Monday, July 29, 2024. Beautiful, sunny weather throughout the weekend with temps in the mid-80s, dropping to the low 70s by mid-evening.
A little history. Back in the mid-’70s, I had a friend who was working in the film business and writing scripts on the side. The potential project fascinated me and I instinctively decided to “write a script.” It was a story based on a murder in a prominent New York family that my father worked for as the chauffeur in the 1920s, full of sex and scandal; big cars and low bars.
I’d been a “writer” since I was a young kid and I asked for a Smith Corona Portable for Christmas and Santa (my mother complied). Portables were still new back then and I’m sure she thought of it as a “toy” for this boy at age ten. Which it was: everything and every thought that I couldn’t repeat went into the “text” as matters of facts. The keyboard remains in the role to this day.
Anyway, the script. When I finished it, my friend Beth Rudin DeWoody, who knew about it, asked if she could see it. I sent her a copy and unbeknownst to me she gave it to her mother Gladyce who was then living in Beverly Hills, the wife of a major agent/producer David Begelman. Gladyce in turn unbeknownst to me, gave it to a friend of hers, a briefly-former film actress named Sherry Lansing, also unbeknownst to me.
One early evening I came home from my business and the phone rang as I entered. Answering, it was a young woman with a voice of certainty but also sunshine (Southern California sunshine). She introduced herself and was calling from M-G-M. Already this was like a message from Outer Space to this boy. I only knew by her voice that she was young and probably very attractive and with a voice of certainty but also sunshine. Her name was “Sherry Lansing.”
She told me how much she loved the script and was so enthusiastic, more than once impressing on me that I should go out there and get into the business of writing scripts. (Were it that simple I later learned.) I also believed her if only because it was a suggestion (not an offer) that the kid had always dreamed of.
L.A. 1978. Ha-ha-ha-Hollywood! I can still recall the moment when I put the phone down and said to myself: “I’m going.” Eight months later in the Fall of 1978, I sold my business, gave up my residence, and with a big rescued mutt named Rex and five cats, I moved to L.A.
I never actually met Sherry until a couple of years after making the move. Her “star” at that time was on a meteoric rise, making history as the first woman head of the Studio (first, 20th Century-Fox and later Paramount).
First time in Los Angeles, living there. One night in early residence, my friend — from New York — EJ Oshins invited me to a dinner party at a restaurant in Beverly Hills. This was a fascinating first for the boy still green. Here’s my “Journal” entry at that time:
February 4, 1979.
Notes from Los Angeles. My friend EJ invited me to a black-tie dinner tonight at a restaurant in Beverly Hills called the Bistro Garden given by a couple named Dan and Contessa Cohn. Contessa gave herself that name after she left Paducah, promising never to go back.
A blazing henna-haired lady in at the very least her late fifties, the Contessa aspires to social height in Beverly Hills and of course there are many who would just as soon deny her a place at the top of the heap — her name alone being a detriment to the aesthetics of this tinsel town.
But she survives nevertheless with the handsome and fat checkbook of her real estate husband. And so this night they staged a seated dinner for ninety complete with disc jockeys to play the disco music. Out here there is always a photographer handy and the men are in tuxedo and the women are got up in lame, chiffon, crepes and the like with hair-dos strictly for the drop dead trade.
The Contessa wore her enflamed locks in tight and kinky ringlets for reasons known only to her and her hairdresser. Her hobby evidently is Dancing. A petite, slender woman, she works with an instructor-dance partner. At one point mid-evening, they performed to a South American melody and several lifts and swinging in the air of our hostess, almost acrobatic in her performance. Seriously amazing and even astounding. The Bistro Garden is dimly lit with lots of smoked etched glass and mirrors, brass bars, and sconces and wooden and painted paneling.
The ample buffet included salmon in aspic, shrimp creole and veal marsala. EJ and I sat with two other couples, namely the Gabor sisters Zsa and Eva and their husbands, the Franks, O’Hara and Jamieson.
Zsa wore diamonds and rubies, large in size and plentiful in number. Whether or not they were real is only for them and their jewelers to know. They sparkled a lot. Zsa has gained lots of weight so that if you wanted to, you could call her Two Ton Tony. Or two ton Zsa Zsa, although I don’t think I’d do it to her face. Nevertheless, the face remains the same, smooth and creamy and without a wrinkle.
Husband number four or five or six or seven looks like an ex-football player. They filled their plates and when they were finished they said “thank you very much,” and ta-ta and were out the door like lightning.
Sister Eva and husband Frank, who is tall and grey and distinguished looking, were much more engaging in conversation, although with great diffidence — until EJ said to the ever-enterprising Eva:
“Everyone ought to have a mentor I believe, and mine is Jane Fonda. And if it weren’t for Jane I don’t know what I’d do.”
At which point Eva said, “Darling, you must take my number and call me, I think you are so charming and so attractive.”
So we all exchanged numbers and no doubt Eva is thinking maybe EJ can get her a job in the next Jane Fonda film. Politically, Jane Fonda is a big star out here and connections with Big Stars are a little like unlimited charge accounts at Tiffany. EJ, who does know Jane Fonda and works with her on fund-raising projects for her husband Tom Hayden, dropped that little sentence just to see what kind of rise she could get out of the platinum blonde, who unlike her sister is not overweight and like her sister has nary a wrinkle on her slender Hungarian face.
Eva wore pearls. Thousands of them. Clipped on with diamonds, “Dahling….” she kept saying. We looked across the aisle where a very sad and lonely Rita Hayworth sat with Hermes Pan, the great film choreographer who worked on most of Fred Astaire’s films.
I asked Rita to disco with me but she begged off with a sore foot. She can’t hear and she said to a friend “he’s not yelling loud enough for me to talk to him.”
Naturally we gawked at the most famous Star of the Forties, her face of woe, much unchanged and her body and her carriage reflecting a woman abandoned by love and attention that is paid to these number one celebrity types.
Lizabeth Scott, looking older but stunning all in black including a cloche pulled down over the top of her head, with long blonde hair and large, bright pools of eyes and a white and shining grin, reminded me very much of Sheila (ed.note: ex-wife). So we flashed our blues at one another and no doubt she wondered (ed.note: we first met briefly about a year earlier) who was looking at Lizabeth Scott with such undivided interest.
After dinner and dessert, the waiters came round with plastic bags of chips — red, white, blue, and black — and in the next room which was set up for a disco, there were gaming tables for blackjack, 21, chemin de fer, and roulette.
Being in practically all other ways an outrageous gambler I am a hick when it comes to the gaming tables. And bound not to repeat the mistakes of other’s pasts, I all but threw the chips away. EJ did the same thing. Oh yes, Mary Pickford’s husband Buddy Rogers was on hand again wearing a red velvet waistcoat and escorting a peachy blonde woman in her thirties. Mary Pickford stays home, you know.
Someone asked Lillian Gish when she last saw Pickford. “Oh, about three weeks ago,” she said.
“What’s she like?” asks someone.
“Oh, about the same as anyone else who stayed in bed for the last thirteen years.”
There are a lot of people who wouldn’t be caught dead at Contessa’s parties, I was told. Her name is enough to cause a deluge of regrets as far as a lot of people in this large Jewish community are concerned. But, I have to admit, always eager for an abundant and free meal, I thought she made an excellent hostess and provided for us an interesting cacophony of old Hollywood in new Beverly Hills.
A totally fascinating evening.
