by Anne Edwards
That was how I learned that Leon—before his engagement in film—as a young boy and adolescent had a short career as a concert pianist. Rather reticently in the days that followed that meeting, he revealed to me more of his past. His parents were from a small town in Russia where, before his birth, there was pogrom where many Jews had been slaughtered. His father managed to get his pregnant wife out of the country. She found refuge in Germany (this was 1911) and then, taking the name of her protectors, continued on to America, where she was in hopes of her husband joining her. He never was heard from again. The pregnant Mrs. Becker had been put on a boat that docked in Canada, not the United States. She was, by then, nearly nine months with child. A contact found her a place to stay and a job as a domestic with a family in Montreal. She gave birth to Leon with the help of passengers and a porter on the train journey there, in a car named Sagamore (therefore, his middle name—Leon Sagamore Becker).
Very early on, Leon showed extraordinary musical talent. He and his mother lived in her employer’s home, which had a piano. The story goes that he had wandered into the music room when he was about four and sat down and played some Mozart piece that he had heard being executed by a guest of the family the previous afternoon, and did so with surprising adeptness and a good ear. He was given access to the piano and lessons with a local teacher. At age nine, believed to be a prodigy, arrangements were made for him to study with a well-known piano teacher in Los Angeles who was a friend of his mother’s employer, and for him to live with Paramount Studios’ head of production, Benjamin (B. P.) Schulberg and his wife, Adeline, who had a son, Budd, close to Leon’s age. Not until the end of her life would Leon, then in his late thirties, see his birth mother again. During the formative years of life, he became the Schulbergs’ de facto second son.
The Schulbergs were an unusual family. Benjamin was “a political liberal in the reactionary world of [Louis B.] Mayer and [William Randolph] Hearst.” Adeline, however, was the true political activist. She visited the Soviet Union in the late twenties and brought back for Leon scores of Russian operas, which he had kept with him throughout the years. The boys shared a room with bunk beds and read as late at night as they could. Budd was a frail child and as a young man suffered fainting spells. He also had a speech impediment and, as one close member of the family said, “stammered his way from therapist to therapist.” There was a concert Steinway in the living room of their palatial home on which Leon practiced and under which Budd Schulberg claimed he hid “in the darkest corner” to write poetry to give to his mother for “various holidays [including] Mother’s Day.” Although not actually brothers, it would seem that Budd had strong pangs of sibling rivalry that matured with him. Once the boys were grown, and graduated from universities, Adeline became an agent. It was always her goal to push people as far as she could toward fame.
Leon made his first public appearance at the age of eleven, accompanying the nine-year-old Yehudi Menuhin on the piano. Leon soon developed a case of stage fright whenever he had to appear before an audience (although he played magnificently, otherwise). He explained to me that he was terrified of playing a piece entirely by memory as he was expected to do. He needed the music as a prop and was forbidden by his teacher to use it. “If you do not have it in your fingers and in your heart, you will never be a great concert pianist,” he was told. He, therefore, decided at seventeen to attend Caltech and study to be an expert sound technician—badly needed in those early days of all-talking films. When in his twenties, both he and Budd became politically active and joined the Communist Party. This was during the darkest days of the Depression (although they wanted for very little). Both dropped out of the party a few years later.
Leon advanced fast, being placed in charge of the Warner Bros. sound department (he also played the piano on tracks for several films). He was greatly sought after in that capacity and became director William Wyler’s associate on four films. Then came Senator Joseph McCarthy. Budd was called up before the Committee and, turning informer, rattled off a string of names of people he had known who had been in the party with him, Leon among them. Blacklisted, unable to work and still holding Canadian citizenship, Leon was one of the first of Hollywood’s HUAC victims to move, with his wife, to London. A valid Canadian passport was accepted in Great Britain, and he was able to work immediately without restrictions.
We had been dating for a time when, a week or so after my meeting with Yehudi, and after a dinner out, Leon invited me for the first time to come back to his flat at 25 Lennox Gardens (which faced one of London’s charming squares). The four-story house, occupied originally in Edwardian days by a well-to-do family, had been converted into flats, as had most of the other houses on the square. Leon’s apartment was on the top floor. There was no lift. To reach his aerie, one needed to first take the marble steps that led into the building, then walk up three long flights of stairs (ceilings being eleven feet high), to reach his door. When opened, one was faced with still another staircase, steeper and narrower than the others. By this time I had left my breath on the floor below. Mounting this staircase for me was akin to the challenge of climbing to the peak of the Gotschna in the Swiss Alps! But I took it.
When I retrieved my breath, I was quite taken with what I saw, not that the apartment was grand in any way, but it was unique. Before Leon’s occupancy, walls had been removed to make larger rooms than in the original. You entered partway into a long, rather wide hall, the living room visible beyond via two more steps. It contained a marvelous high-arched window overlooking the square that on fair days cast streams of light through multi-panes. A grand piano occupied one entire corner and dominated the room. At the other end of the generous entrance hall was a galley kitchen and to its left, a door to a large master bedroom and bath. Another door, and two steps midway in the hall, led to a second bath and bedroom (used by Leon for an amazing collection of sound equipment and tapes—operas, concerts, film scores).
I asked Leon after we had settled in if he would be kind enough to play something for me. He sat down on the piano bench in the manner of a concert performer. There were several tall, neat stacks of music piled up on the floor beside him. Immediately, without reclaiming a score from the stacks beside him, the most beautiful and full sound filled the room. Leon was not the least bit rusty. What I got was a professional performance, as moving and well played as many that we had attended together. I was confused. He had told me why he had not continued his concert career—but not why he had chosen not to be involved in the music world. Nor did he ever play at people’s homes when we were there for an evening and they were good friends—with a piano just waiting to be brought to life. He gave me private concerts (well received and welcomed) often making for a warm, intimate evening. He practiced diligently and daily. Nonetheless, I always felt he was happy with the work he was doing, involved and giving himself entirely to it. Carl once told me that Leon could hear things on a sound track no one else could, and that he was a true artist when it came to sound and music recording. He seemed to mask any bitterness toward the McCarthy period and the end of his Hollywood career, with one exception: the betrayal of Budd Schulberg.
Although I had a house for we three, I was spending a lot of time at Leon’s flat. Very vivid to me is the time Adeline Schulberg (who Leon called Addie), while visiting London, rang up to ask if she might come over and speak to Leon. I had answered the telephone. He looked more tortured than I had ever seen him when I passed the request on to him. After a long moment of consideration, he agreed. Addie, now a widow, was no longer a young woman and she took the stairs with great difficulty. I sat her down in the hallway, where there was a dining table and chairs, and brought her a glass of water. It must have been about five minutes before Leon came out of the sound room to greet her. She got to her feet and threw her arms around him. When they moved apart they were both crying. He helped her into the living room and I went into the kitchen to make tea. When I returned with a tray, Addie had Leon clasped by his
sleeve.
“You must see Budd. Talk to him. He’ll make you understand. You were brothers—are brothers. I raised you both. . . . I . . .” She let go of his arm and sank down into a chair. She was once again suffused in tears. Leon was not. “We will not discuss Budd, is that understood?” he said in a strained voice. She nodded her head. The remaining hour or so she was with us was not easy. Budd’s name was not mentioned again. Leon held on to her arm as he helped her down the staircases onto the street. I watched from the front window as he walked slowly with her up Lennox Gardens. Thank God, he was going to make sure she was safely deposited in a taxi. He returned fifteen minutes later, sat down at the piano, and played for a long while—Rachmaninoff and at a furious tempo. That was the only time I saw Addie Schulberg and the last that Leon ever spoke of either Budd or his mother.
The lovely Marion. My mother’s engagement photograph, 1926.
A rare togetherness: my father and me in Hollywood, 1933. By then, I was on stage and dancing and singing.
Anne Louise, 1931, before we left New York, bankrupt by the Depression, and headed for California on an unforgettable journey.
Dinner at The Algonquin, 1929. Left to right: Uncle Dave, Aunt Theo (his first wife), Harold Ross (editor of The New Yorker), two friends, and Joe Cook. Hollywood was calling.
Seaside, Connecticut, 1929, the year of the crash. Left to right: Marion, me, Grandma Pauline, and Uncle Dave (Dave Chasen).
Left to right: Frank Capra, Uncle Dave, Joe Cook (unidentified fourth man), on the set of Rain or Shine, 1930.
The children’s father (right), serving in Guam at the end of World War II with fellow naval friend.
Michael, 7, and Catherine, 3, about to leave for England and a new life.
Dancing the tango: Michael and Catherine in Florida, 1961.
The children’s uncle and aunt: Robert Rossen and his wife, Sue Rossen, in London, 1963. Rossen had just racked up a major hit, The Hustler.
The Hollywood Ten, minus one: Lester Cole, balding member, center; Dalton Trumbo, third from right rear; Adrian Scott, far left end; Ring Lardner Jr., second row, far right end; Albert Maltz, second from left (with pipe). Associated Press
Sidney Buchman, 1966. Good friend and great filmmaker.
Michael at 12. He and Sidney had lively political debates.
Sy Stewart and his daughter, Laura (c. 1960–1961).
Leon Becker in one of his happier days.
The newly married Anne Edwards Becker in the Lennox Garden apartment with film composer Sol Kaplan.
Leon with my friend and confidant, writer Vera Caspary, at an outdoor café in France (that’s the back of my head seated across from them).
Always on Sunday! Brunch at Carl Foreman’s boathouse on the Thames. Carl was the cook.
Me, exchanging kitchen chatter with Carl’s wife, Eve.
Leon takes time out in front of the humble abode.
Jay Schlein, Gstaad, 1968. He had just “come out” and was one happy fella!
Gstaad, 1968. The always amazing Dale Witt, architect and adventurer.
Swiss Interlude, 1968–1970: Chalet Fleur de Lis. I thought I had found a home at last.
On the terrace: Jay, Catherine, and our poodle family.
Left to right: Graham Payn, Noël Coward, and Cole Porter in an earlier time.
Sandy waiting at the window for Catherine to return from school.
Sunning with Sandy, the patriarch of his dog family.
Catherine, now a young woman in her teens.
Michael with mustache and goatee about to depart for Berkeley and his return to the States.
Catherine during her short spell as a flower child. And back to her gamine look!
Rod Serling: a not-so-brief encounter. Photofest
Chicago, 1968: On tour for the publication of The Survivors and appearing on the Irv Kupcinet television show. Elia Kazan, left end; our host with cigar, second from right. I’m the sole woman, center. Kazan and I clashed, a most unpleasant incident.
Actress, comedian, and childhood friend, Joyce Jameson, in my apartment in Beverly Hills, 1969. The photograph on the bookcase (this portrait of me) was the back cover photo of my book The Survivors.
Judy Garland and Mickey Deans in their London mews flat shortly after their wedding.
Jay Schlein and Robert (Bob) Jorgen in Gstaad. It was a difficult time. Judy had just died and her husband was trying to con me into something I did not want to do.
A macho portait of Bob, who also happened to be my uncle and Mickey Deans’ lover.
Gstaad. From left to right: Me, Bob, Catherine, and Mickey Deans.
Returning home.
• 10 •
Funny Girl
For personal use, overseas telephone calls were expensive (and difficult due to the time differential). Cablegrams were also seen as an extravagance by my penny-saving mother. Therefore, she sent me an express letter to inform me that my father had been diagnosed with rectal cancer and would need an immediate operation if he was to prolong his life. The tone of her letter was infused with fear. This was the summer of 1963 and my parents, still in Miami, had little money. It was obvious from her words that Marion did not feel capable of handling the urgency or the nuances of the situation.
Right or wrong, I was more concerned about my mother than my father. Marion could always be relied upon to dispense loving care, nursing skills, and nourishing meals and to create a degree of harmony in uneasy times. In the advent of a real crisis she went to pieces (and often to her bed). There had been a legion of grave happenings during her marriage to my father, mostly having to do with his comings and goings and the sea of troubles he brought with him and left behind in rough-water waves for her to navigate. Several times during my adolescence I had to go by myself to make a payment to a beyond-the-law creditor who she was too ashamed and fearful to approach. (Boom-Bah! for football heroes!) There was a period when he had written a series of bad checks and was being threatened to be turned over to law enforcement. Marion collapsed. I was twelve years old, yet very adult in many ways. I understood the seriousness of the problem and the consequence if something was not done right away. I had a friend whose father was a top lawyer in Los Angeles and called him. I can no longer remember (or perhaps was never told) how the gracious gentleman mediated this potentially disastrous situation. Charges, however, were not pressed against my father, and my mother’s brothers paid the outstanding debt. That time, it had taken months for Marion, even with her daily readings of Mary Baker Eddy, to recover.
My mother was weak where my father was concerned. Somewhere it is written, “Beware of the weak,” and I believe that to be true. My mother’s first responsibility should have been to herself and to me, a maxim she never adopted. If her gentility and expansive love had not been so seductive, I might have, when younger, seen her inaction as the iniquitous force that it was. I lived with the knowledge that I was the adult in our lives and that I was somehow expected to take the responsibility that she could not bear.
I rang her immediately (damn the cost!). Her voice was imbued with gratitude. I told her I would wire her some money and arrange for two tickets to take them from Miami to Hartford, where she and my father could stay with her mother (my beloved Grandma Pauline, a Hungarian lady of lively temperament, who I knew would welcome them in a time of emergency despite her intense dislike of my father). Dr. Hepburn, who had been the family doctor since Marion was a child, had recently died. I suggested she should call the physician who had taken over his practice and ask him for the name of a colon cancer specialist then make an appointment for my father to see him. I also reminded her that he was a war veteran and that some part of the medical expenses might be absorbed if he went to a veterans’ hospital. Thirty-six hours later my parents were on a plane to Hartford.
After further medical tests, it was decided that my father should be operated on in New York by a specialist. This was early August; the surgery was scheduled two weeks hence. We three flew to Ne
w York on “cheap end” tickets. (Airlines like Air India or Pakistani, who stopped in London on flights to New York from their countries, offered cut rates for unsold “end of flight” seats the day of a scheduled flight.) Good friends, who lived in New York, were planning a trip to England and I made a trade—they use Hasker Street while they were in London and I would occupy their apartment on East Seventy-Ninth Street while I was in Manhattan. My position was to stand by my mother and be there to help her with any decisions that might have to be made.
Ever the iron man that he was, he survived the operation and began a course of radiation. On a Friday afternoon on November 22, my father still in hospital, we three and my mother were at the apartment when there was a loud banging on the door and a neighbor burst in, shouting for us to turn on the television. We did and, horrified, watched the vivid coverage of the shooting death of our young president John Fitzgerald Kennedy in Dallas and the swearing in on Air Force One of vice president Lyndon Baines Johnson—the former first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, standing beside him still dressed in the blood-stained clothes she had worn in the motorcade when the assassin’s bullets had killed her husband.