Still suffering from election-scandal withdrawal, I hate to
add to the general feeling of pessimism in the air, but before the old man with
the scythe makes way for that new kid in diapers with his year to grow, I must
begin the new year with a tearful goodbye to the famous folks who left us in
the one that just ended.
The deaths of both Loretta Young and Hedy Lamarr in 2000
made a sorry beginning for a new millennium. Two symbols of glamour and beauty
to movie lovers everywhere, their departure signals the end of a cinematic era
that will never come again. I knew them both, but it was Loretta who became an
especially cherished personal friend. Long after her glorious film career
ended, after she had recaptured the attention of millions of fans who tuned in
weekly to watch her sweep through the door in yet another lavish gown by
Galanos or Jean Louis on The Loretta
Young Show , she remained a loyal and steady chum.
One rainy night in New York, I took her to a screening in a
smelly projection room where wet and jaded cynics who are never impressed by
anything craned their necks to get a better look at a genuine icon of the
silver screen, surrounding her at the end of the film in awe. We ended up at my
apartment, where I made lentil soup and she washed the dishes. At her home in
Palm Springs, she threw dinner parties in my honor and chauffeured me around in
her enormous 50’s Cadillac, often driving on the sidewalk while the traffic
cops waved and turned the other way. Who would dare give a ticket to Loretta
Young? Deeply religious but never pious, she sent me, the week before she died,
a Beanie Baby-a bear kneeling in prayer with a red heart attached to its ear.
She signed it, “I’m watching over you. Love, Loretta.” I think she still does.
It sits on top of my computer.
Another unwelcome exit: saucy Claire Trevor, who spent her
career playing tough, boozing broads-even winning an Oscar for the one in Key Largo -while in real life she was
rich, elegant and classy. I’ll never forget the time she redecorated her luxury
apartment at the Pierre and gave away her pets because they no longer matched
the décor.
The year 2000 also framed final close-ups for two of
England’s last remaining crown princes of stage and screen-Sir Alec Guinness
and Sir John Gielgud. Few knew what a scamp “Johnny” was, the distinguished
author, director and foremost interpreter of Shakespeare who privately loved
dirty jokes and juicy gossip and once, during the pre-Broadway tryouts for the
musical Irene , played Debbie
Reynolds’ entire role in a wig. (Nobody demanded a refund.) Closer to home, we
lost the great Jason Robards, the world’s foremost interpreter of Eugene
O’Neill. Others taking a final bow were Walter Matthau; Oscar winner Lila ( Zorba the Greek ) Kedrova; swashbuckling
nice guy and perennial party guest Douglas Fairbanks Jr.; movie Hercules and
poster boy for bulging biceps Steve Reeves; Italian Lothario Vittorio Gassman;
Richard Farnsworth, the senior citizen and genuine cowboy who became a movie
star by accident, won last year’s N.Y. Film Critics Circle award and an Oscar
nomination at the age of 80 for his down-home performance in The Straight Story , and then committed
suicide; Mary Poppins co-star David
Tomlinson; the evil Sopranos mob
matriarch Nancy Marchand; George Montgomery, the rugged Montana cowboy and
ex-husband of Dinah Shore who appeared in westerns and detective dramas with
equal ease; rough-edged, chain-smoking Marie Windsor, hailed as “Queen of the
B’s” for playing cheap floozies in so many low-budget film noirs; Richard
Mulligan, who played the embattled father on TV’s Empty Nest for seven years; Beah Richards, Oscar-nominated as
Sidney Poitier’s mother in Guess Who’s
Coming to Dinner ; Ann Doran, the durable character actress who played James
Dean’s neurotic mother in the historic Rebel
Without a Cause ; and David Dukes, a versatile and polished actor who
shocked everyone when he dropped dead on a movie location at 55.
I will also miss my friend Max Showalter, a beloved showbiz
veteran who began his movie career under the name Casey Adams, playing the
newlywed husband of gorgeous Jean Peters in the Marilyn Monroe classic Niagara . Ironically, Jean Peters herself
passed away a few months later, leaving behind many unsolved mysteries about
her hush-hush marriage to Howard Hughes. She will go down in the Hollywood
history books as a talented all-American girl who gave up movie stardom and
ruined her career just to please this eccentric oddball millionaire, becoming one
of Tinsel Town’s most famous reclusive legends. I will also miss Craig Stevens,
TV’s Peter Gunn, the handsome, durable husband of Alexis Smith; and Werner
Klemperer, the Jewish intellectual who specialized in playing Nazis, most
memorably on Hogan’s Heroes .
Broadway dimmed its lights for the legendary Gwen Verdon,
and no dancing star can ever replace those kilowatts. Even after she made
history in hits like Damn Yankees , Sweet Charity and Chicago , she kept the choreography of her husband and longtime
collaborator Bob Fosse alive for generations to copy. In retirement, nobody had
a smile that could light up the room like Gwen’s. Her unique precision and
classy, one-of-a-kind style will inspire Broadway gypsies for decades to come.
Other terpsichoreans to retire their toe shoes include Anna Sokolow; Harold
Nicholas, one-half of the acrobatic Nicholas Brothers team that pepped up so
many movie musicals in the 1940’s; New York City ballet star Anthony Blum; and
Peter Gennaro, the marvelous choreographer of Fiorello! , The Pajama Game
and Annie.
Where will the theater be without its two most controversial
producers? Alexander H. Cohen was responsible for more than 100 plays and
musicals, years of Tony Awards telecasts and three Night of 100 Stars events, all produced with the kind of passion
and love that no longer seems to exist on the Great White Way. David Merrick,
his flamboyant rival, was the last of the curmudgeons: He once sent me a
Christmas card depicting a dead Santa hanging from a noose. When he died, it was
the end of flair. They were joined by the beloved Robert (Bobby) Fryer, who
produced plays and movies with professional dexterity and personal charm.
Ironically, some of their staunchest critics left with them: Jack Kroll of Newsweek , Thomas Quinn Curtiss of the
Paris Herald Tribune and longtime New York Times cultural observer Vincent
Canby, a role model for those who read him, those who emulated him and those of
us he inspired to do better.
The world of writers will seem less literate without the
elegant prose of novelists William Maxwell and Giorgio ( The Garden of the Finzi-Continis ) Bassani; the finesse and balance
of playwrights N. Richard Nash, Samuel Taylor and Thomas Babe; and the powerful
screenplays by Ring Lardner Jr., the Oscar-winning scriptwriter and last of the
blacklisted “Hollywood 10,” and Curt Siodmak, creator of such Hollywood monster
classics as The Wolf Man , I Walked with a Zombie and House of Frankenstein . He taught
generations of terrified moviegoers everything they know about full moons,
silver bullets and wolfbane. Combining horror and humor, Edward Gorey built a
cult following with his macabre drawings and limericks. The Sunday comics won’t
have the same punch without Charles Schulz and his immortal Peanuts , or Gil Kane and his action
superheroes, Captain Marvel and Spider Man. It was “so long, dearie,” for
Barbara Cartland, the 98-year-old British author of more than 100 pulp romance
novels that kept the hearts of milkmaids churning and the Kleenex industry
booming on both sides of the Atlantic. And how will we know where (and what) to
eat without soft-spoken Craig Claiborne, America’s least snobbish yet most
influential food critic? No matter how far he traveled to the gastronomic
pleasure domes of haute cuisine, his passion was always rooted in the down-home
cooking of his native Mississippi.
Music will sound sour after the last eight bars by the true
“Mambo King,” Tito Puente, the sultan of Latin jazz; jazz trumpeter Jonah
Jones; the flute salads of Jerome Richardson; Rio’s primo guitarist Baden
Powell, who pioneered America’s love affair with Brazilian bossa nova; singer
and former Cy Coleman secretary Claire Hogan; bebop piano player Gene Harris;
saxophone wizard Stanley Turrentine; pioneer bassist Milt Hinton; and Tex
Beneke, the legendary singing saxophonist of the big-band era who recorded
Godzilla-size hits for the Glenn Miller Orchestra. In a diminishing world of
first-rate singers, it was sad when the great jazz vocalist Teri Thornton lost
her valiant battle with cancer; and I wonder how many baby boomers surrendered
their innocence in the back seats of Thunderbirds listening to the smoky,
seductive crooning of Julie London. Her first recording, Cry Me a River , sold three million copies, and her 20-odd
exclusive-as-ermine albums, now on CD, are still collector’s items.
More notables who bid us farewell: Steve Allen,
humorist-author-songwriter, star of The
Benny Goodman Story and first host of NBC’s Tonight Show; piano-playing satirist Victor Borge, who took his
last comic pratfall from a Steinway at 91; fashion designers Bonnie Cashin and
Thea Porter; songwriter Carl (“Pennsylvania 6-5000”) Sigman; Doug Henning,
bouncy illusionist and star of the surprise Broadway hit The Magic Show ; TV critic Jack O’Brian; popular Broadway stage
manager Ruth Mitchell; Gordon and Sheila’s sweet, talented daughter, Meredith
MacRae; Roger Vadim, the French film director who molded wives and mistresses
Brigitte Bardot, Jane Fonda, Catherine Deneuve and Annette Stroyberg into
international sex symbols; celebrated Broadway set designers Miles ( Oklahoma! ) White and William ( Mame , Fiorello! , Damn Yankees )
Eckart; and glamorous Jean Howard, the Ziegfeld Girl who became the crowning
party hostess of Beverly Hills and unofficial photographer of the stars in the
golden era of movies, and who published two books-one about her travels with
Cole Porter and the other called Jean
Howard’s Hollywood -that still adorn the best coffee tables in society. She
knew where a lot of bodies were buried. So did Margie Hart, the last living
burlesque queen and the only stripper to be immortalized in a Cole Porter song.
Who could forget Mayor John Lindsay or Cardinal John
O’Connor? Or Dawn Langley Simmons, the exotic transsexual writer who was born
the illegitimate son of Vita Sackville-West’s chauffeur; was adopted in his
20’s by the movies’ addlepated Miss Marple, Margaret Rutherford; underwent a
sex change in 1968 and then married her black butler, scandalizing the folks in
Charleston, S. C. S/he was a case even Agatha Christie couldn’t solve, but what
fun to have around!
Boris Karloff said on his death bed, “I’ll be back.” So will
they all.
