by Erik Tarloff
Irma Gold
After Plains and Hills, there was a lot of heat on Chance. Even before the Oscar nomination, it was obvious this was a break-out performance in a big prestige picture. The reviews were incredible, and he was getting a lot of personal attention. I told him he was ready to star, he’d gone past the up-and-comer stage with one picture. And we were already starting to field offers. And you may find this hard to believe, but that dumb little shvantz was crazy enough to ask me if we could wait a little, he said he was feeling kind of drained from the shoot and the publicity and everything that went with it, he’d like a few months to decompress before he took another plunge. So I could see it was time for me to give him his Hollywood 101 course. I had to get tough with him. Tough love. Read him the riot act, as a matter of fact. I told him absolutely not, he must be out of his mind even to consider it, the iron was white-hot right now and it sure as shit wasn’t guaranteed to stay that way. It was time to strike, not go on strike. Jesus.
So the good news is, there was a bidding war. We ended up with a contract at MGM. Classiest studio and also the best terms. Win win win. He should have been thrilled, although he didn’t seem thrilled. He was appreciative, don’t get me wrong—he told me what a great job I’d done, he could never thank me enough, etc., etc. But he just didn’t seem all that happy.
Briel Charpentier (girlfriend)
I had been in the United States for about five years, I think. People used to make fun of me. They thought it was ridiculous to travel from Paris to Los Angeles to study art, you know. Like you come from Newcastle and go somewhere else in search of coal. These were mostly people in California, by the way, not French people. French people were not so contemptuous of California as California people were. But it was silly. For one, UCLA’s art department had a good reputation. Even in France, you know. But in fact—this was more important to me than how good was UCLA—I wanted to get out of the country. The war had not ended so long before. Paris was uncomfortable to me for many different reasons, obvious reasons and personal reasons also. And since I had studied English in school, and had done especially well in English on my bac, it was clear to me I should go either to London or America, where I could cope with the language. And to me, America meant either California or New York, you know, and California had much more appeal to me than New York. And London didn’t much appeal at all…it too was still recovering from the war, with rationing and fog and what I imagined to be a prevailing grayness. But California seemed like a dream. For the weather, of course, the sun and the beaches and so on, but also the…the elan I assumed I would find there. The joie de vivre. The hedonism, to be frank. And yes, perhaps the glamour also.
So I was in Los Angeles, you know, studying at UCLA during the day and working at night in a little gallery on La Cienega. A funny little gallery…much of the art was …not folk art, but…how do you describe it? Outsider art, that’s what they call it now. Like amateur art, but perhaps somewhat more accomplished than that. By people who didn’t study art at a school or an academy. Didn’t study at all. But who painted, so to say, rather in the style of that old woman everyone seemed to like back then. The one with the snow and the tiny people. Maybe you could say it was primitive. Unsophisticated, certainly. Some of it was rather charming, though. I began to like it, the more I saw. The innocence of it was very sweet. Not that I would want any of it on my walls.
And one night Chance marched into the gallery. Wearing sunglasses, which rather caught my attention. Who wears sunglasses at night, except perhaps drug addicts? And who wears sunglasses in an art gallery? I found out later—soon later—that he was afraid of being recognized. I wouldn’t have recognized him, I had no idea who he was, although that would certainly have been different a year later, after Lightning Bolt came out. After that, everybody knew who he was. But the night he came into the shop, one of his movies had already come out even though I didn’t know it, and so he later told me he was already often molested on the street. Maybe molested isn’t the right word. Hassled. People crowding around him, you know, asking questions, wanting autographs, desiring to take pictures with him. He disliked all of that, as I was to learn. It made him unquiet.
But he came in that night and began to look at the pictures. “Just browsing,” he said to me right away, as soon as he was through the door. To inform me I should not try to persuade him to buy anything. Many people used to say that when they first came in. To stop me from pressurizing.
And I—I was a snippy girl in those days, you understand—I said to him, “Perhaps you will enjoy the paintings more if you remove your sunglasses.”
He smiled, that lovely, bewitching smile. He had the most beautiful smile. “You think so, do you?” A rather teasing tone in his voice.
“Yes,” I said, “in fact the colors might give you more pleasure if you can see them. It’s at least possible.”
He took the glasses off, and he suddenly looked even more beautiful. Those deep, deep blue eyes. “I want you to know I’m only doing what you suggest because you’re foreign,” he said. “Like all Americans, I believe people from Europe are smarter than we are.”
I think by now he was flirting with me. And by now I was delighted to be flirted with, and very happy to flirt back. He was so lovely. I was already enchanted, even though he had not yet done anything especially enchanting. “That is because we are,” I said to him. “Ever so much smarter.”
“You’re French, aren’t you?”
“Oui.”
“All right, smarty pants. In that case, how about you explain to me why these paintings are any good.”
“’Smarty pants?’ But it isn’t my pants that are smart, they are just...pants.” I had never heard that expression before, you know. And it sounded funny to me.
“Well, let me explain, then. ‘Smarty pants’ is what Americans call someone who’s got a lot of sass. And you are very sassy. Do you know what ‘sassy’ means?”
“Certainly not.”
“That’s probably just as well.” He looked around the gallery for a few seconds—it didn’t require more than a few seconds, in truth—and then he said, “See, I was thinking about maybe buying one of these pictures to impress you, but the problem is, I hate them.”
So that made me laugh. “You hate all of them?”
“I’m afraid so. They’re awful.” And then a terrible thought seemed to occur to him. You could see it happening behind those huge blue eyes. He said, “Unless…you didn’t…you didn’t paint them, did you? Because if you did…well, let’s say I suddenly think they’re marvelous.”
Since we were flirting, I did not choose to defend the paintings. There were more urgent things to respond to. “No, I promise I did not paint them. I am an artist, but my work is nothing like this.”
“I’m relieved to hear it. What is your work like?”
“It’s…oh, never mind that. Tell me why you’d want to impress me. We don’t know each other.”
“Well, partly because you’re French—that’s rather intimidating all by itself. But mostly because you’re awfully cute. Très mignonne.” Then he said, “See, I took French in high school, I can say all sorts of things in your language. I can tell you, for example, where to find my aunt’s pencil. It’s on the table, if you’re curious.”
“You are evidently a man of the world.”
“Less so than my aunt. She has many pencils, and they’re all on the table.” Then he said, “In fact, I’m a man who’s become interested in art recently.” And then he started asking me about artists who were fashionable at the time. Did I like Mark Rothko? Jackson Pollack? Willem de Kooning? Were they for real or were they frauds? It was only later that I discovered he knew nothing about any of them other than their names. You see, he had a knack for meeting people on their own territory in order to study how they talked and acted when they were excited or enthusiastic. He could become anything. There was no single Chance
Hardwick—we all met a different one. But at the time I was impressed by what seemed to be his...his…his erudition. Most people who came into the gallery were very ignorant. So I said again he struck me as a man of the world. Even more so than his aunt with her pencils.
And he said, “Would you be interested in having dinner with a man of the world some night?”
“But of course I would.” I didn’t even hesitate. I had no idea who he was, but I liked him very much already. He had a very sympathetic air. And he was so good-looking. “How can a girl refuse a man of the world?”
And that is how it started. We had dinner several nights later at Lawry’s, which was also on La Cienega, you know, not far from the gallery, and then one thing, as one says, led to the next.
Gil Fraser
It’s hard to say whether it was his multi-picture deal with the studio or meeting Briel that made him decide to get his own place. I mean, it could have been either. Or both. They happened at about the same time.
Suddenly he had money, and suddenly he had a girlfriend, or at least a sorta girlfriend. Not just a one- or two-night stand, anyway, unlike what had happened so many times before, more times than you could count. But now there was someone he was seeing steadily. Most nights. And even though they didn’t move in together, it was clear to him—and to me—they were going to be spending lots of time in each other’s company. And that my being around constantly wouldn’t fit in with that arrangement at all. Three’s a crowd, as the saying goes. Except at very good parties. [laughs]
No, no, don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t resentful at all. I thought it was the right decision, even though I was sad to see him go. Probably overdue. And I liked Briel. It was impossible not to, she had that gamine quality, almost waif-like, but knowing at the same time, the way French girls can be, a completely irresistible combination. Really cute-looking too, although not actually my type. Which is probably a good thing: Not that there would ever have been a chance of hanky-panky—friends don’t hit on friends’ girlfriends, that’s an iron-clad part of the code—but sometimes tensions can arise even if you don’t want them to. Something can sort of hover in the air, and even though you try to ignore it, over time it can turn toxic. But nothing like that was gonna happen in this case. Briel, as I say, was totes adorable, but she had that slim, almost boyish type of body, and that’s a type which, while I can appreciate it, just doesn’t hit me on an animal level the way zaftig bodies do. Even the way she did her hair, that close-cropped look that was very fashionable back then, it just wasn’t…I mean, I always preferred a rich silken mane. So it was easy for me to treat Briel like a pal, like Chance’s girl and my pal. And as far as I know, I wasn’t her type either. I think she went for the smoother, less hard-edged type, like Chance. They made a really gorgeous couple, gorgeous and intriguing looking. You know, with both having a kind of neutral aura. They say “androgynous” nowadays, don’t they? Her a little boyish, him…not feminine or effeminate or effete or anything like that, just kind of…neutral.
The three of us got along just fine. And she was a really good match for him, serious about her work, not overly impressed by Hollywood glitz, and smart-mouthed. He loved that about her, the fact she wouldn’t take shit off anybody, that she was funny about it but down deep really tough. And he liked that she wasn’t part of the show-biz scene. It was a relief to him, keeping that side of things separate. You hang out in this town, a lot of the people you meet are either in the business or wannabes, or even worse, hangers-on and groupies desperate for reflected glory. But Briel was none of that. In fact, when they started going out, I don’t think she even knew who he was. His fame, which was just beginning back then, meant nothing to her. She liked him, liked him as a person, which is what you hope for when someone more or less famous gets involved with someone who isn’t. People’s motives in that situation are always a little dubious, fairly or not, but hers were above suspicion.
And by the way, I’m not saying it was a grand love affair or one for the ages—I know some books have portrayed it that way—but they were fond of each other, and they had a very good time together.
In addition, maybe to his surprise and definitely to mine, she turned out to be a terrific artist too. I don’t think I realized till much later how good she was, but I could see right away she had talent, she wasn’t just a...a hobbyist or something. And now—well, her work goes for six figures nowadays, ’nuff said? Of course, her connection to Chance doesn’t exactly hurt her asking price, it adds a bit of swank, but that ain’t the whole story. She’s really good.
And hey, this just occurred to me, but maybe she’s that old lady who visits his memorial, the one people always wonder about. Maybe that’s her. Do you think? She’d be about the right age, wouldn’t she? The main reason to doubt it is that she’d have no reason to be so secretive. Everyone knows about their relationship now. Not at the beginning so much, the studio wanted to preserve the idea that any girl in the country might have a shot with him. They assumed his fan base would be girls who wanted to fantasize about being with him and they were afraid that if it was known he had a steady girlfriend it might hurt his box office, so they kept Briel quiet, set him up on dates with other women, shit like that. I’m not suggesting they wouldn’t let him appear in public with Briel, but they didn’t want it to seem like he was out of circulation. I’m not sure he necessarily was completely out of circulation in any case—I don’t know the details of their arrangement, I never asked, and he never volunteered—but regardless, the studio didn’t want to give the public that impression.
My point, though, is that since his death there have been so many books about him, biographies and film studies, some of them trashy, some of them serious—including yours, yours was one of the serious ones, I don’t want to leave the impression I don’t have a lot of respect for it, hell, I wouldn’t be doing this interview otherwise, I read it with interest and thought you got most things right—but by now Briel has received the attention she deserves as an important figure in his life. And she was. She was. His most important romantic attachment, at least as far as I’m aware. But since she’s celebrated in her own right, the relationship has acquired this…this romantic aura. This prestige. It may be accorded more reverence than it deserves. As if it was, I don’t know, Baudelaire and Rimbaud, Sartre and Beauvoir, Nabokov and Vera, Marilyn and Joltin’ Joe. Where the legend becomes more important than the reality, where it’s regarded as one of the twentieth century’s great love affairs. Two celebrities from totally different worlds finding each other and coming together in a communion of mutual admiration, that sort of malarkey. Having witnessed it at first hand, I can assure you it wasn’t like that.
I don’t know how Briel feels about that stuff these days, it’s possible she’s come to believe the hype—she benefits, after all, it helped make her famous, it’s certainly helped make her rich—but I’m pretty sure it would have driven Chance nuts. Would have made him laugh his head off and gotten him pissed, both at the same time. They were just two frisky kids having a great time together. Nothing fancier or more elevated than that.
Dorothy Goren Mckenzie
Chance and I had been corresponding on and off after he went to Hollywood. His letters were mostly chatty and kind of short. He told me about that science fiction movie he was in. He was funny about that, he said it was, and I quote, “the worst piece of shit ever devised by the mind of man.” I never got to see it, unfortunately. It never reached us. We only had one movie theater in town, and it wasn’t a drive-in. Our theater mainly showed major studio productions. No horror flicks, no foreign films. People like Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini were completely unknown to us. The idea that movies could be an art form…no one had ever even considered the possibility.
We did get to see Plains and Hills, though. That was a year or two later, and it was super-exciting. Everybody in town went to see it. And everybody suddenly claimed to be Chance’s friend. People who h
ad treated him like dirt when he was in high school, they all claimed they’d been great buddies. Girls who laughed at him behind his back claimed they’d gone steady with him. Nothing like this had ever happened here before. We’d produced our very first celebrity!
But anyway, his letters to me were these sort of Hollywood snapshots. Not very personal, not very detailed about the specifics of his life there, but colorful. He was a good writer—I don’t know if you know that about him—but he was a very good writer, and his descriptions of his life in tinsel town were vivid and fun. Very exciting for someone like me, who thought Hollywood was like Oz. Magical and distant and…and unattainable.
So his letters were short and breezy. My letters, on the other hand, were mostly full of angst and complaints. It wasn’t fair to burden him like that, I guess, but I had no one else to talk to about what I was feeling, and after his stop-over those years before, I felt he was a soulmate, a sympathetic ear, he’d understand and maybe have helpful advice.
And then one day in my senior year in high school he wrote and asked me if I’d like to spend a couple of weeks with him over summer vacation. I guess my whining must finally have gotten to him. Holy cow, that was an exciting day. I could hardly believe it. When I told my mom and dad…well, you probably know enough about them already to guess that my mom was pleased and excited for me, and maybe a little jealous, and my dad just said nope, no way. He said he wouldn’t pay for me to travel all the way to California, that it was an extravagance no teenage girl deserved, and besides, Hollywood was full of phonies and…and other people he didn’t much cotton to, let’s put it that way. That’s not how he put it, but it’s how I’m gonna put it.