In and Out of Hollywood: A Biographer’s Memoir

Chapter 17

17
231 T he mid-1980s were very good years. Of many spectacular parties at the time, perhaps the most spectacular was held to celebrate the covering over of the Universal Amphitheater, which had previously been open to the sun and stars, a major handicap in winter, when rain was frequent. Doris and Jules Stein invited me to sit next to them in the privileged front seats of the rented bus that took an incredible collection of celebrities across Coldwater Canyon from Angelo Drive to the San Fernando Valley and thence to the amphitheater, where Frank Sinatra would perform. The James Stewarts, the Cary Grants, the Robert Mitchums , the Minnellis—these were only a few of the illustrious couples who were with us in Hollywood’s most expensive and exclusive caravan. I was seated at a table with the Steins, the Wassermans, the Minnellis, and the Sinatras after the show, in which Sinatra had given one of the greatest performances of his life. I decided that it was time to take a high dive, to test the waters on how these illustrious figures felt about my book on Errol Flynn, so criminally treated by numerous lesser industry lights. I asked Jules what his chief memory was of Flynn; the others leaned forward, expressing approval of what I had written. Stein and Lew Wasserman had been Flynn’s agents in his heyday. “Keeping him out of jail,” was the answer, and the group dissolved in laughter. In contrast to this joyous event, there was the painful news in 1988 of the death of my beloved friend Colin Higgins, the brilliant American Australian writer and director of Nine to Five and Harold and Maude. Handsome , muscular, athletic, extremely witty and charming, he was to me not only a fine and inspiring companion but I was, I am certain, despite my deep commitment to Richard, in love with him. There could be no chance of a responding interest; he would never find me attractive. His sexual interest was in Mexican boys, like another close friend, Mark Nixon, who was murdered in Cuernavaca by hustlers of less than sixteen years of age. Colin was stricken with AIDS. I had never been fond of Shirley MacLaine , recalling what I felt was unwarranted temperamental behavior on a talk-show tour in which we were simultaneously promoting books. But her speech at Colin’s memorial tribute at the Directors Guild was beautiful and poetic and reduced me to helpless tears. A tribute of similar character to Orson Welles in the mid-1980s was not as impressive. The most eloquent and thoughtful of those who spoke of him was Geraldine Fitzgerald, who had once been his mistress and whose personality in films I had always admired, despite Pauline Kael. The occasion was memorable for the striking beauty and star presence of Welles’s companion, the Yugoslavian sculptress Oya Kodar. Richard’s sumptuous decoration of the house and our parties, though small, were much discussed. Jules and Doris Stein; Lee and Vincente Minnelli ; Jean Howard, legendary mistress of Louis B. Mayer (“best food I ever ate at a party”); June (widow of Oscar) Levant and her husband, Henry Ephron, father of Nora; the Minnellis—these were frequent and valued guests along with Anna Sten, Miliza Korjus, and most memorably the great comedian Fritz Feld and his wife, Virginia Christine, famous for the Folgers coffee commercials as “Swedish” Mrs. Olsen. It was Virginia who figured in that period’s most memorable episode. I had picked up in an obscure junk shop on Santa Monica Boulevard a superkitsch papier-mâché artifact: a prop from an old Universal mummy movie, a sarcophagus so blatantly fake that instead of having Egyptian hieroglyphics on the outside, it had the name of the dead—P A—in English lettering. As soon as she saw it, Virginia’s eyes lit up. To everyone’s astonishment, she opened it and stood inside with her arms crossed. She asked me to close the door. I warned her there were no air holes; she insisted. Everyone told me I should pull her out at once; she might faint. I called out to her; she did not respond. Then we heard a frantic knocking and shouting. I opened the mummy case and Virginia, very pale, tottered out. 232 233 A chorus of voices asked her what she thought she was doing. She replied with the statement that...