Dropped Names (8 page)

“Action.

“Okay, Larry. The big guy's coming at you. You see the stake. There it is. No way out. Give me some fear. Okay, here it comes. It's in. It's in. It's in. Give me some eyes, Larry. Throw your head back. Now give the sucker one last look. Good, good. Okay, Larry. Now die.”

He did exactly as he was asked, rolled his eyes to the heavens, lowered his head, looked at me, opened his mouth, did his signature twist of the tongue, slumped, and died. The camera kept rolling for a few beats until John's voice rang out:

“Great! Close your eyes, Larry.”

S
ir Laurence Olivier managed to keep his eyes open for another ten years, and died at the age of eighty-two. There was a great deal about him I found charming, delightful, and admirable. But I was always keenly aware of the fact that I was dealing with a deadly cobra capable of striking without notice. A cobra who nevertheless had a way of looking deeply into your eyes when saying good-bye that made you feel you were the most important person on earth to him. He managed a sort of tender pathos that defused the monster, until, of course, the next time you met him in the woods. It was one of many cunning tricks from a man whose bag of them was bottomless.

T
here is a tradition in the English theatre that when an actor has played a successful Richard III, he must pass down the sword to the next generation's Richard.

“Who are you going to give it to?” he was asked.

“Nobody,” his lordship replied. “It's mine!”

BETTE DAVIS

W
hen asked what it takes to succeed in the acting profession, Bette Davis would answer, “The courage to be hated.” And she unsparingly lived up to that maxim until the end of her days. My relationship with her was brief, provocative, and, at the one time I was in her presence, humbling and sad.

In the late 1970s, we were both represented by an agent named Robbie Lantz, whose specialty was charming and cajoling a great many divas and monsters. At various times he represented Bette, Elizabeth Taylor, Milos Forman, Peter Shaffer, Myrna Loy, Marlene Dietrich, and Richard Burton.

Miss Davis, it seemed, had seen me in a film and liked what she saw. “Is he gay?” she asked Robbie.

“Bette, dear, he's married with two children.”

“So what?” she snapped. “Get him on the phone.”

So, with Robbie as Cupid, Miss Davis and I had a number of racy phone conversations, not quite phone sex but certainly rife with foreplay. She was complimentary and seductive and funny. I have a fan, I thought. So surface were our exchanges though, that I recall virtually none of them. She resolutely avoided anything that could be remotely described as an honest exchange. And when she was done, she was done.

“Well, good-bye” was the abrupt finish, then click.

“Why don't we all have dinner?” I suggested.

“Oh Frank, you don't want to actually meet her,” Robbie said. “Leave it as it is. She'll eat you alive. There is no way you can possibly win with Bette. Keep your illusions.”

“I don't care what she'll be like,” I said to Robbie. “I want to meet her.” He dutifully tried to set up a dinner at his apartment in New York. Miss Davis agreed, but cancelled. He tried again. She agreed and cancelled again. The phone calls dwindled away, and I resigned myself to having been juiced up and jilted. Just a temporary boy toy.

Perhaps it wasn't a bad thing, I thought. I had remembered a friend of my former wife's telling me that when Bette was staying with him in L.A. she asked to meet Mae West, whom he also knew. It was the middle of August, but she insisted it would be lovely to have a roaring fire when Miss West arrived. The fire was lit, and even with the air conditioners at full blast, the room was an inferno. By the time Miss West entered the house, Miss Davis had had a few and was almost incoherent. According to this gentleman, Miss West conducted herself with grace and dignity as Miss Davis fell asleep, drunk and sweaty.

“Poor thing,” Mae said, as she left.

I
n her later years, I watched her give sadly mannered performances in B films and descend into the worst of her nature, as she physically shrank and began to decay. Beset by major illnesses, including a stroke and cancer, she defied death time and again and repaired herself, it seemed, through the sheer power of what appeared to be operatic rage. And toward the end of those days, I would at last have the privilege of meeting her.

It was now the late 1980s. I was staying at a hotel on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. At about 2 a.m., I was at the desk, picking up my messages, and as I walked toward the elevator I saw a tiny, tiny woman moving slowly toward the front door in a black and white polka-dot dress with a wide black patent leather belt cinching her infinitesimal waist. The dress billowed out like those crinolines worn by high school girls in the 1950s. On her head sat a broad-brimmed black and white polka-dot hat, and from her arm swung a white bag with a polka-dot handkerchief peeking out of its opening. Step click, step click, went the sounds of her feet and cane tapping along the marble floor.

I fell in behind and moved slowly forward to catch a glimpse of the profile. Before I could get even with her, that famous voice boomed out of that munchkin body to her female companion:

“Get the car.”

Those three words might as well have been followed by . . . “or I'll kill you!”

The venom with which she spoke them for some reason made me laugh. She was oblivious to my presence as the young woman sat her down in a chair near the front door and left to do her bidding. The lobby was completely empty. There I was, alone at last with Bette Davis. Alone with Regina Giddens from
The Little Foxes
, Margo Channing from
All About Eve
, Charlotte Vale from
Now, Voyager
, Crazy Jane from
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?,
and the man-eating Mrs. Skeffington. I stood at a discreet distance and watched. And, lo and behold, she performed, just for me, the definitive Bette Davis scene.

Click! The bag opened! The handkerchief came up to dab the lips! Back into the purse it went! Out came the cigarette case! Click! It opened! Into the white-gloved fingers went the cigarette! Click! The case closed! Plop! Into the bag! Out came the lighter! Snap, light, close, plop, puff, and click again! The urge to yell “Cut!” overcame me, but instead I walked up to her, now seated in a cloud of billowing smoke.

“Miss Davis?”

“Yes!”

“I'm sorry to disturb you, but I just want to tell you that I think you are the greatest actress of the twentieth century.”

“Thank you!”

Time to go, I thought. She was resolutely staring straight ahead, those giant eyes barely noticeable under her large picture hat. But no! This would be my only chance to share a memory with her. After all, was she not a fan of mine as well? And when she saw me, heard my name, she surely would respond more warmly, ask me to sit down and wait with her until her car arrived. Perhaps we could even have a drink together and discuss the art of acting. I could ask her a question I'm sure no one had ever asked her before, like “who thought up the idea of Paul Henreid lighting the two cigarettes in
Now, Voyager
?”

Since she was so small, I leaned over quite far in order to get my face enough under the picture hat so that she might recognize me and welcome our moment of intimacy. In order for me to make certain she'd know who it was invading her space, I needed to bend practically in half, and in that rather awkward position, staring up at her face, I said:

“Miss Davis, it's me. Frank Langella.”

She sucked on her cigarette, keeping her eyes low, turned, exhaled into my face, looked me straight in the eye, and uttered these words:

“I said: Thank you!” She then turned face front and froze me out.

S
o utterly final was Miss Davis's “Thank you” that I backed away from her, not so much shyly as with a mild revulsion. She had every right, of course, to her privacy. But her rage at it being invaded was so palpable that I moved back in sadness and watched her from a distance for about ten minutes until her handler arrived. Ten minutes as she sat alone in silence, smoking, waiting to be taken home, undressed, most likely given a drink or a pill, and put to bed. A great, great artist, living out her final days alone with a hired companion, going to her grave resolutely mantaining the courage to be hated.

REX HARRISON

H
e was my idol. I thought him the most accomplished, technically perfect, and totally believable English actor of his time. He had enormous style, great sex appeal, humor, and charm. But Sexy Rexy, a nickname he loathed, reportedly bestowed on him by the actress Coral Browne, was a real son of a bitch.

He was at one time married to one of my dearest friends, Elizabeth Harris, who had previously been married to Richard Harris—a force of a different color. I once asked Elizabeth about Rex, and she confirmed his reputation as a divine monster.

“He was the only man I ever knew,” she said, “who would send back the wine at his own dinner table.”

Elizabeth was one of his six wives, along with the stunning Kay Kendall, the also stunning Lili Palmer, and the tortured Rachel Roberts. Also among his many lovers was a beautiful actress of the 1940s named Carole Landis, who died tragically at twenty-nine, by taking a bunch of Seconal after Rex allegedly refused to leave his wife for her. Rachel Roberts also killed herself with pills and then gulped down some lye to boot. With such notices, it was no surprise his at-home performances didn't run very long.

He was as resolutely heterosexual as he was resolutely homophobic, refusing to play any role that would give off a hint of his appearing light in the loafers. In 1962 the playwright Terrance Rattigan wrote a play for Rex entitled
Man and Boy
, in which the leading character Gregor Antonescu pretends to be gay in order to gain advantage over a homosexual business partner. Rex would have none of it. Nor would the next choice, Laurence Olivier. I played this incredible character on Broadway in 2011, often thinking of what a great opportunity both of these actors had missed.

Late in his career he decided to risk the stigma in a terrible movie called
The Staircase
, playing an old queen opposite Richard Burton's old queen. Richard, who had no such worries—“I tried it once,” he said, “I didn't like it”—told me one night over drinks that during the shooting of the film he opened his dressing room doors to a full bar and the crew wandered in and out at will. “Rex was directly next door to me,” he said, “and never once opened his door or entered my dressing room. He deeply regretted having taken on the role, still afraid people might think he was a pouf.” He was from many reports despised on that film, as indeed he was by most of the people who knew and worked with him.

Oddly, he and the actress Doris Day seemed to have found a warm rapport on a film they made together in 1960 entitled
Midnight Lace.
And it shows in both their wonderful performances. But in general he did not endear himself to very many people. The story goes that on his seventieth birthday, someone offered to give him a party and invite all his friends. “I'll even hire the telephone booth,” said the man.

I
met Rex Harrison twice. So brilliant had I thought him in his signature role as Henry Higgins in
My Fair Lady
that in 1956, when I was in college, I memorized his every word, inflection, and sigh. I thought his performance in the musical and the subsequent film indelible examples of how an actor could be both theatrical and truthful and when I played the role some thirty-five years later at the Houston Grand Opera in 1991, his definitive performance rang in my ears every night.

But in the early 1970s, there he was in person, standing before me. He was the guest of honor at a cocktail reception in the home of my agent at that time, Milton Goldman. The last to arrive, he entered with his newest wife and was standing in the foyer, removing his hat, scarf, and coat. I decided that, before he was inundated with well-wishers, I would approach him and pay my respects.

As he turned to enter the main room, I came up, put out my hand, and said:

“Mr. Harrison, it is a great honor to meet you. I—”

“Thank you,” he said, cutting me dead, flinging his and his wife's coats across my arm and making his entrance. I doubt that had I waited at the door all evening to say good night it would have been worth it. He didn't seem the type to tip.

M
y friend the English producer Duncan Weldon told me he was touring Rex, Stewart Granger, and Glynis Johns in the provinces of England in a play entitled
The Circle
in 1991. Rex was at that point eighty-three and very frail. Suddenly taken ill before a matinee, he was rushed to a doctor who told him to take to his bed for a day. Duncan saw to the understudy, then went to visit Rex in his hotel room.

“I'll be fine,” he said, “just a silly bit of dizziness. I'll be in tonight.”

“Oh, I'm so relieved,” said Duncan. “Glynis was so worried. She sends love.”

“Glynis?”

“Glynis Johns.”

“Was she there this afternoon?”

“Of course, Rex. She's in the play with you.”

“Oh no,” he said, “that girl's not Glynis.”

M
y second encounter with him was in 1984. He was performing in a play with the film star Claudette Colbert entitled
Aren't We All
. I witnessed him bring down the house with one word. Toward the close of the play, his character discovers something the audience has known all along. He absorbs the information, realizes he's been duped, and says in barely a stage whisper, “Well!” There were decades of expertise in that “Well!”

A friend of mine in the cast was taking Miss Colbert to supper after the show and brought me backstage for an introduction. She had starred opposite Clark Gable in
It Happened One Night
, close to my favorite film comedy. As we were waiting for her to change, my friend told me that Miss Colbert so disliked Sexy Rex that she only spoke French when in his company, just to annoy him.

Miss Colbert opened her door already dressed to leave in a black mink coat, hat, and gloves. And in the thirty seconds it took her to say hello, shake my hand, and thank me for coming, I fell in love. A great film star exquisitely turned out and gracious as could be. I forever regret not joining her and my friend for supper when they invited me, but I was on a mission. Instead I said:

“I'd like to pay my respects to Mr. Harrison.”

“Yes, darling,” she said. “He's that way,” indicating where to go and leaving my life forever..

There was no one else backstage. Not a soul. I made my way to his dressing room, knocked, and heard:

“Yes! What is it?!”

I tentatively opened the door.

Standing alone in a silk dressing gown, looking like Rex Harrison's grandfather, he offered a wet-fish handshake and a somewhat suspicious smile. But I was not to be coerced into helping him change into his street clothes. I launched into a speech I'd been practicing for forty years and told him what he'd meant to me since I was a young boy. He stood listening patiently and when I finished said:

“Thank you. Very kind. I'm afraid I can't ask you to sit down.”

And I was out in the hall. Again no tip.