Liberation (67 page)

To get back to Sunday the 19th. Ben Underhill unexpectedly showed up—he was in town staying with an old friend, [. . .]. The two of them came down and took me to lunch. Ben looked incredibly healthy, his eyes so clear and his skin so pink. But he had a stare of switched-on brightness which seemed a trifle uncanny. I had no chance to speak to him alone, so couldn't find out anything about his life. He seemed very glad to see me. And indeed I felt happy to see him.

In the afternoon, Rudi Amendt came over to talk to me, at my request, about Max Reinhardt. He is such a weird creature. He worked himself up into a frenzy of gestures, stage whispers, writhings, eye rollings and impersonations. At moments he looked like a reanimated skeleton—his head is skull-like and his eyes become eyeholes. I have no doubt that he can talk
exactly
like Max himself. From this point of view, our conversation was as good as a séance; Max was conjured up. But I don't feel that I got all that much material to use in my speech at the Bowl.

I'll try to note down what I
did
get. . . . Reinhardt was shy, he only came to life in the theater. He didn't understand business. His brother Edmund looked after that, until he died in 1929. Meanwhile, Reinhardt had become accustomed to borrowing large sums of money and expecting people to have confidence that they'd be paid back, sooner or later. That worked all right in Europe, where he was an internationally famous person, but it didn't work in America when he came there during the late thirties and ran up against the psychology of the Depression. He was in great money difficulties when he died (seventy years old, in 1943). . . . When he was going to direct a play, he made elaborate plans in advance. He imagined himself playing all the parts and he knew exactly how he wanted them played, but this didn't mean that he imposed his ideas on his actors if they had ideas of their own. If one of them was at a loss, however, Reinhardt didn't leave him to work it out, he showed him how to do it. When he was moved by good acting he wept, no matter if it was tragic or not. And his laugh was famous. If you could make him laugh, that was the highest honor. He never lost his temper with his colleagues. His attitude to the theater was fundamentally religious; he instinctively presented plays as religious ceremonies. But he never forgot that the public must be entertained. . . . At Salzburg, he learnt style and became an art collector. His sense of style made him pay great attention to detail. Amendt described how, in one play, he installed a specially heavy well-made door, so that it would shut “like the door of a Cadillac” when one of the characters left the house with a lover. . . . There's lots more, but I forget—

 

August 24.
More from Amendt, by telephone, yesterday: When Reinhardt was working with his students at his school in Los Angeles, he was “gentle, reserved, polite,” he treated them “with infinite courtesy.” He made the most of whatever talent they had and even overrated them. He gave them “something to stir their imagination”. . . . I asked, was it difficult for him to stage
Sister Beatrice
in a small room, after having presented it (as
The Miracle
) in a building like Olympia?
⁹⁸
No, said Amendt, because he never compared what he was doing with what he had done before. He never considered any project as being finished. He couldn't stop working on a project—which caused him to keep postponing openings, to the despair of his business advisers. Amendt said that, when he read in
Ramakrishna and His Disciples
that the atmosphere of Ramakrishna's life could best be described by the one word
now
, he had thought of Reinhardt. (I was well aware of the characteristic ally Amendt compliment implied by this—slipping in a little flattery of me along with Reinhardt.) Reinhardt's life, when he was working, was all
now
. He didn't have any sense of time. He would work for days on end and his stamina (until shortly before the end of his life) was extraordinary. . . . Reinhardt had a perfect ear for dialogue, and this was demonstrated when he supervised the translation of foreign plays into German. Not only this, he saw how to tighten them up and improve them in detail. (Am a bit dubious about Reinhardt's talent in this respect, however. I remember the heavy-handedness of his adaptation of Maugham's
Home and Beauty
(called
Too Many Husbands or Viktoria
) and Gusti Adler describes approvingly how Reinhardt had the actress who played the king's mistress in
The Apple Cart
(
Der Kaiser von Amerika
) do gymnastic exercises throughout the second act in order to liven up the dialogue. Adler comments with true kraut smugness that this was “a wittily inserted circus act which fascinated the public—an example of how Reinhardt could help a writer out, when one of his scenes was not very successful dramatically.”
⁹⁹
I wonder what Shaw thought of this bit of wit. Probably he didn't care too much, since Reinhardt made the play into a hit, after it had more or less flopped in England.). . . . Amendt says that Reinhardt never made comparisons between actors who had played the same role. . . . When Reinhardt was working with you, you felt that you were very close to him. But, to Reinhardt, it was only the work that mattered. If another project came along and you weren't the right person to help him with it, then he dropped you. And so, as Amendt puts it, “He left frustrated lovers behind him”. . . . His absolute dedication, his singlemindedness, inspired awe in other people. Amendt says, “One couldn't pee with him”. . . . Reinhardt always attempted too much. He was unable to supervise all his productions and some of them thus slipped out of his control and became second-rate. He was very extravagant and accustomed, in his middle life, to live in luxury. His great house, Leopoldskron, was in itself a kind of theatrical production. But he never became addicted to his possessions as ordinary rich men do. His great attachment was to a dog named Mickey (after Mickey Rooney) and it was a terrible blow to him when Mickey was killed by a rattlesnake in the Hollywood Hills. And on Fire Island in 1943, the excitement and exertion of trying to defend another of his dogs against two others caused him to have his first stroke.

 

August 26.
Sixty-nine. A very quiet birthday—partly because I wanted it that way, partly because Don has a cold. We had a talk this morning with Jim Bridges about the
Meeting by the River
film. He now wants to use most of our script—rewrite some sections and then send it around to possible backers. We feel that he is much hotter on the project than he has ever been before, but his enthusiasm is fickle, and he'll cool off if he gets something else which offers a chance of immediate employment. He is very hard up.

One of our chief problems; what is Tom's role in the story? Jim would like to reduce it, because Tom scares off possible buyers. But he wants to keep Tom in the picture because he loves him. We all agree that the relationship between Patrick and Oliver must be strengthened in every possible way.

Don brilliantly found a present for me which I really needed and yet wasn't expecting: a briefcase.

The thickness—it doesn't seem to be actually a lump—on the ball of my left foot persists and sometimes hurts, especially when I get out of bed in the morning. My feet are altogether quite painful when I run. I notice a slight shortness of breath, nothing serious. The lump in my left thumb persists, neither smaller nor larger. My memory is very bad—am constantly drying up on people's names. My weight this morning 151 and ½.

Chris Wood, whom we had supper with last night, has just started cobalt treatment. He feels well, though complains of being tired, and doesn't seem unduly worried.

Few birthday greetings: Stathis Orphanos and Ralph Sylvester (who made me some sweetmeats out of dates), Peter Schlesinger, Richard (a cable), Marguerite [Lamkin] (ditto). Have just called Rod Owens to wish him a happy birthday, but got no answer.

 

September 3.
We gave a goodbye dinner party for Mike Van Horn last night—Penny Little and Billy Al Bengston, Jim Crabe,
¹⁰⁰
Jack Larson and Jim Bridges came. Mike and Jim Crabe are splitting up, quite amiably, and Mike is going to try his fortune in New York. Mike is worried about this and regards it as a test of himself and his talent and character—though Don has been trying to persuade him not to take such a dramatic all-or-nothing attitude. Don thinks Jim Crabe's attitude to Mike is still condescending; that Jim treats him as a quaint little boy. Jim is certainly not heart-broken over their split-up. He wants to live on his own because then he won't be embarrassed by Mike's presence when his square studio friends come around. I'm sure he has never really appreciated Mike for what he is and probably can become. Jim's closet is terribly terribly square.

Jim Bridges has just been told that he has been awarded the grand prize for
The Paper Chase
at the Atlanta Film Festival. So he's going there on Thursday and so is Randy Kleiser, who also has an award for
Peege
. And Randy, who is signing a contract with Universal, seems quite interested in “The Lady from the Land of the Dead,” if they'll let him! Not another word from Hunt Stromberg.

My appearance at the Bowl was a disaster. When I asked Ernest Fleischmann how long my talk about Reinhardt should be, he said, “Just use your judgment.” So on I went. The Bowl was two-thirds empty—that's to say, the audience count was just over 6,000 out of an available 17,000 seats—but still and all that's more people than I've ever spoken to before, outside of India. When I got to the mike, it was too high, because it had been adjusted to suit a tall British actress, Rohan McCullogh, who was later to speak some passages out of
Midsummer Night's Dream
against a background of Mendelssohn's
Midsummer Night's Dream
music. Also, I found that I couldn't see anything but a great blazing spotlight shining down at me out of a blackness which was like outer space. It was quite overwhelming for a moment—like having to address God; you knew the blackness was conscious and could hear you. I felt a sinking feeling of dismay but launched out into my speech and wasn't bad, I think. Very soon, however, there were flurries of clapping out of the darkness and more clapping with increasing murmuring from the orchestra behind me. At first I disregarded this, but finally the murmuring became so loud that I asked, “Am I running overtime?” “Yes,” they said, “twenty minutes.” I asked if I could finish with an anecdote. They said, “No.” The clapping got louder. So I said, “Sorry, goodnight,” and walked straight off the stage. I may have spoken for twenty minutes in all but I doubt it. (The anecdote was to have been about Jean Ross—how she claimed that she and her fellow extra used to fuck every single night on stage during the party at Guilietta's Venetian palace in the second act of
Hoffmanns Erzählungen.
¹⁰¹
)

As I was on my way back to my seat (in a box with Don and a guy from the gym named Jim Shadduck) a lady named Mrs. Olive Behrendt ran after me and told me I had been marvellous, etc., and not to feel bad about the rudeness of the audience. She is one of the most important people on the Hollywood Bowl Committee.
¹⁰²
I met her again today at Roddy McDowall's and she repeated what she'd said, but she wouldn't at all accept the idea that Fleischmann was really to blame for the whole thing. After the show was over—and Rohan McCullogh had disgraced herself by giving a hissy unctuous performance of her lines—quite a batch of people came up to say how sorry they were that I'd been cut short. And then there was an article by Martin Bernheimer in the
Los Angeles Times
, pointing out that the tribute to Reinhardt had been underannounced and that I wasn't introduced. And then a member of the orchestra wrote a letter apologizing for his colleagues but excusing them by saying that they had none of them known about my appearance in advance or why I was going to speak or for how long; and that the concerts are timed precisely because of union regulations. He also pointed out that, since members of the audience are allowed to eat and drink throughout the performances, many of them are drunk! (The writer of the letter was named Dennis Trembly.
¹⁰³
)

Don, that avenging angel, was furious of course, but we decided to show the flag by going to the party afterwards. However, when we arrived, and asked for wine, we were told that we couldn't have any because it was needed for supper. So we left!

 

September 14.
Letters about the Bowl incident keep arriving. And I keep answering, in effect; don't apologize to me, apologize to Reinhardt—don't blame the audience, blame the management.

On the 6th I sent a cable to John Lehmann, and next day a letter, telling him that I cannot agree to the publication of my letters to him. They are dull, mechanical, false. Don was horrified by their insincerity when he read them—he hadn't believed that even old Dobbin could be capable of such falseness. I haven't heard a word from John yet, but I surely shall soon.

Robin French has at last admitted that he is giving up being an agent. He has got a job as Vice President in Charge of Production at Paramount. We are rather pleased and excited, because we have practically decided to switch to Irving Lazar. If this is a mistake, it will at least be an adventurous one. We sounded him out through Peter Viertel and he was enthusiastic to have us. (Peter is in town because Deborah is here in
The Day After the Fair
. She opened last night, boldly overacting because of the oversize of the Shubert Theater. Her courage is adorable and I think the audience really liked her.)

During the last few days, I quite suddenly decided to make a stab at my autobiographical book about America—or maybe just the first volume of it. And yesterday I actually started. I am basing the opening on my diary, but already I'm expanding the material and, I dare to hope, beginning to see how I can work away from mere narrative. My inspiration is Jung's resolve “to tell my personal myth.”
¹⁰⁴
Therefore, I shall try to dwell only on the numinous, on the magical and the mythical. I shall try to avoid much reference to characters who lack these qualities and arouse negative emotions in me. I don't want to gossip and bitch. I don't want to complain and denounce—unless I am denouncing mythological demons. I aim for a tone which is positive, good-humored, tough, appreciative—but not goody-goody or mealymouthed. I want to refrain altogether from blaming myself or indulging in guilt. When I mention famous people, it will never be merely to debunk them. Unless I can see something marvellous in them, I'll leave them out altogether if possible. I want to write about my sex life very frankly and without the least hint of self-defence.