Buckeye Grove – Columbus, Ohio
Buckeyes
(1955-1957)
1
Ralph Freud eases into a large chair behind his desk, sees
me in the front row and with drooping eyelids, hones in. “What are you doing here?” he asks. It’s spring,
1954, and I’m seated with a group of several dozen eager actors crowded into a
room in one of the prefabs behind Royce Hall for the season’s tryouts.
Embarrassed, I mumble, “Came back to get my degree.” He
smiles—or is he frowning? After almost three years in New York, I’m still reticent to call him
Ralph.
Freud (pronounced “Frood”) is directing more plays than
during the 1948-50 seasons. In the fall of 1953, he has directed Carol Burnett
in the Mary Martin role in the 1940’s Broadway musical, “Lute Song.” Carol is still at U.CL.A. in 1954, seen on
the arm of boy friend, Don Saroyan, dark-haired, soft spoken, laid-back sort of
guy. At C.C. Clarke’s chocolate eatery next to Grauman’s Chinese movie palace,
sitting with my new friends, Stan Young and Peggy McKenna, Carol and Don tell
us the now well-known story of their recent stroke of luck with the San Diego businessman.
This is how I remember it: Performing at a party in San Diego, they are approached by a man in suit and tie
who offers them one thousand dollars if they’ll spend it to go to New York to further
their careers. If in one year they make good, they can pay him back—if not, no
need to. And Carol, if successful, must promise she will help other struggling
actors and performers.
“We thought he was drunk or something,” Carol says, “but
the next morning he called us and said he had the money.”
When I do return to New York almost ten years later, in 1963, Carol
is a shining star, appearing in the television special, “Julie Andrews and
Carol Burnett at Carnegie Hall.” By coincidence, in 1963, Frank Dunand and I
end up on the same street she had lived on, West 69th Street, half-a-block
from Central Park West. Beverly Dickson, friend from U.C.L.A., lives in the apartment,
once shared with Carol. Carol’s autographed eight by ten photo hangs in the
window of the block’s dry cleaner’s.
During the rather lack-luster year of 1954, Katheryn
Offill makes another appearance. She now lives in North Long Beach, teaching
drama at Lynwood High School. Her boy, Sumner, is ten
years old; husband, Don, in a I-want-to
run-off-somewhere mode. One day at the kitchen table, as Katheryn prepares
her special dish, tuna casserole flavored with a can of cream of mushroom soup,
Don directs his dark, intense, somber eyes beneath his equally somber eyebrows,
at David and me, suddenly loudly pleading, “Let’s go to Caracas!” He’d spent most of his army career
during the war, a captain, at the Panama Canal.
Soon he will leave Offill, not fleeing with an army buddy to Caracas, but vanishing into an alcoholic haze
with another woman.
Joe Geers has reappeared, actually in 1953 while David
and I are still in New York
on East 83rd Street.
The woman he’d run off with has been killed by a car while crossing coast
highway 101 north of San Diego.
So Mother and Joe remarry. This time they are together some thirty years, to
the end of Joe’s life.
Other events in 1954: the Palm Springs “matter” again surfaces. Jack
Forline, Mother’s brother, has been in touch with Leon Parma (married to cousin
“Babs,” Aunt Katherine’s daughter) concerning our Palm Springs inheritance. Parma
and Babs have been spending an inordinate amount of time coddling Aunt Pearl in
Palm Springs.
Mother and her older brother, John McCallum Forline
Troubled, Uncle Jack invites Mother and Joe Geers to his
home near downtown L.A.
in a quiet neighbor close to Wilshire
Boulevard and the Ambassador Hotel. Joe is,
surprisingly, without transportation at the moment, so it’s up to me to drive
them—in the green Chevy. A long walk between trimmed shrubbery and newly mowed
lawn, bordered by Jack’s meticulously tended tree roses, takes us inside to a small
but luxurious home reflecting Uncle Jack’s sophistication—rooms filled with
wooden cabinets and book shelves he’s built; crystal chandeliers and a circular
staircase; aroma of prime rib roast from the oven.
Jack, John McCallum Forline, born in Western Springs,
Illinois in 1895, is an elegant man, prince nez hanging from a gold chain and
usually found on the end of his nose; silent and inscrutable, as if he knows
all family secrets (which he does, without doubt). Mother is as proud of her
brother Jack as she had been of their father. There’s no hesitation in
accepting his invitation—albeit a bit troubled by his declaring on the phone,
“It’s time we did something about Palm
Springs and our inheritance.” Mother does not like
controversy of any kind—especially when it comes to sharing family secrets, but
she adores her older brother and will do his bidding.
Jack recently has been on the radio, commenting on
politics and economics. Before the war broke out in Europe
in 1939, he wrote to Roosevelt and Hitler, pointing out the terrible mistake
they were making in not maintaining the peace. Whether they ever got the letter,
or bothered to read it if they did, he would never know. In 1954 he’s quite
happy in his third marriage to Peggy, a former secretary, a savvy, petite,
pretty woman, and quite elegant as well.
Jack was old enough, thirteen, to remember when their
mother died, minutes past midnight in Redlands,
California, November 21, 1908. He
had stood up for his mother’s younger sister Pearl when she married Austin McManus in May,
1914, a few days before their grandmother Emily McCallum died. Emily’s death
was at the heart of things concerning the inheritance. As we would discover a
few years later, Emily had signed a quit-claim deed on her deathbed, giving
Pearl title to all the land in Palm
Springs—the deed was signed with an “X.”
Joe Geers quickly secures a strong mutual-respect with
Jack, “man-to-man,” even though Joe is a
fiercely loyal member of the Teamster Union, while Jack is a corporate vice
president for labor relations, previously for Douglas Aircraft, now for
Richfield Oil (later Arco). Joe’s loyalty for the Teamsters would last until
his retirement, even during the troubled years of Jimmy Hoffa’s rein.
Aunt Marjorie, mother’s younger sister, also is present
at the dinner, and to no one’s surprise proceeds to get loaded on Jack’s
twelve-year old scotch. Dinner itself is medium rare prime rib with an
abundance of side dishes; the prime rib sliced at the table by Jack. Vintage
wine with a cork in the bottle. But Jack’s plan to unify the family isn’t
working. Mother is, as always, totally agreeable to any and all plans her older
brother may wish to instigate with the indomitable and unapproachable Aunt
Pearl. But Marjorie is not.
“I think we should all put our heads together and do
something about Aunt Pearl’s responsibilities to the family,” Jack begins. I see
a tiny red light on the front of a large cabinet. Later Mother will tell me she
noticed it too. Is Jack recording the session?
“It is quite certain how Aunt Pearl got the land by
diverting titles and other shenanigans,” he says. “If we confront her together, with one voice, perhaps
it will spell dividends.” (He doesn’t tell us he’s been in touch with Leon
Parma, and that Leon has been looking into all matters re Pearl’s
estate—another bit of the puzzle we’d learn in a few years—after Jack’s death.)
“What about Katherine?” Marjorie asks. “She’ll never
agree to anything. Leon
is her darling.”
“We’ll cross that road when we come to it,” Jack says.
Marjorie trots out her time-worn story of Grandmother
Emily’s “grocery bill” and how she had given the ranch to Pearl
with the promise that Pearl
“would take care of May’s children.” She lashes out at Aunt Pearl. Pearl ruined her life, forced her into living the high
style in Palm Springs, making up to the wealthy
Stuart Abbott and other rich men who frequented the Tennis Club, preventing her
from marrying the only man she’d ever loved, an accountant who Pearl felt socially beneath Marjorie.
“It’s our mother’s fault,” Marjorie slurs. “Why did she
do it?” Silence at the table; I hold my breath, focusing on my plate, a remnant
of prime rib staring back at me. This is the great family secret not even
Mother has revealed—I’d heard the story from my father by way of his brother,
Tom.
Jack glances at me furtively. “I don’t know about that,”
he replies. Marjorie does an about face—a sudden flip-flop. “I won’t do
anything to hurt Aunt Pearl. You can count me out!” she cries.
“Why not at least look into it?” hearing my voice coming
from another world. I must be nuts in this gathering of the clan, putting my
two cents in.
Marjorie turns, head wobbling, eyes blurred, focusing
more or less, at me. “Aunt Pearl thinks you’re a fairy.”
Jack glowers. “We’ll have none of that kind of talk.”
And that’s that. No chance of “getting together and doing
something about Palm Springs.”
A subject closed forever. Jack will make no further attempt to get his sisters
to confront Aunt Pearl. In two years, he’s gone, and in another five years Leon
Parma is continuing his investigation of Aunt Pearl’s holdings and how she
acquired them at the expense of her nephew and nieces, and their offspring.
On that fateful summer night, 1954, as Marjorie reels
off down Sixth Street
in her lumbering Lincoln Continental, any further attempt on the part of May’s
children to “correct” the injustice her sister Pearl had visited upon her descendents, fades
to silence, accompanied with the screech of Marjorie’s tires as she swings
around toward Wilshire Boulevard and
vanishes.
New friends at U.C.L.A., Peggy McKenna and Stan Young,
meet Aunt Pearl. Peggy, a blonde Irish woman with large eyes—not a raving
beauty—is determined to get me into the sack and eventually the altar,
whichever comes first. I assure her this will never happen. Stan, on our first
meeting, knows all about my past history in U.C.L.A. theatre, 1943-1944, 1948-50,
seeing me as “Great-Actor-Returned-from-Golden Age.” We become inseparable. He’s
young, “schoolboy good looks, chiseled features, smiling, open countenance,
soft brown hair and lingering brown eyes.
David is not happy. In our game-room abode beneath the
garage at Waverly Drive, he lashes out at me, then confesses he himself was
never faithful—profligate, promiscuous activities in New York at every
opportunity, starting almost from the beginning of living with me in 1950. Oh the time wasted! Still he runs with
me and my new found friends, charming as always. We visit Palm Springs in our veteran green four-door
Chevy.
Pearl
welcomes us into her home built into the mountain—the grand pink villa next to
the Tennis Club—also her creation. She greets me with subdued hostility but at
once takes to Peggy. who is not only a woman,
but Roman Catholic. Pearl
has been flirting with the Church in recent years. We lunch at the Tennis Club,
swim in the pool; a grand opportunity for Aunt Pearl to show off. She questions
me about my intention to enter graduate school. I mumble something about
“seminars” and “history of the theatre.” Obviously my heart’s not in it.
“What good will that do you?” she demands. Peggy is
embarrassed for me and later asks why I don’t stand up to my aunt. Good
question. Everyone in the family is terrified of this woman. Too bad. We
could’ve learned so much more about the early years in Palm Springs; although many of her stories
appeared in several issues of “Palm Springs Life,” over the years, were self-serving.
She seldom spoke of her sister May, my grandmother.
As we leave, Pearl
pulls me aside. “Your Aunt Pearl likes it when you bring young girls to see
her.” What can I say to that? One more failure to communicate with this
strange, silent woman given to migraine headaches. Hardly anyone in the family
seemed able to get through to her, much to our regret after he death in 1966.
Summer, 1954. It’s expected I will at last take the
course in Summer Theatre; get my degree and segué into graduate school. I do
not, however, enroll in Summer Theatre. David wants to go back to Ohio, and that’s that. The
brief affair with Stan is leading nowhere, even though I’ve met his mother, a
very young happy woman who has traveled the world. How can I possibly take on
the responsibilities of a fresh relationship?
One ironic twist (historically) in our adventures: Stan
drives me home from U.C.L.A. It’s late at night. We pause, parked across the
street from the sloping lawn at 3301
Waverly Drive, anticipating a modest and brief,
yet passionate, expression of love. A police car rolls alongside. Flashlight
illuminates the front seat, and our faces.
“What are you boys doing?”
“My friend has driven me home from school—U.C.L.A. I live
here. Above, at 3301.”
“Okay. Sorry to bother you. We’ve had robberies in the
neighborhood.”
When, on August 10, 1969, shocked by the front page of The New York Daily News, headlining Leno
and Rosemary LaBianca’s murder—full page picture of 3301, Cadillac and large
boat attached to it parked below the house—it strikes me why two guys sitting
late at night deserved more attention than a bunch of stoned killers moving
through the shadows, to say nothing of the sound of a gunshot. Not a patrol car
in sight.
So it’s off to the Buckeyes—to Columbus, Ohio and
bright red cardinals perched on bare twigs in the snow, autumn pumpkin
festivals, fodder in the shock, smell of over-ripe apples littering the ground
in the apple orchards, Ohio State Saturday afternoon football games. And my
first job as a professional writer.
Northern Cardinal
Ohio’s State Bird
January, 1955, in the Buckeye State joining the farm
boys—or rather those who sell fertilizer to them—with boss, E.S. Halley, tall
Lincolnesque man, Sales Promotion Manager for the Davison Chemical Company,
Division of W.R. Grace & Co. Halley owns a hundred or so acres of farmland
close by, which he himself doesn’t farm. Somewhat straight-laced, a bit skeptical
as to my degree in theatre and from a California
university, Halley hires me anyway. A farmer all his life, Halley has a degree
in Agronomy from Ohio
State.
We oversee a sales force covering eleven states,
Midwestern and border states, including Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana,
Illinois, and Michigan, most of my time spent typing crop-yield charts onto
stencils and running them off on the A.B. Dick mimeograph machine, as I try to
forget, as if I could, I’ve had five years of college. The illusion I’m doing
something creative accrues when photographing the fertilizer processing plant
and making presentations at sales meetings and designing a logo for the company,
figure of a smiling little guy and naming him “Davy Davco.”
So spring finds this big city boy perched on a mound of
hay on a flatbed, riding with Halley and other men through northern Ohio’s
Cuyahoga County state university farm, rattling past experimental acres; lunch
under huge tents—coffee with meal, not
a bottle of beer in site, thank you; fried chicken, mashed potatoes and peas on
paper plates. Strangely, I feel right at home hanging out “down on the farm,” learning
names for grass crops—lush green fields of birds foot trefoil (love that name),
alfalfa; learning to distinguish “field corn” from “sweet corn.” (Am I haunted
by a past life, born on a Midwestern farm?)
Halley retains his stern, distant demeanor during the hay
ride—says little, hardly recognizing I exist, even as we sit under the tent devouring
chicken legs. We are five hundred miles from the sea, but down on the farm this
day recalls “far away places” of childhood dreams, even if I’m not sailing
forever around the world. (I’m reminded of a novel read, title not remembered,
of a guy wandering through Southern France;
also my dad’s geese chasing me around his backyard.)
At David’s home we cram into a small bedroom off the
living room—tolerable surroundings. David, Sr. and I finding common ground in
observing the weather, meteorology already one of my hobbies, as it is for him.
I marvel his quietly expressed pride in the vegetable garden he nurtures on a
large, oblong lot next to the house the other side of the driveway—strawberry
beds, potatoes, rhubarb, tomatoes—even tobacco.
Mother Florence and I tolerate each other. She spends her
time baking roasts and pies and frying chickens, and all the housewifely
chores; nurturing poppies and moss roses, her favorite flower; shopping on
Saturdays, and going to church on Sundays.
Florence
on the phone: “Oh Evelyn, that’s terrible, how did it happen? Well let me know
what I can do. . . What? . . . She didn’t! . . . How awful! . . . She did?
Why? Well of course I’ll be there.”
She hangs up. David asks, “Who was that?”
“Oh that was our Sunshine Chairman” she says.
Saturday shopping with Florence and David in the supermarket drives
me to near insanity as she lingers long over each item before placing it
carefully in the cart, or changing her mind replacing it on the shelf. Saturdays
has never been bearable for me unless I’m out having fun, like going to a
football game, a drive in the country—in California, sun tanning at the beach
and riding the waves; or lunch at a favorite restaurant. I hated cleaning the
house or washing the car on Saturdays, or shopping for clothes in department stores.
Boring.
Family folk in Central Ohio
seemed always to be doing something, seldom seizing the moment to relax or
contemplate. Perhaps this is why fishing and rabbitting are popular sports,
allowing men to escape from their chores, to get close to nature and dream a
little. For the ladies of Ohio
in those years, escaping from drudgery seems to have been found in quilting
bees, church socials, and bingo.
How much I would’ve liked to say to Florence, “When do you people relax? You
spend April, May, and June taking down storm windows, rescuing geraniums from
the cellar for planting, painting the house (a yearly ritual), cleaning,
polishing; maybe relaxing briefly in the summertime, except for the logistic
nightmare of picnics; forever baking rhubarb-strawberry pies, tossing salads
with greens and tomatoes from the garden; in autumn, pickling, preserving,
bottling—peaches, cucumbers, tomatoes; shaking out roots of geraniums, and hanging them in the
cellar, along with overflowing baskets of apples for winter storage; fastening
storm windows, spreading straw over the strawberry patch, cleaning the furnace.
In October, November, December—getting ready for Halloween and Thanksgiving;
shopping for Christmas, baking fruit cakes and interminable trays of sugar
cookies. When fortunate enough to experience a January thaw, you might find
time to take a walk in the woods. Of course, I have to admit, I thoroughly
enjoyed the food and the smell of apples, and all the resultant pleasures
derived from these activities. And Florence’s
pies with strawberries and rhubarb from David Sr.’s garden, smothered with whip
cream, sheer heaven.
One cold, blustery April morning we did manage to get
away long enough to hunt for mushrooms, David and I with David Sr., David’s
brother-in-law, Norman Link and his two boys, Jeffrey and Michael; while
Florence and David’s sister, Emmeline, a robust, earthy woman—Norm’s wife, waited
at home to cook them. An amazing experience for a city boy, trudging among
skunk cabbages and dead leaves matted beneath our feet under the Buckeye trees;
occasional snow flurries filtering down through barren branches, vanishing to
reveal cerulean blue sky—and not a mushroom in sight, even though David, Sr.
assured us they were there—somewhere; Norm, tall, dark, and amused, looking
skeptically at his father-in-law.
Guess who spotted the first mushroom(s)? Right, this guy
from California,
a small clump of the little devils near the exposed roots of a Buckeye tree. Sure
enough, my find is verified by one and all as safe to consume, and once found seemed
to appear everywhere. David, Sr. convinced me I’d discovered real
mushrooms—they were not toadstools. Later
we enjoyed them at home, fried in butter. Nobody got sick.
Hunting, rabbitting especially, another story. How
despicable, cornering a wild cottontail burrowed into a hole in the frozen
ground, staring up at me. I refused to shoot and stormed off the field. The
shooting instigated by David’s brother, Jim, true, red-white-and blue, northern
redneck (he loved Joe McCarthy), his views supported by his wife who if
anything, was more conservative than he was (a kind of Sarah Palin, I think).
Fortunately David and I, most off-days, spend time with
Emmeline and Norm and their boys. They own a small house north of downtown
Columbus near Worthington, the kind of home I used to draw and dream about in
grammar school—white frame with gabled roof; eucalyptus trees towering behind
it—of course no eucalyptus here, but the intention to plant more trees—a live
decorated Christmas tree, not thrown away, but planted outside. Inside on cold winter nights, David
and I bundle into a huge bed in the attic with a mattress we could sink into,
smothered with downy quilts, isolated enough from those below to relish our
lovemaking. A cellar big enough to stand up in; inviting breakfast nook in the
kitchen where we idle away long afternoons and evenings in winter, gorging on
“poor man’s hamburgers” and vanilla ice cream, gooey with chocolate syrup.
Television in the living room, black and white: “The
Honeymooners,” marveling that Emmeline and
Norm sit through Laurence Olivier’s “Richard III” with us. And David and I (not so much Norm) watching singer
Tom Jones. Emmeline adores him, as did many of her housewife friends, not
afraid to admit why they adore him—sporting
white pants in those early days of his career, revealing an ample package. Emmeline
(oh how I loved her) wasn’t afraid to admit her fascination with Tom’s bouncing display as he rolled his
pelvis into the camera. He could sing, of course—a mellow, starving for love, crooning
voice.
To Norm Link’s credit, Emmeline’s fascination didn’t
phase him in the least, although he teased her about it, secure as he was, phobia-free hetero male and
loving husband—a straight man to feel comfortable with. I don’t think he had a
single enemy. He was self-contained and centered—not that he avoided voicing
strong opinions and points-of-view; nor did he avoid confrontations. Norm
worked for the telephone company like his father-in-law and when Halley was out
of town, spent his lunch hours with me in my small office, sometimes bringing
in sandwiches and coffee. We’d talk about the Worthington Players community
theatre group in which all of us were now active; bushels of corn and frozen
peach crops in Michigan; Jeffrey and Michael; sometimes gossiping about his
in-laws, the Woehrles—as in the current story of Florence on the phone with the
Sunshine Chairman.
He would stretch out his legs, plant his feet on the
nearest chair; a regular guy who enjoyed the company of men as much as women,
unlike several young married men we knew who were not comfortable in the
company of women at all, except in the bedroom, and perhaps not even there;
referring here to the “Betty Willis Story” which comes later.
Emmeline has introduced us to Dell Briggs, and nearly
explodes into laughter, telling us one Sunday around the breakfast table that
Dell has questioned my lunchtime rendezvous with Norm. Shouldn’t Emmeline be concerned
Norm and I having lunch together in a private office? We crack up. Rumor
through the years has it that telephone men do fool around a lot on the job,
not averse to giving favors to men as well as women.
As possible as this might have been for Norm (he
decidedly gives off sexual vibes), he did not dispense any such favors to me,
not that I didn’t think it might be fun. (And what if Halley walked in? Imagine
his puzzled consternation!) Emmeline and Norm didn’t need to remind themselves
they were still passionate lovers, even after the birth of two sons.
David, easily compassionate, not one who gave a second
thought to being there when he felt he was needed, took on Dell Briggs with
gusto, and sad to say (sad, for me) she wasn’t
the first woman who would complicate our life. Dell was totally screwed-up and
dangerously overweight, emotional complex, phobia-ridden—I suspect homophobic,
although this was a term never used or even known most likely at that time. Her
one great passion in life seemed to be to control people, seeing herself as one
who has the answer to everyone’s problems. Unfortunately she didn’t seem to
have the same gusto for solving her own problems. Me, I worried about her
influence on David—a lot. But nothing ever came of it.
Emmeline and Norm were on the Board of Directors of the
Worthington Players Club, Emmeline not one
for quilting bees, Needless to say, David and I soon joined, and the
club became the center of our social life.
I wrote and directed a one-act play, “Madame Theresa”
about a black-mailing carnival con artist who fancied herself a medium. For
music, an LP vinyl of authentic calliope music. Not recalling the name of the woman
who played Madame Theresa—dark and passionate—I do recall we argued and shouted
at each other a lot—can’t remember what that was all about!
But I will always remember Carey Lipitz who played the
“romantic lead.” Carey, soft and vulnerable, was a blend of Laura in Tennessee Williams’ “Glass Menagerie” and
Blanche DuBois in “Streetcar Name Desire,” although younger than Blanche. Blonde,
introverted, and troubled, like Laura; diaphanous, delicate and ethereal, yet
tenacious and given to fits of depression. In fewer words, she was not a happy
woman. Her husband, Ben was working on his masters in library science at O.S.U.
Ben, mild mannered, soft spoken, as dull as an overcast
sky, passionately arid, takes pride in showing us page after page of numbers
with decimal points he is collating for his masters degree, none of which we
understood—perhaps a new Dewey system for cataloguing books.
A man like David—that’s what Carey desired, someone to
turn her life around, and David did nothing to discourage her. It became quite
clear she wanted to divorce Ben and run off with him. He would sit up with her all
the long night in our apartment (we had moved to across the street from O.S.U.),
listening, sympathizing. She failed to get him to bed, eventually drifting out
of our lives, nor did she divorce Ben, not while we were in Ohio anyway.
I associate Carey and Ben with the tantalizing aroma of
overripe apples littering the ground in September under the trees of their
one-story, ranch style house.
As for Carey Lipitz—yes, I had my own Carey—Betty Willis.
She and hubbie Wally were in the Worthington Players Club—the ideal couple—or
were they? Both attractive, Betty beyond reason, with a fine looking,
dark-haired son, seven years old, Wally, like his son, pleasant looking with
curly black hair. He worked for the telephone company selling space in the
yellow pages.
Betty was, in a
word, movie star gorgeous, tall and amply stacked, a dark-haired beauty, and like Carey, not
happy, possessed of a Marilyn Monroe syndrome, desiring to be with a man who
loved her for who she was rather than for her beauty or as a sex symbol. She
confessed to me she felt cursed by her beauty, and Wally was not the man to
dispel that curse.
Friday nights were party nights in the Willis home—I
mean, all the long night, dancing
till dawn in their basement game room; David and I the only men on hand to dance more than once with the
women; husbands holding their buddy-buddy celebrations at the wet bar, swapping
hunting stories and baseball statistics. I’m not all that great at dancing
(David is Fred Astaire), but Betty falls in love with me, probably because I
didn’t put the make on her, and she’s heard our stories about living in New York.
She wants to abandon her son and run away with me to New York! I got myself out of this entanglement by saying
no, not in a million years—and never trying to hit on her.
One of our best escapes from both Carey and Betty Willis came to us with Maxine
Davis, another member of Worthington Players. We became a steady threesome. Ah,
Maxine Davis, now there was a fun loving woman! Not tall or especially
beautiful, blonde, buxom, well-formed package who could toss her head back and
roar with laughter. We would play together in Noel Coward’s “Hay Fever,” Maxine
as Myra Arundel pursued by married writer, David Bliss—me. Favorite lines:
David Bliss-“Myra,
you are so tawny.” Myra—“I
am not tawny.” Veddy “Noel Coward.”
Maxine had lost her husband only a year before we came to Ohio. Owner of an appliance
sales-and-service company, he reached around a large air conditioner one
afternoon to connect something or other and was electrocuted, dying instantly.
Maxine fell apart and began drinking heavily; still a heavy drinker and a chain
smoker. Maxine drove a Chevy coupe. How we escaped getting arrested for drunk
driving, I’ll never know.
Just after arriving in Ohio in January, 1955, we learn Daisy
Belmore has died the previous December. A letter written to her promising a
trip soon to New York
soon, is returned with a devastating red scrawl across the envelope—deceased. We’ve heard nothing from her
daughter, Ruth, so call her—she lives in California
now—and she tells us Daisy died in December. Our dear friend has made her final
exit through the window of her room at the Wellington, to make love to the man in the moon.
A turning point of sorts for me, recalling the first
thought that crossed my mind,hearing the news—Daisy, dead? Impossible! How could such an indomitable spirit—the
essence of this rollicking, exuberant, optimistic woman—die? Whatever the
true nature of Daisy Belmore—the essence of her humanity would never die—at
this moment, the seed of a belief—that such a human spirit is and ever will be
indestructible. Years later, studying Buddhism, I would learn to call this indestructible
spirit, not soul, but Mind.
The ax falls at Davison Chemical. After twenty years with
them, E.S. Halley is fired. Our parent corporation in New York, W.R. Grace and Company, has
decided sales promotion doesn’t sell
anything. Halley’s twenty years comes to an end. (Several years later, I will
learn from my Cuban born friend, Frank Dunand, that when he was a child in
Banes, he had to get permission from W.R. Grace to go to the beach, passed a
locked wire fence.)
For a time, after leaving Davison, David and I knock
on doors in outlying Columbus
neighborhoods questioning housewives about their reactions to slick adds in phony
“new magazines.” (Oddly I remember only
one ad—a huge chocolate cake, probably Betty Crocker.)
Then . . . interview with Al Schwartz, Editorial Director
of Publications and Research at the Ohio Department of Highway Safety; a small,
rotund, chubby little man, pleasant enough, if a bit edgy. He’s from Georgia where
he served in the prison system—in what capacity, a bit obscure.
The interview is thorough and a hang up adds suspense—no
record of a college degree from U.C.L.A. I have yet to finish the course in
summer theatre. I air mail special delivery to Ralph Freud who responds, “I’ve
instructed the College
of Applied Arts, what the
hell, give him his degree.” Arts Bachelor (A.B.) Theatre Department, U.C.L.A.,
dated August, 1954. Other references check out. I am now “Information Writer”
for the Ohio Department of Highway Safety, joining Barbara Goodwin, graduate in
Journalism, O.S.U.
I’m soon convinced Al’s title with Georgia’s
prison system must have been “Organizer” or “Categorizer.” Every newspaper and
publication in Ohio fill a scattering of rolodexes surrounding him at his
desk—sub-divided of course—dailies, weeklies, bi-weeklies, monthlies—each with
varying colors to get this or that news release. It’s tantalizing to think what
he could’ve done with today’s digital data bases!
Our “newsroom” is large, Barbara and I sharing the large
room walled off from Al by a large glass partition. Our desks are close to one
another corner near a window. We are housed in a 19th Century relic,
grim and needing a paint job, former state school for the blind.
April, 1956 births our first issue of a slick two-column, six-to-eight page magazine “Buckeye
Traffic Safety Bulletin.” I’m back at Franklin High School in 1942, associate editor of
the Franklin Press! However, at Franklin
we were blessed with the wonderful smell of the linotype, laying out our pages
in metal forms with dot matrix photos. Here our process is offset, so the smell
is mucilage.
A nifty little rag, considering space limitations; “Education,
Enforcement, Engineering, Legislation” proclaims the masthead. Al allows
Barbara and me a free hand. Some of the writing isn’t too shoddy (no bylines, the following by
Barbara):
“Shoveled up from the silent banks of the Scioto River
here in Columbus several years ago were some unique and intriguing scraps of
metal—13 porcelain finished license plates inscribed with the very first
numbers ever issued in Ohio. Number One, the records show, was assigned to a
United States Congressman from Cincinnati
. . .”
“Drag Racing” on State Highways Curbed,
Special Interceptors Prove Effective
A warm Saturday evening in a small Ohio town . . . a handful of teenagers
gather on the street corner to admire the new rod, freshly customized . . .
bulled nose and shaved deck. . . a neat job, but how will she drag? Want to
find out? Why not? There’s nothing else to do. . .
Thus, the dangerous drag race on the open highway is
born. . . its ingredients: the surging energy of youth, and the aggressive
thrill of competition. The recipe: stir well on a balmy Spring evening in a
community which has little or no safely organized activity . . .
In the Summer Issue, 1956, we feature Mr. Wildcat Driver,
and other campaigns, among which, “Slow Down and Live.” Not sure Ohio drivers paid much attention, and today California drivers would
consider the slogan something out of H.G. Wells.
Close to my thirtieth birthday, I decide to quit
smoking—forever. David and I have made many previous, abortive attempts. This
is not a good time for me to quit—too many pencils to chew on. As a smoker, a
cigarette pack and a half a day, preferring real
cigarettes, thank you—long Pall Malls in the
red pack, Lucky Strikes. Couldn’t stand the taste of filters. Today,
sixty years later, I can still taste those Pall Malls!
First step, buy a twenty-pack carton of Winston’s filter
tips and smoke them all—hated Winston filter tips! – finished in a week. Then,
a pipe—why not? mark of the Midwestern
College Professor, tweed coat and leather-patched elbows.
And so, on a Sunday afternoon sitting in Norm and
Emmeline’s kitchen with David and the boys, after exhausting the carton of
Winston’s, I puff my last measure of pipe tobacco, tap the remnants into the
ashtray and proclaim, “Well, that’s that.” Miraculously it was, although the
following year was sheer hell, chewing on endless pencils and consuming
countless gum drops. Most amazing, I didn’t know what to do with my hands!
waving them in the air as if brushing off flies. But I could breathe fresh air
again, and taste buds spiked. For years I would have recurring dreams, quite
real, that I was still smoking.
Barbara marries a boy she’d known at Ohio State,
her last name now Selanders. He couldn’t have been much older than twenty and
looked it—hardly wet behind the ears. He
raised chickens and Barbara complained often about frosts and viruses, and that
her hubbie spent entirely too many nights away from home with his buddies. I
said guys married much too young in Ohio.
“If you can’t hitch up by your mid-twenties, people think you’re abnormal.” Her reply—silence and knitting her soft, blonde eyebrows. She
divorced him after several months—too much time out with the boys, becoming Barbara Goodwin once
more.
Me? always complaining we should all live in New York—the only place
to make it in journalism.
“What about James Thurber?” she said. Thurber
graduated from Ohio State.
The house he lived in as boy later became setting for his delightful short
story, “The Night the Ghost Got in.” the old house close by. I passed it many
times on lunch hour walks.
I answered back, “James Thurber had to leave Ohio to become famous.”
Who was I to
complain? I was acting and
directing almost most as much as at U.C.L.A. and at Highway Safety narrating
one-and-half minute safety spots that ran on television. (Al Schwartz wasn’t
too pleased about this—it wasn’t his idea, and he had no control over the
project.)
At Worthington Players Club, “Hay Fever” is followed by Moliére’s
“The Miser,” creating costumes taken from photos of the U.C.L.A. production;
Emmeline, costume designer. I repeat my
role as La Fléche; Maxine Davis as Marriage Broker, Frosine. Enter Bill
McCormick, another “tall, dark and handsome” guy, an announcer on a Worthington radio station,
part-time disk jockey. Betty Willis plays the Miser’s daughter; Wally Willis,
the Miser.
As director, I copy much of what’s remembered from
Henry Schnitzler’s direction at U.C.L.A. We run three nights with enthusiastic
audiences, then take the show on the road to a couple of small colleges. Norman
Nadel, drama critic for the Columbus Post Dispatch, gives us a fare review. Later,
Nadel will become film and stage critic for New York’s World Telegram and Sun.
Re-enter, of all people, Ed Ludlum! Neither David nor I
had kept in touch with Ed since New
York in the fall of 1950. Item in Post Dispatch – Ed
will direct a summer of tent theatre, “Playhouse on the Green” in Worthington. When Dell
Briggs learns David and I knew him from New
York, she springs into action, and calls him. Result
is Ed casts me in “Sabrina Fair” as Paul, the “Frenchman with an English Nanny”
as the script describes him. My scene is with Sabrina, played by Sally Kemp,
daughter of the 1940’s big band leader, Lionel Kemp.
On the way to first rehearsal up High Street, I run out
of gas, so arrive smelling of gasoline. Sally takes a whiff, eyes my Levi’s
with suspicion (definitely a hick!) but soon overcomes her doubts and takes me
into the fold—a motley bunch of stoned New
York actors, but talented. Although my Actors Equity
card is still active, Ed makes me sign a waiver, and I get paid zilch.
Paul is a thankless part—confusing to the audience since
they expect a Frenchman to enter the scene; and here he is with British accent.
Sabrina questions the anachronism, and Paul replies, “Oh, I had an English
nanny.” It’s a puzzle why the part is written that way.
Returning to Worthington Players, Bill McCormick directs
a production of “Blithe Spirit.” This will be my third time as Charles
Condomine—the first of which was the boggled performance on Mackinac
Island in 1947; and the highly successful performance at U.C.L.A.
in 1950. Maxine Davis and Betty Willis play Condomine’s two wives.
Then both David and I are cast in “The Male Animal” in Stadium
Theatre’s summer season, 1957, a popular theatre venue housed in a ground-floor
corner of the Buckeye Stadium. We never make it to the most prestigious theatre,
the Players Club in downtown Columbus,
but Stadium Theatre runs a close second. David plays anarchic student, Michael,
and I, Tommy Turner, English Professor (the Henry Fonda role in the movie). We play a drunk scene to the hilt—one of my most exciting and rewarding theatrical adventures.
Setting for “The Male Animal” is Ohio
State (its author, Elliot
Nugent, an alumni). The central conflict evolves when Tommy Turner announces he
plans to read the last letter of the anarchist Sacco Vanzetti to his English
class. Ultra-conservative rah-rah Neanderthal alumunis are up in arms, and
threaten to withhold funds for building a new
football stadium, and fire Tommy.
Michael protests suppression of free speech and
faces expulsion. We bemoan our pending doom by getting drunk—David and I
together on stage in a beautifully written scene, thrilling to play.
Nadel gives us a fairly good review, but complains the
negro maid is played too much as stereotype. The cast gets hot under the collar
and I fire off an irate letter to him. Fortunately, no copy of the letter
survives. I’m sure I would be embarrassed, reading it now.
We take smaller parts in the next Stadium Theatre
production in Jean Anhouil’s “The Lark,” a poetic St. Joan, played by April
O’Connell. April tries to get me interested in Zen, my first brush with
Buddhism, but it’s much too ephemeral for
me—not down to earth enough, nothing I can hang on to. Haiku is
intriguing, but elusive. It takes me another twenty years before Buddhism will take
hold of my life, and another thirty before the teachings would thoroughly enrich
it.
Meanwhile, David has enrolled as art major at Ohio State
while I continue to chew on pencils and
write for Highway Safety. By fall David is anxious for another change—a return
to California.
(Why, oh why didn’t I hold out for New York!)
In California,
sister Alice has her Business Degree from U.S.C. and has passed all her CPA
exams and divorced Leno. In her apprentice year at Arthur Young, she will meet
and marry William Findley.
September, 1957, David and I are off to California, this time in our white Mercury
convertible. (Yes, in those days, two guys could jointly own a car, no
“partnership” required.) I have been in touch with the Helen Edwards employment
agency in Los Angeles, hoping that the imperial Miss Edwards will get me a
fabulous job with an advertising agency because of my writing and editorial
experiences with Highway Safety, and at ABC in New York. Such was not to be.
And yet . . . little did I know that events and three
jobs I did get and suffer through from November, 1957 to July, 1961 would
culminate in another appearance in the Pilgrimage Play, this time as John the
Beloved, connecting me with those who will
soon wrench me out of the gray 1950s into a life and world I never could’ve
imagined—not in my wildest dreams. New Yorker at last!
Following – Prelude to the Socko Sixties “When David and I
return to California
. . .”
