Touch and Go (29 page)

“You remember me? That was so long ago. Did you really see me as Pastor Manders?”

I assured him it was so and that I remembered it as though it were yesterday. “Man, you were good.”

He had at first appeared somewhat stoical in nature, a bit on the stiff side. Not in this moment. He simply stared at me. It was then he turned away, obviously fingering his eyes, trying to brush away a tear as though it were something shameful.

For the next two days, he insisted on buying me lunch, while he talked, talked, talked about Nazimova, whom I had seen as Mrs. Alving in
Ghosts
, about theater, about everything. If I remember correctly, he did send me a note from somewhere. A gentle, tender note. Being remembered is what it was all about.

 

 

AGAIN, it was in New York. I was visiting my brother Meyer, who had been attending CCNY. During my visit, we saw a revival off-Broadway of Sidney Howard's
They Knew What They Wanted
. It starred Richard Bennett as the old, Italian vintner, and Pauline Lord (described by Ruth Gordon as America's Duse) who, in this instance, was the young waitress, Amy. The party of the third part, as the young ranch hand, was Glenn Anders.

Years went by, as the calendar always did in Greer Garson–Walter Pidgeon World War II epics. With their stiff upper lips, they, with hardly a gray thread in their hair, gallantly weathered the Blitz and all.

I forget the soap opera in which I appeared. It might have been a children's evening program,
Little Orphan Annie
, or
Captain Midnight,
with Jim Ameche. Into the studio comes a face I find familiar.
I greet him. I don't know why; I am in a horsing-around mood: “Glenn Anders, I presume.”

“Yeah. How'd you know my name?”

I told him about
They Knew What They Wanted
. The first legit play I had ever seen. If I remember, he did a hop, skip, and a jump.

“I'll be damned. You remember me?” That was the usual refrain. I didn't realize we were holding up rehearsals, but it didn't matter. The director of the radio show was stage-struck, so he simply listened, enthralled.

Now, I didn't know when to quit. “I saw you in the Blackstone Theatre as Dr. Ned in O'Neill's
Strange Interlude
. Judith Anderson was doing Lynn Fontanne's role as Nina Leeds.” We later had a great dinner at Riccardo's, which he insisted on buying. To be remembered—that's what made you king of the hill. Not only were you celebrated in somebody's eye, you were remembered long, long afterward. That your hands trembled a bit was a small matter. You counted.

The third and undoubtedly most dramatic and traumatic encounter occurred in the early sixties. I had written a play, and a godawful one it was. It was called
Amazing Grace
at just about the time there was an upsurge of pop-folk influence and the hymn of the same name had become popular. It was to be a professional production at the University of Michigan theater. Alumnus Arthur Miller's encouragement brought that theater into being.

My play was almost all cast, with Cathleen Nesbitt and Victor Bono as the leads. We needed a strong character actor as an old time Wobbly, a garrulous guest at a men's hotel. I immediately thought of an actor, James Bell. I haven't the foggiest idea why he came to mind. I had seen him in a play some thirty to forty years before and I had never forgotten his brief performance.

The play was
The Last Mile
by John Wexley. The locale was death row of a state prison and all were convicted and due for execution. The star was Spencer Tracy as Killer Mears. It may have been his last
play before his explosive entry in the movies. But it was not he I most remembered in that play. It was a young actor, James Bell, who at the second-act curtain is led toward the electric chair. I was absolutely knocked out by that halting shuffle, absolutely mesmerized by this young actor.

I do remember seeing his name now and then in the theater section. During the forever-run of Jack Kirkland's adaptation of Erskine Caldwell's
Tobacco Road
, there appeared about a dozen Jeter Lesters: Henry Hull, Will Geer, James Barton, oh, God, too many to remember—and James Bell. A few years, uneventful, went by.

It was then, during the University of Michigan enterprise, that Bell's name so obstinately stuck with me. I figured he'd be about the right age: late sixties, early seventies. (My arithmetic was never any good.)

I was frantic; I had to find him; he was my man. Equity came through: a member, James Bell, had retired and was living in either Virginia or the Carolinas. I forget which.

I don't recall how many phone calls I made: I know that I did not impoverish Illinois Bell. Finally, a voice at the other end, a faltering, very, very fragile one, answered. Oh, I do remember the conversation, if you want to call it that. Let me paraphrase it as best I can.

AMAZING GRACE
received among the most horrendous reviews possible. Had James Bell, lame, halt, and blind, undertaken the role, it would not have hurt at all.

I still see him, young James Bell, in that second-act curtain, stealing the show from Spencer Tracy.

Yeah, Bell is up there with Wamby in my King Tut pantheon, forever young. I'm certain neither was ever asked: “Wasn't your name once James Bell?” Or “Wamby?” They had no need to be recognized by others, not while I was around . . . While I
am
around.

As for the lethal phrase, “Didn't your name used to be Dave Garroway?”—Charlie Andrews told me, as he kept company with Dave on his down, down, down ski-slide, he'd heard a curious cabbie ask it. I never had any reason to question Charlie Andrews, nor
do I now. I still carry the fish-head cane that Charlie Andrews' widow, Amy, sent me. It helps this lame and this halt on his daily way to Canaanland. Each time I stare down at the fish-head cane he bequeathed me, Charlie says: Simply tell it as it was. Hang on to that cane.

—James Baldwin

 

 

G
irard, Pennsylvania, 1982. It is an industrial town, thirty miles out of Erie. Its people, mostly blue-collar, are experiencing hard times. Since then, things have become much worse.

A controversy had arisen concerning the use of the book
Working
in a high school class. A teacher, Kay Nichols, had made it mandatory reading, in conjunction with a course on American labor. The parents of two students objected; they had discovered some four-letter words in the book. It had been an assignment since 1978. Until now, there had been no objections.

I was invited to the school by the Girard Board of Education. There was to be a public discussion in the auditorium that evening.

I am visiting a classroom in the afternoon. The students range in age from fifteen to eighteen.

THAT EVENING the school auditorium was standing-room-only, overflowing with parents and students. It had something of a carnival spirit rather than a girding for battle; not too dissimilar from the feel of a crowd at a high school basketball game.

There was a touch of tension when the objecting parents entered with twenty or so of their supporters, in tight formation. Yet there was something else, something poignant. It was not a Roman phalanx so much as a
laager
. They were in encircled covered wagons, surrounded by hostile forces about to overwhelm them. They were moms and pops who had worked hard all their lives so their children could grow up as decent, hardworking, God-fearing Christians in a world of woe. And Sin.

The image of Mrs. B. is still with me. A tough little sparrow, resembling the Irish actress Una O'Connor, she really let me have it. Constantly shushing her boy, Tom, who was wildly erupting with scriptural citations, she was eloquent in her wrath, her hurt, her terrors of something dark out there.
⁵³

It wasn't the language so much to which she objected. It was the spirit of discontent she found in the book. As, once more, she pushed her boy aside—he was now Jimmy Swaggart sailing into me with Colossians or Corinthians—she spoke of a hard life, heavy laden enough without still more sorrows burdening the young pilgrims at school. Why not show the happy side of people's lives, the cleansing and godly side? Isn't there enough trouble in the world?

1960. John T. Scopes, middle-aged, is listening to the recording. We are seated in a Chicago radio station. Dalhart's voice comes through bell-clear, despite the record's scratch. I tell my guest it sold a half-million copies in 1925. “I didn't know I was that popular,” he says.