Redeeming Features by Nicholas Haslam

Author:Nicholas Haslam [Haslam, Nicholas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-27306-2
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2009-06-13T16:00:00+00:00

THERE WAS OFTEN SAID TO have been more newsprint devoted to the Liz Taylor/Eddie Fisher/ Richard Burton/Sybil Burton tangle of marriage and divorce than to the entire Korean War. One of the central figures of this much publicized showbiz carousel was about to become a great friend. Much as I had admired Burton’s voice, presence, and intriguingly pockmarked beauty when I had seen him onstage in Camelot, I came to know that Sybil was the one who had emerged from this convoluted quadrangle with the most to lose. As a very young Welsh actress, she had married Burton when they were both ingenues at Stratford. They had two daughters and, Richard having become a major leading man, she thought, a perfect life. When he left her for Taylor, she was devastated. Having previously met in London, Sybil saw me, perhaps, as a sympathetic and obviously innocent companion for the first nights and Broadway parties that constituted her world, and thus she and I spent many evenings together. When at last she met and fell in love with the astonishingly handsome actor Jordan Christopher, they started a nightclub, inexplicably called Arthur. It was the coolest place for the young to go, drawing in also Sybil’s more intellectual friends like Mike Nichols, Elaine May, and Jules Feiffer, all delighted to be in a place where the music was so loud they didn’t have to hear themselves speak, let alone think.

Just starting at this time was the American version of the nouvelle vague, which involved making films using utterly unknown, untrained, and very young people in the lead parts. There was a huge buzz about how this was the new thing, the way movies were going, how that success could be copied, and so on. At Arthur one night I had run into and been charmed by the legendary bandleader Artie Shaw, fascinating for having been married to, among others, Lana Turner and Ava Gardner. His current wife was the actress Evelyn Keyes. As her previous husband was John Huston, the Shaws had most of Hollywood under their belt. They also had a screenplay, and for some reason seemed to think I was ideal to star in it. Naturally I was extremely flattered, and spent several evenings in their company, they topping up their Scotches, and conferring about the script, while occasionally appraising me closely across the table. In the end they saw through me, or saw a distinct lack of talent; for nothing came of the project, and I didn’t see Artie for years. Then, in Hollywood, at a studio head’s table for an Oscar dinner, there he was, a still-handsome man in a black and silver Western shirt and bolo tie.

“Mr. Shaw, you won’t remember me, but years ago you wanted to make me a movie star.”

He looked up, his eyes, old now, scrutinizing me; then he glanced around the table. “Well, looks like I succeeded, don’t it?” he said. One can’t ask for more than that in the charm department.

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