What difference did it make if the African “mines” second unit director George Marton was living atop Laurel Canyon between Sunset Boulevard and Studio city’s Ventura Boulevard in the basin of the City of Angels.
Didn’t Fanny Brice as Baby Snooks (during her Flo Zigfield Billy Rose tandem) throw Budapest born George a curve at the Richard Burton (age 27) Jean Simmons biblical epic “The Robe” premiere at the Fox Wilshire in Beverly Hills, block down from restaurant row and the La Cienega tennis courts. Sammy Match’s pro shop....Kent Taylor (“Boston Blackie”)Allen Joslyn
Alan Mowbary schmoozing...... playing chess while setzing on a call from their agents..
II
“Gosh Momma, there’s Robert Ryan with his sons....Bette Davis “Aging isn’t for sissies” Ray and Fran Stark (Baby Snooks daughter by Billy Rose(Eleanor Holmes husband from the New York World’s Fair, 1939 the Flushing Meadows ball and periscope.)
“Shelly Winters...who’s her consort momma?.....put tthose kleigs on Brando’g “I wuz once a contender”.
“Down boy Don’t you know your composers...Elmer Bernstein Aaron Copeland......selling those maps on Sunset....there’s Morris Carnovsky..”
“And......the open limo ”Born Yesterday”“ William Holden(Billy Wilder’s “Golden Boy”) with Shirley Mclaine?..no that’s Judy Holiday. Can’t you tell, Sonny?”.
“Larry Parks of the “Jolson Story” he doesn’t look like his tongue is cut out....and his Betty Garret. .Sidney Skolsky, the producer and columnist from Shwabs drugstore on the strip......Remember Sonny?”
“Who’s that getting out of the liumo? Charlie Chaplin?” Who’s that with him?”
“I didn’t know he had a daughter ,Momma?”
“That’s his wife. Sonny. Oona O’Neal. Who’d y’think she was? Paulette Goddard?”
III
“Sending you to Hollywood High. Ucla....and you can’t read convoluted brain waves....Shame on you, Sonny. This next star is into commercials......”
“Doing commercials...sure Momma. It’s Orson Welles...those winos suck....”
“And him, a genius....Citizen Kane....y’ think tinsel town is getting even with him. Cutting off his banking.... Bank of America?.”
“I wouldn’t put it past Hearst, would you Sonny?”
IV
“All those hours days years hawking maps on Sunset Boulevard.....waving your arms to the city slickers in their SUVS....the tourists and voyeurs for the latest grand slam....paying for a thrill. And what do we have to show for it, Sonny?”
“How we gonna marry you off? Like the Clintons from Little Rock......Sure they got mobility and Yale Law on their side. Bubba plays a cool sax.... alto? tenor?
“The dysfunctional playing out their inner needs..... want celebrity, don’t they? A thrill to make the economy go....celebrity is the engine playing out..... Sonny.
“Can’t tell a real life star.....molecular biologist and a monkey from Mars astronaut....Horse radishing their haciendas and castles in the air in quest of a title...an identity.
“ Prince Romanoff, sir..”
“Isn’t it all fake? Phoney? We kid you not, Sonny. A fantasy? Illusions we live and die by.”
Where did we and your father go wrong?”
V
“You on peyote? Snuffing it? The National Guard Flight Sarge Jack Nicholson. His multiple personalities searching for his real role model..... coming off the greens as a caddie on the Jersey shores.. Vincent Price’s disciple.... locked up in that test tube as “The fly”
“Brain washed you to be a valet... parking cars..Ciros Mocambo Trocadero the Palladium Earl Carrol’s Vanities.....hustling gas like Dana Andrews...if y’ believe it. That’s how he was discovered, Sonny.
“We moved to Norton Avenue so y’ can draw first blood at the Forum in the role of an usher.
“Isn’t that how Jack L. discovered Martha Vickers husband. Made him chief of production after Colonel Zanuck.....pack backing those trails into the desert: 29 Palms Palm Desert Palm Springs, Sonny.”
“Horse radish, Momma?”
”An apocalypse, Sonny...we’re all hanging by our thumbs...* living on borrowed time.”
The Big Apple, *August 11,2010
