by Anne Edwards
I rushed up to her. She drew one trembling, skeletal hand free from her holders and placed it on my cheek. There it was—the scent of verbena. She insisted we go to the visitor’s room and, when carefully placed in a chair, wanted to know about the children and Leon. “Is he a good man?” she asked. I wasn’t quite sure I knew what she meant by that, but I answered positively. “And the wedding?”
“Lovely. Really lovely. The only thing missing was your presence.”
“Oh, well, sweetheart,” she smiled wanly, “I was at the first.”
We sat there for about five minutes while she held my hand. When she let go, I realized she might be in pain. The nurses suggested she return to her room. I insisted on going with her and remained by her side as the morphine she was administered finally took effect.
For the next two weeks, I spent a good part of every day and evening at the hospital. She had cancer of the spleen, which had spread throughout her stomach and body. She had refused radiation and it had taken several doctors to convince her to have shots of morphine to ease the pain. There was nothing more anyone could do.
“How long?” I asked her oncologist.
“No telling. She seems to be holding on. Six weeks—three months at the most. I’ve ordered that she be moved to a nursing home. She’ll get good care there. The object is to keep her out of pain as much as possible.”
A difficult decision had to be made. Either I sat out the death watch or I returned to London and then came back when things looked imminent. I spoke to Leon, who was in favor of my flying home. “Right now she has your father and her sister,” he reasoned. Then, there was spring break for Cathy coming up in a few weeks.
“It means two trips—double expense,” I said.
“I’ll take care of it. Come home.”
And so I went without any long good-byes to my mother, for by then the morphine kept her pretty much unaware of her surroundings.
Three days after my return, my father called. “Your mother died an hour ago,” he said. “I don’t know what I’ll do.” There were no sobs, but I felt a deep honesty to his words. He had always had Marion to come home to. What now?
There seemed no reason to fly back, for my mother had left instructions that she did not want a religious funeral. She was buried in a small, simple service in the cemetery where Big Charlie had a large family plot. Along with my father, there were seven members of her family present. My grandmother was told that her daughter remained in a nursing home. She passed away less than a year later, never knowing the truth. Or, perhaps, wise woman that she was, did and preferred to accept what was told to her.
The early sixties in England were a time of extremes. At Ascot, the Queen and the racetrack’s elite attendees all wore these extraordinary hats. Skirts were midcalf. The Queen, still a young, pretty woman in her midthirties, dressed in coordinated colors—hat, dress, purse, all matching—as did all the women in her party, although the colors the ladies of the royal family wore could not be replicated by others. If the Queen wore pink, no one else could. That stood for the Queen Mother’s and Princess Margaret’s choice of garment shade as well. The Queen and her mother were ardent horse fans while Margaret enjoyed the side pleasures, for Ascot was the high point of the “social season,” a time that had little effect on the rest of the Queen’s subjects. Prince Philip and the other attending gentlemen wore top hats, their unfurled black umbrellas (with handsome silver, ivory, or gold handles) giving them a three-legged look. If a dribble of rain fell—as often occurred—there would be an orchestrated opening of the umbrellas to cover milady’s plumed and flowered hats (almost a whole garden of flowers it seemed of some).
On the streets of London, in the clubs and chic establishments, designers like Pierre Cardin had shortened women’s skirts to heights that displayed a less-than-discreet section of a thigh. Dresses were designed in tents, triangles, and discordant (or just plain splashy) colors. Hair was so bouffant that it was difficult (except in royal circles!) for a woman to wear a hat. I personally believe that the bouffant hairstyle spelled the beginning of the end for milliners around the world. There was even a madcap fad (very short lived) for paper dresses. The new British musical had come into its own with Anthony Newley’s and Leslie Bricusse’s Stop the World—I Want to Get Off, and their follow-up, The Roar of the Greasepaint—The Smell of the Crowd, while the previous season’s Oliver!, music and lyrics by Lionel Bart, went on to become a smash Broadway hit. The new international male film star was dashing Scotsman Sean Connery as James Bond, perfect martini in his hand, a sharp-titted beauty at his side, as he prepared to save the world from destruction. Cockney accents and bastard English heroes like Michael Caine’s Alfie were in. Reversing the trend, the very English Mary Poppins and My Fair Lady became Hollywood’s top grossers in the same year.
And the music! Let us not forget the music. Sure, Mozart and Schumann were reliable choices at Royal Festival Hall, and the overforties spun Frank Sinatra on their home phonographs. But the most-played music, the sound that would change popular music, that singularly everyman, pop phenomenon, were the Beatles. Strange bedfellows that they were—Walter Shenson and Leon were part of the producing team that made the Beatles’ first film, A Hard Day’s Night, directed by Richard Lester, who was a nonconformist. With A Hard Day’s Night, he broke radically with the established precedent of performance-based musical sequences. The Beatles came alive, popping right off the screen as they tore through the inexplicable action of the film, the songs ofttimes having little to do with the story (which was nominal, at best). They were a force that could not be denied.
At one point, A Hard Day’s Night was about to be dropped from production. The studio could not find a director with substantial credits who wanted to make the movie. Lester, who had directed The Mouse That Roared—also an oddball film, starring a hilarious Peter Sellers—stepped in. Then the original producer backed out. Walter Shenson, the producer of The Mouse That Roared, literally got the movie thrown into his lap. Leon, his associate producer on that film, came along with him. Walter, with little interest in, and almost no knowledge of, music turned to Leon to provide it. I had great respect for Leon, who certainly was one of the first older folks (in his fifties at the time) I knew who saw the brilliance in the Beatles’ music and performance and the potential of its effect on popular music. In music terms, the film was historically significant. It spread a new sound around the world. Without it, the Beatles might not have become as globally popular as they did, certainly not with such shocking rapidity. Leon also went on to produce for British television episodes from an animated Beatles twelve-part series. Lennox Gardens was alive with the sound of the four Liverpudlians, and I liked it.
London, it seemed, had come out of the gloom and glory of the past into this strange new world. It was no longer an isolated island but a lifeline to the future—at least in the arts. Nothing, of course, changed in the manners and customs of the royal family. And when occasions arose for ancient pageantry to be displayed, no country could do better than Great Britain. So there you had it. If you lived in London as I did in those years, you were observing (and were often part of) a schizophrenic culture: the staid traditions of the past and the antitraditional movements of the present.
Early in the spring of 1966, Bob Rossen took seriously ill. He died a few months later from complications due to diabetes and other organic problems. His last film (1964) had been Lilith, an adaptation of a book by J. R. Salamanca about a troubled woman (Jean Seberg) in a mental home who falls in love with a young therapist (Warren Beatty). Earlier, Bob had been interested in adapting John Fowles’s book, The Collector, also about madness and obsession, and lost out in the bidding process. Lilith was its replacement, so to speak. Although artistically interesting, it did not turn out to be one of his great films. The scrappy fighter, so often the protagonist in his work, was supplanted by a moody, indecisive antihero. I would have wished Bob had gone out in more of a blaze of glory.
I was i
n London when he died in a New York hospital with Sue and his three children by his bedside. I felt great sadness in his passing but never could discuss it with Leon or Sidney. To them, he would always carry the stigma of an informer. I knew and judged him on a personal level. Bob had always been good to me and the children. There was, I had to admit to myself, a definite double standard. Bob had never turned his back on me and so I could never turn mine on him.
In April of that year, I had received a call from Sidney, who was in Cannes. He asked me to work with him to co-adapt for screen the musical Funny Girl. The show had been a success on Broadway, without doubt due to the phenomenal performance of a young woman, Barbra Streisand, as Fanny Brice, former star of the Ziegfeld Follies. It had just opened in London to mixed reviews. “One of the most nonsensical plots in the history of American musicals,” the Times reported. However, Streisand’s personal reviews were extraordinary. “She sings and there are saxophones, trumpets, and violins in her throat,” one newspaper wrote. London, in fact, was en fete with Streisand’s success.
Still, it is hard for one performer to make a film a box-office hit, never mind one who had never before made a movie and did not look like a Hollywood star. It would be doubly difficult when the story was as weak as Funny Girl. New York theatergoers had loved Streisand, and it looked like the same would be true in London. She was Fanny Brice and then some. Casting someone other than her would be a huge gamble.
Sidney was coming up to London and wanted me to see it with him. “I’d like you to work with me on this one,” he said. “I don’t feel I can go it alone.” (This was a reference to the fact that he had been having some recent medical problems.) He told me that his agent—who would act on both of our behalves—thought he could get a substantial offer. Sidney would be the senior writer. Therefore, the projected fee would be split 65 percent for him, 35 percent for me—but he would pay the agent’s fee of 10 percent of the whole. He had not seen the play on Broadway, but he had heard Streisand sing on record. “She’s a powerhouse,” he confirmed of the reviews. “And she is set to star in the movie.” This was a chance for me to gain back my identity on-screen. If he accepted the deal, I agreed to whatever terms he thought fair.
Sidney arrived in London in time for Saturday’s matinee. We returned in the evening to see it again. Sunday was spent poring over the play scripts we had been given, making notes—mainly on trying to get a take on the characters and the thrust of the story and how they could be enhanced on film. The male lead was Fanny Brice’s gambler husband, Nicky Arnstein. In the play his role was underwritten, and not interesting, save for the good looks of the actor (Sydney Chaplin, Charlie’s younger son, in New York) who was cast to portray him. Ray Stark, the executive producer and cofounder of Seven Arts Productions company, was also in London. I am not sure where he was staying, but he took a two-room suite at the Dorchester Hotel for Sidney and me to use as our workplace. One morning, a few days after we had begun, Sidney—always an early riser—picked me up at about eight a.m. We sat downstairs in the Dorchester’s coffee shop for some breakfast before heading up to the suite. Sidney had the key, opened the door, stepped inside, and then put his hand up for me to stay where I was. Beyond him I could see Ray Stark and a young, barely covered woman.
“Close the door!” Stark called out.
I stepped back. Sidney went in, to return moments later to me, idling in the hallway. “Can we work at your place?” he asked.
Leon was on location, but in the city. “Sure,” I assented, as he hustled me down the hallway and into an elevator. We rode down in silence. Once in the backseat of one of England’s commodious black taxis, glass window between us and the driver closed, I asked, “What was that all about?”
“The only thing I can say is that you better keep Cathy away from that lecher,” he said, his mouth becoming tightly drawn.
I would not call Sidney a prude. And certainly he was in the front line fighting for free expression. He had, however, his own code of morals and rules that he lived by. One did not swear in front of a lady. One never drank hard liquor before five p.m. Debts must be paid on time. A certain decorum must be upheld in dress and manner. And—most certainly—a man must never, ever, have sex, or even foreplay, with a woman under the age of consent. He felt strongly that Ray Stark had desecrated the last two and refused to return to the Dorchester. We retreated to Lennox Gardens and so the convenient thing seemed to remain there for the work that we had to do. Leon was extremely good about this and was to prove most helpful. We had acquired reel-to-reel tapes made by Fanny Brice shortly before her death in 1951, with the intent of working with a cowriter on her autobiography. Leon transferred them to more easily accessible tapes playable on a small recorder. Fanny’s honesty about her own missteps in the marriage—and the intonation of her voice—added much to her character and more depth to the story; especially to a better understanding of her love affair and marriage to Nicky Arnstein. Nicky became more human—whereas in the play, he was no more than a plot device or a lead-in to a song.
We hired a secretary named Roxanne (I have forgotten her last name—but it was of Scottish derivation), who set up her “office” in our hallway on the dining room table. Sidney hired her, not just because she was a fast typist and could read both his microscopic and my sprawling handwriting, but that she laughed at all his jokes (which were usually more witty than jokey). She was an attractive young woman (although no beauty) in her midtwenties. A few days after she started work, she asked if she could discuss a matter of some importance with us. Yes, of course. What was it? Well, she was first an actress and then a secretary, and she hoped we would not mind if she received calls on the telephone from her agent. Sure, okay, we agreed. Also—uh-oh! They would be asking for Ruth Bernstein. That startled us somewhat. Why? we asked.
“You know better than anyone how popular—because of Barbra Streisand—Jewish actresses are right now. So I have changed my name—just for the stage, of course.”
She did not leave our employ to go upon the stage—so I don’t know what her career was after she departed our services several months later. However, I never saw the name Ruth Bernstein on a theater marquee.
Summer was upon us. Michael was back from his first year at Berkeley where he had truly found his niche, was doing academically well, and had become involved with campus politics which were of national note at the time. I don’t think he had seriously considered another school, although he had been offered scholarships to numerous ones. Robbie Garfield, now remarried to Sidney Cohen, a theatrical lawyer, had pushed for his going to Brandeis University, where she had donated a large sum of money. She wrote a wonderful letter to the board. When accepted, Michael turned the offer down. President Lyndon Johnson (the connection through my aunt Mary, who was his sister-in-law at the time) extended him an invitation as a presidential scholar. He refused in a letter to the president, citing his views on the president’s continuation of the Vietnam War. Summer holidays in England and Europe do not correspond with those in American schools, so Cathy joined us somewhat later from Buser’s.
It was about this time that Robbie and John Garfield’s son, David—in London to attend the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts—came to stay with us. Lennox Gardens was filled with the youth and the vitality of music other than Leon’s daily practicing. He was not a totally happy camper. Not that I could blame him. Streisand’s recording of the show was played over and over—her unique voice a constant trumpet in our ears. Mixed with Beatles’ music and mania as well as Fanny/Barbra, Nicky Arnstein, and Jule Styne’s marvelous score, the place had suddenly become a set for a revival of a 1930s Frank Capra or Preston Sturges madcap movie.
Ray Stark was married to Fanny Brice’s daughter Frances. This created story problems for us. We were strongly warned that certain true incidents must not appear in the script—or should be fictionalized to gain Frances Stark’s approval. It did not help that Nicky Arnstein was also alive and promoting his interest—mainly financia
l. This made the time frame difficult as Frances had actually been born before their marriage. The play had in an earlier rendition been a film script written by Isobel Lennart, for which Stark had not been able to make a deal. Lennart then adapted her screenplay for the theater. According to the play’s director, Garson Kanin, he did a considerable amount of uncredited doctoring. We had all versions—but it was those reel-to-reel tapes and Fanny’s own voice that had most inspired us.
We never consulted Isobel, whom both of us had previously known. She had been a lethal informer during HUAC, her testimony severely damaging the lives of many numbers of our close associates. Since then, she had adapted many lighthearted scripts from book or theater to film, mostly with great success (Please Don’t Eat the Daisies and Two for the Seesaw among them). Apparently, her testimony before the Committee had saved her career. Still, informing had cost her dearly. She battled alcoholism and a fractious marriage, and had lost most of her old friends.
Sidney and I had concurred in making Nicky Arnstein’s role much stronger. But, of course, we would keep the story Fanny’s. On the tapes, Fanny had revealed that she knew a great deal about Nicky’s gambling and was not in any way the innocent that she appeared in the stage version. Also, she had made these tapes with a plan to publish an autobiography based on them, so why not incorporate the stories she told as long as Frances’s birth date was protected? Our first script opened with Fanny—already a star and married to Nicky—dressed elegantly, rushing down a prison corridor, stopping at the cell occupied by Nicky. She expects to see him ravaged. Instead, he is impeccably dressed and involved in a card game with his fellow inmates in which he was winning. She departs after a difficult exchange between them and marches out of the prison. We then flashed back to her early days on Henry Street and followed through with the story, obliging Frances Stark’s request for altering time lines. We created the Georgia James character, the Ziegfeld showgirl who befriends Fanny, the relationship allowing us to use integral incidents Fanny described in her tapes to be included in their heart-to-heart discussions.
