Myra Breckinridge

by Gore Vidal

  Buck Loner made me an offer. While his lawyer and my lawyer work out a settlement, he would be happy to give me a job starting now and extending until the school year ends in June and all the talent scouts from TV, movie and recording companies converge upon the Academy to observe the students do their stuff. I accepted his offer. Why not? I need a place to live (as well as an entré into the world of the movies), and so what could be better than a teaching job at the Academy? I will also enjoy meeting young men (though whether or not they will enjoy meeting me remains to be seen!), and the Academy is crawling with them, arrogant, cocky youths; several whistled at me in the corridor as I made my way to Buck Loner’s office. Well, they will suffer for their bad manners! No man may jeer at Myra Breckinridge with impunity!

  “Now we have an opening for you in our Acting Department—that’s for movie and TV acting, we don’t go in for stage-type acting, no real demand . . .”

  “The theatre is finished . . .” I began.

  “You can say that again.” It was plain that he was not interested in my theories which reflect more or less Myron’s thesis that this century’s only living art form is the movies. I say more or less because though I agree with Myron that the films of the 1940’S are superior to all the works of the so-called Renaissance, including Shakespeare and Michelangelo, I have been drawn lately to the television commercial which, though in its rude infancy, shows signs of replacing all the other visual arts. But my ideas are not yet sufficiently formulated to record them here, suffice it to say that the placing of the man in the driver’s seat (courtesy of Hertz) reveals in a most cogent way man’s eternal need for mastery over both space and distance, a never-ending progress that began in the caves at Lascaux and continues, even as I write, in the Apollo capsule with its mixed oxygen environment.

  “Your work load will of course be light. After all, you’re a member of the family and of course I’m taking into account your terrible recent loss, though it has been my experience that work distracts our attention from grief in a most extraordinary way.” While he was filibustering, he was studying a chart. He then scribbled a note and gave it to me. On Monday, Thursday and Saturday mornings I am to give an hour course in Empathy. Tuesday and Friday afternoons I teach Posture.

  “You seem particularly well equipped to give the course in Posture. I couldn’t help but notice how you looked when you entered the room, you carry yourself like a veritable queen. As for Empathy, it is the Sign Kwa Known (sine qua non) of the art of film acting.”

  We sparred with one another, each lying to beat the band. He so pleased to have me “on the team” and me so happy to be able to work in Hollywood, California, a life’s dream come true and—as they used to say in the early Sixties—all that jazz. Oh, we are a pair of jolly rogues! He means to cheat me out of my inheritance while I intend to take him for every cent he’s got, as well as make him fall madly in love just so, at the crucial moment, I can kick his fat ass in, fulfilling the new pattern to which I am now irrevocably committed. Or as Diotima said to Hyperion, in Hölderlin’s novel, “it was no man that you wanted, believe me; you wanted a world.” I too want a world and mean to have it. This man—any man—is simply a means of getting it (which is Man).

  There goes the siren. The accident was serious. I stretch my legs. The left foot’s asleep. In a moment I shall put down the yellow ballpoint pen, get to my feet, experience briefly pins and needles; then go to the window and lift the blind and see if there are dead bodies in the street. Will there be blood? I dread it. Truly.

  BUCK LONER REPORTS—

  Recording Disc No. 708—

  10 January

  Other matters to be taken up by board in reference to purchases for new closed circuit TV period paragraph I sort of remember that Gertrudes boy was married some years ago and I recall being surprised as he was a fag or so I always thought with that sister of mine for a mother how could he not be only thing is I never knew the little bastard except one meeting in St Louis oh maybe twenty years ago when she was there with her third husband the certified public accountant and I remember vaguely this sissy kid who wanted to go to the movies all the time who I gave an autographed picture of me on Sporko that palomino horse that was and is the trademark of Buck Loner even though the original palomino in question has been for a long time up there in the happy hunting ground and my ass is now too big to inflict on any other nag except maybe Myra Breckinridge period paragraph what is the true Myra Breckinridge story that is the big question you could have knocked me over with a feather when she came sashaying into the office with her skirt hiked up damn near to her chin at least when she sits down she is a good looking broad but hoteyed definitely hoteyed and possibly mentally unbalanced I must keep an eye on her in that department but the tits are keen and probably hers and I expect she is just hungering for the old Buck Loner Special parenthesis start taking pee-pills again to lose weight zipper keeps slipping down which makes a damned sloppy impression end parenthesis period paragraph but what I dont like one bit is the matter of the will and I guess I better put Flagler and Flagler onto it first thing tomorrow it is true that the property was left me and Gertrude jointly but she always said Ted she said she never called me Buck she was the most envious broad that ever lived especially when I was right up there biggest star of them all after Roy bigger than Gene certainly but wish I had Genes eye for real estate that man is loaded of course I dont do so bad with the Academy but Gene Autry today is capital r capital i capital c capital h rich well I was better box office Ted Gertrude said you can keep my share of that lousy orange grove that our father threw away his life savings to buy just as the bottom dropped out of citrus fruit I never want to see or hear of it again is what she said more or less but naturally when word come to Saint Louis and later to the Island of Manhattan where she was living with that crazy picture painter that Hollywood was spilling over into nearby Brentwood and Westwood and all the other woods were filling up with lovers of the sun and fun from all parts of the U S A Gertrude did ask once or twice about our mutual holding but when I told her I needed money to start the Academy and needed the orange grove to teach in and maybe put a building on she was very reasonable merely saying that when the time came I was to help Myron to become a movie star as he was even better looking than I was at his age and besides could act the little fag she sent me all sorts of pictures of him and he was pretty as a picture in a drippy sort of way and wrote these far out pieces about the movies that I could never get through in magazines I never heard of in England and even in French some of them were written I will say he sent them all to me including a long article type piece that I did read about so help me god the rear ends of all the major cowboy stars from austere aspiring Gothic flat ass Hoot Gibson to impertinent baroque ass James Garner shit exclamation mark paragraph Flagler and Flagler will be notified first thing tomorrow morning and told to examine with a fine tooth comb the deeds to this property and also to make a careful investigation of one Myra Breckinridge widow and claimant and try to find some loophole as I have no intention at all of letting her horn in on a property that I my self increased in value from a five thousand dollar orange grove to what is now at a conservative estimate worth in the neighborhood counting buildings of course of two million dollars maybe I should lay Myra that might keep her happy for a while while we discuss the ins and outs of our business mean while I better see if that fag nephew of mine left a proper will all this will have to be gone into in careful detail by Flagler and Flagler and their private detective meanwhile she will be working here where I can keep an eye on her period paragraph check new TV makeup equipment write President Johnson giving him my views on subsidy for the arts in line with talk I gave to Fresno Rotary before Xmas those two kids are definitely balling and I don’t like that sort of thing to be too visible on the campus particularly since she lives here in the dormitory and the matron tells me she is off with that stud every chance she can get and is always coming’ in after midnight a beautiful little piece she is a
nd it may well be that the Buck Loner Special could straighten her out but I must proceed cautiously like they say as she is a minor of eighteen and naturally drawn to a male minor of nineteen six feet two and built like a stone wall who wants to be a movie star with sideburns a nice kid if he stays out of jail and I hope one day he makes it but meanwhile its his making her that I mind I mean what would her mother say her worst fears about Hollywood fulfilled I better tell the matron to give her a tough talking to or back she goes to Winnipeg as an enemy alien and deflowered virgin through no fault of yours truly remember to tell masseuse to come at five instead of six am getting horny as hell thinking about the dear little thing from Winnipeg whats her name Sally Sue Baby Dee Mary Ann thats it Mary Ann Pringle and shes making it with Rusty Godowsky from Detroit where else a nice dumb polack who maybe has that extra something that makes for stardom that masseuse better be good today

  7

  I write this sitting at my desk in the office to which I have been assigned in the west wing of the main building of what must be an incredibly valuable piece of real estate. I’ve spent the last few days prowling about the Academy and it’s a most expensive creation, worth millions I should say, and half of it’s mine, or at least half the ground it stands on. I have already contacted a good lawyer and presently he will surprise Buck Loner with my claims. Our case, I am assured, is airtight. I find Buck Loner something of an enigma. No man can be as cheerful as be seems to be, as desirous of creating love as he says he is. Yet it is true that oceans of warmth flow from him to all the students, quite indiscriminately, and they seem to adore him, even those who are known as “hippies” and mock everyone (the argot is curiously rich out here, and slightly repellent: teenagers—already a ghastly word—are known as “teenyboppers”!). Reluctantly, I find myself admiring the man, monster though he is. But then I shall soon break him to my will. Is there a man alive who is a match for Myra Breckinridge?

  8

  I sit now in a bus on my way to Culver City—and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer! My heart is beating so quickly that I can hardly bear to look out the window for fear that suddenly against that leaden horizon marked by oil derricks, I shall behold—like some fantastic palace of dreams—the Irving Thalberg Memorial Building and its attendant sound stages whose blank (but oh so evocative!) façades I have studied in photographs for twenty years.

  Not wanting to spoil my first impression, I keep my eye on this notebook which I balance on one knee as I put down at random whatever comes into my mind, simply anything in order to save for myself the supreme moment of ecstasy when the Studio of Studios, the sublime motor to this century’s myths, appears before me as it has so many times in dreams, its great doors swinging wide to welcome Myra Breckinridge to her rightful kingdom.

  I was born to be a star, and look like one today: a false hairpiece gives body to my hair while the light Max Factor base favored by Merle Oberon among other screen lovelies makes luminous my face even in the harsh light of a sound stage where I shall soon be standing watching a take. Then when the director says, “O.K., print it,” and the grips prepare for another setup, the director will notice me and ask my name and then take me into the commissary and there, over a Green Goddess salad (a favorite of the stars), talk to me at length about my face, wondering whether or not it is photogenic until I stop him with a smile and say: “There is only one way to find out. A screen test.” To be a film star is my dearest daydream. After all, I have had some practical experience in New York. Myron and I both appeared in a number of underground movies. Of course they were experimental films and like most experiments, in the laboratory and out, they failed but even had they succeeded they could never have been truly Hollywood, truly mythic. Nevertheless, they gave me a sense of what it must be like to be a star.

  This trip is endless. I hate buses. I must rent or buy a car. The distances are unbelievable out here and to hire a taxi costs a fortune. This particular section of town is definitely ratty-looking with dingy bungalows and smogfilled air; my eyes burn and water. Fortunately elaborate neon signs and an occasional eccentrically shaped building make magic of the usual. We are now passing a diner in the shape of an enormous brown doughnut. I feel better already. Fantasy has that effect on me.

  What to make of the students? I have now taught four classes in Posture (how to walk gracefully and sit down without knocking over furniture) and two in Empathy (I invite them to pretend they are oranges, drinks of water, clouds . . . the results are unusual, to say the least).

  Though I have nothing to do with the Speech Department, I could not help but notice what difficulty most of the students have in talking. The boys tend to bark while the girls whine through their noses. Traditional human speech seems to have passed them by, but then one must never forget that they are the first creations of that television culture which began in the early Fifties. Their formative years were spent watching pale gray figures (no blacks, no whites—significant detail) move upon a twenty-one-inch screen. As a result, they are bland and inattentive, responsive only to the bold rhythms of commercials. Few can read anything more complex than a tabloid newspaper. As for writing, it is enough that they can write their name, or “autograph” as they are encouraged to call it, anticipating stardom. Nevertheless, a few have a touch of literary genius (that never dies out entirely), witness the obscene graffiti on the men’s bathroom wall into which I strayed by accident the first day and saw, in large letters over one of the urinals, “Buck Sucks.” Can this be true? I would put nothing past a man who traffics so promiscuously in love, not knowing that it is hate alone which inspires us to action and makes for civilization. Look at Juvenal, Pope, Billy Wilder.

  In the Posture class I was particularly struck by one of the students, a boy with a Polish name. He is tall with a great deal of sand-colored curly hair and sideburns; he has pale blue eyes with long black lashes and a curving mouth on the order of the late Richard Cromwell, so satisfyingly tortured in Lives of a Bengal Lancer. From a certain unevenly rounded thickness at the crotch of his blue jeans, it is safe to assume that he is marvelously hung. Unfortunately he is hot for an extremely pretty girl with long straight blonde hair (dyed), beautiful legs and breasts, reminiscent of Lupe Velez. She is mentally retarded. When I asked her to rise she did not recognize the word “rise” and so I had to ask her “to get up” which she did understand. He is probably just as stupid but fortunately has the good sense not to talk too much. When he does, however, he puts on a hillbilly accent that is so authentic that I almost melt in my drawers.

  “I thank we gawn git on mahty fahn, Miz Myra” were his first words to me after class as he looked down into my upturned face, confident of his masculine primacy. He was, in fact, so close to me that I could smell the most appetizing odor of deodorant mingled with tobacco and warm boy. But before I could make a suitable answer, she pulled him away. Poor child! She doesn’t know that I shall have him in the end while . . .

  9

  I can hardly bear it another moment! I am reborn or in the process of rebirth like Robert Montgomery in Here Comes Mr. Jordan.

  I am seated in front of a French café in a Montmartre street on the back lot at Metro. Last year’s fire destroyed many of the studio’s permanent outdoor sets-those streets and castles I knew so much better than ever I knew the Chelsea area of Manhattan where Myron and I used to exist. I deeply regret the fire, mourn all that was lost, particularly the famous New York City street of brownstones and the charming village in Normandy. But, thank Heaven, this café still stands. Over a metal framework, cheap wood has been so arranged and painted as to suggest with astonishing accuracy a Paris bistro, complete with signs for BYRRH, while a striped awning shades metal tables and chairs set out on the “sidewalk.” Any minute now, I expect to see Parisians. I would certainly like to see a waiter and order a Pernod.

  I can hardly believe that I am sitting at the same table where Leslie Caron once awaited Gene Kelly so many years ago, and I can almost re-create for myself the lights, the camera,
the sound boom, the technicians, all converged upon this one table where, in a blaze of artificial sunlight, Leslie much too thin but a lovely face with eyes like mine—sits and waits for her screen lover while a man from makeup delicately dusts those famous features with powder.

  From the angle where I sit I can see part of the street in Carvel where Andy Hardy lived. The street is beautifully kept up as the shrine it is, a last memorial to all that was touching and—yes—good in the American past, an era whose end was marked by two mushroom shapes set like terminal punctuation marks against the Asian sky.

  A few minutes ago I saw Judge Hardy’s house with its neatly tended green lawn and windows covered with muslin behind which there is nothing at all. It is quite eerie the way in which the houses look entirely real from every angle on the slightly curving street with its tall green trees and flowering bushes. Yet when one walks around to the back of the houses, one sees the rusted metal framework, the unpainted wood which has begun to rot, the dirty glass of the windows and the muslin curtains soiled and torn. Time withers all things human; although yesterday evening when I saw Ann Rutherford, stopped in her car at a red light, I recognized immediately the great black eyes and the mobile face. She at least endures gallantly, and I could not have been more thrilled! Must find where Lewis Stone is buried. This is the happiest moment of my life, sitting here alone on the back lot with no one in sight, for I was able to escape the studio guide by telling him that I wanted to lie down in an empty office of the Thalberg Building; then of course I flew straight here to the back lot which is separated from the main studio by a public road.