Gore Vidal by Fred Kaplan

Author:Fred Kaplan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 1999-08-16T04:00:00+00:00

In spring 1957 Sam Zimbalist, appalled at the awful script he had for the remake of Ben-Hur, sounded out his young writing star about doing a thorough revision. Drastic changes were needed to make it filmable. The successful 1925 silent Ben-Hur had become one of MGM’s signature films, a totemic invocation of the studio’s glory days. With profits continuing to decline, MGM executives hoped that a remake of Ben-Hur would revivify if not the studio system then at least the financial bottom line. Karl Tunberg, a well-established, well-connected journeyman scriptwriter, had, implausibly, been given the assignment. His specialty was light comedy, his most successful movie Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Zimbalist, with some anguish, immediately realized that Tunberg’s unwieldy, undramatic script would have to be redone by someone who knew something about first-century Rome. It would be more than ordinary polishing. Well read, interested in history, with a practical pen for dramatic economy, planning to write a novel about the Emperor Julian, Gore seemed just the right person. The assignment, though, did not appeal to him. Spectacular was dud enough. Ben-Hur might be worse. If he had to earn his living writing movie scripts, then he preferred at least to write the script, even if an adaptation, from scratch. With no wish to offend his paternal supporter, he tactfully begged off the assignment, leaving Zimablist to find someone else to solve his problem. Gore suggested Isherwood. The three of them had lunch together. After some deliberation, Zimbalist backed away from hiring Isherwood. From Vidal’s perspective, that was that. It was not his problem.

When the Malibu arrangement ended in late September, he was delighted to have some time at Edgewater. The Newmans, among others, came to visit, the river was attractive, the autumn weather lovely. As usual, by himself and with guests, as long as the warm weather lasted, he swam out to the island and back, eager for the exercise. Oscillating between slim firmness and noticeable expansion, he worried about his weight. He had bought an exercise machine, kept upstairs in his bedroom, to help him keep fit, which he soon declared a resounding failure.

From the bedroom window, from the octagonal study, from the perspective of the French doors that looked out on the lawn, from almost every angle and position, the river was there, the hazy blue Catskills in the distance. Friends came up by train from New York, for the day or overnight. Jean Stein, ten years younger than Gore, Doris and Jules’s daughter, whom he had last seen as a young girl in Los Angeles, stayed overnight. Claire Bloom visited. She was astounded at how Gore seemed simply not to hear the train roar by. Sam Lurie, who had briefly been on retainer as Gore’s press agent, came up with his companion and co-worker, Stanley Kaminsky, who recollected “being awakened at about two in the morning after having gone to bed and suddenly being … terrified. I thought it was an earthquake.” In the octagonal study Gore labored

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