BOOKTOUR
A NOMADIC LIFE
by
Adam Darius
Chapter 1
The Land of the River Neva
So, once more, goodbye to the land of the magical firebird, soaring in the wind to the exotic strains of Stravinsky and Rimsky-Korsakov. And a wave to the spirit of the imperturbable Neva, host to the passionate and spent lives of those nameless and numberless soldiers of history who once sailed its turbulent waters.
Finally, a farewell to the religious mystics of gold-domed Russia, and the hunched women beggars on the bustling Nevsky Prospekt, crossing themselves repeatedly in the hope that they will be saved from the freezing wrath of the Russian winter until the Easter sun and the son of God reappear to melt their wretched lives into the bliss of imminent eternity.
Chapter 6
Rebel With A Cause
It was late September, 1955, and I was coaching a group of young would-be actors and actresses on one of Warner Brothers' sound stages in Burbank, California. The good-looking and ambitious aspirants were part of the studio's development plan to spot potential stars. As the class progressed and I taught the intensive exercises I had designed to create a total dramatic instrument, standing in the doorway watching for some 45 minutes was an actor no older than any of the group or even myself, the teacher. He was James Dean, at that time the most celebrated film actor on the planet. After his runaway success in East of Eden, he was taking a break from Giant, being shot on the adjoining sound stage with Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson.
James Dean had the ability to expose his acutely disturbed psyche to the rolling camera. The camera for him became a trusted psychiatrist with whom he could unravel the cumulative neuroses of his troubled youth. His inability to articulate the text resulted in patience-stretching retakes since his lines were often unintelligible. But what he lacked in vocal technique he more than compensated for with his undeniable power to pour out the painful truth. Millions of young people throughout the world were able to identify with his characters' sense of alienation. But the public responded less to the roles he played than they did to James Dean himself, whom they were convinced was revealing his own, their own, problems. The dividing line between himself and his characters was invisible.
Days later, the filming of Giant completed, James Dean's meteoric life was over. It was on a sunny California highway that his crushed body was retrieved from the wreckage of his silver Porsche. His life had suddenly ended, but his legend had slowly begun.
Chapter 7
Rock Star Quartet
John Lennon
"Why don't you paint your prick white instead of your face?" asked John Lennon after one of my performances at the now defunct Arts Lab in London. This question posed to me by the most famous of all the Beatles in 1968, at the very pinnacle of his celebrity, was made minutes after I had come off stage.
When I later mulled over his offensive conduct, I understood that he wasn't asking me anything for which he sought an answer. It wasn't even a rhetorical query. His uncalled-for brashness was his way of propping himself up so that he could mask his own deep insecurity. By disarming the potential antagonist first (and everyone was a possible adversary), the lad from Liverpool was able to maintain the upper hand.
People have often asked me my response to that obnoxious question. Actually, I was so taken aback I don't recall what I said or didn't say. Nevertheless, he remained there talking to me, holding court to the mushrooming crowd around us. To say that the onlookers were transfixed is something of an understatement, for the privileged group enveloping us was breathing in the very same air as John Lennon himself, he who had proclaimed very publicly that "We're more popular than Jesus now."
As Lennon continued to hold forth, his initial grossness was gradually replaced by what came across as a genuine desire to be helpful. I was no longer appraised as a possible threat, so the decent human being that he may well have been began to crawl out of his protectively aggressive shell.
David Bowie
Lindsay Kemp, the gifted and flamboyant mime artist had, in 1967, devised a production called Pierrot in Turquoise which I saw at the tiny Mercury Theatre in London's Notting Hill. Among the cast, playing Cloud to Lindsay's Pierrot, was a 21-year-old aspiring pop singer named David Bowie, originally David Jones, born in Brixton but later moving with his family to Bromley. No one had ever heard of the idol-to-be in those distant days...
...Knowing that he was penniless (he is presently reputed to be one of the world's richest rock stars), I invited him to watch one of my performances at the Commonwealth Institute Theatre in London. When he asked if he could bring a young lady with him, without further thought I arranged an additional free ticket. That night when my solo performance drew to a close, outside my dressing room door stood a sullen and silent David with his pert and pretty girlfriend in tow. He stared at me, saying nothing, not even a thank-you for the complimentary tickets. In the midst of the awkward lull, I detected from the look on his face that he was about to launch a mini missile in my direction.
Recklessly, I asked him a rather misguided question. "Did you enjoy the performance, David?"
"No," he retorted, still eyeballing me coldly in the face," but we went out and had a good meal, so it wasn't a total loss."
I was not surprised when David Bowie went so far in the world of smashed guitars and dissembled hotel rooms, for he had all the obligatory rock credentials; a dysfunctional family background, specifically fraternal schizophrenia and suicide, as well as the infantile inability to respond to anyone else's needs but his own.
In due course, he became a supreme hijacker of public attention, and in that capacity he cannot be faulted. In closing this little episode, no words can be more telling than Bowie's own. In an interview with Playboy in 1974, he told interviewer Cameron Crowe:
"Adolph Hitler was one of the first rock stars. I think he was quite as good as Jagger. Hitler was no politician. He was a media artist himself. The world will never see his like again."
Chapter 18
The Mansion of Weird Dreams
Liberace stood in front of me dressed unobtrusively in grey flannel trousers and a navy blue jacket, the very antithesis of his flamboyant public image. It was 1957 and we were being introduced in the lobby of the Hacienda Hotel in Las Vegas where I was appearing in Cole Porter's Can-Can. Las Vegas, then as now, magnetized its usual assemblage of bright movie stars, shady gamblers, painted hookers and a swarm of twangy Midwestern tourists.
Liberace, the small-town boy from Wisconsin, had risen from obscurity to Croesus-styled wealth by sheer intractable determination. By transforming himself into a mincing monument of self-mocking ostentation, he manipulated the public with far more mastery than he ever did the keyboard.
As the master showman spoke to me, I was pleasantly surprised by his quiet and unaffected manner. At the time of this meeting, Liberace's phenomenal earning power was past its unprecedented peak. Lawsuits, injunctions and cancellations of bookings were becoming the order of the day. In his future autobiography he would write that his career was in "a monster slump."
"He is the summit of sexthe pinnacle of masculine, feminine and neuter. Everything that He, She and It can ever want. This deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love has had the biggest reception and impact on London since Charlie Chaplin arrived at the same station, Waterloo, on September 12, 1921. Without doubt he is the biggest sentimental vomit of all time."
So wrote the poison-penned columnist William Conner in 1956, under the nom de plume of Cassandra in the London Daily Mail, an assessment for which Liberace sued him, dragging the journalist through the British law courts for years. Eventually, Conner lost the case. Liberace, though lying through his capped teeth while vehemently denying his homosexuality, had publicly vindicated himself. Sixty years earlier, Oscar Wilde had sued under a parallel attack, only to lose, be imprisoned and die soon afterwards. Liberace won, lived, and eventually recouped, with a vengeance, his place in the sweltering Las Vegas sun....
...On stage, Liberace's blinding sequins, thousands of miniature light bulbs, entrances on Peter Pan-styled flying wires, in hot-air balloons and in chauffeured Rolls-Royces, turned the entertainer into the ultimate showbiz peacock. In private, during the two evenings I spent in his company, I found Liberace to be a genuine human being whose sincerity was never in question.
Or that was the image he laser-beamed to me. For when a man has his teenaged lover's handsome face altered by plastic surgery to resemble his own, does not he teeter on the brink of narcissistic mania?
Borderline obsessive he certainly was. And this self-fixation fuelled him to surpass his earliest triumphs and break every record in the long history of Radio City Music Hall. But even his phalanx of bodyguards couldn't stave off the lurking shadow of mortality. He was to become, along with fellow gay icons Rock Hudson, Anthony Perkins and Rudolf Nureyev, one of the most famous victims of the AIDS epidemic.
In death, Liberace could no longer control his carefully constructed image. The attempt to cover up the cause of his death resulted in a media stampede. As the world discovered the undignified details of his closing days, he was unceremoniously stripped of the final vestiges of his hard-earned splendour. In the words of the priest at the memorial service, Liberace now stood unadorned, naked in the presence of God.
Chapter 28
The Happy Clowns of Coney Island
Coney Island, New York
For Americans, the very name Coney Island suggests a bright fantasia of frightening fairground rides, stilt-walking clowns, spook-filled fun houses, garishly painted pavilions and Sunday strolls along the boardwalk. There, the sweet aroma of candy floss and toffee apples mingled with the tangy ocean air....
...But what does Coney Island, with its hurdy-gurdy echoes, have to do with any of my more unusual performances? Well, it was there that I essayed my first dance steps on a stage. My parents, in 1940, had sent me to Manhattan Beach Day Camp on the eastern tip of Coney Island. The pride and joy of Manhattan Beach was its Rainbow Shell, an open-air theatre with a seating capacity of thousands. At night, the most popular bands of the day held vast audiences in sway.
The day camp I was attending was preparing a kiddie show in which I was to be featured. The big night arrived. Along with an eight-year-old friend named Robert, I entered onto the huge stage of the Rainbow Shell and danced an energetic conga routine. Replete with shaking shoulders and thrusting kicks, it was, I would now imagine, a cross between Desi Arnaz and Carmen Miranda. Together, Robert and I must have been an amusing sight, though I, myself, took it very seriously and gave it my all. I remember, during the curtain call, the master of ceremonies putting his arm approvingly around my ten-year-old shoulders as the audience let loose with a continuous burst of applause...
...That long-ago performance was my initiation into a life of movement. Though over six decades have come and gone, still resonating in my memory are the overlapping strains of Sousa's stirring marches and Strauss's buoyant waltzes. Churned out by a faraway barrel organ, the tunes will not be silenced, nor will the carousels cease circling. The bobbing, prancing, painted steeds whiz by, pulling chariots with winged and gilded goddesses. And nearby, not yet vanished, can be glimpsed the hurtling roller coaster with its soundless screams and cars of ghostly passengers.
Over sixty summers later, in Beirut, I was dancing still, and for the first time since distant Coney Island, in the midst of another fairground. As I applied the chalk-white make-up, I paused for a moment to gaze into the undulating mirror of the past. There, coming softly into focus, were toddlers holding high their rainbow-hued balloons, their once carefree laughter not even an echo, their petulant tears long since evaporated. Then the mirror image shifts.
Blurred but yet visible are those sequined and spangled clowns of yesteryear, somersaulting, slow motion, through life's capricious circus. Who, now, are they captivating with their manic and desperate gaiety?
And what has happened to those sparkling Harlequins, their multicoloured diamonds made incandescent by the sun? Lastly, dare one ask, to which far seashore did they journey, those translucent Pierrots lit by the evening star? In the unseen immensity to which they've sailed, is there no reckoning of their windblown lives?
No, I fear, nor can there be, for they are all gone, gone, alas, but one.
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