The Grand Surprise

by Leo Lerman

  NOTE: At the end of October, Leo went to the Dallas Civic Opera to hear Callas sing La Traviata, directed by Zeffirelli, and Medea, directed by Alexis Minotis of the Greek National Theater.

  OCTOBER 29, 1958 • EN ROUTE FROM NEW YORK TO DALLAS

  TO GRAY FOY • new york city

  Here we sit in a vast plain, not having come to St. Louis but having passed through Terre Haute. The only memorable sight there being enormous clumps of chrysanthemums—parti-colored and deep purple in a garden. My, the Midwest is flat, and there is nothing to distinguish any one place in it from another. (We are racing again.) I read and read (The Proud Possessors [by Aline Saarinen]) and when I have read seventy pages, look up and out at precisely what I have seen all day long. There is beauty in the farmlands and in the trees and streams, but nowhere is there any architectural beauty save in functional structures—barns, corncribs, silos, railroad buildings. As for fantasy, I find level vastness utterly unrewarding: It neither feeds the eye nor nourishes the soul. Oh, for a hill. I didn't know that so many people lived in trailers. Imperma-nence breeds irresponsibility. What monsters of men and women trailer children will be. Here there was surely, in prehistoric times, a great lake—and just as surely there will be one here again

  Now the train is wailing and slowing down. You would think that the nation is being invaded and no hints are to be given the enemies as to where they are. Not a station sign ever visible—nothing, ever, to tell where one is. Even small Austrian stops loudly proclaimed who they were. Here we stop in a station— where ponytailed or babushka'd females await someone and clouds of Anna Karenina steam obliterate what must be scenes of joyful greeting. I can hear this through two thicknesses of window glass, so they must be joyful. Maybe we are in Arkansas—it all sounds so southern. We passed through [Little Rock], your momma's birthplace (and Lorelei Lee's) at about three a.m. States seem endless out here. Sleep well, my own beloved Possum-Pussum.

  OCTOBER 31, 1958 • DALLAS, TEXAS

  TO GRAY FOY • new york city

  It's a very pretty day … kind of smeary blue and smokey and quite warm. But, oh, the desolation of America … the enormous uninspired miles of America … nothing, nothing to nourish one, nothing, not even picturesque debris … only dead-car grounds with parking lots crammed with future dead cars right close… and the same neon-lighted nights all through the land … and hovels … bleak, nasty hovels in which only the most puny lives could possibly be eked out. Could anything save rock ‘n' roll worship come from this? Could anything save debasement of language and spirit come from this wanton vast waste? Oh me … “The Waste Land”—and could he have written it if he hadn't sprung from St. Louis?

  I listened carefully to people in the dining room of this excessively quiet and proper hotel, and I am amazed and appalled at the ignorance. They don't even know what Traviata is, many of them. The women seem well dressed, conservative even, but the men go all out for design(!) and color and those hats—they really wear them. Still, Dallas seems so worn-out, even the newest buildings, not like Chicago, which, no matter whether one likes or dislikes it, is full of spirit and bluster and is, as I thought, still a real frontier town … with more a cattle feeling in it than here…. Ruth [Lindley] showed me all those enormous House & Garden houses, and she says they just don't have collections in them…. Maybe when Neiman Marcus puts in an art department Dallas will collect pictures.27 I still can't stop feeling that this whole city isn't here. It's not quite the same feeling that I had in Hollywood: There I felt that I could see through everything; here I feel that it's all not here. There is not even a rim of low hills on any horizon. The world seems to obliterate itself here, just levels itself into nothingness. What a situation for agoraphobia.

  A curious detail: While lunching at the S & S tearoom yesterday there was a continual dreadful bombing sound, distant but massive and terrifying—jets. How odd to see all those costly ladies eating things they shouldn't have been eating, while their annihilation boomed in the near future.

  Your stepmother Faye [Lockett Foy] just was on the blower—Puss, how can you ever? Oh, me … She means so well. She talked and talked and we are lun-cheoning (despite her migraine!) tomorrow at the Zodiac Room. Sunday morning, she and your poor father will be showing me nearby Texas (I can just see your pretty face). I told her about how hard you worked, and she told me about how much she loved you, and how it worried her that you had no steady girl, and I told her about how very popular you were and loads of girls just swooned at the mere smutch of your look, and she told me how Ruth was the only girl for you and vice versa, and I opined that you had a deep feeling for Ruth and vice versa, and so then she told me that all over again, and she could easily, with her good intentions, drive anyone to dissipation, just as a reaction. She has the sentimental approach to everything. Faye is pathetic the way some of Bill Inge's people are—the pathos of being middle class and perceiving life more glittering in the very near but quite inaccessible distance, like seeing the most glamorous party going on in the next block and not even knowing how to get to it.

  NOVEMBER 1

  Your father made me deeply sad. I wanted to cuddle him. There you are … your beautiful hands quite aged and your cheekbones (which, I do believe, I have told you are as beautiful as the Winged Victory in the Louvre) and so many similarities, but all drawn differently. He is one of the most touching people I have ever seen. How, how did things go wrong, I wonder. He talked quite a lot. I was surprised. He says that he and all sorts of other men in your family and, I guess, you, all derive certain characteristics, such as the recluse strain, from your grandpa.

  Now, about Faye: She is everything I knew that she would be but plumper and dowdier. She and her ambitions and her hen parties and her whole morality and all of her “values” contrasted to this extraordinary desert, this reekingly rich Dallas-Texas world, are the true American play. For I should think that this is a synthesis of all such American regions. I am sure that despite regional variations here is the American dream and tragedy inextricably entwined. I sit here in the dusk looking out over the vast plain with lights glittering and the superhighways not yet in full fluorescent blaze and the neon blossoming like plastic signal fires all over this vast desert… and nowhere do I perceive the future … only the present as though viewed from the future. They have invented a new tense in America—the present past. To be trapped here …

  Last night, the ball… $1,500 of camellia-pink satin ribbon festooning the Adolphus [hotel] ballroom(!) … and the Paris dresses from Neiman's and Magnin's and Marshall Fields and New York stores and even from Paris… and the jewels which even made La Superba's [Callas's] look kind of niggardly… and that fat slob Elsa Maxwell so subdued that one wouldn't have known she was there … and the kind of smug discontent in that room … and the ambiguity of some of the males—so male that one suspected them as one suspects Hemingway's prose … and the rapacity of the women— it's all quite true about [Tennessee Williams's] Big Mama and Big Daddy and their slobby children.

  The performance [October 31] was the most extraordinary Traviata I have ever seen. It is the only genuinely created Traviata. [Director] Zeffirelli is amazing. He did it strictly 1852, having all of the costumes made in Rome, and he did it much the way it is in Dumas's novel. During the overture the curtain rises and there is Violetta dying as in the last act. Then, quite suddenly, when the music requires, up blaze the lights (all very gaslit somehow, quite a miracle of stagecraft). Violetta is in her own past, receiving her guests and quite pathetically pleased not to be on her deathbed. All through the act you are constantly reminded by many subtle touches in her characterization that this is gaiety recollected. It is never tricky; the magic never betrays the magician. The illusion holds as it did in Venice [in 1953]. This is never for one instant out of period. The chorus walks correctly; the hair is accurate; the rooms are the right size. Not the haute courtisane world, but oh so Balzac. And the dresses are each individual and each superb—all those 1850ish colo
rs—autumnal, just off—the kinds you read about in old books and wonder about. If only you could see it. The diva sang better than I have heard her sing in years, and she looked so right. I know of no other diva who would wear her hair (a wig) this not too attractive way.

  FRANCO ZEFFIRELLI Between the Callas Traviata and her Medea some days later, I wandered onto the stage in the early evening. There was Franco industriously snipping, tearing what looked like an animal skin. He was carefully pasting bits and pieces of it onto the walls of his scenery. “What,” I inquired, “are you doing?” “Needs it,” he said … “Texture,” he grunted. “But what is it?” “Fur.” “Where did you get it? Looks like mink…” “Found it… in the house …” gesturing out into the darkened theater. “Just what I needed.” (1984)

  MARIA AND MEDEA In Dallas, on the day preceding the evening of the Medea dress rehearsal, when I came to Maria's dressing room I found her in a rage such as I never had seen. She was clutching a telegram from Bing28 Time came for the rehearsal to begin. We sat out in the house, a small group of disconsolate Maria addicts, as the orchestra began and the opera got under way. Medea enters late in the first act. The opera builds and builds and builds and then slowly, gradually, Medea enters. Medea-Maria materialized, a cloak held up to just below her eyes. As she advanced on a platform above some steps and faced the orchestra, the orchestra stopped playing. The eyes were so full of hatred that it became apparent immediately that, if Mr. Bing were anywhere about, they would strike him dead. Slowly, the cloak began to descend. The mouth opened and out poured a volume of sound, and this was a Medea that no one had ever dreamed could exist in life or onstage. This was Maria complete—the Maria who could become Medea and the Medea who could become Maria—the essence of theater.

  At about four in the morning, we were going home, Maria, Meneghini, and I.I sat in the middle. And Maria had not a word to say. We were holding hands, and her hand was very quiet and very warm. By and by a small voice said, “Who is this Rachel of yours?” “She was one of the very greatest French tragediennes. She began by singing in the streets, a poor Jewish girl, and she became the greatest actress of her day, before Bernhardt.” “Oh,” she said, “before Bernhardt… hmmm.” (1993)

  JOURNAL • november 8, 1958 • st. louis I should write down everything I remember about these eight Dallas days: the enormous emptiness of Dallas— the flabbergasting richness. Mrs. Lambert's maid, calling out to the pre-Medea supper party guests (about sixty), “Come and git yeur plate of knickknacks!” (Gumbo was served.)29 Mrs. Louise Roberts's maid, in head cloth, receiving the lost Italian Girl guests (about seventy) at the foot of the drive and then, with arm and hand upraised in a gesture reminiscent of the Beckoning Fair One, leading each party all the way up the drive and onto the terrace (the house is a replica of a plantation mansion) and into the party— she did this with each group of arriving guests.30 Mr. Leo Corrigan [real estate executive] pointing out that at least four of his male guests are billionaires, and one has at least a million dollars a week; the parties, parties, parties—and how Mary Reed and David Stickelbar (from Kansas City) never want to go to sleep.31 He said suddenly that he wanted time to stop and then threw out of the window of the speeding car his $600 wristwatch; the lunches, dinners-after-party parties at the Cipango, the Imperial Club, the City Club. The woman who said, “Ah have to have at least thirty ball gowns a season, Mr. Lerman,” with the inflection upward on the Lerman. The hundreds of women shaking hands with us when we were guests of honor at the Dallas Woman's Club— Mrs. Roberts finally saying, “It's lucky that you weren't doing this last year, you would have been blinded. Jewelry's changed in a year.” Mrs. Vera Hart Martin (very Big Mama), who entertained five hundred for the debbie niece of Temple Phinney, at an eleven a.m. coffee and then entertained another six hundred of us at a tea on the same day—”People are always saying, ‘Vera, Why don't you git married again,' and I'm always saying to them, ‘I was married, honey.' “ She's been a widder twelve years. Mr. Graf in his showplace, the Stone House, as empty an extravagance as ever the world has known, pressing buttons that illuminate each tree—and how many there are—hundreds— and saying in his Berlin-accented, mittel-European-charm, soft voice, his worldly eyes amused, “und we have walls all around us—like a prison—but it is comfortable….” Then he showed me his dressing room, where some one hundred suits hang splendidly—also a couple of early Mondrian flower water-colors—all other “art” strictly from the calendar (nowhere in Dallas did I see a single genuine painting, save in the museums). When Nancy Howell and I were leaving, and she asked for a red rose from one of the flower arrangements (all placed precisely where [the decorator] Robsjohn-Gibbings had placed them the day the house was finished) and Mr. Graf was about to give her one, the butler in tailcoat said, “Mr. Graf, Mrs. Graf needs them for tomorrow.” Nancy did not get the rose, and Mr. Graf looked regretful but accustomed to it all. Mrs. G was [formerly] a waitress near or in Fort Worth—a blonde and dressed like a carhop. She'd been done up in purple, but five minutes before we came Mr. G had forbidden her to come down in it, for it was too décolleté—so now she was in red pants and jeweled pull-on.

  Do not forget Maria's temper—how this is a nourishment to her—an outlet and absolutely important, for it is the result of her superb genius. She breathes through temper as the earth breathes through volcanoes.

  People at Medea were listening with one ear to the opera and the other fixed to election returns coming over transistor radios.

  NOTE: In the winter of 1958-59, Leo wrote the screenplay of George Balanchine's version of The Nutcracker for a Playhouse go broadcast produced by John Houseman. However, Leo took another prolonged break from journal writing in this period, resuming in July 1959. Although the Nutcracker project passed without comment, following are two reminiscences by him about other experiences during these months.

  TANIA AND MARIA “Isak Dinesen is coming to New York” everyone told everyone else, “to tell her stories.” So, the legend arrived, with retinue, of course—a cousin, a secretary-companion. Female royalty was always attended, in its palmy days, by at least two nobly in waiting. She was even more fragile than she had been years ago when I sat at tea with her in her gray and gold room. I would take her to hear Maria Callas sing Il Pirata at Carnegie Hall [on January 27, 1959]. Yes, she would like that. She had never heard or even seen Callas. She loved music, opera…. She looked at me speculatively, her I-know-exactly-what-you-are-thinking look.

  We went to Carnegie Hall. The mobs on the pavement were the kind you see in movies about Hollywood stars attending their own world premieres. When our taxi finally drew up to the curb, the mobs were busy looking this way and that way and shouting. I helped Tania out of the taxi. She was so thin that the weight of her garments made it almost impossible for her to move. She stood a moment, resting against me.32 She seemed a design by Beardsley: In her youth she had surely known the Marchesa Casati, for here were related twistings and windings of tulle and chiffon, lace and fur, black and deep brown mingling.33 Beardsley, the Casati—she had assimilated them years ago. Now she was herself, unique, a personage of very great quality and astonishing individuality. Automatically the mob became silent. It made a lane along which I half-carried, half-led her and so up the steps and into the hall.

  During the second act, she whispered, “Yes. She has something of Pellegrina Leoni… yes….”34 She continued to peer at Callas. When the aria ended, still staring straight at the stage, she murmured, “It is not always possible to see even the shadow of one's own invention and hers is someone so closely related to …” It was never necessary to explain to Tania. (FROM ISAK DINESEN: A MEMORIAL, 1965)

  MARLENE AND GRETA Walking across town late one evening with Marlene, after we had hidden ourselves in the top balcony of the old Paramount movie palace on Times Square (where we had gone to see the remake of The Blue Angel starring May Britt, and had not sat through the whole thing because it was agony for Marlene, who could not believe what had
happened to her Blue Angel), Marlene said, as she stepped into the gutter, “Dear, what would have become of me if I had not really been a cold woman?” I took her to Café Geiger, that very German bakeshop and restaurant on East Eighty-sixth Street, and fed her Kaffee mit Schlag and rich cakes. We laughed a lot, and the little string orchestra played Marlenes “Falling in Love Again” and “Johnny” and “Peter” and other Marlene songs and “gems” from The Student Prince. Marlene whispered: “I always wanted to play Kathy in that, but who would ever let me play an ingénue? Who would believe me as Gretchen in Faust?” And we both cried.

  Then we went back to Gray and my house, and she, who really did not like to go to sleep ever, sat in the back parlor and laughed and talked and impersonated. She settled down at about five in the morning and said, “Did I ever tell you about the time I went to see Miss Greta Garbo?” She laughed, “Yes. You know that book by Isak Dinesen, The Angelic Avengers, you remember what it's about? You know, two sisters … two sisters who really love one another very much … about their life … and about a beautiful sister and the other one wasn't really so beautiful… two wonderful, wonderful sisters … I thought what a marvelous movie, if Greta would play it with me. So, I went to see her. I took the book. Do you remember the cover of the book? It had the two sisters on the cover? You knew right away what that book was. So I took the book and I went to see Greta. And Greta said, ‘What do you want?' and I told her all about these two wonderful sisters, one so beautiful and the other not so beautiful. And Greta said, ‘So which one should I be?' And I said, ‘What do you mean, Greta, the one who's more interesting, the one who's not so beautiful. She's the most interesting person in this whole book. She's the real star.' And Greta said, ‘I don't think I want to make this movie with you.' And she got up, took me to the door, and that's the last time I ever visited Greta Garbo.” (1993)