Elmer and I met at a Berkshire summer camp where he was the resident young genius and I was a struggling waitress from Philadelphia. Every Wednesday evening, Elmer would play a concert of classical music in the recreation hall. He was brilliant. The waitresses would squat in an adoring semi-circle on the floor, as the dark-haired young pianist confronted the keyboard. One evening, before he began the recital, Elmer stood and faced the audience.
“I want to dedicate this performance of The Appassionatta to Pearl.”
“That’s me!” I thought acutely.
My fellow waitresses stared at me in awe, wondering how they had failed to notice this simmering love affair. I was puzzled...
Read MoreElmer and I met at a Berkshire summer camp where he was the resident young genius and I was a struggling waitress from Philadelphia. Every Wednesday evening, Elmer would play a concert of classical music in the recreation hall. He was brilliant. The waitresses would squat in an adoring semi-circle on the floor, as the dark-haired young pianist confronted the keyboard. One evening, before he began the recital, Elmer stood and faced the audience.
“I want to dedicate this performance of The Appassionatta to Pearl.”
“That’s me!” I thought acutely.
My fellow waitresses stared at me in awe, wondering how they had failed to notice this simmering love affair. I was puzzled as there was no simmering affair for them to notice. I turned beet red and tried to disappear between the floorboards. Beethoven and Bernstein – what an aphrodisiac.
I guess it is too easy to look down the hallways of one’s life and to say with any assurance, this is how it all started – this is how the door swung open – but that moment when the brash, handsome pianist said, “This is for Pearl,” that was surely the way it all began.
In the days that followed, we became an item. There was a fresh spring in my step as I carried eight bowls of onion soup through the swinging doors of the kitchen. “Coming through!” I would squeal. And when the guests at my table were finished eating, Elmer cleared the plates. The most overqualified busboy in the Berkshires.
When we returned from camp, I met Elmer’s parents and he met mine. Six months later we were married and living in our little flat in old Manhattan. The first floor of the building was occupied by the Ship Ahoy Bar. Our apartment was on the fifth floor with no elevator. By the fourth floor, a dozen oranges felt like five dozen. The living room was the largest of the three rooms and was dominated by a Steinway grand piano. The room was about 200 square feet with barely space for all 88 keys. Orange crates contained books and record albums, and a cot doubled as a sofa when we threw a blanket over it. Out the window was Broadway, and across the avenue was a Chinese restaurant where you could get two meals for a dollar-fifty. Street noises sounded like Bradley tanks. But the sounds I remember best were composed by Bartok and Chopin.
My life with Elmer was topsy-turvy. We slept till noon, arose and did our household chores. Then Elmer would practice on the piano for a couple of hours for an upcoming concert. Listening to his music come flooding through the apartment was like standing under a waterfall on a very hot day.
I would teach students in their first and second years, Elmer would teach them from the third-year up. Like most Jewish girls of that era I had had the obligatory piano lessons. So I was able to teach groups of five-year-olds the essence of melody and tempo. Elmer’s students had greater gifts and grander goals. We were a great tandem team, Elmer and I, and together we generated a modest income that managed to keep the wolves at bay.
Many of our evenings were spent at concerts given by young pianists who were just coming on the scene, their eyes sparkling with hope, as indeed were Elmer’s. Other evenings we would spend attending the second acts of Broadway plays whose tickets we couldn’t afford. For fifty cents we could come in after Intermission and see half a show from the second balcony. We knew all the songs from the second act of On the Town, with music by that other Bernstein guy.
We were growing up together. We were a couple of kids. All we had was a little room, a crust of bread, a glass of wine. The summer heat, the shouts from the street. Squalor, love, music. Can you visualize it? Of course you can. It’s Gershwin, Porgy and Bess, Act Two.
That was our life on the memorable day when my life turned from Marjorie Morningstar into The Way We Were. If a screenplay were to describe the action that morning, it would read: FADE UP on APARTMENT, THE COMPOSER sits at the piano playing Beethoven, THE YOUNG WIFE is in the kitchen slamming around pots. The phone RINGS.
Elmer answered the call and engaged in a brief conversation. When he finished, he came into the kitchen.
“Who was that?”
“That was Millard Lampell.”
Elmer had met Millard at a North Carolina army post during the Second World War. While Elmer was playing piano for the brass, Millard was writing scripts for an army radio network. After Millard left the service, he wrote a novel called Saturday’s Hero, about the exploitation of college athletes, and Columbia Pictures bought the screen rights. That’s when Elmer’s old army buddy phoned the struggling concert pianist.
“What did he want?” I asked.
“You know that book he wrote? He’s recommended to Columbia that I write the musical score for the movie.”
“Would that be in Hollywood?”
“I very much think so.”
I was twenty-one. I had traveled from Philadelphia to New York and from the Fulton Fish Market to the Aquarium. To me, the United States resembled the Steinberg drawing that begins with Ninth Avenue and looks west across the Hudson River to Kansas and the Pacific.
“Sidney Buchman, the head of production at Columbia Pictures, is coming to the apartment,” said Elmer.
“This apartment?”
“Unless you have some other one.”
I caught my breath. “When is Mr. Buchman coming to the apartment?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Elmer – we can’t have him climb five flights of stairs. He may be old or handicapped.”
Elmer shrugged aside Mr. Buchman’s possible infirmities. He looked around the apartment, trying to see it through the eyes of a Hollywood executive.
“Elmer, we have no idea how to entertain a movie producer.”
I had heard they did a lot of heavy drinking in Hollywood.
“We should buy a bottle of liquor.”
“Okay,” Elmer replied.
But since neither of us drank, we had no idea what to buy. We had both heard people asking for Scotch in drawing room comedies. We decided to buy a bottle of Scotch.
Then I recalled that my mother would always offer guests something to eat when they visited our home in Philadelphia.
“We should buy some food,” I said. Elmer agreed.
We settled on a cake.
The next day I bought a bottle of Scotch and a chocolate cake.
That evening at the appointed time, the doorbell rang and there he stood – Sidney Buchman, head of production at Columbia Pictures, Hollywood USA. Sidney Buchman had produced the successful movie The Jolson Story which had seemingly done the impossible – it enhanced the size of Al Jolson’s ego. Before that, as a contract writer at the studio, he had written the screenplays for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Here Comes Mr. Jordan. Now he was producing Columbia’s newest gem, Saturday’s Hero.
I could hardly catch my breath. Sidney Buchman stood in our doorway. He was six feet tall, in Sevile Row tweeds, a yellow shirt, and the perfect tie to complete the ensemble. He had thrown over his shoulders a coat that looked like the purest camels hair. Only it turned out to be vicuna. It was a wondrous sight to behold. But I knew that that coat did not belong in that apartment.
We invited him in. Sidney Buchman gave me his vicuna coat to hang up. But we did not have a hall closet in which to hang it. Our only closet was elsewhere in the apartment and was jammed tight with all our belongings.
I took the coat into the bedroom, sat down at the bed, and stroked it.
When I returned to the living room, Sidney Buchman was looking around the cramped little place. He looked like he was searching for something to despise the most. I feared the first words that would escape from his beautiful Hollywood mouth. Mr. Buchman looked out the window onto Broadway, then returned his attention to our shabby apartment. Suddenly he threw his arms out and said: “Don’t ever change!”
“I beg your pardon?” Elmer said.
“This is how an artist should live. You don’t want Hollywood or the money. It will spoil you. This place is glorious.”
“Would you like a shot of Scotch and a piece of cake?” I asked.
Sidney Buchman kept pacing the room, extolling the artist’s life.
The producer refused any refreshment and never asked to listen to Elmer’s music. He was too enthralled by the glorious apartment. In fact, he never mentioned Millard’s movie or offered the job to Elmer. Then, donning his vicuna coat, he winked at Elmer and said, “Get yourself an agent.” With these pregnant words, our fairy godfather Sidney Buchman was out the door and descended the five flights of stairs to the street below.