve blocks. He came to the office to exchange stories, to go over some business, to go through the mail that I thought he should see, and to sign some autographs.

I handled as much of the routine mail as I could without involving him, and there was a lot of Kurt’s mail coming to me. Which letter he responded to was a random hit-or-miss thing depending on how the letter or the picture enclosed struck him at that particular moment. If he wanted to reply to a letter, he would shove it in his pocket and take it with him. It was not predictable what he would respond to or what his response would be.

He would sign the books that arrived, sign the pictures that arrived, and even sign some silly things like shirts, ties, and panties. If it struck him as really dumb he would not sign it. He sometimes sent me copies of his replies to letters and sometimes he did not.

Every now and then I would make a deal with Easton Press to publish some leather-bound autographed copies of a book. This meant that Kurt had to sign five thousand or ten thousand blank pages to be inserted in the books. He often would sign two thousand at one sitting in my office, sometimes less than that. On occasion I would make arrangements for him to do the signing at his home, but he liked the discipline of doing it with me supervising. When he finished this chore, he would ask: “Can I go home now?” I am sure he walked home, and if it was a nice day, he might find a bench to rest on for a spell. He sure didn’t stop off at a bar, as that was not his style.

Strangely enough, some of these autographed blank pages ended up with the leather-bound edition of Kurt’s book
Look at the Birdie
, published after his death, being posthumously autographed by Kurt. Kurt did not come back to life to autograph these books published after his death, but when we discovered we had two thousand pages Kurt had signed before his death, it was a natural to use some of those autographed pages for the autographed leather-bound version. Rumor has it that they did the same thing with one of the books of Mark Twain. Now would not that be ironic, that if it did happen, it was Twain, whom Kurt admired and to whom he was often compared?

About once every four months the large amount of fan mail would contain an offer of marriage. Of course, each had a photo of a smashingly attractive, very young lady. But there was every kind of imaginable fan mail, and presents galore. Once some sheets and pillowcases arrived with a marker pen for Kurt to autograph them, and there was always a return stamped, addressed envelope.

Neither Kurt nor I were surprised by the variety of requests in the letters. There were a great number of invitations to dinner in New York where Kurt lived and even some from different parts of the country, with the offer to send him airfare. Many suggested that they would cook special meals for Kurt. He had a very loyal fan club.

On the Stage of the Library of Congress

Kurt was devastated. Standing on the stage of the Library of Congress, a few minutes into his carefully honed speech, a gruff guy stood up at the back of the room and started yelling at Kurt: “You are a disgrace! You should be a role model for young people, and instead you write this garbage, which gives them the wrong message. You should be writing to encourage the young people to do the right thing.”