1 - Heavenly Hope

"Would you like to meet Hope Williams?' The question was casually posed, almost with shyness, by my downstairs neighbor Buzz Miller, who, with his longtime partner, art dealer Alan Groh, was responsible for my tenancy in a West Village atelier that reminded me of Paris, where I learned a lot, loved a lot, lost -- no, not a lot, because -- depending on your sense of l'amour propre there was nothing to lose at all. Now the phrase l'amour propre has many meanings. So, let your imagination go.


Enbas, as I called the chaps, since they lived on the parlor floor, played concierge of the historic brownstone: they screened for the owner rental potentials; they also had a secret peephole, which let them see who came and went and with whom, and under what circumstances -- if they heard footsteps. I quickly invested in triple-sole shoes. Of course, sometimes a floorboard under the rug creaked. Then I'd sprint up our spiral staircase which is exactly like the one in a film noir by the same title. Actually I enjoyed this little game. There are only eight flats here and no matter who moves in or out, it seems, you never see anyone in the halls or on the staircase. We're self-employed by multinational corporations, I deem plausible, and get paid for the most dangerous tasks.

A doctor once owned the building. He lived with his hypochrondriac wife a few blocks away. He was a true geezer; you just had to know how to make chit with him when you handed over your monthly check. The Wife was rarely seen and always in a wheelchair. Once I foolishly offered to push her across the street. The chair handles slipped away from me when we hit a pothole. She went carooming down University Place, screaming, while I, near convulsion, tried to catch the chaise before it slammed into Deutsche Haus at Washington Mews. "Horrid thing," she exclaimed, giving me the gimlet eye. "But life is like that!" she burped, fingering her rigid beehive. I am now opposed to all philanthropic deeds. Enbas explained that The Wife didnt like sex which is why, shortly after her marriage many years earlier, she became bedridden like Barbara Stanwyck in "Sorry, Wrong Number." We know how that Ended. So the doctor, with his sickly wife and god knows what sort of business -- amputations, I daresay - depended on Enbas to give apartment supplicants the usual financial, social and physical examinations. On a summery day they might well ask, Dont you want to cool off? Here, give me your shirt... It was a blustery wintry day when I signed the lease.

Now Enbas had an extraordinary habitation.

It was just two Whartonian-sized salon rooms facing an enclosed leafy Venetian garden. There was a bath filled with condiments to rub, squeeze, sponge up or insert, and a narrow galley that only accomodated two and a-half persons at once. But the best cooks I've met have always worked in the smallest of kitchens. It's only in suburbia where greedy builders bamboozle owners with electronic and marbelized ghastliness, with sanitarium flourescent lighting, that you find kitchens of roller rink dimension. It's an American affliction that indicates no one at home really knows the difference between meat and fowl, pastry and pudding. The culinary skills are fraudulent. It's strictly frozen food, take-out or worse: pot-luck.

Furniture in the Enbas salons was a marvelous mix-&- dont-match -- not a match & match you see in the feeble-minded Home Decor sheets which exist only to promote harebrained interior designers. A plummy sofa faced a circular glass dining table; iron chairs, footstools, the odd heavily cushioned wing chair or high-backed bench sat alongside a mahogany desk. Wooden folding screens, found in a Louisiana flea market, partially divided the main room. The smaller adjoining salon presented a low pillowed daybed, which was a lot more than that. (I always said, 'If that bed could talk.' Now it's mine). Elsewhere there was a discreet TV, and a rectangular walnut table with recovered thrift shop chairs. Both rooms were elegant and hothouse sexy. They suggested that anything could happen, and it often did. I must dutifully add that the items including bric-a-brac and artful objets were of theatrical, drawing-room comedy scale. So you walked onto and into a "stage set," with dim, rose-hued lighting. Finally, a glass-paned door led onto a wooden-slat deck with slat steps to a stone and gravel garden where rose and lilac bushes bloomed. Scattered lounge chairs and side-tables. It's important to 'set the scene,' for Enbas created an Environment -- a kind of installation art piece that guests craved to visit and never wanted to leave. I had a second set of keys because, 'you're the only person we fully trust,' they said, and when they went away for the summer or Christmas holidays, I was encouraged to entertain there. Enbas were an important part of my life, even when hellzapoppin' mischief was afoot.

We maintained a certain inhouse formality. No knocking on doors for yesterday's paper or extra lumps of sugar. We communicated by telephone between four floors. I was writing about the theatre and movies and art, and they knew people who knew people. Sometimes the people overlapped. I had just seen on TV the Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur oddity, "The Scoundrel," an independent film made at the Astoria Studios in the the mid-'30s. It's the first movie in which Noel Coward starred as a snotty but smart publisher who destroyed men and women who made him jealous or simply fussed him up. He was preposterous as a heart-breaker. Leland Hayward who soon became one of the most successful Broadway producers was then their agent. The two were known for their comedies "The Front Page" and "Twentieth Cenutry." He got them an indie deal and they became the first hyphenates. Hayward's disdain for movies, recalls Hecht, won him respect from the moguls. 'They felt that a man so full of sneer must be peddling a superior kind of wares. All that he peddled was a superiority complex.'

"The Scoundrel" is a fabulous mess, with wisecracker lines. Coward is killed in a plane crash but like Billy Bigelow in 'Carousel' is given a day on earth to make a plea for forgiveness. I vaguely remember him underwater ....after the crash, gurgling or farting, perhaps both, with immense hauteur nonetheless. What keeps this rubbish from oblivion is the delicious performance by an actress named Hope Williams who plays the meanie's ex-girlfriend. She can take the twerp or leave him. Hers isnt a big role, but Hope was really heavenly. Blonde and bobbed with a throaty voice, Hope, then into her 30s, could whack a line like a ping-pong ball and watch it scamper -- with utter gravitas -- until it was bonked, haplessly to the net. When asked about her Atlantic crossing, she says, 'It was nice.' A tolerant smile: 'I love storms.' Then moves away with an air of patrician distraction. Who was this wonderful creature? I reported my discovery to Buzz. He looked mysterious, elfish. But weeks later he phoned, asking if I'd like to meet her. Why not?

During the '50s Buzz Miller had simply been the sexiest male dancer on Broadway. Everyone, from all three sexes, agreed: 'He's so butch.' Today it sounds campy. Today you'd say hunky, but butch defines Buzzie in any era. He was a farm boy, born in the sticks: Snowflake, Arizona. Throughout his life, regardless of age, he radiated candid, fresh as newly-mown hay features with a sandy thatch of Huckleberry Finn hair. He had a hesitant, diffident manner, except when he was dancing, and a lean, muscular frame. He was 'the kid next door' in Snowflake, always. It gave him an aura of errant innocence that audiences loved. Wounded during the Battle of the Bulge in World War 2, he was later hospitalized for months and then devilishly restless, bored stiff, as he tells it, 'I took some college courses and drifted west to Hollywood, where a lot of soldiers went....I hung around the studios and, one day, I wandered into an audition for dancers. I'd just been to the beach, so I put on my trunks. Ok, what could I do? Well, I could jump. I had to leap over landmines in the war and land on my feet. I knew how to move. I was really -- limber.' He made an impression. A new career began for Vernal Miller -- his real name -- of Snowflake. He was in a slew of movie musicals, wooing Marilyn Monroe in 'Heat Wave' from "There's No Business Like Show Business" and on Broadway, most notably, in "The Pajama Game," sizzling in 'Steam Heat,' which he repeated in the film version. He became great pals with Gwen Verdon and settled down with the choreographer Jerome Robbins for five years. In the late 50s a peculiar moppet named Andy Warhol hung outside the stagedoor at the Imperial Theatre where Buzz did a show-stopping tango with Verdon in a murder-mystery musical called "Redhead." Warhol wanted his autograph. He swooned over Vernal who was now most assuredly Buzz. Warhol worshipfully followed him to late-night bars and clubs. Then a commercial artist, he would thrust drawings on Buzz, which he kept. 'Andy was always there, in a corner, very quiet, he spoke in a whisper. He gave me some drawings of shoes. They were wicked. I liked them.' Buzz was amused by his celebrity, although he lost interest in long-run shows. He heard about a special woman -- Hope Williams -- who was teaching cooking, if she'd accept you. Hope, he learned, was a society worldling of the '20s who'd inspired and starred in Philip Barry plays and a Cole Porter musical. She could do anything she wanted; she was rich. Broadway bored her. She retired from the theatre in 1939. But theatre friends still included Tallulah Bankhead, Kate Hepburn. And like them, she didn't give a damn what people thought about anything.

When I met Hope Williams she was in her early 80s and a complete charmer. Initially reserved she gradually relaxed and I 'saw' the debutante who'd attended the Brearley School, was a member of the Junior League, and then married for a few years to a doctor who died in a plane crash after their divorce. They had remained close; she was his sole heir. Buzz served them both ice-tea -- well, I believe it was ice-tea. He tried to stay on the wagon. When sloshed he would swoop into the attack, verbally and physically. His war wound left him with a steel plate in his head. His squiffed behaviour made it seem like he had a whole set of dishes up there. Sober he was a meek lamb. 'You want a vodka?' he asked me. 'Fix yourself one -- you know how to, you know where it is.' I fixed. A platter of smoked salmon with toast points was placed on a coffee table.

'Do you have any champagne?' Hope asked matter-of-factly. 'It goes so well with smoked salmon, don't you think?'

When he went off to the bar, she added, 'I don't care if it's warm, if it's a good champagne.'

She smiled enigmatically and fiddled with a silver bracelet. She wore grey woollen slacks and a long-sleeved silk blouse. Very little makeup. A 40s turban encased her hair. I'm sure it was a turban she had indeed worn in the 40s. Very chic. When Buzz presented her with a flute, she teased, 'Darling, you funny streptococcus.' Shades of a Philip Barry play. The critics saw her in 1927 in Barry's "Paris Bound," a cocktail about adultery where the wife observes she may have lost her dignity and the husband replies, 'That's not serious.' The following year Hope Williams took acting honors in "Holiday," a role written for her, as the nonconformist rich girl Linda Seton who realizes that her conventional sister doesn't understand hero Johnny Case at all -- he wants to make a million while young and then retire, get away from it all, to hell with making more millions. "Barry -- whose wife was very comfortable -- wondered how one adjusted to money and also marriage," she said. 'I didn't adjust. It's a losing compromise.' Crunching on a toast point, I ventured, 'I never intend to face that compromise, or living with anyone. But getting away from it all, that's why I split from New York, and moved to Paris. Getting away is freedom.'

Freedom, Hope allowed firmly, was most important of all. 'Yes...' she sighed. 'It usually takes money or access to money.' A pregnant silence smothered the salon. 'It's good to go far, but, dont go too far,' she added, eyes grazing me. Changing the subject she spoke of her vast ranch -- over 1,000 acres in Wyoming -- where she fished and went horseback riding for years, with guests Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, and Tallulah Bankhead. Buzz had told me that Tallu as a youngster in New York, had been smitten, hopelessly, by an equally young, derring-do-it-all Hope Williams. It made perfect sense. Do what you want with whomever you want. And stay friends. Carnality and frivolity. In those days, you sometimes had to have been married -- once -- but it's not so different today. How many embrace the mariage-blanc?



(to be cont.)