Ben, I love a British breakfast. Who else would think of baked beans as breakfast food. And fried toast. Yum! Did you have any Scotch Eggs while you were there? Another of my favourites.
Okay...THE MARY ASTOR STORY. Many years ago, somewhere in the mid-eighties, probably before some urchins on this message board were born, when Miss Astor was yet alive. I, my wife, and a friend were lolling around our apartment (this is before I had bought a house) discussing what deserving venerable souls, pioneers of the cinematic arts, had yet to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the AFI. We felt women had been particularly stinted and started dropping names of the deserving.
I brought up Mary Astor, one of my all-tiime favourite actresses, who, though all too often in supporting roles, was better than the leads. And after all, who is more of a pioneer in cinema than a woman who had had her virginity plucked by a forty-odd year old John Barrymore when she was only seventeen? The first of many tempestuous love affairs the most famous...and exposed...culminating with George Kaufman about whose prowess and staying power she rhapsodized in her now-infamous diaries.
Anyway, our friend happened to work for AFTRA at the time and he said, "You know, she lives at the Motion Picture Home out in Woodland Hills." It was decided then and there. If AFI would not honour this film legend, we would. We decided we go out to the Motion Picture Home that weekend with a bouquet of flowers.
Somehow we thought security would be immense and that we would be forced to leave this little token of esteem and appreciation at the front desk...like most flower deliveries anywhere.
Oh, how wrong we were! These are the forgotten remanents and waiting cadavers of the movie industry. No one but a few relatives or "drooling" fans like us knew that once some of these people were the height of glamour. The chirpy lady at the front desk smiled, looked in a directory, and said, "She is cabin number such and so." And we were left free and unescorted to roam the interior grounds and wend our way to said cabin. We were getting nervous. Going to meet the famous lady herself.
But threading through the ground did not inspire confidence. These were OLD people we kept seeing on the winding pathways! Arriving at her cabin inspired less confidence. It was about the size of a small motel room. There was a three-wheel bike blocking the entrance. I was getting cold feet, but my friend manuvered around the cumbersome bike and boldly pounded on the door. "Miss Astor?" he sang out. After what seemed like an eternity and several more knocks, A low, slurred, sepulchral growl, harsh and leathery from too many cigarettes, rasped from within, "Whattya want?" Somewhere within that snarl was the recognizable timbre of what was once Mary Astor's voice. Undeterred, our friend blithely responded: "Flower delivery." Another pause.
"Well, come in," came the begrudging mutter. At which point I had pretty much decided I was NOT going in. As my friend pushed opened the door and I got a look at the tiny disarrayed kitchenette, I definitely decided I was not going in, even as our friend brazenly entered and my wife followed. I don't think there would have been enough room for me in there anyway.
The rest of the rest of the story, I have to rely on the lovely wife Julieanne's description. She says that as she turned around the door into the miniscule cubicle...one untidy room of minimal furnishings...Miss Astor...or a frazzled heap that might have resembled the gorgeous Miss Astor once upon a time, was still in bed and tugged the covers tighter around what was her apparently naked body. She looked either drugged or hungover. I can't remember whether there were actually empty liquor bottles and prescription containers littered about the shriveled kitchen counter or whether this was merely an embellishjment of my fevered imagination. But this was like about one pm on a Sunday afternoon. My guess: she had not gone to church earlier that morning.
As my wife solicitiously asked her where she might like the flowers and our friend just nonchalantly ransacked her cupboards for a vase (He was a very fearless fellow when it came to celebrities he adored. He went backstage to see Eartha Kitt once...an utter stranger to him...and ended up giving her a footrub in her dressing room. My wife was with him on this occasion too), a guttural, vaguely threatening rumble emanated from out of the blanketed, tousled-thinning-haired heap on the bed. I even heard it outside. It said: "Just leave the damned flowers and get out."
Which they did...but not before my friend actually did put them in something with water, I believe. We then went to a nearby restaurant and consoled our busted illusions with a late lunch. Ah, "The stuff that dreams are made of", indeed. And if you've not seen the classic MALTESE FALCON, you'll not get the reference.
