Dropped Names (3 page)

Two choruses and Sir Noel brought the song to a resounding finish. By now we were all up on our feet applauding wildly and the President stepped from the coffee table, took a bow, reached for Adele, and she joined him on the floor, each of them bowing with mock humility as the piano played them out of the room. I turned to Jackie, who was beaming with happiness, and said my first words to her since “hello.”

“Not bad for a President.”

“Not bad for Jack,” she said.

We all trouped out to the lawn to say our good-byes, and before boarding the helicopter the President said to me:

“What do you think, Frank? Should I keep my day job?”

And then he was gone.

I
left later in the afternoon, having sneaked back into the dining room to steal the small bouquet that had been in front of the President's plate. And that night I replayed every moment of the day in my mind. Coward had ended a medley from his new show with a haunting ballad entitled “Something Very Strange.” And as I sit here writing this on December 12, 2010, looking at snow-covered grounds from a window in the countryside forty-eight years later, Sir Noel's lyrics seem sweetly prophetic.

This is not a day like any other day!

This is something special and apart!

Something to remember

When the coldness of December chills my heart.

 

Nobody is melancholy. Nobody is sad.

Not a single shadow on the sea.

 

Something very strange is happening to me.

A
ll but two of us from that day are gone now: Jack, Jackie, Noel, Paul, Adele, Buds, and Liza. Other than myself, the sole survivor is Bunny Mellon, who in 2012 will turn 102, and has remained my lifelong friend. The President, had he lived, would be ninety-three years old. I kept the flowers I had taken from his place sitting in a tin cup in my room for the rest of the summer, until they withered and died. Of the forty-six years Jack Kennedy spent on this earth, I was privileged to have been in his company for four hours when he and those flowers were still in bloom.

It was a day not like any other day. Nobody was melancholy. Nobody was sad. And there was not a single shadow on the sea.

MONTGOMERY CLIFT

H
e never spoke a word to me. Never even knew my name.

I
t was 1962. I had moved into a four-flight walk-up on Third Avenue and 61st Street. One night there he was again. I don't remember when or how often it would happen, but coming home late at night, I would find him rolled up in a ball in my covered vestibule, against the front door of the building. The first time I found him I thought he was just a street bum, of which there were very few in the 1960s. But when I focused in on his haggard and broken face, I saw the beautiful, profoundly gifted young actor he had been. Along with Marlon Brando and James Dean—two other men who also had talent, looks, sex appeal, and mystery—Montgomery Clift possessed an inner flame impossible to extinguish with age or death. All three exuded an androgynous quality that made them appealing to both sexes. Dean and Brando allegedly played with boys secretly, but Clift was openly gay in a time when it was forbidden.

I knew he lived around the corner in a townhouse. I'd seen him often climbing or sitting on the steps. On a few occasions I picked him up in my hallway walked him there, and deposited him with his houseman, who took him from me with a silent thank you.

His indelible performances in
A Place in the Sun
,
From Here to Eternity
,
Judgment at Nuremberg
, and
The Misfits
all reveal what must have been an agonized soul. And if there is any consolation to be found in his early death at forty-six, it is in watching him harness that agony and use it both creatively and thrillingly.

As if by a tiny little creature in a film about aliens that crawls into your ear and occupies your brain, he must have himself been invaded, most likely at a time when he had no way of defending himself. And the invader must have brought with it a torment so great that it caused this lovely actor to curl up in an abandoned hallway, not his own, rather than turn a corner and suffer in his empty house.

On this particular night, he was not even semi-conscious. My girlfriend opened our front door, gave me back the outside key, and went upstairs. I bent over, sat him up, put my hand under his knees, and lifted him into my arms with the ease I would have a five-year-old child. His head fell against my chest and I began the familiar walk toward his front door.

He made no sound, did not open his eyes, and remained inert when I handed him over to his keeper. On my way home I cried not from pity or sadness, but from fear. Could such a fate happen to me? And, I wondered, where had he been, what was the terrible pain, and why had he no one to hold him through the night? You wonder those things at twenty-four. When I got upstairs my girlfriend took me into her arms and we made love. Young, romantic love.

Fifty years later, I no longer wonder the things I did that night. I understand there is nothing particularly romantic about a broken man lost and alone. But there is something profoundly noble in Mr. Clift's efforts to hold his pain close and leave us with just the memories of his artistry.

BILLIE BURKE

B
illie Burke spent the last part of her career paying off the debts of her late husband, the great showman Florenz Ziegfeld, deserving the moniker of her greatest role: Glinda the Good Witch in the classic film
The Wizard of Oz
.

I
n the summer of 1956, she was touring in a lightweight comedy entitled
The Solid Gold Cadillac
, in which she played a woman who outsmarts the corporate guys and ends up with the money. Some of the touring plays had parts with one or two lines in them and these roles were played by the apprentices of the various theatres. When it got round to the Pocono Playhouse, where I was apprenticing, I was lucky enough to get not one but two bit parts. The first was that of a reporter holding a camera. I think I said something like “Look this way please” after first picking up Miss Burke and sitting her on a desktop. The second part was a groundbreaker for me.

If you were among the chosen few to get a small role in one of the touring productions, it was necessary to have a quick rehearsal with that week's star on the day of the opening night. They would have arrived the evening before or even early that morning from their last performance in some other northeastern state.

There she was, seventy-two years old, dressed in a two-piece blue suit, wearing a hat and gloves in July, coming onto the stage after we had all been pre-rehearsed. The voice was exactly as one would have hoped, distinctively tweety. I was instructed to lift her on her right side, and another lucky apprentice would do the same on her left. We were then to place her on the desktop, pick up our cameras, say our one or two lines, take a photo, and leave the stage.

She stood rigidly as we approached, and as I went to lift her she said politely to the older gentleman sitting at the edge of the stage:

“Mr. Director, would you kindly tell these young men to place each of their hands under my elbows, and I will grab them to steady me as I reach the table.” She then turned to us and said: “I'm so old, my dears, that if you're not careful I might break.”

And that is precisely what we did for the following eight performances as this delightful woman charmed and entertained the Pocono Playhouse audiences with her particular brand of inspired silliness; as she prowled her way around the stage, missing no laughs and playing her audience. She did, however, have one serious problem: her bladder. At any given moment in any performance she would suddenly exit the stage and rush to the nearest bathroom. The rest of the company, long used to these unannounced exits, ad-libbed their way around until she came back, blithely entering with lines like:

“Oh, I just met the most delightful person in the hall and stopped to chat. Sorry. Where were we?”

O
ne evening the young leading lady was having a phone conversation during the time Miss Burke was relieving herself. As she reentered she spotted that the cord of the phone wire, which was taped to the end of the desk leg, had come undone and was on the floor. I watched as she peered down at the wire, saw a comic opportunity, got down on her knees, and took hold of it. As she stared at its frayed edges, the audience began to see the joke along with her. She held onto the cord's end with one hand, used the desk to pull herself up to her full height, and stared blankly at the actress on the phone, who was as yet unaware of what she was doing. The audience was riveted to her every move and now laughing uproariously. Once the laughter died down, Miss Burke ad-libbed:

“I don't see how you can be speaking to anyone, dear. It seems to me you've been cut off.”

I have often thought of Miss Burke when watching actors walking around a fallen prop, ignoring it. Pick it up, I think, we see it. We know you see it. Be creative. Use what's there. I would be willing to bet that in
The Wizard of Oz
when Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch disappeared in a large puff of red smoke, Miss Burke ad-libs her next line:

“What a horrible smell of sulfur.”

M
y second role in the production was actually much more exciting than the first. I was to appear in the curtain call with Miss Burke. At the end of the play, her character receives as a reward for her victory, a Solid Gold Cadillac; so, when she appears for her curtain call, she is to be brought on by her Solid Gold chauffeur. I got that assignment because I was the kid who fit into the costume, which consisted of gold lamé pants, jacket, boots, cap, and gloves. My face was smeared with gold makeup during the Act 2 intermission, and I was told to take my place in the wings during the final applause. Miss Burke would come offstage, have a sip of water, grab my hand, and lead me out to warm, enthusiastic applause. The stage manager told me that after I led Miss Burke out for her curtain call, I was to take a step back and, as she bowed, leave the stage. As the week wore on, my step back grew slower, and my exit less rapid. I finally ended up lingering in her light so long that the curtain was coming down with me basking in the glow behind her. Miss Burke was totally unaware of my presence.

At the last performance, the audience's enthusiastic applause swelled even more than usual, and emboldened by the acceptance, I remained close to the star and reached out and took her hand as she rose from her slight curtsy and grandly led her off the stage. She turned, looked at me with utter bemusement, and as we hit the wings she said, “Mustn't be greedy, dear. Your time will come.”

NOEL COWARD

“B
ig things for you, I think,” said Noel Coward as I sat at his feet on a summer's day in 1961. Never mind there was a President and First Lady in the room or that our host was one of the richest men in the world: Mr. Coward only had eyes for me.

You will read stories of John F. Kennedy and Paul Mellon in this book and discover why and how Mr. Coward and I got to where we were. It was after lunch now, after he'd performed and before we were all to depart from our magical afternoon in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Magical to me, certainly, but for Mr. Coward most likely not at all an unusual occurrence. He was sixty-three years old and looking fit as a fiddle. And there was no question, as he leaned forward to brush the hair out of my eyes, that he wanted to kiss me. Why wouldn't he? If the only song he had ever written was “Mad About the Boy,” it would have been enough to understand his longing, romantic heart. I just happened to be
the
Boy
of the title at that moment.

But straight-cut or queer-shaped, there is nothing as sexy as rapt attention to your every word, and I was mad about the man. He wanted to know everything about me, making me feel completely and profoundly wanted in a way that transcends gender. I could have sat on that floor at his feet for a century, so seduced was I by his quiet and intelligent pursuit of my inner thoughts. Which of course he hoped was his gateway to my inner thighs. He learned in our conversation that I was residing nearby while apprenticing at the Cape Playhouse. And he casually mentioned the name of the hotel he was then staying at in Boston, preparing his new musical:
Sail Away.
“Perhaps you can come visit me on your off days,” he said.

We were joined by Adele Astaire (Fred's sister), who perched on the armchair, flinging her arm around his shoulder and looking at me with sweet indulgence.

“The lad wants to be an actor,” Coward said.

“Well of course he does, Noelie. Look at him.”

They then proceeded to discuss me as if I were an alabaster statue perched on a pedestal and up for sale. My body, my eyes, my mouth; deciding no doubt if I would be worth bidding on.

“I think he must cut his hair, don't you?” she said.

“I rather like it,” he said, brushing it off my forehead again.

“Now, Noel,” came the motherly response, and she moved away giving me a little squeeze on the shoulder. “You couldn't have a better teacher,” she said.

This was, remember, the beginning of the sexual revolution. And it was everything legend would have you believe. To be twenty-three years old in 1961 was tantamount to having a million-dollar lottery ticket blow into your face on a windy day. And most of us were on a twenty-four-hour spending spree.

I didn't sign up for Mr. Coward's class, primarily because I was too busy cashing in my ticket all over Cape Cod. I'd only just begun to realize my sexual potential and when you're ripe for the picking, you don't need to travel too far from the tree to enjoy the harvest.

I
would not be in his presence again for seven years. This time we were surrounded by several thousand worshippers on the occasion of his seventieth birthday at the Phoenix Theatre in London. My friend, the great English actress Celia Johnson, would be one of the many luminaries of the English theatre, performing moments from Coward's illustrious career, and she scored me two tickets in the balcony.

He sat in a box, his companion the legendary beauty Merle Oberon. For three hours in a perfectly focused flattering amber light he watched, in tears, as his extraordinary gifts were being unwrapped before him.

It's difficult to explain the glory that was Coward then, as wit, intelligence, and style have lost ground to stupid, vulgar, and loud. He was, even in his heyday, often dismissed as facile and lightweight. But listen to his songs, read his best plays, and you feel the seductive power of his mind—just as I did on that summer day in 1961.

I don't know what Sir Noel would have divined had I traveled to Boston that summer and let him kiss me. He probably would have looked deep into my opportunistic eyes and said:

“Trying to decide which way the wind is blowing, dear?”

Of one thing I am certain: I would have laughed a great deal. As I often have by the following examples of his legendary wit, told and retold, but which I can't resist telling again.

W
hen hearing a rather pretty but dumb young man had blown his brains out, Coward said:

“He must have been a terribly good shot.”

P
eering at a tiny sketch on the wall of a wealthy matron's luxurious apartment, he asked:

“Who did this?”

“Picasso,” she said.

“Hmm! Serves him right.”

O
f a well-endowed dancer who had neglected to wear a supporter under his costume, he said:

“We must tell Dickie to take the Rockingham Tea Service out of his tights.”

T
o a woman resolutely picking her nose at rehearsal, he called out:

“When you get to the bridge, dear—wave!”

W
hen the actress Lily Palmer told him she was madly in love with a certain gentleman, Coward replied: “Don't be ridiculous, he's as queer as a three-dollar bill.”

“He can't be queer,” she said. “He's married, with two children!”

Coward retorted, “That only means he managed to lash it to a toothbrush . . . twice!”

S
itting on the porch of a country cottage one warm afternoon, watching a young boy play, one of his dogs mounted the other and began a happy hump.

“What are they doing, Uncle Noel?” said the little boy.

“Nothing, dear. One of them is sick and the other one is pushing him to the doctor.”

R
eceiving a secret fan letter from Lawrence of Arabia, signed with the code name “227460,” Coward replied: “Dear 227460, May I call you 227?”

A
nd in fond memory of his hoped-for conjugal visit from me in 1961, there is a wonderful story of his having invited a boy of another moment to come up to his apartment. When the elevator doors closed, Noel moved quickly across the floor and kissed the boy full on the mouth. Once upstairs, he changed into a smoking jacket, poured some white wine, lit a cigarette, placed it in a holder, and coquettishly stood at the mantel. The young man mustered up his courage and said:

“Mr. Coward. I'm afraid I must tell you now before we go any further, I'm not gay.”

Coward took a deep drag of his cigarette, looked deep into his eyes, and said:

“Yes. I knew it when I kissed you!”