And in the middle of all this, I only have to look at your picture in my room, and I am perfectly contented, knowing that there is one supreme friend that I have, who will understand whatever I do, mistakes included. I hope to see you very soon; meanwhile take good care of your health, and know that my love is with you always.
Leonard
153. Fritz Reiner124 to Leonard Bernstein
Rambleside, Westport, CT
4 September 1943
My dear Leonard,
Needless to say that I am very happy about the news!125 It is a great chance and I do not doubt for one moment that you are going to make the best of it. You have the talent and the tenacity to put it over. I hope that the years spent at the Curtis with me will bear fruit.
As to your appearance in Pittsburgh on Jan. 28 & 30th, you will feel relieved to know that you are not expected to play the Triple or any other concerto. You will only conduct your Symphony and another work at the end of the program about which I would like to have your suggestions. Also – please let me know the name of the lady who is to sing the Symphony in Boston with you. Maybe we could use her also in Pittsburgh.
I shall be at the Hampshire House from Tuesday the 7th until Thursday the 9th in case that you want to get in touch with me.
Heartiest congratulations once more, in which Mrs. Reiner joins me.
Sincerely yours,
Fritz Reiner
154. Adolph Green to Leonard Bernstein
[Hollywood, CA]
[September 1943]
Dollink Leonard,
I'm writing, I'm writing, I can't believe it. My pen is tracing figures on paper, making bold, masculine markings indicative of a strong character and a willful mind plus creative ability, yet with a strange strain of tenderness withal and a slight indication of liver trouble.
Forgive me for not writing sooner. As always was the case with the Revuers, we have been through parlous times. I'll give you a brief resumé.
The day we arrived, our agent, Kurt Frings, told us that Duffy's Tavern126 was off. The varied producers had quarreled – but, said Kurt, this was a good thing because now we were free to receive really good offers. We opened at the New Trocadero & were sensational, so sensational that the owner let us go after 4 weeks because he figured that now that he was doing a landslide business, it would continue so without us. At this point we realized that no movie company wanted us. Too smart, they said. First M.G.M. turned us down. Then everybody else turned us down all the way down the line, including dinky little Universal, who screen-tested us and said we stank. We were in despair. Then – our agent Kurt Frings (who, by the way, is a sensational agent, plus a Viennese gentleman) got us an audition at 20th Century Fox, right on the lot. It seems that 20th was the one company that hadn't caught us at the Trocadero. Oh God, we said, an audition, how horrible. We went to the audition. First, in walked high and mighty Lew Schreiber, Darryl Zanuck's chief assistant. We trembled. Then all the producers and directors – Lubitsch,127 Schambitsch,128 Perlberg,129 LeBaron130 etc., etc. And finally the great Darryl himself in simple slacks & polo shirt. We started doing our numbers. For four numbers no one smiled. We noticed that a number of them wanted to laugh, but had to stifle it, because Zanuck didn't look happy or pleased. Then suddenly it happened. D.Z. grinned. HE GRINNED!! Then he chuckled. CHUCKLED!! From that second on we were in. Everybody there roared & rolled & clutched their sides with helpless laughter. We did number after number & they screamed. That very day we were signed for a super-duper all-dancing all-technicolor, all-Alice Faye131 picture with a minimum guarantee of 6 weeks at a very fine figure indeed. The picture doesn't start till the middle of October, & we don't quite know what we're doing till then. Maybe a two or three week engagement at the Mark Hopkins132 in San Francisco.
The picture by the way is called Greenwich Village, and we're going to do Bazooka in it, plus a new spot which should be something stupid about the Vie de Bohème of Greenwich Village. We'll have to build it around a song by Nacio Herb Brown – in march tempo – sample lyrics as follows (lyrics not by us):
It's all for art's sake
It really is
Whatever we do we really do
For art's sake.
There's that lady there
A very mysterious gypsy
But honest folks,
She's really from Poughkeepsie.
Plus another undetermined spot, plus parts in the picture itself. All in all, the set-up looks very good for us.
Hollywood is the weirdest country in the world. I'm only afraid you would love it here. One day Aaron [Copland] & I were envisioning the way you might take to it – a mad swirl of parties and gatherings, with you the life of the [party]. Then you awakening in the morning with a hangover – or fluff on your lungs, a fly on your tongue, etc., etc. – and filled with remorse. “My God, I'm not getting any work done – Oh God, what the hell am I doing – it's fantastic, I'm not accomplishing anything. Oh, my God!”
Of course, I should not talk. Almost everyone I've ever known is out here and everyone is rich as Croesus, and life for me has been that self-same swirl – not terribly mad but the liquor and the thick steaks flow. It's a terribly unreal life out here, if you're with prosperous people who've decided you're a comer & sort of take you up. At first your conscience bothers you that these swimming pools & groaning boards exist while the whole world is starving and dying, & generally tightening its belt. After a while, you relax & enjoy it. After that, you suddenly become horribly bored with it. It's really meaningless & stupid & everyone out here is bored & screaming for some kind of diversion. You see the movie people out here never exchange anything resembling ideas. Most of them are stupid to begin with & impossibly spoiled by all their money, & the more intelligent minority are just afraid to exchange any intelligent remarks. Nothing is secret out here, and even the most casual statement might drift back to the wrong person, & shit, you just mustn't offend anybody. The first thing you know, you'll be out on your ear. A good friend of mine is a movie director, Frank Tuttle. He is prosperous now & back in the dough, through having discovered & put across LADD: an Alan. But he was black-listed for almost 4 years because of having openly expressed sympathy for the Loyalist cause back in 1937.
I'll write more about H–wood later. Oy, I've seen so many movie faces and know them all, all the sad little extras & bit players. As a matter of fact, I've scared the hell out of a lot of people with my well-stocked memory.
Incidentally, Tuttle took us out to visit Charlie Chaplin last Sunday. Quelle disappointment! Charlie is now a fattish, ageing man, and he insists on being the life of the party. He was bounding around all afternoon, clowning, grimacing, putting on native Balinese and Hindu phonograph records & dancing madly to them. This sounds charming, I know, & had you been there we might have had some fun with it – but somehow Chaplin was a little more frightening than amusing, mainly I think because there was more of an air of desperation than joie de vi[vr]e in his cutting up. The guy just didn't look cute and I kept thinking, “Who does this mincing fat-necked little fellow think he is, imitating Charlie Chaplin?”
I've seen Uncle Aaron a few times since I've been here. He's been working furiously finishing up his film133 – and the scoring was completed last night. Aaron let me come to the studio to watch. They had only five small scenes to complete, but the music sounded fine. There's an especially cute little theme for Walter Brennan who seems to be portraying a crusty, lovable old peasant.134 It's sort of a cross between a Slavonic dance & Schumann's “Jolly Farmer”. Anyway, that's the mood.
The orchestra that recorded the score was largely made up of the Warner Bros. musicians’ crew and I never saw musicians as excited & enthusiastic over anything as they were over Aaron's score. It was just miraculous to them after all the Steiner–Korngold crap they've been playing. Imagine a composer who not only does not have the hero & heroine do their big kiss to the accompaniment of surging strings, & bl-w-l-anging harps in great Straussian releas
e, but cuts out the music entirely at that point.
Do you see Billy Schuman? Give him & Frankie my love & tell him that I have seen much of his old friend & co-partner, Frankie Loesser, plus his wife. Loesser, it seems, is an old admirer of ours, a hysterical admirer, in fact, and he & his wife have been most generous to us – many dinners, parties, etc. He is a typical Hollywood case – horribly prosperous and a back-slapping one of the boys. He is a very nice guy, though, and really talented at writing lyrics. His new movie Thank Your Lucky Stars has some very nice stuff in it, which he wrote with Arthur Schwartz, and any song he touches these days is a sure hit. But a typical example of Hollywood in what he said about Billy Schuman. If you repeat this to Billy I will loathe you to my dying day. I was having a nice conversation with him the first time I met him. Here is a man, I said to myself, who hasn't gone Hollywood. Then I mentioned Billy – “Yeah, he's a swell guy”, says Loesser, “but you know Adolph, where the hell is he today? That long-haired stuff doesn't get you anywhere. O.K. he's teaching & turning out that symphony stuff & he's got a wonderful wife & a home in Westchester – but what the hell, he's going to end up on the shit end of the stick. He ain't on that gravy train, Adolph. There's no dough on the Icky express” etc., etc. –
For great Horowitz’ sake don't tell this to Billy. It just might get back to Frankie L. And besides Loesser really loves him. He was just giving out with the Hollywood jive that only strong men don't succumb to the lure of.
Loesser told me a cute story of him & Billy when young. Loesser is quite a small guy about 5 foot 4. One day he & Billy were walking down a street. Suddenly, out of the clear blue sky Billy turned to Frank & said, “What the hell, I'm bigger than you”, and proceeded to wallop the shit out of him.
Enough of all this crap!
All the Revuers are fine, Betty [Comden] is ecstatically happy. Lizzie [Reitell]135 is here on a 16 day leave. Little Alvin [Hammer] is soon sending for his wife & child. Judy [Holliday] is this moment on her way to New York for 2 weeks. Why don't you call her at mama's around Monday. SU-7-6229. She'll be able to tell you in detail of what's been going on.
Write me everything that's been happening to you, at once, do you hear, at once!!!!!!!!!
I'll write you more later.
I think I've been pretty happy here so far, and I look staggeringly better than I have my whole life.
I have a grizzly feeling that we've really got a future in this place, Lord help me, even if we do just do one picture, we won't be back in town before January.
So please write!
Love
Shrdlu
P.S. I hate people who go to Hollywood.
P.P.S. Heard about your appointment with the Philharmonic. Nice goin’ kid. Congrats & all that. But strictly between us, where's all that long-haired stuff going to get you? You don't want to end up on the shit end of the stick. You'd better get on that gravy train, son. But nice goin’ kid.
Write, write write.
I love you
I miss you.
Regards to everybody.
What happened to your draft board?
Paul Bowles?
David Diamond?
Your love life?
Your Boston concerts?
Warner Bros?
Rhoda Saletan?
Your symphony? Reiner? Koussevitzky?
See, it's wonderful about the Philharmonic. It's thrilling!! It's marvelous!! I can't wait for the Copland festival!!
Have you seen Jesse Ehrlich136 & weib? His wife is not the big fat colored woman you dreamt of. […]
We have a wonderful apartment here. It's more of a house than an apartment. 6 rooms, 2 baths, 3 radios, piano, bamboo liquor bar, roof terrace. We got it by a sheer miracle, because you know the housing conditions here are impossible. Viola Essen & her mother found it for us etc. etc. There's an extra bed waiting for you. Come out!!
Love,
Adolph
155. Randall Thompson137 to Leonard Bernstein
Division of Music, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA
16 September 1943
Dear Leonard,
After many years of hard work – under grueling taskmasters; in the face of tyrannies, rivalries, pedantries, rebuffs – there came to the young musician a first-class opportunity worthy of his powers. Notwithstanding a mercurial temperament which was wont to raise him into the Empyrean at moments and drag him, at others, into a deep and brooding melancholy, historians are generally agreed that this sharp upswing in his musical career brought him, inwardly, a steady and deep feeling of satisfaction, security and happiness. And they are equally agreed that this feeling was fully matched by what his many (and varied) friends felt on hearing of his new appointment. Not the most eminent nor yet the least devoted among them is known to have been
His ever sincerely,
Randall Thompson
156. Leonard Bernstein to Aaron Copland
Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York, Steinway Building, New York, NY
Friday [?September 1943]
My Dear Mr. Copland,
I'm saving all my talk for your very own personal ears; but I just wanted to show you this super-authentic stationery with its free stamped envelope. Ah, the life of an assistant conductor.
It all seems to be working out beautifully. Rodzinsky, of all things, turns out to be a fine gentleman.
I'm off to dinner with Kouss (we've already spoken very seriously of reviving your Ode!)
Then the weekend with Bill Schuman & Frankie who is pregnant as hell!
But all this is mere substitute for the real thing – the week of Oct 4 is all yours (except that it's the first week of the Philharmonic season). I can't wait. Speed the day.
I love you.
L
Lost my temper with D[avid] D[iamond] t'other night, & left him in a rage in a bar. That's just one delicious bit of gossip, a sample of the horrors in store for you. Hurry, hurry, hurry.
157. Leonard Bernstein to David Oppenheim
Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York, Steinway Building, New York, NY
5 October 1943
Dear David,
I just ran across, in moving, your ink copy of a little known piece of mine called “Two” which set all kind of memories, delicious and otherwise, in motion. I have a tremendous desire to see you again. Is there any possibility? Where are you? (I'm taking a chance on your last address, as of last summer.) Why did your fertile crop of letters from the army suddenly stop? You never answered mine, you know; or did you never receive it?
So much has happened since our last contact that it is impossible even to begin to deliver information. Life has been marvelous, hectic, and unreally beautiful since my fantastic appointment, of which you must have read somewhere. It was a real shock to me, since I had had no inkling of it, beyond a rumor that I might become one of three assistants. And I had never met Rodzinski (who turns out to be a swell and honest guy). The position is unprecedented for one such as me, and a really historic step in terms of other young conductors. But I must see you to tell you, as the Frau says, “what is really going on.”
I have a fine large apartment in Carnegie Hall (address: Carnegie Hall, Apt 803, NYC) from which I can literally walk on to the stage. It's quite beautiful, and I'm having a very quaint experience furnishing it, and it has an extra bed for you, and my own bathroom & kitchenette. If you are within 100 miles of New York at any time, please let me know, & come to town. In fact, let me know where you are in any case.
The day before my appointment was revealed to me, I was rejected might and main by the army for asthma.
Aaron returns next week. Write, & spend your furloughs here.
Love,
Lenny
158. Leonard Bernstein to Renée Longy Miquelle
Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York, Steinway Building, New York, NY
9 October 1943
Dear [musical notation: D-A-E, i.e. Re-La-Mi],
W
ell, the opening is over, with a bang-up reception at the St. Regis & your nice letters to both of us, and I a great hit with Mrs. Lytel [Lytle] Hull, & Myrna Loy was there, & Frank Sinatra (who Oscar Levant says is the image of me) and Bruno Walter & Fabien Sevitzky & Marshall Field & and & and & and. You would have loved it. The concert was less exciting than the reception but maybe it will all pick up soon.
The other news is that Steinway has just moved a piano into my room. The same color as yours, same shape & size, & they're standing together now side by side like two beautiful horses in the meadow. But one is more in tune than the other (guess which?). Now – what is the action to be taken on Baby Steinway? Or will I have Babies Steinway? Do let me know.138
What the hell is Edgewood Road [Longy's address in Baltimore, Maryland]? Liberty 6510 sounds like Boston. Is it fun? Any nice people – are you branded a Jew-lover yet? Any good students? When do you come to NYC?
These and many other things, write, and make no bones about it.
Love
Lenny
My job is marvelous – 29 hours a day.
159. Leonard Bernstein to Renée Longy Miquelle
Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York, Steinway Building, New York, NY
15 October 1943
Dear R,
A lovely series of illegible postals have been arriving daily. You say nothing about your work, your students, your milieu. Is it bearable?
As to the furniture, sure I could use it: especially did you say, a chest of drawers or a bureau? Or is that French for desk? The bench sounds swell: the desk is not essential, but could be useful, I suppose. Could it be used as a chest of drawers? That's what's really on my mind – my shirts are all in suitcases. Would it be easy to ship? In storage? In NYC?
The “dame merveilleuse” is writing you today and sending the first payment.
Glad you saw Randall. He's lovely.
I haven't actually conducted yet. Monday the 18th is the first time, & I will do readings of Diamond's 2nd Symph., Haieff's Symph.,139 & Charles Mills’ Symph.140 And probably all the Chaikovsky rehearsals too.
The Leonard Bernstein Letters Page 20