Memoir Blog # 12 A Hard Days Night

“Come on, little one, pack your bags, we’re off!” Joe stood over the bed, gently shaking me awake.

 “Off? Where to?” I grunted, turning over to see what the heavy lump was at the end of the bed.  It was Joe’s battered old suitcase, already packed, and waiting to be locked.

 “The Caribbean!” he replied nonchalantly, “Hurry, otherwise we’ll miss the plane!”

 “What is this?” I asked, half asleep, “a joke?”

 “No, a little holiday. We’ve been invited to the opening of the new Sheraton Hotel in Aruba. I bet you’ll be out of bed in a second when you see the guest list!” He dangled a piece of paper tantalisingly above my head, which I feebly attempted to snatch out of his hand.

 “You can do better than that!” he laughed, walking out of the bedroom. “Come, get it. I’ll fix you some coffee.”

I pulled back the sheet, swivelled my legs over the side of the mattress and tested the cold hardwood floor with my toes. This was the daily routine I always dreaded.  I knew the moment my feet touched the ground I would recoil and snuggle back down into the bed again. When it was hot weather outside the interior of Joe’s studio would be stifling. But if it was cold outside, despite the effective central heating, the bedroom rarely warmed up enough to make getting out of bed a welcome part of the day.  I never could get used to dragging myself out from beneath the blankets and standing on that cold hard floor. And I never could find my slippers when I needed them. They almost always got lost somewhere in the dark narrow abyss beneath the bed.

I stumbled out onto the minstrel’s gallery and played with the idea of shinning down Jeannie’s rubber tree, which I could have sworn had grown and swelled a good few feet since its arrival. It seemed to have a mind of its own and, attracted by the light from the huge picture windows on two sides of the room, its tentacle-like branches appeared to be spreading to all corners of the studio.

When I reached the bottom of the staircase Joe handed me a cup of steaming coffee.

“If you hurry up and pack,” he said, “we’ll have time to have breakfast in the deli before we leave.”

By “the deli” he meant our neighbourhood Horn and Hardart’s, the cut price, over the counter, fast food eatery that served as our breakfast club. It was clean, cheap and convenient.

 “So who’s going with us?” I asked,

“Your friend, Caterine, for one.” Joe replied. I was relieved to hear that. Caterine would be a good companion on a trip like this and, after all, it was she who had been instrumental in arranging the blind date between Joe and me in the first place. Since then we had all spent many memorable weekends together with our mutual friend, the sculptress Barbara Mortimer, in her idyllic Connecticut retreat.

 “Who else? Where’s that piece of paper?” I asked impatiently.

Joe picked it up and read off some of the names. I shrugged my shoulders. Typical New York socialites, I wasn’t that interested.

Then he hesitated, “Here’s the good part,” he teased.

“Let’s see it!” I made a grab for the paper but he pulled away.

“Come on, I’m not in the mood for teasing.”

I made a second grab, spilling the coffee down my dressing gown. This time Joe gave in.

I devoured the list quickly. It was peppered from top to bottom with society names but then there, staring me in the face, were the names of some of my favourite authors:  “JOHN STEINBECK”, “TRUMAN CAPOTE”, “JAMES MICHENER”, “TOM WOLFE” and  “GORE VIDAL” . Other equally impressive names were there too, some of whom I’d already met. Charles Addams, creator of the Addams Family, Art Buchwald, satirist and columnist for the Herald Tribune, Burt Bacharach the composer and, someone who I hadn’t yet met, Al Capp, creator of the L’il Abner cartoons.

For a moment I stood rooted to the spot. In all my life I have never been “celebrity-struck”, nor, like some people I know, ever thrilled at the prospect of meeting famous people. I have never, in fact, been a name-dropper or a social climber. But all this was all about to change. The idea that I was soon to meet some of my favourite authors convinced me it wouldn’t take much for me to become “author-struck” – or, as Christina more crudely described it, “author fucker”. I giggled aloud at the thought.

 “What’s funny?” Joe asked, “Aren’t you impressed?”

“Impressed? I’m dumbstruck. I’ve just decided I’m going to become an author-fucker!” I announced laughing. I wasn’t joking.

I didn’t need any more encouragement from Joe to get packing. I grabbed my suitcase from the cupboard, raced upstairs and flung open the wardrobe doors. Fortunately, I never did have many clothes so never suffered from the usual problems of “What shall I pack? What will I need? What shall I wear?” My packing was probably completed in less than ten minutes, plenty of time to eat breakfast around the corner and contemplate how I would “fuck” my first real author.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this trip before?” I asked Joe while munching on a chocolate fudge brownie.

“I thought it would be a nice surprise for you.” Joe smiled. “Besides we have nothing better to do, do we?”

“I certainly don’t. What parties will you be missing though?”

“Don’t worry about that, little one. A few days won’t be a problem. There’ll be enough people to write about in Aruba to cover all my columns. That’s why they invited me, after all.”

“Do you think I could get to interview some of the writers?” I asked eagerly.

The thought of interviewing the incomparable John Steinbeck suddenly filled my stomach with butterflies. What would I ask him? Had I read all his books? Could I remember them sufficiently to conduct an intelligent discussion about them? And what could I say to James Michener, a man who, I was acutely aware, took seven painstaking years to research each of his books on Hawaii, Japan and Spain. The adrenalin rush had faded. I felt faint. I pushed aside the plate leaving my fudge brownie, for the first time ever, half eaten.

Joe smiled at me in a fatherly way. I realised then that compared to him I was just a child. I must have sounded idiotic, naïve and ingenuous. Why would any of those heavyweights want to be interviewed by me, a young, untested journalist, particularly when top newspaper writers from all over the country had also been invited along on this trip.

“God, I’m an idiot!” I announced aloud. “Why don’t you just shut me up?”

“Because you’re a delight. You’re curious about people, you’re refreshing and you’re positive. You’re a breath of fresh air in New York – and that’s why I love you.”

Joe kissed me on the forehead and got up to pay the bill.

“Come on, let’s get to the airport before we miss your chance to ‘author fuck!’”

The plane had been chartered by Sheraton hotels. Everything was free and the people on board were definitely in party mood. Although not everyone on the guest list had showed up (Truman Capote and Gore Vidal were noticeably absent), the plane appeared almost full. While Joe wrote his column ready to file on our arrival, Caterine and I meandered up and down the aisle stopping to chat with friends or being introduced to new ones.

“Caroline, I’d like you to meet good friends of mine, Art Buchwald and Al Capp.” Earl Blackwell grabbed my arm as I passed his aisle seat. “Art, Al, I don’t think you’ve met Caroline Kennedy, Joe Dever’s great love.”

Earl winked at me. I stretched out my hand across him to shake theirs in turn. Al Capp held onto my hand far longer than was necessary. A slight thrill of anticipation ran through me as I felt his thumb very gently exploring the erogenous spot in the centre of my palm. His eyes, dark, intense and unblinking, pierced mine.

“Charming,” he smiled. I thought I detected him biting his lower lip discreetly but somewhat lasciviously. I wasn’t mistaken,

Earl had obviously noticed it too.

“Don’t worry about him, darling girl, he’s a well known lecher but he’s completely harmless. I vouch for it.”

Caterine was beckoning me to join her further up the plane. I withdrew my hand with some difficulty from Al’s forceful grasp leaving us both in no doubt at all that there was some unfinished business between us that would have to wait for a more opportune moment. I blushed at the thought as I felt the cartoonist’s persistent and appreciative stare continuing to penetrate right through me.  I made my fumbled excuses and left. But I was still acutely conscious of his eyes piercing my back as I made my way towards Caterine.

On the way down the aisle I noticed John Steinbeck, drink in hand, eyes closed, deep in thought. I felt a sudden urge to touch him on the shoulder, wake him from his reverie, introduce myself and ask him for an interview. But, being a professional wimp, I quickened my pace as I past him lest he should open his eyes and notice me staring at him open-mouthed, like the dumbstruck fan that I was.

Caterine meanwhile had been chatting to the notorious Venezuelan playboy millionaire, Reynaldo Herrera. I had met Reynaldo some summers before. His niece, Mercedes, was a neighbour of my family in Formentor, on the island of Mallorca. Ever the gentleman, Reynaldo, despite his advanced age and his dependence on a cane, rose from his seat to greet me.  He kissed my hand.

“Two beautiful unattached girls,” he drooled, “I must be in heaven! Come here, little Carolina, let me give you a big hug.”

I drew closer and he enveloped me in his arms, squeezing me against his chest.

“You hear my heart, mi amor?” he whispered in my ear, “that’s how you…. how you say it….. turn me on.” I was relieved he didn’t refer to another part of his anatomy that was obviously also being turned on by the company of the “two beautiful, unattached girls”.

I glanced back down the aisle and noticed with satisfaction that Al Capp was still following my every move. I watched him subtly parting his lips and rubbing his finger very lightly over the tip of his tongue. I smiled as chastely as I could under the circumstances lest my impure thoughts be recognised as such by other passengers.

“Don’t worry, Al,” I reflected, secretly hoping he could read my mind, “there is no doubt you and I will have our moment.”

During our three-day stay in Aruba, I managed successfully to avoid Al Capp until the last evening although, try as I did, I couldn’t banish him from my mind. On the surface I acted modestly enough but beneath the façade unchaste thoughts of him constantly swirled around in my head threatening to ruin the trip. There was little doubt I was experiencing my first real sexual obsession.  Not as a schoolgirl crush on my delectable but unattainable science teacher. Not, as a lovesick teenager drooling over a fading movie poster of James Dean. Not even, as a would-be writer, with one of my beloved and revered authors. But simply as me – to date a fairly composed, normal and intelligent young woman fantasizing over a middle-aged cartoonist with a pair of dark piercing eyes, an exploratory thumb and an erotic limp.

I tried to make sense of it all but failed. And, in order to prevent this obsession from taking hold of me completely, I suggested to Caterine that we rent scooters and spend our days exploring the island’s coastline. If I had hoped that charging around Aruba on a moped would dispel the prurient images of Al and me in bed together, I was bound to be disappointed. The combination of driving over bumpy dirt tracks and a rough saddle between my thighs only served to add a physical thrill to my over-stimulated imagination.

On our first day Caterine and I passed the Shell oil refinery, a vast, imposing monument contrasting starkly with the flat, treeless landscape surrounding it. Caterine remarked that she thought it resembled a giant spaceship landing on the smooth surface of the moon. But, in the strange mood I was in, I could only visualize its huge towers as giant phalluses of gleaming metal thrusting their way up through the earth’s crust and exploding into the sunlight.

I had asked Joe to accompany us but he said he needed to work. Catching up with him later in the day I told him about our moped jaunt and he told me about his lunch with Al Capp. I feigned disinterest although the truth was I was hanging on his every word.

“He asked about you,” Joe said, “He had hoped you’d be joining us. He said I’m a very lucky man. He thought you were gorgeous. It’s the English accent again, I bet, because he’s mad about the Brits too. He spends a lot of time in London, did you know that?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “How could I know, I’ve only just met him.”

“It’s just that he was chatting away about you so much and the people he mentioned in London, well some of them I know are your friends too, that I thought, well…well maybe you’d bumped into him before over there?”

“No I never did.” I replied emphatically. I was getting to feel a little uncomfortable. Where was this conversation leading? Did Joe suspect anything? Had Al been indiscreet? Had I given it away? Rather than change the subject abruptly, I steered it in a different direction.

“Who else have you interviewed besides Al today?”

 “No one, really. I’ve been lazy, hanging around the pool writing, chatting.”

Strangely, in all the months I had been living with Joe, I had been anticipating, and hoping, he would ask me to marry him. And one question that had been nagging me on this trip was could my current behaviour, perhaps, be a way of trying to provoke Joe into proposing? But right at this minute I had the answer. Now, I realized, the idea of marriage scared me. I adored Joe in many ways but, with these feelings about another man churning me up inside, I came to the sudden and unwelcome conclusion I didn’t really love him enough to commit myself. The fact had just dawned on me that I would never be faithful to him. If it wasn’t with Al it would be with someone else. This realization truly saddened me at that moment and I shed some tears.

“Hey, little one,” Joe reached over and took my hand, “what’s the matter? I thought we were having fun here, what is it?”

I couldn’t tell him, of course. After all,  I was a wimp, wasn’t I? And what made it doubly poignant is that, many years later, Joe revealed to me that it was in Aruba, perhaps even at that very minute who knows, that he had decided he wanted to marry me.

“Then why then did you never ask me?” I was hurt and puzzled.

“You were so young. I thought it was unfair to you. I didn’t want to clip your wings. But now I see you with your children, I so regret not having children with you.” I could see the conversation was upsetting him. Several times before his death of a stroke in 1997 he repeated this to me. I believed at that moment, and our mutual friends have since confirmed it, that I definitely was the love of his life.

Back in Aruba, Joe, in reflective mood, wanted to be alone to interview some of the other guests that evening so Caterine and I arranged to meet up with Reynaldo who turned out to be a generous benefactor. After treating us to champagne at dinner he thrust $1000 dollars into our respective palms and sent us off to the hotel Casino.

“Here, sweet ladies,” he smiled erotically, “have some fun with this. If you lose you come back and find me. There’s much, much more! My room number is 507, remember that!” 

There was no doubting the inference of his last remark but, purposely ignoring it, Caterine and I set off for the gambling tables. We both chose blackjack because, being comparative innocents, that was the only game we knew how to play. Needless to say, by the end of the night we left the table empty-handed but neither of us had ever enjoyed losing money so much. It didn’t belong to us so we didn’t care and we could afford to be profligate, taking foolish risks and placing large bets on dubious cards.

We didn’t, however, take Reynaldo up on his offer for more money. Neither of us felt tempted to go tapping on his bedroom door in the middle of the night. I strongly suspected, though I could have been wrong, that the price we might have to pay was, at worst, an hour or more in his bed struggling to avoid any physical contact with him and, at best, an awkward, fumbling grope in his darkened room, neither of which appealed to us.

On the last day it occurred to me I hadn’t yet plucked up the courage to interview either John Steinbeck or James Michener, my main reasons for coming to Aruba.  Subconsciously, I suppose, I had been putting off approaching either of them in case they rejected me. In the case of Steinbeck I was also worried because I had seen him and Al Capp a couple of times strolling in the grounds of the hotel together, deep in conversation, and assumed they must be good friends. I dreaded conducting an interview with John if it meant Al would be present too. Under the gaze of those disquieting eyes I knew I would be incapable of talking sense, let alone conducting a serious c0nversation.

When, on the last evening, I did eventually find Steinbeck on his own, I introduced myself and asked if I could sit down beside him. Gentleman that he was, he appeared genuinely flattered by my attention. Sadly, though, our talk had only lasted about five minutes when his friends approached inviting him to join them for dinner. When I looked up, sure enough, there was Al. His eyes hooked onto me immediately and lingered just long enough to make me feel nervous. I was beginning to be concerned there was something seriously wrong with me. Never before had lust provoked such a compelling and troubling reaction. What on earth was going wrong? I prayed he would keep his distance but, at the same time, knew he was just as incapable of staying away from me as I was from him.

“Won’t you join us for dinner, Caroline?” he asked, drawing up behind me and placing his hand firmly on my shoulder. “We’d love it, wouldn’t we John?” Steinbeck nodded.

”Of course,” Steinbeck smiled at me, “and perhaps Joe can join us too.”

Meanwhile Al’s touch was sending a fizzing electrical current down my spine as his thumb gently massaged the nape of my neck. “God,” I thought, “if this man is a lecher, he’s not like one I ever met before!” I decided then and there he was not so much a lecher but probably a professional lover, skilled in the arts of seduction. This thought only strengthened his appeal.

Aloud, I replied, “Thanks, but I think Joe and I have other plans.”

I was lying, of course. And, attractive though the invitation was to have dinner with one of my literary heroes, I knew there was no way I could sit through a meal with Joe on one side of me and Al on the other. It was definitely out of the question.

Before he and his friends headed for the dining room, Al leant over me and whispered urgently, ”Where have you been, little one? I’ve been looking for you! I must see you!”

For some reason I was deeply touched he had used the same term of endearment for me as Joe always used.

But before I could give him an answer Steinbeck said goodbye, grabbed Al’s arm and they were gone. I picked up my glass to finish my drink. My hand was visibly shaking. I knew then for certain that Al and I would have to resolve this “business” once and for all, if only to stop this unsettling sensation of not being entirely in control of my behaviour, my speech or my emotions. It was, at the same time, confusing, uncomfortable, thrilling and terrifying. I began to revive only when I saw the group disappear inside the hotel lobby.

Though my moment with John Steinbeck had been brief, sadly too brief even to write up, the interview I had with James Michener, later that night, lasted an hour at least and it was eventually published a year later. This is what I wrote:

“A successful author, a much-honored teacher, a sometime politician and an inveterate traveller, James Michener was resting for a few days on the island of Aruba in the Dutch Antilles. Like the rest of us he was attending the opening of the new Aruba-Sheraton Hotel. Over two long glasses of fruit punch – surely a familiar drink to the author of such works as Tales of the South Pacific and Hawaii – he told me about his latest book.

“Iberia delves into the history of Spain. It took me 2 ½ years in the writing alone.”

For someone who happily spends 7 years in researching his subjects, 2 ½ years is no time at all. His books, for the most part, consist of several entities building up to one unity. His aim is perfection and his method hard work. So it is with “Iberia”

“It’s not easy to be a writer these days,” he explains, “I am trying to duplicate the great English travel writers, the literary travellers. Works that are opinionated, reflective but, by no means, conclusive.”

He quoted several examples including Isabella Bird’s Travels, Lady Calderon de la Barca’s “Mexico” and D.H. Lawrence’s “Sardinia.”

I was eager to talk, to ask questions but this soft-spoken man with a deceivingly insignificant face, had a great deal to say.

Ever caught up in the fascination of politics Michener declared, “I would run again if chosen.” His first attempt in 1962, as democratic candidate for the strictly Republican constituencies of Bucks and Lehigh, ended in defeat by his opponent William S. Curtin.

“I am a Johnson man,” he pledges, “through and through.”
In the days of John F. Kennedy, Michener was appointed co-chairman of the Food for Peace Programme to bolster the image of America abroad. Defending Johnson’s present unpopularity he offers, “I believe the Texan has been unfairly judged in comparison to his forerunner and the rest of those Boston patricians.”

Michener was, of course, alluding to the Kennedys. “Time, I think, “ he continued, “will reveal this to be true”

I asked him what he thought of Nelson Rockefeller’s chances if he were nominated on the Republican ticket.

“He has some hope but I am sure the Democrats will win the next election – though it will be a close one. We have always relied on a split in the Republican Party but now we Democrats find ourselves faced with the same problem.”

I asked him about his present activities. The former naval commander told me he had spent the last three months acting as secretary to the Conventional Institution of Pennsylvania, his home State. He was the only non-politician selected to revise the age-old Constitution rights.

“It has been worthwhile,” he concedes. “We have come up with a good piece of work unlike the disastrous one in New York which got nowhere and cost around $10 million!”  

A friend of Michener once told me that the author would consider himself primarily a teacher rather than simply an author. I asked him his own views. He confessed he combines the two.

“While a professor at Harvard University I specialized in teacher training. To illustrate my methods I wrote several books,” he concluded modestly. In fact his output at that time was astounding. He wrote such classics as, “Who Was Virgil T. Fry?”, “The Unit of Social Studies” and “The Beginning Teacher”.  

After the war Michener completed the first-ever entire history of the Strategic Air Command which was subsequently used by the American government for the purpose of advising foreign nations of the great power of America’s Air Shield. For this he was awarded the highest civilian medal for Public Service.

For his first novel, “Tales of the South Pacific” in 1947 he received the Pulitzer Prize. Unlike most writers who would be content with this highly-desired recognition, Michener went on to produce such equally acclaimed masterpieces as “Return to Paradise”, “The Voice of Asia”, “The Bridges of Tokori”, “Sayonara”, “The Floating World”, “The Bridge at Andau”, “Rascals in Paradise”, “Selected Writings”, “The Hokusai Sketch Book”, “Japanese Prints”, “Hawaii” and “The Source”.

I asked him the reason for his undeniable infatuation for the South Pacific and he replied simply, “You’ll find out when you get there!” He added prophetically, “You will go. I can tell by your enthusiasm you’re a fellow wanderer, a natural traveler.” He was certainly right there.

Having achieved fame as a writer, Michener still remains enthusiastic and always accessible to young writers.

“I like to be around young writers,” he explains, “particularly beginners. American writers don’t interact enough with each other. They don’t stand out against the world in the way the French or English writers and artists do. They don’t hold a position in our national life, which I consider wrong. I was terribly moved, for instance, by the influence of the French writers during the Algerian crisis. I can’t imagine it happening here and it disturbs me a little that it doesn’t. I, myself, felt impelled to work in politics during the last election and shall do so again this year. But most American writers just work at writing and are judged simply on what they achieve. They should really be a community of their own.”

At this point Michener’s third wife, Japanese-born Mari Yoriko Sabusawa, turned his attention to his watch. He dutifully got up, shook my hand and whispered,

“Keep working hard. It’s worth it, believe me. Maybe one day I’ll see your name on the cover of a book and I’ll be able to say I encouraged her when she was just starting out. That will give me great satisfaction. Go ahead, Caroline, just do it!”  

Not too long afterwards, Al and I eventually did have “our moment”.  A few weeks later he and I met up again at a weekend party in Long Island. Joe had decided at the last minute not to accompany me  so, instead, I brought my cousin, Mina, who was visiting me from London. There have been very few times in my life when just a split second glance between me and a virtual stranger convinced me, without any shadow of doubt, that we would end up in bed together – not some time in the future, not the next week nor, even, the next day – but, immediately, right there and then. Although, since Aruba, I could no longer really consider Al a stranger, this second chance meeting with him was definitely one of those times.

We had no sooner spotted each other across the room than we instantly knew the sexual spark ignited between us on the recent trip had, in no way, diminished. On the contrary, I had been thinking of little else since and the short interval between our encounters had only served to increase my need to satisfy this almost painful lust I felt for him. It was an urgent, tantalizing, all-consuming lust that demanded instant satisfaction, no matter the consequences.

I probably should have felt guilty. I should have thought of Joe and the distress it might cause him or the damage it might inflict on our relationship. I should have thought of Mina, of abandoning her at a party where she didn’t know a soul. Possibly I did, I don’t remember now.  But if I did, I didn’t dwell on it for long. This was my moment to be utterly selfish, reckless and abandoned, to release my pent up animal instincts and my over-active hormones! Whether it was Al’s dark lived-in looks, his slightly debauched expression, his sexy limp or his deep, penetrating eyes that did it for me, I really couldn’t tell. But, without even saying a word, we ignored everyone else around us, swept up by an uncontrollable urge, raced headlong towards each other and greeted each other like long lost lovers.

After a prolonged and passionate kiss accompanied by some heavy groping, that must have astonished, offended and, probably, dismayed the assembled crowd, particularly Joe’s friends, Al grabbed my hand and steered me towards the door. It seemed like there was not a moment to lose. There was no question where we were going – we were heading for his hotel room or anywhere there was a bed or even, simply, a surface to lie on. We both instinctively knew we had our “unfinished business” to resolve and this time we weren’t prepared to wait. In fact I was so eager I didn’t even bother to undress and just threw myself onto his bed pulling him down on top of me. 

In my fantasies of him I had imagined Al ripping the clothes right off me in a frenzy of unbridled yearning! Al, I could sense, notorious lecher, professional lover or just simply hot-blooded male, was every inch a “ripper” in a way Joe could never be. Joe was too much of a gentleman for that. Being rough, even once in a while, just wasn’t his style. But Al didn’t disappoint me. He too, he told me, had been fantasizing about this moment ever since Aruba. His powerful hands tore savagely at my dress. Breathless, we stopped for a moment, looked at each other and then smiled conspiratorially. There was no doubt about it – this was going to be the best. This was going to be special. This was going to be something neither of us would want to forget.

But like most sexual encounters, no matter how passionate, this one too had its humorous moments as Al sat on the edge of the bed, impatiently tearing off his trousers and then, very slowly and precisely, he began to unscrew his left leg.

Shock! Horror! I froze instantly, my ardour thoroughly dampened. In a split second that delicious, long-anticipated moment of fantasy fulfillment had just died. Until that minute it hadn’t even occurred to me Al had a wooden leg, I merely thought he had a very pronounced, somewhat romantic, Byronic limp. I watched, horrified but totally mesmerized, as he gently turned it round, and round and round, carefully detached it and then threw it impetuously across the room where it landed with a shattering thud.

Laughing at my barely disguised distress, he kissed me fiercely and then slid under the sheets beside me. Thoughts and questions besieged my mind. What would his left stump feel like?  Would it feel repulsive against my bare flesh? Would I be disgusted at the thought of it lying there immobile beside me?  Could I ignore its existence during our lovemaking or, even, am I regretting being so impulsive, of fantasizing so intensely about this man?

But, in seconds, those anxieties evaporated as I discovered that, far from being an insensate appendage as I had imagined for that one dreadful moment it must be, it was powerfully strong, even flexible and wickedly adventurous. I felt an erotic thrill as it skillfully probed, then entirely enveloped, my right thigh pinning me artfully to the bed. It was certainly a highly original turn-on that I could never have anticipated in my fantasies and, in the end, it added a rare eroticism to our delectable sexual interlude.

I don’t know how many times the two of us made love that weekend, I wasn’t counting but it certainly left Rupert and Manny out in the cold.

By the time we had to think about heading back to New York and our other lives, we both had empty bellies and I was the one suffering from a noticeable limp, one that I was not sure I could disguise successfully from Joe.

I knew there would have to be a day of reckoning some time soon. Al and I had been wanton, self-obsessed, and utterly irresponsible and we would have to face the music, each in our own way. It wouldn’t take long for the word to be out, for tongues to wag and rumours to circulate. Very soon I would have to explain my actions and my whereabouts that weekend to Joe who, I’m sure, had been trying to get in touch with me. I dreaded it but, at the same time, accepted it was inevitable. I owed him that much.

As Al and I parted late on Sunday night, he to return to his wife and me to face Joe, we agreed not to try to contact each other again. And, although we did keep to that bargain, there was no way we could possibly avoid meeting up at other social events over the months ahead. And every time we saw each other, it was obvious the spark was still very much alive and we both ached to repeat our shared experience. But, for the sake of our respective partners, we resisted. 

If Joe ever heard about the incident – and I’m sure he did, gossip after all was his trade – he never alluded to it. I suspect now, in light of the conversations we had over the years, that my occasional straying was a price he was willing to pay to keep me happy and to keep me with him. He realized, too, that my young libido was much more active than his and he often apologized for not being able to fully satisfy me.

“I’m an old man,” he would joke, “and that’s what you get when you pick an older man. You better go out and find a younger one!”

Later that same year, I’m ashamed to say, that’s exactly what I did.

Memoir Blog # 11 Andy, Edie & Baby Jane

By the end of 1964 I had met some of New York’s most prized artists, Larry Rivers, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Salvador Dali and Jasper Johns. But the artist I really wanted to meet was Andy Warhol. To me Warhol, though naturally shy on a personal level, epitomized everything that was brash, cocky and arrogant in the art world of New York in the early Sixties. In a few years the master of self-promotion had made an unparalleled transformation from minor commercial artist to living icon and, despite his lack of social skills, he appeared to thrive on his new found celebrity status. Warhol was possibly the first artist to successfully integrate a blossoming underground movement with an Establishment whose traditional response to any such movement would normally be openly hostile, particularly among the culturally snobbish New Yorkers.

Warhol and his coterie of female acolytes, Baby Jane Holzer, Viva, Ingrid Superstar, Ultra Violet and Edie Sedgwick, were lionized by New York society. They could be seen, almost every night, at art openings, premieres and first nights. And, despite their outrageous fashions and their willingness to shock they were written about, photographed, filmed and adored by journalist and society matron alike. And, like everyone else, I too became fascinated by them.

I was particularly captivated by two of Warhol’s stars, Baby Jane Holzer and Edie Sedgwick, both of whom I got to know quite well.  The two were very different in appearance. The one, an impeccably dressed, upper crust, leonine blonde and the other a leotard-clad, crop-haired super waif.

But, unlike the other girls who formed part of Warhol’s entourage, Baby Jane and Edie did have something in common. They both came from privileged backgrounds, the former from the east coast, the latter from the west. To Warhol, a self-made man, this added immensely to their fascination. For, even at the end of his life, despite the monumental success he achieved and the financial security that accompanied it, Warhol remained impressed by “old” money and flattered by the adulation from what he perceived as Manhattan’s “elite”.

The glaring difference between Baby Jane and Edie was that whereas the former “dabbled” in Warhol’s underground whilst maintaining an upper middle class lifestyle complete with respectable husband, black tie dinners and fashionable lunch parties, Edie totally rejected her family background, distanced herself from the life it offered and devoted herself entirely to the Warhol Factory.

Ironically, as Andy Warhol’s popularity grew so Edie’s assumed bohemian existence became increasingly upper middle class again as they were invited into the homes of the rich, powerful and famous. But while Baby Jane preserved her detached, sophisticated and impeccable image, Edie adopted an increasingly androgynous look and, whether by design or accident, ended up as a mirror image of Warhol.

I remember Joe whispering to me one night as Edie passed us, clinging to Andy’s arm, ”Don’t you think Edie’s getting to look more like Andy than Andy does himself?”

I had to admit it was true. They had begun to look remarkably similar.

As the excitement of being part of the Factory gradually wore thin, Baby Jane began to detach herself from the booze, the drugs, the crazed parties and the bizarreness that its lifestyle demanded. Edie, on the other hand, embraced it all – the sex, the amphetamines, the bouts of depression, the persistent bulimia and, finally, in a desperate bid to be noticed by Hollywood, even breast implants.

Sadly for Edie, this bid for mainstream recognition was destined to fail. By that time she had burned herself out. The drugs, the sex and the eating disorders had taken their toll. Her frail body gave up the unequal struggle.

In the end Baby Jane, with her innate instinct for self-preservation, became a rare thing – a Warhol survivor. But Edie had so identified with him that, like several other of his superstars who died a premature death from drugs, alcohol or suicide, she ultimately became his most celebrated victim. And while Joe and I became quite close to Baby Jane over the three years I was with him in New York, Edie always remained something of an enigma.

One evening Joe and I sat briefly with Edie in a darkened corner of the newly-opened nightclub, “The Scene”. On the surface she appeared as she always did, serene, vulnerable and beautiful.  But the few times I had met her she reminded me of a caged bird, flapping its wings in a desperate but hopeless struggle to release itself.

We started talking about books and our favourite authors. We found out we had something in common. We both admired Truman Capote. In fact we remembered the two of us had first met briefly the previous December at the Y.M.H.A. where Truman had given his first public reading of his eagerly-anticipated, unpublished non-fiction novel, “In Cold Blood”, describing the tragic, ruthless murder of the entire Clutter family at their farm in rural Kansas.

Fever had been mounting in New York for a few weeks before the event since the rumour had gone out that, although Truman was supposed to be reading from “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, he would in fact be reading passages from his long awaited “In Cold Blood”.

It turned out to be a thrilling, yet deeply disturbing, night as both author and audience were only too aware that the young murderers, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, were due to be executed pending the outcome of their third appeal to the Supreme Court. (Indeed, the following month, January 1965, the Supreme Court rejected their latest appeal and they were executed on the 14th April the same year).

 “Wasn’t that an amazing night?” Edie shouted to make herself heard above the pounding music. “It’s a great book. One of his best. Do you dig his short stories? We do. Andy loves The Innocents, because it’s gothic. But my favourites are Children on Their Birthdays and Miriam.” 

Joe and I discussed her choices later that night. Somehow they were very revealing. We couldn’t help imagining that Edie identified with the menacing ghostlike quality of Miriam and the aloof, somewhat ethereal beauty of the doomed Lily Jane Bobbit. Joe told Edie that he and I both intended to be authors one day and maybe, when she was a big star in Hollywood, we’d write about her.

The next day Joe referred to our conversation with Edie in his column, in the World Telegram & Sun:

”At a low decibel point amid the deafening sound of the Executives trio last night at the Scene, we shouted into the ear of Edie Sedgwick, silver-topped queen of the underground movies;

 “Where is the real Edie Sedgwick – at home with a book?”

 The bob-haired, 20 year old heiress from California, looked to see if we were serious, then shouted back:

 “The real Edie is where the action is. Fast cars, fast horses, and people doing things!”

 With that she watusied away, her trademark leotards lost in a swirl of hip-huggers, tight blue jeans, Pucci slacks and mod dresses. The Scene was definitely where the “action” was last night.”

For a brief second, I sensed, the little bird seemed to break free but, without realizing it, Edie was caught up in a deadly web. She desperately wanted the fame, the stardom and the notoriety that being Andy’s consort offered but, at the same time, she failed to see it was dragging her deeper into a self-destructive abyss from which she was unlikely ever to recover.

A couple of weeks later Joe and I met up with her again. This time the venue was more sedate – an opening at the Lincoln Centre. As always, Edie’s entrance that night turned heads. Like all great actresses – and Edie aspired to be one of them – she was constantly aware of her effect on her audience.  She wanted to dazzle, shock and inspire. This occasion was no different. She swept through the auditorium, trailing a long train of black feather plumage, glancing left and right every so often to acknowledge the stares of appreciation or nods of approval. 

And the next morning again Joe wrote in his column:

“Clip-coiffed Edie Sedgwick upstaged the Vampires on screen at the Lincoln Centre film festival last night as she swept in on the arm of pop artist Andy Warhol. Edie’s outfit included her usual black leotard plus a trailing black ostrich-plumed cape like a camp version of Madame Dracula.”

Joe leaned over and whispered to me: “Who does she remind you of tonight?” I shrugged my shoulders.

 “Gloria Swanson – you remember?  In Sunset Boulevard?  The last scene – sweeping down the grand staircase?”

 He was right, of course. Edie certainly knew how to stage her entrances.

 I visited the Warhol Factory on two occasions, perhaps secretly hoping that Andy might invite me to take part in one of his famous screen tests. After all, the photographer, Richard Avedon, had photographed me so I reckoned that Andy might just follow suit. I still have my written account of my first visit:

“If I had expected to find the Factory a hive of activity, I was disappointed. A couple of early-risers had just spilled out of bed and were stumbling around bleary-eyed, cigarettes dangling on their lips, cups of cold black coffee in their hands. Most were still curled up dead to the world, in singles, couples or in groups, on every conceivable surface available – sofas, chairs, beds, tables and floors. This was 2pm and the Factory was still sound asleep.

Evidence of the previous night’s party remained in the congealed leftovers of take-out meals, bulging trash bags, empty spirit bottles, discarded clothing, the tell-tale signs of cigarette papers and overflowing ashtrays dotted about the rooms. In the corner of one room a continuous film played silently on screen. I recognized the dark, brooding looks of the Factory’s most famous actor, Joe Dallesandro in “Trash”. The afternoon sun pierced the flimsy blinds reflecting shadowy patterns on the aluminum foil wallpaper. I looked around for the famous shock of white hair but Andy Warhol was nowhere to be seen.

I chided myself for not accepting Baby Jane Holzer’s earlier invitation to visit the Factory with her. Nor had I gone inside with Edie Sedgwick, when I dropped her and her friend off late one night in a taxi on my way home. Edie had told me everyone would still be up but, foolishly, I had decided 3am was too late for a chat, a joint and a cup of coffee. Looking around me now, I realized that, like nocturnal animals, the Factory’s principal residents were up all night and asleep all day.

I felt foolish. I had arranged to interview Andy Warhol for an all-night radio program, the Sandy Lesberg Show, on 1010 WINS and he wasn’t even there. Someone, who introduced himself as Greg, volunteered to peer under a few sheets and blankets to see if any of the dormant bodies belonged to Andy. I thanked him but told him not to bother, that I’d come back another time. I said I was curious, however, to see the art rooms. These rooms were where the silkscreens were created from Andy’s designs. These rooms were the nerve center of the Warhol Factory. This was where the Factory’s non-residents came to work on a normal 9-5 basis. This was where the money was made to keep the whole operation – the books, the artwork, the films, the newsletters, the movement and the publicity machine – going.

To enter these rooms was like entering a different world. Suddenly I became immersed in lights, colour, noise, music and shelf upon shelf containing the celebrated lithographs, screenprints and designs. Here were the artists who executed Andy’s ideas. And they were all hard at work, oblivious perhaps of the sleeping bodies in the next door room. This, indeed, was a factory undeniably designed by a commercial artist for commercial success.

I came away never having interviewed Andy Warhol but, somehow, knowing him little better than I did when I arrived.”

Memoir Blog # 10 – Published At Last

In December I had the rare opportunity to interview the French sex goddess, Brigitte Bardot. Excitement had been mounting in New York for some time following the announcement that, for the first time, the beautiful French film star would visit the city. 

 Bardot was already a huge star around the world by then, thanks to her first husband, Roger Vadim, who instantly recognized the appealing childlike qualities in her and knew that here was a star in the making.

 Bardot’s main handicap to US stardom was that she had a real fear of flying. Some said that Bardot didn’t need to appear in person to make an impact on people. Her photographs and her movies were enough to catapult her to the top. But, while most stars travelled the world to make films and to publicize them prior to distribution, Bardot stayed mainly in France, content to make European movies. Occasionally she would come to England but always travelled there by sea. I had already met her there once when she was evicted from the Dorchester Hotel for wearing a particularly modest outfit for her, a trouser suit. I remembered then he newspapers had had a field day.

 “What’s the matter?” she had growled in her strong French accent, “I’m not even showing my, how do you say, nude skin. And the Eenglish make a big fuss. What ees this place? Who are zese people?”

 But now, in December 1966, she had made a brave decision – to fly to New York for the promotion of her first American movie, a western entitled, “Viva Maria” co-starring Jeanne Moreau.

 My godmother, Olga Horstig, had been Brigitte’s agent since her discovery, at the age of 16, by Vadim. Brigitte would call Olga “Mama” and trusted her with her most intimate secrets. She was proved right in doing this as Olga, over the years, had been besieged by publishers offering her vast sums of money to spill the beans on her top star clients, in particular Brigitte Bardot, but these requests had always met with silence. Olga kept her lips tightly sealed.

 It was Olga who invited me to the Plaza suite to interview Brigitte. This was a unique opportunity not offered to any other New York journalist. Brigitte was not giving any interviews, except one formal press conference followed by a television appearance. Olga told me I would be the only newspaper journalist allowed backstage with her. When word of this privilege got out I was inundated by offers to publish my article but I had promised it to NANA and they agreed to syndicate it all over North America.

 This is the article as it was published then:

 “And what can I do for you, little girl?” asked the towering Pinkerton officer guarding the door to New York’s Hotel Plaza suite, 903-5.

 “I’ve come to see Miss Bardot.” I replied timidly.

 “So has half New York!” he bellowed. “And who shall I say is calling this time?” He turned and smirked to his companion.

 “Caroline Kennedy.” I answered, bracing myself.

 “Yeah, yeah!” He nudged the other giant beside him. “And John-John will be along too in a minute, I suppose?”

 They both laughed heartily.  I handed him the slip of paper from Bardot’s agent, Olga Horstig.  He examined it skeptically, like an immigration officer but then disappeared inside the room. A moment later the great door swung open and I was ushered in to the inner sanctum of the most famous sex goddess of the Western world by my godmother, Mme. Olga Horstig.

 Olga had been Brigitte’s agent since she had started her movie career 13 years ago at the age of 16. Behind the door the atmosphere seemed strangely normal. Inside people were milling around. All the customary people who insulate big movie stars from the rest of the world were there. Press agents, producers, directors, stylists and make-up artists – Mme. Horstig introduced me to all of them.

 First there was her daughter, Vera, an old friend of mine, who was working as publicity officer. Then there was Jerome Briere, New York representative of Unifrance Films, and his wife, Christine, the press agent for Brigitte’s new movie, “Viva Maria”.

 Mme. Helene Vager smiled me from across the room. Olga informed me that Mme Vager was the stylist responsible for everything in Brigitte’s wardrobe, from the thigh-length skirts down to the infamous pink bath towel featured so effectively in “And God Created Woman”.

 I shook hands with Louis Malle, Director of “Viva Maria”, Mike Hutner of United Artists and last, but by no means least important in Brigitte’s life, Jean-Pierre Barroyer, her hairdresser. In France Jean-Pierre was almost as famous as his star client as there is no doubt he had done much to influence the hairstyles of half the girls in the western hemisphere.

 The golden suite of the Plaza, which includes three large double bedrooms, a living room, a dining room and kitchenette, overlooks Central Park.

 “This is all I have seen of America.” Brigitte lamented to me later. But if it had to be one’s only glimpse of the Big Apple, I reassured her, it certainly wasn’t a bad one.

 I was led into the Royal Chamber and there, curled up on the end of the bed, clad in a clinging wool dress of pink, yellow and lavender candy stripes, was the movie queen herself, pouting at a soundless television set.

 “My favourite American westerns,” she announced, puffing heavily on a king-sized cigarette, as she watched John Wayne silently eliminate a row of tough-looking men who didn’t even have time to reach for their guns. Every now and again she would tug nervously at her blonde curls.

 “It’s a habit with me,” she explained.

 On the table beside her was an untouched cup of coffee. I noticed several other discarded cups around the room. She saw me looking at them. “French people do not like American coffee,” she puckered her pretty nose, “They find it too sweet.”

 One of the courtiers passed her the newspapers. Unsurprisingly she had made headlines on almost every front page. Brigitte Bardot in America for the first time was big, big news. She giggled at a picture of columnist, Earl Wilson, an old friend of mine, who had tried to gain entrance to her forbidden chambers the night before in the guise of an electrician. “He was so funny!” she exclaimed, giggling at the memory.

 “I’ll tease him about it next time I see him,” I laughed, “I can’t wait to see his face when he knows I’ve got the interview and not him!”

 As if on cue she suddenly jumped up and bent over double. I thought she was picking up something off the floor. “How do I look?” she bubbled, wiggling her million dollar behind at me. It could have been a vignette from a Vadim movie. There were those famous long legs and the provocative bare skin between the top of her stocking and the hem of her micro dress. A quick tug at the hemline, however, and the can-can view was gone. It was explained to me that this little sequence was a rehearsal for the photographers. I suppose I should have guessed! Brigitte stood up and smoothed down the tight dress.

 “Is it true in England they wear skirts 4 inches above the knee?” she asked me. Her own skirt was, maybe, a meager 3 inches above her knees but she glared down at it convinced that in New York it would be considered far too long.

 Brigitte quickly bored of television and collapsed into an armchair in the living room. Everyone followed suit. Someone flicked on the record player and a press agent demonstrated the stylized gyrations of the current dance hit, the French ‘frug’.

 “Do you enjoy dancing ?” I asked B.B.

 She tossed back her golden mane.

 “Oh! Dance, dance, I love to dance and I love nightclubs, I love it!” she declared passionately, clapping her hands in enthusiasm. “I used to be a ballet dancer for 10 years before the films but now I no longer do it. C’est domage, n’est ce pas ?” She looked wistful.

 Mme. Horstig looked at her watch. “Everybody downstairs for the News Conference, hurry!” she announced. As we dutifully filed out of the room, Brigitte paused to tug at her tresses in front of a mirror. It seemed that at any significant moment such as this, a hand would stretch out from nowhere with a lighted cigarette for the love goddess.

 Security guards now appeared in force. Some rode down in the elevator with us so that we felt more like a Brink’s shipment of gold. It certainly contained property almost as valuable.

 Once behind the Conference Room doors it was each man for himself. The spectacle was frightening. Flash bulbs popping, shutters snapping, people tripping over microphones, reporters scribbling furiously, photographers jumping up and down, craning their necks, all jostling, pushing and shoving to get a better view of the French movie queen as she made her way to the platform. I felt that at any minute now, if someone gave a signal, there would be a stampede. The mob was suffocating, the shouts deafening and, despite the winter outside, the heat stifling.

 “Hey! Brigittet, this way!”

“Hi ! Brigitte, put your right arm up, now your left!”

“Pout for us, Brigitte!”

“Smile, Brigitte, over here!”

“No, over here, Brigitte!”

 She posed docilely for 10 minutes. Laughing, pouting, smiling, talking, wistful, eager, coquettish, devilish, surprised. The cameras lapped it up and begged for more. Finally, an agent for the film, forcing himself to be heard above the uproar, made what must have been the most anticlimactic introduction of the day.

 “Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Miss Brigitte Bardot! And here with her is the Director of “Viva Maria”, M. Louis Malle!”

  Miraculously, as if this had been a pre-arranged signal to depart, the wave of photographers swept towards the door and disappeared. Without a second’s hesitation, the tide of reporters moved in like the rebels storming the Bastille. Brigitte’s English is surprisingly good but, to give her confidence, Louis Malle stood by as interpreter. The questions came thick, fast and indiscreet. But Brigitte fielded them like a veteran.

 “Do you like being called a sex kitten?”

“I adore it!” she purred.

“Don’t you think it necessary for every woman to have a child in order to be fulfilled in life?”

“Il faut tout essayer dans la vie,” she responded. (One must try everything in life).

“Could you give a special Christmas message for all troops posted overseas?”

“A very merry Christmas to all of you. And especially to you,” she whispered huskily into the microphone.

“How do you feel about love and marriage?”

“Why, did you try it?” Brigitte asked cheekily.

“Yes, but what do I do now?”

“Just keep trying!” she giggled wickedly.

Questions flew at her. Questions about love, politics, friends, entertainment, hobbies, men, American morals, movie stars, animals, children and every possible question about her personal life.

 “Miss Bardot, what did you do with the one franc awarded to you in your privacy suit against those two newspapers?”

“I kept it as a souvenir!” she winked.

The press agent signaled, “Time is up, folks, Miss Bardot has to go!”

“Thank you very much, everybody,” she beamed, blowing kisses in every direction. “I kiss you and bye-bye!”

 With one last wave to a beseeching photographer at the door she was swallowed up in a surge of human traffic towards the waiting elevator.

 Safely inside and, once again, the hand out of nowhere presented a lighted cigarette. Stepping off the elevator she linked arms with Helene Vager and, swinging their hips in unison, the pair swivelled down the corridor to the television interview.

 Brigitte scarcely had time to puff at her cigarette before she was plonked unceremoniously down into a green armchair, a microphone secured around her neck and a welcome glass of water thrust into her hand. The heat from the arch lamps was insufferable. Just then a cameraman told Brigitte that this TV interview would be in colour. Brigitte’s hand rushed to her cheek in horror.

”Oh, no! “ she exclaimed, “I hope I am not blushing!”

 The interview began. Once again the same routine questions.

”Do you like being referred to as a sex kitten?’

“How do you feel about love without marriage?”

“What do you think of American men?”

 Nevertheless, Brigitte conducted herself with the same eagerness. The camera’s eye got a full record of the celebrated Bardot mannerisms. When she was stuck for a word she would pout, put her finger to her mouth, give a sideways glance, play nervously with her hair and you would immediately feel sorry for her. Brigitte has all the charm and coquetry of a young girl. No wonder the papers kid her about being the world’s oldest teenager! Like Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone with the Wind”, Brigitte’s motto appears to be, “I’ll worry tomorrow!”

 “Do you ever think what you will do when you are 40 or, even, 60? “ the interviewer asked her.

“I don’t think about it. No, no. Tomorrow is a surprise and I love surprises!”

“Will you send a Christmas message to De Gaulle?”

“I have already given him my Christmas message by voting for him!”

Olga Horstig explained to me that Brigitte had, indeed, cast her ballot for the Generale before leaving Paris.

 The interview was over. We made our way down the corridor and, once more, the mysterious hand, like a Cocteau movie, appeared out of the dark with the lighted cigarette.

 Like an actress back in her dressing room after an evening onstage, the teenager was no more. The coquetry was gone, the pout vanished, the sparkling eyes dimmed. Brigitte sank exhaustedly into a deep armchair. She was even too tired to tug her hair. I thought it was time for me to leave. I thanked Brigitte for letting me have a unique look-in on the most famous movie star of my generation. She opened one eye and looked at me. She took my hand and, with a puckish smile, said, “See you in the movies!”

 Joe was so proud of me when he saw the article printed in several newspapers. To tell the truth I was pretty proud of myself too.

 “See you did do by yourself, little one,” he said, “with no help from me. I knew you could.”

 It was true I really had wanted to make it on my own. I valued his support but I didn’t want to succeed only through his contacts. But this was all Christina’s doing and I will always be grateful to her for, unwittingly, giving me my first break as a journalist. I was on top of the world. With the arrogance and optimism of youth, I knew nothing could stop me now. As a journalist I was on my way.

 My second and third articles, interviews with Tom Courtenay and James Michener the previous year were then updated and published through NANA.

With these three articles under my belt and a series of Christina’s fashion columns in print, we were approached by the New York Post to write a daily column. The suggestion was we would each write three a week. I couldn’t quite believe my luck, that another top job was about to land in my lap, without making any effort. I wrote to my family at the end of December:

”….Something very thrilling has also cropped up and that is that Christina and I may have a daily column in the New York Post (an afternoon newspaper). Imagine that! We’ll each write three a week. I hope to know by the end of the week whether it’ll come off or not. I am so excited about it but it really seems too good to be true. Keep your fingers crossed. And, by the way, just in case you’re thinking that the job has anything to do with Joe, you’re wrong. Christina and I did this all by ourselves. Joe had no idea till three days ago that we were negotiating this. He is very excited about it too! Meanwhile I think we shall have an 80% Christmas as Joe and I are jetting off to Palm Beach for the weekend. He has to cover the opening of “The Nutcracker Suite”. Don’t you envy me?”

Memoir Blog #9 First of the Free Spirits

From 1963 onwards Manhattan’s social events were considered incomplete without the presence of Christina Paolozzi, the daughter of an impoverished Italian Count and a wealthy New York socialite. Christina, referred to in the society pages as “The first of the Sixties free spirits”, provided an invigorating breath of fresh air to those New Yorkers who had managed to shake themselves loose from the moralistic shackles of the 1950’s.

To the majority of them, however, who remained judgmental and bound by strict codes of behavior, Christina managed to provide insult after insult. Her initial shock was to conduct a very public affair with a married man. And he was not just any married man. The man in question was Yul Brynner, the bald-headed Russian actor who was then at the height of his fame, following his successes in “The Magnificent Seven” and “The King and I” for which he received an Academy Award. 

Over a decade later, in 1977, I went backstage of the London Palladium, accompanied by my two small children to see Yul after watching a matinee performance in a stage revival of “The King and I”.  Somewhat timidly I knocked at the door of his dressing-room. After all this time I wasn’t even sure he’d recognize me.

“Remember me?” I asked as he opened the door slightly and peered out.

“My God, Caroline Kennedy!” he beamed, “Of course I remember you,” he tossed some make-up tissues towards a bin beside the dressing table, “with our wonderful Christina in New York. How long ago was that? Have you seen her recently? How is she?”

 

“Oh, she’s fine. “ I replied. “She’s – well…She’s as she always is….She’s Christina, isn’t she? Still raising eyebrows and still creating wonderful mayhem wherever she goes.”

“I can’t believe it. It’s so good to see you again, come in.” He stepped back and gestured for us to take a seat among the mountain of clothes that were hastily being removed by his dresser. I ushered my two children the door.

“By the way Yul, these are my children, Elisar and Mayumi!” I announced proudly. He bent down and cuddled each one in turn. They eyed his bald head and exaggerated stage make-up suspiciously.

“So, “ Yul announced, “you’ve done the same as I have. Well done, Caroline!”

“What? What have I done?” I asked puzzled.

“Got yourself two of those,” he replied.

“My children, you mean?”

“Yes. I adopted two Vietnamese children too, didn’t you know?”

I did know but my maternal pride bristled to think he hadn’t even recognized them as my own.

“They’re not adopted, Yul!” I retorted. “Nor are they Vietnamese. They’re all mine. And their father is Filipino!”

For a moment Yul appeared dumbstruck. Then his face broke into a huge grin.

“Well, good for you anyway. They’re just beautiful – both of them.”

We had well and truly broken the ice after so many years. It was good to see him again. I told him how I had enjoyed his film “Westworld” where he had played a robot cowboy. It was a brilliant portrayal and had rightly won him many accolades. He gave the children an impromptu demonstration strutting robotically up and down the dressing room, stopping abruptly to aim a pretend gun at his image in the mirror.  His performance looked all the more absurd since he was still dressed in his King & I costume. The children giggled. He had won them over. We reverted to discussing Christina for whom, it was obvious, he still held enormous affection.

I reminded him of the second outrage Christina performed on stuffy New Yorkers – posing nude for the fashion photographer, Richard Avedon, in Vogue magazine. For this deliberate offence to respectability Avedon catapulted to fame but Christina was immediately struck off the Celebrity Register, the bible that every society-conscious New Yorker desperately wanted to be included in.

“Christina couldn’t have cared less.” Yul laughed loudly. “She said to me, “Me respectable? You know me better than anyone, Yul, I wasn’t born to be respectable, was I ?”

I am sure I left Yul that night reminiscing on his old flame. To all of us Christina was beautiful, capricious and affectionate. Her passion for life, her compulsive flirtations and her need to test traditional boundaries were judged by most New Yorkers as distinct character flaws but to us, her friends and admirers, they were considered all part of her undeniable individuality and charm.

She and I discovered an immediate and enduring kinship that survived both our marriages and living on different continents but finally succumbed, after twenty years, to staying out of touch for too long. Her carefree attitude, her naïve immorality and her sense of fun were contagious. I had never met anyone quite like her. Her warmth, her spontaneity, her rebellious streak and her generosity of spirit had a lasting impact on me and on all those who knew her. Christina loved life and she loved living it to the full. I think her unspoken motto must have been: “If you don’t ever try it, you’ll die regretting it.”

Many nights Christina and I drove around town, either on our own or with a group of friends, to see what mischief we could get up to. We would start in downtown Greenwich Village, dropping into places such as the Peppermint Lounge, Ondine’s, Max’s Kansas City and the Scene, checking out the music, the atmosphere and the people. When, finally worn out, we would end uptown, either in her Park Avenue apartment or in the studio above Carnegie Hall that I shared with Joe Dever.

One summer night Joe had a friend in town. Mark Birley was the owner Annabel’s, the most successful nightclub in London.  Joe suggested we show Mark a different side of New York, something a world away from fashionable Berkeley Square – a visit to the famous Apollo Theatre in Harlem. Used to the stuffy atmosphere of London’s social scene, Mark thrilled at the idea. Although Harlem at night was considered dangerous territory for anyone other than its own residents and, thus, out of bounds to most white New Yorkers, neither Christina nor I gave it a second thought. The four of us piled into an uptown bus and watched out of the window, fascinated, as the architecture, the mood and the character of New York changed in front of our eyes. There was nothing subtle about these changes. The well-maintained buildings of Fifth Avenue soon gave way to drabness, decay and dereliction the further uptown we went. Wretched poverty and a sense of futility, despair and hopelessness were etched into the faces of the people in the street.

The crowd gathering outside the Apollo when we arrived that night looked at us suspiciously. This was understandable since we were the only white people there. No doubt they immediately recognized us for what we, undeniably, were – four upper middle class whites out looking for some action.

Inside the place was literally jumping. Martha and the Vandellas were playing live onstage. The audience were clapping, dancing and singing along with them. The lights, the atmosphere, the colours, the fashions, the music, the noise and the sheer exuberance, in stark contrast to the streets of Harlem outside, were exhilarating. Mark, in his very British way, was enchanted by the whole scene.  I realized how different it must have seemed to him compared to the staid, somewhat prissy atmosphere of his own club in London.

At we danced to Martha and the Vandellas that night, Christina and I had no idea that this would not be our last visit together to Harlem – the next one under very different, far more serious, circumstances.

Not long after our visit to the Apollo, Christina did something that astounded all her friends, even me. She announced she had fallen in love. Not, as we would have imagined, with a handsome playboy jetting her off in his private plane to the polo fields of Argentina nor with a famous movie star sweeping her off to life in a Beverly Hills mansion nor, even, to a romantic, but impoverished, European nobleman like her father but with a young intern trauma surgeon, Howard Bellin.

“Howard who?” Joe asked.

“You might not have heard of him now,” Christina replied, “but give him ten years and he’ll be more well known than me.”

In her choice of Howard, Christina was, for the first time, showing a different, more sober, side to her personality. Perhaps the timing was right for her and life in the fast lane was beginning to pall. To us, as onlookers, their opposing characters could have clashed abysmally but, as it was, they both appeared to benefit from each other, blossoming in opposite ways. Howard became more outgoing and less obsessed by his work. And, while not losing any of her sense of fun, Christina managed to stifle some of her natural exuberance to settle into life as a young surgeon’s wife.

Joe, for one, didn’t think the marriage would last.

“Christina’s far too headstrong,” he predicted, “she’ll opt out within a couple of years, you’ll see.”

I was a romantic. The idea of a failed marriage, particularly such a short one and one involving two of my friends, upset me.

“I think you’re wrong.” I protested, “Christina has met her match this time. You haven’t seen them together like I have. Howard’s absolutely right for her and she knows it. She adores him.”

“We’ll see!” It was obvious that Joe, like many of our friends, needed convincing.

Most could not believe that the ubiquitous blonde with the piercing blue eyes, the girl who loved to be everywhere at the same time, the enchanting rebel who loved to shock, would ever settle down to a normal family life. How wrong they all were. And how happy I was when, some summers later in London, Howard and Christina proudly introduced me to their two sons, Marco and Andy. I could see then that, despite the normal ups and downs endemic to all long term relationships, theirs was, without doubt, a strong marriage.

One evening, during the feverishly hot summer of 1966 Christina called me,

“Caroline darling, you’ve gotta help me out!”

“What is it?” I asked, half expecting her to answer, as she often did, that we should all go downtown for an evening’s fun and games.

“There’s a local nurses strike, haven’t you read about it?” she continued breathlessly, “You must come and help Howard at his hospital. They desperately need nurses!”

“But…” I stammered. I was about to tell her that I fainted at the sight of blood.

“No, you’ve got to help, Caroline, I’m asking all my friends. Please come!”

“OK, OK, I’ll do it.” There was a sigh of relief at the other end of the phone. “Which hospital should I go to and at what time?”

“The Harlem Hospital Center,” she replied.

“Where’s that?” I asked.

“Harlem, 120th Street!” she replied, “near the East River.“

“Harlem? You’ve got to be kidding me!”

“I’ll pick you up at six. OK?”

“In the morning?”

“No, the evening. We’ve gotta do the night shift you and I. That’s when Howard’s on duty!”

“All night? Christina, honestly I really don’t think…..”

I should have learnt by now that it was a waste of breath trying to say no to Christina. Her charm won out every time. I folded immediately, realizing there was no use fighting it.

“Caroline?”

“OK, yes, that’s fine. I’ll be ready!”

“Thanks, I love you. I won’t forget it.”

“You might not forget it but you may regret it!” I laughed, “See you tomorrow at 6pm.”

I put the phone down. I looked over at Joe. “You won’t believe that!” I said, “That was Christina wearing her Florence Nightingale hat. She wants me to be a trauma nurse at Harlem Hospital Center tomorrow night!”

“And you said yes?”

“I guess I did,” I replied, not fully convinced that I had, in fact, accepted her “invitation.”

“What our darling Christina wants….:” Joe began.

“Our darling Christina gets,” I finished off, “Yes, that’s the way it always is.”

Due to the ongoing transit strike in New York, Christina had ordered a chauffeured car to pick me up. I felt as if we were going off on one of our nightly jaunts to the discos. But, instead, we were heading uptown to a very rundown general hospital right in the heart of Harlem. I was not sure the nurses, who were probably on a picket line outside the hospital, would appreciate our altruistic reasons for being there.

As we made our way uptown, Christina gave me some idea about what I was about to experience.
”There are shootings every night, particularly at this time of year,” she said, referring to the hot summer months when tempers fray easily, “and stabbings too. Howard usually stitches them up and then they insist on going home. They’re normally back the following week, Howard says, with some other injury.”

I was beginning to feel sick already. I wasn’t cut out to be a nurse – that much was obvious.

“Have you done this sort of thing before?” I asked her.

“Only over the last couple of days – during this nurses’ strike,” she replied. “But I am already planning your reward.”

“What reward, what are you talking about?” I was offended that she thought I needed to be recompensed for a doing her a favour.

“I didn’t mean that. But Howard and I are planning to give a dinner party for Leslie Uggams when she opens at the Cocacabana. We thought it might be nice if we invited all our ‘nurses’ to come along.”

We arrived at the hospital and, as I suspected, a handful of uniformed nurses with placards were stationed outside. I felt like scab labour. We couldn’t very well pass ourselves off as patients up in Harlem. So, with heads held high, we catapulted ourselves out of the chauffeured limo and made a dash for the door of the Emergency Department.

The scene inside was utter bedlam. Young mothers with howling children, lone adults in slings and plasters wailing loudly, youths with various injuries picking a fight among themselves as they waited to be seen by a doctor. The floor looked like it hadn’t been swept for a week. There were bloody swabs everywhere, soiled dressings and discarded food wrappers, drinks cartons and cigarette butts.  I took one look and started to panic.

“What shall I do? Where shall I start?” I shouted to Christina above the racket.

“Let’s go and see Howard first,” she said, taking me firmly by the arm and whisking me away, “just to let him know we’re here. He’ll tell us what to do!”

She led me towards the operating theatre where Howard, unrecognizable in blue cap, mask, surgical gown and gloves, was preparing for an operation.

I stood silently outside the room thinking ‘what the hell am I doing here?’ I watched, transfixed, as Christina donned her own gown and mask, scrubbed her hands, eased on a pair of rubber gloves and went to stand beside Howard.  She nudged one of the “nurses”.

“Thanks, Jane, you can go now!” she whispered. “I can take over. The car’s waiting for you outside.”
Howard looked at Christina. I could see from the wrinkles forming around his eyes that he was smiling. Above her mask her distinctive pale blue eyes stared back at him. That look, I think, was the defining moment when I knew for certain their marriage was going to last. Christina had come of age.          

Howard, peeling off his gloves, walked towards the basin to scrub his hands. Christina and another nurse started wheeling a trolley into the room.

Howard approached me at the door. He removed his mask and beamed at me.

“Thanks for coming, Caroline,” he said. “Isn’t Christina great for arranging all this. I don’t know what I would have done without her and all of you.”

“She’s very persuasive,” I smiled. “So now that I’m here, tell me what can I do to help”.

“Why don’t you stay out here in reception and, after the house doctor has triaged the patients, bring them into theatre for me. You’ll need to get a gown and mask. The receptionist will show you where.”

He started to walk back into operating room.  As he reached for the door, he turned back. “Oh, and if they’re any real emergencies alert me straightaway. OK?”

I was alone, or so it seemed. All kinds of people, in all states of distress and conditions, poured in through the doors of the Emergency Department. Getting them to line up at the Receptionist’s desk was a major battle. They finally formed a queue of sorts, after jostling, shoving and pushing their way as close to the front as they could. As is always the case, the stronger ones got to the top while the weaker, and probably the needier, ones were shunted behind.  It didn’t take long for the bullies to work out I had no idea what I was doing and they took full advantage of it.

Within half an hour the door burst open and a man, with his throat, apparently slashed from ear to ear, was being dragged in on the arms of another man. The man carrying him shouted for help but all I could see was the blood bubbling and frothing from his companion’s neck. I felt my own blood drain from my head. My brain started to feel dizzy and, before I knew it, I had passed out on the linoleum floor.

The next thing I was aware of was Christina propping me up on her lap, attempting to pour brandy down my throat.

“Hang on” I whispered faintly, “I’m a teetotaller, remember?  What happened?” I tried vainly to remember the scene.

“You fainted.”

I nodded weakly. “Yes, I’m sorry. I did try to tell you I tend to do that at the sight of blood!” I smiled. “Too late now, I suppose.”

Memories started to come back to me. “What happened to that guy – the one with his throat cut?”

“Howard’s sewing him up right now.”

“Who slashed him? What’s the story?”

Feeling better I sat up, eager to hear the gossip.

“Well, apparently, the guy who brought him in did it. They’re best friends but they had some fight over a girl. Howard says he’ll be OK but they’ll probably be back here next week. They’ll find another woman to fight over. It’s very common here, Howard says, they’re always fighting over women.”

“How romantic!” I joked, “I wish two men would fight over me!”

Not long after this experience Christina was offered a syndicated fashion column through the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA). She was thrilled at the prospect but doubtful she could handle it on her own.

“Grammar and spelling, Caroline,” she giggled, “are not my greatest talents, as you know!”

“You’re not kidding!” I replied. “Your spelling is atrocious!”

“Then should we write it together, the two of us?” she asked.  “Would you do it with me?”

I didn’t know much about fashion so I asked if we could meet the editor who had offered her the job and discuss, perhaps, the idea of writing on several other topics besides fashion.

“Social and celebrity interviews, for instance,” I suggested, “since both of us have the opportunity to meet a whole cast of characters who come through New York. Would he go for that idea, do you think?”

Christina was sure that he would and set up an interview. The outcome was positive. The editor seemed to be open to any ideas we suggested. As it turned out, we didn’t actually write articles together. I wrote mine and Christina wrote hers, although, as we agreed, she did pass a number of them to me for editing before she submitted them.

So, by the end of 1966, I finally had my first article published and syndicated across North America. And surprisingly it was Christina, not Joe, who I had to thank for the launch of my career as a journalist.

 

Memoir Blog # 8 Encounters with Mr Celebrity

Someone else who was about to make the “big time” in 1965 was actress, Sharon Tate. Following her success in the much-hyped TV version of Jacqueline Suzann’s explosive novel, “Valley of the Dolls”, Sharon had just completed filming, “Eye of the Devil” with David Niven and Deborah Kerr.

Prior to the film’s release, Joe and I were invited to meet Sharon at the home of publicist Earl “Mr. Celebrity” Blackwell. Earl was known as the undisputed king of New York society. For the past two decades he had defined who was and who was not a true American celebrity. Since 1939 he had been printing a “Contact” book, available by subscription, containing the names and contact addresses of everyone who was anyone in the U.S. He also co-edited the Celebrity Register, in which every society-conscious New Yorker wanted to be included.

Earl lived on our doorstep, right opposite Carnegie Hall, on the southeast corner of 57th Street & 6th Avenue. His luxurious penthouse home, boasted a Mediterranean roof garden, Italian stone and marble sculptures, mature trees and water fountains. Stepping into the interior of Earl’s apartment was like stepping out of modern day New York and into an 18th century Etruscan villa, complete with terracotta tiles, stucco mouldings, mosaic floors and trompe l’oeil frescoes.

As Joe and I walked into Earl’s apartment that night there were, it seemed, around twenty men milling around just one very beautiful girl, Sharon Tate. The men were press agents, lawyers and financiers. All had a vested interest in making Sharon a major star.

As one of them told me somewhat crudely: “We put a lot of money in that girl. Now it’s pay back time!”

In my very English way I retorted, “That’s not a very nice thing to say.”

I guess I still had a lot to learn about the way Hollywood works. My only brush with it so far had been a recent audition with the director, Joshua Logan. My friend, Sarah Dalton, and I had hoped to secure roles in his movie version of “Camelot” as the handmaidens of Guinevere.

From the start Josh had been the consummate gentleman. When deciding to reject us, he rose from behind his huge mahogany desk, shook our hands and said, “I’m very sorry, girls, but I can’t give either of you a role. You’ll both outshine my leading lady, Vanessa Redgrave. It wouldn’t do, would it, to surround her with girls more beautiful than her!”

So I was not used to these Hollywood thugs, these unrepentant “money men” exacting their pound of flesh. I hadn’t even met Sharon yet but I already felt sorry for her.

When Earl introduced us she smiled warmly. “I m so relieved to see another girl,“ she whispered, “I seem to be surrounded by men all the time these days.“

Although she looked as fragile and sweet as she always did on television, like some brittle porcelain doll, it was obvious the pressures of non-stop appearances, photo opportunities and publicity interviews were already beginning to take their toll on her.

“It’s a big step for me,” she sighed. “We fly to LA tomorrow and then they tell me my life’s going to be crazy after that. As if it isn’t already!”

“Aren’t you looking forward to it?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she replied, wrinkling her nose seductively, “I really don’t. One moment I think it’s all thrilling and I can’t believe it’s happening to me and the next, well…sometimes I just want…” Her voice trailed off.

“It won’t be that bad,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. “They’re not all vultures out there. In fact I’ve heard that some of them can be quite human!” I told her my about my recent meeting with Josh Logan.

Sharon laughed. “I hope you’re right, Caroline, but most of them aren’t like that, sadly. They’re hideous, really they are. They’ll probably chew me up and spit me out – like they do with everyone else.”

“I’m sure you can handle them, darling,” Joe said, patting her sympathetically on the back as one of the press agents appeared from nowhere, grabbed her arm and whisked her off to introduce her to yet another hovering journalist.

As Sharon left us, she turned and whispered in my ear, “I just hope I’ll remember what it was like to be me.” “You will,” I reassured her, “I’m sure you will.”

As we left Earl’s apartment I went over to Sharon to say goodbye and wish her luck.

“I’ll need it, lots of it,” she smiled. “Thanks for coming. Perhaps we’ll meet up again when I get back to New York and I’ll tell you how it’s been.”

“It’s a date, “ I said. “Good luck. “ There could be no way any of us that night could have anticipated the gruesome fate that awaited her. And, when the appalling tragedy did occur just four years later, it was hard for me not to reflect on our very brief conversation and hope that Sharon had found, at least, some brief happiness with her husband, the bad-boy film director, Roman Polanski.

Joe and I were in Earl’s apartment again some weeks later. As we were chatting his telephone rang. He answered it and carried on a short conversation.

”That was Cary Grant,” Earl informed us as he replaced the receiver. “I’ve invited him over – he’s at the Plaza.”

Earl summoned Chang, his Chinese chauffeur.

“Now,” he addressed Chang, speaking very slowly, “I w-a-n-t y-o-u t-o g-o t-o t-h-e P-l-a-z-a H-o-t-e-l a-n-d p-ic-k u-p M-i-s-t-e-r C-a-r-y G-r-a-n-t. He’ll be waiting for you, OK?”

The chauffeur shrugged his shoulders. It was obvious he didn’t understand a word except, perhaps, the name of the Plaza Hotel.

“C-a-r-y G-r-a-n-t, you must know him,” Earl went on.

Again the bewildered Chang shrugged his shoulders.

“Cary Grant” Earl emphasized, “the famous movie star? You must have seen his films!” It was obvious Earl was beginning to lose his patience. The chauffeur’s face remained impassive. Exasperated, Earl wrote down Cary Grant’s name in capitals on a piece of paper and handed it to him.

“Well, it doesn’t matter, Chang,” he said, nudging the driver towards the door, “just go to the Plaza Hotel. Mr. Grant will be waiting for you in the lobby. I’m sure when you see him you’ll recognize him. OK?”

“OK!” Chang beamed, “I go. I find, gentleman. You not worry, Sir! “ Chang grabbed the note and left.

Half an hour later the apartment door opened and Cary Grant walked in. I was eager to know whether Chang had, in fact, recognized him immediately or not.

“We’re dying to know, what happened when Chang picked you up.” I said.

“Oh, it was fine,” Grant laughed, “I was standing in the lobby waiting for him anyway. And, as soon as he saw me he flung his arms into the air, grinned from ear to ear and said, “Oh, Mr. Kelly Glant why didn’t Mr. Brackwerr tell me it was you!!” Then he asked me to autograph the piece of paper for him!”

A week later Joe and I lunched with Earl at our favourite health food bar on 57th Street, just below his apartment.

“Look what I’ve got!” Earl grinned as he reached into his pocket. He extracted a telegram and handed it to us to read. It said: “Dear Err Brackwerr. Thanks for a wonderful evening. See you again when I’m next in New York. Signed, Kelly Glant.”

On another occasion Earl accompanied Joe and me to dinner with Joan Crawford in her sumptuous Park Avenue apartment. Joan had just completed filming on “I Saw What You Did”, a thriller where she played a murderous old woman, Amy Nelson, plagued by teenage pranksters.

I was curious to meet Joan since I considered that, although she had an unequalled tendency to be melodramatic, she was, without doubt, one of the great actresses of her generation. But I was totally unprepared for the evening that awaited us.

It was obvious from the start that dinner with Joan Crawford would be no ordinary affair. A maid ushered the three of us into the living room. I only needed one swift glance around me to realize that the entire room was white. Joan, dressed in an impeccable white V-neck cardigan over a neat white pencil skirt, was sitting bolt upright on a white sofa There was even a white ceramic bowl containing white tulips placed on top of the white grand piano.. And everything, including photographs, paintings and furniture, was covered in sheets of clear plastic. This, I learned later from Earl, was how Joan Crawford always entertained. She didn’t want any of her guests to make a mess. Surprisingly for someone who was obviously so hygiene conscious, Joan was smoking a cigarette in a long, white holder. I extended my hand, as Joe introduced us but, evidently fearing the transfer of germs, she chose to ignore it so I was forced to withdraw it, hoping no one had noticed.

“Charming,” the trademark bright scarlet lips parted briefly into a smile as she surveyed me up and down. “Won’t you sit down, dear – Caroline is it?” She patted the plastic covered seat beside her. “Earl tells me you’re from London?”

The smile, I decided, was not genuine. It was the smile of someone long accustomed to adapting her mood and character for the benefit of a film camera, an interviewer or an audience.

“I adore London,” she went on, taking a sip of neat vodka, “I love your theatrical tradition but, my dear, the theatres are so….” she paused to think for a suitable adjective, “so ancient. Most of them should be torn down or replaced, wouldn’t you say? I mean they’re falling apart! It’s a disgrace!”

“The English like them that way,” I replied frostily, “we think it gives them character.” I thought I better change the subject.

I shifted uncomfortably on the plastic covered sofa and asked somewhat foolishly, “Are you redecorating here?” Joan arched a perfectly plucked eyebrow, “Now why would I want to do that, dear? I like it just the way it is!”

Silly me. I had fallen into a trap – and I hadn’t seen it coming. “I just thought because of the…the…” I stuttered, picking up the plastic sheeting and waving it limply in front of me. I immediately regretted pursuing the subject. I felt my cheeks burning. I looked across at Joe for moral support but he and Earl were smiling, seeming to enjoy every minute of my discomfort. Right then I could have killed them both for not warning me. I decided I had no alternative but to prolong the joke, even at my own expense.

“I think you’re absolutely right,” I said to Joan, trying to keep a straight face, “I’ve always loved white. And what a brilliant idea you have to keep it clean. One day when I get my own house I think I’ll do the same.”

To my surprise and relief that seemed to do the trick. Joan was completely taken in and she went on to expound the visual, spiritual and emotional virtues of the colour white.

“Visually white is unassuming, inoffensive and harmonious,” she explained. “Spiritually it’s uplifting, uncomplicated and pure. And emotionally it’s quiet, gentle and balancing.”

I wondered if she was quoting from her favourite script, from a Hollywood clairvoyant or from her interior designer. “Yes,” I agreed, and added a little cheekily, “I read that somewhere too!”

Joan gave me a withering look. This, I thought, was a good start to a dinner party. Earl butted in, trying to salvage the situation.

“We went to the opening of “The Glass Menagerie” the other night, Joan dear. Did you see it yet?” He was referring to the twentieth anniversary production of Tennessee Williams’s play, starring Maureen Stapleton.

Joan waved her arm disparagingly, “Earl, dear, you know me – and you should know how I feel about him and his plays!” She pronounced the word “him” with evident disgust.

I had no idea what she was on about. The way she spoke the words sounded petulant and dismissive as though she either hated Tennessee Williams personally or his plays professionally or, indeed, both. Pity, I thought, since, unlike many contemporary playwrights, he wrote particularly strong female roles, most of which were totally “off-the-wall” and would have suited Joan’s melodramatic talents admirably.

“It was a wonderful production,” I said defensively. “I love almost all his plays and Maureen Stapleton was excellent as Amanda.”

“No doubt,” Joan replied icily, removing the cigarette from its holder and stubbing it out fiercely in the ashtray.

I sensed that Joan didn’t like any form of competition and that a compliment about another actress’s work was immediately translated into a threat to her own acting abilities.

The maid came to the door at that moment and announced that dinner was ready. If I was expecting to be ushered into a white dining room I was about to be disappointed. The maid disappeared for a minute and then reappeared pushing a trolley in front of her. I saw then we were going to eat off our laps. This, perhaps, helped to explain the plastic on the chairs. Joan handed us huge white cotton napkins which we draped them over our knees. And the maid handed round plates of homemade sandwiches. I half expected a television to be turned on so we could enjoy a TV dinner but realized there was no television set in the room. The laboured conversation would have to continue.

Joe came to the rescue. ”Earl tells me you don’t entertain too often, Joan?”

She sighed theatrically, “It’s difficult in my business. I have too little time to myself. And the children need me when I’m at home.”

Children? Apart from us, the apartment appeared to be empty. I wondered where she kept them.

“Are your children here?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, but I always make sure they’re in bed by 6pm. I need some time alone, you understand. And, when I have friends around I don’t want the children to disturb them.”

I wanted to tell her I would have much preferred to be momentarily “disturbed” by her children than by the persistent discomfort of her plastic sofa cover that, on this hot summer night, was becoming increasingly clammy on the thighs.

For once I was very relieved when Joe announced we had to proceed to another party. We made a hasty getaway, leaving Joan perched on her plastic-covered sofa, inhaling a cigarette and pouring herself another vodka.

I think I’d had so much pent up embarrassment during the evening that, once in the elevator, I started giggling hysterically. “The woman is completely insane!” I blurted out, clutching my sides. “How can she live like that?”

“Same condition as Howard Hughes,” Earl explained, “simply terrified of germs!”

“You must admit it was worth it, though,” Joe pointed out, “you’ll be able to dine out on that yarn for a while.”

Poor kids, that’s all I could think of. “Just imagine,“ I giggled, “what it must be like having a mother like her! Perfectly tailored clothes. Perfectly manicured nails. Perfectly mascaraed eyes. Perfectly pencilled eyebrows! Perfectly painted lips! And a perfectly primed ego to match. Can you think of anything worse?”

It certainly came as no surprise almost a decade later when her adopted daughter, Christina, published a “kiss and tell” book about life with Joan Crawford, “Mommie Dearest”. I doubted if there was enough room in Joan’s house for two stubborn, strongheaded and wilful women.

Tiptoeing Through the Tulips

Memoir Blog # 7

 Although I genuinely disliked most nightclubs, the Scene on 8^th Avenue and West 46^th Street, came to be one of my favourite watering holes in New York. Steve Paul, the enterprising 23- year-old owner, was determined to make his basement club the most important music venue in the city. Steve lived like a pauper most nights, sleeping rough on friends’ couches, even though money appeared to be plentiful. He was constantly flying off to Seattle, Los Angeles or London to find new bands, offer to be their manager and invite them to play at the Scene.

One night I was sitting in the club with my friends, Sarah and her brother, the pop journalist David Dalton, when I decided to ask Steve how, without a job and at his young age, he could afford to be jetting off to all these places.

“You must have wealthy parents who support you?” I ventured.

Steve shook his head. “Nice try. But no, Caroline.“ He smiled. “It’s Orange Julius,” he added simply.

We all leaned forward at this point.

“What do you mean, Orange Julius?” I asked.

“Orange Julius. You know, the new drink? I discovered it. I made up the recipe!”

He sounded serious but his reply seemed so preposterous we weren’t quite sure whether he was joking or not. In less than two years Orange Julius had literally flooded the United States becoming the nation’s favourite fruit drink. Supermarkets sold it in large, medium and small cartons. Franchises for Orange Julius counters were being sold in every State from New York to California. And posters advertising Orange Julius were popping up on hoardings all over the country. If, indeed, Steve had dreamed up the recipe and patented it, he must have been an extremely shrewd businessman, not to mention an exceedingly wealthy young man. If, however, he was the product of a rich family he never admitted it, not even to us. And, to this day, I don’t know if he was telling the truth, trying to impress us, disowning a privileged background or, simply, pulling our legs. Strange as it may seem, it still intrigues me.

But of one thing there was absolutely no doubt. Steve was a force to be reckoned with in the New York music world. Many groups he approached didn’t hesitate to ask him to be their manager. It was evident, even in those early days that Steve Paul was one of those rare and fortunate individuals who, for no apparent reason, seemed to have a Midas touch when it came to identifying musical talent.

Many musicians, hoping to be discovered, wanted that touch to rub off on them. Even widely known artists and bands, such as the Velvet Underground, the Progressive Blues Experiment, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Rick Derringer, Duane Allman, Frank Zappa and the exceptional “white” blues guitarist Johnny Winter, all accepted Steve’s invitation to play at the Scene. Despite strong competition from other music venues over the years, the Scene grew in reputation, popularity and strength.

By the late 60’s, long after I’d skipped town, it had more than fulfilled Steve’s wishes and was, without doubt, the foremost music club in Manhattan. Sadly, the very success of the club led to its premature demise at the height of its fame. Rumour has it that the mob wanted a piece of the action,

Years later Sarah wrote to me: “Remember Teddy? The lovely maitre d’? He had his legs broken and, rather than give in to the Mafia’s bullying tactics, Steve reluctantly decided to close the Scene down. “

Then, after years of sleeping on friends’ couches, Steve Paul, the entrepreneur with the magic touch, retreated to his new home – Rita Hayworth’s rambling estate in Connecticut.

He told Sarah recently, “In those days you didn’t need money. You didn’t need anything. I slept on peoples’ couches. Today, it ’s different. It’s into the bunkers.” Smiling he swept his arms around the vast living room boasting walk-in fireplaces on either end, “And now, twenty years later, I find I need all this!”

One of Steve’s earliest, and most unlikely, discoveries at the Scene was Herbert Kaury, alias Vernon Castle, alias Emmett Swink, alias Danny Dover, alias Rollie Dell and, now, alias Larry Love “The Singing Canary”. But even Steve, with his innate sense of success, did not immediately recognize Larry Love’s unique appeal. Sarah had already heard Love in some smaller clubs in Greenwich Village and had begged me and David to go with her.

 “You’ve got to check him out,”.she giggled, “You won t believe your eyes and your ears! “

She was right about that.

So, once again, Sarah, David and I descended on the Scene, this time with Larry Love in tow. During a break in the evening’s entertainment, Sarah asked him if he would get up and sing a solo for us. In fact, encouraged by Sarah, Larry had brought his ukelele with him in the vain hope he might be invited to play at the Scene. He looked pleadingly at Steve who shrugged his shoulders.

“Go on, Steve,” Sarah begged, “please let him!” David and I joined in, eager to experience this weird singing phenomenon once again. Steve, who had a soft spot for the two decorative English girls who frequented his club, didn’t need much convincing.

“OK, I guess. Why not? What the hell?” Steve ushered Larry towards the microphone. “What’s your name again?” he asked.

“Tiny Tim!” Larry answered, without hesitating.

“Excuse me?” Steve looked surprised, “I thought you said….”

“Tiny Tim!” Larry repeated quietly but firmly.

Looking nonplussed, Steve tapped the microphone. “All you folks here tonight, please welcome Tiny Tim!” he announced.

The tall, gangly figure of Herbert Kaury’s latest incarnation rose from his seat, tossed his long curly chestnut tresses away from his face and picked up his ukelele.

“Excuse me, Miss Sarah. Excuse me, Miss Caroline,” he whispered politely

as he left the table and walked to the front. Then, in a falsetto voice that would later become his trademark all over the world, he sang, “Tiptoe Through the Tulips.”

When he finished he looked towards Sarah and me.

“That was for my very special friends, Miss Sarah and Miss Caroline, thank you both,” he announced to the astonished crowd, who stood rooted to the spot, not quite sure what to make of the performance they’d just witnessed.

And thus, Herbert Kaury’s latest alias, Tiny Tim, was born. I was speechless, little guessing that within three years “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” would echo across the world earning the singer a platinum disc.

The effect of this extraordinary entertainer on the audience that night was indescribable. Probably for the first time in its, so far, brief but explosive history, the Scene was completely hushed, whether out of sheer disbelief, amazement or respect I shall never know. But, by the time the song was over, Steve Paul, the music entrepreneur, certainly knew. From the audience’s reaction Steve immediately sensed Tiny Tim was going to be a big, big star. And from that night on, Steve became his manager and Tiny Tim became a regular at the Club.

And as the Scene’s reputation grew, so did Tiny Tim’s. People from all over New York would come to listen to him, in amazement, in amusement or in rapture. Why they came in such numbers didn’t matter to either Steve or Tiny Tim. All that mattered was that they came. From swank uptown restaurants and clubs, such as Le Club owned and run by Oleg and Igor Cassini, or the smart El Morocco nightclub frequented by New York’s top “400”, or the fashionable Four Seasons to downtown Greenwich Village bars, nightspots and cafes, people from all backgrounds and from all social levels made the nightly pilgrimage to the windowless cellar on West 46th to listen enthralled to the weird and wonderful phenomenon that was Tiny Tim.

Most were turned away disappointed. The basement venue was so small it was unable to accommodate the large numbers of eager fans lining up on the sidewalk outside. Recently Sarah and I reminisced over those early days.

“You, David and I were the lucky ones, “ she said. “ We were so privileged. Steve would always let us in. But most people were turned away at the door.”

One evening, following a somewhat dreary uptown dinner party, I even managed to drag a reluctant Joe down there with our friends New York Senator Jacob Javits and his wife, the irrepressible Marion, and out-of-towners Governor Henry Bellmon of Oklahoma, British actor Bill Travers and Irish writer Conor Cruise O’Brien. Despite all their initial protests, they were later forced to admit that a live performance by Tiny Tim was an experience not to be missed.

“Come on, Jack,” I whispered to the Senator during the performance, “enjoy it! After all I sat through your son’s reading of the Torah at his Bar Mitzvah last week and even managed to have some fun!”

The Senator gave me one of his illuminating beams, his face cracking open from ear to ear. “I am enjoying it, my dear sweet girl,” he whispered back, “didn’t you hear me humming along?”

Steve soon realized Tiny Tim was an asset to the Club in many other ways. He enjoyed meeting people and talking about his life, his religious beliefs and his long and rocky career as an entertainer. He had endless stories about the successes and failures of each of his previous incarnations. He had stories about his Polish family’s struggle for survival. And he had hilarious anecdotes about his own hygiene and beauty programmes, which involved, among other things, manicuring his nails, splattering cologne over his face, brushing his teeth with goat ’s milk and taking a shower several times a day. If Tiny Tim looked like a beatnik straight out of a Jack Kerouac novel, he certainly never smelt like one. Most nights he reeked of Elizabeth Arden’s Blue Grass but, occasionally, he’d try something a little more adventurous such as Jean Patou, which always reminded me of my Jugoslav grandmother.

The sheer novelty of a performer like Tiny Tim had struck a chord with New Yorkers. Here was a clean living individual (he didn’t drink, he didn’t smoke, he didn’t take drugs and I doubt if he even had sex) with old-fashioned values, jealously guarded principles and quaint codes of behaviour. He was quiet-spoken, polite, unassuming and gentle. To jaded New Yorkers, used to the brash, spoilt and, often, uncouth conduct of their pop stars, Tiny Tim was, like the old-fashioned songs he sang, a breath of fresh air from a bygone era.

Finally the Press got to hear about this phenomenon. And, by 1968, just three years later when I was travelling alone across the vast icy plains of Siberia, Tiny Tim was whisked off to appear before millions of Americans on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. This was immediately followed by offers of recording contracts, club bookings and concert spots around the world. At the age of 45, or thereabouts, Tiny Tim, as Steve Paul had accurately predicted, had finally made the big time.

Memoir Blog # 6, Life With Joe

Chapter 6

 

Life with Joe, I found out very swiftly, was anything but boring. The phone never stopped ringing, the invitations never stopped arriving and people would drop in on any excuse just for a chat. For a few weeks I had the definite feeling that many were passing by simply to give me the once over. Joe had acquired scores of female friends over the years and they had become quite possessive of him. His was a good shoulder to cry on when their husbands played away from home. Or, if their husbands were too tied up with work, Joe had been happy to escort them to dances, cocktails, film premieres, gallery openings and first nights at the theatre. And he was a useful extra man for dinner parties. All this, they realized, would abruptly change now that I had appeared on the scene. They needed some reassurance from Joe that he would still be available for the occasional date and I needed to reassure them I was no threat. Joe was very skilful about handling both their hurt feelings and my sense of being an unwelcome intruder. In the end they totally accepted me. In fact several gave me some advice as to how to get by in New York.

 

“Sharpen your edges a bit, little one,” Julie Gabor, the mother of Eva, Magda and Zza Zza, told me one night, “you’re much too, how shall I say it – sveet? If you vant to be success in New York you gotta become more stronger, you know, more selfish and more demanding. Stay as you are, darlink, and you’ll die, for sure, I should know.”

 

I guessed, of all people, Julie Gabor should certainly know what she was talking about. After all she had successfully educated her three blonde daughters to appreciate what she considered the “finer” things of life – ageing millionaires, 24 carat diamonds and multi-million dollar trust funds made out in their favour, not necessarily in that order.

 

At a ladies’ lunch party the actress Mamie Van Doren told me, “God, darling, you look so young. Make yourself look a bit older otherwise Joe will be had up for statutory rape. And none of us would want that now, would we?”

 

I think my jaw dropped open. I wasn’t quite sure how to respond.

“She’s just jealous,” Joe revealed later, “A woman past a certain age and all that! One day you’ll understand!”

 

Rita Gam, famous for once being the room-mate of Grace Kelly and for a brief but memorable part as an American Indian in a Marlon Brando Western, warned me, “Darling, Joe’s got literally hundreds of girlfriends. Just keep a watchful eye, you know what I mean? I’m sure he loves you but…..”

 

But what? I wanted to ask but didn’t. There was no point. By that time I was pretty confident Joe was besotted by me and, although I got jealous from time to time with all the midnight phone calls from neurotic women seeking his sympathy, I never viewed them as a threat to what was fast blossoming into a serious relationship for us both. 

 

In the end, though, I think most of his friends, both male and female, were happy for Joe he’d finally found someone he could live with and, more to the point, someone who could actually live with him.

 

In fact it even surprised Joe how easily he slid into “married” life with me, as he called it. He had been a bachelor for 45 years. So to invite me to live in his studio was a life-changing decision for him.

 

“I had absolutely no misgivings,” he told me a month or so after I moved in. “It seemed like the most natural thing in the world to me. I never hesitated for a moment. Nor have I regretted it.”

 

“Not even once?” I asked.

 “Not even once,” he replied.

 

I never found my new lifestyle with Joe easy, since it required going out to at least three or four parties every single night. But I eventually found a formula to cope with it. To date I had never been a very social person so this nightly routine of Joe’s, which I was now expected to embrace, was a complete anathema to me.

 

“Look on the bright side, darling” he constantly reminded me, “it certainly has its advantages.”

 

I had to admit that was true. Firstly I was able to make important new contacts that were helpful to my work as a radio producer. And secondly, it enabled the two of us to take all-expenses paid junkets to places such as Jamaica, for the opening of a new resort in Montego Bay, to Aruba, for the opening of the new Sheraton Hotel, to Palm Beach for the opening of “The Nutcracker Suite”. One weekend we flew down to Washington on the invitation of Perle Mesta to attend an event she was organizing, the 50^th Anniversary Tribute to Ethel Merman.  A decade earlier Perle herself, the original Democratic “hostess with the mostess”, had been immortalised in the successful Broadway musical, “Call Me Madam”.

 

“And, best of all,” Joe continued, “if there is nothing else for us to do, we can always go downstairs (Carnegie Hall) and get free seats in the stalls or standing room at the back.”

 

That too was true. I knew I couldn’t complain. In just a few short months we had listened to artists such as Arthur Rubenstein, Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone and Ray Charles – all for free.

 

We were also invited to every first night, every movie premiere and every concert and ballet performance, including the Beatles at Shea Stadium, Rudolf Nuryev and Margot Fonteyn at the Lincoln Centre and Laurence Olivier on Broadway. Other than the endless society parties, I knew I had very little to complain about.

 

Six months after I met Joe I gave up the futile attempt of trying to combine my work schedule at WINS with his nightly routine. Although his contacts had become increasingly useful to my work and I was managing to get some “awesome guests”, as my boss, Sandy Lesberg, described them, I found I just couldn’t take the pace any more. Among the guests I had managed to invite on the show were pin-up girl Jayne Mansfield, Republican Mayoral candidate John Lindsay, composer Burt Bacharach, actors Gig Young and Tony Randall, New York Senator Jacob K Javits and the film critic Clive Barnes,

 

But the pace was furious, too furious for my constitution. I started taking amphetamines to keep me alert and functioning. Our combined nightly routines gave Joe and me little alternative other than try to sleep during the day. For Joe that was fine but, for me, that was impossible. The phone rang all the time and people constantly dropped by to leave an invitation, a request or simply to gossip. They had little understanding of the needs of us “night owls” and I found myself perpetually weary from lack of sleep.

 

One of our fellow “night owls” in the Carnegie Hall studios was the jazz pianist, Bobby Short. Bobby was the highly successful resident cabaret performer at Manhattan’s elegant Café Carlyle. Often, on the way home at night, Joe and I would drop by the Carlyle to enjoy Bobby’s unique talent on the piano.

 

One afternoon, soon after I moved in with Joe, Bobby called him to say,
”Joe darling, Frank Sinatra’s in town. Gloria and I are planning a dinner for him next week. I hope you and Caroline can come.”  The “Gloria” he referred to was his very close friend, the designer, Gloria Vanderbilt Cooper. Independent and headstrong, Gloria, had recently defied the wrath of her wealthy family and shocked New York society when she decided to move in with Bobby, the gay black pianist.

 

The dinner party numbered around twenty people. And, even though we literally lived just down the corridor, Joe and I predictably arrived late. Dinner had already begun. Bobby got up to welcome us. He was dressed, not in his usual impeccable pin- striped suit but in a flowing white beaded caftan. He drew me to an empty chair next to Bill Paley, the founder of CBS Television. On my other side was Peter Duchin, the popular resident pianist at the St.Regis Hotel’s Maisonette Club. Peter’s wife Cheray Zauderer was seated across from us. Frank Sinatra sat a little further up, on my side of the table, between Gloria and Bill Paley’s beautiful wife, Babe. There were several other people there, some of whom I recognized, such as society beauty Fiona Thyssen and publicist Earl Blackwell, and others I did not. When we arrived the conversation and the wine were both in full flow.   

 

Mouthing excuses, I edged into my seat. Bill Paley was very gracious. We had already had a nodding acquaintance at various functions before but this was the first time I was able to talk to him in depth.

 

I told him one of my best friends, Rupert Hitzig, worked for him.

 

“Talented young man he is, he’ll go far!” Bill predicted. And, although neither of us could have possibly known it then, he was right. In another ten years Rupert Hitzig would replace William S Paley to become the head of CBS.

 

Our conversation then veered towards the one person in New York that always managed to shock, fascinate and amuse me, Truman Capote. It was no secret that Truman was infatuated with Bill’s wife, the very beautiful Babe Paley. There was a time when Truman was so often in her company and in her homes in New York and Long Island that the Paley marriage could have been accurately described as a “ménage a trois”.

 

“Aren’t just a little bit jealous?” I teased after a couple of minutes warm-up.

 

“Of Truman?” he asked incredulously, “Why? He keeps my wife amused, entertained and flattered while I’m hard at work. What more could a man want?” He laughed.

I could see his point. “You mean all gossip and no sex?”

He laughed again, “You got it! Hey, you’re a bright kid. When you need a job come and see me!” He raised his wine glass and winked.

 

By the end of the night, toasts were being made, each one more slurred and more cringing than the last. Most were in praise of the evening’s “special” guest, Frank Sinatra, telling him what a great man he was, what a privilege it was to be in his company and how fortunate we all were to know him.

 

Personally I had never seen the attraction of Frank Sinatra, neither as a man nor as a singer. It seems there was a huge difference in his appeal for those born before and those born after the war. To the Sixties generation not only was he not of our decade, he didn’t seem part of our century. To us, brought up on the Beatles, the Byrds and the Rolling Stones, Frank Sinatra was irrelevant. He was history, a musical relic from another era, much like the dinosaur. I found it hard to understand the adulation he enjoyed among my parents’ generation. To me he was physically ugly, too thin, too small and his ears stuck out too far. His language was vulgar, his manners coarse and he was already infamous for treating women with lecherous contempt and men with physical and verbal abuse.

 

And this night, at Bobby Short’s dinner, I was about to witness Frank Sinatra at his undeniable worst. When the toasts were over he raised his arms, stumbled to his feet and reached for his own glass to respond. The toast he made was not quite what everyone was expecting. Carefully surveying the room, eyeballing each woman in turn, he said,

 

“And I am privileged to be here. Thank you Bobby for inviting all these beautiful hookers. I want you all to know that,” he paused for dramatic effect and then, very slowly and deliberately pointing to each of the “hookers” around the table one by one, he said, “I have fucked every single one of them,” until his finger arrived at me, hesitating briefly, he added, “except her, who is she?”

 

A chill of complete horror pervaded the room. No one dared look anyone else in the eye. Wives, mothers and daughters froze. Husbands, fathers and sons glared. On both sides of me I felt Peter Duchin and Bill Paley shift uncomfortably. Everyone looked deep into their wine glasses, not daring to say a word.

 

I think the immediate reaction of all of us must have been had we heard right? Had Frank Sinatra just said what we thought he said?  Everyone looked at the drunken singer desperately hoping he was going to laugh, say it was a joke, apologize for his bad taste. But no, he was still standing there, innocently swallowing the contents of his glass, studying the expressions around him, thrilled at the mayhem he had just caused. One by one heads started to look up, each person looked at their escort. Doubts and questions must have been flooding their minds. Could what he said have been true? Was it just possible? When? Where? How did it happen? How dare he? How dare she? I shuddered to think what the conversations would be like later behind closed doors.

 

This was my first and, considering the circumstances, fortunately my last close encounter with Frank Sinatra and it clearly illustrated to me what an odious, obnoxious and belligerent character he was. He had broken every code in the book and he still stood there, conceited, gloating and self-satisfied as he watched everyone else in the room squirm. Drunk or not, there were no excuses to be made. And, besides, there was no doubt he was enjoying himself immensely. If nothing else, it clearly demonstrated he had no class at all. If he was determined to make such a compromising statement he should have made it in his own home, not at the home of someone he called his “friend”. By announcing this at someone else’s dinner party he had committed an unspeakable offence. Poor Bobby Short looked more shell-shocked than anybody. 

 

I decided there and then that I despised Frank Sinatra and I silently vowed to sully his name in public whenever and wherever I had the opportunity. I was thrilled, decades later, when I met the diminutive blonde author, Kitty Kelley, and she handed me a copy of “His Way”, her devastating unauthorized biography on him. And I noted with glee that, despite threats against her life, despite moves to injunct the book, Sinatra and his mafia friends were unable to prove successfully to a court that the lurid details it contained about his links with organized crime and many of the disreputable activities he was involved in throughout his career were not the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

 

The book was published intact in 1986 and gave the public an insight into the more unsavoury aspects of his life. By this time his bad behaviour was well-known, his filthy language was legendary and his uncouth bullying treatment of women was publicly acknowledged. But, despite all this, the public still continued to adulate him. In their eyes he could do no wrong. Perversely it was Kitty Kelley, not Sinatra, who was considered by many to be the villain. She had dared to write the unpalatable truth about an American icon. It was Kitty Kelley, not Sinatra, who was vilified and shunned following its publication. And it was Kitty Kelley, not Sinatra, who suffered most from the after-effects. I tried to analyze why that should be. It confirmed something I already knew about the American public that they are willing to forgive everything, sordid language, criminal activities and even physical abuse of women as long as the person is a much-loved celebrity. And Frank Sinatra was just such a celebrity.

New Neighbours

 In less than a week I had been convinced to move out of 59^th Street and into Joe’s studio above Carnegie Hall. The address was 881 Seventh Avenue. Joe’s neighbours in some of the other studios included the jazz pianist and cabaret singer Bobby Short, the Italian impresario Gian Carlo Menotti and the Actor’s Studio run by Lee and Paula Strasberg.

“There are enough characters and stories in this building to write an epic novel.” Joe said to me as Cecil, the elevator operator, helped us move my bags across the hall to studio, 906, “. Isn’t that right, Cecil?”

“Perhaps the Princess will do it some day!” Cecil replied, beaming at me.

From that moment on I became Cecil’s “princess”. He watched out for me, looked after me, carried my bags for me, hailed taxis for me and escorted me to my door whenever I was alone. He was a gentle giant from Jamaica, adored by all the residents of 881 Seventh Avenue, my new home. I asked him one day why he insisted on calling me “Princess” and not Caroline.

“You got class!” he announced, “You’re kind, you’re pretty, you’re intelligent. You’re not like the rest of the ladies in this town! You just got class.”

It’s hard for me even now to contemplate on the tragic event that befell my good friend and confidante, Cecil. Some years later, in 1988, I returned to New York and immediately went to pay a visit to Cecil. Joe had long ago moved out of Studio 906 so I asked Jimmy, the other elevator operator who was on duty that day about Cecil’s whereabouts. He shook his head sadly. He told me that some years back Cecil had been tried and convicted for second degree murder and had been in prison for almost a decade. I was shocked.

“But, Jimmy, he could never hurt a fly! You know that as well as I do! ” I protested.

Jimmy nodded. “I know it, Miss Caroline. They dun get him!”

I was very upset by the idea of my gentle champion, Cecil, languishing in some U.S. jail, perhaps never to be free again. I desperately wanted to send him a message from his “Princess” or, better still, visit him but Jimmy told me no one knew where he was being held.

“Hasn’t he even told you when he will be let out?” I asked.

“Nope. Nothing.”  Jimmy stared down at his feet. “He was my friend. Twenty years he was my best friend, Miss Caroline. And he’s gone,“

I didn’t push Jimmy further. It was obvious he was uncomfortable. I tried to change the subject.

“Remember, Jimmy, the first day I arrived in Studio 906 with Joe?”   I touched his arm. “Do you know what I thought? I thought living in Carnegie Hall, this is going to be heaven.”

Jimmy nodded again. “Mr Joe was a fine man,” he smiled. “and Miss Campbell too – a fine woman.“

The memories were suddenly very clear. I realized I had been gone for over twenty-two years and yet it all seemed so recent. I could hear Joe’s voice as he swung open the door to Studio 906 and ushered me in.

 “Jeannie Campbell lives above us, you’ll love her, she’s completely mad. I’m the godfather of her daughter, Kate.”

I certainly knew Jeannie by reputation. She was the granddaughter of Lord Beaverbrook, founder of the Express Newspapers. She was a journalist and, before arriving in the States, I had devoured her weekly columns in the Evening Standard on political life in Washington and New York.

There were two things in particular about Jeannie that had intrigued me. The first was that she had been married to one of my idols, the bad boy of American literature, Norman Mailer, by whom she had her eldest daughter, Kate. The second was that rumours abounded across the Atlantic, fuelled I’m sure, in part, by Jeannie herself, that she had been carrying on a longstanding affair with Jack Kennedy. In 1964 for anyone to admit publicly to such a thing about someone as sacred as Jack Kennedy was almost tantamount to treachery. Consequently she was vilified by the public at large and even by some of her journalist colleagues for besmirching his, so far, spotless reputation.

Some close to Washington, however, knew the truth about his relationships with women but preferred to remain silent. Others chose not to believe any of the many stories that gradually emerged over the succeeding years while, at the same time, wondering if there might be some truth in them. Still others, totally convinced of JFK’s sainthood, genuinely disbelieved them. It was fortunate for him that he had been so canonized by his own publicity machine that very few women dared admit to having an affair with him during his lifetime and some years beyond. A decade later, of course, all that would change dramatically.

On the top floor of 881 Seventh Avenue, lived the frail-looking eighty-year old Miss Tiffany with her rheumy eyes, her wide-brimmed black hat and her pet chichuaua, Toots. Miss Tiffany and Toots, I soon found out, were two of New York’s most endearing characters. Nobody could remember a time when they hadn’t seen Miss Tiffany in her wide-brimmed hat playing her accordion at night on 57^th Street and Seventh Avenue with the increasingly infirm and emaciated Toots curled up asleep beside her. Every night for forty years, come rain, sleet or snow, Miss Tiffany was there. The little money she made, she told me, she kept in cash under her mattress. But when she took me upstairs to inspect her “little money”, as she referred to her lifetime savings, it amounted to no less than $11,000, a small fortune in those days.

“Don’t trust the banks,” she sighed, trying to stuff a thin wisp of grey hair back under her wide-brimmed hat, “they steal your money!” Whether that was meant as a warning or as a belief based on personal experience I never found out.

About a year after my first encounter with Miss Tiffany, Toots died at the venerable age of 13. Or, as Miss Tiffany put it, “He was 91 but I thought he’d outlive me!” She was inconsolable and, to those of us residents worried about her welfare, we became increasingly concerned that she wouldn’t survive without him.

One day Joe, Cecil and I hatched a plot and, when she returned home in the early hours she found a chichuaua puppy in a basket waiting for her outside her door. It was love at first sight. As she bent down to pick him up, the puppy leapt into her arms, dislodging her wide-brimmed black hat and messing her wispy grey hair. But Miss Tiffany didn’t seem to notice. Tears were flowing down her cheeks.

“Toots! Toots! It’s my Toots!” she kept repeating, over and over.

Cecil picked up her accordion, I picked up her plastic bag with her evening’s takings, Joe unlocked her door to let her in and then we left the two of them alone.

The next night Joe and I visited her in her favourite spot in front of Carnegie Hall. “Toots” was curled up beside her and she was playing her heart out.

“What have you named him, Miss Tiffany?” I asked, stroking the sleeping dog.

Miss Tiffany stopped playing abruptly.

“What do you mean?”

“Caroline just wondered if you’d thought of a name for him yet,” Joe explained.

“Name?” she looked nonplussed, “why should I think of a name? He’s Toots. He’s always been Toots. You know that. Why do you ask?”

Later she told me she believed in reincarnation and that there was no doubt in her mind as soon as she saw the new puppy that he was the reincarnation of her beloved Toots.

Two years later I helped Miss Tiffany pack her plastic bags. She was finally leaving the studio that had been her home for so many years. She was being taken off to an actor’s retirement home in the Adironacks. As she sat on the sidewalk, bundled up among her packages waiting for the taxi to take her away, her wide-brimmed hat askew and her accordion on her lap, she shed a few tears. I instantly noticed Toots was not curled up beside her.

”Where’s Toots?” I asked alarmed.

Miss Tiffany hunched her frail shoulders and wept.

“I had to give him away,” she whispered, “they don’t want him where I’m going. Cecil’s finding a home for him.”

I gave her a hug.

“He’ll be fine,” I said unconvincingly, “Cecil will make sure he’s well looked after. Please don’t worry about him, Miss Tiffany.”

“I can’t help it,” she sniffed, “he was all I had. He means everything to me.”

The taxi came and Cecil and I helped Miss Tiffany into the front seat, taking great care not to dislodge her wide-brimmed hat.  She insisted all her plastic bags were placed behind her on the back seat where she could keep an eye on them. I tried to imagine the taxi driver’s expression if he just happened to peek into one of those bulging shopping bags and seen Miss Tiffany’s “little money” – $11,000 in notes and cash!

I clasped her hand through the window as the taxi started to draw away.

“Wait a minute,” she said. Despite her weak voice, the command was strident and the taxi driver abruptly applied the brakes.

“What is it, Miss Tiffany?” I asked.

“Tell Joe, don’t forget to write me up,” she said.

I promised I wouldn’t forget. And, as her taxi pulled out of sight, Cecil gave me one of his big bear hugs. I think we were both sad to see her go, knowing that, without Toots, without her nightly station outside Carnegie Hall and faced with life in an old people’s home, she would probably not last long. Her life would just ebb away.

Joe fulfilled the promise I’d made to her and this is what he wrote:

“……The cast of characters that called Carnegie Hall “home” ranged from Leonard Bernstein, Giancarlo Menotti and Marlon Brando to the photographer, Richard Avedon, and Bobby Short, the jet set pianist bandleader whose triplex there complete with skylight looked like everybody’s dream of Paris in the 1930s.

 The most unforgettable character there, however, was not a celebrity but a little old lady with the unlikely name of Lila Tiffany. Miss Tiffany played the accordion – not quite in Carnegie Hall but on the sidewalk outside.

 She also lived in a tiny studio above mine. In time out of memory Miss Tiffany had been a fixture in front of the Hall, her Mexican chihuaua, Toots, standing guard over the money box.

 Wonder of wonders, one day a casting director spotted Miss Tiffany and she wound up on Broadway in the role of the 101 year old woman in the James Agee play,  “All the Way Home”. The main requirement seemed to be looking 101 and, in that, Miss Tiffany was very convincing. So much so, they cast her in the movie as well. Meantime her accordion fell silent.

 But Broadway never beckoned again for Miss Tiffany. Someone stole her movie money and, in due course, Toots and his mistress were back in their favourite nightly spot, on the sidewalk outside Carnegie Hall.

 Knowing I was a journalist, Miss Tiffany often talked about a musical she was writing, never losing a chance to audition her songs for me, usually as a captive audience in the elevator.

 I can still hear her singing the theme song, “The Pen is Mightier than the Sword”. Her voice frail but on pitch, her performance surprisingly animated. But like some melodic time warp it all came out pure Gilbert & Sullivan.

 One night, some months later, the snow was falling and the wind howling when we came home around 2am.

 “The old lady is leaving,” said Cecil the elevator man, meaning that Miss Tiffany was off to the actors’ home in Lake Saranac. It was an 8 hour ride.

 Feeling I had to make a gesture, I rushed to my studio, grabbed a handful of small bills and a bottle of brandy and hurried up to Miss Tiffany’s. As I stepped into her studio I nearly tripped over her. There she sat on all her earthly possessions, suitcases, a small trunk and a myriad shopping bags. Toots was standing guard over the accordion.

Feeling embarrassed I thrust the money and the brandy at her and said, “I’ll keep track of you, Miss Tiffany,” as I backed into the elevator. That was the last I saw of her.

 Later that day I received a message from her. In the great tradition of theatre, she had requested, “Promise me, don’t forget to write me up.”

 So, Miss Tiffany, wherever you are, I’m delivering on that promise.

Joe’s studio, number 906, was a huge double height room with a minstrel’s gallery. On the second floor, off the balcony, was the only bedroom. There was a lot of light from the floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides of the room and views facing east towards the river and uptown towards 72^nd street. On the ground floor, on either side as you entered the studio, was a galley kitchen and a small bathroom.  In the main room and up on the balcony there were copious bookshelves, stuffed with books stacked in complete disorder. Despite being owned by a bachelor, studio 906 was surprisingly well kept. Cecil’s aunt, Lillian, who lived in New Jersey, came once a week to sweep up, dust, polish and gossip about the antics of her extended family. Lillian was very happy to meet me that first day.

“Mr. Joe needs a woman,” she confided, “he been alone too long. You can see it. It’s not right – a man alone, you know. You make him plenty happy, girl. Mr. Joe, he be a good man. He deserve a good woman! And Cecil tell me you be a good woman!”

“I don’t know about that, Lillian!” I laughed.

“You’re young. You’re healthy. You be that woman!” she replied emphatically, leaving no room for argument.

At that moment the door opened and Mr. Joe arrived.

“I’ve got Jeannie and the tree!” he announced, “Where are we going to put it, Lillian?”

Jeannie Campbell was not as I expected a wife of Norman Mailer or a lover of JFK to be. For some foolish reason I expected both men to go for trophy women, blonde, curvaceous and long-limbed. And Jeannie was none of these. Although she was an attractive woman with a commanding presence, she was certainly not beauty queen material. It was a warm Spring day in New York and she was dressed very conventionally in Scottish tweeds, with a pastel lambswool twin set and row of pearls and what I refer to as “sensible” shoes, English leather brogues with laces. She had dark curly hair and a typically Scottish, pink and white, complexion.

“Jeannie, this is Caroline! Caroline this is Jeannie!”

“Yes, the one you never stop talking about!” Jeannie smiled and then drew me to her ample bosom and kissed me. “You must be special to have got our Joe,” she laughed, “We all love him…so make sure you look after him!” She abruptly let go of me and swivelled round. “Now where are we going to put this rubber tree, Lillian?”

“Couldn’t you leave it upstairs, Miss Jeannie, and I’ll water it every week while you’re away?” Lillian suggested hopefully. A fine idea I thought, considering the size of the tree waiting outside in the hall.

“Oh, no, I can’t possibly do that. I promised it to Joe,” Jeannie said, “I’ll take it back when I return.” That appeared to be the end of the discussion. So the four of us proceeded to grab the tree at various points and drag, push and haul it into the studio, spilling gravel, earth and dry leaves as we went. Lillian was muttering away under her breath about the mess we were making as we struggled to pull the tree over her newly polished hardwood floor. Eventually we managed to resurrect all 30 feet of it, up against the balcony, securing it with a rope.

“There, you see!” Jeannie exclaimed, proudly standing back and admiring it, “I told you it would look great here, Joe. Now you can climb up to bed at night instead of using the stairs. It’ll be good exercise for you!”

She said her goodbyes, kissed us all, including Lillian and left in a typical rush.

“That’s Jeannie for you,” was Joe’s explanation, after she slammed the door shut. “So what do you think of the woman who has no navel?”

“I beg your pardon?” I asked, not quite grasping the question.

Lillian blushed, “Mr. Joe, please….”

“No navel, it’s true!” he continued, “She had it surgically removed, or covered up. She thought it was an ugly thing! You ask her next time you see her.”

I contemplated the idea of a woman with no navel. It sounded suitably surrealistic for Jeannie but I couldn’t imagine what she would look like in a bikini.

“It’s a bit bizarre, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Well it certainly jump starts an interesting discussion at dinner parties!” Joe laughed.

“When will she be back?” I asked.

“With Jeannie, who knows?” Joe replied, “Next week, next year. She’s got a new man in her life, so maybe never!”

Lillian said, “My, my! Miss Jeannie, no navel, I do declare! Wait till I tells my husband that!”, and then, placing her hands on her aproned hips, laughed uncontrollably.

And thus my life with Joe started. Miss Tiffany and Jeannie were just two of the many characters I would meet over the coming years.

A Blind Date

 

 

Caterine embraced Olivier when we arrived at his sumptuous East 54^th Street apartment. It seemed to me very much the perfect bachelor pad. Very masculine in taste, it boasted comfy black leather Chesterfields, modern furniture and huge picture windows overlooking the New York skyline. Olivier, as it turns out, was one of those natural cosmopolitans that feel at home anywhere they go, as long as they have their creature comforts. Originally from Paris he had been in New York for a few years by this time, having successfully established himself as someone who could feel the pulse of the people, could predict trends and could attract capital to his business ventures.

 

I ignored the knowing glances between Olivier and Caterine as he shook my hand. It appeared to be a wink of approval and, for a brief moment, I had the horrible feeling I might have been brought along by Caterine as a “playmate” for Olivier. But, as he made no specific attempts to chat me up, that particular thought evaporated. He grabbed me by the arm and ushered me into the living room where a group of people were already drinking and chatting. The introductions were brief and I squeezed myself into a sofa beside Howard Oxenberg, the ex-husband of Princess Elizabeth of Jugoslavia.

 

“From London?” Howard guessed correctly, breaking the ice.

 

I nodded, “Yes. Do you know it?”

 

“Only too well. In fact the last time I was there I met your Queen.”

 

“Really? How did she strike you?” I asked.

 

“To tell the truth, I struck her!” he chuckled, “I was standing in line with Elizabeth, my then wife, waiting to be introduced to her. Very formal it was. Some stuffy dinner at the Palace. Evening gowns, tiaras and all that. Elizabeth was whispering something to me about bowing low and kissing the Queen’s hand. She told me to observe the others ahead of us in the line, see how they did it. Well, I watched but obviously didn’t get the hang of it. I’m quite tall, you see, and I think when the Queen held out her hand to me I bent down just a bit too far. I guess I was nervous about making a good impression. When I turned my head upwards and looked for her hand it was way above me and I didn’t have much choice. I either had to hit her hand with my head on my way back up or kiss her hand on the wrong side, on her palm which, apparently, is not the done thing!”

 

I laughed. “How did she react?”

 

“Oh, I think we were not amused at all! One of those famously sour looks. You know.”

 

“I know your ex wife” I said.

 

“How so?” he looked intrigued.

 

I told him about my Serbo-Croatian lineage. I told him how I’d met Elizabeth and most of her relatives in London over the years. In fact the long family association had started with our respective grandparents.

 

“So we’re almost related?” he joked.

 

“Hardly!” I laughed, “No royal blood in my veins. Just good rural peasant stock!”

 

I told him my grandmother and I had visited Elizabeth in the New York hospital when she had given birth to their second daughter, Christina.

 

“I even babysat Tina and Catherine in London a few times when Elizabeth was living nearby me in the King’s Road.”

 

“No kidding!” he laughed, “Quite a handful my girls, I bet?”

 

As time passed and people began to get hungry, Olivier announced: “I’m sorry, dinner’s a bit late. We’re waiting for Joe.”

 

That explanation alone was enough to make everyone smile. It was obvious by their expressions that this Joe, whoever he was, made a habit of being late.

 

As if confirming this point, someone asked. “Joe Dever? God, don’t wait for him. He’s always late!”

 

Without exception, the guests nodded in agreement. “Yes, don’t let’s wait for him, for heaven’s sake. You know him, he might not turn up till midnight!”

 

So we filed into dinner. The empty chair reserved for Joe just happened to be, or was intended to be, beside me. We were halfway through the meal, listening intently to Olivier’s latest plans for a new nightclub, to be called The Hippodrome, the largest of its kind in New York, when the door opened and Joe Dever walked in. What I saw was a middle-aged man, pale skin, blond hair, slightly effeminate, with a very gentle face. What I also noticed was everyone’s face light up with surprise and pleasure. Despite being notoriously unpunctual, it was evident that this Joe was still a popular man amongst this particular group of New Yorkers.

 

Olivier stood up. “Welcome, Joe. You know everyone, of course!”

 

Joe looked around, nodding at the assembled gathering. Then he looked at me.

 

“Not me, yet,” I said, holding out my hand.

 

“Joe, this is Caroline Kennedy. Caroline this is Joe Dever. Why don’t you sit right there, Joe, next to her?”

 

Neither Joe nor I knew at that moment that this was a planned meeting – a set up, a blind date arranged by Olivier and Caterine. We shook hands and Joe sank down beside me. We were unable to talk for the first half of dinner as the guest on his other side proceeded to monopolize him in a lengthy discussion about a charity event she would be hosting in a few weeks time.

 

“You must come and write about it, Joe, please say you will. Just everyone’s going to be there. We’re hoping to raise $100,000. Guess what, I’ve got Sally Rand – remember her? – doing her famous fan dance. And I even took you up on your suggestion to ask dear Robert to open it for me.” (I later found out she was referring to Mayor Robert Wagner).

 

“Sally Rand, my God, she must be over 80, isn’t she?” someone asked, “Does anyone really want to see her dancing nude on stage at that age?”

 

The charity organizer looked offended. “Darling, she’s still got the most faaaaabulous figure, you’d be sooooo jealous. I’ll sell you some tickets in a minute, you really must come see for yourself.”

 

Joe looked at me and shrugged his shoulders. I could see he was bored but, as I soon learned, being a good listener was all part of his job. He had to listen otherwise he wouldn’t have anything to write about. And he genuinely enjoyed it, which was probably the secret of his popularity. Unlike other New York gossip columnists Joe was not intoxicated by the sound of his own voice, did not have a gargantuan ego, nor was he in the least bit opinionated. He simply listened quietly and people naturally trusted him.

 

When he eventually managed to extricate himself from the one-sided conversation Joe immediately turned to me. And, as soon as I spoke he knew where I came from. Like many Americans of his generation, he was a great Anglophile and he had particularly fond memories of London. And also, like many New Yorkers, he had Irish ancestry, hence his middle name, Xavier. Yet again, I thought, the American Vice Consul in London had been right. New Yorkers, and that included Joe Dever, appeared to be entranced by my English accent.

 

I have little recollection of what we talked about during dinner but it was enough to know that Joe and I would become, at least, good friends. I was nineteen but looked about 15. Joe was already 45 and looked, possibly, older. But to me at that time anyone over 40 tended to look old. I was impetuous, headstrong and excited at being in New York but, although I didn’t realize it then, I was totally out of my depth in a city where the majority of society people I’d met so far had struck me as being phony, jaded and materialistic. I discovered immediately that Joe was none of those things. He was very open with me from the start.

 

“Listen, darling,” he told me, “I have no excuses. I’m a hack writer of a trashy gossip column. I know I could do a lot better but right now this is how I make my living.”

 

Joe, I discovered that night, was also a procrastinator and a dreamer.

 

“One day, darling,” he continued, “I’ll write my magnum opus and, believe me, it won’t contain one shred of gossip!” He continued to say this to me over the next thirty-five years I knew him. In fact, a week before he died we spoke on the phone and, despite being seriously incapacitated by a stroke, he vowed he would be back typing out the manuscript for his long-awaited book as soon as he replaced the receiver.

 

Needless to say, we left Olivier’s together that night.

 

Joe told me later, ”I called Olivier the next day to thank him for inviting me. I told him, Olivier you may have changed my life forever!”

 

“How so?” Olivier had apparently asked him, already anticipating the answer. After all he had been responsible for setting us up.

 

“Introducing me to Caroline, I’ve haven’t felt this way about a girl in years, I’m so grateful!”

 

“That, mon ami, was very obvious to everyone!” Olivier had chuckled, “Good luck!”

 

As we headed towards my apartment in a taxi, Joe suddenly asked,

 

“Would you do something with me?”

 

I half expected an invitation to his place and bristled slightly that he would put me on the spot so soon.

 

“If you’re going to invite me to your apartment, the answer’s definitely no!” I said more emphatically than I felt. For some reason the thought of returning to my second floor walk up that night to be faced by loaded questions from the ever-inquisitive trio of Ming, Rupert and Manny did not seem at all inviting.

 

Joe laughed. “No, no! Not that. I hope you don’t think….heavens no! What I wanted you to do, if you don’t mind a late night, is come downtown with me while I file my column.”

 

As a budding journalist, this idea naturally thrilled me.

 

“Of course!” I replied, little imagining that, by accepting his invitation, I had started a routine that would last over the next three years.

 

The office of the World Telegram & Sun, a Scripps Howard newspaper, was housed in dank warehouses downtown on Houston and Canal Streets. Electric light bulbs swung on wires suspended from the ceiling of the newsroom, flies buzzed around them, typewriters clattered noisily in the background and the night editor, peering out from under his green eye shade, barked out his orders to the hovering journalists waiting around on desk duty. For a young journalist, this was heady stuff. This, I decided, was where I wanted to spend the rest of my life. Phones ringing, news breaking, excitement mounting, a surge of adrenalin immediately pumped through me.

 

Joe sat down at his typewriter, pulled out his notes and started typing. He looked up at me every so often, worried that I might be bored.

 

“You don’t regret it?” he asked.

 

“Are you joking?” I laughed, “This is pure, unadulterated heaven to me!” And I meant it. I could have sat there all night absorbing the atmosphere, observing the frantic goings-on, listening to the breaking news stories.

 

At around 3am, tired but exhilarated, Joe dropped me off at my apartment. I sneaked in hoping not to wake the others and collapsed on the sofa, unwilling, for once, to share my bed with Manny. Something had happened that night and, although it was probably obvious to all, I couldn’t yet figure it out.

My first job.

 

I don’t know what stroke of good fortune directed me to Joe Dever.  I still strongly believe, even after all these years that a guardian angel has been sitting on my shoulder during my solitary travels. The night I met Joseph X. Dever that certainly must have been the case.

 

Up until I met Joe I had been sharing a cheap second floor walk-up apartment on 59th Street, between 3rd Avenue and the 59th Street Bridge, made world famous by the singer-songwriting team of Simon and Garfunkel. The location of the flat was, in my view, perfect. Half a block from Third Avenue, it was a street boasting literally dozens of junk shops, many of them set behind drab facades, broken shutters and dirty windows. Once inside, however, their dusty interiors revealed bargains galore for an insatiable collector like me. Strolling through them on a lazy Saturday afternoon was my idea of heaven.

 

The other advantages of living near Third Avenue was that I was close enough to Bloomingdales to make sure I never ran out of cheap underwear, close enough to Howard Johnson’s to satisfy my daily craving for any one of their 37 flavours of ice cream. And close enough to P.J. Clarkes, the famous Irish-style pub, to arrange meetings with friends after work in a relaxed environment. Not that I drank in those days. I remained a teetotaller until I was 39.

 My flatmate was another English girl, Ming Gellatly. I had met Ming at school in Switzerland and, after school was over, we hung out together in London. Ming was not beautiful in the accepted sense but she was definitely very striking. She had deep olive skin, almond shaped grey eyes, and shoulder length reddish brown glossy hair. She was quick witted, generous and had an infectious sense of humour. There was no doubt she was extremely appealing to men. I had been aware of this fact from our first skiing lesson together in Gstaad when our tanned young ski instructor had taken a little more trouble teaching her how to snowplough to a dignified halt than he had the rest of us.

 

 

Ming had preceded me to New York, writing copious letters begging me to join her. These letters were filled with gossip mainly about men and how crazy they were for English girls and how easy it was for girls with English accents to get laid and to obtain jobs. In fact I needed little encouragement. New York sounded vast, cosmopolitan and enticing. Although, in those days, it was London that was considered by the world’s youth to be “swinging”, to me it seemed dull, insular and parochial in comparison.

 

Now, finally, here I was in the Big Apple. While I was hunting around for a job I enrolled at the Art Students League and attended classes three times a week. As with many art establishments, the school had its share of dilettantes but the majority of the students were serious and the standard was pretty high. Too high, I decided, for my limited talents. I realized pretty soon that I was never going to be an artist. So most of the time I offered to model for the portrait classes in order to avoid the embarrassment of showing up my lack of draftsmanship and being kicked out of school.

 

The face peering out of the finished portraits, particularly those produced by the male students, seemed to belong more to Jean Shrimpton than to me. “The Shrimp”, at that time, was at the height of her modelling career. If the words ‘international supermodel’ had been coined then, she would certainly have merited it. I was flattered, of course, that my classmates thought I resembled her since I considered, somewhat naively, that her large blue eyes, her porcelain skin and her mane of tumbling honey-coloured hair were all the attributes needed to be classified as a beautiful, seductive and desirable woman. I wondered, was it wishful thinking on the men’s part – or did I, perhaps, have all these things?

 

Many of the boys, excited by a fresh face from “Swinging London”, invited me out on dates but I resisted. Ming said she had other plans for me. She had been in New York for some time before I arrived on the scene and was determined to guide me around and introduce me to her wide circle of friends. Ming was a party animal and she was keen to convert me to the pleasures, both social and sexual, that New York offered.

 

“No beatnik art students for you, my girl!” she giggled, “I’ve got other ideas!”

 

Ming’s boyfriend at the time was an ardent young television executive, Rupert H. Pleasant looking and fun-loving he was fairly short in height but, as Ming confided to me in his presence,

“What he lacks in height, darling, he makes up for in size! He’s coming over this evening, Caroline” she winked, “and he’s bringing his friend, Manny. We can all go out together. Rupert’s told him about you. He’s looking forward to meeting you.”

 

It was obvious the pair were hatching a plan.

 

Manny turned out to have a more serious nature than his friend, Rupert. Although entirely different both in looks and character, they appeared to be inseparable. While Rupert, like a budding TV executive, was always clean shaven, manicured and elegantly dressed in spotless shirt, sombre tie and well pressed suit, Manny was content to shuffle around in a long dark trenchcoat, his fair, wavy hair constantly ruffled, a frown perched across his dark eyes creating a brooding, anxious look. I found out a few days into our affair that Manny had been fucking or, as Rupert so quaintly put it, “doing it to” Ming’s previous flatmate, Daphne, who had moved out of the apartment the day I moved in. Daphne and I had met briefly on the doorstep heading in opposite directions. I imagined it must have been a source of unparalleled amusement to both Rupert and Ming that Manny managed to “do it” to me without the least resistance on my part and within a day of Daphne’s departure. 

 

“Hell, don’t you know, Caroline? It’s always the strong silent types you girls gotta beware of!” Rupert joked when I spluttered something about how he and Ming should have warned me that Manny was probably just in it for the sex.

 

“Fuck the strong silent types!” I retorted, somewhat irritated by his obvious enjoyment of the situation. “That’s the last one for me!” I stormed out of the living room into my adjoining bedroom where Manny was curled up in bed chuckling away to himself as my indignant reaction penetrated through the flimsy plasterboard walls. He patted the mattress beside him. “It’s warm here, my love, why don’t you join me?” Being a creature of little resistance and a temper that tends to subside as soon as it erupts, I needed no second bidding. I realize, even today, that I never have quite got over my penchant for strong silent types.

 

Probably the four of us would have continued our respective affairs had I not been introduced to Caterine Milinaire. Caterine, the stunning, raven-haired daughter of the Duchess of Bedford, was the junior editor at Vogue magazine and she introduced me to the New York fashion scene. In no time at all, it seemed, I had been photographed by Richard Avedon, attended several fashion shows and got my first job making decorative Indian-style belts for a recently opened boutique named Paraphernalia. Paraphernalia was owned by a passionate Anglophile, Raybelle, and was fashioned on the many little boutiques that she had seen on a TV documentary about London’s King’s Road.

 

The shop sold everything from Tiffany lamps to the newly designed Rudi Gernreich topless bathing suits to the latest Rolling Stones records. Raybelle’s little emporium sold it all. I spent my days tapping my fingers to “I Wanna Be Your Man”, Raybelle’s favourite record, and describing to her, again and again, what it felt like to actually live in “Swinging London”, to see the Rolling Stones in the flesh, to shop in Carnaby Street, to drive around in a mini and to have a haircut by Vidal Sassoon. The fact that I was not currently living in London, that I hadn’t yet met any of the Rolling Stones, that I had only ever shopped in Carnaby Street occasionally, that I had never been the proud owner of a mini and that I was not a fan of Vidal Sassoon haircuts did not seem to deter her in the least. I made it all up and she lapped it all up. Without ever having set foot across the ocean, Raybelle was a mad afficionado of everything that Sixties London represented and, for the time being, I was its emissary.

 

Raybelle’s miniskirt raised many eyebrows, particularly among the male clients and she revelled in their admiring glances. It was shocking pink, no larger than a table napkin and hardly covered the tops of her thighs. And her enviable long skinny legs were habitually covered in paisley patterned tights and patent leather thigh length boots. It was what she called her “English look”. She professed to adore my English accent and she dubbed the contents of my Biba and Ossie Clarke wardrobe as “Divine, darling, simply divine!” It took her no time at all to hire me. She wanted, as she said, “a real live English doll” as a full time member of her staff. 

 

But life at Paraphernalia where, other than making belts, I was simply a glorified salesgirl, was destined not to last long. At a party one night I bumped into another Anglophile, Sandy Lesberg and his wife, Betty. Sandy was a big, bearded redhead with ambition. His wife was a pretty blonde dominated by her husband’s huge personality. Sandy took me aside and, with a self-important air, told me, “I need to talk to you Caroline – seriously.”

 

“Yes? What about?” I asked. I had a horrible feeling he might divulge the terrible state of his marriage, in my experience a ploy often used by men prior to seduction. Happily though it seemed his marriage was still very much intact.

 

“I have been offered to front a six hour programme every night on 1010 WINS New York. I’m looking for a team to help put it together. Would you be interested?”

 

I didn’t want to sound too eager but it was hard to disguise the excitement I felt. This might offer the chance to fulfill my journalistic ambitions while, at the same time, getting me out from under Raybelle’s shocking pink miniskirt.

 

“You bet!” I answered, “What would it involve?”

 

“I need a producer, well, a couple of them actually. It’s a lot of time to fill, six hours a night, six nights a week. All talk. I like your accent too, I can’t deny that. You might come over good on radio. How does that sound?”

 

That sounded even better. Me on the radio, I definitely liked the sound of that.

 

“I think I could handle it,” I assured him nonchalantly, “when can we discuss this properly?”

 

Sandy grabbed my arm, steered me towards Betty and led the two of us out of the room. Outside the building he hailed a cab and we headed off to Sardi’s to discuss the offer “properly”.

 

By the end of the evening, I was hired. I would work alongside Betty as a producer of “The Sandy Lesberg Night Time Programme”. The job was to start the following week. I was on top of the world. This was giddy stuff for a girl like me. I had only been in New York a couple of months, I had no contacts to speak of and now a top job had simply fallen into my lap. The American Vice Consul was right, it was the English accent again that had clinched it, I was sure. I couldn’t wait to get home and tell the waiting trio.

 

“Good for you!” Rupert enthused, “Soon you’ll be joining me at CBS!”

 

“At this rate I could be there next year, who knows?” I joked.

 

Manny hugged me, “I’m real proud of you. Hey, everyone, my girl’s a radio producer, how about that?”

 

Raybelle was not quite so pleased when I gave in my notice the next day.

 

“Honeychile, you might just live to regret it,” she whined like a spoilt child, stamping her patent leather spikes into the hardwood floor.

 

“I doubt it, Ray. It’s going to be hard work but I’ll love every minute of it. You might even hear me if you tune in to 1010 WINS one night.”

 

“What am I going to do for belts, honey?” she asked, trying to prick my conscience.

 

“Well I’m not planning to make any more, if that’s what you want. My fingertips are raw. Sorry Ray but I’ve got to move on. You understand?”

 

“See if I care, girlfriend,” she retorted, petulantly tossing her long black tresses over her shoulders. “Do what you like, it’s your life. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

 

What there was to warn me about I wasn’t quite sure. Overworked and underpaid I certainly was over the next few months. But it was exhilarating. It gave me the opportunity to call people out of the blue – celebrities, politicians, businessmen, artists, actors and writers to invite them on the show. In fact, in a sudden display of Southern hospitality and to prove there were no hard feelings on her part, Raybelle twice invited me to lunch at the United Nations with her “real good and sweet pal” Kurt Waldheim. And, with a little “friendly persuasion” from Raybelle that involved wrapping her paisley-covered thighs around his legs under the table, even Austria’s dour Permanent Representative to the United Nations was tantalized enough to agree to do a radio interview with Sandy Lesberg.

 

The format for the show included nightly political interviews, round table discussions on current topics, celebrity interviews, music reviews, theatre reviews, film and book reviews, a travel section and poetry reading.

 

I soon discovered that six hours a night, six nights a week was, as Sandy had warned it would be, a lot of air time to fill but I threw myself into it with enthusiasm and everyday it became a little easier. My daily routine was fairly simple. I arrived at the office at around 12pm, spent most of the afternoon on the telephone booking guests for the coming shows, helped tape interviews for the later half of the programme, stayed on during the evening to receive that night’s guests and then, when the last guest had left around 5am, made my way home. Some nights, when Betty and I hadn’t procured enough guests or guests failed to turn up at the last minute, Sandy interviewed me about subjects as diverse as Swinging London, holiday travel, the New York social scene and contemporary artists. I started receiving fan mail from as far away as Mississippi, Georgia and Delaware from long distance truck drivers who “just loved” my English accent.

 

During the middle part of 1964 when the New York taxi drivers went on strike I hitched my rides uptown with the early morning laundry cart whose driver, Jimmy, took pity on me one day. In the end it became a regular trip.

”It’s on my way,” Jimmy explained, “and I get to have some company at this hour of the morning.”

 

“Suits us both then,” I replied, pleased that I would no longer have to pay exorbitant rates for a taxi to take me home every morning.

 

One Sunday night, my only night off, I made my excuses to Manny, Rupert and Ming and escaped with Caterine and her boyfriend, photographer Maurice Hogenboom, to a dinner party hosted by Olivier Coquelin, the French entrepreneur. I didn’t know it at the time but the dinner party I was about to attend would drastically change my life.