A couple of hours settling in at 242. The house is not a perfect house for kids, and I’m suddenly aware of the enormous numbers of stairs. Terry and I get very hot and bothered moving the two enormous cots we’ve rented for Rachel and Sally. We keep knocking Noël Coward’s painting off the wall as we struggle to get them up two or three flights.
In late afternoon TJ and I have to go to a reception being given by the BBC. A couple of gin and tonics, and the good news that we have a rave review from Clive Barnes of the NY Times. The review, out tomorrow, was circulating the party, as was its author – small, owl-like doyen of NY theatre critics – Clive B himself. I was introduced to him by Nancy. He said how much he’d enjoyed it, I went over some of the things that had gone wrong – e.g. the till not working in ‘Blackmail’ – he said that sort of thing made the show even more fun, and excused himself, but he had to dash off and see a play in New Haven.
After tonight’s show another party – this time quite a cheery affair thrown by Arista in the New York Experience – an exhibition in the bowels of the Rockefeller Center.
At the party – Clive Davis, of course, with photographers in careful attendance. Talking with Clive is like going into one of those photo booths on stations. The lights start popping and, before you know it, 600 pictures of you and Clive happy have been taken. But Clive doesn’t embrace you for no reason – throughout the session he’s working on me to agree to extending our visit by taking the show on to LA until the end of May. It’ll sell so many records if we do go to the West Coast.
Meet John Cale, another complete Python fan. A breathless PR lady rushes up and asks me to come and have my photo taken with Leonard Bernstein. This means being pulled through the crowds of ordinary plebs and being held in position, like a greyhound in a stall, whilst Lenny finishes talking to someone else. Then, after a while, Lenny turns, shakes my hand. He’s smaller than I expected; short and dynamic. The flashbulbs go crazy. Lenny introduces me to Adolph Green, another songwriter, who is nice and quiet and amiable. As I talk to Lenny I’m actually being pulled to one side by this wretched PR lady so that I don’t spoil the shot by obscuring his face from the cameras. He goes on about how he and his kids adore the show. Later he asks John and Eric to do bits of sketches and Eric replies by demanding that Bernstein sing a bit of Beethoven.
Clearly the little fellow loves the publicity and plays up to it – sending it up rotten, but playing along nevertheless, and, always behind and around, the acolytes, the standers and watchers.
It’s the NY treatment, and it goes on till two or three – I forget which – when the waiting limousine whisks us back, exhausted, to 242.
Friday, April 16th, New York
A night to remember. For its sheer awfulness. The children up and about even before dawn, myself trying desperately to catch up on much-needed sleep and poor Helen, up and down calming or quieting the kids, then back to a bed which she found terribly uncomfortable. I had been aware that it was a hard bed, but had put my lack of sleep down to nervous energy rather than discomfort. Now Helen’s misery made me feel just how hard the bed is. I can’t sleep, she can’t sleep, the children can’t sleep.
I ring home, to be congratulated by my mother on our tenth wedding anniversary, which I’d totally forgotten.
Try to buy a mattress for the bed – very difficult on Good Friday. Finally track down a foam rubber store and, with the help of a huge Cadillac limousine, provided by Nancy, I’m able to buy and bring back a 6’ x 6’6” piece of foam rubber before the shop closes at 2.00. Many strange looks as the impressive limousine purrs uptown with a huge ball of foam rubber taking up the entire back seat.
In the afternoon everything improves. The new mattress is a winner (the best $43-worth I’ve ever spent). The evening show receives the best reaction yet – a truly thunderous ovation.
Saturday, April 17th, New York
Two shows tonight: 6.00 and 9.30.
At the theatre Neil tells me that their flat has been burgled. He’s now about the fourth or fifth of the Python group to have lost money or had it stolen since we arrived in NY. Charles K,1 Mollie2 and Carol have all had money taken and, in a strangely un-detailed episode, I gather that John C was rolled by a couple of hookers!
At the first show someone is letting off firecrackers very irritatingly. It comes to a head in ‘Argument’, in which a crack completely obscures a line and Graham leaps in, doing his favourite bit, shouting – or rather, yelling – at hecklers. As he’s just done the Man Who Gives Abuse, it all fits in very neatly. The offender is seen to be removed forcibly from the theatre by Jim Beach. G’s volley of abuse follows him right up the aisle. The sketch goes swimmingly after that.
Sunday, April 18th, New York
Well here we are, about to play two shows at the end of one of our hardest weeks ever, and the temperature hits 96° – the highest April temperature recorded in New York.
Crowds outside stage door now number forty or fifty. Much screaming and autograph signing. Nothing like this in London. It’s quite nice for a while. Am given two beautiful Gumbys – one made in plaster, and another elaborately and painstakingly embroidered – plus flowers, etc. TJ is given a flower for every performance by one fan.
Tuesday, April 20th, New York
An incipient sore throat. It worsened, perversely, on the day off, probably as a result of heat and dust and tiredness. Today’s schedule gives it no chance.
At 10.10 we all leave the house to go to a Warner Books ‘Literary Reception’ at the Bronx Zoo. A good chance to mix business and pleasure. Due to a mix-up with the limousines, we do not arrive at our destination for an hour and 20 minutes. It’s free day at the zoo and the place is packed. Our limo noses its way through the crowds to the back of the reptile house. Unbeknown to us, Warner Books have laid on a stunt. We are to present a python to the zoo, and this involves us in having to hold the thing whilst press and TV take their photos.
An unpleasant little episode. Eric refuses to join in. The press and photographers are singularly objectionable and the python is getting very hot and disturbed. It’s about eighteen feet long and, after a while, its huge body begins to writhe slowly in discomfort. The idiotic pictures go on and on … ‘Would you stand here by its face, please?’ ‘Come on, someone tell a joke …’ ‘You’re Pythons – do something funny for me.’
We have to hold up a copy of our book by the python’s head. All of us, including the snake, are getting hotter and crosser. Finally I can’t take any more of these asinine remarks from the cameramen and I walk away, muttering angrily. Most unpleasant.
At the show tonight George Harrison, looking tired and ill and with short hair, fulfils what he calls a lifetime’s ambition and comes on as one of the Mountie chorus in the ‘Lumberjack Song’. He’s very modest about it, wears his hat pulled well down and refuses to appear in the curtain call. He’s now off on holiday to the Virgin Islands. He needs it.
Thursday, April 22nd, New York
Suddenly we’re half-way through.
After the show, who should come round but Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, owners of 242. My heart missed a couple of beats as it was only today that Sally Jones1 had painted a mural over one of their walls. But they were a charming, disarming pair. She, who must be 80, full of life – a real sparkle in her eyes. Did she enjoy doing Where’s Poppa? (one of my favourite comedies), I asked cautiously. No, hated it, she replied, quickly and convincingly – then, with a broad grin, accepted the compliment and eulogised over the film with me.
They had both loved the show and Kanin commented on how surprised he’d been by the mixture of people in the audience – young, middle-aged, old, smart Broadway pros, scruffy college kids and boys and girls with their parents. ‘Just one thing,’ said Ruth G, as they left, ‘When you write another Python movie, make sure there’s a part for me in it.’ I will, too.
Friday, April 23rd, New York
Up at 10.30 after good sleep. Breakfast at coffee shop. Oh, the fresh oran
ge juice! Nancy rings about 11.00. Familiar tale – could I go to an important ABC radio interview with Gilliam this afternoon? Eric won’t, John has a ‘prior commitment’. Either I refuse and Nancy breaks down – she sounds very weak, having been up all night on the LP – or I accept the emotional blackmail. I feel good this morning – New York’s sunny. A perfect day. Yes, I’ll do it.
On the way out my one and only encounter with our legendary neighbour – Kate Hepburn. She’s at the wheel of an unpretentious green car, she wears a headscarf which carefully covers most of her face. Low, gravelly voice offers Tom and Willy the use of her fountain to paddle in. I introduce the boys. ‘Oh, I know Tom and Willy, I’ve seen them out in the garden.’
From ABC and the crowds in sunny Sixth Avenue, I meet Helen and the boys and we take a cab down to Battery Park and out to the Statue of Liberty. A great success. The weather sunny and clear. Fine views of Manhattan skyline and climbing inside Liberty’s ‘skirt’ appealed to the boys’ imagination. ‘We’ll soon be at the underpants,’ says Willy – as the three of us toil towards the crown.
Sunday, April 25th, New York
The boys come to see the matinee this afternoon. Favourite moment – Gilliam’s exploding stomach!
During the second show a two-foot-long prick is thrown on stage. Eric —’One of these little American penises.’
Wednesday, April 28th, New York
The boys, dressed in their new Spiderman outfits (bought yesterday), escorted me across Second Avenue to the coffee shop. At 11.00 all the Pythons, bar Terry Gilliam who is giving a court deposition, arrive at 242 for the first meeting/discussion about the next Python movie. It’s a pleasant day. Sunny and warm. Resist temptation to work out in the gardens and use Ruth and Garson’s living room, where, beneath the Grandma Moses hanging above the fireplace, we have the first positive thoughts about a new movie.
Are we or are we not going to do a life of Christ? All feel that we cannot just take the Bible story and parody or Pythonise every well-known event. We have to have a more subtle approach and, in a sense, a more serious approach. We have to be sure of our own attitudes towards Christ, the Scriptures, beliefs in general, and not just skate through being silly.
John provides a key thought with a suggested title – ‘The Gospel According to St Brian’ – and from that stem many improvised ideas about this character who was contemporary with Jesus – a sort of stock Python bank clerk, or tax official, who records everything, but is always too late – things have always happened when he eventually comes on the scene. He’s a bit of a fixer too and typical of St Brian is the scene where he’s on the beach, arranging cheap rentals for a fishing boat, whilst, in the back of shot, behind him, Christ walks across frame on the water. St Brian turns, but it’s too late.
So at the meeting, which breaks up around 1.00, we seem to have quite unanimously cheerfully agreed to do a film, and a Bible story film, and have had enough initial ideas to fill all of us with a sort of enthusiasm which has been missing in Python for at least a couple of years.
Tonight Harry Nilsson joins me on stage for the ‘Lumberjack Song’. He is coked to the eyeballs and full of booze too, but grins benignly and seems to be enjoying himself, when, at the last curtain call, I see him suddenly lurch forward towards the edge of the stage, presumably to fraternise with the cheering audience. As he goes forward, the curtain starts to fall and, before I can pull him back, Harry keels over into the front row and lies helplessly astride the wooden edge of the orchestra pit. The curtain descends, leaving me with this bizarre vision of a drunken Mountie lying on top of the audience!
Thursday, April 29th, New York
Nancy rings at 10.30. A CBS film crew want an interview, walking in the park or something, this lunchtime. Should help to sell a few seats for the weekend. It’s important, of course.
Today Helen and the kids are going back home and here am I, with pathetic lack of resistance, sucked into the publicity machine.
A less productive film meeting at 242 this morning, although we take the Bible story into wider areas, Rome perhaps or even the present day. A silly World War I opening is suggested, which starts with a congregation of English soldiers singing in some chapel. A moving scene. Except in one row at the back there are four Germans singing. Nobody likes to look at them directly, but heads begin to turn.
When I get home, Helen is in the throes of packing.
Took a cab across town and picked up the boys from Yvonne. They’d been up the Empire State Building and had more pressies in their hot little hands. Back to 242 with them. Give Helen a goodbye peck, grab my thermos of tea, which I’ve been taking into the theatre for the vocal cords. So off I go, clutching my thermos like a miner going off t’ pit.
Sunday, May 2nd, New York
Woke with the nightmarish realisation that I had no voice at all. I croak, ooh and aah and try a few of the exercises, but realise with a flush of horror that my voice has disappeared – more suddenly and severely than I ever remember. My reactions – it’s about 11.00 and I’ve slept a good nine hours – vary from urgent panic to reluctant acceptance and then to cautious optimism. I have often heard of doctors who deal with this sort of vocal paralysis with one squirt or one jab. So, I try to ring Nancy. She’s not there. So I try to ring doctors myself. This isn’t much fun as I have to croak gutturally into the phone and it’s difficult to make them hear. Dr Lustgarten, the Park Avenue specialist, is away. His partner, Dr Briggs, will ring me back. Dr Briggs doesn’t ring me back. I have a bath.
My predicament seems like a particularly vicious stroke of fate. Only two shows to go, and, instead of recovering and consolidating during the night and day (as it has done throughout the run), the voice has perversely decided to vanish today, leaving me the last two shows – the two fun shows, when everyone will be happy and jolly and enjoying themselves – as millstones.
I try a contact of Dr Lustgarten’s. He’s also away, but a Dr Ryan rings me back. Dr Ryan has not got the expected message of hope – all he can suggest is that I buy ‘Afrin’ nasal decongestant and try and squirt it on my vocal cords. This doesn’t sound like the miracle cure I’ve heard so much about, but I’ll give it a try.
Out around midday. It’s a warm, sunny Sunday morning. Walk along Second Avenue to try and find a pharmacy with the miracle ’Afrin’.
Police everywhere. A buzzing feeling of something being about to happen takes my mind off my own predicament. Turns out there’s to be an enormous ‘Free Soviet Jewry’ march on the United Nations, only about half a mile away from our house. Find ‘Afrin’; head home as the police take up their positions in serried ranks along Second Avenue.
Absolutely no effect. Depression and gloom close in again. Buy a huge copy of the New York Times; and decide to sit out in Turtle Bay Gardens in the sun with a beer and hope that rest will somehow save the remnants of the voice.
It’s 2.00 and time to go to the theatre. Once there, I decide to try everything and see. Funnily enough, Gumby is the easiest. The grunting can be easily brought up from the depths of the stomach in the proper way – it’s things like upper-register incredulity and emphasis in’Travel Agent Sketch’, for instance, which prove most difficult.
At half-time in the first show Dr Briggs arrives. Smooth, receding hair neatly brushed back with a precision only doctors seem to achieve. He has his daughter with him and seems more anxious to get my autograph than to treat the voice. He whizzes me upstairs, whilst they hold the curtain, and gives me a Cortisone jab in the arm and sprays my throat with Novocaine. The spray is re-applied midway in the second half. My voice is now a rather sinister manufactured thing, like Frankenstein’s monster. At the end of the first show I’m supposed to rest it, but instead there’s a birthday party organised for me by Loretta and Laura, two fans who’ve been outside for every single show. They’ve made me a cake, given me a present of two T-shirts and other presents for the kids and even bought me a bottle of Great Western New York State Champagne. Everyone sings �
��Happy Birthday’ to me in a hoarse whisper.
Clearly Dr Briggs’ much-vaunted Cortisone treatment hasn’t worked by the second house, despite his confidence – ‘I got Robert Eddison on to play Lear and his voice was far worse.’ I suppose there are better people than Dr Briggs, but I was paying the penalty of losing my voice in New York on a Sunday. No-one was there. Before the 7.30 show another doctor, this time with halitosis, appeared, and, before he looked down my throat, asked me who was going to pay him the $40. Then he treated me utterly ineffectually and went away.
Neil, meanwhile, kept offering me large swigs of scotch as ‘the only cure’. He was right. I drank enough not to care, and managed to survive the last show. As the audience knew my voice had gone, they were very sympathetic and we made some capital out of it. But there is still something terrifying about going on stage in front of 2,000 people and not knowing if you will be able to speak.
Monday, May 3rd, New York
A record-signing had been laid on at Sam Goody’s Store from 12.00—2.00. A limousine with all the others in was supposed to pick us up at 12.00. It didn’t arrive. It was getting rather cold suddenly and we were all in summer gear, feeling like Indians in Aberdeen, pathetically trying to ring Nancy. No luck.
At 12.10 we set off for the record-signing – and then realise we don’t know where the store is, so we stop and ask a pretzel seller. All at once we’re there. Through the traffic, on the opposite side of the road, a queue half a block long. And they’re waiting for us. With an increased confidence in our stride we cross the road. A few screams and shouts and we’re into the store. The entire basement is full of Python records. The album Live at City Center has been marketed in only ten days since the master was cut. There they are. Racks of them. And it’s playing in the store as well.
Diaries 1969–1979 The Python Years Page 43