by Mark Forgy
Elmyr and I had lunch a couple of days later with Robert Patterson. He was Marlene Dietrich’s impresario. Elmyr made his acquaintance and he was kind enough to invite us to Dietrich’s performance at the Wimbledon Theatre. I was excited to see this living legend singing in her inimitable smoky voice.
That evening we attended a dinner party in her honor at a fashionable London restaurant, privileged to be among a dozen guests. A kind of round-table coterie, it was an unusual occasion, since she rarely ventured outside the company of longtime friends. She was the last to arrive and took her seat at the center of the long table. Immediately everyone’s attention turned on her as though eerily reenacting a tableau vivant of Christ’s Last Supper. I sat at the end of the table so as not to disturb the illuminati around her. Elmyr sat opposite her, her impresario to her right, the editor-in-chief of The London Sunday Times to her left. She and Elmyr began conversing in a lively manner. Horribly cultured banter broke out like a vile plague. Everyone seemed to speak at once, creating a sophisticated white noise, gliding by me like jets of smoke around something sleek in a wind tunnel. I found listening a wasted effort of concentration, like meeting the new vicar and attempting polite small talk while able to focus only with an acid-trip fascination on his saber scars and eye patch. In person, out of her stage makeup, Dietrich looked considerably worse for wear. She still had those penciled-in eyebrows where hair had been a half-century earlier. More alarmingly, her teeth had discolored as though placed in a water glass each night with a generous dollop of Copenhagen chewing tobacco. When the editor from the Times asked where she was going after London, she barked to her impresario, “This man’s trying to interview me,” as though to evidence why her circle of friends was small. She was indeed proving to be a giant with feet of clay.
The manager of Mr. Chow’s, the Chinese restaurant hosting this memorable event, decided we needed a Hong Kong version of the Super Bowl halftime show. So somewhere between the dried seaweed and octopus courses, the pastry chef wheeled out a trolley. With lights dimmed around the room’s perimeter, he stood in the theatrical glare of a center spot, juggling globs of floured dough, changing their shapes into sorts of edible balloon animals. He did things few of his audience knew were possible, I imagine, and probably wondered why.
By dinner’s end, it was evident that she was unaccountably combative and difficult. Just before leaving, a woman restored my faith in a cosmic balance when she approached Dietrich with a piece of paper and a pen seeking an autograph, surely. We held our collective breath. She said, predictably, “I’m your biggest fan! I’ve seen all your pictures. Please, may I have your autograph, Miss Garbo?” Melting from laughter, we all began slipping from our chairs. I thought everyone would have to be recovered with a spatula. Now, the surprising thing was, she calmly accepted her request although no one knew what name she wrote down. Some legends and myths, I suppose, cannot withstand scrutiny. Perhaps this is why Dietrich and others purposefully limit public exposure.
On another visit to London, Elmyr and I attended the opening of an exhibition of paintings by Lilli Palmer, an actress and former wife of Rex Harrison. They appeared together in a classic British film, The Four-Poster Bed. It was made in a time when censorship was rigid and helped further the notion the English were a sex-free society. Lilli told us, “It was illegal to show anything considered risqué such as two people in a bed. In fact, if there was a bedroom scene you had to have one foot on the ground at all times. Well, in Four Poster there were several scenes of us in bed together, so they had to cut holes through the bed in order that Rex and I could each have one of our feet touching the floor.”
She and her husband, Argentine actor Carlos Thompson, came to visit Elmyr in Ibiza. Like with so many other first encounters, they became friends. We later visited them at their home in Campo de Mijas in southern Spain. At that time, she showed us various works destined for her upcoming show at the Arthur Tooth Gallery in London. Elmyr thought she was a good painter. He offered advice on composition and technique. It was an interesting exchange of ideas with another artist in her studio that I never before witnessed. Elmyr said we would come to her opening.
Perhaps the recognizable faces circulating throughout the gallery should not have surprised me. I met Sean Connery that night, and Noel Coward. Coward had suffered a couple of strokes by then. His watery eyes and slightly droopy eyelids suggested their effects on him. Nevertheless, he sat on a chair, both hands resting on the head of a cane between his legs. He wore a black dinner jacket and silk tie, and a sly smile graced his face. I suspected his mind harbored some clever witticism he was content to share with just himself. Lilli introduced us to him, and he seemed charmed to meet us. Who knows?
Coward lived at the Savoy Hotel for years. He suggested we visit him sometime. A couple of days later we went to see him. Elmyr carried an improvised cardboard portfolio. Someone accompanied us to his suite. There, one of two men who attended to him led us to the sitting room. Coward greeted us cordially, although his expression conveyed a vacant searching, perhaps trying to recall who we were. Elmyr made some small talk. I don’t recall about what. He then got to the point of our visit. He wanted to present Coward with a large pencil drawing of me—nude. Must have thought it would give the old boy some pleasure. As he handed it to him, I blurted out, “Well, this should put us on a first-name basis.” Everyone laughed, along with Coward. I was so pleased with myself after that that the rest of the visit remains a blur. Elmyr seemed particularly thrilled when I demonstrated some urbane wit. After all, it could only have stemmed from my association with him.
During the evening of Lilli’s exhibition, the gallery’s director introduced himself. He knew who Elmyr was. He invited us upstairs, along with a few others. We went to a storage room where he provided us a private viewing of some of their collection. One at a time he pulled out large oil paintings in French frames. First was a Renoir portrait of a young girl. Elmyr said instantly, “That’s ’82, ’83,” meaning 1882/1883. Then another slid out from its vertical bin. Another Renoir—“That’s ’85 or ’86.” He repeated this perhaps a half-dozen more times with works by other masters. Everyone enjoyed this demonstration of knowledge, none more than Tooth’s director. I have no doubt that Elmyr merited the title of professor if he ever desired it.
Through our friend Jack Frye, we met Charles Clore, owner of Selfridges, the London department store. The public knew of his philanthropic donations, and some knew him as a passionate collector of art. As I recall, he wore his ego like actor’s makeup on a bulbous face. Smoke from his fat cigars engulfed him like a cornfield after the pass of a low-flying crop duster. When he learned from Jack that Nina van Pallandt and Elmyr were friends, he mentioned his desire to meet her. He invited us to dinner at Trader Vic’s in the Hilton Hotel. Naturally, the conversation drifted to art. Thinking my question rhetorical and based in some sense now elusive, I asked, “Mr. Clore, when you buy art, do you consult others?” My impertinence penetrated his considerable ego and pride. “What am I, some kind of schmuck?” he hurled in my direction, his breath pinning back my ears. Turned heads of those around us could have better answered his question. Elmyr rushed to my defense, trying to disarm my gaffe, saying, “Well, I’m sure before you spend a few hundred thousand pounds, you want to be sure about what you’re buying.” He calmly expressed what I was intimating. I remember enduring Ançi Dupres’s fury at my absence of forethought when I said I didn’t think $150 sounded too much to pay for gluing Elmyr’s Modigliani to an old canvas. Now, once more, I thought my sphincter muscle would fail me at Clore’s reproach. It suggested my mind was still unwed to the consequences of spontaneous speech, but also renewed my conviction that wealth does not impart class. A young woman we knew who dated him mentioned how he wanted others to love him for himself and not his money. Easier to climb Everest in ice skates, I thought.
I remained sufficiently quiet for the rest of the dinner for his pique to subside. Afterward, he invited us to his home f
or a private viewing of his art collection. Every impressionist work he possessed was a masterpiece. Among them were a pointillist landscape by Surat or Signac; Degas pastels, his ballet dancers; and behind his desk was a blue period Picasso, a boy on a horse. There was too much to remember, but it was enjoyable to see Elmyr’s reaction to a truly impressive collection. If we had another occasion to see Clore, I imagine him saying to Elmyr, “Leave him at home.”
The Other Side Of The Mirror
Almost immediately from the moment I met Elmyr there was more than the patina of glamour and success suggested. Underneath the thin, newly formed crust of appearances was substantial seismic activity, unpredictable and volatile. Neither his recent celebrity nor wealth could completely insulate him from their consequences.
He said nothing of his story the first few weeks after my arrival at La Falaise. Ultimately knowing him as well as I did, I can only say this was an extremely unusual act of reticence. He enjoyed talking, and secrecy often collided with his inclination toward spontaneity and candor. Near the end of November 1969, he showed me a copy of Fake, the book about his life written by Clifford Irving. It became an instant success and heralded a flurry of spotlight-grabbing articles in the international press. Offers poured in to do films and documentaries about “the greatest art forger of our time,” as Irving described him. While he would later accept public attention with the ease of a born-on-stage vaudeville performer, he greeted the initial crush of publicity with self-effacing shyness. This reaction, I suspect, was because he still felt somewhat uncertain about the legal fallout over his activities.
For more than twenty years Elmyr’s life was an insecure, nervous existence; a succession of aliases, phony IDs, fake passports, nomadic meanderings, risky business dealings, terminal relationships, and a questionable future most likely made him dismiss the prospect that any stability awaited him. The shock of something good blossoming from something bad was only slightly less surprising but more of a jolt than a slap with a twenty-pound wet fish. Shadowy cover-ups masked by theatrical pretense morphed into reluctant eye contact and ah-shucks foot shuffling when asked hard, blunt questions by the press. In a Sunday confessional whisper he acknowledged that he did some paintings but he never signed them. That tight-lipped admission later relaxed to the point where he reminded me of the attention-craving Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, where, at the top of the stairs, she declares in a selfabsorbed trance, “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.” Although, Elmyr’s burgeoning romance with the public spotlight never assumed that wide-eyed spooky aspect.
By March of 1970 he had whittled down the various film offers that were cascading in since the release of Fake. He chose the French filmmaker François Reichenbach. A couple of reasons prompted this decision. As Reichenbach explained, it would be a collaborative venture of French television and the BBC, which Elmyr greatly respected for their quality work. He also had a history with François, an Oscar recipient for his documentary on the pianist Artur Rubenstein.
On a cool, rainy spring day they arrived from Paris and London to capture Elmyr in his own celluloid portrait. The British producer was Richard Drewett of the BBC. Over a period of about three days, they followed him everywhere but the bathroom. Spider webs of large black cables stretched across the floor of the villa. Blinding arc lights illuminated the interior with sun-surpassing intensity. Elmyr posited his views on art, the art establishment, experts, artists, critics, curators, gallery owners, patrons, culture, society, friends, scoundrels, travel, Ibiza—and himself. One of the first 60 Minutes news magazine programs excerpted a portion of the ninety-minute exposé titled “Elmyr, The True Picture?” It is one of the most interesting documentaries I have seen, and I remain mystified to this day why, instead of releasing this insightful gem for the public’s delight and entertainment, it collects dust in the vault of the BBC’s archives.
To illustrate his reluctance to take full credit for his discomforting artistic contributions, he couched his purported authorship of works now passing as authentic Modiglianis in this way. “I don’t feel bad for Modigliani, I feel good for me. He worked very little and died very young, so if they add a few Modiglianis here or there, it is not going to destroy his oeuvre. Besides, I never made hundreds of Modigliani’s. I made a few Modigliani’s and they were recognized by Mme. Modigliani and all great experts.”
The connection between Elmyr and Reichenbach is also a curious one. Prior to a career switch to filmmaking, François was an art dealer who not only knew Elmyr but also bought artwork from him. As we dined at a local restaurant, François recounted a series of dealings with Elmyr. He had told François that he escaped Hungary after the war with a small portion of his family’s art collection, and that, due to some current misfortune, he was obliged to part with some pieces. Would he be interested? To help Elmyr, of course, François bought several drawings by Modigliani, Braque, Picasso, and others. He then told Elmyr that he loved the work of Soutine. Did he have anything by Soutine? Elmyr regretted that he hadn’t any. A few days later François received a call from him. Gushing with surprise, Elmyr exclaimed, “François, this is incredible but I was looking through the collection and I found a small Soutine portrait!” Thunderous laughter erupted at the table. Drewett then asked Reichenbach, “Did you suspect anything?” François’s eyes darted back and forth as though watching a high-speed tennis match. Then with that inimitable Gallic shrug, he said, “I didn’t want to know.” More laughter ensued. Even Elmyr was visibly amused at the comic retelling of the incident.
I must add here that Reichenbach came from a comfortably bourgeois background and his family possessed an impressive collection of art. They in fact had some important Modigliani paintings. He revealed that one of the sensual reclining nudes (perhaps Nude on a Cushion) bothered him somewhat as he thought it needed more pubic and underarm hair, so with boyish impulsiveness, he added some with a crayon. “To this day” he insisted, “the addition remains unchanged.” Elmyr always said, “If something hangs in a collection long enough it becomes authentic.” François’s childhood “improvement” is now an intrinsic part of that work, long accepted as an original feature and indistinguishable from any other intended stroke from the artist’s own hand.
This anecdote provides an insight into the relationship between what is real and unreal. Keep in mind that Elmyr’s buyers were the supposed cognoscenti, art dealers or museum curators who enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with him. They stood to gain profits or prestige from acquiring his work. The extent to which they openly or knowingly bought something doubtful is questionable. For this to never have occurred during his long career is even more doubtful if Reichenbach’s story is to be believed. During my seven-year association with Elmyr, I witnessed enough instances of people’s eagerness to profit from his art with no compunction about ethics or legality. While it may have been tempting for Elmyr’s clientele to denounce him, anyone coming forward to accuse him of malfeasance also probably risked self-incrimination as well. The taint of guilt by association was a ruinous prospect for many who had dealings with him and, understandably, preferred to stay out of the fray when the scandal finally exposed him. What were they to say? “Oh, I bought several works by him, but I no longer have them as I resold them,” for example, or, “Our museum unknowingly procured some fakes and we will no longer be hanging them in our permanent collection.”
In that very vein Time magazine reported in about 1972 or ’73 that the Metropolitan Museum in New York “deaccessioned”—a fancy word for sold off—a large Modigliani painting, a portrait of a woman, suspected to be by Elmyr. After demoting it to one of the institution’s storerooms, it then resurfaced. London’s Marlborough Gallery paid a fire-sale price of $50,000, or between ten to twenty percent of the market value of a bona fide Modigliani. That august institution passed off a work of art they knew was not authentic. Whatever their rationale, it is open to speculation and likely, “no comment” from them. Marlborough, by the way, turned around an
d promptly sold it to the Japanese for $250,000.
It is precisely this kind of Machiavellian capitalism that abounds in the business world (the art world being very much a part of it) that Elmyr consistently witnessed. Considering his negligible bargaining skills in moments of desperation, he was ill suited to the rough-andtumble tactics of the marketplace and predictably came out on the short end in his dealings. However, he always made a distinction between selling a work to a private buyer, say, Mrs. Smith from Omaha, and a dealer. The former might have neither the knowledge nor expertise to make an educated decision regarding the purchase of a work of art. The dealer, gallery owner, or museum curator, on the other hand, make it their business to know what they are buying or selling. Elmyr liked to use the analogy that if he walked into Cartier and wanted to sell them a diamond that was actually cut glass—and they thought it was a diamond, they have no business being in the gem business. “If they don’t know the difference, they should be selling sausage or hosiery in the market instead.” He added, “I sold my work uniquely to those who were professionals.”