Overdrive (7 page)

Guy Lombardo [this rhetorical device, I once learned— I'll talk about that—is called "antonomasia" ] sat for a breathtaking hour and a half at the Bosendorfer. I recorded it, and gave a copy to David Oppenheim, dean of the School of the Arts at New York University, and he told me he thought the last half, in particular, one of the finest piano recitals he had ever heard.

And then, when I was out of town, a friend taped her on CBS, playing in London at Temple Church. One half hour, videotaped from a concert during the first half of which she had played the harpsichord, the second half the
organ!
I have shown that videocassette to terribly cosmopolitan types who have been uniformly swept off their feet by what she accomplishes on an organ with the
Chromatic Fantasy:
one walks away convinced that Bach must have meant it for the organ, but forgot so to designate it. Until one hears it again on the harpsichord. Or on the piano. "Bach wrote tonalities," she once said to me, stressing the success with which Bach himself took identical themes and expressed them on the keyboard, the violin, or cello.

Tonight at Carnegie Hall she would play four preludes and fugues, the Partita in E minor, the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, and the Italian Concerto. That, for the baroque crowd, is the rough equivalent of going to a Shakespeare recital and hearing, oh, the soliloquies of Hamlet, Lady Macbeth, King Lear, and then Romeo. The four preludes began (only a showman-artist could do this) with the triumphantly simple C major, which Gounod practically ruined by coming up with his Ave Maria all over it, much as kindergarten music teachers forever ruin Schubert's symphony by teaching the children to remember it with the melodic mnemonic,
"This is
the-sympho-
nee
/That poor old Schubert never
fi
-nished." Rosalyn's rendition was so enthralling one had the sensation of hearing that minute-long masterpiece for the very first time.

And so it went, through the balance of the preludes, including the marvelous G major she also played at Stamford (and at Temple Church), a rendition breath-catching in its lyrical speed. Rosalyn loves and reveres the Sixth Partita, and the combination is perfect. After the intermission, the Chromatic Fantasy, with the deceptive slowness of the fugue, and her remarkable capacity to increase the tension. She looked small from the dress circle where our seats were, and the sound she produced was all the more imposing, the dominion of a mid-sized, handsome woman with dark hair, ample bosom, dead serious in her devotion to the agent of our delight; a memorable experience. The Italian Concerto, with which she concluded (she gave three encores), has—the marvelous slow movement apart—never done for me what it does for others, and it intrigues me that true connoisseurs gravitate to it, giving it such serious attention ("Nobody plays the Italian Concerto like Alicia de Larrocha," Fernando Valenti once solemnly told me). When judgment by very particular people is passed on something, which judgment isn't in accord with one's own, one must pay such judgment presumptive respect. I understand what I have just said as an intellectual proposition. And yet I am required to reflect that there are serious people who think the Rolling Stones make captivating sound. I cannot agree. I would go so far as to say only that the Rolling Stones captivate their audiences, not that their sound is captivating; but perhaps I resent it when I reflect that there were a few empty seats in Carnegie Hall tonight, but none a few days earlier when the Stones played at Madison Square Garden; though perhaps I am being foolish. As if a reading of the sonnets of Shakespeare could be expected to bring in as large an audience as would flock to hear Billy Graham.

I wired Rosalyn the next morning, before catching the plane, "YOU BROUGHT GREAT JOY LAST NIGHT, WAS THERE A LITTLE TOO MUCH PEDAL IN FIRST FUGUE? I COULDN'T HAVE DONE BETTER MYSELF. YOU CAN BE MY SECOND THIRD AND FOURTH LOVE." On the first point she later expressed some concern, but we ended by agreeing that where I was sitting, off at the right and high, there must have been a little distortion.

The last is an inside joke. On a "Firing Line" program, years ago, that touched on the question of love and marriage, someone was making some point or other about artists and marriage and I blurted out that what-the-hell, Rosalyn Tureck had been married three times, and that this datum hardly advanced whatever point my guest was seeking to make. A few weeks later Rosalyn accosted me at the premier of Jerome Robbins' Goldberg Variations ballet, and asked me whether what she had heard I had said was true. To answer her truthfully (I had quite simply forgotten making that reference to her) I needed to consult the transcript, which I subsequently did. I
had
said it; and I was wrong. Rosalyn has been married twice, one of her husbands having died, so to speak,
in situ
. In my apology I told her that I could only think to do the right thing by offering my hand as her third husband, so that
retroactively
it could be said that she'd had three.

 Ah yes, antonomasia. A dreadful episode, though I acknowledge that my more disreputable friends found it awfully funny. It was several years ago and I was on the Merv Griffin program to announce the publication of my most recent book, which I attempt routinely to turn into a national holiday. The other guests certainly completed the spectrum. They were Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Murray—after Terpsichore, the principal sponsors of modern dance; a young woman—a movie producer; and—well, here is how 1 wrote it in my column:   . a rock-ballad singer, envelopingly warm, talented Pat Boone-type who sings songs about father-son relationships."

My office, confused by the balance of my text and unable to reach me as I had flown off to the Fiji Islands, cut out the word "type" so as to leave it as, merely, "Pat Boone." This was consistent with the balance of the column, in which, secure in the knowledge that such a literary convention existed, I had referred only to "Pat Boone," even as one might write, say, "The Californians that year elected a Robin Hood-type as governor. The moment Robin Hood reached Sacramento, he came out for a wild program of redistribution. ..." I didn't know that that device was called "antonomasia."

Not that knowing would have kept me out of trouble.

I had gone on to describe what "Pat Boone" had said on Merv Griffin's program about the activity in which the woman producer was engaged. What was
her
line?

Well, [I wrote] she produces and directs porno flicks. The hard stuff. She looks rather like Kay Kendall. How old are you, dear? Twenty-three. What religion were you brought up in? Catholic. Still practice your religion? Well—tee hee—no, not really, don't go to church much. Did you go to college? Yes, Michigan State. Graduate? Yes. Major? Phys. Ed. What made you go into . . . porn movies? Wanted to get into the business, and worked for a while as a cashier at a movie house that featured X-rated movies, so got interested in the business, asked around, and went to Hollywood. Do you make . . . all . . . kinds of . . . films? No, we don't go into, well, bestiality, sado-masochism, that sort of thing. Just, you know, the regular stuff, only, in a way, you know, we try to experiment, new positions, that sort of thing.

After that paragraph I had written:

Pat Boone came in and said he thought it was all a pretty good idea. He and his wife had an X-rated film which they showed on their home videocassette system, and he thought it was very healthy, after all we're all part animal, and we have animal instincts, and what's wrong with recognizing anything that obvious?

I had, on Merv's show, contributed at that point something to the effect that it was also an animal instinct to eat other animals, but we don't make movies about people eating other people.

And Merv said to the author [me]: Have you ever seen a pornographic film? "Sure, the author said, I've done a lot of reprehensible things." The audience, I noted, hadn't liked that very much—

That did it. What was so reprehensible about it: I mean, here's a sweet young thing, 23, Phys. Ed. from Michigan State, making the kind of movies that Pat Boone and his wife show in the privacy of their living room, so what's so bad about that?

I was calmly scuba diving in the Fijis when that column hit the fan. Someone close to Griffin read it when it arrived in mimeographed form at the Los Angeles
Times
and telephoned my office in New York to ask how was it that I had mistaken the singer John Davidson for Pat Boone? Frances Bronson called Harry Elmlark, who sent telegrams to three hundred newspapers. Half the clients made the correction in time, but the others did not. The first call awaiting me on my return to New York was from Pat Boone's lawyer.

After it was all settled I had a letter from Pat Boone which is surely one of the most lugubrious ever composed. "I appreciate your letter of November 20, and your expression of concern. I don't think you can have any idea of how this article has wreaked havoc in my life. I'm getting letters from all over the country from irate and terribly grieved people, most of them in the evangelical Christian community, who feel that I am a hypocrite, a traitor, and worse. . . . We've only got a partial tally so far, but it appears the column ran in almost every place I've ever called a 'home town,' including my birthplace of Jacksonville, Florida, and folks by the thousands, at least, must now be quite convinced that I have pornographic films at home, and that Shirley and I sit around drooling at them in the evenings. The terrible irony of this is that I was the
only entertainer
who came out in favor of Proposition 18, the anti-pornography measure on our ballot in 1974, and earned the disfavor of the whole entertainment community. . . ."

I was terribly grieved at the hurt I had done him. His lawyer said it would not have made a substantial difference if the column had retained the qualifier "type" after the first mention of "Pat Boone." (Ignorant of antonomasia? That will be a fine of five thousand dollars!) Five thou was how much money I had to send to compensate the lawyer. I confess that when I wrote out the check, I permitted myself, just that one time, to reflect, with a wink ever so discreet, on one of the clippings I had been sent. It was in the White Plains daily, featured a large picture of Pat in a most pious posture, head slightly downturned on the stage. The caption?
"At night he watches the pornies."
Oh dear. As Hugh Kenner tells me, and I do not tire of repeating, "Newspapers are low-definitional instruments. Never rely for the exact meaning of what you wish to say on the correct placement of a comma."

I tried to rise without waking Pat, didn't succeed in doing so, and she kissed me bon voyage with that combination of listlessness, habit, and implicit affection that somehow works, or must, because without it the day begins incompletely. She muttered that I must not be late for the ballet, and I promised. Jerry as usual was a few minutes early, and we got to Kennedy at 7:30, in plenty of time. In the aircraft I checked my speech folder, wrote out an appropriate new introduction, and turned to the mail.

A couple of weeks ago I did a column devoted to examining a public letter sent out by the television producer Norman Lear ("All in the Family," etc.) which letter he had announced as "probably the most important" he would ever write. Its contents were a denunciation of the Moral Majority and a hair-raising description of the threat it poses to the American way of life. My reaction was that that sort of thing (The Moral Majority Is the Greatest Threat to America) has become altogether too easy and fashionable, rather like denouncing Joe McCarthy a generation ago, then looking up expectantly as though your physical and moral courage had clearly earned you a standing ovation. I was careful to point out that Norman Lear is a man of enormous talent, and incidentally that no single simplification urged by the Moral Majority, e.g., in the area of creationist theology, could hold a candle up against the hilarious flights of reductionism at the expense of religion, patriotism, and the free market system regularly urged by Mr. Lear's most famous creation, Archie Bunker.

I myself became addicted to "All in the Family" back during the years when it played at eight on Saturday, when I am generally home. I remember greatly resenting it one Saturday a few years ago (before the age of videocassettes) when Pat reminded me we were scheduled that Saturday night as guests of the Nelson Rockefellers, who were giving a big party at Pocantico in honor of Henry and Nancy Kissinger. This meant I would miss "All in the Family." But life is full of such pitfalls—and at 8:30 on that fabulous terrace, we sat down in our designated seats; and lo, the man seated next to Pat and me was none other than Carroll O'Connor—Archie Bunker: who proved a charming dinner companion.

Fie had just returned from Rome, he told me, having traveled there with an old friend, a Jewish Hollywood producer who was the
original
anti-fascist. "I mean, when he was a kid, no baseball for Al, he was out there selling flags for money to contribute to Bundles for Britain, distributing leaflets at public gatherings about Hitler and Mussolini, the whole thing. Well," O'Connor's face lit up, "so we travel together to Rome, and a couple of nights ago— Al's crazy, I mean
crazy
about jazz piano especially, and we wander into one of those late-night clubs and there's a piano player, and Al orders drinks and he says, 'That guy's
good,!'
So he signals to the headwaiter to come over, and he says to the headwaiter, 'What's the piano player's name?' And the waiter says, 'Mussolini.' And Al says,
'What did you say?!
And the waiter says, 'Mussolini. Romano Mussolini.' Al turns white, and says, 'Any ... relation?' And the waiter says, 'Yes. Son,' and off he goes. And so Al looks at me as if he was seeing a ghost, and orders another drink. Well, two or three drinks later, there's just the two of us, and old Romano playing away, all the songs requested by Al. And by now we're seated right up against the piano. Al orders a last drink. And suddenly he turns to the piano player and says, 'Romano, you know something? That was a
hell
of a thing they did to your father!' " Archie was never funnier.