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 I WANT TO GET OFF! |
The way the year ended,
we were lucky to get out alive
By MURRY FRYMER
of TheColumnists.com
Bill Clinton used to talk a lot about a bridge to the 21st Century. Like a lot of what Bill Clinton used to talk about, this bridge has been shaky. But I guess now that we've all taken it, there's no way back to those glorious days called the '90s.
2001, the real thing, not the movie, has been so unreal that no movie maker could have imagined it. Oh, maybe the Japanese, but they would have included a 10-storey monster. The year's real monsters were human size, terrible nonetheless.
It was a year that began on a stock market slide and disintegrated from there. George Bush took over at the White House. I missed the old cast, including Monica.
But it was September 11th that gave the year its image, and it was one of death. The New York Times has been writing daily synopses of the lives of the more than 3,000 victims and I don't know just how long that will continue. I still read some of them, keeping their calamity fresh and its dread alive.
For solace, I prefer to remember a few others who also died in 2001, people who I happened to share some moments with. They were an impessive bunch.
The film producer Stanley Kramer died in 2001. I sat with him one day about 15 years ago at the Holiday Inn in San Jose while a worker running a vacuum cleaner poked his noisy machine around our feet. Kramer ("Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," "Inherit the Wind," "Judgment at Nuremberg") was morose about being unable to get financing for new films. He had gone to Bellevue, Washington, to escape Hollywood for a while and write a column for a Seattle newspaper. He was going back now to try to revive his career.
Imogene Coca died in 2001. I spoke with her and Sid Caesar at a Nob Hill hotel in San Francisco (I can't remember which one) about a dozen years ago when the famed TV "Show of Shows" duo were doing a nostalgic show in town. Coca sat quietly most of the time while Caesar dominated the interview, which seemed about normal. When I specifically turned to her for answers, she was animated, but soft. And brief, so as not to hog Sid's space.
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willing and very able second banana to Sid Caesar. |
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Anthony Quinn died in 2001. I interviewed him in San Francisco when he was coming to San Jose to star in "Zorba," the musical. Quinn told me that as a child he had been an illegal Mexican immigrant who used to pick prunes in the Almaden Valley of San Jose, now an area of tract homes, one of which is mine. I invited Quinn to meet me at an Almaden farm where Mexican immigrants still worked the fields. I thought Quinn might talk to those workers. Alas, Quinn chose to arrive in a limousine entourage with wife, agent, agent's wife, etc. The workers, thinking the official party was the Immigration Department, all fled.
There were others who died in 2001 who I felt I knew, but never met. Carroll O'Connor seemed closer than most actors and I would have wished to share some moments with him. I spent years listening to Perry Como and to Isaac Stern, but never met them. Herbert Block (Herblock) was my favorite editorial cartoonist of all time. We used to run his cartoons in the (U. of) Michigan Daily editorial page, right above a column I used to write in those days.
But I did meet multi-Oscar winner Jack Lemmon on more than one occasion, once on the New York Waldorf Astoria set of "The Out-of-Towners," where my cousin Boomie was working as the script assistant. I also talked with Jack at a film party shortly after Boomie's death. Boomie, over the years, had become a close friend to the famed actor. Lemmon, who also died in 2001, was a kind, sensitive man who gave every interviewer consideration and warmth. (And I also loved interviewing Walter Matthau, with whom Lemmon made 10 films!)
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every interviewer consideration and warmth. |
Katharine Graham died in 2001. I wish I could have worked for a publisher like her. And William Hewlett died in 2001. He and his partner David Packard turned sleepy Santa Clara Valley, in which I have lived for 22 years, into Silicon Valley, in which my house, at least, prospered.
On the whole, I guess, 2001 will not be remembered well. But some marvelous people, a few of whom brushed my life for a moment, left memories that will stay with us and warm us.
As for me in 2001, I got
through it. This year, that's something.
©
2001 by Murry Frymer. The
Frymer caricature is © 2000 by Jim Hummel.
You
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to: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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