“My goodness,” said Bunny. “What was that?”
“Frank,” said Paul calmly, “have a look in on Tim, would you?”
I raced down the long hallway, through the dining room, into the kitchen and found Tim lying on the floor halfway across from the stove, holding his face in his hands, blood pouring down his shirt. The smell of gas was powerful and the door to the stove was hanging on by one corner. I turned the gas off and then kneeled down next to him. His nose was badly cut and half hanging off, so I pushed it back in place, grabbed some paper towels, and applied pressure.
Paul appeared in the doorway, not entering the room, and said matter-of-factly:
“I’ll call Dr. Higgins,” then left as Liza and Bunny were coming in.
“Maybe we better call an ambulance,” I said.
“Paul’s calling Dr. Higgins,” Bunny said. “He’s very close by.” And she too left the kitchen.
Liza and I sat on the floor on either side of Tim, who was calm and collected and told us that when he’d come back, the food was still cold and he realized he had turned on the gas but hadn’t lit the pilot light. So it had been escaping for twenty minutes when he struck the match.
Dr. Higgins did appear, brought Tim into the living room, laid him down on the couch, and I assisted as he put in about six stitches across the top of Tim’s nose. Liza sat close, fascinated. Paul and Bunny remained across the room. Bunny knitting. Paul reading. Tim was stoic and silent throughout. As he worked, Dr. Higgins was told the story. Paul said generously, “Frank took charge. He turned off the gas and applied pressure to Tim’s nose,” etc.
“Well, you did everything right, young man,” Higgins said. “Tim shouldn’t have much of a scar.”
When he left, Paul, Bunny, and Tim went to their rooms and Liza and I raided the ice-box—peanut butter, jam, pickles, ice cream, anything we could find. We then made a goodie bag for Tim and took it up to him but he was already sound asleep.
Before I turned out my light, I thought had this event occurred in my volatile Italian household in New Jersey, the decibel level, the flinging of my body into a car, the race to a hospital with rosary beads pressed into my hand, my mother’s hysterics, and my brother whacking me across the back of the head for being so stupid, would have been the way it was handled. But in Paul Mellon’s ordered and restrained household, it was as if a few morsels of dog food had been spilled out of the bowl onto the floor by an unruly puppy; and it could all be cleared up and made neat again by the servants, which it was.
The next morning, when Buds, the butler, brought me my breakfast in bed, as usual, he said:
“Mr. Mellon would very much like it if you would come to see him in his study before lunch.”
“It’s Fearless Frank,” Paul said as I came in at about 12:30 p.m. “I’m going to name a horse after you: ‘Fearless Frank.’ ”
His smile was open and warm as he shook my hand and clapped me on the back.
“Sit down.”
I sat across from him at his desk and he said in a slightly more businesslike fashion:
“The family would like to give you something for your bravery. What would you like?”
“That’s not necessary,” I said, looking up at a tiny Picasso hanging next to the bookcase.
“No, you need to have a reward,” he said.
“I don’t want anything,” I said, watching him tap his leather-bound checkbook open on the desk.
“Well, you’re not going to leave here without a reward.”
Sitting on the edge of his desk was a small Minolta camera.
“May I have that?”
He looked surprised and said:
“Of course. Take it. What else would you like?”
“That’s all,” I said. “Oh, and another game of Scrabble tonight.”
“All right, let’s have a tournament. We’ll play whenever you visit.”
And so we did. And it was over that Scrabble board, playing for a penny a point, that Paul Mellon and I enjoyed a comfortable personal rapport. We played several games a night after the family had gone to bed, and it was the most relaxed and at ease I ever found him to be. No words of depth or heartfelt confessions were made. He was grateful to me for looking after Tim and I had passed a major test in the life of the truly wealthy. Other than a small camera, I had not ever asked for anything and never would.
I looked up from my program at the memorial service to find my section was about full and that sitting directly in front of me was an unmistakable blond head.
“Hi, Caroline,” I whispered.
Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg turned around. I had not seen her since she was a little girl.
“Hi Frank, nice to see you.”
“Do you remember that your mother used to leave you and John-John with me when you were small and I’d take you for long walks on Dead Neck at the Cape?”
“Yes,” she said. “You got stuck with us when she and Bunny wanted to be alone.” She did not introduce me to her husband sitting beside her as we reminisced, and then turned back to her program.
The ceremony was about to start. Liza and Bunny came in and took their seats directly in front of me. I leaned forward and gave each of them a kiss.
As I thought it might be, the ceremony was dry and unemotional. When Tim got up to speak, I saw little trace of the young boy I knew thirty years before. He was in a business suit, slightly overweight, and wearing eyeglasses. He spoke of his father with respect and honor. But no one, including his son, told a single personal story or anecdote, or made a loving joke about Paul. Reverential and formal were the memories. I half expected someone to present him with a posthumous gold watch for years of good service to the Company.
When it was over, I walked over to Tim.
“Can I see the scar?” I said.
He lifted his eyeglasses and there it was—tiny and hardly noticeable, as Dr. Higgins had predicted it would be. Tim asked me no questions and made no overtures. We shook hands, he turned to other guests, and I spent some time with Bunny and Liza before going into a private viewing, titled in the program: Small French Paintings. In a stunningly lit space I walked among the works of: Fragonard, Giroux, Rousseau, Degas, Vuillard, Bonnard, La Tour, Tissot, and Renoir. Just a few postcards from a man who had all his life loved and collected great art.
Staring at the Cézanne on the program cover, I wondered whether Paul chose it as his first purchase because it depicted a wistful, sad-eyed young fellow, hand on hip, in a straw hat, the bright red waistcoat his only bit of dash, seeming to be longing for something, but not knowing what. The pale pink shirt and suit in the equally melancholy portrait of Paul on the following page seemed to me the faded colors of a youth’s once bright future.
I walked back out into the beautiful D.C. day, and got into the car. It was during the ride back to New York, that I recalled how, thirty years earlier, Jackie had innocently altered my warm relationship with Paul. We were returning to New York on the Mellon plane, after a long visit at their home in Antigua in the West Indies. Paul was getting off in D.C. and Jackie, Bunny, Liza, and I were going on to New York. As we circled D.C. I was regaling Jackie with the story of how Paul’s and my Scrabble tournament began.
“And, you know,” I said jokingly, “he’s into me for a lot of money. We play a penny a point and he owes me $11.43. I have his signed IOU.”
“Well, you have to get your money,” she said laughing. “Ask him for it now.”
“Oh, I don’t expect ever to get it. I’m his guest and we have a great time just playing.”
“No,” she said. “Paul would respect you wanting the debt paid. Ask him for it right now.”
He was down the steps on the tarmac talking to the pilot while waiting for his luggage to be put in the back of the car. So, emboldened by Jackie’s prompting, I ran down the steps and confronted him.
“You know, Paul,” I shouted over the noise of the engines, “you haven’t paid up.”
“How much do I owe you?” he shouted back.
“Eleven dollars and forty-three cents. Look, I have your signed IOU,” I joked, taking it out of my wallet.
“Let’s settle after the next game,” he said.
I looked up and saw Jackie, Liza, and Bunny staring out the windows of the jet, smiling and egging me on.
“I’d like to do it now,” I said. “I have bills to pay.”
He did not laugh, but took eleven dollars out of his wallet, borrowed the forty-three cents from the pilot, and handed it to me. I tore his IOU into little pieces and flung them into the air in a grand gesture as much for the ladies’ pleasure as for Paul’s; but again he did not smile or react to that small bit of theatricality. He just shook my hand, got into his car, and was driven away.
When I got back on the plane, the ladies were laughing.
“Drinks on me,” I joked.
It wasn’t that I was at all important in the scheme of Paul Mellon’s life. It was just perhaps that by chance an exploding stove, a bloody nose, and an ongoing Scrabble game had allowed him to enjoy my company with no strings attached. Strings most likely were what he understood and expected. I was part of no major merger, no winning horse, no extravagant purchase.
Jackie had teased me into demanding payment on his $11.43 debt. And perhaps once he paid it, he no longer saw our carefree time together in quite the same way; because no matter how often I continued to visit the Mellons, after our business transaction on the tarmac, despite my importuning, Paul and I never again played a game of Scrabble.
OLIVER REED
Up the stairs he came. His bloated face fixed in a manic grin, bloodshot eyes shifting from side to side, body thick, square, and unkempt, in clothes wrinkled and soiled. I thought he was going to punch me in the face, step over me, and keep moving. Instead, his outstretched fist opened wide and he gripped my hand in a painful shake.
“Nice to be working with you,” he said, as he studied my face.
He seemed to be looking for some kind of attitude in me that he could challenge. I adopted an air of pleasant, subservient warmth, letting him grip as hard as he wanted, and held his gaze. He may as well have punched me in the face.
It was Malta, 1994. Oliver Reed had been hired to play Geena Davis’s father in a film entitled Cutthroat Island, perhaps the single worst disaster in which I have ever appeared. It cost $100 million and grossed hardly $3 million. Months and months and months in Thailand and Malta, resulting in a film so brainless and worthless, it brought shame on all who had been associated with it, but not, as it turned out, to Oliver Reed. We would have no scene together, for which, having just met him, I was now grateful. His involvement in the film would only be for a few days. He had a cameo at the beginning, imparting a grave secret to Geena before he died. One good scene, and back to England for Mr. Reed. A healthy paycheck, then over and out. Sadly he was both at that point.
The steps on which we met led into a movie house where our director, Renny Harlin, had arranged a screening of a movie starring James Spader and Kurt Russell called Stargate. It would turn out possibly to be even worse than our little debacle. We sat in the dark, watching Mr. Russell in a haircut resembling a miniature bed of nails, ooze intensity and Mr. Spader, in bangs and horn-rimmed glasses gently walking up to a disturbed yak, reaching out to pet him, and saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay.” Two noble colleagues making the best of it. I felt better.
The screening was followed by a large dinner for our cast, given by our producers. It was ostensibly to welcome Oliver into the company. I sat opposite him at a long table, as he settled in between Geena and Renny, who were married at the time.
The simple idea of his one scene was that, as a dying man alone on an island, he would tell his daughter, Geena, to shave his head and on its bald pate, she would find a tattooed map leading the way to the secret treasure she and I, as heroine and villain, would be pursuing through the course of the picture. Oliver, in his by then drunken wisdom, had decided on a twist that he thought would give the picture an exciting opening scene. He gestured for Geena, Renny, and me to lean in close as he slurringly intoned his unique suggestion:
“Now, bear with me dearies, and hear me out. I do think the idea of my character’s having tattooed the map on his head is rather far-fetched and improbable. It seems to me, he would have needed to murder the man who’d done it for him. And that information would need to be communicated to the audience and only complicate the scene.
“So, darlings, I think it would be absolutely fascinating if the silly bugger had by his own hand, tattooed the map on the head of his cock. You see, he’s an old codger by now, and it would simply be the last place he would assume anyone would look for it.”
The silence was deafening. Three sets of eyes, fixed on the tabletop with another pair, bloodshot and gleeful, searching faces for affirmation. Quite a long time passed before someone leaned over to introduce himself to Oliver, and he mercifully let go of Renny’s wrist, who used that moment to leap from the table, flash a look to one of our producers, and disappear into the crowd. Geena quickly followed and I discreetly tried to turn my attention to the person on my right. But Oliver continued to explain to me the wisdom of his idea. As totally insane a fellow as I thought he was, his desperate and sweaty demeanor was touching. He was far less disagreeable than he had been on the stairs. Now just a sloppy drunk wanting to engage; he appeared to be a man no longer capable of controlling either of his heads, and beginning to sink into a sea of oblivion. He grew more blotto with each passing second, and was literally carried out of the room within the hour.
The next day, the shooting schedule was, not surprisingly, changed, and Oliver’s scene was postponed indefinitely.
Not only was Oliver sacked and paid, but after being told so, he disappeared into the bowels of Malta and was not to be located for several days. Eventually he was found in a drunken stupor somewhere in a tiny hotel, put on a plane, and sent back home. He was replaced by a more sensible actor, Harris Yulin, who kept both his mouth and his trousers zipped.
By not exposing himself to it, Oliver dodged a bullet with Cutthroat Island. It remains, in my film experience, the single most egregious example of excess I have ever witnessed in the movie world. Writers being paid one hundred thousand dollars a week to punch up horrible dialogue with inane jokes, private cooks serving gourmet food to the Harlins under a cozy tent while hundreds of extras being paid less than minimum wage stood in the freezing rain for hours. Specialty makeup artists being flown in from California on a whim and dismissed days later on another. One of them said to me: “I’m costing them a fucking fortune, just to powder Geena’s chest.” And scenes being shot with up to fourteen cameras often placed anywhere but where the central dialogue was being said. So cynical, inept, and amateurish an undertaking was it, that one could only hope that had Oliver seen it before he died he might have been forever stunned sober.
Perhaps in a long laundry list of ludicrous events I have witnessed on film sets, the one I most treasure is watching my leading lady having her makeup and hair assiduously attended to between each take of one scene. Not unusual, certainly for lovely actresses, but mindboggling when you consider the fact that she was going to be completely off camera.
Having seen the finished film myself several years after making it, I’m not altogether sure that Oliver’s suggestion would not have given this turkey a singular moment of originality and challenging filmmaking. Think of Renny Harlin directing Geena Davis in a two-shot in which she must copy a map off the head of her deceased father’s penis. Rather than leave it to a stand-in, I’m sure Oliver would have insisted on lying there himself. No doubt suggesting that in the course of the action the old guy achieves a posthumous erection.
GEORGE C. SCOTT
Actors are ima
ge, often depicting in fantasy the very qualities they wish to possess in life. In the many times I spent in George C. Scott’s company I was struck again and again by this archetypal schism in him.
When I learned of his death, the first memory that came to my mind was of his haunted, childlike face peering at me from three feet away on an airplane. It was the late 1980s and we were seated across from each other going from Los Angeles to New York on MGM Grand—a luxurious airline, now defunct. We were the only passengers in the plane’s living room–like setting and had not seen each other for close to three years. George sat clutching an electronic chessboard and drinking sidecars at 11 a.m. Disappointed that I didn’t play or drink, he began to talk.
Fury is the word most often used to describe the power in George’s work. No one could display rage like him—not even the other great actor of the twentieth century, Marlon Brando. When George turned on that faucet, everyone drowned in the torrent of anger that poured out of him. After accepting an invitation to be directed by him in a play, my first thought had been, “Here’s a guy who’s going to deck me if we disagree.” As it turned out he did, but in a totally unexpected way.
My first meeting with him took place several months before the planned production. I was asked to come by and say hello and talk about which of the two men I’d like to play in Noel Coward’s comedy Design for Living, Otto or Leo. The room was dark and belowground and George was prowling back and forth behind a desk. After a few minutes, it was clear he wanted me to play Otto and in a quiet gentlemanly style I was unprepared for, he let me know that. I wanted to be directed by him and felt either character would suit me. He knew, however, that Otto would suit me better and he was right.
The year was 1984. It was the first day of rehearsal at New York’s Circle in the Square Theatre. George would direct Jill Clayburgh, Raul Julia, and myself as the play’s leading characters. He deposited two packs of Luckies, a six-pack of beer, and a bottle of Scotch on the table at the read-through, and when his stash was gone, rehearsal was over. The hours he did give us, sometimes as little as three in a day, were nevertheless a course in acting worth a small fortune.
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