The Grand Surprise

by Leo Lerman

  OCTOBER 7, 1962 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO RICHARD HUNTER • bern

  I was reclining depressedly—what with Gray ill so many weeks, ten now, and new managing-editor worries,1 and the rent being raised and [the landlord] Dancik wanting some $500 extra in a lump sum, and worrying over Maebelle's retirement (a year off, but still a worry), and worrying over Puss not having any money (but as long as I can make it that isn't a real worry), and such taxes… I had to pay around $3,000. Luckily, I had saved for this, but my income has been considerably reduced—no Columbia Records money (that came to about $4,000 last year), no Doctor's Wife (that came to about $800),2 and Playbill cut in half—Woe—Ah, well—I feel in good health. Also, I have two things to write for the Times and some LP notes (The Nutcracker) to write for Mercury Records, and something lovely will happen now that you've called.

  This is Yom Kippur, so I don't go to Mlle tomorrow, but work at home. Soon I must arise and get ready to retrieve Momma from the synagogue. Last night I spoke to her, and she said I should call up Aunt Ida [Lerman] and tell her what time services are today. Since Aunt Ida lives only two streets from Momma, I asked, “Why can't you?” She said, “I don't use the telephone on Yom Kip-pur….” “But Momma,” I wailed, “you are talking—” “You're using it,” she said. What could one say to that logic? She seems well and announces that she has more than enough money for the rest of her life. Why, then, must she have any from me monthly? What are all of these mysteries?

  DECEMBER 9, 1962 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO RICHARD HUNTER • london

  Mina is about to put [her Massachusetts farm] Chapelbrook on the market. At least three houses, a wood, all sorts of lovelinesses, thirty miles north of Northampton [on Ashfield Lane]. I wish that you could see it. Maybe this is a solution for all of us. I don't want to make a move until you return, because we must all be near. Life is too short for separations. Now we must try to make a real base for ourselves—somewhere. I feel like the lost boys in Peter Pan. Who is our Wendy?

  I am trying to think of cheerfulnesses to tell you—we went to a party Arnold Weissberger gave for Vivien Leigh. Oh—she is beautiful. She said to me, “You never say anything to me…. Everyone says how witty you are, but you never say anything to me.” I said, “How can I, when all I can do is look at you … etc., etc.” So she was pleased and I felt like an oaf. Dolores Del Rio [screen actress] looked beautiful and hothouse, but Vivien Leigh is a genuine little girl beauty—such eyes.

  DECEMBER 10

  Last week was one of the worst in my whole life. I guess I had some sort of mental upheaval. Finally, Friday morning, Gray took me to the doctor, and he talked to me a long time and gave me an injection (which still hurts) and pills. These do seem to calm me, for I feel removed and controlled. My sin is pride. I could talk to you face-to-face, but not write about any of it. The house [concerns], it seems, did help to do me in. I am going to try to hang on until spring. Then we can all decide about the future. I think that I must move out of this whole world—but, of course, I must think of how to make a living. It was so good of you to think of coming home, but that would not be good for you. Be true to your heart. I have been so long away from my true center. I should never have walked into this jungle. Now I must somehow find my way out. Do you really plan to live in America part of the time? When I know what you really plan, then I shall be helped to know in what way to go. Was life similar for our parents? Poor, poor Gray—such a burden—what with his own troubles and sorrows. He has not been given a job since we returned from Spain (don't mention this) but luckily I earn enough for us both. Also I seem to have become so stingy and miserly. I imagine us in Spain and France and that helps. But I think that the drugs help the most.

  DECEMBER 12, 1962 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO MARLENE DIETRICH • montreux, switzerland

  Never, never listen to anyone save your own instinct about your work. You are a natural writer. You cannot be told what or how to do. When you try to be someone else—try to lie—you cannot be anything save a disaster. You must not worry or be worried about what someone else could or would do. Emlyn [Williams]'s book is his—good or bad.3 Colette's books are hers. You write you. If you cannot remember the war, then you must write about not remembering. That is your world, your climate, that is what makes your writing uniquely yours. Please, please do not let yourself be worried with externals. Write from within yourself. Do not distrust what you know.

  JOURNAL • February 10, 1963 Gray made a triangular hat—very neat—out of a newspaper, and this was my madeleine for today. What an upheaval of memories. Poppa made them, and we made swords of box pieces—and, oh, the wars, duels, and carousing.

  MARCH 4, 1963 • NEW YORK CITY

  TO RICHARD HUNTER • london

  About a week ago Puss had a dreadful seizure, seemingly a heart attack, but thus far, the various tests show no condition. Then, during the week we were (on a very cold evening) walking down Broadway, to view The Hollow Crown, and he had an asthma attack such as I have never seen—not yours nor any. He literally almost smothered to death in the street. I was frantic and carried him (sort of) into the Henry Miller [theater]. Soon after, two fingers on his right hand seemed almost paralyzed. Then a night or so later he had another asthma attack. I cannot get him to return to the doctor, but somehow I will. He seems better, but I am in a state. Reezl, I am (deep inside) really very frightened about Puss. He seems to have lost almost all of his hope.

  MARCH 6

  I have been asked [by Holt, Rinehart and Winston] to write a book, and the advance offered is close to $12,000!!! It is a history of taste and collecting, centered on Sotheby's, and it would be wonderful to do—London four months next year and Vienna and Paris and then home. I would try to arrange a leave of absence from Condé Nast.

  NOTE: In the spring of 1963, Leo underwent a complicated and painful procedure of stripping his varicose veins. It took months for him to walk—even as well as he had previously.

  JUNE 23, 1963 • HARBOURTON, NEW JERSEY

  TO RUTH YORCK • west berlin

  I am propped up on a long chair on the pool's edge at the Newhouses'4 — lovely, annihilating sunshine, a bellyful of strawberries, and I am being cherished. It is good to be alive, especially since I was in the way of possibly being dead. When they opened my leg, a blood clot was forming. So my instinct to have the operation immediately was good. A complicated business, taking from ten in the morning to three in the afternoon. Going under the anesthetic I was heard to murmur, “What a sneak!” and coming out, I raised my right arm and declared, “Did I do it like royalty?” Eight incisions and over a hundred stitches—incredible pain at times ever since—forty-three pounds lighter.

  Look what happens when you go away: Item—one drastic but triumphant operation. Item—one poor Gray with a bad ulcer, and he suffers desperately. Item—one Richard buying a large house you will adore—four miles from Augusta, Maine, a Greek Revival house (five columns) on the Kennebec River. We saw it twenty-five years ago, and now he is buying it. Built circa 1810–20, it is a marvelously preserved example of its genre—six bedrooms, thirty-five acres, one apple orchard, a day's drive from New York, and very beautiful. Item—Gray and Leo are coming to live in London, because Leo has a book to write (excellent contract), which requires him to research in London, and the book must be finished by March 1, 1965. Please do not tell, because only Alex [Liberman] knows at Condé Nast, and we are trying to make a plan whereby I can do some work abroad, so as to get paid by Condé Nast while away. I will need that money.

  You know when I missed you intensely? On my birthday, which was in the hospital. Sixty people came, three enormous birthday cakes, more flowers than for the opening of a Hollywood shopping center, presents endlessly, a twenty-four-hour celebration. Ruth Gordon recited, Jennie Tourel played the castanets, Martha Graham made a speech, Eileen Herlie sang, wires came from Fonteyn, Markova, Danilova … all the actresses. Callas sent a pressing of a new LP. But the ones
I wanted most—you and Ela—ah, well.

  JOURNAL • August 4, 1963 • sands point, new York At Sono [Osato] and Victor [Elmaleh]'s,5 two p.m., and the pewter light streaming from water and sky suddenly livened into a blinding, flaming boldness by sun. The radio beats a constant popular, syrupy beat. In the kitchen, Sono and Puss sit at table, lingering over crumbs, and settling world, children…. Sono is wonderfully graphic when she talks. She's a natural talker, as Vivien Leigh is a natural screen actress and Marlene is a natural writer. (Do I know what I am “natural” at? I seem to me to be so made-up.)

  Sono and Ballet Russe [Monte Carlo] danced in Berlin in 1937 and 1938. Goebbels came to the Scala [theater] where they danced. Sono: “He sat there in the Blackshirt uniform—all black with the terrible insignia. Every night those Mercedes would drive up. I lived in the pension next to the theater, and those Nazi bigwigs, they gorged themselves. Then every Sunday, we'd go to the White Russian place, the Troika, and in would come the Blackshirts, shaking their cans and standing there till you gave them money. Oh, it was weird. It was an ugly town then. There was no butter. We ate whale blubber. I bought a jacket made of wood. I thought it was fun. One day, I thought it would drop off. Then, we were driving down the Rhine…. I always had thought that it was beautiful. It wasn't cozy. It wasn't intimate—unlike the plain, where the sky opens up near Avignon—not even cozy like that great flat plain. It was ugly. No, it's not my country.”

  NOTE: Leo played his only film role in director Ted Flicker's The Troublemaker, which told the story of a naïve chicken farmer who moves to Greenwich Village to open a coffeehouse. Leo's scenes were filmed in one day on Long Island.

  JOURNAL • August 11, 1963 • new York city In our yard at home, I have been rereading David Copperfield: “When I saw him going downstairs early in the morning … it appeared to me as if the night was going away in his person.” David, about Uriah Heep. This is so devastating an image, that all of Dickens's touches—his dark revelations—pale, and the reader suddenly sees—actually sees and feels—the concentrated awfulness of Uriah—the black horror of Uriah spreading more and more through the book. What depths Dickens reveals—sometimes in a descriptive word or phrase so brief that it almost is lost in the mass of detail, yet lights the scene like a great burst of flame.

  Last night I met Gore [Vidal], younger looking and tan and thin. He's here en route from Rome to Hollywood, where his play (the political one, The Best Man) is being made. He said that he had finished his novel, Julian, and asked, “What about Troosey?” When I told him that he was trying to finish his book [In Cold Blood] in a house in one of the Hamptons and would have to go to the execution in Kansas, Gore said, “Little T, baby ghoul…” Gore says that Tennessee's Frankie [Merlo] is dying of cancer, but doesn't know that he is dying.

  I talked to Truman this morning. No news save that there has been a stay of execution, and a new trial will be held. Truman will have to go to Kansas for that. Tennessee and Frankie go to Key West. Frankie told Paul Bigelow (a revenant, a spook who does not fade6) that he weighs only 108 pounds. I can't believe Frankie doesn't know. But did Poppa know? Yes. When he saw the robin hopping in the early autumn and he said, “Even the birdies will be here in the spring,” he knew—but did he believe?

  On Friday morning I became a movie actor, and by Saturday morning I was in the depths at it all—no dignity to it. It is an emptying and empty business, acting. I understand the exhibitionist motive, but still I don't understand why people persist in acting, and no one can tell me. I played three scenes, the first two well at the first try, but badly when having to repeat them. These were scenes on a ledge high above the city. The third scene I did wretchedly. This was shot after seven, and I had been at it since midmorning, having been trotting about since six a.m.

  This work is not for me. I do want the money from it, and it is a change from writing Mademoiselle copy. Even in the midst of making this movie, Tom Aldredge (who plays the “hero” and is an excellent actor) and Joan Darling (a wonderful stage creature—alive, talented, versatile) worry about their next jobs, not having a notion of what they can or will be. There is a lack of strain in the studio, but that is unusual. There is a heavenly doggie (Waggles, Tom's dog), who is a lesson in patience, obedience, and devotion. The people are friendly, charming, intelligent. The expertise is staggering and all for this ephemera—nine minutes and some seconds were shot during the long day, and this was thought remarkable. When I think of how many words I force out on some days. It was intensely exhausting. I fell into bed at eleven. But the long waits between scenes were relaxing, specially those during which I sat alone, the make-believe world going on all around me. That was soothing. But I am not an actor and I shall never be one, no matter how many movies I make. The agony of trying to remember lines—that alone would keep me from being an actor.

  THE TROUBLEMAKER It was awful. Tom Aldredge just opened doors, slid through rooms, said his lines as if he were making them up. I didn't know how to open doors suddenly. I didn't know how to walk across rooms suddenly. I certainly could not remember any lines. But I did it somehow.

  When I, sitting on the edge of Marlene's beige bed, told about how it was, she roared with laughter. Then she got out from under her covers and onto her knees and hugged me and said, “Darling, darling, there never was a Marlene Dietrich … or a Greta Garbo.”

  Then came the big preview in a big movie theater in Manhattan, and Gray and I went. There I was. And people roared with laughter at whatever I did: When I, the “Dirty Old Man,” held out, from a dark alley, an ice cream to a little girl; when Tom chased me along a ledge—presumably ninety stories up, only two or three feet from the floor, I was terrified, but did I show it? No. I wanted to go home! I was quite fascinated with this large creature in that beautiful Max Beerbohm-ish gray suit and a beautiful white hat on the screen and felt utterly detached. And we got outside and people asked for my autograph and Gray said, “I think you were dubbed.” And I almost hit him. (1993)

  NOTE: Leo went to London in the fall of 1963 to discuss with his friend Peter Wilson, Sotheby's chairman, writing a history of the firm. Leo also had an assignment from Mademoiselle to supervise photographs and do research for a feature on Britain's National Theatre, which opened its first season that October.

  JOURNAL • October 19, 1963 • London London, despite changes, as wonderful as ever. I pelted off to Penelope [Reed] and stopped there until ten at night—lovely Penelope is very beautiful, and we talked of being fifty. I thought of the great shock of discovering that one continues to be vaguely virile. (The absolute self-possession of the pages here, through which peeps little-boy rogueries.)7

  Gina Lollobrigida came in, wearing an “old” Chanel, her black hair in a short full bob, chains and jewelry à la Chanel, a pale-blue silk blouse (not for this Chanel, for another). She loves Chanel: “She was the only one.” She is very beautiful, tired, and discontented with her movie career, wanting something else: “I would give half of my money for memory, to be able to read and remember, to remember names….” She has morbidezza and dreadful depressions. She is radiant when she talks about “my son.” Or the publishing house her husband has bought and the triumph of their Dalí-illustrated Dante. She says the Dante title as though she has carefully been taught it. But she is lovable, and a tough peasanty root is evident beneath the Chanel. “Once I bought a cocktail dress from Dior. How you say? Three thousand dollars!” She was flabbergastingly awed.

  OCTOBER 21, 1963 Maria C rang from Monte Carlo—long outpouring: Everything is all right—don't believe newspapers—she's working hard—she will do the Tosca if everything is perfect8—she must see me—she would try to come for a day—should she come to America for the concerts? She seems in good spirits, but she does get down. “Twenty-six years… and they take away my confidence….”

  JOURNAL • January 5, 1964 • new York city At 8:45, I went out onto the steps and looking up at a wishing star thought of the extraordinary people— women mostly
—who had come up these steps and into 1453, and who were not to mount the steps this evening or, some of them, ever again. I blessed them and loved them that moment.

  And so the [Twelfth Night] party began, and over two hundred poured in, and everything was magical; 1453 behaved marvelously, like a precocious child—glittering with charm, radiant. The wine flowed (forty-eight bottles in all) and Joan Sutherland said to Risë Stevens: “I've been in Carmen, too,” and Risë said, “So I've heard.”9 And Alicia Markova and Nureyev and Erik [Bruhn]10 counted out Petrouchka. And Truman crouched in the corner of a sofa next to Mina. He seemed so old; she for the first time showed her real age. Parties burst and blossomed like exotic pods in every room. Newhouses and Mayeses trooped like tourists through Kronstadt. Lionel Trilling asked Joan Sutherland for an autograph (for [his son] James Lionel) and she asked him for his autograph for her son. This party had a definite rhythm to it, a real beat. All the pregnant girls looked like extras waiting for their cues in some modern-dress Lysistrata. I was touched to the deeps of my sentimental heart by Martha Graham suddenly appearing in a fur tippet, tiddly and fragrant with garlic. She fell upon Tilly Losch, crying, “She was one of my little ones,” while Paula and Chucky [Bowden] and Betty Comden and others sat around the dining room table playing family. When Tilly looked at Pavlik [Tchelitchew]'s portrait of Alice, she stared coldly, appraisingly a long time, and did not say a word. A curious murmuring came out of her. So this was the end of her affair with Raimund [von Hofmannsthal]?11 [Painter Robert] Motherwell said he'd never seen a house so personal. [Broadway columnist] Lenny Lyons declared that it must become a national monument.

  But I have not given the color of that party—a rich, dark—shot through with light like bubbles and glitter—winey color. It was deeply gay, with a kind of high-riding vivacity. I enjoyed every moment of it—only the dear dead making some moments unbearable. Thirteen years this month [since Eleonora died], and I still ache. We sat around the fire—Peter [Lindamood], [fashion designer Herbert] Kasper, Gray, and I—sipping coffee, munching stollen crumbs, and talking the whole long festivity over, until four a.m., and then off they went, down the desolate avenue where once Poppa had carried me, almost fifty years ago.