by Gore Vidal
Actually, corruption has been more the rule than the exception in our political life. When Lincoln was obliged to appoint a known crook as secretary of war, he asked a congressman from the appointee’s state if he thought that the new cabinet minister would actually steal in office. “Well,” said the congressman thoughtfully, “I don’t think he’d steal a red-hot stove.”
Neither personally nor auctorially did I feel sorry for Nixon during the days of Watergate and his resignation. After all, he was simply acting out his Big Loser nature, and, in the process, he turned being a Big Loser into a perfect triumph by managing to lose the presidency in a way bigger and more original than anyone else had ever lost it before. That takes gumption. No, I only began to feel sorry for him when the late, much-dreaded Fawn M. Brodie, a certifiable fool (of the dead only the truth), wrote one of her pseudo-psychobiographies of him and plowed him under as if he were a mere Thomas Jefferson (a previous victim of her somber art) in pursuit of mulatto nymphets. Enough is enough, I said to myself; do not inflict this Freudian horseshit on Nixon—my Nixon.
So let us now praise an infamous man who has done great deeds for his country. The clatter you just heard is that of knives falling on the floor of the American pantheon, where now, with slow and mechanical and ever-so-slightly-out-of-sync tread, the only great president of the last half of the twentieth century moves toward his rightful niche. Future historians—and with some thanks to Nixon, there may even be future historians—will look to Nixon as the first president who acted upon the not-exactly-arcane notion that the United States is just one country among many countries and that communism is an economic and political system without much to recommend it at the moment and with few voluntary adherents.
Simultaneously Nixon realized that coexistence with the Soviet Union is the only game that we can safely play. Nixon also saw the value of exploiting the rift between Russia and China.
In a book called Leaders, Nixon praises de Gaulle, from whom he learned two lessons. First, power accrues to the ruler whose actions are unpredictable. Although this tactic might work at a local level for the leader of a minor country, such a system of unexpectedness on the part of the emperor of the West could send what is known euphemistically as the Wrong Signal to the emperor of the East, in which case there would never be enough shovels to protect us from the subsequent nuclear rain. The second—more practical—lesson was in de Gaulle’s view that nations are nations, and while political systems come and go, national interests continue for millennia. Like every good and bad American, Nixon knows almost no history of any kind. But he was quick to pick up on the fact that the Russians and the Chinese each have a world view that has nothing at all to do with communism, or whatever happens to be the current official name for Heaven’s Mandate.
Nixon proceeded to do the unexpected. He buried the hatchet with the Son of Heaven, Mao, by going to see him—as is proper for the Barbarian from beyond the Four Seas if he wishes to enjoy the patronage of the Lord of the Middle Kingdom. Then, from this position of strength, Nixon paid a call on the Czar of all the Russias, whose mouth, to say the least, was somewhat ajar at what Nixon had done in China. With one stroke, Nixon brought the world’s three great powers (all nuclear) into the same plane of communication. There was no precedent for what he had done. Kennedy worshipers point to Kennedy’s celebrated we-are-all-in-this-together speech at American University; but Kennedy was a genuine war lover in a way that Nixon was not, despite his locker-room-macho imitation of what he took to be Kennedy’s genuine locker-room macho. Actually, neither one ever qualified for the team; they were just a standard pair of weaklings.
Although Nixon is the one who will be remembered for ending, four years too late, the Vietnam War, he is currently obliged to share some of the glory with a curious little man called Henry Kissinger. In the war of the books now going on between Nixon and Kissinger, Kissinger is trying hard to close the fame gap. The Kissinger books give the impression that while Nixon was holed up in the Executive Office Building, swilling martinis and listening to the emetic strains of Richard Rodgers’s score for Victory at Sea, the American Metternich was leading the free world out of the Valley of the Shadow. But, ultimately, a Kissinger is just a Kissinger, something the burglar uses to jimmy a lock. While Nixon allowed the Vietnam War to drag on for four years, hoping that something would turn up, Kissinger did as he was told.
Even so, if the Kissinger books are to be believed, he was a lot tougher than Nixon when it came to dealing with Hanoi. After the election of ’72, Kissinger tells us, “basically, [Nixon] now wanted the war over on almost any terms….He had a horror of appearing on television to announce that he was beginning his new mandate by once again expanding the war.” But Kissinger was made of sterner stuff. Although he praised (to Nixon’s face) the Christmas bombing of North Vietnam, he was taking a tougher line than Nixon in negotiations despite “Nixon’s brooding disquietude with my new-found celebrity….” Also, Kissinger, being Kissinger, did not want the press to think that he had concurred in the brutal bombing. “I did not indicate to any journalist that I had opposed the decision to use B-52s,” he tells us firmly, then adds, “but I also did little to dampen the speculation, partly in reaction to the harassment of the previous weeks, partly out of a not very heroic desire to deflect the assault from my person.”
Meanwhile, Nixon quotes from his diary at the time the decision to bomb was made: “Henry talked rather emotionally about the fact that this was a very courageous decision….” Later, when the war ran out of gas, the diarist reports: “…I told [Kissinger] that the country was indebted to him for what he had done. It is not really a comfortable thing for me to praise people so openly….On the other hand, Henry expects it….He, in turn, responded that without my having the, as he puts it, courage to make the difficult decision of December 18th, we would not be where we are today.”
The unsatisfactory end to the most unsatisfactory and pointless war in American history will be, like Kissinger himself, a footnote to a presidency that will be remembered for the bold initiative to China combined with a degree of détente with the Soviet Union.
Today we are all of us in Nixon’s debt for seizing an opportunity (ignore his motives: the world is governed by deeds, not motives) in order to make sense of close to one third of a century of dangerous nonsense.
Finally, I am happy to say that the ever-restless householder of Saddle River, New Jersey, continues to surprise. In the spring of last year he addressed a fund-raising event at the Disneyland Hotel, in Orange County, California. For the right-wingers present, he was obliged to do a bit of the Russians-are-coming; then he made absolute sense.
“The Soviet Union needs a deal,” Nixon said. “And we should give them one. But for a price.” Noting that the West has a five-to-one edge in economic power over the Soviets, Nixon said that this advantage should be used as an “economic lever.” Because “simply to have a program that would lead to a balance of nuclear terror is not enough. We must try to add to that a new dimension of the use of America’s and the free world’s economic power as both a carrot and a stick.” Predictably, the press did not pick up on any of this, but history will; and since we are all of us Nixon and he is us, the fact that he went to Peking and Moscow in order to demonstrate to all the world the absolute necessity of coexistence proves that there is not only good in him but in us as well—hope, too.
ESQUIRE
December 1983
CHAPTER 6
HOLLYWOOD!
One morning last spring (June 1982), I cast a vote for myself in the Hollywood hills; then I descended to the flats of Beverly Hills for a haircut at the barber shop in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, where I found the Wise Hack, now half as old as time; his remaining white hairs had just been trimmed; he was being manicured, the large yellow diamond still sparkles on that finger which he refers to as a “pinkie.” The Wise Hack’s eyes have lost a bit of their sparkle but then eyes that
have looked with deep suspicion into those of F. Scott Fitzgerald and of Y. Frank Freeman have earned their mica glaze.
When I greeted him, he said, accusingly, “Why do you want to be governor of this schmatteh state?” When I said that I didn’t want to be governor (I was a candidate for the U.S. Senate) he nodded slyly. “That’s what I told people,” he said, cryptic as always. Then: “It’s over there. In my briefcase. This Xerox copy. You can borrow it. Everybody’s in it. Not that I know a lot of these young hotshots they got nowadays with their beads and long hair. Remember when there was only the one head of the studio and he was there forever? But a lot of old-timers are in it, too. Ray’s in it. Real hatchet job like that one that—you know, what’s her name, did to Dore…” I supplied the name of Lillian Ross. He nodded, “I warned Dore at the time…”
In due course, I read the Xerox of a book—or tome as the Wise Hack would say—called Indecent Exposure by a journalist named David McClintick, who has examined at great length the David Begelman scandal of five years ago. As I read the book, the Wise Hack supplied me with a running commentary. Although the Wise Hack’s memory for names is going fast, he has perfect recall of what goes on—or went on—behind Hollywood’s closed doors. “You see, the book is told from the point of view of this one young hotshot who, when Columbia Pictures was on its ass, was made president in New York by Ray Stark and Herbert Allen, Jr., then this hotshot Alan Hirschfield…You know him?” A sharp look, suddenly. I said as far as I know I have never met Mr. Hirschfield. But then like the Wise Hack I can’t keep straight all the young executives who come and go, talking of Coca-Cola—Columbia’s new owner.
I did know the unfortunate Begelman, who had been my agent, and I had once made a film with Ray Stark twenty years ago while…But as the Wise Hack always says, “First you identify your characters. Then you show us your problem. Then you bring on your hero. Then you kick him in the balls. Then you show how he takes that kick. Does he feel sorry for himself? Never. Because,” and I would recite along with the Wise Hack movieland’s inexorable law: “Self-pity is not box office.”
* * *
In 1973 Columbia Pictures was close to bankruptcy. The studio’s principal supplier of films, Ray Stark, went to his old friend Charles Allen of the investment firm Allen and Company and persuaded him to buy into the studio. Stark proceeded to interest Allen’s thirty-three-year-old nephew, Herbert Allen, Jr., in Columbia’s management. Together they selected an employee of Allen and Company, one Alan Hirschfield, to be the president of Columbia Pictures, headquartered in New York. Thus has Hollywood always been governed. The power and the money are in New York; the studio and the glamor are in Hollywood. According to the Wise Hack, the day after Pearl Harbor was attacked, there was not a dry eye in the commissary at MGM when L. B. Mayer exhorted each of the assembled artists and artisans “to say to himself a silent prayer—at this time of national emergency—for our great president—Nicholas M. Schenck in New York.”
David Begelman was made chief of production of Columbia Pictures in Hollywood. Begelman had been a highly successful agent and packager of films. He turned, as they say, Columbia Pictures around. After four years of Begelman’s management the studio was a great success. Begelman got most of the praise, which somewhat irritated Hirschfield. Even so, everything was going very nicely for everyone until…
In 1976 Begelman forged the actor Cliff Robertson’s name to a check for ten thousand dollars made out to Robertson by Columbia. Robertson would never have known of the check if he had not got an IRS form in the mail. It is of some psychological interest that although Robertson had once been a client of Begelman, a froideur, as they say in Bel Air, developed between the two men when Begelman took the side of Cinerama against his client in a dispute over money. Begelman’s attempts to cover up the Robertson forgery failed, and Columbia’s board of directors suspended Begelman as president of the company, notified the SEC, and ordered an audit of Begelman’s affairs. The press reported that there had been “financial irregularities”; the word forgery was not mentioned.
A second forged check surfaced, made out to the director Marty Ritt, as well as a payment to an imaginary Frenchman whose name Begelman had appropriated from one of Hollywood’s leading maîtres d’hotel—Begelman’s subconscious had its witty side. After a thorough investigation, the auditors reported to the board of Columbia that Begelman had embezzled $61,008; he had also taken, in unauthorized expenses, $23,000. The board was stunned by these amounts.
“Why so little?” asked the Wise Hack, not at all rhetorically. “A real thief in that job can steal millions. This was the petty cash. Let’s face it, David’s a sick man. That’s all.” Since the Wise Hack’s estimate was pretty much that of the board of directors, Begelman was reinstated on condition that he pay back what he had taken and agree to go to the village medicine man—at this time and in that place, a shrink. Plainly, they were all nuts. Now begins the agony and the ecstasy of Mr. McClintick’s tale.
* * *
In an author’s note, Mr. McClintick tells us that “everything in this book is real [as opposed to true?], every episode, scene, weather reference, conversation, and name (except for that of a single confidential informant).” Since Columbia’s board meetings are reported with such a wealth of “real” dialogue, it would appear that the author’s Deep Throat is Mr. Hirschfield himself. Certainly, he must have an astonishing memory. If not, how else could he have supplied the author with so many detailed conversations? After all, in Mr. McClintick’s own words, “The minutes are summaries and contain no actual dialogue.” Perhaps Mr. Hirschfield taped himself and his fellow board members.
But this is only idle supposition—one must proceed carefully with Mr. McClintick because on the page entitled “Acknowledgments” he gives “thanks also to Robert D. Sack, the finest libel lawyer in America and, not insignificantly, an astute editorial critic.” Plainly, what we are in for is hardball. Curiously enough, neither author nor libel lawyer cum editorial critic is exactly straightforward on the problem of attribution. On the next page there are two epigraphs. One is an aria by John Huston on how Hollywood is a jungle. The other is a remark by David Chasman: “The New Hollywood is very much like the Old Hollywood.” To the innocent reader it looks as if both Huston and Chasman had made these statements to the author. The Huston aria is dated 1950; the Chasman 1981. I had no idea of the provenance of the Chasman quotation but surely Mr. McClintick should have given prompt credit to Lillian Ross, from whose remarkable book Picture he lifted Huston’s speech. Instead, under “Notes,” on page 524, he identifies his source.
Despite the author’s note, Indecent Exposure belongs to a relatively new genre of writing in which real people are treated as if they are characters in a fiction. Villains “smirk”; heroes “stride”; Begelman “sidled over.” Although Mr. McClintick has proudly billed his book as “A True Story of Hollywood and Wall Street,” he does not hesitate to enter the minds of real people. “Caressed by Muzak, Begelman sat at his elaborate faux marbre desk and thought about the check and about Cliff Robertson….Using Robertson’s name to steal the money in the first place had been a big mistake, even though it had seemed perfectly logical at the time.” Incidentally, “the finest libel lawyer in America” and “astute editorial critic” does not have much of an eye or ear for English—or even the faux anglais of Bel Air. Dangling participles adorn Mr. McClintick’s pages like hangman’s nooses. Or, later, “Sitting at home on a Sunday three months later, facing an imminent investigation, Begelman decided to proceed with his plan for concealing the Pierre Groleau embezzlement.” How does our author know that Begelman was sitting rather than standing? or whether or not Muzak caressed or annoyed Begelman? And wouldn’t it be more dramatic to have him on the toilet instead of at his desk when he thinks about the check? Since all of this is plainly unknowable, all of this becomes untrue.
* * *
It is Mr. McClintick’s thesis that good-gu
y Alan Hirschfield wanted to get rid of Begelman because he was a crook but he couldn’t because the real power brokers at Columbia, Herbert Allen and Ray Stark, did not share his high moral standards. Mr. McClintick’s Hirschfield is a highly moral man—if somewhat indecisive, because he fears not only for his job but he suspects “blackmail” might be used against him because his wife Berte was employed by the research firm E. J. Wolf & Associates, who did work for Columbia.
Thus, Mr. McClintick sets up his hero: “Reporters, especially women, enjoyed interviewing him. He was an attractive man—a six-footer of medium build with an athletic bearing, hair that was expertly coiffed even though thinning and graying, and a countenance that revealed his droll, playful personality through twinkling eyes and the trace of a smile. Relaxed and informal, he laughed easily and often, and his speaking voice was the kind of soft, gentle adult voice that children find comforting.” I looked in the back of the book for affidavits from children; there were none.
Hirschfield is also from Oklahoma, which gives him a “somewhat hometown naïveté that was a deeply ingrained part of Alan’s character—the Oklahoma in him—as Berte saw it….” Mr. McClintick is no doubt an eastern city bumpkin, unaware that Oklahoma’s rich and marvelous corruption makes Hollywood’s wheeling and dealing seem positively innocent. In the text, Hirschfield usually “strides”; occasionally he “ambles.” Sometimes he is “discombobulated”; even “a man in agony”; once—only once—he “whined.” He is a good family man, as all good men are, and “the company of his children—Laura, thirteen; Marc, eleven; and Scott, eight—always invigorated Alan, no matter what problems might be plaguing him.”