I could hear the man behind me whisper to his wife, “It’s Stella Adler.” Her comments only quieted slightly and continued throughout. I figured I would never be invited by Fox to a screening again but no one really seemed to mind. Stella was so thoroughly engrossed in the intricacies of the actual performances that she didn’t really follow the plot and asked me a number of times what was happening. Toward the end, after Brando’s character undergoes a kind of life-altering experience, she said, pretty loudly, “Something must have happened—that’s the first time Marlon has walked like himself.” But she knew exactly what was going on in the sequence during which the Americans are seen liberating a Nazi concentration camp. Stella just said, slowly, with a kind of angry sadness, “That is what they saw.” And, after a moment or two, nodding her head, she repeated with finality, “That is what they saw.”
The only other films I ever looked at in Stella’s presence were a few of my own. Toward the end of The Last Picture Show, I remember seeing her put her hands over her eyes at a climactic moment, and after Nickelodeon, she sent me the loveliest note of congratulations (far more than the movie deserved). Following a screening of my film of Michael Frayn’s theatrical farce, Noises Off, which had made her cry with laughter, I came over to her. She looked at me, still wiping her eyes, and demanded loudly, “Who directed that?” I said, “I did.” She said, loudly, “You didn’t!” I repeated, smiling, that I really did. She said again, louder, “You didn’t!” Then she stood and embraced me, and said nothing else.
At the party I threw for her ninetieth birthday—the last one at my Bel Air residence—she arrived after most of the 200-plus guests (all hand-picked by her). I ran out to the parking area and walked her in. She was a touch shaky but OK. As she entered the foyer, there were many of her friends clustered around anxiously—a lot of those in front were women—and everyone applauded. Stella looked about in dismay and demanded, loudly, “Where are the MEN!?”
Over the years, I saw Stella with three of the men in her life, though never with stage director–author Harold Clurman—from all reports, the most explosive of her relationships—about whom I heard her tell a few anecdotes. The one I recall most vividly had to do with Clurman’s cheating on her and, in retaliation, Stella’s stepping onto a table at a party and demanding that the men she had slept with encircle her. “You see, Harold,” she supposedly announced, “you have your girls—but I have my men!” (At my last party for her, Anthony Quinn told me with amusement that Stella had asked him quietly that night if the two of them had “ever done it.” I believe he told her they had, though he left it ambiguous whether this was the truth.)
She had a longish affair with New York art dealer and poet Stanley Moss, a very tall and attractive man, perhaps twenty years her junior. I don’t remember many details of the times I saw Stella with Stanley—they came at least twice to my Parents’ apartment on 90th Street and Riverside Drive in the mid-fifties—and I was over at Stella’s apartment on Fifth Avenue a couple of times while she and Stanley were an item. But my impression was that Stella wasn’t especially challenged intellectually by, or really terribly interested in, Stanley, who seemed almost like a trophy date—young, handsome, bright, and wealthy enough. On the other hand, I was pretty callow in those days, and could have misread things.
However, there was no mistaking her feelings about Mitchell Wilson, the scientist and novelist who combined his twin passions in the very successful novel Meeting at a Far Meridian, among others. Cybill Shepherd and I double-dated with Stella and Mitch in the seventies in Manhattan before and after they were married. Stella said to Cybill the first time she and Mitch met her (Cybill was about twenty-three at the time): “You’re not really beautiful, are you?!” Cybill just kept smiling as Stella went right on with, for her, the triumphant ultimate compliment: “You act beautiful!”
We always had a great time: Mitch absolutely adored Stella and she was crazy about him, though she would occasionally give him a hard time. He was patience itself, to such a degree that it transcended patience and became an inherent saintliness, which Mitch possessed in spades. Such erudition (which he also had in abundance) combined with such a lack of either pomposity or academicism is rare in itself; then add self-effacing humor and ready wit, and a genuine interest in others, and you have an idea of what a special fellow Mitch Wilson was. His sudden death from a heart attack almost killed Stella, too. She was shattered by the event. I don’t believe she left her apartment for nearly two years.
About fourteen months after Mitch died, I got permission to see Stella and went up to the apartment. She was in bed and looked dreadful. Exhausted, haunted, grief-stricken. When I left, I doubted that I would ever see her again. I thought she really wanted to die, and would probably succeed. It seemed to me that Mitch Wilson’s early passing broke Stella’s heart because she realized he had been the love of her life. Both regretted how little of their lives they had had together. Often, over the many years after Mitch’s death, Stella would refer to him in loving ways. When I would mention Robert Graves—who by the early eighties had become my favorite writer—she would invariably say that Graves had been Mitch’s favorite writer, giving the impression that Mitch’s endorsement was the one she valued above all others. Stella remained close to Wilson’s children, and it was at Stella’s Los Angeles house one year in the early nineties that I met editor-writer Victoria Wilson, who became my treasured editor at Knopf. Vicky shepherded my Who the Devil Made It (companion to the present volume) into a success.
After Mitch, Stella seemed to lose interest in men and I saw her in only one brief dalliance years later with a California university professor about three or four decades her junior. I think he was entirely bewildered by her, and she chewed him up and spit him out in about three and a half minutes. And that was that.
In her later years, Stella spent more and more time in Los Angeles, though she didn’t really like it there. But it was easier: the weather generally was mild, and walking was far less necessary. This became of particular importance after Stella fell in her early eighties and broke her hip. The doctors who operated and installed a replacement did not do a good job and she never mended right, which made walking increasingly difficult for her—the only real impediment Stella had physically as she aged. It angered and frustrated her and made her sad. When I tried to console her once by pointing out all the positives in her situation, she would have none of it. But she couldn’t walk, she responded in essence, and so her freedom of movement was profoundly compromised. For the first time she became dependent on other people and she did not like any of this at all. There was the invariable jockeying for position around the circle of people who took care of running her life and schools (on both coasts), and she was, by turns, aware of it, irritated and bored by it, or knowingly in denial. (Luckily, her beloved daughter Ellen Adler and Ellen’s son Tom Oppenheim have kept the New York school going since her death; Irene Gilbert has supervised the L.A. school.) She had a lot of friends in Los Angeles but found the place culturally stagnating. One time, while I was still living there, I complained of being depressed and Stella said, “Darling, if you drive and drive and everywhere you look it’s ugly, darling—of course that is very depressing.”
In the eighties and early nineties, I had a number of severe setbacks in my life and career, but Stella was always there for me. She kidded about it once: “Peter, darling, your life is very difficult on your friends!” I remembered a significant anecdote she told about her being sick one time while married to Harold Clurman. Over a period of three or four days he went from being deeply concerned and solicitous to being utterly irritated with the whole matter. Stella concluded: “You can only be ill for a short while, darling, before people get bored with you!”
So she didn’t really complain about her inability to walk properly, though it irked and infuriated her. I phoned a few of her old students and suggested that a call from them would certainly cheer up Stella. She was lonely. Harvey Keitel said he would
call; Bobby De Niro said he wouldn’t. He was annoyed at Stella, said she never knew who he was. Stella did tell people in class she never knew who De Niro was because every time he did a performance he immersed himself so completely and successfully in the role that he became unrecognizable. Therefore, she never recognized De Niro. Instead of realizing that this from Stella was a compliment, Bobby was insulted, which seemed to bother Stella. Warren Beatty was quietly livid with Stella after she attacked him in front of his new wife, Annette Bening. It was at someone’s Hollywood party, to which Warren—who had been a student of Stella’s just before me in the fifties—had brought Annette specifically to meet his old teacher. Stella had decided to castigate Warren on the Golden Boy issue, about the loss of integrity. According to others who were there, Stella delivered an unnecessarily brutal tongue-lashing in fairly loud tones. At one point, when Annette tried to say something, Stella supposedly snapped at her to “Shut up!” Within ten minutes of delivering this speech, however, Stella was apparently laughing with Warren again and talking animatedly about other things.
Warren eventually forgave Stella. When telling me about the incident, however, he was clearly upset and trying to pretend that he wasn’t; he minimized his time spent as her student. I remembered meeting him for the first time at Stella’s around 1958, after he had come into her studio one afternoon, embraced her in a bear hug, and chatted briefly. I felt jealous of his apparently earned intimacy with Stella. Another time, in Los Angeles years later, Warren came into one of Stella’s classes with his then current amour, the Russian ballerina Maya Plisetskaya. Again, much embracing and a brief chat. Afterward, Stella told me Warren and Maya’s relationship was perfect: “He speaks no Russian, and she speaks no English—of course, they get along wonderfully.”
Stella Adler (billed as Ardler) in her single Paramount vehicle, Love on Toast (1938), a screwball comedy directed by E. A. Dupont, and co-starring John Payne; she is brilliant in it.
Toward the end of her life, Stella received some acclaim for her achievements. There was a TV special on the Group Theatre which featured her prominently, her first book on acting was published (though she had only approved it, rather than writing and constructing it), and the prestigious PBS series American Masters devoted one of their programs, entitled “Awake and Dream,” to Stella and her legacy. There were articles in the Times, both New York and Los Angeles. She herself seemed most impressed by the couple of honorary university doctorates she was given.
The last time I saw Stella was one late summer afternoon in 1992 at her Los Angeles house. She was worried about me because my financial situation was terrible—I had declared bankruptcy, things hadn’t yet started improving at all—and my personal life wasn’t in good shape, either. She offered to loan me some money. Though I felt badly, I took her up on it. Naively, while opening her checkbook, she asked how much I needed to pull myself out of the mess I was in. I told her honestly it would take about half a million. Well, she didn’t have that kind of money, she said without blinking, but she would do what she could. I said that anything was a big help and she wrote out a check for five hundred dollars. This was terrific, I said, and would be paid back as soon as possible. She told me not to worry about it, that she knew I was good for it eventually, that I should stay in touch, that she loved me. As usual, I kissed her on both cheeks when I said so long. We spoke on the phone a few times—I called not too long afterward to tell her I’d gotten a studio directing job, would now, therefore, be OK, and sent back with many thanks the five hundred she had loaned—but I never saw Stella again. The film I did took me out of town to Nashville for a while and we came back to Los Angeles shortly before Christmas. I was going to call Stella and see her during the holidays. She died peacefully in her sleep on December 21st.
A little girl who once saw Stella’s grand entrance at a Manhattan cocktail party—and Stella Adler had such size in life as we shall never see again—turned to her mother and asked, “Mommy, is that God?” To so many of us who knew and worked with her, of course, she was.
Born Stella Adler, February 10, 1901, New York, NY; died December 21, 1992, Los Angeles, CA.
Features (with director):
1938: Love on Toast (E. A. Dupont)
1941: Shadow of the Thin Man (W. S. Van Dyke II)
1948: My Girl Tisa (Elliott Nugent)
5
MONTGOMERY CLIFT
A Rolls Silver Cloud pulled up in front of the New Yorker movie theater one afternoon around four, and a tall, stately woman got out, followed by a thin, frail man whom I immediately recognized as Montgomery Clift. As though in somewhat of a trance, the two of them—the lady, we found out later, was Mrs. Walter Huston—made their way into the theater, where we were running a couple of Hitchcock pictures. One of them was I Confess (1953), starring Clift, and I guess that was the reason they had come all the way up to 89th Street and Broadway that gray spring day in 1961.
I had been working there for about a year, having started shortly after Dan Talbot acquired the theater, renamed it and changed its policy. Under Talbot’s management, it became the first theater in New York City—and among the first anywhere in the States—regularly to revive good American movies. I was then just twenty-one, having directed one play, and what I didn’t know, as Clift and Mrs. Huston went in to see I Confess, was that Monty Clift was near the end of the line.
Clift had been a kind of unacknowledged leader. His performances in Howard Hawks’ Red River (his first movie, though Fred Zinnemann’s The Search was released earlier), in William Wyler’s The Heiress, in George Stevens’ A Place in the Sun, heralded a new acting style. It came to be known, inaccurately, as the Method. After Clift came Brando, and after Brando, James Dean. Clift was the purest, the least mannered of these actors, perhaps the most sensitive, certainly the most poetic. He was also remarkably beautiful. Over eight years he acted in eight films, became a teenage heartthrob as well as a popular star with older audiences. He was nominated for Best Actor Oscars three times in six years and should have won each time. He gave at least four performances—in Red River, in A Place in the Sun, in I Confess and in Zinnemann’s From Here to Eternity—that remain among the finest anyone has given in the movies. Hawks would tell me: “He worked—he really worked hard.”
Montgomery Clift as Pvt. Robert E. Lee Prewitt listens while AWOL in Pearl Island to radio reports of the bombing in Fred Zinnemann’s film, based on the superb James Jones novel, From Here to Eternity (1953). Clift received his third Oscar nomination as Best Actor (he lost to William Holden in another WWII story, Stalag 17).
In the middle of shooting his ninth picture (Raintree County), he was driving home one night from a party at Elizabeth Taylor’s house in the Hollywood Hills when his car went out of control on one of those narrow, absurdly winding roads and crashed. His face was shattered by the windshield. Plastic surgery did what it could, but those heartbreaking eyes now looked out from behind a mask that could only approximate what his actual visage had been. He finished the movie he’d begun (it is a chilling experience to see both faces in the same picture) and made another eight films, never once giving a performance without the same riveting intensity, the same soulful integrity, but the mystery had been tampered with and the magical perfection of pitch was gone.
Here it was about eight years after Clift had acted in it, and I Confess was on the screen; I was standing at the back of the theater watching. About halfway through, I saw Clift come up the aisle, slumped over, weaving a little. At the back, he lit a cigarette and turned to look at the screen again. I came up and said I worked there. He was polite. I said I liked the picture and asked if he did.
John Wayne as Tom Dunston and Montgomery Clift as Matthew Garth in the finale of Howard Hawks’ classic Western Red River (1948), the first movie Clift acted in. Hawks would say that Monty worked diligently on all aspects of the role, including the learning of a little hop into the stirrup on mounting. This performance was actually the first in pictures of what came
to be called “Method acting,” later popularized by Brando, and then James Dean.
The huge image on the screen at that moment of his pre-accident beauty must have seemed to mock him. He turned away and looked at me sadly. “It’s … hard, you know.” He said it slowly, hesitantly, a little slurred. “It’s very … hard,” he said. I nodded. He looked back at the screen.
A few steps away was a “request book” Talbot had set up for his patrons. It was a large lined ledger in which audiences were encouraged (by sign and trailer) to write down what movies they would like to see. I told Clift about the book and said I wanted to show him something. He followed me over, puffing his cigarette absently. I leafed through the book quickly and found the page on which I had noticed a couple of days before that someone had scrawled in large red letters: “ANYTHING WITH MONTGOMERY CLIFT!”
Clift with Elizabeth Taylor in George Stevens’ memorable drama A Place in the Sun (1951), adapted from the Theodore Dreiser novel An American Tragedy. Clift received his second Oscar nomination as Best Actor.
Who the Hell's in It Page 11
