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TRICKSTERS AND HUCKSTERS: SHOW BIZ ARCHETYPES
by Addison De Witt
“The Genius”
Leonard Bernstein was a true genius. There’s no disputing it. He was also flamboyant, passionate, needy, giving, loving, cruel, self-destructive, and arrogant. He had an unparalleled career in music, as a world-renowned conductor (he led the New York Philharmonic for eleven years), as a legendary Broadway composer (“West Side Story”, for example), and as a composer of “serious” music, as well. Through his televised “Young People’s Concerts” and his appearances on “Omnibus”, Leonard Bernstein was, arguably, the greatest musical ambassador this country will ever know. Yet, for all his brilliance, he died, in 1990, at the age of 72, a deeply conflicted, guilt-ridden man tortured by (among other things) what he felt was his own unfulfilled promise.
Our paths crossed during an intense three-week Master Class in Musical Theatre that “Lenny” (as those in the know referred to him) gave. There were only 16 of us, so we got to know him rather intimately. Lenny loved to teach, it was a calling for him, and he devoted a substantial chunk of his time to nurturing young musicans and composers. But Lenny was not just a musical genius. He could carry on about politics, art, history, theatre, popular culture – you name it – with equal passion. During our sessions – eight hours a day for three weeks – Lenny often digressed wildly from the topic at hand, but he was never, ever boring.
He would always arrive very late, and then sweep into the room (did he ever enter any room any other way?), with his coat or cape (yes, a cape!) hanging from his shoulders, an ascot often tied around his neck. He would begin with whatever happened to be on his mind at the moment – one was always subject to his whim. This was par for the course with Lenny, who went through life more than just admired and respected – he was worshiped. Sure, there were classical music critics who seemed to delight in bursting Lenny’s bubble by criticizing his latest compositions, but by and large Lenny was surrounded by sycophantic adoration 24/7. Is it any wonder that he hated being alone? He suffered horribly from insomnia, and would often corral anyone he could to stay up with him into the wee hours of the morning to keep him company – and to save him from being alone with his own thoughts.
Lenny enjoyed baiting us. He would conjure up a completely subjective (and uninformed) psychological profile of each of us in his head, and then challenge us accordingly, determined to create some kind of psychodrama in the classroom on a daily basis. He flirted shamelessly with certain young males.
If, while he was commenting on someone’s work, Lenny suddenly had to use the bathroom, he would head there mid-sentence without dropping a word and insist that the person he was talking to accompany him. Giggles would be suppressed as we silently watched our classmates disappear into the men’s room with Lenny and sheepishly return several minutes later.
One simply did not question Leonard Bernstein and the maestro clearly relished this fact and used it regularly as a way of testing people to see how far they would go to please the genius in their midst. When Lenny was hungry and cried out for a roasted chicken, one was found as quickly as possible and placed in front of him. (He attacked and devoured it like King Henry VIII and kept on talking without missing a beat.) When Lenny growled for a bottle of scotch, everything stopped until one was provided.
For three weeks, we were kept on the edge of our seats. No one would have dared miss a minute of watching Lenny teach. After a certain point, we were teamed with other classmates and given exercises to complete. Yet, oddly enough, almost nothing valuable or concrete was accomplished in terms of writing. The situation was too tense, the expectations too high, for any of us to do our best work. The primary value was being in the company of Leonard Bernstein, and no one ever doubted its worth.
At the end of the three-week session, it was announced that Lenny was hosting a party in our honor at his home in the Dakota. Snow was falling that night, giving us a magical view of Central Park outside Lenny’s windows. If memory serves, we were asked to arrive at 9:00 p.m., though Lenny was conducting that night and didn’t make his grand entrance until much later. After shedding his cape, he instantly disappeared into his bedroom, and didn’t join the party until he had freshened up and changed into a silk dressing gown, like a character in a Noel Coward play.
And, like a character in a play, Lenny had an agenda for the night: He wanted to play Charades. Teaching musical theatre had apparently rekindled not only Lenny’s love for the genre, but his affection for that time in his life (the 1940’s and 50’s) when his social life revolved around his theatre friends, Betty Comden, Adolph Green, and Judy Holliday among them. In those glory years, many a night was spent playing a fierecely competitve, super-intellectual version of Charades, the more sophisticated and obscure the clues, the better.
For this night, Lenny divided us up into two teams. He would lead one team, and the
other would be led by his current collaborator (on the opera “A Quiet Place”), young librettist Stephen Wadsworth. Rather than depend on something as democratic as choosing straws, or even eeny-miney-mo, Lenny rather undiplomatically surveyed the room and gleefully selected his own teammates, those he deemed the best and the brightest. If any of us wondered which of us Lenny preferred, the answer was given in that tension-filled moment.
Alas, Dear Reader, the maestro failed to choose yours truly for his team, a devastating ego-blow, to be sure. We rejects went off to one side of the living room, while Lenny huddled with his favorites on the other.
The titles and phrases to be guessed, prepared by Lenny and his collaborator in advance, were not your garden variety Charades items. No popular movie titles or Broadway showtunes in this game, oh, no. We were forced to give clues for obscure titles of unperformed French operas, 15th century paintings, and the like. Many of us, on both teams, could neither recognize nor even pronounce what we were supposed to help our teammates guess, and were reduced to giving our clues phonetically.
Call it over-confidence, or hubris, if you will, but Lenny’s team lost. While I admit to no small sense of personal satisfaction in besting Lenny’s golden team, nothing could have prepared me for Lenny’s reaction to losing. This grown man in his 60’s, this genius, this world famous paragon of brilliance and accomplishment, husband, father, teacher, mentor – not to mention host of this party, exploded into a childlike tantrum the likes of which I have never seen before or since, even from an actual child. He screamed, he yelled, he flung himself about, stomped his feet, pounded on the walls. As my colleagues on both teams watched in stunned silence, Lenny started to throw things against the (expensively covered) walls, including a large silver bowl which was inscribed in French and displayed with other honors and awards. He then retreated to his bedroom to cool off.
Quietly, but steadily over the next several minutes, the party guests started to grab their coats and leave. It was, after all, close to 1:00 a.m. by this time. As Lenny came out of his funk and started to realize he was losing his guests, his companions, his audience, he panicked and begged the few stragglers left to stay. He kept maybe half a dozen of us with him, willing captives, as he regaled us with stories. The desperate attempt of a man in failing health, with incurable insomnia, to connect, to stay alive, to not be left alone with his own thoughts until dawn.
Sometime after 2:00 a.m. most of us finally left. Lenny stood at his front door and kissed us each good-bye. Not on the cheek, mind you. But full, on the mouth; Lenny never did anything half-way. Frankly, it was a moist, mushy kiss, and kind of creepy. One friend (and the only female) later revealed that Lenny had pushed his tongue into her mouth. It’s not something she’ll ever forget.
Snow was still falling as we emerged from the Dakota, 72nd Street was deserted and blanketed in white. I decided to walk the twenty blocks home. I wanted to savor the moment. I was young, I was living in New York, I’d just been kissed on the mouth by Leonard Bernstein. And I thought, “It doesn’t get any better than this.”
Postscript: 18 months later, I’m now employed as a writer and engaged to be married. I take my fiancee to see Lenny conduct at Avery Fisher Hall. Bernstein is brilliant. Thrilling, in fact. We go backstage where dozens and dozens are waiting patiently in a receiving line for a quick audience with the Maestro. I’d like to impress my girlfriend, so I’m hoping he won’t have any trouble remembering me.
Lenny sits at the other end of the room, in his dressing gown, like a potentate. He’s holding hands with a Nun, a New England Sister, in full habit, who is famously one of Lenny’s biggest fans and has been following him from concert to concert for years. Finally, it’s our turn, and I approach Lenny eagerly, introducing my fiancee. He takes one look at me, scowls dramatically and growls: “You’re fat!” I stand there, stunned, for a moment, before realizing that our audience has ended and Lenny is on to the next person in line. Since I weigh the same as I did 18 months earlier, I’m not sure if Lenny has merely given his (belated) opinion of me, or if he’s mistaken me for someone else (someone slimmer, apparently). And I will never know.
A few years later, I was at a small reunion with friends from Lenny’s class, and we spent a good chunk of time recalling those three crazy weeks together and that wild night at the Dakota. The next morning, I turned on the radio and heard that Leonard Bernstein had passed away the night before.
Why do we tolerate “bad” behavior from geniuses? Who knows, Leonard Bernstein may actually have been “nicer” than Picasso, more “lovable” than Jerome Robbins. If you ever want to find out if you’re a true genius, try behaving the way these guys did, and see what happens.
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