In My Father's Shadow

by Chris Welles Feder

  “What about you, Daddy?” I asked as we left the screening room. “Do you like Harry Lime?”

  “Like him? I hate him!” He spoke with a vehemence that startled me. “He’s utterly cold and without passion.”

  Orson playing the villain Harry Lime in The Third Man (1949).

  AS OLD AS my father seemed to me at the time, he was actually at the peak of his youthful vigor and optimism. Tall and burly, he was not yet the monolith he would become in later years when his flat feet and delicate ankles could no longer support his enormous weight and he had to be ferried about in a wheelchair. Now he was fully capable of shepherding me around on foot. Just as he had deepened my love of art during our visits to the churches and museums of Rome, so in London he brought to life the Tudors and the Stuarts. It would remain my favorite period in English history.

  We began at the Tower of London, the grim fortress on the Thames where so many were imprisoned and executed during the reigns of Henry VIII and his daughters, “Bloody” Mary and Elizabeth I. We stood looking down at the Traitors Gate, the entry point from the Thames where boats unloaded new prisoners. “Just think of the thousands who passed through here,” my father intoned, “never to return to the world.”

  Then he told me about Anne Boleyn whose personal tragedy appealed to our shared romanticism. King Henry had been so determined to marry pretty, high-spirited Anne that in order to divorce his first wife, Catharine of Aragon, he had split with the Roman Catholic Church and founded the Church of England. Then, Anne, not knowing when she was well off, had dared to cuckold the king and been sent to the Tower. Only twenty-nine years of age, she lost her lovely head on the Tower Green.

  On another fine day, my father took me to Hampton Court. It had been built by the archbishop of York, Thomas Wolsey, he told me. On completion, the manor house and its grounds were so grand that Wolsey feared King Henry might suspect the archbishop was trying to outdo his sovereign and live above his station. So, to save his neck, Wolsey made a gift of Hampton Court to the king. My father led me through the palatial rooms, pointing out the fine antiques, chandeliers, and paintings. We lingered in rooms with leaded windows that looked out on the serene gardens and the Thames beyond. What fascinated him the most, though, was the vast kitchen complex with its three fireplaces and adjoining pastry house, confectionery, saucery, spicery, boiling-house, larders, and sculleries. “Think of the banquets they prepared here for the king,” he murmured with more than a touch of envy.

  Our next excursion was prompted not by English history but my father’s memorable role in The Third Man. The moment he appeared in a public place, anyone with a musical instrument struck up the theme from the movie. It seemed that the face of Orson Welles had become synonymous with the zither’s insistent tune. It also seemed that every musician in London knew the tune, and every restaurant, lounge, tearoom, or hotel lobby possessed a piano, gypsy violin, or three-piece band. So there was no escape since my father was not about to give up his leisurely lunches and dinners, a hearty tea with scones, raspberry jam, and clotted cream at four in the afternoon, cocktails before dinner, brandy after dinner, and a pint of stout at any time of the day.

  Each time we were subjected to yet another rendition of the theme from The Third Man, my father would heave a sigh. Patient as he tried to be—and in dealing with his fans, he showed remarkable patience and courtesy—the breaking point came when we were waiting to cross Piccadilly Circus one afternoon. An organ-grinder on the corner spotted Harry Lime and began to play the tune my father never wanted to hear again. “That does it!” he roared. “We’re getting out of London!”

  The very next day, a chauffeured limousine drove us into the English countryside. A lavish picnic hamper, lap rugs, cushions, a folding table, and chairs occupied the trunk. About an hour out of London, a suitable grassy knoll was found by a winding stream in open country. It was a glorious late spring day with not another human in sight and no car but ours parked to one side of the country road, bordered by tall hedges. The table and chairs were set up under a shade tree, the picnic hamper unpacked, and we settled down to the serious business of eating. My father was wolfing down the gull’s eggs he loved, while the chauffeur, in impeccable uniform and white gloves, uncorked the vintage wine. “Can I have a sip, Daddy?”

  “Absolutely not!”

  As I was debating which bottled soft drink to choose, along came a man on a bicycle, pedaling furiously along the deserted road, then stopping short when he saw us. The man grinned, waved—“Oh, dear God, no,” groaned my father under his breath—and whipped a harmonica out of his jacket pocket. On this he proceeded to play the theme from The Third Man.

  OUR STAY IN London coincided with the 1951 Festival of Britain. The stars of the festival were the reigning king and queen of the English theater, Sir Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. On successive nights at the St. James’s Theatre, they were appearing in the title roles in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra and in George Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra.

  Also performing in London that May was the irrepressible, red-haired comedian from Brooklyn, Danny Kaye. His movies were among the few that were shown on Saturday nights at my boarding school. I had found him irresistible in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty—funny, charming, and vulnerable at the same time—and I had laughed myself silly during his manic routines in The Inspector General. So when my father asked me which I would like to see first—the Oliviers’ classical offering at St. James’s Theatre or Danny Kaye’s one-man show at the Palladium—I had no trouble making up my mind.

  I loved everything about Danny Kaye: his rapid patter songs, his hilarious impersonations, his dazzling display of foreign accents, his nonstop clowning. While he couldn’t be called handsome, I found him extremely attractive. He was a slim, well-built man as graceful in his movements as a classical dancer. Whether on stage or off, he exuded an engaging warmth and openness.

  During the interval, as intermission is called in England, my father told me, “Sam Goldwyn wanted Danny to have a nose job, but he refused.” Good for him, I thought. My father gratified a stranger’s request for his autograph before continuing. “Danny is Jewish, you know. He was born Daniel Kaminski, and his father was a tailor, I think, from somewhere in Russia. Anyway, Danny grew up poor. He dropped out of school when he was your age, Christopher—something you might consider doing yourself, by the way, if you continue to be so miserable at that school in Johannesburg—and then he became a stand-up comic at those Jewish resort hotels in the Catskills. The borscht belt, they call it. That’s where he learned his trade, and that’s where he still might be working today if he hadn’t met Sylvia Fine.”

  “Who’s Sylvia Fine?”

  “The woman he married and the woman who made him. She writes his songs and most of his material. A very clever woman. She also manages his career. So he’s completely dependent on her, you see, and can never divorce her.”

  “Does he want to?” I asked hopefully.

  “Even if he did, he couldn’t. Besides, they have a daughter.”

  That didn’t stop you, I almost said.

  It was time to return to our seats for the second half of the show. Before long I was laughing until I felt weak and my eyes were tearing. After the final curtain call, the last explosion of applause, foot stamping, and cheering, my father rumbled, “Would you like to go backstage and meet Danny Kaye?”

  “That would be nice,” I forced myself to respond in a calm, grown-up voice. I mustn’t let Daddy see what a crush I have on Danny Kaye, or I’ll never hear the end of it.

  Moments later we were ushered into Danny’s dressing room, and he and my father were exchanging hugs and warm greetings.

  “Hey, Orson, great to see you. I didn’t know you were in London.”

  “Danny, you were great. My daughter couldn’t stop laughing.”

  “This is your daughter?” Danny swung around, dropped to his knees and flung his arms wide to receive me. “Rebecca!”

  “
No, I’m Christopher, Mr. Kaye. Rebecca is my younger sister.”

  “Christopher!” he cried without missing a beat. Still on his knees and with his arms wide open, he smiled up at me as though he had been waiting his whole life to embrace me. The situation was beginning to feel false and theatrical to me, but seeing no way out of it, I leaned over and, to my surprise, Danny hugged me with unmistakable warmth. Then he was on his feet again, agile as a cat and all charm, grinning down at me and ruffling my hair. He clearly liked children and felt comfortable with them, but at thirteen, I no longer saw myself as a child.

  “I really enjoyed your show, Mr. Kaye,” I told him, trying to sound like a matron of forty. “You were wonderfully funny.”

  “Wonderfully funny, was I? My, my.” His blue eyes were mocking me. “Then you must come again and watch the show from the wings. Would you like that?”

  “Oh yes, Mr. Kaye!”

  “Good. You can come back whenever you like, but only if you stop calling me Mr. Kaye. I’m not old enough to be called anything but Danny. If you can call me Danny, then we’ll get along just fine. Let’s hear you do it.”

  “Danny.”

  “That’s swell.” He ruffled my hair again, making me feel about three years old.

  A few days later, I returned to the Palladium and saw Danny’s show again, from the wings. How privileged I felt to be standing there with the backstage crew, as though I, too, were a member of the company. Every time Danny bounded off stage in my direction, as soon as he was out of the audience’s sight he wiggled his nose at me or chucked me under the chin, cooing, “Hi there, little girl. Having fun?” And I assured him I was. Just give me five more years, I wanted to tell him. By that time Sylvia Fine will have fallen off a cliff, and I’ll be writing your tongue-twisting songs.

  After I’d seen Danny’s show twice, my father took me to see the two Cleopatras being performed on consecutive nights. As I sat enthralled through both productions, no one had to tell me that Laurence Olivier was the greatest actor in the English-speaking world. It was apparent from the moment he appeared on stage, a handsome, commanding presence, so sure of his every word and movement, so at home in the play that one could hear the collective sigh of the audience relaxing into the moment. We were in the hands of a master, whether he gave us Shaw’s Julius Caesar in his world-weary fifties or Shakespeare’s Marc Antony in his ardent youth.

  On the other hand, in her two versions of Cleopatra — Shaw’s headstrong child-woman and Shakespeare’s smoldering femme fatale — Vivien Leigh was mainly remarkable for her beauty. At thirty-eight, she was so petite and vivacious that in Shaw’s play she created the illusion of being only sixteen. In the interval my father boomed, “Believe me, Vivien’s a lot more convincing as a young Cleopatra than Katharine Cornell was when she tackled Juliet in her forties.”

  He began to tell me how he had toured the United States with Katharine Cornell in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet when he was still in his teens, his first professional engagement in the American theater, but several times he had to interrupt himself to oblige the autograph hunters. One fan leapfrogged over the seats in his frenzy to reach Orson Welles, only to present him with a pen that was out of ink. While my father behaved like a gracious host welcoming unexpected guests, I resented the intrusion. These people we didn’t want to know came crashing into our space and then felt free to hang around and ask questions that were none of their business.

  “Vivien Leigh is very lovely as Cleopatra,” I told my father when we were alone again, “but she doesn’t come across the way Laurence Olivier does.”

  My father gave me a delighted smile. “You’re right! Vivien is much better in the movies—in fact, she’s superb. Some actresses can’t project on the stage but have a magical relationship with the movie camera. Larry is the opposite, not nearly as thrilling on the screen as he is on the stage, but I do wish he wouldn’t wear tights. If I were directing the Cleopatra plays, I would do them both in modern dress so we wouldn’t have to see Larry’s legs.”

  “What’s wrong with his legs?”

  “What’s wrong?” He glowered at me. “They’re so thin they look like match-sticks. For years Larry starved himself, you know, because he was too poor to buy food, and now it doesn’t matter how rich and famous he is, he looks dreadful in tights. Someone ought to tell him …”

  On the second night, when my father took me backstage to meet the Oliviers, I prayed he wouldn’t raise the subject of tights. Still in their stage costumes and makeup, the incredibly good-looking couple greeted us with the easy smiles and warmth of theater people, creating an aura of instant familiarity. I wanted to pull up a chair in their cozy dressing room and talk to them for hours. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I was no better or worse than the autograph hunters who besieged my father.

  “Orson, you must come to lunch this Sunday,” Vivien was saying, “and bring Christopher, of course.” There was something birdlike about her, her hands fluttering in the air as she spoke, her head cocked to one side, her darting, luminous eyes that took our full measure.

  “That’s very kind of you, Vivien, and I’d be delighted to bring Christopher if she’s still with me on Sunday …”

  “Still with you?”

  “By then she may have run off with Danny Kaye. She’s madly in love with him, you know.”

  “Daddy!” So he had found me out after all! I turned crimson and wanted to rush out of the theater and vanish into the night, never to be seen again.

  Vivien turned to her husband, who had begun to remove his makeup. “We can’t have her running off, now, can we, darling?”

  “Of course we can’t,” Sir Laurence agreed, scrubbing his face with cold cream. As neither one of them seemed to be making fun of me, I lifted my eyes from my shoes.

  “I know what we’ll do,” cried Vivien, giving me a dazzling smile. “We’ll invite Danny to lunch, too. Would you like that, Christopher? Of course you would!”

  So it was all arranged. On Sunday my father hired a chauffeured limousine and we were driven about fifty miles north of London to Notley Abbey, the Oliviers’ palatial country home in Buckinghamshire. My father had boned up on the house’s history, which he imparted to me on the way there. Named for an Augustinian monastery, the thirty-two room house had been an abbot’s lodge in the thirteen century. Then, in 1539, when Henry VIII abolished all monasteries in England, the building and its extensive grounds—over seventy acres of rich farmland, orchards, and gardens—were surrendered to the crown. By the time the Oliviers bought Notley Abbey in 1943, it had fallen into disrepair.

  “Larry fell in love with the place and its history,” my father told me as our limousine snaked up the driveway and the abbey loomed before us, an austere Gothic presence of gray stone and leaded windows. “Larry has played so many kings on the stage and screen, you know, that he wants to live like one in his private life.” A wistful note had crept into my father’s voice, making me think of a small boy pressing his nose against the window of a pastry shop. At that point in his life, Orson Welles had no home to anchor him, and even though he was living in Europe by choice, he was a man without a country. “Larry could afford all this,” he rumbled on, as though thinking aloud. “He made a fortune with Henry V, the most popular movie ever made of a Shakespearean play, and that’s exactly what it is, a play slapped onto the screen.”

  “Notley Abbey looks awfully gloomy,” I remarked, peering out the window. “Does it have a dungeon?”

  “Dear child,” he laughed.

  “Well, I wouldn’t want to live here.”

  “Wait until you see the inside, Christopher. Vivien has done wonders with it. She has a talent for decorating—and for entertaining. She likes nothing better than to invite carloads of people on weekends, which drives Larry crazy.” He went on to tell me that Olivier was an intensely private man who would have preferred to spend the day reading in his study or working in his rose garden. “Larry’s out of luck today, all right.”
My father gestured at the lineup of fancy cars parked in the driveway. “Looks like we’re not the only ones invited to Sunday lunch.”

  The overcast sky and a brisk chill in the air made us hurry indoors, where we found lamps lit and fires crackling in the succession of rooms on the ground floor, which included three large living rooms, a library, and a dining room. A feeling of warmth and coziness pervaded these rooms, in spite of their high-beamed ceilings and leaded-glass casement widows. There were piles of books and bowls of flowers fresh from the garden on the antique tables, brightly colored cushions on the slipcovered sofas, reading lamps and comfortable armchairs everywhere. After seeing Notley Abbey’s grim exterior, I could never have imagined I would feel so at home once I had walked through its doors.

  The celebrated couple of stage and screen Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier, 1941.

  Vivien greeted us with cries of delight and introduced us to Suzanne, her eighteen-year-old daughter from her first marriage, who was visiting that weekend. I could hardly believe they were mother and daughter. Somehow Vivien—so petite, lively, and exquisite—had produced a tall, stolid daughter who was painfully shy. I tried to draw Suzanne out, but she had the sullen air of a person determined to keep her problems to herself, and she seemed particularly ill at ease with her mother nearby. I wanted to tell Suzanne that I knew how hard it was to have a famous parent who only saw you now and then, and maybe, if you had to lose a parent to fame, it was worse to lose a mother, but what could we children of fame do but make the best of it? We might as well enjoy our parents while we were with them … But there was no breaking through her British reserve.

  Before long we trooped into the dining room and took our places around the long table. There must have been at least fourteen of us. Among the guests, I recognized the actors Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Tracy looked sunk in gloom and hardly said a word to anyone. After Vivien seated herself at the end of the table, she invited my father and Danny Kaye to sit on either side of her. Before taking his place at the head of the table, Olivier seated me to his left, graciously holding out my chair. Being the youngest and least important person in the room, I felt extremely honored. Then Olivier put Robert Helpmann, the great Australian dancer, next to me.