Speak, memory

A couple of weeks ago I got an email from someone named Jackie Sanders. She's working on a film about Arlene Francis, and wondered if I was the same Karen Wickre whose name she found on a cassette tape in Francis' things which her son, Peter Gabel, had lent Jackie for research. The strangest part is that she, ahem, Googled me and found me at, well, Google. She nailed my email address (I forgot to ask how many naming schemes she tried).

So anyway, I reached her in New York and we chatted about her project. Most people today probably don't even know Francis, but she was a radio, film and TV star from about the 40s-70s. (Not sure she was as well known in the 30s, when she was for a short time on the WPA payroll.)



Photo found at http://www.curtalliaume.com/wml.html

Likely she's best known today as a panelist on What's My Line? along with those other leading lights of the day, Bennett Cerf, Dorothy Kilgallen and Kitty Carlisle. (I even watched this show.) I was in this heady mix because at the tender age of 26 I interviewed her at her apartment in New York (upper East Side, I seem to recall) about her (minor) work in the WPA Federal Theatre Project. This was my first "real" -- connected to my studies and meaningful to me -- job just after grad school, as oral historian for an NEH-funded project at George Mason University. I interviewed about 200 people who had been paid by the FTP between 1935-39, when it was killed by HUAC.

Sanders sounds savvy and committed - she's done a ton of research and has found many Francis partisans. She even got one of my thespian heroes, Cherry Jones, to narrate! (Jones already knows the realm of the FTP, having played Hallie Flanagan in that odd but endearing film, Cradle Will Rock.)

The whole thing made me think about long-past experiences - how fleeting (or not), how memorable (or not), how life-shaping (or not). I can't say Francis herself had a huge impact on me - god knows research was a lot harder then, and I probably didn't appreciate all she'd done - but I do remember that she was gracious to a nervous young woman fiddling with a tape recorder. I doubt there was anything too revelatory in her remarks, but perhaps it filled a niche in her own memory - after all, I was interviewing her c. 40 years after the FTP ended. And now, it's 30 years since I did that work. There's a kind of baton-handing effect here I like thinking about.

The other baton-handing has to do with getting in touch with one of my George Mason colleagues from that long-ago time. Urk: he's now a grandfather of four. My memories are (of course) frozen back then. Has everyone but me really gotten this old? =8-/

Frank Langella is a god

In Frost/Nixon on Broadway. Of course, he was helped by that stunning Peter Morgan script (which I can't yet find online - it's one you need to read to fully appreciate). I had such complicated feelings about F/N. I watched the 1977 program, I was a fan of Frost's from the earlier U.S. version of "TW3", but didn't know of his later somewhat-falling star, which the interviews obviated. Of course given my dad's huge love of Nixon, my fascination is for this Shakespearean-sized character. I always felt I understood the sorrowful, dark part of him, believing there was much overlap was with my dad's own demons. He was dogged his entire life by similar feelings of an impossible loneliness, of an outsider status that no amount of success could assuage. Langella really delivers on that premise - that Nixon's own fears and hurt fueled his massive hubris, and his colossal, deadly mistakes in Vietnam and with Watergate, among others.

Ben Brantley: "Mr. Langella’s Nixon has come across as a man of quick intellect, maudlin sentimentality, vulgar wit and studied social reflexes that have never acquired the semblance of natural grace. You are always aware of someone who struggles to conceal not only a defensive self-consciousness but also a cancerous anger and fear."

There a few unforgettable moments in my theatregoing life: the original M Butterfly and Rent; the late '90s revival of Carousel; anything by Anna Deveare Smith, Spaulding Gray or Sarah Jones. Langella's drunken late-night call as Nixon about 2/3 of the way through was another such moment. You can't convey that depth of anguish in another medium. (I'm glad Ron Howard & Brian Grazer are producing the film version. But it can't possibly go as deep.)

Early August at Ma's

Just spent four days at Ma's, which I'm committed to do at least every four weeks. It's getting harder now -- because of her pulmonary hypertension, her brain is increasingly affected by lack of oxygen, which mostly shows as extreme short-term forgetfulness. She can't remember which meal she's had, what time of day it is, and who's been to see her. There are long periods of quiet. Conversation consists mostly of someone asking if she is hungry, or thirsty, or needs to get to the bathroom, and her responding. She's still so good-natured and accommodating to virtually any request that her caretakers enjoy helping her.

So I sit and read or watch TV while she stares at the screen or (more often) naps. I think long and hard about "quality of life" when I'm with her. On one hand, she has a comfortable apartment, visitors who care about her, and doesn't lack for looking after. She knows who the key people are (her children, her immediate neighbors, and also the most regular caretakers, her doctor, the hospice team), she can enjoy the greenery outside, the sun filters in, and she's in a safe and homey atmosphere. On the other hand, she can't really do anything anymore. She led an astonishingly active life - traveling, gardening, churchgoing, tending to friends, reading, following Washington politics - and that's all gone, as is her house of 38 years, and many of her closest friends, whom she's outlived. Day by day, she gets more frail, more forgetful, and is slightly less interested - or rather, slightly less able to be interested - in the doings of the more robust. Things do enter her consciousness, but they don't stay long or grow in value.

After I left her I headed to New York, where after a couple of days of a regular work routine I found myself getting sadder and sadder as I thought of her diminishing world. Because that's what's happening - she is slowly departing this life. The vividness of the world is almost beyond her now. The texture of life is thinning. This awareness, for me, is a sharp reminder of how much I'm missing her already - and how much more missing is to come.