Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (76 page)

Wake at six, i.e. nine Moscow, then sleep for two more hours – filled with Muscovite dreams of wide streets, looming buildings and silent, slow-moving lines of people.

Talk with Steve about
American Friends
. A cautious, even faintly embarrassed reaction. I really must finish reading it and see what’s wrong!

Then by Underground to Stockwell to present certificates to local school children who’ve drawn variations on the ‘Red Bus’ theme for a local public transport pressure group. The children’s pictures are marvellous. Bright and imaginative and full of little jokes and bits of detail, and all very different. Nearly all the winners are either West Indian or Asian.

To the Bijou for the cast and crew screening of
East of Ipswich
. All four ‘juveniles’ there. Three of them currently have no acting work at all.

I love the film. Nothing I’ve done gives me as much unqualified pleasure. So glad to be able to transmit my elation to those responsible, especially Edward, John, Oona and Pippa
¹³⁷
– with whom I end up drinking in the Intrepid Fox. ‘You weren’t in
Crossroads
, were you?’ asks an aggressive gay at the bar.

To the T2000 office for a pre-AGM briefing with Susan H. None of them seem to be lit up at the thought of, as Susan puts it, ‘spending what looks like the last good weekend of the year in the Oldway Centre at Paignton’.

Spend two more hours on my speech, then set to my other task for the week, reading both
Erik the Viking
and finishing
American Friends
.

A very bright sunlight glows around my workroom as I begin to read Terry’s jokey adventure of sunless Iceland. Some dynamism missing at the centre of the film and also the balance between anachronistic comedy and gritty Norse/Bergmanesque realism not struck quite right. By comparison
American Friends
is wordy, but I’m encouraged by its richness and the potential of all the characters.

Leave for squash at four feeling very optimistic and quite excited that
we have two Prominent Features here.
¹³⁸
Find myself quite eloquent about
Erik the Viking
– and hopefully offer Terry some good advice. He seems very happy at my reactions, and in turn I’m going to make some instant changes to
American Friends
and let him read it whilst I’m away.

Walk to the Oldway Mansion, a huge house, built on the proceeds of sewing machine sales by the Singer family and set incongruously amid the nylon and print semis and just up the road from the ex-cinema. It is completely out of character for T2000, but Cyril Perry, our organiser, fixer, and member of the NUR Executive Committee, has set us up in the ballroom, and orchestral music plays over speakers in the marbled hall.

I’m a little thrown by the scale but, before I can settle, a squat, mediaeval-looking figure is introduced to me as the Mayor’s assistant. Cyril Perry has evidently secured the services of his worship to open our proceedings.

I am marched away by the Beadle – and addressed familiarly from the start as ‘Mike’ – to meet the Mayor.

The Beadle treats the Mayor like a dog or a ventriloquist’s dummy. ‘At 9.30 sharp we proceed around the gallery, and I bring the Mayor into the ballroom. Everyone stands. We go to the podium, you will say a few words of introduction, his worship will declare the conference open, you may reply, then I have to take him out again.’

The morning session begins at 9.30. Kerry Hamilton, who made a TV series called
Losing Track
– one of the few to have something to say about public transport – is a guarded feminist, with a hard and daunting Irish exterior, which melts away somewhat when she’s not under threat. She says that when Channel 4 first commissioned her series they repeatedly insisted it must be ‘controversial’. When it was finished and done (with a five million viewing slot for one of the programmes), their judgement was that it was too controversial! She shows excerpts, which liven up the talk.

At midday I wind up the conference, final speeches of thanks abound, and I’m quite touched when John Gregg – the white-haired, kindly Devonian member, who has spent the entire proceedings with a hand cupped behind his ear – rises to propose a vote of thanks to me. He calls my chairing ‘genial’. They all seem very happy and content and, though I was steering blind through much of the weekend, I think that I found my way through all the pitfalls, kept control and maybe managed to stamp some of my character on the proceedings.

All back together in the train – and a jolly crowd we are. In fact my hope that the experience of the AGM would be the final straw that made up my mind to resign, is unfounded. Still, no time to reflect now, as I have to unpack, repack and set off on my travels again tomorrow to promote
Ripping Yarns
in America.

Live at Five
call to say that owing to the President’s announcement of the appointment of a special prosecutor,
¹³⁹
there won’t be room for me on the show. They need a seven-minute ‘window’. As I was set for a ten-minute interview, this is quite a blow for the CBS/Fox machine.

Feeling unadventurous and low on energy I remain in my room, occasionally going to the window to watch fierce rain lashing the home-going crowds ten floors below. I watch extensive coverage of the Iran arms deal crisis. Call some friends, then order supper. Drink a half-bottle of red wine and then have to fight against sleep. So in a most unsatisfactory state when Judi Marie and the limousine call at 9.15 to take me to a live TV interview.

The interview is quite hard work. Get through it on nervous hysteria. Thick greasy coating of make-up and nothing to drink but cold coffee, whilst all around, like flies, the crew do their Python impersonations. I’m afraid I’m just not in synch with them tonight.

Paul [Wagner, in charge of publicity for CBS/Fox] rang and was quietly and politely critical of my CNN interview last night. He felt that I let the interviewer guide me and didn’t push
Ripping Yarns
enough.

Then on to a very badly-run new TV show called
Made in New York
. The make-up man hasn’t turned up and I’m made-up by the other ‘guest’ – a lovely, pregnant singer.

To the
Letterman
show. Julia Child on before me, cooking hamburger. Her electric ring doesn’t work, and she improvises marvellously. Lovely, big, slightly shambolic lady who looks like John in drag and is a wonderful breath of fresh air after the coiffured Leona Helmsley clones of the past two days.

Swept away from NBC to drive uptown for another TV chat show –
Nightlife
, with David Brenner. Water has flooded their control room after recent storms and recording is delayed by an hour. I never feel at my best between four and six anyway, and after the day and
Letterman
I have to work very hard at being happy to be there. Brenner is a good host, if a little less playful than Letterman. I’m on for half an hour.

Still no let-up as Paul wants me to ‘work the room a little’ at a big video dinner-dance at the Marriott Marquis.

On the stage a man called Ken Kai is exhorting free enterprise on to further challenges. Hardly a word he says can be understood owing to a thick Oriental accent, but at one point I plainly hear him say ‘Get up off your asses!’

Breakfast arrives late, packing and bill-paying all in a rush, then sit in slow traffic through the mid-town tunnel, arriving at JFK 45 minutes before the American Airlines flight to the West Coast.

I’m driven to the ‘Carson’ studios. Someone called Jay Leno is hosting.
¹⁴⁰

Am shown a dark and wretched dressing room with my name on it and a tray of food in the middle of the floor. All eaten. Lot of hanging around, omens not good. But as air-time nears things brighten up.

Amy Irving is one of the guests. A bevy of ‘friends’ cluster round her in the make-up room, but she remembers very well our encounter in India nearly four years ago, when she and a friend offered Terry G and me use of their room at the Rambagh Palace, and we chose the overnight bus to Udaipur!

Am last on. Amy I is lovely – a little nervous and formal, but very beautiful. Eva Marie Saint – older, and more relaxed – looking back on working with Brando, etc. Dignified and very funny.

Then me last. For some reason the scales fall from my lips and I’m blessed with the gift of tongues, going into a very silly improv about my mother being a sword-swallower, being the oldest high-wire act in England – the wire having to be 18 inches wide – and my father having a dental comedy act. Taking his teeth out and impersonating great world leaders (the Yalta Conference comes to me from somewhere).

Could not have done this with Carson. I think everyone feels the difference – Leno is much more like Letterman.

Meet Paul Zimmerman at the very Jewish Carnegie Deli.

Already at midday every table is taken – everyone squashes in next to everyone else. It’s friendly and fast. Businessmen on one side, mother and child on the other.

My pastrami sandwich is ridiculous. About 25 layers of pastrami strain the rye to breaking point. A wooden nail pierces the whole lot in a vain attempt to hold it together. I ask Paul why on earth they make anything this big. ‘Guilt,’ he says. ‘It’s an expiation of 2,000 years of history, a desperate attempt to make up for everything that’s gone wrong.’

Paul’s fortunes are improving. He’s been paid – or promised – 100 G’s for writing a film called ‘Digby’ for Denis O’Brien.

Makes up for a complete falling-out with Goldwyn over ‘A Consuming Passion’. This is now being rewritten by one Andrew Davies. I get an odd feeling when I hear this. A twinge of jealousy? Like hearing that one’s ex-wife has yet another new man!

It begins to snow; quite pretty for a while, then it turns to rain. I buy a copy of
Mirrorstone
at B. Dalton’s for the Zimmerman family. Paul insists the assistant knows that I’m the author of the book. She takes some convincing. ‘They like to know things like that,’ Paul assures me as we spill out into the crowds.

Land on time at Dayton – at a quarter past one [to see Simon Jones in a touring production of
My Fair Lady
]. Clean, clear, still, a complete change from the freneticism of New York.

To the theatre. Simon’s dressing room is more like a service closet. Pipes across the ceiling, a very small mirror and worktop and that’s about all. Various people have signed the wall, including Steve Lawrence,
¹⁴¹
who has signed ‘I’ll be right out’ on the door of the lavatory.

They’ve sold out. 2,800 seats. Apparently Richard Harris came here with
Camelot
and sold out a week, making 380,000 dollars, of which Harris took 10%. Now I understand why people do these gruelling US tours.

Have never seen the stage version of
My Fair Lady
, and am impressed by the literacy of it all, and the part of Higgins especially is full of wonderful lines. Simon plays him at a brisk, belting, no-nonsense level – projecting at a volume well above most of the others. The part is admirably suited to Simon’s skill at the testy, quizzical and dryly down-putting. And he sings with confidence too.

Breakfast together with Nancy and Simon (who sounds seriously croaky). We drive to a Dr Feelgood who has been suggested to Simon for his vocal problem. Leave him in a smart surgery at a spotless, low-slung, modern building among a lot of similar, comfortably affluent erections in a road called Corporate Way. The doctor is called Boyles.

Nancy then takes me to the airport.

At La Guardia I pick up a Buick Skylark – with digital display panel – and, with only one brief wrong turning, find myself in three full lanes of moving traffic along the LI Expressway, passing turn-offs to Babylon and Jericho.

Al is cooking when I bang the glass of the sliding door on his porch. Embraces, greetings (the pattern of the last week). He looks thinner and moves more slowly. Yes, he has aged. Tea and a bagel as a late lunch.

Presents are exchanged and opened. Then I take a short walk along the darkened streets – Division, Madison, Rogers and Jermain. The houses
all different, all interesting, yet something missing – I think it’s people.

After a delicious fish stew (cooked by Al) and cheese and Far Breton [a prune flan] and a lot of wine and calvados, Al and I walk together down to Main Street.

Al sounds discouraged. Morale low. He writes, he says, but with great difficulty and … who for? Sometimes he says he feels like a ‘bull elephant, just waiting for the end’.

To bed soon after eleven, on a put-you-up in the sitting room. It’s so cold I have to sleep in my sweater.

I get up to pee. It’s 1.30. Al is in the kitchen reading E F Benson. He raises his big, impressive head and gives me one of his most heavy-lidded looks. In a tone of great weariness he says ‘I’m waiting for the irrigation system to work.’

I bid him not to strain his eyes, and return to the sitting room. I’m quickly asleep.

The sun streams in. The comforting sound of a home coming to life. Occasional patter of feet, a pause. I’m being looked at. Then back to the kitchen, footsteps slapping on the exposed floorboards. Sound of shushing.

About a quarter to nine I give up further sleep. I’ve had seven hours on this makeshift bed. Feel on good form. Al, in dressing-gown and
Missionary
sweatshirt, is at his ‘irrigation’ again. He’s also begun reading
American Friends
.