by Paul Rudnick
I read up on Barrymore’s life, particularly in his entirely fraudulent, ghostwritten autobiography and in Good Night, Sweet Prince, an equally fanciful work devised soon after the star’s death by his close friend Gene Fowler. There was a story that, after his demise, Barrymore’s poker buddies had snatched his body from the morgue and propped it upright at their clubhouse table, for one last hand.
Barrymore was born into an illustrious family of American performers, which included his sister Ethel and his brother Lionel, and John had been nicknamed The Great Profile for his beauty, and acclaimed as a classical actor of extraordinary personal magnetism and range. He was later drawn to Hollywood, appearing as Katharine Hepburn’s wayward father in A Bill of Divorcement, a mature Mercutio in an all-star Romeo and Juliet, and, most uproariously, as a bulging-eyed, fire-breathing producer, opposite Carole Lombard, in the screwball gem Twentieth Century. Perhaps his signature role was that of a handsome, dissolute jewel thief, redeemed by his brief, ethereal passion for Greta Garbo in the sumptuous MGM melodrama Grand Hotel. This film exemplified the public perception of Barrymore as a gifted, doomed wastrel. The more I absorbed, and the more months I spent under Barrymore’s bastard Jacobean roof, the more I felt required to write something set at the address. Someone or something had led me to these quarters and would not be denied. I began a novel about a character named Andrew Rally, the young star of L.A. Medical, a fatuous network gold mine. Andrew moves into the Barrymore apartment just as he’s about to play Hamlet at Shakespeare in the Park. He gets apprehensive about returning to the stage, and he’s ready to flee to Los Angeles when the ghost of Barrymore appears. I soon realized that the material would make a better play than a novel, as it took place primarily in a single location and was overrun with theatrical types. I surrendered, to God or Satan or the will of Barrymore, and completed a draft of a two-act comedy called I Hate Hamlet.
An out-of-town workshop in Saratoga went well, and a group of producers decided to bring the play to Broadway. The characters by then included Deirdre, Andrew’s love interest and an ardent twenty-nine-year-old virgin; Gary Peter Lefkowitz, Andrew’s pal and writer-producer-director, who’s given to remarks like “You don’t do art, you buy it” Felicia, a gregarious real-estate broker; and Andrew’s agent, Lillian, a flinty German émigrée, a tribute to Helen Merrill. In an early scene, Lillian asks her companions if she might smoke, and Deirdre implores her not to because it’s such an unhealthy addiction. Lillian replies, “I know, I really must stop.” Deirdre asks, “Smoking?” and Lillian says, “No—asking.”
Most of the cast were New York stage actors, including Evan Handler as Andrew and the whiskey-voiced Caroline Aaron as Felicia. Lillian was to be played by Celeste Holm, who’d won an Academy Award for Gentleman’s Agreement and who was practically the sole surviving cast member of both All About Eve and the original Broadway production of Oklahoma!. Celeste was wry and glamorous, and Helen was gruffly pleased. The supremely funny Adam Arkin would be Gary, and he later won my heart when, during a particularly trying and self-indulgent rehearsal, I noticed that Adam was calmly making a completely appropriate, masturbatory motion at his crotch.
Our great challenge was in casting the role of John Barrymore—ghost, thespian, and lecher. If you’ve written a star, you need a star. From Fanny Brice to Ray Charles, the impersonator must reignite the legend. The audience needed to believe that whoever played Barrymore, from the instant he stepped onstage, was an Olympian Hamlet, a devastating seducer, and everyone’s favorite scoundrel. I Hate Hamlet was a romantic comedy by an unknown playwright being directed by the very young Michael Engler, so it wasn’t easy to find, persuade, and sign a Barrymore.
The search finally arrived at Nicol Williamson, a Scotsman who’d achieved fame several decades earlier as a self-loathing solicitor in John Osborne’s Inadmissible Evidence. Nicol had played a savage Hamlet in London and New York, and he’d become a reliable character presence in such films as Robin and Marian and Excalibur; in the latter, he’d been a memorably baroque Merlin. Onstage, Nicol was notorious. At a curtain call during the Broadway run of the musical Rex, in which Nicol was Henry VIII, he’d slapped a fellow actor whom Nicol felt was drawing focus. Our casting director had heard countless tales of similar misbehavior and advised us to acquire Nicol’s services “only over my dead body.” We didn’t listen.
Nicol accepted the role, and an introductory lunch at a midtown restaurant was arranged between our Barrymore, the producing team, the director, and me. Like any decent star, Nicol arrived last. He was a tall, shambling man, with a bald pate bookended by buttresses of reddish curls, clinging to his head for dear life. His eyes were doleful and piercing, as if he’d seen far too much, enjoyed most of it, and had somehow managed to avoid arrest. His basso voice was gorgeously Shakespearean.
“Hallo, mates!” he boomed, and we all grinned and exchanged delighted glances, because Nicol was, if nothing else, everything an American wants a reprobate, Continental stage personality to be. He beguiled everyone with tales of beautiful women, show business, and air travel. He was an incipient tyrant, an Amin or Evita, caught at an early stage, when charm was of the essence in crafting a grateful, adoring cult. Clearly, here was Barrymore. After many hours, as the group departed, Nicol slung a long arm over my shoulders and said, “Dear fellow, I know you’ve heard tattle, but don’t believe a word. I’m in top fighting form. And I haven’t touched a drop in over a year.”
I chose to believe it, despite a quick backward glance at the table, which held a brandy snifter, a wine bottle, and a beer mug, all of which had been recently emptied into Nicol.
The early rehearsal period was, as early rehearsal periods often are, a promising Eden. Nicol embraced every company member, and everyone seemed happy with the play. Celeste provided delectable anecdotes. In 1949, she was costarring with Loretta Young in the uplifting film Come to the Stable, in which the pair appeared as radiant, tennis-playing nuns, founding a children’s hospital in Bethlehem, Connecticut. In reality, years earlier, Loretta had secretly given birth to Clark Gable’s illegitimate daughter. For publicity purposes, she’d then contrived to remain virginal by adopting her own child. All of this subterfuge had made Loretta an even more devout Catholic, and during the filming, whenever anyone used profanity, or took the Lord’s name in vain, she had the person drop a nickel into a cuss box, with the proceeds shipped to Vatican-related charities. One afternoon, Ethel Merman visited the set and was told of the cuss box. She yanked a bill from her wallet, located Celeste’s costar, and brayed, “Here’s ten bucks, Loretta. Go fuck yourself.”
In our second week, Nicol invited me to his small, bare Hell’s Kitchen pied-à-terre, where he hunched over a rec-room quality Hohner organ and played and bleated a song cycle that he’d composed, based on his open-wound divorce. Each number was devoted to a militant, usually obscene hatred of his ex-wife and assorted female members of her family. After each ditty excoriating another ungrateful bitch who’d charbroiled his soul, Nicol would turn to me eagerly, for an opinion. “Wow,” I kept repeating, “she sounds awful.”
“Yes!” Nicol thundered each time. “That’s exactly right!”
Early in the play, the real estate agent suggests that Andrew hold a seance to contact the ghost of Barrymore. An attempt is made, which, though apparently unsuccessful, later results in the great man’s return to earth. “Am I dead?” the ghost inquires. “Or just incredibly drunk?” To prepare for this scene, the cast decided to hold an actual seance in my apartment. We hired a psychic, a frazzled woman with a matching perm, who, I suspected, owned more than one cat and far more than one scented candle.
In my apartment everyone gathered around a massive oak library table. I’d furnished the place in the Barrymore manner, with burnished leather couches, heavily carved and gilded thrones, the sort of antique coats of arms found in any suburban steak house, and a tarnished, tilting brass candelabra. Hosting on a budget, I served reasonably priced wine, microwave popcorn,
and Pepperidge Farm Milanos. Our psychic offered each cast member a brief, sketchy reading, identifying the invisible spirit guide that stood just behind each person’s chair.
Some of the actors had angelic, Victorian child guides, or Native American shamans with names like Sunshaker or Wind-climber, which sounded like recreational vehicles. The psychic made a foolish mistake in contacting Celeste’s spirit guide, a gentle Navajo who warned Celeste against wearing fur. Celeste prided herself on upgrading her mink every few years, so she graciously wondered if she could fire her spirit guide. The meter was running, so I encouraged the medium to aim for a direct hit on Barrymore. We all clasped hands and she shut her eyes, clanged her finger cymbals, and began a rhythmic moaning that was either a trance state or a belated Kaddish for my grandmother. She directed us to concentrate our spiritual energy on the door that opened on the stairs to the rooftop. Nicol, who’d cornered the reasonably priced wine, staggered to his feet and, in a sepulchral wail worthy of any character on a Simpsons Halloween special, bellowed, “Come!”
Nothing. We all sat up straighter and glared even more aggressively at the door. “COME!” Nicol bellowed again, raising his arms in Dionysian welcome.
Still nothing. We were all quivering with ecstatic, ectoplasmic yearning, and Nicol howled “COOOME!!!” with such ferocity that I feared for his sexual partners.
The door moved a fraction of an inch. It didn’t swing open, and Nicol had certainly been producing some Hindenburg-quality hot air, but who knows? I’ve often wondered if everything that followed was the result of that seance, if just maybe we’d actually unleashed some cackling, uproar-seeking, heedless Barrymore imp. We waited, but nothing else happened, except for the psychic reminding us that her rates doubled after the first hour. Nicol pronounced the evening “a fantastical success!” I switched on the lights, and everyone went home, with Nicol cradling the last unopened jug of reasonably priced wine. Celeste couldn’t have been more well-mannered, even as she offered the psychic a slightly frosty, “Thank you, dear.”
I continued to rewrite the play, but with each passing week Nicol grew more paranoid. His complaint was essentially that he was being asked to appear onstage with other people. He took to calling me at three a.m., always opening with a solicitous “I didn’t wake you, did I?” He’d had a brainstorm: What would I think if Evan left the show and Nicol played the parts of both Andrew and Barrymore simultaneously? I couldn’t even begin to formulate a response, since not only was Evan first rate, but the characters had many scenes together, including a ripsnorting duel that climaxed the first act. As I sputtered, Nicol jumped in: “Oh, I know just what you’re thinking. Of course I could play both parts easily, but Andrew is intended to be, what, twenty-six-years-old? And you’re wondering, will the audience accept me as twenty-six? It might be a concern, but it’s not a film—from the stage there’d be no problem at all!” Nicol was then fifty-two.
Our preview performances began. The set, by Tony Straiges, was a grander approximation of my apartment, resembling the great hall of some fantasy castle, with tapestries, a large oil portrait of Nicol as Barrymore, and, on a wooden stand, an enormous parchment-covered globe that, in the early moments of Act II, opened to reveal a wet bar.
Nicol was sensational. In a luxuriant wig and sculpted black tunic and tights, he was utterly persuasive as a dashing, brutally comic Barrymore. He commanded the stage, and seemed to be having the time of his life. He was possessed by Barrymore, both in the play’s more burlesque moments and in his speeches from Hamlet, which he delivered with eloquence and simplicity, as a lesson to Andrew and the rest of us. It was too good to last.
After the first few shows, Nicol embarked on a self-destructive binge. He repeatedly propositioned the stage manager, and when she resisted his groping advances, he called the management and demanded that she be fired. This didn’t happen, but the atmosphere backstage became poisonous. The cast posed for a raft of promotional photographs, and Nicol tried to block the release of any picture in which he appeared with another actor. Then he began murmuring directions, while onstage, to other cast members: “Is that what you’re doing?” “God, that’s awful,” and worse. During scenes in which the script called for him to hover, as a ghost, and eavesdrop on the action, he would leave the stage. He gradually and deliberately alienated almost everyone, until the production became a war zone. One night, I stopped by his dressing room to make a final attempt to repair our relationship. When I entered, he took a wobbly swing at me, aimed at my head and connecting with my shoulder. I was more surprised than hurt; it was like being assaulted by a sleeping bag. Further revisions to the script became impossible.
During the opening-night performance at the Walter Kerr Theatre, I sat crouched on the carpeted steps at the rear of the balcony. Like any opening-night crowd, the audience was appreciative and vocal. As I watched, I thought, My play is opening tonight on Broadway. This was a glorious and yet conventional dream, and that was the problem. Conventional dreams, such as Broadway openings, weddings, and elections, aren’t about joy; they’re about expectations, pressure, and blind panic.
The cast party was at Tavern on the Green. Everyone’s friends and family were in attendance, and Nicol ruled the night. He still wasn’t speaking to just about anybody, but there he was, in a white dinner jacket, grabbing the microphone and forcing the band to back him on assorted Tom Jones hits. It was like attending the coronation of a sadistic, self-proclaimed emperor, with toasts encouraged by armed guards. I longed for Nicol to be a caddish yet magnetic rogue and win everyone back. But he couldn’t. Owing to drink and bitterness and rage, he needed to be loathed by friends and adored by strangers.
The reviews were mixed. “Mixed reviews” is a phrase like “creative differences,” or “of unknown origin” it’s what the government tells the widow. Nicol was accused of genius, slumming, and everything in between. Reports of his bad behavior had been rampant, so his notices were like bulletins from the front, hoping to make sense of a battle still in progress.
Now that we had opened, the fun truly began. During the first act, Barrymore’s ghost arrives to coax and browbeat Andrew into playing Hamlet. Andrew is ambivalent and wary. While he hates playing opposite a hand puppet in his lucrative ads for Trailburst Nuggets breakfast cereal, he’s terrified of the stage, the tights, and the Bard. His friend Gary backs him up: “I mean, it’s not even dinner theater. They sell whole-wheat brownies and little bags of nuts and raisins. It’s snack theater. It’s Shakespeare for squirrels.”
Barrymore scoffs, asking Andrew, “Can you possibly believe that every prospective Hamlet did not tremble and pale and bolt? Hamlet will change you, Andrew, make no mistake. What are you to be—artist, or lunchbox?”
“Get out!” Andrew wails.
“En garde!” cries Barrymore, now brandishing a dangerously gleaming sword.
I wasn’t there on the Thursday night, a month or so after the opening, when Nicol went for broke. I had gone to see another show, and at a restaurant afterward a friend rushed over to my table, asking, “Oh my God! Have you heard anything? Is he really hurt? Is he okay?”
“Who? What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Tonight! At your play! Nicol Williamson stabbed Evan Handler!”
During the swordplay scene, Nicol, it seemed, had actually struck his costar. Evan, quite wisely, had left the stage, the performance, and, ultimately, the production. His understudy had finished the show that night.
Later that evening, another friend came running up to me. “Oh my God,” he said, “it’s so tragic!”
“Nicol?” I asked. “And my play?”
“No! Jerzy Kosinski! He’s dead!” Kosinski, the acclaimed, controversial, Polish-born author of such works as The Painted Bird, had committed suicide in his bathtub. The next day, Kosinski’s grisly end shared billing with the I Hate Hamlet tumult on the front page of the Times. In the Post’s weekend edition, a photograph of the duel filled the entire front page, under the he
adline “I HIT HAMLET! ACTOR STORMS OFF STAGE AFTER CO-STAR WHACKS HIM IN BUTT.” There was coverage all over the world, and TV news crews stood outside the theater, every night. I learned to say “No comment” in many languages.
Evan Handler wanted to bring Nicol and the production up on charges. A meeting was called, and the producers and I tried to determine a course of action. Should Nicol be fired? We realized that he’d been brilliantly, maliciously sly; because of all the publicity, he now was the show, and no other star in his right mind would step into the role. The situation was impossible. At an earlier meeting, two of our producers, the gentlest and most well-intentioned men, became so frustrated that a fistfight broke out. The brawl ended within seconds, with instant apologies all around. Even when he wasn’t in the room, Nicol was winning.
Evan’s understudy took over, and the show wobbled along for a few more weeks. Nicol was in clover. He began leading the audiences in singalongs of “Happy Days Are Here Again,” and, at the curtain calls, he liked to instruct the crowd to “Head home and enjoy a nice juicy slice of sexual intercourse!” The Tony Award nominations were announced around this time, and while Adam Arkin received a nod, Nicol did not. He was livid, and took to haranguing the nominating committee from the stage.
I attended the closing-night performance, and afterward I went backstage. On a small table outside Nicol’s dressing room was a bottle containing his blood-pressure medication. I considered replacing the pills with—what? Arsenic? Rat poison? What could possibly kill him?
