by John Lahr
From his closet he brings out a sweater. “But Bert, I gave you that for Christmas.” And shoe trees. “Keep the shoe trees. Here, when you buy new shoes, you can use these.” And his assortment of ties. (“You like them. Take one. Take two. Say, Mildred, whatever happened to that white Italian tie I got in Florida.”) He starts foraging through his closet. “I’ll find it, Bert. Let me look.” In his random generosity, he has even tried to pawn off presents I had given him the previous years—a fishing knife, an indoor putting green. Invitations to dinner are handed out with warnings—“Your father says to dress nicely.” He expects, one imagines, that a hoary version of the Ancient Mariner will sit down at his dinner table. Style is threatened at every turn. “Everything’s filth and vulgarity. Always the cheap angle. I walk along the street today and what do I see? Lots of kids with beards and girls with skirts up to their knees … What is it? Where has the taste gone? Now your sister brought a nice boy up to see me. He was quiet, and very intelligent, but he was dressed like you. You don’t take baths, you stink. I once said to Jay C. Flippen, who had an aversion to water like you, ‘You know they’re going to have to take you to the hospital to break your socks off.’ What is it with you kids? Ugh!”
A picture of Jane and me as infants now hangs in a cameo over the fireplace—cherubs framed in suitable baroque gilt. Memories of taking us to the Stork Club in our Easter outfits bring tears to parental eyes. But as adults, my father can never be sure what he’s got. A son who is more interested in ideas than making money; a daughter who creates objects she doesn’t feel like selling. “You kids think you know everything. Well, we’re no idiots, you know. Experience counts for something.” In anger as well as illness, Lahr’s face spills over its posturing into grotesque laughter. He shouts; he pouts; his nostrils flair wide like a gorilla’s. He shoves his finger in the air to unleash a barrage of words from the ether, only to mispronounce them. His son the free-lance writer smiles kindly at his suggestions, but won’t take them. “I’ve got an idea for you. Get pictures of menus from all over the country and reproduce them with menus of today. Talk about how prices have changed. The Free Lunch Era.” For days, he asked me to type up a special document. Finally, he took me into the bedroom and confided, “John, I want you to write this up for me and make a copy so I can send it to myself. I’ve got an idea for a hot dog parlor—you know. Every kind of hot dog, bratwurst, weiners … every kind. I want to call it the ‘Dog House.’”Bert Lahr, the Industrial Magnate, the landowner of twenty-five thousand acres of useless grazing land in New Mexico he’s never seen, is captivated by the quick killing and disturbed that his offspring don’t yearn for the “fast buck.” He can claim one of the most original ice-cream inventions since the popsicle. While in Du Barry he got Betty Grable and Lana Turner to endorse his ice-cream venture called “Tits on a Stick.” “We wanted Jane Russell too,” he smiles like the man who nearly broke the bank at Monte Carlo.
In a family debate, he once admitted, “Kids—I could take them or leave them.” But, as father and patriarch, he is undeniably there. As his mood goes, so goes the spirit of the house. If he is hungry, we eat; if he is tired, we are quiet; if he is angry, we get out of the way. We can never know when his interest will be raised or when he will call on us for information. During one family fishing trip, Jane and I argued and discussed Beowulf at great length. We often bemoaned the difficulties in translating the “whales road,” and Grendel in her “fen-fastness.” Two weeks after the discussion, I received a long-distance call from Dad, who was still in Canada. “Hello, John, listen … Did Chaucer write Beowulf?” When I answered assuredly “No,” he cupped his hands over the phone and I could hear him saying, “See, I told you he didn’t. That’s five bucks.”
In another discussion, on neurosis and art, Dad maintained that there was no relation.
“What about Van Gogh?” my sister began passionately. “A lot of mad guys created but they didn’t know what they were doing.”
Lahr sat back patiently. Jane continued.
“What about that brilliantly beautiful ear of Van Gogh’s? You know what he did with it? You know? He cut it off, put it in a box and left it at his mistress’ door. That’s beautiful. That’s insane. That’s brilliant.”
“That’s your sister!” he added and left the table.
Even for his family, Lahr is encountered as an event—something apart from the every-day and yet merging with it. His words, spoken in uncompleted sentences or spilling out in paragraphs, can only be remembered as vivid fragments. His face, which stamps itself so memorably on the eye at each meeting, blurs into more general outlines. The special situations that reveal him are frozen moments from diary jottings—lifted from the expanse of silences.
My father sits in the boat scanning the shoreline. He has been up since six, casting from the dock, slamming doors on tiptoe, and supervising a bass breakfast. The sun is already high, the lake calm—a good fishing day. His blue sneakers squeak on the wood. Everything is packed—water, two tackle boxes, four fishing poles, his beer and sandwiches, an extra can of gasoline for the outboard motor. He is taking his children fishing. The visor of his fishing cap is turned backwards on his head. He looks more like a baseball catcher than a guide. He dabs cold cream on his nose, tells Jane not to move about so much in front, and pushes off for a day on the water.
Jane has been practicing her casting on land. She has fished with mother, brother, guide, but never with father, for long hours of stalking his prey are part of the fun. Jane likes to poke her fishing rod in the water and watch the ripples, talk to the fish, and play guessing games with the woods. She looks at the birds and the trees sprawled in the water like bony hands. She daydreams.
An unlikely Chingachgook, Dad aims the boat down the lake, pointing out turtles slithering off logs and looking for fish breaking water. He shouts above the motor’s hum and points to the equipment. We can’t hear him, so he settles back on the throttle, steering the boat into a quiet pool. Then he helps prepare the fishing gear. He is surprisingly generous with his equipment. He puts his glasses on to tie the leaders and bites off extra line. The glasses slide down his nose. Jane suspects pike because of the lily pads; father assures her that this is bass water, pointing to the rocky shoreline. He tells us, as he does each trip, that the art of casting is in the wrist, and that if we catch a fish we must keep the tip of our poles high. Jane, eager to show her prowess, makes the first cast. Captivated by its unsuspected arc, Jane watches the lure crash against the rocky promontory and cling to a bush twenty feet above. Lahr looks away for a moment, and then tries to help her.
“See if you can’t get it out—pull lightly.”
Jane, heaving like a tuna fisherman, snaps the lure free and sends it careening directly over her head into the water behind her. She is afraid to look at her father’s tired eyes; her line lies in serpentine knots on the water.
“Reel it in, Jane. Reel it in.”
She dips her pole in the water as she cranks the reel.
“Keep your tip up.” She raises the pole.
“Hey, I’ve got a fish.”
Dad grabs the line and tugs on it like the Indian guide who usually accompanies him.
“Bottom,” he says, sighing.
“I knew I’d get a fish on the first cast.”
“Bottom. Jane, do as I say. Keep your pole straight; and let me free the line.”
He reaches out to tug it, and a fish breaks the water. Jane reels furiously, her pole dipping in the water and then flailing the air.
Lahr helps it in the boat; and Jane squeals as he takes the hook out of its mouth. A pike.
The fishing is slow; at the end of an hour we have only netted two. Jane, dangling her lure in the water to watch its movement, attracted a bass right under the boat. My father is anxious to move.
We begin to cast along a wooded cove. “There’ll be some big ones in here,” Jane announces. Sunken logs make the maneuvering hazardous, but my father is after The Big One. The
motor inches us along while we cast. A fish swirls as my lure hits the water and then leaps high in the air.
“That’s gotta be a six-pounder,” Dad says leaning toward the action. The fish jumps again, and on the second leap spits out the lure.
Dad is intent. “Jane, give me your rod.”
Dad makes a cast, but with his hand off the motor the boat angles in toward the logs.
“Jane, all you have to do is hold the handle like this. We don’t want to go very fast. But when I tell you to move—then do it. Not now. Let me cast back in there.” They change places and Dad trips over his tackle box.
He takes aim and sends a long cast into still, deep water. He reels in slowly.
“They’re in here. We know they’re in here.”
He casts again; and suddenly his reel begins to hum. A fish—and a big one.
Dad’s head stiffens, his nose points out like a bloodhound; the tip of his rod shoots high into the air.
“Uh—huh! This is a beaut!”
We catch a glimpse of a large pike. From the boat it could be as large as twenty pounds. But, with all the excitement we are moving, again, into the logs.
“Steer the boat clear of the logs, Jane … I don’t want to lose him in the logs. Turn the throttle.”
Jane turns the throttle—the wrong way. The boat suddenly jolts into reverse at a fantastic speed; and Dad sprawls on his back at the bottom of the boat, the fish being yanked behind. Jane tries to adjust the motor; but before she can shut it off, we are already rammed against the shore. When Dad recovers his pole, the line is broken.
We return home four hours early, in tired silence … Dad at the helm.
“I smell, I really smell.”
Dad is sick again. The fevers began in 1962 and come unexpectedly; no doctor can explain them. They can last from two days to ten. They leave him frustrated and furious, and the family exhausted.
“Don’t come near—I really stink. The doctor won’t let me take a bath. I can’t stand myself. Phew—this is terrible …!”
In bed, with the covers pulled up to his chin, he stares at the ceiling, his nostrils elevated above the sheets, like a hippo in water. He clears his throat, but continues staring. He fumbles for the thermometer, shakes it, and sticks it in his mouth.
The doctor has been to see him. Another doctor. He is so demanding that they get tired of coming. When they don’t discover anything but send him a big bill, he fires them like baseball managers. The doctor stays with Dad an hour, but refuses to give him penicillin. As Mother is showing him to the door, Dad pushes himself on his side with a low grunt.
“Get me the telephone book, John—I want to find a doctor.” He looks for a minute and then becomes interested in the perspiration that lathers his forehead. He grabs the towel around his neck and wipes his face as if he’d just come off a tennis court. He reaches for the thermometer again and crams it in his mouth. Three minutes later, he is squinting down his glasses, “Tsk, tsk—102.”
He gets up to go to the bathroom. His hair—what is left of it—is uncombed and damp. He looks like a newborn bird. He wobbles on his feet and I try to help him into the bathrobe. He never wears pajama bottoms and suddenly realizes there are women present. He searches for a loin cloth and ends up hiding behind me as he eases into the robe. When I touch his arm, I can feel the bone. What fat there is hangs loosely to one side. He walks carefully toward the bathroom muttering, “Those goddamned nuts, I should never have eaten them.”
When he comes back to bed, he shrinks with cold, holding his hands to his chest like an old lady.
“It’s freezing in here. Turn on the heat.” The room is very warm. His face is grizzled and beaten. He sinks back with his eyes shut—pained and hoping and afraid.
He scares me. He has lost weight since his illness. He is convinced it’s cancer; but when we point out that he has not eaten regularly in five weeks, he takes heart. “That’s right. If you don’t eat, how can you gain weight.” He has a job, and he must keep working. He can get up out of a sickbed and do a scene. In front of the camera, he is vivacious and agile. But at home it is a different story. Is this how it will end—rubbing his nose to keep from crying, sitting nervous and petulant? There is no rage, not even a howl. In bed, he is frozen in fear, pulled up into a fist of bone and flaccid skin. He is suddenly shrunk to a size less than human—he sits motionless, graceless, grinding his teeth in frustration.
Came to see Dad; his temperature was down.
“You know what I’d like—some soup. What kind have we got?”
I brought in six varieties. He chose chicken noodle.
“But I can’t eat the noodles—strain them out.”
He was lying in the chaise longue when I brought it to him. I wrapped a napkin around his neck and put the tray on his lap. He took a spoonful and spluttered like a motorboat, the soup spraying the room.
“There’s salt in this. You know I can’t have anything with salt in it.”
He’s getting better.
“Well, we’re going to find out what this is once and for all,” he says.
Dad is going to Mt. Sinai Hospital for observation.
When we arrive, mother meets us in front of his bedroom marked “Mr. Smith.” “He keeps telling me I read my lines wrong. I can’t do anything right. But the nurse who met us wanted to have him go up in a wheelchair. Imagine Bert Lahr going up in a wheelchair.”
His presence in the hospital is supposed to be secret; but nurses send him notes and doctors bring their teams of interns to meet him. He tries to be sociable. He can’t understand the people around him. The young doctors, looking very serious, gaze at him—while the head physician pokes his liver and asks him questions. When they take him for observation, he has to be lowered onto a stretcher. With a white sheet around him and strapped to the stretcher, Lahr looks like a roped calf. His stomach rises in a hillock between the straps.
“Everything will be okay, Pop.”
“Yeah, well, I’m an orthodox coward …”
They wheel him down pale green hallways.
A week of testing reveals nothing. The doctors come, examine his charts, and leave. Each time after they exit, he whispers, “They’re all charlatans—every damn one of them. Maybe country doctors are dedicated …” He takes his temperature.
“Well, what is it?”
“Parker ’51.”
“I think I’ve got a temperature. I feel like I’m getting the chills.”
Mother sighs. Dad watches for a fever behind every rumble in his stomach.
“Oh, Bert—I’ll bet you haven’t got a fever.”
“Whaddya mean, I’m a walking thermometer.”
“I’ll say you are! You never take it out of your mouth.”
“Wanna bet?”
“Five dollars.”
Dad takes out five dollars and holds it toward mother.
“I don’t have five dollars, but my word is my bond.” She writes out an I.O.U. and hands it to him.
“What is that,” Dad laughs. “A piece of paper. She’s trying to con me. ‘My word is my bond.’”
“Take your temperature.”
We wait as my father puts the thermometer in his mouth and watches the clock. He takes it out after three minutes and holds it up to the light. Turning back to Mother, he announces, “It’s normal—you win.”
“That’s the easiest fiver I’ve ever made.”
“I guess I didn’t keep it in long enough.”
He returns to his desk and tries again—this time he waits twenty minutes.
“I’m all mental since that illness. I’ve got a complex. Turn off those Christmas carols, they make me sad. The boys at the club think so too.”
Dad surveys the Christmas tree and his family sitting around with the presents. He has never gotten up early with his family to open them. His presents are stacked in a neat pile for his arrival. He begins ripping at the carefully wrapped gifts.
“Toilet water, socks—that’s all I
get.” He laughs and looks toward Mother, raising his eyebrows to show he’s teasing her.
He goes inside and brings out a sweater.
“Bert, that was my Christmas present to you!” Mildred says.
“I have three sweaters—a pink one, a yellow one, and one in blue. Try this on, John. Let’s see how it looks.”
He buttons the cardigan on me and stands back to judge.
“Hey, it doesn’t look bad. You keep it. Feel that material. That’s one hundred per cent wool. It would cost you forty dollars in the stores.”
“$62.50,” says Mildred.
The news of an English production of The Beauty Part reached Dad today. He was excited, and got out of his bed—another fever—to call S. J. Perelman. He tried to hide his illness.
“Hello, S. J., this is B. L.”
He talked excitedly, and after the conversation confided, “He’s a tough one. Never wants to chop a line. I think he’s got confidence in me now though …”
This will be his first time on the English stage. There have been many days of waiting; but Lester has just confirmed the deal, although no papers have been signed. “At this point, John, I don’t care if I go or don’t go.” But the apartment looks like a campaign headquarters. The trunks are open and on Jane’s bed things are being laid out in profusion: his tails, top hat, two hair pieces, a portfolio of sketches in case there are TV shots, extra batteries for his radio, his walking cap, two pairs of ankle-length boots that he had made in Spain at four times their actual value, pictures of the family, good-luck charms …
