Both Dody and I have
been avid readers since childhood so we must have read thousands
of books in our longish lives. But in our senior years we own
only a few hundred. That’s because periodically, when they began
to overcrowd our shelves, we would weed them out and give away
the surplus to library book drives or friends. When we bought
a book we didn’t look to see if it were a first edition. We didn’t
care. And we usually discarded the cover because we preferred
our books naked.
So I guess it’s safe
to say we’re readers, not collectors.
But there’s one forty-seven-year-old
first edition on our shelves that would be the gem of our collection
if we were collectors: Gypsy
Rose Lee’s Gypsy, with a typewritten, signed note to me
from the gifted illusionist (she made you think she was taking
all her clothes off) conferring on me a singular honor.
Back in 1957, when
Miss Lee’s memoir was published, I was gainfully employed as television
editor of the Houston Post, which was owned by another gifted
lady, Oveta Culp Hobby (I never miss a chance to drop her name).
I bought the book and was captivated. Frustrated, too, because
I wanted to say so in print but I was the TV editor, not the book
editor. Until I realized I could sneak a review into my daily
column by establishing a television connection, however tenuous.
So I opened with a
spurious conjecture that television was being overrun by folks
baring their souls and that though Gypsy Rose Lee had bared almost
everything else for the public, she hadn’t bared her soul in her
tell-all book (almost all), Gypsy, just written "an extraordinary
blithe view of even the darkest moments" and launched into a rave
review including the observation "Unfortunately, there probably
isn’t much chance of seeing Gypsy on TV, at least until it has
had a run in some more lucrative medium…it would make a marvelous
Broadway musical." I even proposed an alternate title, My Bare
Lady.
Then in 1959, Gypsy,
a musical comedy based on her memoir with book by Arthur Laurents,
music by Julie Styne, lyrics by Steven Sondheim and with Ethel
Merman as Rose burst upon the scene like a tidal wave that swept
all before it.
I looked up my two-year-old
column and sent Miss Rose a copy. I got back a chaste white note
card, with Gypsy Rose Lee and an impressive Manhattan address
elegantly engraved on the cover and a brief typed missive inside,
saying
"Dear Mr., Westheimer:
Thank you for your note and the clipping. This makes you a member
of the Gypsy Fortune Telling Club."
Sincerely,
(signed) Gypsy
I carefully glued my
letter of appointment to the title page of my first edition, where
it remains to this day to confound anyone who doubts my prowess.
But you will have to
read it in situ. That book doesn’t leave the premises.
And Gypsy fortunes are told only in immediate proximity.
David Westheimer,
SeniorWomenWeb's resident male, lives with his wife of 57 years,
Dody, in the same Los Angeles apartment they moved into from Houston,
Texas 41 years ago. Their son, Fred, is a Senior Vice-President
at the William Morris Agency and his younger brother, Eric, is
a veterinarian. Succeeding generations include five grandchildren
and two great-grandchildren. As a journalist, David worked for
Oveta Culp Hobby.
At 85, David Westheimer
continues to write, and not just for Senior Women. The Great
Wounded Bird, his recollections of World War II, is winner
of the Texas Review 1999 poetry prize, was published by Texas
Review Press and may be ordered from Amazon Books, where it has
surged to 821,374th on their sales list. It is also listed with
Barnes & Noble and Borders Books. David's latest novel, Delay
En Route, is hovering at 1,485,676th on Amazon's list.
Poet and novelist,
David is a retired Air Force Officer. He can be reached for a
repertoire of feigned curmudgeonly remarks at: DWestheime@aol.com.
