EUNICE HARRIS, BETTE DAVIS, ROSALIND RUSSELL, AND OTHER
GIRLS
There was, and, I hope, still is, an
artist in Hollywood named Paul Jasmine.
Nobody knows how to find him, not intimate friends, not those who
collected his work. But he was/is of
such an original turn of mind, I can only imagine he would never have done
anything as usual as die. Besides his gifts as painter and, later,
photographer, he also had an assumed persona, a nasal, twangy Midwestern woman
named Eunice Harris. It became a bit of
a local legend that his was the voice of Norman Bates’ mother, in the upstairs
of that weird house in ‘Psycho.’ I’m not
sure of the truth of that-- I never checked it out with Tony Perkins, though I
know they were close friends, if not more.
But it will help to convey the timbre and sound of the voice he put on,
when he made some remarkable telephone calls.
I
don’t know where or how he obtained the phone numbers. But he successfully got through to many of
the women who were major stars at the beginning of the Sixties. More impressively, even miraculously, he
managed to really engage them on the phone.
By the end of their conversations, this perfect stranger would have made
them his/her friend. It was a late-night
sport to which some of us were privy, lying around in jeans on the floor, our
vestigial adolescence making it the hot ticket in town, to be one of those
listening to Paul putting on the stars.
But we had to learn to contain our laughter, as it was the early days of
speakerphones: the person on the other end, Ingrid Bergman, for example,
hearing the sniggers, might hang up.
But
only one person ever did.
“Hi,”
he would say, in his funny, aging, just-got-in-from-the Midwest voice. “This is Eunice Harris. Colonel Tom and I just drove in from Iowa and
tired as I am, I just had to call you before I could even dream of
sleeping. I hope I’m not inconveniencing
you,” he would say. “I know how busy you
are, and of course I am one of your most ardent admirers.”
They
almost never asked him how he had gotten their number. By the time they might have thought to ask,
Eunice had gently wormed her way into a real conversation, telling them what a
hard time she’d had finding a decent place to stay, the smog was so terrible
that night, people were so unhelpful, what a hardship it had been driving in
from Nebraska or Wyoming or whatever her place of origin for the sake of that
particular call. She would ask about
their children by name, having dutifully pored over fan magazines. That would inevitably get them. In the case of Doris Day she was very proud
of young Terry.
Best
of all the conversations was the one with Rosalind Russell, who began talking
so fast and so much that Eunice could lay back and just listen. Miss Russell, every bit as elegant and funny
on the phone as she’d been in Auntie Mame , was gently guided by Eunice
into a discussion of her visit to the Eisenhower White House. “Is it true,” Eunice asked, “that Mamie is an
alcoholic?.”
“Oh,
what nonsense!” Rosalind Russell said.
“Mamie just enjoys her Old-Fashioned.
She’ll say, ‘Oh, any minute now we can have our Old-Fashioned.’ Then a
little while later, ‘Soon the sun will be over the yardarm, and it’ll be time
for our Old-Fashioneds.’ Or, ‘It’s almost five o’clock, and then we can have
our Old-Fashioned.’ Then the clock will
strike five and she’ll absolutely light up and say ‘Old-Fashioned time!’ But no, of course she isn’t an alcoholic.
“And
what she’s done with that White House is not to be believed!” Miss Russell
exclaimed. Then the actress launched into a discussion of the Lincoln bedroom,
and the other rooms, the fabrics, the materials Mamie herself had chosen,
surprising, Roz said, in view of the way people saw the First Lady, which was
mostly chintz.
It
was at this point that we had to hold our stomachs, along with our mouths. Stanley Kubrick made a tape of the tape we’d
made, ‘Eunice Harris talks to the Stars,’ and secreted it in his vault in
Elstree when he moved to England. But
while he was still in Hollywood, he’d had me invite the bona fide Eunice (Paul)
to his house, and had her call, watching how she did it. Stanley, who did not smile easily, sat there
grinning all the while, reveling in the mischief. He gave her Janet Leigh’s number, and Janet
was so gracious I felt bad for her, knowing her and liking her as I did, but
the phone call was harmless. Eunice said
at the end of it that they’d have to get together, and Janet, very much the
kind lady, agreed. “Yes, we must do that,” she said.
“Would
you mind coming over to the Valley?” Eunice asked. “I’m in this little motel right by the
freeway, and there’s all this noise from the traffic, but I’m sure we can find
a Mexican restaurant or something, and I’d love to treat you to lunch.”
“Oh,
I couldn’t let you do that,” Janet said.
“All
right,” said Eunice. “I’ll let you pick
up the check just this one time. When do
you want to do it?”
“I’m
sorry, I haven’t got my book with me right now,” Janet said.
“Well,
why don’t you go and get it, honey,” Eunice said. “Or I can call you back in a few minutes.”
“I’m
sorry,” Janet said. “I’ve got some
company here.”
“I’ve
heard you give the best parties,” Eunice said.
“I’ll be right over.” Then she
hung up, leaving, we were sure, a very anxious Janet on the other end of the
phone, crouching against the fearfully anticipated ring of the doorbell.
By
this time, Stanley, giggling like the bad little boy I always suspected he
secretly was, turned over a prize: author Vladimir Nabokov’s number. One must understand that as protective as
people in Hollywood are of their friends’ privacy, on the right occasion, under
the right circumstances, many of them will betray one another on a dime. In this case, it was not for money or power,
but for a really great laugh, as rare and prized in those environs as a
heartfelt hug. Stars allowed into
Eunice’s circle would happily volunteer their dearest pals’ unlisted line. So it was that Stanley, in the midst of
making the movie of Nabokov’s erotic bestseller, Lolita, gave Eunice the
number of the master, at the moment ensconced in a rented house in Cheviot
Hills.
“VLADIMIR!”
Eunice enthused, the moment he answered the phone. “Colonel Tom and I have been
driving night and day from Council Bluffs, hoping to get here in time. You’ve got to get rid of that dreadful Sue
Lyon. There’s only one girl who can play
Lolita, and that’s our daughter, Cindy.
We brought her with us, Colonel Tom and I, and she’s perfect for the
part. Delectable. Adorable. And she doesn’t look a day over
thirteen.”
“Who
did you say this was?” asked the hapless Nabokov.
“Eunice
Harris. Mother of the girl who must play
the part. Cindy. You’re just going to love her, being the
prevert that you are. You’d never be
able to tell that… she’s… well.. thirty.”
Stanley
lay curled up with laughter on the floor of his living room, holding his mouth
and his stomach. Poor Nabokov, genius
though he might have been, was no match for Eunice. And it was from Jasmine’s inspired, lunatic
dialogue, that Stanley was to harvest the word ‘prevert,’ that echoed
throughout the screenplay of Dr. Strangelove.
Eunice
was merciful with Ingrid Bergman, who was back in Hollywood after the disrepute
of her running away with the Italian director Roberto Rosselini. Because her image had been virtually angelic,
her public equating her with St. Joan, a role she had portrayed in Otto
Preminger’s production, filmgoers found it unacceptable, her turning out to be
a passionate, living human being. She
had even been denounced by Congress. So
Bergman was quite anxious at the time. When Eunice asked her, ‘just between us
girls,’ about the end of her marriage, Bergman said she really didn’t want to
talk about it. “Not even with me?”
Eunice said cheekily.
“Well,
I’m not really sure who, exactly, you are,” said the great lady.
“I
understand, dear. We can’t all be Ingrid
Bergman.”
“I
didn’t mean that,” Ingrid Bergman said, apologetically. “I’m not really that sure who Ingrid Bergman
is supposed to be.”
Bergman
was really a lovely, if openly melancholy woman. I met her in the still- striking flesh a few
years later, when the writer Sterling Silliphant invited me to join them for a
drink at ’21.’ She seemed edgy and
depressed, having survived her fall from sainthood. She and Rosselini had had twins, a daughter,
and a couple of terrible movies. Now she
was making films in Hollywood again. But
the remarkable success of her early career had vanished, as evanescent as the
glow of her complexion. I don’t think
there was ever a more carved, exquisite face on the screen than hers in ‘Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,’ where she was victim to Spencer Tracy’s temporarily
murderous villain, or in ‘Gaslight,’ when she was driven nearly mad by Charles
Boyer. Phillip and Julius Epstein, the
writers of the all-time classic ‘Casablanca’, graced by that face, were later
to be accorded a standing ovation by the same U.S.Congress that had denounced
her.
But
there in ’21,’ she seemed lustrous and sad.
“You
are,” I said to her, after some moments, sensing her unhappiness, “the most
beautiful woman ever to be in films.” It
sounded, I know, sycophantish, but I was sincere.
“How
very lucky for me,” she answered, coldly.
It
dismayed me slightly, her haughty and ironic delivery. It disappointed me even more when I saw Saratoga
Trunk on television some years
later, and heard her say the same line in the movie. She was, after all, only an actress.
But
she’d been cordial on the phone with Eunice Harris. I cherished her for
that.
And
now we come to the only movie star ever to hang up: Bette Davis, staying at the
Chateau Marmont with her then husband, Gary Merrill.
Once
connected by the operators at the Chateau, who, in those days were a little
air-headed, and didn’t always screen the calls, or necessarily connect them, Eunice
launched instantly into her most successful terms of entrapment. She told Bette Davis she had just been
selected to be the poster girl for the Daughters of Bilitis. That was a name for a lesbian organization,
but Miss Davis didn’t know that, and Eunice didn’t elucidate. She said only that there would be a
photographer there the next morning to take the star’s picture for the cover of
the Daughters of Bilitis magazine, and they’d like her to be in a tennis
outfit.
“I don’t play
tennis,” Bette Davis said. “And I’m not
posing for your magazine.
Now go away!”
Even the way
the phone crashed into the cradle sounded soooooo Bette Davis.
There was, and, I hope, still is, an
artist in Hollywood named Paul Jasmine.
Nobody knows how to find him, not intimate friends, not those who
collected his work. But he was/is of
such an original turn of mind, I can only imagine he would never have done
anything as usual as die. Besides his gifts as painter and, later,
photographer, he also had an assumed persona, a nasal, twangy Midwestern woman
named Eunice Harris. It became a bit of
a local legend that his was the voice of Norman Bates’ mother, in the upstairs
of that weird house in ‘Psycho.’ I’m not
sure of the truth of that-- I never checked it out with Tony Perkins, though I
know they were close friends, if not more.
But it will help to convey the timbre and sound of the voice he put on,
when he made some remarkable telephone calls.
I
don’t know where or how he obtained the phone numbers. But he successfully got through to many of
the women who were major stars at the beginning of the Sixties. More impressively, even miraculously, he
managed to really engage them on the phone.
By the end of their conversations, this perfect stranger would have made
them his/her friend. It was a late-night
sport to which some of us were privy, lying around in jeans on the floor, our
vestigial adolescence making it the hot ticket in town, to be one of those
listening to Paul putting on the stars.
But we had to learn to contain our laughter, as it was the early days of
speakerphones: the person on the other end, Ingrid Bergman, for example,
hearing the sniggers, might hang up.
But
only one person ever did.
“Hi,”
he would say, in his funny, aging, just-got-in-from-the Midwest voice. “This is Eunice Harris. Colonel Tom and I just drove in from Iowa and
tired as I am, I just had to call you before I could even dream of
sleeping. I hope I’m not inconveniencing
you,” he would say. “I know how busy you
are, and of course I am one of your most ardent admirers.”
They
almost never asked him how he had gotten their number. By the time they might have thought to ask,
Eunice had gently wormed her way into a real conversation, telling them what a
hard time she’d had finding a decent place to stay, the smog was so terrible
that night, people were so unhelpful, what a hardship it had been driving in
from Nebraska or Wyoming or whatever her place of origin for the sake of that
particular call. She would ask about
their children by name, having dutifully pored over fan magazines. That would inevitably get them. In the case of Doris Day she was very proud
of young Terry.
Best
of all the conversations was the one with Rosalind Russell, who began talking
so fast and so much that Eunice could lay back and just listen. Miss Russell, every bit as elegant and funny
on the phone as she’d been in Auntie Mame , was gently guided by Eunice
into a discussion of her visit to the Eisenhower White House. “Is it true,” Eunice asked, “that Mamie is an
alcoholic?.”
“Oh,
what nonsense!” Rosalind Russell said.
“Mamie just enjoys her Old-Fashioned.
She’ll say, ‘Oh, any minute now we can have our Old-Fashioned.’ Then a
little while later, ‘Soon the sun will be over the yardarm, and it’ll be time
for our Old-Fashioneds.’ Or, ‘It’s almost five o’clock, and then we can have
our Old-Fashioned.’ Then the clock will
strike five and she’ll absolutely light up and say ‘Old-Fashioned time!’ But no, of course she isn’t an alcoholic.
“And
what she’s done with that White House is not to be believed!” Miss Russell
exclaimed. Then the actress launched into a discussion of the Lincoln bedroom,
and the other rooms, the fabrics, the materials Mamie herself had chosen,
surprising, Roz said, in view of the way people saw the First Lady, which was
mostly chintz.
It
was at this point that we had to hold our stomachs, along with our mouths. Stanley Kubrick made a tape of the tape we’d
made, ‘Eunice Harris talks to the Stars,’ and secreted it in his vault in
Elstree when he moved to England. But
while he was still in Hollywood, he’d had me invite the bona fide Eunice (Paul)
to his house, and had her call, watching how she did it. Stanley, who did not smile easily, sat there
grinning all the while, reveling in the mischief. He gave her Janet Leigh’s number, and Janet
was so gracious I felt bad for her, knowing her and liking her as I did, but
the phone call was harmless. Eunice said
at the end of it that they’d have to get together, and Janet, very much the
kind lady, agreed. “Yes, we must do that,” she said.
“Would
you mind coming over to the Valley?” Eunice asked. “I’m in this little motel right by the
freeway, and there’s all this noise from the traffic, but I’m sure we can find
a Mexican restaurant or something, and I’d love to treat you to lunch.”
“Oh,
I couldn’t let you do that,” Janet said.
“All
right,” said Eunice. “I’ll let you pick
up the check just this one time. When do
you want to do it?”
“I’m
sorry, I haven’t got my book with me right now,” Janet said.
“Well,
why don’t you go and get it, honey,” Eunice said. “Or I can call you back in a few minutes.”
“I’m
sorry,” Janet said. “I’ve got some
company here.”
“I’ve
heard you give the best parties,” Eunice said.
“I’ll be right over.” Then she
hung up, leaving, we were sure, a very anxious Janet on the other end of the
phone, crouching against the fearfully anticipated ring of the doorbell.
By
this time, Stanley, giggling like the bad little boy I always suspected he
secretly was, turned over a prize: author Vladimir Nabokov’s number. One must understand that as protective as
people in Hollywood are of their friends’ privacy, on the right occasion, under
the right circumstances, many of them will betray one another on a dime. In this case, it was not for money or power,
but for a really great laugh, as rare and prized in those environs as a
heartfelt hug. Stars allowed into
Eunice’s circle would happily volunteer their dearest pals’ unlisted line. So it was that Stanley, in the midst of
making the movie of Nabokov’s erotic bestseller, Lolita, gave Eunice the
number of the master, at the moment ensconced in a rented house in Cheviot
Hills.
“VLADIMIR!”
Eunice enthused, the moment he answered the phone. “Colonel Tom and I have been
driving night and day from Council Bluffs, hoping to get here in time. You’ve got to get rid of that dreadful Sue
Lyon. There’s only one girl who can play
Lolita, and that’s our daughter, Cindy.
We brought her with us, Colonel Tom and I, and she’s perfect for the
part. Delectable. Adorable. And she doesn’t look a day over
thirteen.”
“Who
did you say this was?” asked the hapless Nabokov.
“Eunice
Harris. Mother of the girl who must play
the part. Cindy. You’re just going to love her, being the
prevert that you are. You’d never be
able to tell that… she’s… well.. thirty.”
Stanley
lay curled up with laughter on the floor of his living room, holding his mouth
and his stomach. Poor Nabokov, genius
though he might have been, was no match for Eunice. And it was from Jasmine’s inspired, lunatic
dialogue, that Stanley was to harvest the word ‘prevert,’ that echoed
throughout the screenplay of Dr. Strangelove.
Eunice
was merciful with Ingrid Bergman, who was back in Hollywood after the disrepute
of her running away with the Italian director Roberto Rosselini. Because her image had been virtually angelic,
her public equating her with St. Joan, a role she had portrayed in Otto
Preminger’s production, filmgoers found it unacceptable, her turning out to be
a passionate, living human being. She
had even been denounced by Congress. So
Bergman was quite anxious at the time. When Eunice asked her, ‘just between us
girls,’ about the end of her marriage, Bergman said she really didn’t want to
talk about it. “Not even with me?”
Eunice said cheekily.
“Well,
I’m not really sure who, exactly, you are,” said the great lady.
“I
understand, dear. We can’t all be Ingrid
Bergman.”
“I
didn’t mean that,” Ingrid Bergman said, apologetically. “I’m not really that sure who Ingrid Bergman
is supposed to be.”
Bergman
was really a lovely, if openly melancholy woman. I met her in the still- striking flesh a few
years later, when the writer Sterling Silliphant invited me to join them for a
drink at ’21.’ She seemed edgy and
depressed, having survived her fall from sainthood. She and Rosselini had had twins, a daughter,
and a couple of terrible movies. Now she
was making films in Hollywood again. But
the remarkable success of her early career had vanished, as evanescent as the
glow of her complexion. I don’t think
there was ever a more carved, exquisite face on the screen than hers in ‘Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,’ where she was victim to Spencer Tracy’s temporarily
murderous villain, or in ‘Gaslight,’ when she was driven nearly mad by Charles
Boyer. Phillip and Julius Epstein, the
writers of the all-time classic ‘Casablanca’, graced by that face, were later
to be accorded a standing ovation by the same U.S.Congress that had denounced
her.
But
there in ’21,’ she seemed lustrous and sad.
“You
are,” I said to her, after some moments, sensing her unhappiness, “the most
beautiful woman ever to be in films.” It
sounded, I know, sycophantish, but I was sincere.
“How
very lucky for me,” she answered, coldly.
It
dismayed me slightly, her haughty and ironic delivery. It disappointed me even more when I saw Saratoga
Trunk on television some years
later, and heard her say the same line in the movie. She was, after all, only an actress.
But
she’d been cordial on the phone with Eunice Harris. I cherished her for
that.
And
now we come to the only movie star ever to hang up: Bette Davis, staying at the
Chateau Marmont with her then husband, Gary Merrill.
Once
connected by the operators at the Chateau, who, in those days were a little
air-headed, and didn’t always screen the calls, or necessarily connect them, Eunice
launched instantly into her most successful terms of entrapment. She told Bette Davis she had just been
selected to be the poster girl for the Daughters of Bilitis. That was a name for a lesbian organization,
but Miss Davis didn’t know that, and Eunice didn’t elucidate. She said only that there would be a
photographer there the next morning to take the star’s picture for the cover of
the Daughters of Bilitis magazine, and they’d like her to be in a tennis
outfit.
“I don’t play
tennis,” Bette Davis said. “And I’m not
posing for your magazine.
Now go away!”
Even the way
the phone crashed into the cradle sounded soooooo Bette Davis.
