When I was a younger
man I wrote for The Houston Post for years, interrupted by World
War II and the Korean War. Radio and magazine editor, then TV
editor. Columnists in the entertainment field who worked far from
Hollywood and New Year interviewed stars by telephone and I did
my share. I can still remember some of them.
After a string of dance-musicals
beginning with “Flying Down To Rio” in 1933 and ending in 1939
with “The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle,” and a long hiatus,
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were reunited in 1949 in “The Barclays
of Broadway.” Separately, they did a series of telephone interviews
with movie and TY editors all over the country.
I spoke first with
Astaire and later with Rogers. When I asked him about those wonderful
films he had done with her, “Follow the Fleet,” “The Gay Divorcee
,” “Shall We Dance?”, “Top Hat,” and all, he said, “Yes, it was
so boring.” I told Ginger Rogers that and she laughed, saying,
“ I didn’t know Fred felt that way. I had a wonderful time.”
I was able to tell
her something else she hadn’t known. Back when she was winning
Charleston contests in Texas before she became a movie star, my
brother Joe danced with her. He remembered that all his life.
I guess she didn’t.
In 1958, Danny Kaye
starred in “Me and the Colonel,” a different sort of role from
the light-hearted comedies he usually did, and he did phone interviews
to promote it. When I spoke with him, I was still cherishing a
patter-song he did in “The Court Jester” a couple of years earlier.
I’ll bet you remember it, too. If you heard it you couldn’t forget
it. You know, the one about “the potion with the poison” and “the
flagon with the dragon” and “the chalice from the palace?” I told
him I’d appreciate it if he would do it for me over the phone.
He couldn’t remember
the words. So
I did it for him.
It was in that same
era that Bill Dana, a writer for Steve Allen, introduced his memorable
character, Jose Jiminez.
I was enchanted by
Jose and phoned a network PR guy I knew to arrange an interview.
Dana was delighted. A writer, not a comic, Dana said it was the
first time he’d ever been interviewed. I asked him the source
of Jose Jiminez. He said he’d been vacationing in Havana (this
was before Castro) and met a man who told him he was “the Dutch
representative.” Dana said he asked him if he was the Dutch Consul
or what? The man said, “No, no! The Dutch automobile.”
He was the Dodge dealer
in Havana. And he talked the fractured English that Dana borrowed
for Jose Jiminez.
My shortest phone interview
was with my favorite actor, Toshiro Mifune. He was in New York
on a publicity tour and I happened to be in New York on business,
too. They couldn’t fit me into his busy schedule but they could
set up a phone interview. I was to take the call in a Japanese
restaurant they picked because Mifune couldn’t speak much English
and they needed someone to answer the phone who could speak Japanese.
So Mifune called me there and we managed a sort of a conversation
for three minutes. He was calling from a pay phone and the operator
broke in and asked him to deposit more coins. He didn’t know what
she was talking about. So she broke the connection.
One of my favorite
phone interviews wasn’t long distance. I got a tip that an up-and-coming
young actress, Gena Rowlands, was in town visiting her family.
Her business-executive father had been transferred there from
somewhere in the East by his company. Her mother answered the
phone. When I told her who I was and what I wanted, there was
a pause. Then she said, “You know, her husband is with her and
he’s better known than she is. It might be better if you said
you wanted to interview him and interviewed her, too.” So I interviewed
them both on the phone. Gena Rowlands and John Cassavetes. Years
later, after Dody and I moved to Los Angeles, the couple moved
here, too, and so did Gena’s mother, who had been widowed in Houston.
We used to go to movies with her, and visited occasionally with
her daughter and son-in-law, who had two children by then.
There were other job-connected
calls, not interviews. NBC used to do big production shows they
called “Spectaculars.” On one of them I was reviewing, some ballet
dancers came out for a short performance. The lead dancer was
spectacular. Very big for a ballet dancer and gifted. I called
a friend of mine in the publicity department of the network and
asked him who the dancer was. It took a while for him to find
out.
Jaques D’Amboise.
And JP Miller’s mother
would call me when one of her son’s scripts was going to be on
TV. He was a writer of such dramas as “Days of Wine and Roses.”
He was from Houston and had graduated from Rice Institute, as
had Dody and I. We hadn’t known him then. When JP’s mother told
me he was going to have a play on, I would call the network and
ask for details. The first time I did, my PR department friend
said, “How did you know? It hasn’t been announced yet.” “His mama
told me,” I said.
Later, after JP Miller
got famous, I did a long-distance phone interview with him, too.
David Westheimer lives
with his wife of 55 years, Dody, in the same Los Angeles apartment
they moved into from Houston, Texas 39 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 83, David Westheimer continues
to write, and not just for Senior Women. His latest effort, "The
Great Wounded Bird", his recollections of World War II, winner
of the Texas Review 1999 poetry prize, was published this year
by Texas Review Press and may be ordered from Amazon Books, where
it is 1,458,159th on their sales list, from Barnes & Noble and
Borders Books. He is a novelist and a retired Air Force Officer.
He can be reached for a repertoire of feigned curmudgeonly remarks
at: DWestheime@aol.com.
