For something that's a little bit lighter,
a great story from my partner's life,
my deceased partner's life, which
is self-explanatory except that his parents' names.
His parents were Holocaust survivors,
their names were Kathy and Fred Rose.
And he was the only child, and you
may imagine the burdens of growing up
is the only child of Holocaust survivors.
But this was a particularly funny and resonant story,
I think.
Kathy and Fred had been in America several years
when the West German government began to pay reparations
to Jews who had lost family and property in the Holocaust.
Partly with the help of this money,
they rented space and opened a small department store.
Eventually, in the way of so many American immigrants,
they bought the store then rented it
to a family of Vietnamese, another of this country's
refugees from distant wars.
They took care to immerse Larry in all
they perceive to be American, good immigrants that they
were, especially the glitz and glamour of nearby Hollywood.
So it came to pass that he was standing with Kathy
at the back of a crowded television studio, for what he
later told me was the first filming of the Lucy Show, July
19th 1962.
And his neat rounded hand Larry, he of the eidetic memory,
noted the date in the brown leatherette autograph book
that I found among his effects, and that
sits before me as I write.
The studio lights dimmed, Lucy's mother
swept through the audience followed
by a retinue of relatives, friends, groupies.
13-year-old Larry stepped forward to thrust
out his autograph book.
Flattered, Mrs. Ball, Desiree to you, waved Larry and his mother
to the front.
As she ushered them into first row seats,
she leaned over to whisper in Larry's ear,
it's not what you know, it's who you know, she said and winked.
The band struck up the theme.
For the next several years, with a faithfulness
that in my thoroughly Catholic childhood
was reserved for the affairs of God, Larry and his mother
attended the Lucy Shows every filming, seated
at the right hand of Desiree Ball.
Around the studio lights, Larry encountered the stars
of the day, and soon he approached them
with his brown leatherette autograph book.
Who could resist the entreaty of this impeccably well-mannered
boy, accompanied by an evidently displaced mother still
struggling with her w's.
Not judging from Larry's autograph book, Maurice
Chevalier, a Gallic flourish underscores a florid execution.
Dick Van Dyke, J. North, Dennis the Menace,
Sammy Davis Jr. the pan all over the page.
Jack Benny, a pinched parsimonious hand.
Clint Eastwood, uncertain of his fame,
he takes care to append his TV name, Rowdy.
[LAUGHTER]
And of course, there were the Lucy Show players as well as
assorted hangers on.
Ella Fitzgerald, Hedda Hopper, Natalie Wood,
unaware of her watery fate, Count Basie,
Lorna, Judy Garland's daughter, and Larry's careful note.
Juliet Ashanti, Miss Brazil 1962.
Attending the international beauty
Congress at 13 years old, what was Larry
doing at the international beauty Congress?
[LAUGHTER]
Pier Salinger, Pat Brown, Zubin Mehta, whom Larry surprised,
he told me, post performance in his dressing room
shirtless and dripping with sweat.
As I page through the book, snapshots fall out.
Larry on a red letter day at the Santa Anita racetrack,
posed at the side of Allen Ludden and Southern and Eve
Arden, to piece avocado green suit, Buster Brown collar,
sunglasses removed for the photo.
Clipped to the snapshots, a tomato sauce
stained cocktail napkin with Pearl Bailey signature
scrawled across the corner.
A relic of Larry's days of haunting the Brown Derby, where
he and his mother badgered the Maitre d' into seating them
near the rich and famous, or the less prosperous and lesser
known.
Who is Wilbur Hedge, Minor Martinez, Ziva Rodann,
Perc Westmore, and now courtesy of my audience and fans
know who all those people are, and can tell you.
Perc Westmore actually was-- there
was a family of five Westmore brothers, all gay,
so far as I can tell.
They were all makeup artists in Hollywood.
And Perc was the best known of these makeup artists
and was called upon by--
The way I found out about it was that I was reading a Gore Vidal
piece in the New Yorker.
And Vidal talked about how he went to visit Greta Garbo,
and he admired her eyeshadow, and she said, Oh, Perc Westmore
created it for me.
And I thought, Perc Westmore, where
have I seen that name before.
And it was the clue that enabled me to find out
who the Westmore brothers were.
Larry, a polite boy, evidently requested all the signatures
at the table, however, he might only want miss Bailey's.
Immortality comes easy to the lunch companions
of the big time stars.
Not that he limited his autograph grubbing
to the Brown Derby and the Desiree back lots.
20th April, 1960, I am commanded by the queen to write and thank
you for your letter, and for the congratulations which
you have sent to Her Majesty on the birth of her baby.
I have to explain to you that owing to her Majesty's rules
in these matters, the queen does not send autographs
to people with whom she is not already personally acquainted,
Susan Massey, lady in waiting.
[LAUGHTER]
16th November, 1961, I have received the Queen's command
to thank you most sincerely for your kind
message of good wishes to the Prince of Wales
on the occasion of his Royal Highness birthday,
Susan Massey, lady in waiting.
25th April, 1962.
The queen has commanded me to thank you
for the message of good wishes which you have so kindly sent
on the occasion of her Majesty's birthday, Susan Massey, lady
in waiting.
There are probably two dozen of these notes, each slightly more
brusque than its predecessor, most
under the signature of the patient, Susan Massey.
Larry was nothing if not persistent.
All but one of his famous addresses and canned responses
cranked out and signed by flunkies, Herbert Hoover,
Jacqueline Kennedy on the occasion of her son's birth,
Robert Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, Jacqueline Kennedy
on the occasion of her miscarriage, Pope John 23rd,
Jacqueline Kennedy on the occasion of her husband's
assassination.
None of these notes was signed by the real McCoy.
But in an era before computers or photocopy machines,
each is flawlessly manually typed.
The image comes helplessly to mind, 1,000 Susan Masseys,
and 1,000 Smith Corona typewriters,
banging out kind notes of rejection
to a world of 13-year-olds, seeking an authentically signed
note from the queen, from the Pope,
from Jackie on the occasion of her various misfortunes.
Chaff and more chaff, until buried
in this haystack of chaff I find the needle, the payoff
of Larry's persistence.
Amid this flood of form letters, arrived a personal response
written on personal stationery from a man
of the old school, a Frenchman of course,
bound by duty and manners.
Who understood that all personal correspondence
is to be answered personally.
And so in response to Larry's sympathies
on the occasion of his gallbladder surgery,
writing in his own hand from his office as president
de La Republique, the Republique where 26 years later Larry
will greet his death.
30 avril, 1964.
Très sensible à votre aimable pensée.
Je vous en remercie de tout coeur.
Charles de Gaulle.
30th April, 1964.
I'm touched by your kind thoughts,
I send my warmest thanks, Charles de Gaulle.
So it says something wonderful, I
think, about the workings of power that--
and if you know anything of Charles de Gaulle's history.
That he went from this place of being
the center, really, of the attention of the West,
to being a man who was very much sidelined and who had,
what can we say, time to write letters back to people--
13-year-olds who were sending him
notes about his gallbladder surgery.