The Grand Surprise

by Leo Lerman

  I can, I see, still scribble a bit. Such excesses of floral tributes, the most unexpected from Mrs. Reagan—a conventional centerpiece arrangement of pink and white—carnations, dogwood, and quince twigs. Carol Channing's note, with a splendor of Spanish yellow and scarlet-striped tulips: “Don't worry—Mary Baker Eddy will take care of everything.” If we had waited for M.B.E., I would now be dead. [Dr.] Bill Cahan took care of everything, and that is why I am now alive.

  The muck that poured out of me lay like a thick impasto—rich, scarlet, flut-tery edges—almost pinking-shears edges—like carnations—almost too right-angle scarlet edges, a smooth surface of rich, rich brown black—very Rothko.

  MAY 9, 1981 The Little Foxes opening—The play creaks like Sardou [nineteenth-century melodrama]. Elizabeth Taylor performing is not an actress. Like Marlene, she is a larger-than-life old-time star. Elizabeth is very beautiful, with a kind of fatal doom in her dark face. When she is onstage, her beauty, her legend usurp all other theater elements: We watch her. Why not go to see Elizabeth Taylor not to see her act, but to see Elizabeth? She does not shortchange you, the would-be actress does. When she is offstage, the real actors are very good, coming into their legitimate own. This Regina and this Birdie are more like the “real” prototypes than any of their predecessors— Tallulah (who acted), Geraldine Page, Pat Collinge,68 Felicia [Bernstein]. Altogether the most glamorous Broadway opening in a decade.

  Evangeline Bruce (very “The Italian Lesson69) on the Reagan dinner for Prince Charles: “Everyone wondered what the Mellons and I were doing in that galère. But it was fascinating…. I talked with the prince about Lady Diana's sweet expression…. She's had it since she was a little girl of three, and he was delighted that I mentioned it…. He doesn't have a touch of sentiment about her, but he went away muttering ‘sweet expression.'…”

  MAY 10, 1981 That Harlem of my childhood, now totally obliterated, save in my mind—that teeming Jewish place, a set map invisible to any eyes save mine. (Aunts at every window—who could run far with the aunts so watchful?) At the center of my map—Grandpa, the uncles, Momma, Poppa, the cousinage. The long, late-spring, early-summer twilights—how I awaited them then, for we were permitted to stay up longer to hop from square to square of the chalked pavement in front of our house. And in the sunset sky, over the park, flagrantly green with approaching summer, great torrents of pink light (years later suddenly alive again on Venetian ceilings). The sounds of that now invisible Harlem … The Irish girl in her flyaway pinafore dress, her waist-length plaits swinging wildly, as she danced to the raucous, tin-pan sound of the merry-go-round. Then, one day, a fat, serious round of pale roses, from which depended broad purple and black ribbons, hung on the wooden door of the house—and she emerged, her plaits severe, her dress frowns in black, sculptured folds—all her brightness quenched beneath a pall of black veiling.

  MAY 13, 1981 Last night, the Niagara energy of Lena Horne [The Lady and Her Music, on Broadway] proving that at sixty-four (in June) she is still emerging. But now she is no longer an entertainer, she is a concert-platform artist— of a splendor. I wired, saying she was up there with Gielgud and Callas. I meant that wonderful [1959] season when Gielgud brought his evening of Shakespeare, Maria did her concert Il Pirata in Carnegie Hall, and Karen [Blixen] told stories at the Y. Lena last night fitted into that season: She is the event. She has overwhelming passion, wit, judgment—all disciplined. The cabin on her shoulder has fallen off.70 She now looks at life, but is not hardened by it. She is a most worldly black artiste. Lena's wise-girl eyes, her long, thin neck and that antique head, alert for any of life's tornadoes, any of life's rich handouts; the little girl-child-smarts; the Cotton Club adolescent, all of the Lenas preserved, apparent—like ancient leaves preserved as fossils in a rock. It is a going off the edge, reaching beyond the point of no return that gets the crowd out of its expensive seats and stands them cheering. It is the danger made visible, the madness that is hidden [made] suddenly visible that gets the crowd. Constant standing ovations. Lena made a coup de théâtre, each song a wholly dramatic event. The audience was the kind, not seen in years, found in a Carlo [Van Vechten] novel. This was really black elegance, chic. This evening returns me to the Harlem of my childhood.

  MAY 21, 1981 This morning in the Times, Elizabeth Otis was dead at eighty. I didn't feel anything when Puss told me, then about an hour later, I burst into tears. What a long, intense life we shared, for some years. And did she ever know that, briefly, I shared Larry [Kiser], her muddled husband? I found out that even married men were queer. (I would exclaim, “But he's married!”) The importance of Elizabeth, Mavis, and Annie Laurie during those formative years is in the all-night jaws, the sharing, the hours of laughter, and the doors they opened. John Steinbeck and Howard Fast and Rachel Field—all in and out. I read eighteen manuscripts a week and got $18 (such riches!), met everyone, and so became part of that “literary” world.71

  MAY 30, 1981 Yesterday morning—Jan Morris (formerly James) came to talk about the piece that she will be writing for Vogue about Monte Carlo.72 After some years of telephone chumminess, in which she seemed all gush and girlish flutter and laughter, here she was in a blue-and-white horizontally striped sailor shirt and white button earrings, her attractive, careful, calm, very English (“I am Welsh!”), more male than female voice embroidered with bright laughter, appreciative chuckles, knowing inflections—mirth always just under the surface.

  I got my genders mixed, sometimes referring to Jan as she, then he. “Forgive my slips of gender,” I said. When she stepped into the lift, she said sweetly, “Don't mind about the gender. You'll get used to it.” She laughed and was whisked away. An altogether pleasant person—agreeable at all times, but with a toughness, a fiber. “Are you sure I'm the person to do this article? I'm not the least interested in fancy society and all that sort of thing. I couldn't be farther away from it. I'm interested in power.” She became, as she said that, a moment of power, very strong, a complete affirmation of the idea and of her chosen self. She has the air of a good-sport girl, a shoulder-bag girl, a girl who will pitch in and help, a girl who could be a sublimated dyke. And she has a certain blondish, blue-eyed prettiness—unspoiled somehow. I liked her. She referred to the time she was a man as “my disability.”

  MAY 31, 1981 The look in the eyes of Grandpa and Grandma's generation (they were probably in their forties when I first knew them!) when they listened to music—Caruso or [soprano] Alma Gluck, or [cantor] Yossele Rosenblatt, or any opera chorus, or The Masked Ball with Caruso, or violinists (Elman, Heifitz) or pianists… that look of hearing angels or even God … a special veiled sparkle in which the soul was visible looking out at wonders, splendors, the promised land … the stillest listening, the heart standing still between throbs. This look was also apparent at the performances of children. Every child could become, indeed was, a prodigy, an adorable, impossible prodigy, dressed in white satin and Little Lord Fauntleroy rig. Inconceivable to become president of the U.S.A. at that time, but a great musician—a player of world renown and immense fortune—that was a golden possibility. Look at [the pianists] Hofmann, de Pachmann, and that newcomer Horowitz.

  One early morning, Aunt Sara [Lerman] called to my mother. We found her sitting at the top of the backstairs which connected her second-floor apartment. (The Jackson Heights house was divided between two brothers—my uncle Max and my father Sam. In a year Poppa was to buy his brother out.) Her knees were spread wide apart. I saw, with flesh-creeping alarm, that between her legs was a large dark vacant place—a chasm—where on me and on the bodies of the cousins with whom I had played show-me-yours-and-I'll-show-you-mine was a reassuring, handy appendage, something I could hold on to— a fact, not a nothingness. Did this first glimpse of a woman's sexual area help determine my future sexuality? I was a very hot little boy. I needed a lot of sexual warmth, reassurance, and I got it from my little boy chums, not from the girls…. So many taboos instilled by adults: They did not forbid boys (pr
obably they thought about the dangers). So it was natural to seek pleasures, before the possibility of orgasm, from boys. Dire results could happen from tampering with girls. Who said anything bad could result from “playing” with boys?

  JUNE 2, 1981 Last night the Daniel Roses [he a real-estate investor] gave Francine [Gray] a dinner at the Century (not the Harmony!) honoring her [novel] World Without End and commemorating the long friendship between Francine and Joanna [Semel Rose]. I had the feeling of an engagement party. Francine I knew when Alex and Tatiana first came. I saw eleven-year-old Francine at Henriette [Pascar, Alex Liberman's mother]'s—a stiff child, very secretive, a child in one of Julian Green's enclosed gardens—pretty when she smiled, beautifully dressed by her beautiful and terrifyingly arrogant mother. Alex, in gray flannel, had a Middle Eastern look—Turkish? He could have been a boy in a Michael Arlen saga—no, more Konrad Bercovici. All three were tremendously Continental.73 Henriette was one of the centers of the Russo-Franco émigré colony. The grown-ups seemed to suffer intense pain and shame over her. Later I discovered that this was rage and indeed shame.74 Francine and Joanna came to work with me at Mademoiselle as June girls, long ago (both came from Bryn Mawr). Francine was by then a beauty—tall, slender, beautiful bones—a sort of late-medieval sculpture on a French cathedral facade, and they were so literary, so intellectual.

  JUNE 6, 1981 Richard Locke to be editor of Vanity Fair. My hopes dashed, but I don't mind since this book is the only interest and Vanity Fair is too late for me—also I've had almost a decade of its remains.75 “Can you work with him,” Alex asked eagerly. No free rides.

  Locke came to lunch—a guarded man, squarish, a burrow beast—some culture, but no international scope. He will last for a time—even longer. “He'll have me,” says Alex, who, obviously, intends to edit Vanity Fair. I see Vogue will become a fashion magazine, ultimately losing what I bring to it—but by then I hope to be away from it and hopefully “booked.” Locke seems to appreciate humor. He must have connections because of his twelve years with the [New York] Times Book Review (a dreary sheet).

  JUNE 7, 1981 I think, reading the beginning of Swann in Love (how witty is the fine blade of caricature) of John and Dora Koch and their “circle”—Virgil [Thomson], Ania [Dorfmann], the Reginald Marshes [both painters], us, some worn music critics, eager young piano students who were then in the “slave” state (larvae—the parallel should be bees). The pretentiousness of the Kochs and the vulgarity of Dora … Her voice was more a scream—a hawking scream, the voice of a woman peddling newspapers from a pavement booth or one of those kiosks found in the lobbies of public buildings. Dora's voice had matured in just such circumstances. Her father kept a newsstand in a downtown office building, and there Dora, with beautiful skin and an echo of Judy Garland in her face, dispensed the views of the day for a nickel a throw— shrieking her wares, raking in the take—between lessons on the pianoforte, lessons which were not to make her the great concert artist which was her father's dream, but which were to fashion her into one of the world's great teachers. She determined to marry John, and after he was beaten up in a doorway, where he had been “doing one of his pickups” (the latter almost killed), Dora was able to catch him. She made him the extraordinary success he became in their life with very rich out-of-New-York (Detroit, etc.) “society”—also Roosevelt ladies. John became the master of flashy, obviously sensual, rich portraiture. His portrait of me—black and pink—hangs in Kansas City.76

  Their feasts were first in a brownstone walk-up, one-plate gumbo dinner on laps, and later elaborate “banquets” in a huge, Central Park West double co-op, very Art Deco, where Dora would scream: “This is just like old St. Petersburg!” She shouted affluence—at her sit-down dinners for seventy-five, at her collection of Guardis and Bouchers and El Grecos (“Aren't they a dream!” she would shriek. “All real!”). When she ran out of self-praise for her possessions, for her enormous person, she would glare wildly about—her eyes those of a carousel horse—and howl, “And this is my table!” as John's pink tongue darted avidly between his full lips, and his hands surreptitiously felt the limbs of any young male seated deliberately nearby at table. At the heart of this circle was John's homosexuality. He told all by his body and his facial movements (remnants of his former flirtatious girlishness), and, of course, I was astonished to find that he was a practicing homosexual. I think that Dora knew.

  This world had its “little nucleus,” as all such worlds must have to exist— a core of devotees—the charities and benevolences done so quietly that you cannot fail to hear them. They had a box at the old Metropolitan Opera. They went everywhere except into the higher reaches of New York “society.” They were the Verdurins or the Veneerings [parvenus] of the moment, starting to climb in the forties, reaching their apogee in the late fifties and sixties, declining in the seventies with John's drawn-out death.

  JUNE 12, 1981 Miltie [Goldman] is carrying on with young men. Each time when he is fucked, [the late] Arnold's photograph bounds off his bureau. “I have a poltergeist in my bedroom,” says Miltie, who somehow combines being a new kind of Merry Widow and an old-fashioned relict—sad, tearful, huddling in the dead spouse's jacket—and, withal, Miltie is appealing. He is so honest in his behavior and laughs at himself. He is basically nice. Why doesn't anyone write about the Miltie-Arnold kind of relationship or ours—the good, sound, long-lived relations. What's written about are the one-night stands, the broken homes after two years playing the field, the unattractive sex arrangements.

  JUNE 14, 1981 The [Metropolitan] museum distrusts, probably even dislikes, Diana Vreeland—the peacock among the domestic fowl—but this exotic brings golden eggs (money). Her legend and sure glamour attract funds, so the museum, so greedy, must “put up” with D.V., her much publicized eccentricities, her prized (in the outside world) originality. D.V. and Stephen [Jamail, her assistant] appear an eighteenth-century painting of a “Royal” and her— what is the word?—man-of-all-work, the one who gets the menu, watches the servants, spies, even arranges assassinations and intrigues and seductions— could be even earlier, painted by Van Dyck. Diana is the antithesis of the museum world. Curators and librarians usually feel that their “charges” belong to them. They frequently resent any public use, forgetting that they are public servants, and behave like proprietors.

  1. The dancer, choreographer, film director (The Turning Point, The Goodbye Girl), and producer Herbert Ross (1926-2001) was married to the dancer Nora Kaye from 1959 until her death in 1987. He was later married (1988-99) to Lee Radziwill.

  2. “Mina talks about how she was deeply in love with Henrietta Bingham, and how she could not think of writing about that [affair], which evaporated: ‘I thought that I could do some-thingforher—take her to [the Freudian analyst] Ernest Jones—but she became vicious. Her father became an ambassador, and she took against me.' “ Journal, October 13,1973. In 1922, Mina Curtiss took a leave from teaching at Smith College to travel to London with Henrietta Bingham (1900-68), then recently her student. In London, Bingham would have many other affairs (said to include John Houseman, Lytton Strachey, and Dora Carrington). Mina Curtiss returned to America in 1923 and resumed teaching at Smith. In 1926 she married Henry “Harry” Tomlinson Curtiss (1888-1928), head of the golf-ball division at Spalding & Bros., where his father was company president. He died a year and a half later.

  John Houseman (1902-88), best known today for his creation of Dr. Kingsfield in The Paper Chase, had a long career as a producer and director, including cofounding the Mercury Theatre with Orson Welles. He and Curtiss were friends and lovers through many years, beginning in the mid-thirties.

  3. The Russian ballerina Galina Ulanova (1910-98) had danced with the Bolshoi from 1944 to 1962.

  4. The architect and scenic designer Norman Bel Geddes (1893-1958) designed the General Motors “Futurama” pavilion at the 1939 World's Fair. Leo and Richard assisted in painting its scenery, Leo often napping under it.

  5. James Whitney
Fosburgh (1910-78) was a painter and a teacher who had been openly homosexual and then married Minnie Cushing (1906-78), previously the wife of Vincent Astor.

  6. When Martha Graham (1894-1991) had been invited to the White House earlier in 1975 to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, she called Leo for advice on how to dress. He recommended the designer Halston. Graham was so thrilled with the result that she asked Halston to design costumes for her company. That gala's Lucifer would be the first of their many collaborations.

  7. Nancy Wilson Ross (1901-86), a novelist and an authority on Eastern religions, was married to the playwright Stanley Preston Young.

  8. Nicole Stéphane (b. 1923), the French film actress (Les Enfants Terribles) and producer, was then the lover of essayist and novelist Susan Sontag (1933-2004).

  9. Louise Abbéma's 1876 portrait of Bernhardt, who was rumored to be her lover, launched the painter's career.

  10. Baron C. P. Snow (1905-80), a British scientist, novelist, and biographer, was married to Pamela Hansford Johnson (1912-81), also a novelist.

  11. Edna May Oliver (1883-1942) often played amusing spinsters onscreen (Little Women, David Copperfield).

  12. Lesley Blanch was writing a biography of Pierre Loti (1850-1923), a French author of novels set in exotic locales.

  13. Blanch was then married to French diplomat and novelist Romain Gary (1914-80).

  14. Esquire had published one section of “Answered Prayers,” titled “Mojave,” in its June 1975 issue. Vogue's letter of agreement and advance payment had given it a right of first refusal. Leo noted later that Capote had to return $25,000 advanced to him by Diana Vreeland.