The Grand Surprise
Page 28
AUGUST 6, 1954 Two mornings ago Gray told me that Colette had died, and I had to work at keeping the tears back. How curious that both Gray and I were reading Colette at this time. The world now seems a poorer place. Although I did not know her to talk to, I feel her death a private loss. But, of course, having read only Sido and La Maison de Claudine one knew her intimately. This is the mainspring of her great genius, this intimacy that she sets up instantly and with such dignity. This dignity elevates above pornography such works as The Gentle Libertine [L'Ingénue libertine]. So the triangular cat face with its mop of music-hall hair is gone, but do not think that one smitch of the spirit of that loving heart is lost. I felt this way when V. Woolf died, but furious, for that was a self-destruction in wartime. This saddens me: Colette's death is like the dousing of a little dependable potbellied stove that miraculously heated you all your life.
AUGUST 9, 1954 In bed, making notes on Colette, and a spittling rain making this room, beneath these lamps, an island in the vast summery, autumn-touched night. Gray works at his table, painting snowflakes on a Christmassy red ground. In between the notes I think of Judy Garland, and all the things Irene Sharaff told us, especially Judy G crying: “Am I such a monster?” as the zippers on her dress burst because drink fattened her, thickened and coarsened her overnight, sometimes as much as two to five inches. And how she delayed and delayed the last moments of her movie [A Star Is Born] because of her terror while she was making a movie that she would never make another. She would only work at night, keeping hundreds of people waiting an hour and a half. She and her husband, [Sid] Luft, have no money at all, having to borrow all the furnishing from the Malibu scene when they had people in. She had nothing to wear when they went to the party the Jack Warners gave for Franco's daughter, so Judy G tried to borrow one of the dresses Irene had designed for the movie. At that party Judy G fell flat on her face.
Seven carloads of people would go to her house to fit her. When she came to fittings she always had one of her children with her, and sometimes several people who would reassure her, make her feel the star. But then suddenly, drunk, fat, worn, she became the great obliterating star—a twelve-year-old girl, a marvelous raw current, an elemental force—making all those who had suffered from her caprices, her insanities, her drinking adore her, acclaim her, weep over her—her vile language forgotten, her tantrums, her wastefulness all forgiven. They loved her and the force she became. Her mother fed her Benzedrine when she was twelve. She was drunk in her teens. She hated her mother, who died doubled over in a Hollywood parking lot. I think that Colette would have understood this utterly.
AUGUST 22, 1954 • NEW YORK CITY
TO RICHARD HUNTER • hamburg, new york
Well! That Bible! That Jacob! He married Leah and Rebecca, and they, filthy girls, gave him their handmaidens, and he just begat with all of them. How can Christians be against bigamy or whatever it is, when a man has many women for wives and concubines and children from all? I asked Gray about all this, but he says that he just accepts the Bible and doesn't try to explain it. I do not understand how any person of intelligence can believe in a man-made God.
JOURNAL • September 26, 1954 The Duchess of Kent [Princess Marina], dowdy but literally ablaze with jewels, in a white-chrysanthemumed box at the Met… Alice [Astor] gave a posh luncheon for the duchess—only nobilities— such as Nin Ryan (!), the duchess's local hostess.53 (I wonder if Nin was given Wit's End [Alexander Woollcott's apartment], where once Saint-Subber kept Robbie [Campbell, his lover] and later Johnny Ryan kept Eartha Kitt?) Alice brought her butler and chef down—and what splendor. All the royalties assembled, and this time Alice was even [there] beforehand. After everyone had gathered, a message came that the duchess was unable to attend. She was at the dentist!
SEPTEMBER 29, 1954 Sometimes I suspect that I have ruined my life, in the way a life or two lives can be ruined by a bad marriage, bad signifying the attempt of two more or less incompatible persons to unify themselves. I wonder if most marriages are not between incompatibles? Most marriages, I am sure, are premature. A bad marriage is hell on earth, for it deteriorates the persons involved, embittering them, diminishing them, exaggerating their sensibilities, making them ugly.
OCTOBER 19, 1954 • NEW YORK CITY
TO RICHARD HUNTER • hamburg, new york
Yesterday, early in the morning we trundled off to the Paramount Theater to preview (I had already seen it) A Star Is Born. Mobs poured in. This time we were the guests of Irene Sharaff and Mai-mai. I found the movie even more fascinating the second time. I think it a most important document, a sort of elaborate, perhaps unintentional look into what the American mind (especially the Hollywood mind) thinks America lives like. The mise-en-scène held me as much as did Judy Garland's and James Mason's performances. They are wonderful, but the surroundings really are a triumph of contemporary mediocrity. Millions of people dream of living that way—and Judy G is so much the product of today in America.
Then I went to my office for a bit and then flew home in time to dress up in my old dress-up suit, which is now much too large (!), and off we went to dinner at the Sharaff-Sze ménage and so on to the gala opening of On Your Toes. I had Diana [Forbes-Robertson] for my partner and Gray had Mai-mai.54 Irene, who designed the costumes, flitted about. So very gala it was—because A Star Is Born was opening simultaneously at two theaters and the biggest fashion event of the year was being held at the Waldorf, so all through midtown life seemed like the twenties—enormous limousines jammed with expensive furs and tulle and glittering with sequined and diamonded ladies and even white ties.
On Your Toes, you will remember, was years ago a great favorite of mine, and I used to delight you with my interpretation of it. All those years ago, I saw the show from a hard-earned seat high up in the balcony. I scrimped and saved while working at the Grossinger, came to town, bought an inexpensive ticket, and saw it. Now here I was in an orchestra seat for which I did not pay, all dressed up, and surrounded by people I know and “friends” with most of the people in the show, and I thought all about this and did not feel gay, because life does not turn out quite the way one expects and hopes, and who is there to say whether this is good or bad.
The show is not terribly well done, but Brigitta is much better than I thought she would be … actually dancing better and acting well. Some of Irene's costumes are good but all of them look awful because of Oliver Smith's dreadful sets and horrid lighting by untalented Peggy Clark. Balanchine didn't do so well, either.55 The songs are heavenly, as they always were. So, backstage and into Brigitta's room in time to see a nondescript, housewifish woman dash up to Miss Zorina (who disports herself more licentiously in the “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” number than any burlesque harridan ever did), and this housewife was clutching Brigitta and saying, “I never would have dreamed anything like this in the playground in East Sixty-seventh Street….” That was where Brigitta took her little children. Goddard looked an easy sixty. I do not think that he is happy with all these developments.
Then we had a lovely surprise—Judy Garland had asked Irene to bring her friends to a party she was giving in her suite at the Waldorf after midnight. So, the people who own some enormous whiskey enterprise took us all to the Plaza, and then we all went to Judy G's party. She is very small and immediately reaches out to you and makes you feel that you are the most important person in the room and that she is deeply delighted to see you. She has wonderful manners and puts herself out to be a marvelous hostess. All the while, as the night grows on, she becomes more and more frantic, and when everyone decides to go she seems wildly desperate, implores you never to go, setting up new attractions. She cannot remain alone—even with her husband. Also, she seems to be drinking…. But none of this impairs the original impression she makes: a warm, loving girl with devastating charm. She sang a lot, and Lena Horne, whom I like, sang, and little Truman and Harold Arlen whimpered numbers from The House of Flowers. So far I don't much like the songs I've heard. Th
ere were lovely viands, and [British actress] Leonora Corbett, who has become a horrifying frump, and a few dozen Wampas Baby Stars56 and [prizefighter] Sugar Ray Robinson and Mrs. Sugar Ray Robinson—a chocolate baby-doll type. I had a very good time … and Judy G seemed to take to me and gave me kisses, and Lena Horne gave me cuddles and kisses, and Moss Hart shook my hand dankly and repeatedly, and Kitty Carlisle looked like a wound in a rumpled bed,57 and it was that world—always reminding me of Eleonora but not really her world … and always reminding me of how I used to conjure over it and wonder at what seemed to be their marvelous and glittering lives…. So now I know that world and how very seamy and fragile it is… and how desperate. Maria Riva was there, enormous in one of Marlene's white-beaded dresses, and when Maria telephoned Mummy in Las Vegas, where she opens tonight (Judy G said, “My, think of calling her Mummy …”), Mummy was in a state—bored, with a cold, lonely, firmly convinced that she, Mummy, was doomed to a disaster this time…. Everyone talked to her and it was more like one of those embarrassing broadcasts late at night when someone requests a record to be played for someone and all the names are mentioned. These people stay up all night. When we left, at about four, Adolph Green and Betty Comden were just getting down to performing burlesque opera. At one point I said to Irene that next on the program was square dancing…. Everyone had taken to clapping in rhythm to Judy G's singing (she has marvelous sure pitch, innate rhythm, and such a sense of dramatizing a song) and snapping their fingers—real homefolks-having-a-party-in-the-kitchen sort of antics. Part of the atmosphere at that party came from a curious fact: Almost nobody there was born into a world rich enough to make them think that they could ever afford the sumptuousities of dress which they all now wear with such aplomb.
NOTE: Mademoiselle presented Maria Callas with a merit award in the autumn of 1953, probably at Leo's suggestion. Dorle Soria of Angel Records wrote to Callas explaining the honor.
CALLAS'S AMERICAN DEBUT Dorle Soria, sometime early in 1954, rang. I was in my office at Mademoiselle. She was in her office, probably at the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Dorle said, “I'm not calling to ask where your program notes are. You're always late, but somehow you always manage. I'm calling to tell you that Maria Callas asked me about you this morning, and I told her that you thought she was the greatest person on the opera stage. She said that she had heard, and she would like it if you called her one day. Here is her telephone number in Milan.” Dorle's husband was the head of Angel Records: Angel recorded Maria. By and by, I got my courage up and I called her in Milan. The voice was rich in varied associations: Manhattan street twang, Italian musi-cality, girlishness, a touch of diva resonance, a kind of Greek harshness. She told me that she would be coming to make her United States debut with the Lyric Theater of Chicago. I told her I knew that. “How do you know that?” The voice was surprised, delighted, instantly intimate—she knew that she had hooked her fish. “Larry Kelly told me.” “Oh, Larry. You know Larry.” Then she laughed. “Only for Larry would I come….”58 There was a pause. “You will come to Chicago, no?” “That's a silly question, isn't it?” “I am sometimes silly….” This was flirting. I enjoyed this game very much. I had played it many times before. So had she.
Scene: Autumn in Chicago. Larry Kelly called: “She's already here! She came, as usual, with a retinue and enough food to feed an army. You cannot believe it! She wants to see you.” I went to the opera house, into a dressing room, and I did not see the woman I had seen in Venice. She stood up, twirled about in imitation of a model, or what she fondly believed was an imitation of a model. Then, impulsively, she hugged me. She said, “Surprise!” I was not surprised: I was shocked. Here was a suave, utterly feminine, in a sense freshly seductive figure (of course, she had played those parts so very well, even as a very big woman).59 So, then I did several radio broadcasts in Chicago, all about the greatness of Maria Meneghini Callas. (1993)
NOTE: In November 1954, Callas sang Norma, La Traviata, and Lucia di Lammermoor at Chicago's Civic Opera house. The response was rapturous, launching what would soon become the Lyric Opera of Chicago into international visibility.
JOURNAL • November 2, 1954• Chicago The opening of the Lyric Theatre of Chicago, Maria Callas, the Angel Ball and all my broadcasts:60 Callas sang, especially in all the embroidery and in the genuine coloratura passages, exquisitely. The upper, upper tones wavered a bit, but the voice has great heart, brilliance, ease. It is produced with such ease that at times it seemed to float in the air, an entity in itself, quite independent of any human agency. She has become extremely slender, a twenty-two-inch waist, and she is very girlish— not repulsively—with enormous, darkly outlined eyes, an archaic Greek profile, dressed at the ball tastefully in a pale blue slightly bouffant gown, and magnificently diamonded. These diamonds are given her by her sweet-faced (but a touch of Scarpia) elderly, non-English-speaking Italian husband, [Bat-tista] Meneghini.61 The Callas diamonds are named after each of her triumphs, for she receives them for them: The “Puritani” is a huge stone. (“Dirty,” she said, “I must clean it.”) She also had on “La Scala,” a great brooch, and others. She has the same warm, affectionate hand, strong but womanly, that Judy Garland has. The contrast of her peering through ornate, gold-rimmed, and jeweled harlequin glasses at the ice show, which formed the entertainment at the ball—this gaudy, noisy, fleeting-for-over-an-hour “show” so antithetical to the glorious Norma, which was its excuse. Callas is very reminiscent of artistic girls I have always known. There is a suggestion of Audrey Hepburn about her, and you know that she can be a beast when she wishes, but oh those prima donna smiles, wiles, and graces.
A REFUGE FOR MARIA How to tell about the twenty-three years of our loving, to-and-fro friendship? There is no point to recounting the pyrotechnic public life. That can be found, in various stages of truth, in dozens of publications—in newspaper headlines the world over, in books….
Here is Maria, sitting in the back parlor of 1453, on her first, very private visit, when she found it a refuge from reporters and all of the clamor that her Metropolitan debut was causing. She is meticulously correct in a black tailleur, closely hatted, sleekly shod, discreetly jeweled, furs flung back—but she is raging: “Why would they not let me alone? Why, oh why, all this with my mother? What did she ever do for me? Why can they not be content with what I have to give them?”62 She is all fury. Then the darkness is gone. “What are these?” She reaches for a very large piece of cake, takes up the plate on which it reposes, peers at it nearsightedly with her gleaming eyes—pokes about the rich cake with a fork, smiles roguishly, and says, “You eat it: I'll taste it.” I eat or really manage to eat a very small bite, and suddenly the rest is gone: She has eaten it all. In years to come, I would discover that when she asks me to order, in a Dallas restaurant, fifteen different varieties of ice cream, she will taste each and every one and I will scarcely get a chance to eat any of them. Maria was a prodigious eater who thought she never really ate anything. Finishing the cake, she was relaxed and all eagerness for news, any news, of rival divas, although she never admitted that she had any rivals at all. She was merely interested in what the other girls were up to. (1993)
DECEMBER 5, 1954 • NEW YORK CITY
TO RICHARD HUNTER • miami
Everyone is giving parties—and I find that I am having a small birthday party for Osbert Sitwell, who practically asked for it. He's dying, poor man, and I like him very much—but his sister! Edith [Sitwell] says there are noises in the walls of her room at the St. Regis, and she cannot sleep. So she went down and told the people behind the desk that she was sure that a nun was immured in the walls of her room: They now think her crazy—what a monster.63
JOURNAL • DECEMBER 7, 1954 Dame Edith fell on Marlene saying, “You are the great revelation of my life.” And went away in a green brocade tunic— clamped to her bosom by an enormous, gold-mounted, oblong jade brooch, topping a black satin skirt—murmuring, “About ‘woman,' Marlene Dietrich … I will send yo
u my Collected Poems on Saturday. You have a wonderful thing for me.” Marlene ecstasized: “A great woman, that one.” Wystan [W. H. Auden] buttled. He was dressed in real work clothes, browns, torn, unpatched. Osbert was teary when the cake came down and Wystan led the singing.64
DECEMBER 11, 1954 • NEW YORK CITY
TO RICHARD HUNTER • miami
I have gout—that means I have uric acid in my blood which helps make kidney stones and affects the liver. The idea now is to diminish the uric acid, so as to prevent kidney and gallstones and liver sicknesses. That means I am on an even more rigorous diet, being permitted to eat only 1,000 calories a day. Also, I have various medicines. I find it consoling to know that I, myself, have earned all this—gorging my way into it—and I am not sorry, because I think back on all the good things you ever cooked and I am rapturous. The evening after hearing this report, I had a real old blowout—an enormous dinner at the Canton Village (which, alas, will see me no more for a long time) and a sundae at Schrafft's (my first since mid-June). Now I've settled down to getting well.
JOURNAL • december 12, 1954 A gentle morning with the mellow gleam of a bird's wing, some blue-green bird, and the river in the distance an icy light blue, the palest blue in all those blues flaring in a lighted gas jet. I lay in my lavender-fragrant bath reading Memoirs of Hadrian [by Marguerite Yourcenar] and sometimes the writing slipped quite away, such marble, slippery writing, but sometimes a great chunk of marble, an idea, a concept, a characteristic— and, ah, a toehold, something on which to pull oneself up.