by Erik Tarloff
Lots of Europeans in those days too. We were everywhere during the war years, and remained a presence in the decade after. Many people don’t realize that Los Angeles was something of a mecca for refugees who were fleeing Hitler or the Bolsheviks. They think of it as LaLa Land, but that is a very incomplete picture of the city, at least during that particular period. I arrived in ’38, in the nick of time as you might say. And for a while…well, as a cultural capital, it could give Paris or London serious competition. Rachmaninoff lived in Beverly Hills—died there too, in point of fact—and Stravinsky’s house was just off the Sunset Strip on Wetherly Drive, and Schoenberg, whom I’d known rather well in Vienna, was in Pacific Palisades. Rubinstein was here, Heifetz, Piatigorsky, Thomas Mann, Brecht, the Werfels, Wilder, Garbo, not to mention almost every extra and bit player in Casablanca. [laughs] Even Eisenstein was here early on, a bit before my time unfortunately. I believe I would have enjoyed speaking with him. And he should have stayed, of course. Those who went back to the Soviet Union, from wherever they’d emigrated to, often ended up regretting the decision. Those who went back to Germany too, at least to the DDR. I never learned how Brecht felt about his repatriation, but of course he was escaping McCarthyism by then, he was fleeing from rather than returning to.
Plus there were all the Brits. Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, James Mason. If foreigners constituted a Hollywood colony, the Brits, typically, were a colony within that colony. Englishmen simply adored it here. Couldn’t get enough of the sun and the flesh. Everything they couldn’t find at home. Available apparently without guilt or shame. A miracle! [laughs] Not to mention the additional, traditional colonial advantage of feeling superior to the natives. [laughs]
But I was telling you about meeting Chance Hardwick. Frieda and I were at this party at the Prices’, as I said, and as usual I felt a little…I felt like I didn’t exactly belong. Like a fish out of water, is that the idiom? Yes? It’s a lovely expression. It conveys exactly how I used to feel. My English wasn’t so good in those days, and that was one reason for my discomfort. It’s got much better since, I believe. I’ve been here so long now, you know? Practice, practice. Like playing scales, so it becomes automatic. By now I’ve lived in California so much longer than I ever lived in Austria, much, much longer, so even though those early years are usually decisive, I now, for example, think in English most of the time. Although I sometimes dream in German, which is itself interesting, is it not so?
Now, I don’t say my English was not already serviceable from the start, I’d studied English in school, a difficult and demanding school, one of the best in Vienna—they taught British English at the gymnasium, they took their cue about correct pronunciation and usage from the BBC, and sometimes even today people ask me if I’m English, can you believe it?—but what I mean is, although I could function here in practical ways from the arrival, I could go shopping for groceries and consult a doctor and fill my petrol tank and help Frieda deal with the authorities when it was necessary, but in that setting, at the Prices’ I mean, with that erudite company, I was hesitant about attempting to express myself. These were some of Europe’s great minds, and there were some rather intelligent Americans there as well, and they were often discussing politics and philosophy and science and so forth, and for that a high school vocabulary did not seem altogether adequate.
Also, we were struggling a little financially, Frieda and I, money was short—I’d lost my job in the Warner Brothers studio orchestra a couple of years before, quite unfairly let me say, I’ve always suspected anti-German sentiment played a role which in my case was ridiculous, after all, Frieda is Jewish, it’s the reason we had to emigrate. But I am not, and therefore was perhaps a little suspect. But there was nothing to be done about that, and so I was giving lessons and we were trying to cope that way—and as a result we were always the poorest guests at these fancy social occasions, and while that doubtless bothered Frieda more than me, it bothered both of us. We felt like poor relatives receiving charity sometimes. Not that the Prices ever made us feel that way…it was all our own distress, not anyone else’s fault. Some people could be snooty about that sort of thing, no question, but the Prices were always welcoming.
So…Frieda was off talking to some of the wives, or at least standing with some of the wives while they talked—Frieda could be very shy under the best of circumstances, and especially around important people, maybe that was a carry-over from having been a second-class citizen in Austria during her formative years, you learn to accept such a judgment of yourself even when you know in your mind it’s wrong—and besides, she was even more self-conscious about her difficulties with English than I—so she was in another room, and I was in the living room taking a canapé from a passing waiter and wondering to whom to talk or whether we should just leave, and suddenly this extremely good-looking young man approached me. He was dressed very casually, no jacket, no tie, which you might think was typical for Hollywood, but it wasn’t, not in those days and not at this kind of gathering, and I right away assumed he must be the one person at the party who might be more destitute than I. Which—[laughs]—immediately endeared him to me, of course.
He introduced himself. The name Chance Hardwick meant nothing to me. It meant nothing to anybody at that point in his career, I don’t believe. I’m not sure how he managed to get himself to the party. He was even less known than I at the time, and I was a complete nonentity. Perhaps he’d encountered Vincent somewhere random and Vincent had taken a shine to him and impulsively invited him.
I told him my name, we shook hands, and then he said, “Someone told me you’re a musician.”
“That I am.”
“And that you were trained in Vienna.”
“Vienna and Brussels, yes. At the Conservatory, and privately with a gentleman named Eugène Ysaye.”
“The way you say it…am I right in thinking he must be famous?”
That was rather astute of him, I must admit. My studies with Ysaye were a point of pride for me, I cannot deny it, and my tone must have conveyed that pride even while I endeavored to sound matter-of-fact. And as a result, I immediately began to regard Mr. Hardwick, whose self-presentation was so unprepossessing, I began to regard him a little differently, with a measure of respect for the chap’s intuition. For what is now rather pretentiously dubbed “emotional intelligence.” I answered, “Well, yes, Ysaye had a…a certain reputation. He was, in point of fact, a great man.”
“I’m really glad to meet you,” Hardwick said. “See, when I heard you were a musician, I wanted to ask you something. I’m just beginning to listen to classical music, and I’m getting very interested in it. I’m starting to realize what I’ve been missing all these years by not knowing about it. And I wonder if you could tell me something—anything, really—about…uh…is the name Barcock? A composer. Very modern. I’ve just discovered him. His music seems terribly exciting.”
“Do you mean Bela Bartok?”
“Yes, that’s the one!”
So I had to laugh. Barcock! [laughs] But he was very eager to hear what I could tell him. Bartok was still considered quite avant-garde at that time. By now he’s just part of the canon and that’s all there is to it, but then he was regarded as…as…thorny? Is that the right word? Difficult, anyway. A little…rebarbative? [laughs] You mean to say you don’t know that word? My English vocabulary is superior to yours! [laughs] And you’re a university professor! Well, you’ve certainly made my day, Professor Frost.
[laughs for several seconds]
So Hardwick asked about Bartok—or Barcock [laughs]—and I was surprised that this young man might be interested in someone so forbidding, and I must say I was in general very impressed with his seriousness. You don’t expect that kind of seriousness in one so young. Let alone in a handsome young Hollywood actor. We talked for over an hour. At one point, Frieda came to me from the next room and made one of those “I’m ready to leave now�
�� gestures that husbands and wives learn to make to one another, and I had to shake my head to indicate I wasn’t ready. I was enjoying myself, and thoroughly enjoying Mr. Hardwick’s company. As he seemed to be enjoying mine. We talked about the music he should listen to if he wanted to know more, and he asked me many questions about my training and my experiences and my life in LA. His curiosity about practically everything seemed voracious.
And meanwhile, Frieda kept going out and coming back in, looking increasingly desperate. I suppose I should have been a better husband, more attentive to her whims. But it was so rare for me to have a conversation like that in those days, it was very hard to tear myself away. When we finally did leave…well, Frieda wouldn’t talk to me for the entire drive home. I was…you say in the doghouse? I was very much in the doghouse.
Gil Fraser
Wait, you’re saying someone told you Chance was interested in classical music? [laughs] Nah. [laughs] Ridiculous. Must have been a classical musician, right? Yeah, I thought so. See, Chance had this way…he had this way of talking to people. A sort of…trick, I guess, although he’d never have called it a trick himself. Pretending to be interested in what people did. Asking a lot of questions. I don’t mean pretending to be interested in them so much, that would have been too obvious for Chance, but pretending to have been interested for a long time in what they did. It was a way of getting them to talk. And no, he wasn’t being sociable. For Chance, it was research. People who knew things he didn’t know, or acted in ways he hadn’t seen before, he always felt he could pick up something from them that might come in handy later. He wasn’t especially interested in the information per se, in what they actually said—I mean, sometimes it was interesting, sometimes it bored him to tears—he was interested in watching how they acted and sounded while they were saying it. So he could use that specific emotion and behavior when something along the same lines arose in a script.
Pretending to be interested was a sort of confidence game. He did it all the time, and people were always taken in. Because you want to believe people are interested in what you have to say, right? I saw him do it scads of times. I’m sure there are still people out there who think he was passionately interested in astrophysics or Polish history or agricultural economics. He became what he thought you wanted him to be. And he could be totally convincing. He’d pick up on what you were telling him and give it back to you in different words as if he’d been thinking about it forever. He was a chameleon, see? And he’d be studying you closely the whole time in order to be an even better chameleon next time.
You’d be hard-pressed to say who or what the real Chance Hardwick was. For a few years back there, I probably knew the cat better than anyone, and even I can’t claim I really knew him. We were good friends, but down deep he was always a mystery to me. He was…I think I’d say…jeez, not deceptive. Maybe just baffling.
Maybe Briel Charpentier knew him better than me. It’s possible. She’s the only one besides me who you might reasonably say got close to him. Have you talked to her? She’s around somewhere. And I’m sure her Chance Hardwick was completely different from mine. You ought to give her a call. You have? Well, that’s good. She can probably tell you things I can’t. I mean, heck, she can even describe his dick.
But as to your question, the simple truth is, in the entire time we roomed together, I never once saw Chance listening to any classical music. That was just completely not his thing. We shared an apartment for over a year—I know what I’m talking about. It was mostly jazz, he listened to plenty of jazz, and he knew a lot about it. I think he’d picked up the bug in New York. We’d go to clubs occasionally, him and me. Shelly’s Mann Hole, the Lincoln Theater, a couple of others in town. Including places where we were the only white guys in the joint. Didn’t faze Chance, and nobody ever made us feel unwelcome.
There were great players around in those days. The whole West Coast jazz scene was cooking. But going to a club…it was always his idea…you know, “Hey, Gil, so-and-so”—a name I didn’t necessarily even know, but Chance obviously thought was hot shit—“so-and-so is playing in the Valley tonight, let’s make ourselves presentable and head out there.” Doing something like that would never have occurred to me, it wasn’t the way I usually chose to spend my time, but if Chance suggested it I’d usually say yes. He was fun to be out on the town with, for one thing, plus I trusted his taste. I can’t honestly say he made a convert out of me, but I dug the atmosphere. I dug being in the club, checking out the women, getting half-potted, shooting the shit, listening to the music. I enjoyed the music okay, not the bebop stuff so much, but some of the more melodic players, some of the quieter tunes. But the thing is, if any music was his passion, that was definitely it. At home, he’d often have a record on while going about his business. Always jazz, never classical.
Or if he was with a date in the living room—I’d give him space under those circumstances, go out somewhere or retire to my room, and he’d always do the same for me; it was an unwritten rule between us, it’s the way roommates stay on good terms—if he was with a girl in the living room, he might put some Sinatra or Nat Cole on the record player. Something to put her in the mood. He had nothing against those guys, but for him they were mostly a means to an end.
Irma Gold
I wouldn’t say Chance and I ever became friends exactly, but we always got on well. Still, other than the occasional lunch to talk business, or a round of drinks to celebrate a good bit of casting, or one of the big holiday parties Marty and I used to give, we rarely socialized. Different generations, different worlds. Mutual respect—and over time I came to feel more than respect for Chance, it became something closer to awe—but outside of business, we weren’t in each other’s lives in any significant way.
But with one exception, we never had a cross word between us or anything like that. He trusted me, he knew we were allies, and he seemed to appreciate what I was able to do for him. And I believe he respected me as a person as well as an agent. So our relations were always amicable and cordial and even warm. Except for this one time, and it still pains me to recall it. It was the only time we lost our tempers with one another.
This was early on. I’d already gotten him some smaller parts, he was working a little. Including one Western…I got him an audition without even being sure he knew how to ride a horse. Usually I was more careful than that! Fortunately, it turned out he was actually a really good rider. He’d loved horses since he was a boy. But anyway, he was working some, small roles in this and that, some commercials, like I said, some TV, a couple of pictures. He was starting to make a living, but we were still waiting for the big breakthrough.
And then a well-known director—I probably shouldn’t tell you his name—saw him in something, recognized his potential, and asked me to arrange a meeting. This was great news. It seemed like it might be the break we’d been waiting for. The fellow was a veteran, you could even say an old-timer, hell, he’d gotten his start in the silents, but he was still super-respected and still active, still A-list. So when he suggested Chance come to his house and they could discuss possible projects over a drink, Chance was excited. I was excited. The man was a force in the industry. He got movies made.
I told Chance that before he went he should shower and shave and dress respectably and comb his hair and so on. Show some respect. He still needed that kind of guidance. I don’t know whether it was rebelliousness or plain old slovenliness, but he didn’t always put his best foot forward. Sometimes it didn’t matter, but there were times it could matter quite a lot. And this time, because so much might be riding on the meeting, and because the fellow he was meeting with was kind of old school, I insisted Chance come to my office for inspection before he drove over to Beverly Hills. This director had a reputation for exquisite taste, both in his work and in his person. He was famous for having a certain casual elegance, good dresser, suave manners, beautiful house, fine art collection, and I didn’t wan
t him to be offended by Chance before they’d even had a chance to talk. See, I knew Chance was bound to make a good impression once they started discussing movies and acting. I just wanted to make sure things got to that point.
When he showed up, he looked okay. I mean, honestly, he was so handsome he could get away with stuff like a couple days’ growth of beard or faded jeans and a torn T-shirt and still be totally gorgeous, but that wouldn’t do this time, and he’d followed my advice and taken care of some personal grooming. He still looked informal—khaki pants, a striped sport shirt, no tie—but the gestalt was respectable. Almost collegiate. What would later be called preppy. Not, in any event, zhlumpy. So I gave him my stamp of approval and sent him on his way.
And it may have been an hour or so later when I got a call. On my home phone. I’d already gone home. It was Chance, and he was speaking so quietly he was almost whispering. I’m guessing he’d asked to use the fellow’s phone and gone to another room so he could talk to me without being heard. But even though his voice was very low, he sounded panicky, with that quavery quality. The director was moving on him, he said. He said the guy had sat very close to him on the sofa, had looked deeply into his eye, had put his hand on Chance’s knee and told him if he wanted to succeed in the business he needed to be flexible. Chance knew what he was being told, of course. He might have been fairly new to Hollywood, but he wasn’t a babe in the woods. When you look like Chance, you get hit on a lot, you learn to recognize the signs early in life. The guy told Chance he could make him a big star, said he’d helped a number of young actors in his time. He mentioned a few names. They weren’t obvious ones by any means. Some macho types, some legendary ladies’ men. Of course, the fellow might have been lying about some of them. No way for us to check, is there?