Dropped Names

by Frank Langella

  It was now 2 a.m. and both Sir Laurence and Larry were stinko. A young assistant appeared in the doorway. “Mr. Langella, I have your per diem with me. Would you mind signing here?” I did and he handed me a packet of my expense money. The young man turned to leave, looked over my shoulder, and realized that the tiny little person in full period costume slumped over next to me was Sir himself. “Oh, Sir Laurence,” he said. “Forgive me. I didn’t know you’d arrived. I have yours in the car; do you need it?”

  “Need it? Need it? Of course I don’t need it, dear boy. I just like to collect it. Go get it.”

  Over the course of the first several weeks we had dinner together most evenings and he could be vastly entertaining. The stories poured out of him in well-rehearsed rhetoric. The one constant in his endless repertoire was the actress Vivien Leigh, whom he referred to as “my late wife.”

  “I got the call that she was gone, and I rushed over to remove some papers and such before the fuss began. There she was laid out on the bed, dead. I tiptoed through the apartment, almost going ass-over-teakettle to the floor. I looked down and there was a small puddle at my feet, between the bedroom and the bath. She must have gotten up in the night and couldn’t make it to the bathroom so she just stood and peed herself. You know, she was a nymphomaniac! And I’m a premature ejaculator! Not a good matchup!”

  Quick off the mark were certainly not words that could be applied to our film. It was grossly underprepared and the waiting was endless. So the door between our suites stayed open most mornings. In Larry would pad wearing his flannel robe and his velvet slippers, and take tea with me and read the morning papers sitting by the window. I’d sit up in bed, drink my tea, and read as well. Those were the times I most enjoyed him: a silly old English gent who loved to play camp and gossip about anyone and everything. And as the days wore on his stories and his language grew more and more ribald. I slept in the nude but when I heard him stirring I would slip on a pair of boxers and climb back under the covers. And if I needed to dash to the john he’d say:

  “Oh, we’re not going to have a look at the naughty bits, are we?”

  So one morning, as a gag, I slipped off my boxers under the covers and streaked to the bathroom, then turned at the door and said: “Oh professor, see anything you like?” He howled with laughter, flung his arms in the air, clapped loudly for me and shouted out, “Bravo, dear boy, bravo!” Returning to his newspaper he chose not to look up as I scurried back to the bed.

  As yet another workless day stretched before us, a makeup man arrived in my rooms to make a plaster cast of a portion of my chest for the love scene in which I open a vein so Miss Lucy can drink my blood. Larry sat by the window watching the process. When it was done he beckoned me over to him and we sat staring out to the sea. “You know, Frankay, you have a very good chest. I had a lovely chest when I was your age. In fact, one of my fantasies was to be standing on a pedestal in a museum and have people pay to worship my naked form.”

  “You too?” I said.

  I was forty, still vain, still watched my dailies, and pored over stills.

  “Oh, there’ll come a time, dear boy, when you’ll take a look at yourself in the mirror and you’ll just settle. I look like an old trout now and there’s nothing to be done for it. Ahhh! Tears before bedtime.”

  After our morning sessions, he’d pad back to his rooms, leave the door open, and I’d hear him relentlessly repeating his lines in an indeterminate accent:

  I did not hear you come in, Count, he would say over and over again, with the Count slightly extended and broken into two syllables. And finally, when I entered the scene in which he was to say the line, on camera, months later, he turned to me and said it exactly the way I’d heard it dozens of times coming from his room. He could have been playing the scene opposite the March Hare for all he noticed me, and he was gone the moment his on-camera lines were finished.

  Perhaps one of the most ludicrous scenes I’ve ever played in a film was performed sitting on a horse in the back lot of Shepperton Studios on a cold and rainy afternoon surrounded by bags of garbage. Larry was long gone from the production, so as my horse’s hooves sunk into the mud, I acted to an 8x10 photo of him that had been taped onto a wooden stick and stuck into the ground. The horse and I kept sinking lower and lower, forcing my eye-line to change and the stick to be pounded deeper into the ground with each take. When watching the film it is impossible to tell that several months had passed between Larry’s close-ups and mine. I was, in fact, so used to acting without him there, that one day as I said a line on the set of the study, I turned in shock when I heard his voice off camera feeding me a cue.

  “What’s Larry doing here?” I asked Badham.

  “The press is visiting,” he said.

  But with or without their obsequious presence, Larry was always consistently for Larry. One afternoon we were asked to stand on the balcony of the castle to pose for publicity photographs. We both faced the camera in full regalia, staring intently into the lens.

  “Sir Laurence, would you have a look at Mr. Langella, please?” the photographer asked.

  “No,” he shot back.

  “Mr. Langella, would you have a look at Sir Laurence, please?”

  “No,” I retorted.

  As we came back inside he took my arm and said, “You know, Frankay, dear. You’re a monster. So am I. It’s what you need to be to be a Star. But really there is nothing so rewarding as being inside an ensemble. Particularly when playing Chekhov. So much more thrilling than giving a Star Performance.” I did not believe or agree with him then, and time has not in the least altered my opinion.

  He could no longer, of course, give star performances. His illness and age prevented the sort of theatricality for which he had been lionized. But the monster in the man was still very much alive and I was actually regretful at not having caught him at a time when his teeth were sharp and his claws were out. He was doing Dracula for the money, giving it his formidable showmanship, having his tea, and being, from time to time, a delicious old camp.

  One afternoon, with his feet up, turning the pages of a big movie picture book, he hilariously commented on some of the performers with whom he had worked.

  Of Merle Oberon:

  “Dear Merlie. She was always complaining to Willy Wyler [who directed them both in Wuthering Heights], ‘Willy. Larry’s spitting on me.’ ‘Well, I’m from the theatre, Merlie dear,’ I said. ‘That’s what theatre actors do. We spit.’ ”

  Of Kate Hepburn:

  “Fancied herself a laaady, so I’d just say, ‘Fucking cunt’ any time I could, and she’d pretend shock. ‘Oh come off it,’ I’d say. ‘After all those years of living with Spence you’ve heard a lot worse.’ ”

  And once he said of a young actor who’d never quite succeeded and tried desperately to appear straight:

  “Darling chap, but he just couldn’t hide the Nellie. And you know, dear boy, you’ve got to hide the Nellie.”

  The months dragged by and, on his last day of work, I had to drive a stake through his heart, pinning him up against a wall. Most of it was done with a double, but he was brought in for his close-up. John Badham, whose style of direction was pretty direct and pragmatic, was going to take Larry through the shot, as there was no sound required. And it went something like this:

  “Action.

  “Okay, Larry. The big guy’s coming at you. You see the stake. There it is. No way out. Give me some fear. Okay, here it comes. It’s in. It’s in. It’s in. Give me some eyes, Larry. Throw your head back. Now give the sucker one last look. Good, good. Okay, Larry. Now die.”

  He did exactly as he was asked, rolled his eyes to the heavens, lowered his head, looked at me, opened his mouth, did his signature twist of the tongue, slumped, and died. The camera kept rolling for a few beats until John’s voice rang out:

  “Great! Close your eyes, Larry.”

>   Sir Laurence Olivier managed to keep his eyes open for another ten years, and died at the age of eighty-two. There was a great deal about him I found charming, delightful, and admirable. But I was always keenly aware of the fact that I was dealing with a deadly cobra capable of striking without notice. A cobra who nevertheless had a way of looking deeply into your eyes when saying good-bye that made you feel you were the most important person on earth to him. He managed a sort of tender pathos that defused the monster, until, of course, the next time you met him in the woods. It was one of many cunning tricks from a man whose bag of them was bottomless.

  There is a tradition in the English theatre that when an actor has played a successful Richard III, he must pass down the sword to the next generation’s Richard.

  “Who are you going to give it to?” he was asked.

  “Nobody,” his lordship replied. “It’s mine!”

  BETTE DAVIS

  When asked what it takes to succeed in the acting profession, Bette Davis would answer, “The courage to be hated.” And she unsparingly lived up to that maxim until the end of her days. My relationship with her was brief, provocative, and, at the one time I was in her presence, humbling and sad.

  In the late 1970s, we were both represented by an agent named Robbie Lantz, whose specialty was charming and cajoling a great many divas and monsters. At various times he represented Bette, Elizabeth Taylor, Milos Forman, Peter Shaffer, Myrna Loy, Marlene Dietrich, and Richard Burton.

  Miss Davis, it seemed, had seen me in a film and liked what she saw. “Is he gay?” she asked Robbie.

  “Bette, dear, he’s married with two children.”

  “So what?” she snapped. “Get him on the phone.”

  So, with Robbie as Cupid, Miss Davis and I had a number of racy phone conversations, not quite phone sex but certainly rife with foreplay. She was complimentary and seductive and funny. I have a fan, I thought. So surface were our exchanges though, that I recall virtually none of them. She resolutely avoided anything that could be remotely described as an honest exchange. And when she was done, she was done.

  “Well, good-bye” was the abrupt finish, then click.

  “Why don’t we all have dinner?” I suggested.

  “Oh Frank, you don’t want to actually meet her,” Robbie said. “Leave it as it is. She’ll eat you alive. There is no way you can possibly win with Bette. Keep your illusions.”

  “I don’t care what she’ll be like,” I said to Robbie. “I want to meet her.” He dutifully tried to set up a dinner at his apartment in New York. Miss Davis agreed, but cancelled. He tried again. She agreed and cancelled again. The phone calls dwindled away, and I resigned myself to having been juiced up and jilted. Just a temporary boy toy.

  Perhaps it wasn’t a bad thing, I thought. I had remembered a friend of my former wife’s telling me that when Bette was staying with him in L.A. she asked to meet Mae West, whom he also knew. It was the middle of August, but she insisted it would be lovely to have a roaring fire when Miss West arrived. The fire was lit, and even with the air conditioners at full blast, the room was an inferno. By the time Miss West entered the house, Miss Davis had had a few and was almost incoherent. According to this gentleman, Miss West conducted herself with grace and dignity as Miss Davis fell asleep, drunk and sweaty.

  “Poor thing,” Mae said, as she left.

  In her later years, I watched her give sadly mannered performances in B films and descend into the worst of her nature, as she physically shrank and began to decay. Beset by major illnesses, including a stroke and cancer, she defied death time and again and repaired herself, it seemed, through the sheer power of what appeared to be operatic rage. And toward the end of those days, I would at last have the privilege of meeting her.

  It was now the late 1980s. I was staying at a hotel on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. At about 2 a.m., I was at the desk, picking up my messages, and as I walked toward the elevator I saw a tiny, tiny woman moving slowly toward the front door in a black and white polka-dot dress with a wide black patent leather belt cinching her infinitesimal waist. The dress billowed out like those crinolines worn by high school girls in the 1950s. On her head sat a broad-brimmed black and white polka-dot hat, and from her arm swung a white bag with a polka-dot handkerchief peeking out of its opening. Step click, step click, went the sounds of her feet and cane tapping along the marble floor.

  I fell in behind and moved slowly forward to catch a glimpse of the profile. Before I could get even with her, that famous voice boomed out of that munchkin body to her female companion:

  “Get the car.”

  Those three words might as well have been followed by . . . “or I’ll kill you!”

  The venom with which she spoke them for some reason made me laugh. She was oblivious to my presence as the young woman sat her down in a chair near the front door and left to do her bidding. The lobby was completely empty. There I was, alone at last with Bette Davis. Alone with Regina Giddens from The Little Foxes, Margo Channing from All About Eve, Charlotte Vale from Now, Voyager, Crazy Jane from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, and the man-eating Mrs. Skeffington. I stood at a discreet distance and watched. And, lo and behold, she performed, just for me, the definitive Bette Davis scene.

  Click! The bag opened! The handkerchief came up to dab the lips! Back into the purse it went! Out came the cigarette case! Click! It opened! Into the white-gloved fingers went the cigarette! Click! The case closed! Plop! Into the bag! Out came the lighter! Snap, light, close, plop, puff, and click again! The urge to yell “Cut!” overcame me, but instead I walked up to her, now seated in a cloud of billowing smoke.

  “Miss Davis?”

  “Yes!”

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I just want to tell you that I think you are the greatest actress of the twentieth century.”

  “Thank you!”

  Time to go, I thought. She was resolutely staring straight ahead, those giant eyes barely noticeable under her large picture hat. But no! This would be my only chance to share a memory with her. After all, was she not a fan of mine as well? And when she saw me, heard my name, she surely would respond more warmly, ask me to sit down and wait with her until her car arrived. Perhaps we could even have a drink together and discuss the art of acting. I could ask her a question I’m sure no one had ever asked her before, like “who thought up the idea of Paul Henreid lighting the two cigarettes in Now, Voyager?”

  Since she was so small, I leaned over quite far in order to get my face enough under the picture hat so that she might recognize me and welcome our moment of intimacy. In order for me to make certain she’d know who it was invading her space, I needed to bend practically in half, and in that rather awkward position, staring up at her face, I said:

  “Miss Davis, it’s me. Frank Langella.”

  She sucked on her cigarette, keeping her eyes low, turned, exhaled into my face, looked me straight in the eye, and uttered these words:

  “I said: Thank you!” She then turned face front and froze me out.

  So utterly final was Miss Davis’s “Thank you” that I backed away from her, not so much shyly as with a mild revulsion. She had every right, of course, to her privacy. But her rage at it being invaded was so palpable that I moved back in sadness and watched her from a distance for about ten minutes until her handler arrived. Ten minutes as she sat alone in silence, smoking, waiting to be taken home, undressed, most likely given a drink or a pill, and put to bed. A great, great artist, living out her final days alone with a hired companion, going to her grave resolutely mantaining the courage to be hated.

  REX HARRISON

  He was my idol. I thought him the most accomplished, technically perfect, and totally believable English actor of his time. He had enormous style, great sex appeal, humor, and charm. But Sexy Rexy, a nickname he loathed, reportedly bestowed on him by the actress Coral Browne, was a real son of a bit
ch.

  He was at one time married to one of my dearest friends, Elizabeth Harris, who had previously been married to Richard Harris—a force of a different color. I once asked Elizabeth about Rex, and she confirmed his reputation as a divine monster.

  “He was the only man I ever knew,” she said, “who would send back the wine at his own dinner table.”

  Elizabeth was one of his six wives, along with the stunning Kay Kendall, the also stunning Lili Palmer, and the tortured Rachel Roberts. Also among his many lovers was a beautiful actress of the 1940s named Carole Landis, who died tragically at twenty-nine, by taking a bunch of Seconal after Rex allegedly refused to leave his wife for her. Rachel Roberts also killed herself with pills and then gulped down some lye to boot. With such notices, it was no surprise his at-home performances didn’t run very long.

  He was as resolutely heterosexual as he was resolutely homophobic, refusing to play any role that would give off a hint of his appearing light in the loafers. In 1962 the playwright Terrance Rattigan wrote a play for Rex entitled Man and Boy, in which the leading character Gregor Antonescu pretends to be gay in order to gain advantage over a homosexual business partner. Rex would have none of it. Nor would the next choice, Laurence Olivier. I played this incredible character on Broadway in 2011, often thinking of what a great opportunity both of these actors had missed.

  Late in his career he decided to risk the stigma in a terrible movie called The Staircase, playing an old queen opposite Richard Burton’s old queen. Richard, who had no such worries—“I tried it once,” he said, “I didn’t like it”—told me one night over drinks that during the shooting of the film he opened his dressing room doors to a full bar and the crew wandered in and out at will. “Rex was directly next door to me,” he said, “and never once opened his door or entered my dressing room. He deeply regretted having taken on the role, still afraid people might think he was a pouf.” He was from many reports despised on that film, as indeed he was by most of the people who knew and worked with him.