The Magnificent Elmer (11 page)

***

I had always admired Elmer so much. He had opened the world of music to me. Music was his bible. So I was a little disappointed. Yes, I thought, Eve is attractive. But what about his love for
music
? Why didn’t Elmer have a fling with someone in the orchestra? Some nice girl in the string section. Perhaps a cellist. Then I could have kidded him about the instrument between her legs, we could have had a good laugh, and that would have been the end of it. But no. I had to say the memorable words. “Her or me.” Probably not even grammatical.

***

Elmer and I had come a long way together. But it was time to move forward along different paths. As Yogi Berra so wisely said: “When you reach a fork in the road, take it.” I took it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
SCORE ONE FOR ME

“You’re a lonely, misunderstood woman who’s been getting a lot of dirty breaks.”

—Groucho Marx

When your marriage has fallen apart, you have lost your husband, your friends have cut you off, and your life is a shambles, if you can pick yourself up and dust yourself off and start all over again, then you don’t understand the extent of the problem.

For myself, I understood the problem all too well. And I had, if not a remedy, at least a poultice for the wound—something I always did in the face of calamity. I would get behind the wheel of my car and drive along Mulholland Drive until it ended. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the topography of Los Angeles, Mulholland is a road that winds its way through the green hills of the city. On one side you look down on the West Side, on the other the vista of the San Fernando Valley. Driving along Mulholland it is impossible to feel anything but blessed. It is also very dangerous, since if your mind wanders even for a moment, you will find yourself in a ravine.

Hence I took a drive along Mulholland. It helped, for about twenty minutes.

***

The year Elmer and I broke up, Gregory was eight and Peter was twelve. I did not want them to suffer unduly from the rupture of their family. I knew that broken homes could have a harmful effect on kids, nearly as bad as the effect of intact ones. Says Holden Caulfield: “I keep picturing all these little kids playing in a big field of rye. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. And I’d be the catcher in the rye.” Well, every mother is a catcher in rye. I wanted to catch my boys before they went off the cliff of our separation. So Elmer and I never had a formal visitation agreement for him to see the children. He came over to the house almost every day. It was almost as though he had never left.

***

If there is a secret to life after a midlife crisis, it is reinvention. I should have learned this from Elmer. He was always reinventing himself. After the biblical epics and the jazz opuses of the fifties, when his career lay temporarily fallow, he reinvented himself with westerns, and then with comedies.

All through the years of our marriage, I was the little girl from Philadelphia married to the iconic composer. In the company of Hollywood’s elite, I would be careful never to contradict or challenge him. I was living in the shadow of the composer. But as Nietzsche said, what the fire doesn’t destroy, it hardens. And the breakup had led me to an important discovery: I had a brain. My thoughts had value and even, on occasion, wit. On a trip to London, Elmer asked me to join him and a lady friend for dinner at the Savoy. He would bring a date for me. We had a great time at dinner, and Elmer called me the next morning. “You were wonderful—They loved you!” he exclaimed. What a vote of approval.
My ex-husband and his lady friend found me great company. Like winning the Good Housekeeping Seal.

***

Then one evening at a dinner party, I met a writer who had been having his own share of post-marital anguish. His name was Michael Morris. He was good-looking, smart, and funny. Mike and I were two people with broken hearts. “It’s the old story,” he said. “You’re a lonely, misunderstood woman who’s been getting a lot of dirty breaks. Well, we can clean and tighten your brakes and change your oil, but you’ll have to stay in the garage overnight.” Mike confessed he had borrowed the line from a Marx Brothers movie. I knew he had character because he attributed the source, something Hollywood writers seldom do.

I started to feel like my old self, which some of my friends would observe is the worst thing you could say about anybody. After my relationship with Mike had matured, I told Elmer I wanted a divorce. He was stunned. He wanted to continue to enjoy the best of both worlds—a loyal wife to care for the kids, and a tall, skinny British girlfriend. But that isn’t how it works. Life has a way of moving on.

Eighteen months after my separation from Elmer, Mike and I flew to El Paso, and took a cab across the border to the town of Juarez, where (a) I got a divorce, (b) I had a taco, (c) I got married. Juarez is a dangerous town. The Americans who came there for quickie marriages often found their nuptials marred by violence, promiscuity, and even murder. And the town was pretty dangerous, too.

Then we drove back to El Paso and flew to San Francisco where some friends had flown up for a wedding celebration; thence we drove back to L.A. Mike’s arrival seemed to bring an element of stability to the home that had been shaken by our passing storm. So I was glad to see that the boys seemed to have survived the melodrama. For a long time I had been submissive and broadminded. But the streets of Juarez were littered with the bones of men whose wives were no longer submissive and broadminded.

Mike was occupied as a story editor for the television sitcom
Bewitched
, where co-star Paul Lynde was hilarious when he wasn’t infuriating. Paul’s infectious sarcastic wit made him stand out as one of the show’s most memorable characters. But Paul tended to read Mike’s lines in erratic ways, and when Mike’s eyebrows climbed his forehead, Paul would say, “You’ll
learn
to like it.”

As reality returned to our household, I realized I couldn’t go through the rest of my life hanging out at home. By this time, Peter was at college and Greg had reached the age of self-sufficiency. Mike was at the studio all day and into the evening. My life had no focus. I was not one of “the ladies who lunch” who spend their day choosing a hat. If I may be excused for using the C word, I was looking for a career.

After much soul-searching, I decided to attend a seminar at UCLA for “directionless women.” One of the speakers was the dean of the USC law school. But I was ambivalent. I raised my hand.

“Yes?”

“Do you realize, when I graduate law school I’ll be fifty-one?”

“Do you realize,” said the dean, “that if you don’t go to law school, you’ll still be fifty-one?”

That line closed the deal.

***

As I write this, the women who are getting law degrees outnumber the men. But when I graduated law school in the late seventies that was not the case. I recall wearing my navy blue credibility suit and low-heeled shoes, and with the handful of other new lady lawyers, receiving cautionary instructions from a judge in the Los Angeles Courthouse.

“Women lawyers are not to wear pants in court.

“They are not to wear heels.

“They are not to wear red.

“They are not to wear bows. But if they
must
wear bows, the bows are to be tied snugly about the neck. And on
no
account are said bows to be thrown over the shoulder.”

I decided that at my age—I was pushing fifty-one—I was too old to take instructions from others. So I hung out my shingle in my own office. I was practicing general law. Some of my more credulous friends sought my help in legal matters—a will, a trust agreement, a real estate document. Then I joined a small practice that focused on intellectual property and patent law, and in an era before computers and data bases, this meant trips to the U.S. Patent Office in Washington. Other cases took me to other world capitals, from Bombay to London, from Rome to Paris. I practiced family law, and usually represented the wife. I sought to secure the rights of women in society, their social and political empowerment.

With every fresh document and legal challenge, the soap opera of my breakup with Elmer faded further from my conscious thoughts.

Now, there is a theory that has been propounded by my son Gregory that had Elmer never left me I would’ve never become the woman I became. Which explains, I suppose, why the Chinese use the same symbol for the words “crisis” and “opportunity.”

Or as Mr. Sondheim says in a lyric from a song about marital breakup: “That’s the killer—Now you grow.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I’M STILL HERE

“The accordionist knows three songs—‘New York, New York,’ the theme from
The Godfather
, and ‘When the Saints Go Marching In.’”

—Minister at the Venetian Hotel

After a long struggle with colon cancer and Alzheimer’s, Mike died in 2003 at the Motion Picture Home.

I met Gerald Gardner at a birthday party that our friend Bernie West threw for his wife Mimi at the Peninsula Hotel. In one of those “what if” moments, Bernie seated us together. We talked and laughed all evening. We spoke about politics and show business and other things. Gerry loved music—he was caught in a time warp bounded by Gershwin and Cole Porter—he admired Elmer’s work. When Gerry told me he lived on Camden Drive in Beverly Hills, I started thinking about a boat and a beach house. I didn’t realize till later that Camden Drive runs all the way to the airport.

Six months later, Gerry and I were taking some real vows on a faux bridge over a faux canal at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. The young minister said, “I’ve been married a long time, so let me give you a little advice—” Since between us Gerry and I had been married eighty-two years, we don’t remember much after that. Then our young minister gestured toward the accordionist and said, “He only knows three songs—‘New York, New York,’ the theme from
The Godfather
, and ‘When the Saints Go Marching In.’”

Only Gerry’s children and grandchildren, and my own, were at the ceremony, but it was memorable. The Venetian setting, the painted sky, the tourists staring at the geriatric couple as our gondola glided upstream toward the restrooms.

We’ve had some fun. It’s been a good life, cushioned in music and books. Perhaps the sugar
is
all at the bottom of the cup. We went on a cruise to Alaska. We went to both presidential conventions in 2004 and watched a young senator named Barack Obama give a keynote address. Gerry tried to learn golf and fell into a sand trap. Even when we hit a dry patch, we leavened it with laughter. When I said, “Gerry, it was so much fun at the beginning. Tell me the truth, is it waning?” he replied, “No, but it’s dwizzling.”

Gerry was at work on a book called
80
in which eighty famous octogenarians talked about what keeps them young. So I had the unique pleasure of answering the phone at all hours and hearing the voices of Carl Reiner, Studs Terkel, and Ben Bradlee. Whenever anyone asked who was the most intriguing of his subjects, it was no contest. It was the brash and incorrigible Elaine Stritch. Her advice to one and all: “Suit up, show up, wear comfortable shoes.” Was it tough producing a nightclub act at her age? “I’ve got the prostitute’s complaint,” growled Elaine. “It’s not the work, it’s the stairs.”

Gerry was surprised by the eminence of the people who were taking the time to contribute their thoughts to his book on old age. On the day he spoke to Norman Corwin, Ray Bradbury and Mike Wallace—and it was not yet noon—he said to Helen Gurley Brown: “I’m surprised at how many famous folks are taking my calls and talking to me at such length.”

Helen Gurley Brown laughed and said, “Don’t be surprised, Pussycat. These people are
survivors
. They’re proud of it. And they want to talk about it.”

Which I suppose is why I am writing this book.

Elmer’s journey to the big 8-0 and the passions that kept him the youngest guy in the room were always worth observing and emulating. He never tired
or
retired.

Elmer died in his sleep at his Ojai home at the age of eighty-two.

Of course, the years are never quite long enough between the overture and the final curtain for men like Elmer.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
TRIBUTE

“His favorite words were ‘grace’ and ‘joy.’”

—Peter Bernstein

Three hundred of Elmer’s friends, family and colleagues gathered to say goodbye at a memorial tribute at the Paramount Studio Theatre in October of 2004.

Driving to the Paramount lot that evening, I was racing past the juncture of La Brea and Sunset when a light flashed in my eyes. It is God winking at me, I thought. No, on second thought it is the LAPD telling me I have been photographed jumping a red light. When the photo and the summons arrived a few days later, I knew it was the latter. And somewhere I knew Elmer was sitting at God’s right hand and nudging him: “It’s Pearl—she drives like that.”

If a bomb had gone off that night at the Paramount Studio Theater, with its assembly of composers, musicians, lyricists, and arrangers, all the movies in town would have to depend on Jolson solos. Director John Landis, who tempted Elmer to score
Animal House
and its numerous progeny, was the host.

Peter told how, at the age of nine, he watched breathlessly as his father conducted the original score for
The Magnificent Seven
. He related that his father’s two favorite words were “grace” and “joy.” And when Gregory spoke, he talked of his father’s “fearlessness.” He told of how, days after Elmer had undergone surgery for the cancer that finished him, he was back piloting his boat and planning future projects.

Greg also recalled Elmer’s “problem with authority figures,” and told of him outrunning a motorcycle cop who actually thought he could chase Elmer down for a speeding ticket. Greg wasn’t so tactless as to mention that Elmer’s loathing of authority figures embraced some famous directors. There were too many of them in the front row.