For the Time Being (22 page)

If one watches Garbo today after all the years, it is blazingly obvious, even to the basest viewer, that she is dateless. She has no mannerisms to hide behind, she simply
IS.
She thinks, ergo the ‘thought' is photographed, conveyed to the screen, delivered to the audience. There has never been anyone quite like her since, and there very probably never will be. One thinks, perhaps, of Simone Signoret or, at some moments when she is controlled, Vanessa Redgrave, but there are very few people around who can channel that startling originality.

She never won an Oscar, was not paid as much as lesser stars, did not fit in remotely with the average Hollywood product -mainly recruited from drug stores, gas stations, the chorus line, or Broadway successes – and spent most of her time trying to avoid the crass vulgarity of her surroundings. When Stiller was dumped, she was quite alone in that comic-strip-glitter-city.

She stayed aloof, speaking poor English, with a minimal education, lonely (Swedes do not easily assimilate in hot climates … I recall, with affection, my friend Ingrid Bergman, who suffered almost as badly there), and, intensely physical, she decided pretty early on that she would remain apart.

And apart she stayed, sharing her life with the few people she trusted, and who would not take advantage of her privacy – a treasure greater than rubies in that hideous place.

It is possible that she had lovers of both sexes, not unusual even in Pinner and Morecambe Bay, and this
ugly
book gives you full value in that direction. And does it honestly matter a tinker's gob to us now? What she did, with whom, or how? After all the riches which she bestowed upon us with her work, unique in the world; the magic, the joy, the glamour, the ageless perfection of an art beautifully honed.

Should we now demand to see her disfigured, sullied, brought down to the gutter of popular press writing? Because she was selective, chose solitude rather than the common herd, because she
chose the company of friends she trusted and who amused her, must we revile her and insist that she was a recluse?

Merely because she showed good taste, a yearning for privacy which every mortal has the right to secure; because she chose to read, to learn, to see beyond the confines of that restricted world of cinema; because she stayed away from parties and restaurants, remained loyal to a handful of directors and technicians who were trustworthy, honourable and knew how to present the amazing gifts she was able to offer, and because, above all, she decided to quit the cinema at the exact moment that Hollywood became aware that a war raged in Europe, decimating their profits, and that they had to make a different kind of movie for the hard-pressed and free European market.

Because of these simple, obvious facts, Garbo became a Legend.

For no other reason. She had always been unavailable, cautious, remote, whatever word you choose to use. Unafraid to say ‘No', which did not make her popular in a ‘Yes' city, and as she was a sensible, tough Swede, she could see the future and, after a final very poor film, which she disliked making, she simply stayed away, unwilling and uncertain how next to move into a new era.

So she left.

Few players are as sensible. They hang on playing smaller roles, ‘mothers' and ‘fathers', and finally just ‘guesting'.

Rusted, finished.

Garbo left shining like diamonds.

And remained so. A Legend; avoiding people and press, the curious and the spurious. And finally had books written about her like this one. Who can resist what they call an ‘enigma'?

There is another version of this so-called ‘enigma' in
The Legend of Greta Garbo.
A perfectly respectable scissors-and-paste job, no hatchet here, consisting of pieces from journals and papers of the day.

George Cukor, who directed her in
Camille
and in her final film, and who was a close personal friend, gives you a far clearer account of the woman in a few pages than Antoni Gronowicz can manage in all his laboured 400.

There is a familiar saying among theatre and film people, which runs like this: ‘You've either got it or you've had it.' Miss Garbo had it a-plenty, her biographer not at all, and if you believe his stuff., you'll believe anything.

Daily Telegraph,
18 August 1990

The New Yorker Book of Covers
(Chatto/Cape)

The first copy of the
New Yorker
hit the bookstands on 21 February 1925, price 15 cents, and, in this vast volume which must weigh kilos and is best accommodated on a coffee table, every single cover is represented, in glorious colour, up until and including 20 February 1989 (price $1.75). Here they all are, marvellous weekly comments on the way of life in America, a social history of that great nation.

If the United States did not already have as many museums as they need, and probably more, there really should be another devoted entirely to these 3,277 splendid covers. They should be framed, enlarged, and set apart in rooms of the year, for we can see the amazing alteration in that society from the end of one war up to and including another as fearful, and on towards probable Armageddon. It could be called the National American Gallery; why not? Nothing has been overlooked here; everything is represented, from the Jazz Age to the Walk on the Moon, from garage sales in suburban Connecticut, to the American thirst for Culture, from pointed political comment to the epitome of suburban life; for America is, after all, one gigantic suburb, from Long Island to Orange County. You will not dodge the Wall Street Crash or the American discovery of Europe during the last war – the European ties still trail ribbons of memory.

You will discover, very gradually, how the black man takes his place in this enormous mixing bowl. In the early twenties he is merely set in the jazz bands or in the theatre and cabarets; it is only
much
later that he takes his place in a commuter train, in a restaurant, or fighting in Vietnam.

There is irony in these covers, political comment, nostalgia and wit. Perhaps, above all, it is the
wit
which so delights. There is
shrewdness here as well as sobriety, nothing is overlooked, all is set down by artists who make the Europeans look impoverished.

We have no Peter Arno with his astonished playboys and
grandesdames;
no Mary Petty with her frilly maids and dowagers in rococo palaces; no glorious Helen Hopkinson and her tribe of bewildered, bothered, bewitched suburban ladies; no wondrously frightening Charles Addams spying witches on broomsticks above the sky-scrapers; and no one can offer the beautiful architectural simplicity of Gretchen Dow Simpson's compositions in simple form, light, and shade. It is a rich land indeed, and these covers – sometimes deliriously funny, sometimes shockingly reproving – will tell you a great deal more about America than a heavy book by an historian.

But, after all, these covers are
drawn
by historians; that is why they tell the story so beautifully. It is really very well worth a look.

Daily Telegraph,
17 November 1990

Luchino Visconti: The Flames of Passion
by Laurence Schifano.
Translated by William S. Byron (Collins)

The cabin trunk was a splendid affair. Beautifully crafted in olive-green leather. Lined in watered silk of the same colour, embellished with the initials of Gustav von Aschenbach in gothic-gold. The drawers were fitted with every kind of bottle and pommade-pot, all in crystal, all engraved, all silver-stoppered. The mirrors and the hairbrushes were silver-backed, coat-hangers swung gently in quilted silk to match the lining. The locks and hinges were polished brass.

In all probability no one would see this splendour, for it was only to be used once in the gondola or while it was being carried up to the apartment of von Aschenbach in the Hôtel des Bains. That was all. I remember saying, in amazed bewilderment: ‘But Luchino! So much glory! Who will ever see it?'

His eyes, those fine, hooded, black-agate eyes, regarded me with a flick of irritation at my crassness.

‘You,' he said.

And he was right, as usual. I did see it. I
knew
it, and I was aware all through the work to come that the cabin trunk stood for the complete background of the man I was to play. Elegant, expensive, luxurious, spoiled and vain. Fastidious, correct. Everything in its place. Visconti was not incorrect in providing me with such a valuable item of ‘instruction'. I learned.

I am always anxious, and often with good reason, when I am faced with the biography of someone I have known, even loved. Especially when the biographer has clearly only met the subject a couple of times (or even not at all) and has relied on the testimony of ‘friends' and others for information, the rest gleaned from the
clippings-file. On such slender strings hangs the fabric of many biographies. Accuracy mixes wildly with inaccuracy and gossip.

Rumours are forced from seedling to forest giant; the portrait offered is too often the image of the victim the biographer
thinks
he has seen, the subject set down in vivid colour. Pastel becomes Picasso. There can be little fear of retribution as the victims are most often dead, and then only outraged families, wives or lovers can protest despairingly. And helplessly. One trembles in advance.

However, in this case, joy reigns. There is absolutely no need to have trembled before Laurence Schifano's triumphant biography of Luchino Visconti. As far as I can be sure of anything, I am sure that he himself would have approved. It was awarded the French Academy's award for Biography last year and fully merited that honour.

We are in good, caring hands here. Not one false step, no hint of envy or malice, no shadows of cruel inaccuracy. Professor Schifano is compassionate, understanding and fully aware of the
grandeur
of her subject. Never in awe ofhis complexities, sympathetic to his follies and foibles, alert to the towering rages (and they could indeed tower when necessary), equally aware of the quite touching gentleness, the arrogance, the astonishing humbleness other prince. For prince he was.

To those of us fortunate enough to have known him – and to know him was to have worked with him – this book is very much like being once again in his company. Closing the covers one can say, and I did: ‘Yes. That is how he was, that is who he was, that is how he did it.' No one, in my entire life, has affected me as he did.

Luchino Visconti was born on 2 November 1906, in Milan, the fourth child of Duke Giuseppe Visconti di Modrone. His mother was Clara Erba, heiress to one of the greatest industrial families in Italy. He was brought up, very strictly, in an atmosphere of quite astonishing nobility and richness, two things which were to be part of his works for ever after.

An incredibly precocious child, he was writing and producing
his plays
and
operas in the family theatre where he and his brothers and sisters would perform. Surrounded by immense wealth, love and security, he flourished. But there were hidden cracks in the family. Once so desperately close, it began gradually to pull apart, and when Visconti was a young man he joined the cavalry to become a sergeant in the Savoy Regiment.

He had courage, great strength, dashing good looks, a vast fortune and, very important, a true ‘eye' for a horse. He bought his first racehorse in 1929 and continued to race and to breed until the end of the thirties. He once told me that the majority of actors were thoroughbreds and hacks. A cruel description, one filled with his normal arrogance perhaps, but it was none the less accurate, and woe betide the poor hack who fell into his hands! He was not patient with timidity, stupidity, fear, dullness or the least
vapour
of inefficiency. These were inadmissible in his life. The horse which left the horse-box kicking up its heels, nostrils flaring, eyes wide,
ears pricked, and which confidently sprang down the ramp would, he swore, lose the race. The horse which came down with care, scenting the air, eyes aware and steady, ears back, would be the one to win. Just like we actors. And he treated us, by and large, in much the same manner as his horses.

Not altogether a bad thing. Unless you fell by the wayside.

It is perhaps difficult for an English reader to comprehend exactly how vast was the area of work, the enormous range, that Visconti covered. He was a master of not only the cinema, but the theatre and the opera
and
the ballet. More, he
understood
them. There was not one facet of the arts in which he did not, or could not, participate, save perhaps for painting. I don't know that I ever heard of him holding a brush in his hands, but he well might have done.

He wrote, composed, directed. He gathered about him many of the greatest players, singers, designers, musicians and dancers of his time He used them brilliantly and gave some of them (Callas, for example, in
Traviata)
an entirely new existence. Those who loved him stayed close: there were a great many sycophants, but these he knew very well – they amused him and sometimes could be useful. There was no whiff of, say, Gerrards Cross about this man, no chintz, latticed windows, weekly trips to Sainsbury's; there was no Parson's Green either, no stripped pine, coffee in mugs and golf-clubs in the hall. He was, in all respects, larger than life, and so was his work.

Brought up as a prince, in a princely household, that is exactly how he behaved. There was colour, vividness, violence and passion in all he created. There was no dust, no liberalism, no shock-to-shock. His splendour was almost medieval, which was, of course, not always liked by what he called Monsieur Tout-le-Monde. He once said: ‘The truth is that these accusations of waste and hedonistic self-indulgence have always come from people who still think it is a luxury to eat in a railway dining-car.'

Just so.

He demanded, and always got, excellence of the highest degree. From a carpenter, electrician, the girl who sewed on the ribbons, his actors, writers, cameramen, the operator of his camera, the boy who ‘pulled focus'. All were hand-picked, all were the best; all
would have cheerfully died for him. For working for Visconti was a certain sign that you
were
The Best.