Authors: Frank Langella
Dropped Names (19 page)
“C
ome over. Paul's racing a horse at Epson Downs,” said my friend Eliza. The Paul's name was Mellon, the horse's was Mill Reef, and it was Derby Day in England in 1972.
I was working on a film in Paris entitled
La Maison Sous Les Arbres,
opposite Faye Dunaway and directed by René Clément. Faye would sometimes cause shooting delays for any number of reasons. This time, as I recall, it was her inability to decide the style of shoes to wear. So shooting shut down for a few days as assistants went scurrying in search thereof. I was now at liberty to hop a plane to London and hole up with the Mellons at a posh hotel.
I arrived the evening before, carrying my only suit and tie in a plastic hanging bag. Paul had taken a private corner of a floor and the next morning all the doors to our rooms were open and we padded back and forth, having breakfast and getting ready.
I noticed Paul donning an outfit I found rather amusing. Gray top hat, striped trousers, odd gray ascot, but I thought maybe owners of horses need to dress a certain way. The look of shock on his face when he got a gander at me took me by surprise.
I was wearing a perfectly decent suit I'd bought in Paris. A subtle Cerruti, light green.
“Oh Frank. You can't wear that,” he said. “It's Derby Day. There is a code of dress.”
“Well it's all I have.”
Calls were made to see if there wasn't a way to get me properly outfitted, but we were due to get into the car in forty-five minutes and all hope was abandoned. It looked as if I would have to fly back to Paris and miss attending my first and only race at Epson Downs. But Bunny, Paul's wife, said:
“It'll be fine. He won't be paid any mind. We must leave.”
I
n several large Bentleys we joined the queue making its way to the race. Bunny had seen to baskets of delicious foodsâdeviled eggs, chicken and cucumber sandwiches, etc.âand buckets of champagne. When we arrived, nicely stuffed and happily high, we were taken to the paddock to visit Mill Reef and then ushered to our seats. It was a magnificent day, as I recall, with thousands of women out in their finery. An extraordinary combination of ill-fitting garish dresses and hats of enormous size in perfectly awful taste; sexless parade floats on high heels.
Then there were the men. Thousands dressed exactly the same as Paul. And me, a six-foot, three-inch follied Green Giant. It got worse. The horse won. Never mind that I had only bet five pounds. Never mind that I looked like a walking cucumber. Further indignities awaited me.
We were ushered through the crowds by a number of large women and courtly gentlemen into an enclosed area where Mill Reef and the jockey were waiting. Paul was suitably thrilled and not showing it. Bunny was, as always, perfect.
“Frank, why don't you and Eliza stand back by the fence. It's going to get a bit crowded in here.”
And indeed it did. Because after a while, in came the Queen. Mill Reef was crowned, pictures were taken, and a trophy was handed over. And she was gone. I was gratefully spared the indignity of meeting her in all my bourgeoiserie.
The large ladies gathered us once more and we were again ushered up stairs, down hallways, and around corners. Finally we came to a door and were asked to wait a moment. I assumed they were bringing the cars round from some private parking area, and we were going to be put in a comfy room to wait.
The door was opened. Paul, Bunny, Eliza, and their other guest Charles Ryscamp, then head of the Morgan Library in New York, and I entered a large room, superbly soundproofed. Coming from the excited noises of the racetrack and the shouts of the crowd, it was like suddenly being underwater in a calm sea. And who should come floating across this beautifully appointed space but Herself, The Queen of England. We were in her private box.
We formed a short line. Paul at the start. Me at the finish. The Queen was followed by Prince Philip, Princess Anne, and a jolly little lady known to all as the Queen Mum.
The absolute quiet of the room and the close proximity to the Royal Family gave me a slightly giddy Forrest Gump feeling as they chatted amicably and made their way toward me.
I may as well have been impeccably turned out and perfectly groomed because the Queen reached me, put out her gloved hand, said something like “Wasn't it thrilling? How lovely for Mr. Mellon,” and passed on without removing her eyes from mine. The rest of the family followed in equally charming fashion with no one's eyes ever straying lower than my forehead.
Until along came Mum.
“How do you do, young man?” she said.
“How do you do, ma'am,” I said.
She was wearing a dress gaily depicting a florid English garden, with a string of pearls wrapped round her neck. Holding them at the center bottom just above her impressive bosom, she smiled broadly, stepped back, and gave me a head-to-toe perusal, saying with utter delight:
“My wordâwhere have you come from?”
“Paris, ma'am.”
“Oh. What have you been doing there?”
“I'm an actor. I'm making a film.”
“How exciting for you. What's it called?”
“It's called
La Maison Sous les Arbres.
That means âThe House Under the Trees.' ”
Only the tiniest pause and she said, grasping her pearls, with utter sweetness: “Thank you for telling me.”
As if the green suit weren't enough, I had just translated the simplest of French words to England's Queen Mother. I could hear the equipment gearing up to help load my big dumb foot into my mouth.
Then came tea and crumpets, I think, but certainly booze as well and polite chat. The Queen Mum was a jolly camper, totally captivating, charming, and curious. Soon we were gently dismissed and back into the real world. Standing a level down we milled about waiting to be taken to the cars. I asked for a gents and was shown down a hall and around a corner.
Now what are the odds?
As I opened the door to leave the gents, simultaneously another door opened and England's great-grandma appeared all alone. A tiny smile and down the hall and around the corner she went in the opposite direction from which I'd come. Seconds later she popped back and said:
“Oh, dear. I seem to have lost the family.”
“It's this way, ma'am.”
“Oh very kind,” she said, putting her chubby arm in mine.
“I'm so looking forward to your film. Is it in French?”
“No ma'am, it's in English”
“Ah, yes, of course. Easier for you I should think.”
We walked back down the hallway, turned the corner, and I took her to the stairs that led back up to the Queen's Box.
“Oh, I know where I am now,” she said. “I do hope I'll see it one day. Thank you so much,” and she happily climbed back into the comforts of Royal Privilege.
I
hope this next story is true. It was told to me by an attendant at the Palace Theatre in London, where Yul Brynner was appearing; most likely, his one millionth performance of
The King and I.
It seems the Queen and the Queen Mum were having words at intermission when being escorted into a private waiting room. The Queen was compulsively nattering on about something that was disturbing her. Finally, I was told, the Queen Mum turned to the Queen and said: “Elizabeth, stop it!
Who do you think you are
?”
N
ever too late for a good Mummy to discipline an unruly child.
A
mong my most treasured possessions collected during a lifetime of working in the theatre are ten original drawings of the dozen that Al Hirschfeld did of me in various roles. And but for a smudge of wet ink, I might have missed an extraordinary afternoon with him just months before this true genius left us at ninety-nine years old.
His last caricature of me was with Alan Bates from the Broadway production of Turgenev's
Fortune's Fool
, which had successfully played the 2002 season. Our producers had gifted each of us with a copy.
When the play closed, I took the drawing to be framed and noticed his signature was in a light blush color, different from all past ones. When I put my thumb over it, it easily smudged. So I picked up the phone and called his house. His wife, Louise, answered and I told her of my dilemma.
“Just a minute, darling,” she said.
Then Al came on, “Hello Frank, what's up?”
“Well, I'm on my way to the framers to put you under glass, but your signature is all funny andâ”
“Where are you?”
“Crosstown”
“Bring it over.”
I hopped a taxi, got out at his townhouse on East 95th Street, was let in by a maid, and met Louise on the parlor floor.
“He's up in his studio,” she said.
As I climbed to the top floor, I realized I had never, in all the times I'd visited for dinner parties, been to Al's inner sanctum. And there he sat in his famous barber chair, leaning on his famous wooden table, drawing. The ancient magnificent hands steady and sure and his voice strong and clear.
“Hello, Frank. Let's see it.”
I instinctively leaned in and kissed him as he put down his pen and patted my hand.
“Nice to see you again.”
He cleared the surface, took my caricature out of its plastic sleeve, and placed it carefully on the desk.
“Well, this is strange.” And with one swift swipe of his thumb he eliminated his iconic signature as if wiping away a fresh coffee stain, and picked up his pen. I flopped onto an old worn couch and watched a little bit of theatre history being made.
So completely certain was Al of his gift and so completely in charge of his powers even still, that the sight of him, sitting at a table he'd sat at for decades, holding a pen in his hand, leaning over and making a simple, basic correction in his work, exemplified the essence of greatness to me. From those now gnarled, brown, blotched hands had come astounding caricatures starting in 1925. Some eighty years of work.
He was born with the gift, of course. Whatever force guided those hands from which flowed a few lines that evoked a smile, a smirk, a depth of persona so powerfully true, it was outstripped by the man himself who just got up every day, climbed the stairs to the top floor of his townhouse, sat down, and did the work. Nothing mysterious, nothing otherworldly or magical.
Part of his genius was his responsibility to and respect for his God-given talent. In his time on earth he recorded thousands of artists, and leafing through the unparalleled collection, there are to be seen so many tragic figures, profoundly gifted themselves to one degree or another but unable to sustain the gift throughout their careers. Al would capture their moment, bringing them a touch of immortality. As I watched him, I thought how uncomplicated and simple it must be in that head. “This is what I do. This is who I am.”
He came to a rehearsal of Noel Coward's
Present Laughter
in 1996 and sat sketching me from the audience. Unfortunately, his hearing aid was turned up so high it was wreaking havoc with the sound system. But he was held in such awe that no one on the production staff would ask him to adjust it, so I went into the house and said, “Al, your hearing aid is interfering with Noel Coward's lines.”
“Oh,” he said, and turned it off. When the dinner break came, I ordered some food and invited him into my dressing room to continue his sketch work.
“Have you got a piece of costume or anything?” he asked.
“Yes, I've got a beautiful new silk robe.”
“Okay, that'll do.”
I put it on and Al sat on the couch, hearing aid back on, and did his miraculous thing while chatting about the current season.
I
n 2002, I was now comfortably sitting in the study of this great artist, ninety-nine and still at the top of his game. Louise came up with some tea and we all three sat and talked in the late afternoon light. Al asked if there was any banana cream pie left.
“No, darling, you ate the last piece for breakfast. Let's take a picture,” she said. And I stood over Al with my newly signed and inscribed piece of history in my hand, which I treasure more than the other works of his I own, because I knew then it was going to be the last he would ever do of me.
As I was preparing to leave I said:
“You know, Al, I have a dear friend who's older than you even.”
“Oh. Who?”
“Tonio Selwart, the actor. He's a hundred and five.”
“Oh, dear Tonio. How is he?”
“Well, he lives alone now. Ilsa, his lady, died about forty years ago. He's totally blind, but gets up every day, bathes, combs his full head of beautiful pearl gray hair, puts on a crisp white shirt and his hand-made vintage Valentino jacket, and sits by his window. I try and visit twice a month.”
Tonio had had some minor success as an actor as a young man in Europe onstage and had one good role in a film called
The Barefoot Contessa
, starring Ava Gardner, in 1954.
“Will you give him my love?” Al said.
“Why don't I call him?”
“Oh yes, do.”
Tonio's phone rang and rang. I was about to hang up when his fragile but beautifully modulated voice said:
“Hello.”
“Tonio. It's Frank.”
“
Francesco.
Cara mio. Come stai?
”
“
Bene, grazie, mi amico
. Guess who I'm sitting with?”
“Who?”
“Al Hirschfeld. He wants to say hello.”
“Oh dearest Al. Put him on.”
I handed the phone to Al and retreated across the room, and for the next ten minutes these two men of 105 and 99 laughed, reminisced, and vowed to get together soon.
When Al hung up the phone, he said:
“How lovely it was to talk to dear Tonio again.”
“When was the last time you'd spoken?” I asked.
“Oh, about seventy years ago.”
I took my precious cargo, kissed Al on the forehead, and made my good-byes. Louise saw me to the door and we made promises to get together soon.
T
he next day I sent over a large banana cream pie. Louise called.
“Frank darling, Al wants to say thank you.”
“Frankâhow did you know it was my favorite?”
“I just took a chance,” I said.
“Come over and have a piece with us.”
“I can't, Al. But soon again. I promise.”
Seventy days did not pass before he was gone.