Marlene (25 page)

One day, when I was in Paris, my friend, Alex Liberman, arranged a meeting between Giacometti and me. Both of us shun publicity, so we met in a bistro, out of the view of pestering photographers. As usual, I didn't open my mouth and just sat there like a mute. Giacometti took my face in his hands and said, “You're not at all hungry, right? Come, let's go have a talk in my studio.”

At the time he was working on female statues so huge that he had to climb a ladder to work on their heads. The studio was
cold and bare. He stood at the top of his ladder; I sat below, looked up at him, and waited for him to come down and say something to me.

Finally, he began to talk. But what he said was so sad, I would have cried if I could have cried at the right moment. When we were again at the same level, we embraced each other. He gave me a splendid
Figure of a Young Girl,
as he described it. He wrapped it in a newspaper. “Take it to America, and give it to your daughter,” he said. I followed his instructions to the letter. I flew across the Atlantic with the small statue in my lap, knowing I would never see Giacometti again. He died all too soon from a cruel sickness. Like all great artists, he was a sad man. My admiration seemed to have touched him, but, although I would have liked to, I could not help him in his misfortune. We would go to the cafes in Montmartre, and to restaurants—he would watch me eat. His heart and his body were sick. Today I regret that I didn't accept all the treasures he offered me. I was, as usual, too well bred to accept such an abundance of gifts. But I didn't turn away his love—I hope the “professors” will keep their academic noses out of this! I can't say he enriched me. I tried to enrich him. But I had too little time. Too little time.

I
HAD ADMIRED HIM
for a long time, but didn't think I would ever meet him. But I was lucky without any effort on my part, since I have never pursued my “heroes.”

Igor Stravinsky sat next to me at a dinner given by the English actor Basil Rathbone. As calmly as possible, I told him about my admiration and said, “What I like very much is the part in
Rites of Spring
where the young girl runs away from the man and disappears in the woods, screaming.”

He looked at me for a moment and said, “Such a scene doesn't exist anywhere in the music that I have composed, not even in my ballet music.”

So I sang to him the very passage of which I had spoken. He waited patiently until I was finished. “If you believe that this music belongs to the scene you mentioned,” he remarked, “that's fine with me, but I can only tell you again that there is no such scene in
The Rites of Spring.
”

But I wasn't to be discouraged. Continuing to love his music as I understood it, I had no intention of changing my interpreta
tion. Generous as he was, he later told me that he would have loved to have composed the scene I had described to him.

We saw each other again each time our paths crossed, and before he left forever. Unfortunately, these opportunities were very rare.

How I loved him! How I love his music! How I loved his talent, his intelligence!!

He and his children were my good friends. Once he wrote one of his songs on the wall of my daughter's nursery. His generosity is limitless. When I finally had the courage to sing one of his songs, “One for My Baby, One More for the Road,” in London, he crossed the Atlantic to hear me. I was half-dead from fear, but the song was well received and the results pleased him.

But that's not all. He also lent me money when I needed it.

He was very ill, and when I came back from Europe, I learned that he was hospitalized in New York. The doctors, who had diagnosed an ulcer after operating on him, had figured they could do nothing, and like good surgeons, they sewed him up again. I spent two terrible days at his bedside, while the famous doctors of the university enjoyed their peaceful weekends outside New York, where they could not be reached.

Since I wasn't related to Harold Arlen, it was difficult for me to make a decision, or to make any demands. I felt terribly useless. After his family, who had been waiting to see whether his condition would worsen, was informed, I called Dr. Blackmore, the great ulcer specialist, from a phone booth, and asked him to hold himself ready, which he did in keeping with professional ethics.

“If we can stop the bleeding in less than a quarter of an hour,” he said, “he's saved.” He succeeded and the bleeding stopped.

I didn't move from Harold's bedside. “Come back, Harold, don't go away, come back,” I murmured into his ear. He heard me and soon was out of danger.

I became friendly with the nurse, a wonderful girl who
tended to his countless transfusions. At the end of the day, when it was no longer possible to find a taxi, we would walk home, arm in arm.

Harold Arlen, who owed his life to Dr. Blackmore's imaginative intervention, has since died. He was a great man, a great composer, unmatched and unmatchable.

F
RANK SINATRA, THE UNCHALLENGED
King of Popular Song, is in contrast to what is generally said about him, a very charming man. That's understandable, since to sing as he does requires an extraordinary sensibility and a truly educated heart. The press has created his public “image.” It absolutely does not fit him. I know him well. He doesn't need reporters. Nor has he ever needed them, these types who stick their noses in other people's private lives and falsify all information on command.

Sinatra has a great advantage over us women: He can physically defend himself against reporters. We would also like to do that, but it's much more difficult for us, although some women do have the requisite courage. Sinatra hits out only when he's forced to; yet his Italian temperament makes it difficult for him to conceal his anger.

Photographers act like wild beasts, particularly at airports. They try to take photos of people at the least favorable moments. I'll never forget the day when I had asked for a wheelchair because I didn't want to walk for miles to my plane. I was suffering from the effects of a serious accident and didn't want to exert myself unnecessarily. But after the assault of all the photographers and
reporters who stormed the airport, I decided to walk and rid myself of this horde. My plan worked. The “gentlemen” had wanted to see me in a wheelchair. They were uninterested in pictures of me walking to my plane on foot, and disappeared, deeply disappointed.

Sinatra treats them the way they deserve to be treated, and he does that well, as in everything he undertakes. He tackles a song like a poet his text. His intonation, his breathing technique, his arrangements, are famous. His professionalism, his generosity, his loyalty—everything about him is famous. This brilliant genius can do without reporters.

Nat King Cole was a shy, forthright man.

I got to know him in Las Vegas. At that time I was still new in the profession into which I had entered so suddenly.

Nat Cole was of the opinion that I shouldn't sing in that city, that I should perform in theaters, go abroad. And he advised me to begin with South America.

We met again when he sang at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, and I had a contract with the Geary Theatre. I had come there from Texas and didn't know that so many musicals were being staged in the city while good musicians were really not available anymore.

Nat Cole visited me during an audition. He took me aside and gave me some advice: “You shouldn't be working with second rate musicians because your arrangements are difficult. You should always consider two things.
Numero uno
: Fish around for the best musicians in every field.
Numero due
: Look for your impresario long in advance so that he can engage the best musicians, at the right time, for a definite date, in a definite city.”

As his evening's performance at the Fairmont was drawing to a close, I hurried there to hear him sing “The Joe Turner Blues” again. He was holding the stage curtain in his hand while he sang the last
refrain. Nat King Cole was a wonderful man who expressed his feelings with great reserve, but he was never shy when he had good advice to give. Without him, I probably would not have made the transition from nightclubs to theater. How unjust that he had to die so young! I believe that God loved him, even though it seems impossible that God loves those who die young.

Horrified, I looked on as she exhausted her energies and took on three lovers at once. It all made me feel like a country cousin. She didn't notice that at all. Around the clock she was concerned only with her feelings, her profession, her belief in all kinds of odd things, with her passion for the world in general and for certain people in particular.

In my eyes, she really was The Sparrow, the little bird whose name she bore. But she was also Jezebel, whose unquenchable thirst for love must have been due to a feeling of imperfection, her “ugliness,” as she put it—her delicate, scrawny body, which she sent forth into combat like Circe, the Sirens and Lorelei, the temptress, who with her incomparable vitality promised all the pleasures of this world. She made me dizzy with all her lovers, whom I had to hide or lead to different rooms of her dwelling. I did what she demanded of me. I did many favors for her without ever understanding her enormous need for love.

She liked me; perhaps she loved me. But I believe she could only love men. Friendship was a vague feeling whose shadows sometimes scurried through her head and heart. She had no time to dedicate herself exclusively to friendship. And she was right, since her energies were not inexhaustible. I helped her dress at the theater and at the Versailles, the New York nightclub in which she sang. When the tragic accident occurred, I took over the practical problems of her life. We were to pick up Marcel Cerdan at the airport; she was sleeping when I heard that his plane had crashed over the Azores and that he was dead.

I had to wake her up at the scheduled time and tell her the news. Then came the doctors and the medications. I was sure she would cancel the appearance at the Versailles, but when I spoke to her about it in the afternoon, she said she had no intention of breaking her contract. I must add that she considered it absolutely necessary to ask the orchestra conductor for an intermission during the performance and to omit the “Hymne à l'amour” (“Hymn to Love”) Then, with the house electrician, I adjusted the spotlight to a softer light. I went to her dressing room again; she was calm and determined. She had decided to sing the “Hymne à l'amour.”

All of us were afraid of one particular passage in this song: “
Si tu meurs, je mourrai aussi
” (“If you die, I shall die too”). But she stuck it out. She went through her repertoire as if nothing had happened. In fact, she didn't even seem to bow to that harsh law of show business, “The show must go on.” She made use of her grief, of her mourning, so to speak, to sing even better than usual.

On succeeding evenings we sat in her dark hotel room and held hands across the table. She was inconsolable, and tried with all her will to bring Cerdan back. Suddenly she cried out: “There he is—don't you hear his voice?” I put her to bed, knowing that this lunatic despair would pass.

And it did pass. Long after these events, Edith Piaf announced that she was getting married. This storm, too, I let pass over me. The ceremony had to take place in a church in New York, and I was to be the witness to the marriage. Since I'm not a Catholic, Piaf procured a special dispensation for me. She returned to the land of remembrance and to her cherished superstitions, and on a dark New York morning I helped her dress. When I came to her room she was lying naked on the bed, as was her custom. The “custom,” of course, was connected with her belief that in this way happiness would never abandon the young pair. Around her neck she was wearing a chain with a tiny emerald cross I had given her. She looked lost in this gloomy room, thousands of miles away from her country.

Afterward, she went back to France. We had a tender rela
tionship, but it was not love. I have always respected her attitude and her decisions. Very much later, when she became a drug addict, I broke faith with her, it was more than I could bear. I knew my limits, even when I understood that she needed the drugs. To understand does not always mean to approve. What could I do? All my efforts to help Piaf ran into an unconquerable wall: drugs. I was inconsolable. Drugs, at that time, were not as dangerous as now—heroin was not as widespread, nor other similar atrocious substances. But anyhow, it was a matter of drugs, and I gave up helping her. My love for her remained constant, but it had become useless. She wasn't alone. As was to be expected, a devoted young man was at her side.

I gave Edith Piaf up like a lost daughter whom you forever mourn, whom you always shed tears over, whom I shall always carry in the depths of my heart.

I've never known a vainer man. He certainly had good professional grounds for it. Perhaps one would have tolerated his attitude if he were not as conceited in private life as on the stage.

I got to know Nureyev through my friend, Margot Fonteyn. After their appearance, I would dry both of them off behind the giant, cold “wings”—if you can still call them “wings”—of the Parisian Sports Palace.

Nureyev is a loner, and, at the same time, an extrovert, an astonishing mélange that surprises anyone who comes in contact with him. But that is precisely his intention.

I often saw Nureyev in London, since we were neighbors. He constantly complained about his legs, which he considered “too short.” My job was to assure him that this was not the case, that he was perfect on stage. The great dancer Erik Bruhn was his guru. Bruhn never left Nureyev's loge, and only the approving nods of his head could satisfy Nureyev. Since I had never seen Bruhn dance, I can say nothing about his talent, and must rely on
Nureyev's judgment. He must have been the greatest, although he in no way looked like a dancer. He looked very serious, and seemed to be alien to the theater and to the dance.