SWIRLING

Swirling is not a word I would usually use, it seeming excessive.  But swirling is what it is doing outside my New York window, or, more accurately, terrace if a terrace can be really small and more than hazardous to step out on, especially with the snow swirling. Flakes, or sideways sort of clumps are seemingly trying to fall.  Over the rooftop edging the overbuilt seemingly abandoned apartment house across the way some windows are lit, as though this were still New York.  I am at once touched and baffled by this display of actual weather, it having been so long since I experienced any, my next to last days in LA having been so rainily out of character they seemed pretentious, an attempt to seem a real place.  On my way here I sat next to a nice couple also consigned mistakenly to a last row on American, having paid for a premium that wasn't available.  They had gone to LA for a dose of sun that was uncharacteristically totally absent.  Nothing right now seems to be turning out as any of us expects us to, except Trump.
    The Uber driver who brought me home, a miracle, from the airport was from a place I cannot name, since he couldn't either, being unable to speak any of their usual unintelligible languages.  You can't even Google them anymore in a tongue nobody can wag,  It is truly the end of the world as we knew it, or thought we did.  I may just stay in my tiny apartment forever watching the snow swirl.

You Said WHAT?????!!!!

So to my surprise, and, I suppose, in a way, gratitude, I am growing older.  This is not an anticipated eventuality, as I was always the youngest one: in my class at Bryn Mawr, in my building in New York, in Bikram's yoga class, till he started promoting himself and hitting on students... you get the idea.  It came as a shock then when I was contacted by my audiologist, I think he's called, to have a hearing test.  Deafness has never been true anathema to me, as my sweetest most lovable relative was my Grandma Gussie, with whom I lived for my five first years, because my father, whose family was rich, particularly for Pittsburgh Jews, loved nothing better than everybody else doing everything, and did not share with my mother till after their wedding party in the basement of her family, his intention.  As she told it to me, he said, as they left their mating celebration, "Why don't we just go upstairs?" and moved in.  My mother, not yet having embraced the fury that was to characterize her being, just behind the wit that also developed, stunned, acceded.  Three years later I was born, and so it was that my crib was assembled  just inside the doors that led out onto the sort-of balconied front porch, while at the other end of the hall my mother's several brothers, sisters and parents had to wait every morning outside the only bathroom while Lew W. Davis, as my grandpa Moisch always called him, a slice of wry with his observation, slowly maximized every moment of his bathing and shaving, impeccable as well as inconsiderate. 
      When Lew appeared to be going to work he would hide out just up the street in Grandpa's fruit and vegetable store so my mother wouldn't know he didn't have a real job, as he sold pharmaceuticals for Bauer and Black, and that you could do without going into an office as I don't think he actually had one.  He ate Indian nuts there until it was time to go home, shelling the little things and throwing the casings on the floor.  My grandma, in on the secret, and, as already noted, the sweetest person in the world, swept everything up and said nothing. 
     So because I loved her so, her being hard of hearing didn't seem that odious to me. As few of the people I've known were captivating with every word they spoke, missing a thought now and then didn't seem dire.  Being tested then, coming up with the numbers far below what they should have been, I quickly acceded to getting a hearing aid, as I know this is a transition time in my life, grateful at having come this far, past where I always assumed I would be over.  Also I have made a penny or two, and there is insurance, so the price of my new appendage did not weigh in to my cognition.  It took a few days after I had ordered the aid, tried it on, saw how primitively, obviously, even obtrusively it sat on, behind, and in front of my ear, or rather ears, that it even sank in how much I was paying.  $7200.  The price, once I thought about it, of a small used car.  Or maybe a new one if I knew the right dealer.
      Thus I have spent the better part of this weekend day pulling my thoughts, my phone, my ears and my soul together, arranging to return the things, just say "Huh?" and/or be with people who don't mind repeating, delighting in the happy fact that we are all still here.  Or if they are lucky enough to be cute and younger, that they will be privileged  to have my run, if they do, or if anyone can with what is going on politically. I am still going to have to pay $300 to return the aids, plus postage. I suppose with how things are and what is going on in the world,  I am lucky have become conscious before it was too late, and I had to go everywhere with what the dealer told me, surprised I wanted to return them, was "the Rolls Royce of Hearing Aids."  That might have mollified me if there was somebody fabulous standing by the curb.

THE DAY AFTER NOT QUITE OSCARS

So it is the morning after the Golden Globes honoring of Oprah, the boomstart to the speculation that she will run for president, and my understanding that I am more Californian than New Yorker in spite of Jeannie in the basement who keeps me from going madder than I am, and Acacia, Flower of the West, whom circumstance and her tough fortune and my Good one have brought into the Central Park South building, and my life.  In spite of eight hours on the runway and a landing in Las Vegas, making my trip back here as time-consuming as would have been a voyage to Europe, it was all in the end incontrovertible proof that here(LA) is where I belong, if I belong anywhere besides the moon.  Happily I no longer think I am meant to be in the center of things, especially as the center of things is only a little way away but the line-up to get there is many many many cars long, and motionless, engines running.
     I am at the little hotel I stayed at in-between sorrows or victories and defeats--hard to distinguish which they are from the distance- and it is absolutely empty of soul except for Armando, the bartender who's been here forever on and off, and an adorable young woman at the front desk named Asia who's going into business when she leaves here which I hope will not be soon as she's bright as a new penny and well-dressed, something that never really mattered to me I was convinced, but it is reassuring.  On the TV by the bar where I sit drinking the dregs of my coffee, served at my request in a paper cup as the china sucks, Trump, cross-armed, is fighting allegations that he had ties to mobsters which he certainly wouldn't have if they had any taste.  
     Am not exactly sure what I'm doing here besides being surprised at still being alive, hoping the brain is continuing to dance, even without a cute partner.
     Mon Dieu!  Outside the six-paned window that sees across the street to the small building almost everyone goes to for plastic surgery, rain actually falls.  I would like to think I may have brought it, as it isn't money, and is available to everyone at too long last.  Going back upstairs now in the hope there's something inside my head I may find in my room.  

ALMOST EVERYTHING MOVED EXCEPT...

for my heart.
     It is frightening or surreal, I have not been able to ascertain which, how unmoved I am by what is going on.  The truth that this terrifying clown has the whole world in the palm of his stubby-fingered hand is too much a treatment for a bad TV not-quite comedy not to be tossed out the window, except that it would doubtless land on somebody, somebody being all of us.  
     My desk is an unmeasured pile of litter, all the things I was planning to organize before the leaving, not being able to sort out when I was going, not knowing for what, if anything is there, if the heat of California would be worse for me than the absence of true human contact, besides the one or two seemingly loving presences I have found in New York, apart from the doormen, whose affection you can no longer measure as genuine at Christmas.  I just experienced the closest I have come to orgasm in decades at finding my passport in the litter on my desktop.  I am so ashamed of what I have become, dull, fearful, productive of nothing.  I was never afraid of age, not realizing how quickly, suddenly, and unmarkedly it could hit you, not realizing what a Strong-y you assumed you were.  I would write about it to share and soothe all the others experiencing this shit, except I'm afraid that halfway through I would forget what I was writing, and reading it over, would wonder why. Just received a brilliant e-mail(yes, Virginia, they do come in scattered time) from a longtime brilliant (right, who am I to judge?) buddy who continues to send the long, well-thought-out e-mail, perhaps not realizing how over those are, being emotionally secure enough not to care, or even measure.  It is such a strange time to be still seeking, and either brave or stupid enough to care. Especially if you think the whole thing comes with a solution.  We'll find out.  Or not.
   I like best, of course, the idea that it is all part of a Russian plot, as that makes us less stupid than we seem, more of an Agatha Christie than unthinkable, except who really understood her anyway.  Life, she am a puzzle.  Especially when from time to time you have been happy with/in her.  Usually when you were dancing. At least in your heart.

THE WANDERING JEW

So as we enter what I hope will be a peaceful and productive next year, I am trying not to let what is happening paralyze me.  I have
such happiness when I remember how it was here, when I was young.
      We were living on East 8something Street.  There was a little news store a block away, with a gentle old man selling magazines and papers on the other side of a small shelved window.  He had an accent and a pipe in his mouth.  It felt like Don and I were his only
customers, it was so quiet.
      And then he was closing, put out of business by a builder, so he gave us two tickets from his final promo that would get us into a movie we wanted to see. I can't remember what it was, but I remember him, kind as he'd been.  Buyers boarded it up, that little not-a-lot-of candy-shop.  I went back to see it once and the space had been mounted by an apartment building like an indifferent lover.
    How different things were in The Not That Long Ago.  At least it seems not that long.  But maybe that's because you remember it better when you cherish it more.

PICKING UP PEOPLE

What still works better in New York than anyplace else is picking up people.  Better even than usual is when there are blustery winds and folks, as newscasters try to call them in their hope of trying to make all this sound connected and friendly, move into coffee shops and bump into other people, as I did today.  Two very sharp and attractive women, one with tiny scarf covering her head, the other dark hair newly washed and almost in her soup, so intense was their conversation.
     It was, that portion I caught of it at least, about Donald Trump, that name held so high in his own limited attention span, that we too lightheartedly laughed off in its earliest emergence, thinking America was too bright to let this happen.   How could it have?
    Anyway, they were lovely, and as this was their first actual meeting, abetted by my intrusion from the next small table, intense and sadly joyous, as most enlightened conversation seems to be these days.  Those of us who love our country for the right reasons are forced to observe it like the soap opera he is making this portion of history into, assuming we survive.  "Joyous", as he would put it, probably in caps, because at least people are waking up, as proven by the numbers that made it to the election and squeaked it into turning out the right way.  Or, more aptly, the moderate one.  I had a dream in which Benjamin Franklin, who believed in reincarnation, so I frequently see him as here, and wish he were, gives a sigh of relief.
     Where it will all go from here is, of course, a puzzle.  I trust none of it, and wish my friends who loved country above party were still alive and in Washington.  But close as it is to Christmas,
I don't think there is a Santa Claus, and there is a Donald Trump.
      Such a bad scenario.  If only there were a better Editor.  Maybe there is.  We shall see.  Providing we still have eyes and he hasn't sold us to another country.
      

REPORTFROMTHEFRONT: The God Within

So as I continue my struggle to find out where I belong, if one is supposed to belong in one place, I attended my Quaker meeting this morning and that certainly ain't it. First, there is the reality of Memory, which, though I was given a Still There by the Memory doctor, is better when there is someone else nearby who remembers, is best in another place, spiritually anyway.  The Quaker Meeting in New York is absent of soul, but may be intensified by the truth that I can hear almost nothing.  There are many rows of built-in bench, and a small number of people who also appear built in, none of their backs particularly inspiring, and I leave hungering for my little Meeting in Santa Monica.  So along with my growing affection for my Grandboys, I have a hunger for connection with my West Coast spiritual buddies.  Also I found out after leaving that meeting that the woman there who seemed smartest and most intense had gone to Bryn Mawr, so am hoping that pinky touch of No Kidding! can be re-established.  And the colder it grows, the older I realize I am, the most happily spoiled by weather all these years I didn't have much to cling to, if you can be said to cling to air.
    Then I stopped in a food place on 57th street and enjoyed myself as I rarely do, or at least haven't done since I used to go south towards San Diego of a Sunday.  Eating all kinds of thing I wouldn't dare usually, imagining the place had just opened, only to discover on departure that it had been there for 18 years.  None of this is particularly exciting except as an alert that my spirit has been slumbering, if that's how I can describe it, assuming or probably more accurately hoping it hasn't died.  If I stayed here I would probably chub up, as fooding is the most sociable---it seems-- activity I have found, since the Y hasn't spoken to my soul, if I still have one.  A soul, that is, since we can be sure there is a Y.
    Oh please, God, tap me on the mind.  Let me know I am still here, and there is a reason to be.  It is quietly dazzling to discover you are still here when you thought you were gone.  And there is even a song, the other side of this, even after you have less than delighted in Brigadoon, though were happy to have seen it, City Center being so close, even though your own center seemed so far away.  You can remember a friendship with the tossed away Mrs. Alan Jay Lerner, the lovely Nancy Olsen, who was told by him that he couldn't live without Micheline, then seeing her on a side street in the south of France a few years later, withered.  The universe does seem to mete out Justice.
     

WHAT THE HELL: Why Not?

So I have lowered my head against the wind, and my expectations, bought an overpriced book (Callas) at one of the few remaining independent bookshops in Manhattan, have given up hope of a predictable schedule, (pronounced the British way,) and decided not to run away, not today anyway.  Somewhere inside me I am borderline terrified, as I have not been this old before and am surprised to still feel girlish.  You never change from inside your eyes.

     In the same book batch that I found Callas, I found a much cheaper little volume by Thornton Wilder, who at one time I imagined myself to be like, creatively anyway, full of bright imaginings as I was, not having come to terms with the truth that I would probably never find the creative partner for my soul.  I was a little girl for a very long time, the happy conviction that I would be able to fulfill myself as a dreamer who could write and be realized, exacerbated by a novel, Sweet William, being optioned when I was in my early twenties (Sweet William), going back to my high school (Cherry Lawn, Darien, Connecticut, the capital of anti-Semitism in America, and us mostly Jewish kids, put out on the hill by confused or incompetent parents) for a movie that never got made (the star went to another film instead, taking the money and the deal with him.) I still get flashes of memory of the long weekend when it was still going to happen, and Bazz Burwell, my wondrous once drama teacher, sat musing , his fine face in his fingertips, and seeing me seeing him softly said, "I was just remembering you as a student."  I really loved him but didn't have the money he needed, so the relationship didn't continue, the school went out of business, and I still don't know if the Carter Burwell creatively in the movie business is his son.  "Age cannot wither nor custom stale her infinite variety" Shakespeare wrote of Antony musing on Cleopatra, but the relationship must not have gone on long enough.

          Oh, Life she am a puzzle. As is this instrument of writing I am not quite sure what to call, typewriter that she really isn't.  Laptop, I guess.   Just as I am unable to maintain true sovereignty over the size of the print. 

       I could take it back to the Apple store, mercifully not that far away from the apartment left me by Maman, as I think of her in affected recollection, in spite of her oft murmured threats that she wouldn't, including once as she awakened from a coma.  "You're not getting the apartment!" she grunted, before even opening her eyes.  

      I have to guess she really loved me, as much or as well as she could, having sold, lost or profligated everything she had, from the diamonds to the Jackson Pollock, The Blue Unconscious, 8 x 12, feet that is, which I slept under when home from school once she'd married Puggy, and turned it (and him) on its side("What difference does it make?"she'd said.)  He had gone to school with Clement Greenberg, the art critic, who'd gotten Puggy (Saul Schwamm he was to fellow brokers who'd mostly had their backs to him, since he was a Jew) to buy the painting as he was the only one with any money.  When their marriage ended... he'd fled, left everything, and she, a child of the Depression, had panicked and sold everything in the huge Park Avenue apartment for peanuts, almost literally, the Pollock for ten thousand.  It is now worth maybe two hundred million.  Maybe more  by the time you're reading this.  Gag.  Oh, well.

       It's only money.

       Cost me only a hundred and ten dollars to go to the Christmas show at Radio City.  I thought (not sure) I had gone there as a little girl, with my daddy, as I called him and was sure he was, except I liked my mother better, cruel though she was.  Cruel is a heavy-handed, heavy-hearted word, but it applied to her.  She was beautiful and brilliant, the first after minor plastic surgery: nose.  Incredible eyes and a dazzling smile.  Only one cavity her whole life.  

      There had to have been something truly mentally ill about her, as she was disproportionately smart, and had times been different probably could have become the head of General Motors.  As it was, she knew how to downcast those eyes.  But no idea how to look up into herself to become.

      Poor Mama.  Probably she was as enraged as she was having spent all those lunchtimes in a cubicle toilet in a bathroom at 

school, eating the sandwich Grandma Gussie had made her, saving the two dimes, giving them, all added up, to Grandpa when she'd graduated.

        Writing this, remembering as best I can, I am touched that she was only as crazy as she was.  And only part of the time.  Even more moved  by how much in love they must have been, a few years later,  Puggy the self-made Jew on Wall Street, Helen the social director she'd become after the struggle upwards from secretary she'd learned to be on the train as we Southerned towards Florida from Pittsburgh that winter.  I'd turned five but had to pretend to be four as we didn't have the money for the ticket.  Already knowing how to read,  I could dictate to her as she practiced  shorthand, and we moved towards her improbable Destiny.

      

So to my happy surprise, I am starting to be glad to be in New York.  I spent this... I guess it is: Holiday weekend, and the day after in this allegedly festive town where I have been sullenly less than glad, running into some really nice people, some of them picked up in coffee shops which you can do here, and on the streets themselves where there were parades and races and quests for merriment.  Forgive me, Universe, for doubting.  I would not like to blame it on Donald Trump, but I could.
    In any and all events, I have beamed onto some really good spots, that carried on them some truly nice people, seen a good ballet, The Red Shoes, the stage adaptation, of my high school roommates obsession. It was not as engaging as my high school roommate, Lenny Landau, Leonara she was actually, who had a life in the theatre, semi-sort of, and with whom I reconnected for not long enough as I really liked her, and she was married to a creative man and lived in a town house, which seemed very creative to me.
      But the beautiful San Diegan I met in my coffee shop and I have definitely linked up, and it is joyful to make friends, something i hadn't really been doing much except for the people who work in my building.  This is a tough town if you're not going to the right places which seemed to be everywhere i wasn't.  But enough about loneliness. It does take a strong hold, and that pulls you into television and then you grow old.
     Am off to a concert now, something I did not often enough since coming here, walking as I've been with downcast eyes, shut ears, and weighted soul.  See you later, I hope.

So alas, I missed a day.  Two now.  May I come back this evening.

So when I got to the restaurant, late, which I didn’t mean to make intentional, it just takes longer to get someplace on foot than I remembered, or maybe the foot is just slower, it was closed.  Not permanently, just for the day, or maybe the Universe toying with my sense of attachment, imagining that things were supposed to work out, even though it was New York.  So I walked over to Lincoln Center, hoping to find/bumpinto them, sprawling though that setting is, wandered around, spoke to some kind people working windows where ‘No,’ there was no ticket for me, went over to the coffee shop where I saladed next to a kind couple from outside the city as many seem to be on a concert night, went to the ticket window, bought one for myself, when the woman of the couple came to the window and offered me a ticket as a child hadn’t shown up.  So I returned my bought ticket, to the annoyance of the woman in the window(No, not the movie of that name, if you are old enough to remember) and went inside and up to sit with my new, generous friends.   

      Concert great, I thought, though twas just the first half, met another wondrous couple, European, elderly as apparently I am, too, went back in and was impressed by the performance of Jeremy Irons as I always am, as he stays masterful and doesn’t age, especially from the good balcony. Afterwards went down where two aging Brooklyn women were arguing the spiritual applicability of the piece we had just heard.  I hadn’t judged it for God rules but just theatre.  Pretty good, I’d thought, but what do I know.  Then I’d wandered down, had a nice exchange with a young viola-ist, and ambled down the street and into a cab to go home, as I’m trying to make it.  Got to my door when I’d dug into my sleeve and not found my earmuffs, the fur accessory to my silver-fox trimmed jacket, all I have left of unnecessary luxury, having sent my ground-length red-dyed mink to a cleaners that has closed and disappeared, but hey, I was fearful of that ensemble anyway.  I can remember having worn it only once when Maman, who had given it to me told me “Wear it with nothing underneath, as you have no taste in clothes.”

    Now, fearful of having lost the earmuffs, having given away most of the many furs Maman had had and passed down, I taxied back to Lincoln Center, where the muffs weren’t on the ground, found a security guard who let me back into the center where I searched for my headpiece to no avail, took a taxi back to home, which I am still trying to make it, and no, no one had come to leave the earmuffs, went upstairs having resigned myself to the loss, trying to figure which earmuffs I might wear with it even though they weren’t a true matching accessory,  took my fox-fur trimmed cape off, and went to hang it in the closet, when all the way up on my shoulder I found the earmuffs.  Am I that old, or is my upper arm that insensitive?

    In any case, I regard it all as a Victory.  I have made new friends— I received an e-mail from the nice couple who’d invited me to concert and then the restaurant had been closed, and we hadn’t found each other, we shall meet again, my new wondrous buddy from Florida who feels like a contemporary from inside my eyes, my doorman seems always glad to see me, and it looks like Trump is on his way out, though it ain’t going to be easy. 

LOVE AND GRATEFUL KISSES.

Where Do We Go to Scream?

So as it turns out, this Rube isn't really president.  The fascist who runs him is.
   I just got back from my Quaker Meeting.  Don, my darling husband, too long late, said I should introduce myself as a Quaker-Buddhist-Jew: "That will really confuse them."  But it doesn't confuse me.  Quaker is what I am when I go very deep and quiet.  Buddhist is what I am when I am around Jack, my teacher and friend and a really wise, touching, funny man.   He is not doing very well with all of this either. I don't think anybody is doing well who can really feel.
   And Jew is what you never really lose if you are born into it, as it will pursue you in places you didn't know had anti-Semitism.
    What an incredible time.  I feel Quakerly arms around me.  Impelled to get up for a change, I had to go to Meeting this morning as I am so... what?  Anxious is too easy a word.  That anyone is paying real attention to this... again, what?  Moron? Lout? Swine?   The people who support him, in the little towns, are not evil.  They just have no idea.  No idea what he really thinks, if he thinks anything besides 'Me, Me, Me.'
      I am not afraid so much as numbed by sorrow.  Heartened by the soft but firm undercurrent of sadness at my Quaker Meeting, I am almost confident this will be well dealt with, except that I fear that Evil, which I don't mean to capitalize but have to, will find insidious ways to subvert and foil.  There is such strength in Quakerly belief.  The power of Silence.  If only we could muffle him.
     I do not hope for his assassination, as Pence is worse, and being smarter would be more effective, and deadlier.  Oh, God, if you are there, and I really believe you are, especially in Meeting, Do SOMETHING.  And let it be comic.

A WEDDING

So I am inspired and amused by the news that they have a TV movie, FEUD, about Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. 
 When I was getting ready, organized and spirited to marry Don, I went to the Plaza to book the place where we would be married, on a day when my mother couldn’t have my father arrested for failure to pay child support, for me.  I was 29.
  I put that in numbers rather than words because it makes it look the more stupid and ridiculous, both of which it was.  My mother had been suing him from the time I was a child, when he owed it, and ducked it, everywhere he went, which included Tucson 
where he’d gone because Selma couldn’t breathe.  She was his wife, and had been a friend of my mother’s to whom she’d introduced him because she was sure Selma would mean his death.   Instead, they’d fallen in love and he’d moved there and become Mayor.  He’d never been in politics, or a Republican, both of which he did, apparently it never being too late in life to change your skin. 

     So I went to the Plaza, booked the place for April 28th, and left.  In front of the
elevator stood Bette Davis, a great ribbon on her ass, also great.  If she hadn’t been a movie star, it would have been overwhelming.  I had gone to make the reservation, and told the woman in charge I was Miss Davis, causing some excitement and confusion as Don had announced himself as Miss Davis’ s fiancee, and they thought he meant Bette, who had an appointment at the same time. 

       Having been emboldened by the large, sequin-bordered ribbon on her butt, I told The Bette of the confusion.  She’d said in true Bette style: “How (breath)…very (breath)… amusing.”  It was almost as memorable as the wedding.

The process server my mother had gotten to serve my father had to wait outside the wedding the whole day for it to turn midnight so he could serve 

him, as you couldn’t be served on a Sunday.  Inside, all those there sat on which
side of the aisle and lawsuit they were.
   
      It was not a huge cast, but it WAS colorful.  Sue Mengers, later to become a major Showbiz Celeb, was among those present, being at the time a close friend which she could be until it wasn’t convenient.  Also there were my close friends from Bryn Mawr and David Begelman, later to commit suicide. 

 
     My mother and my father sat on different sides of the aisle, along with their newer, present partners, and my father-in-law Harry who’d gotten us the champagne wholesale.

         I have been told often in life, at least the earlier part of it, of my penchant for
comedy.  The truth is I never have to make anything up.  What I am handed in life,
or have always been proffered, is plot, my weakest suit. 

A KESEY LOOK-ALIKE

So I am feeling in an unaccustomedly creative mood-- unaccustomed because who has felt inspired with what has been going on with our manipulated and potentially disastrous politics-- when I open this week's New Yorker, and there is an article about writer-director Mike Mills, and his film, 20th Century Women.  He looks exactly, from the angle they have him, like Ken Kesey who was a great friend of mine when I went for my Master's Degree in Creative Writing at Stanford under the allegedly great writer  Wallace Stegner, except he was on sabbatical but they didn't tell me that till after I had paid my tuition, which they wouldn't give back.  It was a dedicated and hilarious, if less than greatly productive time, and I probably wrote a book or two about it that I don't remember, as I am don't remembering many things at this point, but I am still ahead of Kesey, though he is better known and loved, since I am alive.  I think.
      I had what I hope is a really good idea for a comedy, and if I can remember, I may indeed write it, and if there is a comedy god, Susan Sarandon will play the lead, who is, indeed, based on me, as a gifted Goy.  I can say that it begins with an older woman strolling the beach, telling a much younger woman of her great love, who died early on, not that long after the relationship had just begun to mature.  The rest I can't tell because that is what makes it clever and fresh and ripe for theft.  Not that anyone necessarily reads these things, but you never know, especially with the accessibility of the Internet, and Donald Trump coming to office.
     What a time.  It is not easy to be an American who loves and prizes her country, and, when she was much younger, believed in reincarnation.  I used to think I had been friends in a previous life with Benjamin Franklin who really did.  But I hope for his sake, and that of probably the rest of us, that I was wrong.  To have been as smart, wise and creative as he was, and have to come back for this shit would be indefensible.
     How will it all turn out?  Will anyone be alive to know?  What will she wear to his funeral?
     

A CARTOON FOR THE NEW YEAR

Two Birds sitting on a wire
FIRST BIRD:  When the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and there's music in the air, it's hard to feel bad about life.
SECOND BIRD: Trump is president.

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.

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.