Martens memoir...from the TOP

The Cover Photograph
This is a picture of Wayne Martens
playing PROSPERO in Shakespeare's THE
TEMPEST. This production, in 1957, was the
American premier of the score composed by
Johan “Jean” Sibelius. The Detroit Symphony
Orchestra (conducted by Valter Poole)
performed on stage throughout the performance
at the Bonstelle Theatre in Detroit, Michigan.
Wayne was only twenty-one years old at the
time. Sibelius died shortly after the play closed.
SELF-PUBLISHING?
I have never written a book before. I have
poor vision and have never even read an entire
book. I will certainly never write another book.
So you can see why I thought it unlikely that I
would ever find a publisher for this book. I did
purchase a copy of Writer's Market. “4,000 listings
for book publishers, trade journals, literary agents
and more.” I sent out a few letters to see if anyone
would at least read the first few pages. No such
luck. It may be vanity, but I do believe that the
book is filled with many interesting stories about
the theatre, my autistic daughter, my relationship
with God, and yes, I admit it, a lot about my love
life. I do hope that if you have read this far, you
will at least read the first few pages of the book.
Then maybe, just maybe, I'll get you hooked.
Wayne Martens
When a working New York City actor
becomes a single parent, he gives up his dream
of stardom and spends full-time caring for his
his severely autistic daughter. He then prays for
miracles that never happen. In this book, he
shares many laughs and a few very precious
tears.
.....from
the
TOP
by Wayne Martens
Copyright, December 14, 2006
Williston, Vermont
You're standing on a stage, the curtain is
about to go up and you're in a panic. It's not that
you can't remember your lines; you can't even
remember which part you're playing or the name
of the play. If only you could look at the script
one more time, then maybe, just maybe, you'd
remember. This is a dream, so you can look in
your dressing room, then your bedroom and then
your car and get back on stage without missing a
beat. But, of course, you can't find your script.
You wake up in a cold sweat. You know it was a
dream but the fear won't subside. You've just
had the stage actor's nightmare.
My name is Wayne, Wayne Martens. I
know that if you’re reading this book, then you
already know who wrote it, but I'm an actor; I
like to see my name in print. Isn't that strange?
As I begin to write this book, it is the year 2000,
32 years after I swore to myself that I would
never act again, and yet, I still think of myself as
an actor. God knows I still have that dreaded
nightmare.
Between the ages of eighteen and thirty, I
was obsessed with the theatre. Within those
years, hardly a week went by that I was not
working on a play. I produced and directed but
my true love was and always will be acting. Life,
as I knew it, came to an abrupt halt one evening
1
in 1968 at the Pocket Theatre on Second Avenue
in New York City. I was doing an Off-Broadway
musical called How to Steal an Election. At that
time in my life, I was a single parent of a fiveyear-old mentally disabled child, my darling
daughter Michele. In order to make a living as an
actor, I had often needed to go on the road and I
would take Michele and a baby-sitter along on
the tour. As she grew older, I knew that she
would need more stability and so I had decided,
come hell or high water, I would only work in
New York City.
One evening, my baby-sitter called and
said that she couldn't sit for Michele that night. I
tried desperately to get a replacement but failed
to find one. I had to bring my daughter to the
theatre and lock her in my dressing room. When
I was on stage, I could hear my child crying. I
knew, at once, that it would be a new nightmare
that would haunt me from that day forward. I
would, forever, be on a stage hearing my child
crying. I would try to go to her, but would be
trapped on stage, unable to find an exit. At that
moment the acting, which had been the most
important thing in my life, suddenly seemed
insignificant. Like the apostle Paul, I needed to
put away childish things. I decided that night to
abandon my career as an actor and dedicate my
life to caring for my child.
2
My interest in acting started in 1953 at
Alma College where I was enrolled as a preministerial student. Forgive me for using such a
hackneyed phrase as "God works in mysterious
ways," but that is the only logical explanation I
can give for the strange twists and turns of my
curious life. I was born in South Bend, Indiana. I
was told that we could see the golden dome of
Notre Dame from our kitchen window. My family
moved to Charlotte, North Carolina when I was
three, but by the time I was eight, we moved back
north again to Detroit, Michigan. So after five
years of being called a Yankee, I was now a Rebel
with a thick southern accent. A boy in our new
neighborhood asked if I wanted to go to Sunday
school with him. Being anxious to make new
friends, I said yes. It was going well until the
Sunday school teacher asked me if I knew why
Jesus died on the cross. I said, “I'm not from this
church. I'm only visiting.” “But surely you know
that Jesus died for your sins,” she responded.
I didn’t know I had any sins. When the
Sunday school teacher told me that I was born in
sin, I felt humiliated. I walked out. At that point
I had no idea what I was, but I was certain I was
not a Baptist.
My brother Les, who's three years older
than I am, had better luck. The church he visited
had a basketball court. This was before anyone
3
had the idea of little league sports and so the
chance to play with a team on a real court, as
opposed to a hoop over a garage door, was a real
big deal. My whole family became lifelong
Presbyterians so that my brother Les could play
basketball.
The church, the Redford Avenue
Presbyterian, became the center of my life. It had
social gatherings every week for all ages. When I
became a teenager, I was active in a group that
met every Sunday evening. We would all talk and
pray and sing, and then we would go to a
member's house for a little party. There were
never enough cars for transportation to the
party. I was usually able to borrow the family
car, which made me very popular, but it also
made it next to impossible to find a way to be
alone with a girl. I was excruciatingly shy and
always felt that it would be easier to talk to a girl
if we were alone together. But everyone wanted
me to give him or her a ride. I would meet a girl
who wanted me to take her home, but there
would always be someone else in the car who
would say, "No, take her home next. I live two
miles past the blah blah and she just lives down
the street." How could I say, “I want to be alone
with her, stupid.” Of course, the girl in question
would always say, “Yes, Wayne, it makes sense to
take me home next.” Oh well, the best-laid plans.
4
I was always very self-conscious about my
looks. Inside, I felt as if I was a dashing,
handsome, romantic character, but when I
looked in a mirror, I saw this skinny kid whose
hair was always standing on end, who wore thick
glasses. I never knew what I looked like without
the glasses because, without them, I couldn't see
myself in the mirror.
One Sunday evening, a new girl to the
church group sat next to me in the car on the way
to the party. The minister rarely came to these
parties, but he did that night and he rode in my
car. The three of us were in the front seat and
three others were in the rear seat. There wasn't
much conversation in the car. Then, out of the
blue, the new girl said, “Wayne, stop that.”
Everyone giggled. Both of my hands were on the
wheel. Keep in mind that even though the sedans
of the fifties seated three in the front, it was a
tight fit. This girl was sitting right next to me.
Our legs were squeezed together. My hand was
just above her knee as it moved the gearshift.
There was nothing in the world that I wanted
more than to gently move my hand down to her
leg and then slide it along the inside of her thigh,
but never, in truth, would I ever have the balls to
do it. A few minutes later she said, "Wayne, get
your hand out of there." I was dying of
embarrassment. I kept both of my hands high on
5
the wheel to make sure that our minister could
see them.
Throughout the party this girl pretty
much ignored me, but I knew there was a good
chance that she would want me to drive her
home. She must have some interest in me; why
else would she have played that silly game in the
car?
She did ask me for a ride home, but she
sat in the back seat. The car, as usual, was full. I
dropped off everyone but her and one male
friend. I kept asking the boy, "Where do you
live?" I, of course, wanted to take him home next,
but he never responded. I looked in the back
through the rear view mirror and couldn't see
anyone so I pulled over and turned around to
look. Sure enough, they were doing it in the back
seat. The radio must have been blasting away
because I hadn't heard a sound. I didn't know
what to do and so I just sat there and waited.
After taking the girl home, I told the boy,
Richard, that I thought what he did was sinful.
He explained that, far from being sinful, sex was
an act of faith. It was his plan to have sex with as
many women as he could until one of them
became pregnant; that would be God's way of
selecting the girl he would marry. His soul mate.
Well, he didn't have long to wait; the young lady
in my car became pregnant that night. They both
6
quit school and got married. The strange part is,
the last I heard, they were happily married.
Everyone gets lucky now and then. The
law of averages finally played in my favor. One
night at one of the parties, a lovely young lady
asked if I would give her a ride home. After I said
yes, she requested that I not offer anyone else a
ride; she wanted to be alone with me. Oh my god,
oh my god. And believe it or not, my whole family
was away on vacation. The house was empty. We
drove straight to my house. She wanted a drink
and so I poured her a shot of my father’s
bourbon. I didn't drink and she called me a
prude. She then lit up a cigarette. I didn't smoke
then either. We began some heavy petting and I
was in heaven. She told me she wanted to make
love with me because I seemed to be so moral and
self-righteous, it would be fun for her to teach me
the joys of the flesh. I told her I was eager to
learn the lessons she wanted to teach. Things
were getting pretty hot and steamy, but I soon
realized that the smoke that was permeating the
room was not coming from our hot bodies. It was
coming from the cigarette that she had dropped
between the cushions of the sofa. I jumped up, got
a pot of water, and dumped it on the fire. After
making certain that the fire was out, I took the
young lady home.
7
What could I do? My father was going to
kill me. I gave myself a crash course in reupholstering. The situation was complicated by
the fact that the sofa was part of a set. I would
have to recover the entire set. I measured and
went to the store and purchased a very nice
fabric and new stuffing. I purchased a tack
hammer and got out the sewing machine and
went to work. Day and night I worked at it.
When it was finished, it looked marvelous.
Really, I did a good job. When my parents
arrived, a day earlier than expected, my mother
was overjoyed. The old upholstering was a bit
worn and when I explained that I had wanted to
do this as a gift for the entire family, the story
seemed to play quite well, that is up until my
father found the charred remains of the old
upholstery and stuffing in the garage. I lived
through it. I think my father was impressed that I
was able to pull off such a good re-upholstering
job. He must have found my explanation to be
very funny. Of course, I left out some of the
details. I tried to get another date with the girl,
but she wasn't interested. She told me that she
had a regular boyfriend and she was only
interested in me as a charitable contribution, she
called it a “mercy fuck.”
While still in high school, a friend asked
me to go to a revival meeting with him.
Presbyterians are not too big on revival meetings,
8
they’re more of a Baptist thing, but I went
because he said that this was a good way to meet
girls. I really got caught up in the emotion of the
evangelical service. I ended up with tears in my
eyes and needed to tell the world how much I
loved Jesus. I marched down the aisle. I was
saved. Young, good-looking girls kept coming up
to me and introducing themselves and hugging
and kissing me and praising the Lord. From then
on, I went to every revival I could find. I was
"saved" every time. I liked this a lot, but as with
all good things, I started to feel guilty. How many
times could I be saved? Would a voice come out
of the sky saying, “Hey, didn't I save you last
week?” What if God knew that my favorite part
was meeting the girls? Had I become a closet
Baptist? The guilt became so great that I decided
to become a minister, a Presbyterian minister.
It’s easy, now, to make light of it, but at
the time, I did sincerely believe it to be God’s Will
that I become a minister. I had friends from my
church who attended Alma College, a small Scots
Presbyterian school, and they convinced me that
attending Alma would be a good choice. I
received a phone call from the business manager
of the school. He explained that the student who
headed the photography department was
graduating and the school desperately needed a
replacement photographer. He implied that he
9
would personally guarantee that it would be to
my advantage to attend Alma College.
Apparently some of my friends had told
the business manager that I not only did the
photography for the Redford High School paper
and yearbook but also that I had won numerous
awards and competitions as a photographer.
I started in photography when I was ten
years old after I had purchased a "photo kit" for
twenty-five cents and three box tops from
Kellogg's “Corn Flakes.” I took to photography
like a duck takes to water. By the age of twelve,
yes, twelve, I was the photographer for a local
ultraconservative newspaper in Detroit called
The Redford Record. We were among the first to
point out that the Communists were about to
poison all Americans by putting fluoride in the
drinking water. By sixteen, I was on the staff of
United Press. This is before it became UPI and
before Associated Press was a contender. I
carried around a 4X5 Speed Graphic camera,
twenty film holders and forty flashbulbs. At each
news event, you had to be careful not to use up
your film or flashbulbs. Each shot had to count. I
worked after school and was the only full-time
employee on the night shift. I had a list of
available freelance photographers throughout the
state but I was in charge of all news coverage in
the state of Michigan. My assignments came
10
directly from the New York City Headquarters.
We were in constant communication by phone
and wire.
At that time, in order to get a divorce,
you had to prove adultery and photos of the act
in progress were often required by the divorce
court. I had never heard of pornography, let
alone seen it. As a joke, one of the New York
operatives sent me a special packet of
photographs over the wire. They had been used
by the actor Franchot Tone in his divorce case
against Barbara Payton. The modem did not
print the pictures, it exposed the photographic
paper which then had to be developed in a tray of
developing chemicals. As the pictures began to
develop, I wondered, “What is that guy doing
with his face between that girl's legs?” As a
“religious conservative,” I found it revolting. The
New York office had a big laugh but I found it
embarrassing to say the least. I was angry and I
was tired. Not all that much went on in Michigan
at night and I often got to sleep on the job but I
had to be at high school in the mornings. I was
now seventeen and this was my senior year. I
quit. As I look back on this, the incredible thing
is that at UP, we were scanning photos and
sending them by modem in 1951, decades before
the personal computer was invented.
11
Like most of us at the time, I was an avid
hater of communism. That changed when I
wanted to buy a car. There was a street in Detroit
called Livernois, which was nothing but miles
and miles of used car lots. As I walked up and
down the street looking at all the cars, I thought
to myself, “What a waste! All these cars are just
sitting here. There are so many people, like
myself, who want a car and these cars are just
going to waste.” I said to one of my high school
teachers that there must be some way to get these
cars into the hands of the people who need them.
He said there was. It was called communism.
This did not make me run out and join
the Communist party, but I did end up
campaigning for Adlai Stevenson, the Democrat
nominee for president.
Eventually, with the help of my father, I
saved enough money to buy a car, a 1947 Ford
convertible. That car may well have been
responsible for the skin cancer I developed in
later years, but God, I loved that car. There can
be no doubt that a convertible enhances a
student's popularity. It was maroon, with a
cream-colored top and trim. It was now the
summer of 1953 and I was planning to enroll at
Alma College in the fall. As it turned out, maroon
and cream were also the school colors. It is a
beautiful combination, but can you imagine being
12
at a football game and yelling, “Maroon and
cream, fight, fight?”
But before going to college I had to make
some money, I needed a job. I answered an ad for
a photo lab that was looking for photo printers
experienced on automatic equipment. This was
something new. All of my work had been by
hand. I stretched the truth and implied that I
was experienced on their new equipment. The
"darkroom" was well lit with yellow safe lights
and I was able to figure out how the equipment
worked. I got the job. I was going to go to Alma
College in the fall and I had no idea how I was
going to pay for it. The offer made to me by the
Alma College business manager was vague to say
the least and I did not have anything in writing.
Even if I received a full scholarship, I would still
need money for room and board and textbooks. I
needed to earn as much money as possible and I
needed it as soon as possible. So when I learned
that the lab where I was working the day shift
was looking for help on the night shift, I came in
one evening and applied for the job. The daytime
foreman didn’t know that I was working nights
and the nighttime foreman didn’t know that I
was working days. It would only be for two
months and I was young and strong. The problem
developed when both shifts went on overtime.
When a foreman for either shift came into work,
he would see me and say, “Oh, you’re here early,
13
good.” I was working around the clock. I
screwed up a lot of prints before I nearly passed
out. Even though this was automated equipment,
the processing was still being done by hand. One
of the processing technicians yelled out to me,
“I’m getting a lot of pictures with people's heads
cut off. Is everything on your machine set up
OK?” No, it wasn’t. I was set up for 35mm but
was printing larger 120 negative sizes. I was
cropping out about eighty percent of the image
and had no idea how long I had been doing it.
Food was brought in for breaks and it had been
several days since I had been out of the lab.
Management was not happy but this was only a
few weeks before college would begin, so I was
soon in my maroon and cream Ford convertible
on my way to Alma, Michigan.
Everything went smoothly at the
registration until I got to the end when they
requested money. “That will be Blah, Blah
dollars,” the young lady said. “Oh, I don’t have
enough money,” was my response. Remember,
this is long before “student loans.” “How do you
intend to pay your tuition?” the young lady
asked. “I have no idea,” I replied. At that point,
the business manager arrived and had a behind
the scene conversation with the young lady. She
then approached me and said, “Oh, no problem.
You are now registered.” I found this confusing,
14
but I attended Alma College for three semesters
without ever being asked for any money.
Alma had a lovely campus in the very
center of Michigan. In 1953, it was so small that it
was required protocol to introduce yourself to
anyone you saw whom you didn't recognize and,
after a few weeks, you rarely saw anyone you
didn't know. Even with free tuition, I needed
money and I got a job as head of the photo
department for New Moon Trailers, located in
Alma. They co-produced the movie The Long
Long Trailer with Lucile Ball and Desi Arnaz and
I got to shoot a lot of the stills and promo shots.
That was fun.
I will always remember Alma College
with a deep affection. It was there that I first
discovered the arts and philosophy. It was at
Alma that I became a radical. I was never asked
to pledge a fraternity so I tried to form my own.
Those of us who were not members of a fraternity
were called "GDI's," God damn independents.
Many of us joined together and became "The
Bohemian Brothers." We would sit around and
get drunk listening to classical music, reading
poetry, and talking about art and which girls we
wanted to sleep with. It was here that I learned
that I was not the only man who wanted to spend
a night with Elizabeth Taylor in a sleeping bag.
ESP and reincarnation were also favorite topics.
15
We all tried to communicate with aliens via ESP
as we waited for flying saucers to come and save
the world.
My Bohemian Brothers and I had many
discussions about the relationship between
religion and science. We decided to write a letter
to Albert Einstein. A science professor at Alma,
Harold Potter, was a personal acquaintance and
knew Einstein’s address. He forwarded our
letter. To everyone’s surprise, Einstein
responded, explaining that science was nothing
more than man searching for the laws of God.
In an effort to broaden my horizons, I
decided to learn more about the form of music
called jazz. I went to the record store and
thumbed through the jazz section. I found a
record with abstract modern art on the jacket.
This was a good thing; I could show my new
appreciation for art and jazz at the same time. I
listened to the record in the store but was not
overly impressed. It was an "Octet" headed by
someone named David Brubeck. As it turned out,
I had played it in the store at the wrong speed.
When played at 33RPM it was a whole new audio
experience. All my friends loved it.
Many, many years later, when I ran a
photo studio and lab in New York, I did some
work for Dave Brubeck. When I mentioned that I
16
had purchased the recording of his octet, he said
that I may have been the only person to have
purchased the album who was not a personal
friend or relative.
My first week at Alma, I was playing
ping-pong in the recreation room and I heard a
blood-curdling scream, a female in distress. I ran
through a door and sped through a dark
labyrinth of curtains and leapt onto what turned
out to be a stage. The screaming was coming
from a rehearsal for The Taming of the Shrew.
After the laughter subsided, a voice that I
recognized as my English Professor, William
Gregory, called out, "Martens... if you have any
interest in passing English, I recommend that you
take a few 'walk on' parts in our play." I had
reason to believe that his threat was not made in
jest.
The first day of school, Gregory gave us
our first assignment. He explained that an "A"
paper with one misspelled word would be graded
as a "B;" two misspelled words would get a "C,"
and so forth. Considering that I had 26
misspelled words on the first page, I thought it
best to accept the walk on parts.
My inability to spell is more than likely
related to my inability to read. I was born with
weak eyes. As a child, I had to wear a patch over
17
my better eye in an effort to strengthen the
weaker eye. This "pirate" image probably
increased my natural inclination toward
adventure.
I started with the patch in North
Carolina, but in Detroit, I was sent to an
experimental eye doctor who had a new
treatment. Every Saturday, I would go downtown
by bus and sit in front of this strange contraption
that would flash lights and spin wheels,
performing optical illusions. One day, it seemed
to me that I had been looking into this machine
forever. I was sick to my stomach. I was about to
pass out when I heard a female voice screaming,
"Oh Jesus! Oh Jesus!" It was the nurse. She had
closed up and gone home, then she must have
realized that she had forgotten about me and left
me at that contraption. I got the feeling that she
had been repeating "Oh Jesus!" for about an
hour as she rushed back to the office. Maybe that
experience was the cause of my strange eyesight.
I see the image from both eyes in the part of the
brain normally reserved for the right eye. In
other words, if I close my right eye, everything
that I see from my left eye appears to the right of
my nose, as if the image was in front of my closed
right eye. You have to admit, that's weird,
especially when trying to put in eye drops. The
bottom line is that I see two of everything. Not
double vision, but two distinct images. But even if
18
I close my left eye it is still difficult to focus on
anything close up and so it is very difficult to
read.
I have never finished reading a book, any
book. I went through High School and three
years of college without ever buying a textbook. I
got a few “A”s, a few “B”s, and a lot of “C”s but
never failed a course. In the ninth grade, I was
determined to read Crime and Punishment by
Dostoevsky. I wanted so much to be an
intellectual. If people knew that I couldn't read, I
would be considered an idiot. I never made it as
far as chapter two. I came close to finishing
Kipling's Jungle Book in grade school and at
Alma College I put a big dent into Gibran's The
Prophet, a very short book.
At any rate, I was about to alter the
course of my life. I accepted a few walk-on parts
in The Taming of the Shrew and we rehearsed for
a month. The evening before opening night, the
father of the student playing the role of Biondello,
a small part with one long staccato speech, passed
away. I wasn’t asked; I was told the part was
mine. I spent that evening and the entire next day
repeating the speech over and over again. "Why,
Petruchio is coming, in a new hat and an old
jerkin, a pair of old breeches thrice turned: a
pair of boots that have been candle cases, one
19
buckled another laced…” It just goes on and on.
I kept repeating it right up until show time.
My first entrance brought the house
down. I thought it was comedic talent, but lets
face it, skinny boys look funny in baggy tights.
My every entrance was greeted with
laughter. By the time of my big speech I was
feeling pretty full of myself. Then the moment
came. "Why, Petruchio is coming, in a new hat
and an old jerkin, a ... a.... a....” I went totally
blank. Then I blurted out, “He looks like hell!”
At least it was in iambic pentameter.
I could hear my English professor rolling
on the floor. I was hooked. The theatre became
my ministry. I preached it from the hilltops.
My roommate, Bob Fritz, and I lived in a
little two-room cabin off campus. It was about six
feet from the railroad tracks. Luckily only one
train passed per day, at about 3 A.M.
One of my ambitions in life was to be
making love to a woman when the train went by.
It would be an experience that she would never
forget. Unfortunately, I was still a virgin. Outside
of the incident with the burning sofa, I had never
even been close.
20
This was long before co-ed dorms. Boys at
Alma could live off campus but girls could not.
The girls' dorm was locked up at 11 P.M. That
meant that if you got a girl to stay out past 11
P.M., you had a fighting chance. She was locked
out of the dorm. There were ways a girl could
sneak out, but she couldn't get back in unless she
had someone waiting by the back door to let her
in.
One night, November 8, 1954, (I
remember the exact date), a young lady told me
that she had to speak with me in private. Could I
meet her by the back door of the dorm at
11:30pm? This was a girl that I hardly knew. I
couldn't imagine what she had to say to me that
couldn't be said in the coffee shop.
I pulled up in my Ford convertible. She
came out the door and we drove away. She knew
of a secluded parking lot where we could park.
She told me how she was having a hard time with
her boyfriend and how she had been attracted to
me since she first saw me. The next thing I knew
we were kissing and feeling and rubbing so hard
that I was afraid that I would rip a hole in my
pants.
"Take me to your place," she said. "What
about my roommate?" I asked. She responded,
21
"He and his girlfriend went upstate for the
weekend; that's why I wanted to get together
with you tonight. I knew your cabin would be
empty." All of this was said in between heavy
breathing. This was it, my moment of truth. We
drove back to my cabin. Sure enough, the lights
were out. Just before entering, she kissed me
while gyrating her hips over my trembling body.
We went in. The foreplay was over. We were both
ready. I grasped the rubber that had been in my
wallet for the past two years and had it ready
when the lights went on and a chorus of Happy
Birthday rang out. Everyone seemed certain that
the party was a complete surprise. I had to sit
down. It seemed like hours before I was able to
stand up without embarrassment. The girl's
boyfriend was at the party. The whole thing was
his idea. As popular as I had become as an actor
at Alma, I remained a virgin.
One day, the president of the school, John
Stanley Harker, asked me to stop by and see him
in his office. Theatre had become very popular at
Alma. Dr. Harker felt it was a little too worldly
for a church school and he wanted theatre deemphasized. He told me that William Gregory's
contract would not be renewed and he requested
in a polite but firm tone that I not return to Alma
College the following semester. This didn't bother
me. I wanted to do more theatre not less. Dr.
Harker may have considered my devotion to the
22
theatre to be a distraction from my desire to be a
minister but I thought my talent as an actor was
a gift from God. The theatre was my church. I
saw this as God's Will. I was predestined to be a
star. I would transfer to Wayne University in
Detroit where I would major in theatre. Thy will
be done.
23
24
Chapter 2
Wayne University would have to wait.
Alma College refused to release my transcript
unless the three semesters of tuition, previously
held in limbo, were paid in full. That was very
unfair. It meant that all the photographic work I
did for the school was not compensated for at all.
My father got me a job in a "Tool and Die"
company across the street from his restaurant.
He had given up his career as a salesman to open
a tiny little restaurant in an industrial area of
Detroit. It had six stools at the counter and four
tables. The people who hired me often ate at the
restaurant.
My father was always my hero. During
my very early childhood in Charlotte, N.C., my
father worked as a traveling salesman. Everyone
on our block on Chesterfield Avenue knew when
my father was returning from a sales trip. I
would ride my tricycle up and down the sidewalk,
my Captain Marvel cape floating in the breeze
and yell, "My daddy's coming home! My daddy's
coming home!"
He had played minor league ball with the
Chicago White Sox, but what impressed me most
was that he had been a sparring partner for
Tommy Loughran, the Light Heavyweight
25
Champion of the World. Years later, my mother
explained to me that my father's employer,
Bendix Aviation, had been on strike, which was
bad news because my father worked on
commission. During the strike, he had no income.
So in order to put food on the table, my father let
a champion fighter beat the crap out of him.
As a child, I never knew much about my
mother. My father loved to talk about himself.
Like father like son. My mother never mentioned
anything about her past. I knew that her mother,
my grandmother, was a stern woman. She had
come to the U.S. from Sweden, by herself, at the
age of twelve, and worked as a live-in servant for
a wealthy Swedish family in the Chicago area. I
don't know what age she was when the family's
teenage son began to fool around with her, but I
do know that my grandmother became pregnant
with my mother as a result. They were married,
but soon after, the boy died. I don't know how or
of what he died. My mother and grandmother
were then kicked out of the house.
My
grandmother got another job working as a live-in
servant. My mother was raised without ever
feeling that she lived in her own home.
As a young child, while playing in the
attic, I found a box filled with dozens of drawings
of naked people. Sex was never discussed in any
way in our house and I was not about to ask what
26
pictures of naked people were doing in our attic. I
learned many years later that my mother did the
drawings. She was a student at the Chicago Art
Institute. A very good one I must add. I probably
got all of my creative genes from my mother.
When I was six, and started school in
North Carolina, I began to have a problem with
two bullies who lived down the street. One was
seven and the other was nine. I don’t remember
their names, but I’ll never forget them. One day,
they forced me into an alley that was strewn with
garbage. They took off my shoes and socks and
then picked me up and put me down feet first on
a large watermelon rind that was covered with
bees. I was stung repeatedly on the soles of my
feet. I ran home screaming. My mother was small
and gentle but she was very angry. She stormed
down the street to talk to the bullies’ mother.
Kids in the neighborhood told me that my mother
punched the bullies’ mother in the face and
knocked her on her butt. My mother denied it,
but I never had a problem with those two kids
again.
I wanted my father to teach me how to
fight. In addition to having been Tommy
Loughran’s sparring partner, he was always
telling stories about how, as a kid in school, he
had to fight his way to school and back. This was
on the south side of Chicago; my father lived in
27
the German neighborhood. On the way to school,
he would fight the Irish kids in the Irish
neighborhood, the Italian kids in the Italian
neighborhood, etc. I wanted him to teach me how
to box, but he only wanted to teach me how to
protect myself.
“The first thing you need,” he told me, “is
speed.” “You must be able to run fast. The only
way to win a fight is to not have a fight. There’s
no pride in a broken nose. If you sense a fight is
brewing, get out of there. Being a coward is
smart; getting in a fight is dumb. If there is no
way to get out of it, then hit first, hit hard, and
then run like hell!”
That was it. That was my lesson. I can’t
deny that I was disappointed.
Our house in Charlotte was in the center
of the city, but we had chickens, pigeons (for
roasted squab), ducks, geese and even a goat with
a cart. No one complained because my father was
the Bar-B-Que king. We had parties every month
for the whole neighborhood. Many people in
Charlotte still insist that my father invented BarB-Que. He never made that claim, but he never
denied it either. No one can seem to agree as to
what Bar-B-Que is let alone who invented it or
how to even spell it.
28
Let me throw in a bit of trivia. The Ford
Motor Company used to make a station wagon
partially made of hard wood. Henry Ford hated
throwing out all of the scrap wood left over, and
so he hired a think tank to come up with an idea
of how to put the scrap wood to use. The result
was "Charcoal Briquettes." Mr. Ford's brotherin-law, who helped him in this project had the
last name of “Kingsford.” When it comes to
Henry Ford trivia, did you know that in 1942,
Ford built a car made entirely out of plastic? It
ran on ethanol. No one seemed interested. It
never went into production.
But I digress. Let's get back to Charlotte.
I'm in the first grade and I am very fond of my
two pet ducks. They would follow me to school.
They would sit in the schoolyard until the end of
the school day. I could see them out the window
of my classroom. Then they would follow me
home.
One Sunday, we were having "pheasant"
for dinner. It tasted pretty good, but I noticed
that no one else was eating it. I asked why, but no
one would give me an answer. Then I figured it
out. I ran to my room, slammed the door and
cried into the night. If that didn’t make me a
vegetarian, nothing will.
29
After the second grade, my family left
Charlotte and we moved to Wilmington, N.C. I
think my father quit his job and got a new job
that was going to make us rich. Our new house
was nearly a mansion. A horse stable was next
door and my father bought a horse. His name
was Happy. I hated Wilmington, but I loved
Happy. I had a hard time adjusting to the new
school. The first week in the third grade, I had to
urinate real bad. I asked the teacher if I could go
to the bathroom. She said, “No, school will be out
in an hour. You can hold it.” I couldn’t. I just sat
in my seat until everyone else had left so that I
could sneak home without being seen. I've been
told that this has happened to many children at
that age, but at the time, I was certain that only a
moron would wet his pants in school.
I had been told that our next door
neighbor was a big executive with a tobacco firm.
One day, I was sitting on our front porch and he
came over to talk to me. He told me that under no
circumstance should I ever smoke a cigarette. I
do not believe he ever said a word about nicotine.
He told me that the tobacco was sprayed with
arsenic and that arsenic was highly addictive.
This was 1942, long before smoking was
considered to be evil. I recently investigated
arsenic on the Internet and discovered that
arsenic is still sprayed on tobacco and that it is
highly addictive. I can't help but to wonder why
30
this is never mentioned in the anti-smoking
commercials. All you hear about is nicotine.
Fortunately, we weren't in Wilmington
very long. We moved to Detroit. At the time, I
had no idea as to why we were moving. I later
learned about my father’s job in Wilmington. He
had been hired as sales manager for a new
company called Differential Wheel. When large
trucks with double sets of tires negotiate a turn,
the outside tire has further to travel and burns
rubber in the process. This shortens the life of the
tires. Differential wheels had a clutch between the
tires so that the wheels could move back and
forth on a turn and the tires would wear evenly.
It was a good idea but unfortunately, the clutch
would burn out and it ended up costing more
than it cost to replace the worn out tires.
Our first house in Detroit was across the
street from a golf course. There was a deep hill
leading down to a small river, the River Rouge.
In the winter we could sled and toboggan down
the hill and ice skate on the river. When we were
freezing cold we'd just walk across the street to
warm up and then back to the "slopes." The big
drag was that each time you went down the hill,
you had to walk back up.
One year, there was a light snow followed
by rain. Then for several days, it would rain and
31
then freeze. The golf course became covered with
ice. I got the idea first, but soon every kid in the
neighborhood was doing it. We would ice skate
down the hill. We would go so fast that we would
coast to the top of the next hill and then zoom
down again. We found a route where you could
just keep going around and around with hardly
any pushing. No more walking back to the top. As
an adult, I realize how dangerous this could have
been, but oh my, that was fun. Have you ever
heard of anyone else having such a wild
experience? Ice skating down hill?
In the summertime, I would sell soda pop
to the golfers. We had a large freezer in our
basement. I would go to a local beer and soda
distributor with a wagon and pull back five or six
cases of soda at a time. In Detroit, it was just
known as "pop." We were across from the tee for
the seventeenth hole. Golfers were pretty thirsty
at that point. On an average weekend, I would
clear well over $100. For a twelve-year-old in
1948, that was pretty good money.
Our house had a unique feature that no
one else in the family knew about. In one of the
upstairs bedrooms, there was a small bookcase
built into the wall. Once while playing, I bumped
into it, and it opened up. It was just a storage
area, but when I discovered it, I hoped to find
money or treasure inside. All that was there were
32
old newspapers. No one else knew of this space so
I hid my money in there. When my younger
brother, Randy, had the same experience of
accidentally opening the bookcase, he went in and
found a box full of money. You can imagine how
difficult it was to convince him that it was my
money that he had found. He may well still have
doubts to this day.
For my graduation from Holcomb grade
school, June, 1949, my parents decided to throw a
party for my fellow graduates and me. The boys
came in suits and ties and the girls were all in
pink and baby blue formals. I had heard of a new
game that I had wanted to play. It was called
Sardines. It was the opposite of hide and seek.
One person would hide and everyone else would
look for them. When you found them, the idea
was to cram into their hiding spot. After a few
people found the hider, it became a lot like a can
of sardines. This seemed to me to be a neat way of
getting real close to some of the girls. I was
chosen to be "it." I would be the first to hide. I
found a real good spot. Too good of a spot since
no one could find me and they all gave up and left
me in my hiding spot. After hiding for what
seemed to be an eternity, I heard the sounds of
screaming and laughter. I went to investigate.
The noises were coming from the golf course. One
of the young male guests had invented his own
33
game. The girls would stand on the top of the hill
and the boys at the bottom. At a given signal, the
girls would run down the hill and try to reach the
"goal line." The boys would chase the girls and
kiss any girl they caught.
There was one problem with this game.
Did you ever try to run down hill? This is the
same hill I was just telling you about in the ice
skating story.
My parents received phone calls from
each of the girls’ outraged parents. "What
happened at that party? My daughter came home
with her dress torn to shreds, covered with grass
stains, and scrapes and bruises on her elbows." It
must have been difficult for my parents to
explain.
But once again, I digress. I want to return
to February of 1955. I've been kicked out of Alma
College and need to earn some money so that I
can enroll at Wayne University. I do not want to
work in a photo lab.
Outside of photography, I had no job
skills. Photo labs were extra busy in the summer,
but for professional photographers, the summer
is the slow season, so jobs were hard to find. The
previous summer, 1954, I had a job as a Fuller
Brush Salesman. After a week of training with no
34
pay, I had to purchase a bunch of items that were
to be given out to each household as a free
sample. During my first week of going door to
door, I had developed what I thought was a
pretty good sales pitch but by the end of the
summer, I was ringing the bell and when
someone came to the door to answer, I would say,
"You don't want any brushes do you?" They
would say "no" and then I would give them their
free gift and go to the next door. After paying for
the free gifts, I may have broken even by the end
of the summer.
So now you can understand why I needed
my father to get me this job as a tool grinder. I
worked from February through August of '55,
and paid off my debt to Alma College. My father
had told all of the tool shop employees that I was
studying for the ministry and they all called me
"Deacon." I got along well with my co-workers
but the shop foreman seemed to resent me. He
was angry with the owners for having hired me.
The machine that I worked on made a lot of
noise. I would spend the day singing at the top of
my lungs and no one could hear a sound. The
shop foreman would look at me and see my lips
moving all day. I knew him to be a devout
Catholic. During a break, he came up to me and
said, "I have heard that people who talk to
themselves are crazy." I said, "That may be true,
35
unless of course they are praying." He was
embarrassed and apologized. On my next to last
day on the job, I confessed that I was not praying,
but singing.
I was at last able to transfer to Wayne
University, this is September, 1955, before it
became Wayne State. I majored in theatre. My
first role was in Saroyan's The Time of Your Life.
After opening night, we had a cast party, which
lasted all night. I was living at home at the time.
My father woke me up shortly after I went to
bed. He was all excited. "Listen to this," he said.
He was reading from the morning edition of the
Detroit Free Press. "Wayne Martens is a master
of deadpan comedy."
I don't know which was more thrilling,
the rave review or the fact that my father was so
proud of me. My family had only begun to accept
the idea of my being a minister and now I was
going to be an actor? They had hoped that this
would be a passing fancy.
Although I now thought of myself as an
actor, I did not abandon my "ministry." I
thought that I could use the power of the theatre
as a "voice" to preach my message. While still
attending Wayne University, I began producing
plays at local churches. The Enchanted by Jean
Giradoux opened at a large downtown
36
Presbyterian Church. It was intended for the
parishioners, but the critics showed up and it was
a hit.
A man by the name of Fred Barnett came
to see it, and after the show he asked if he could
have a word with me. He and I had worked
together at a theatre in Detroit called World
Stage. Fred had an idea, an idea that would alter
the course of my life forever.
37
38
Chapter 3
In 1952 a new theatre opened in Detroit.
It was called World Stage. It had been started by
a group of professional actors in need of a space
to perform. I was not involved with it. I was still
in high school and had not yet discovered my
talent as an actor. World Stage was a wonderful,
unique experience. There is not much in the way
of recorded history when it comes to American
theatre and when you think about the arts in the
United States, Detroit, Michigan is not a city that
comes to mind. However, the success of World
Stage was unique and perhaps unequaled in
American theatre history.
Today, it is just assumed that theatre
designed to be creative, artistic, inspirational, or
that intends to have an influence on our culture
in any way, cannot be self-supporting. It must be
supported by grants and donations from wealthy
individuals, corporations and foundations. When
World Stage opened, there was not much of
anything available in the way of grants for the
arts. The Ford Foundation offered "matching
grants" to a handful of theatres in the U.S., but
never even considered giving a grant in Detroit.
The theatres that did receive Ford Grants, The
Arena in Washington, D.C., The Alley in
Houston, Texas and The Actors’ Theatre in San
39
Francisco, are all remembered as making
important contributions to American theatre, but
World Stage is only remembered by a few aging
Detroiters who sit around reminiscing about the
good old days.
One of the main criteria for grant
consideration was the "quality" of the Board of
Directors. The board of directors of World Stage
did not consist of society leaders who found it
fashionable to be associated with the arts and
have their names on a letterhead. World Stage
was originally run and operated by the artists
themselves. As time passed, and actors moved to
New York and Hollywood, one man became more
and more responsible for the day-to-day
operation of the theatre: Fred Barnett.
The original World Stage was located in a
loft on the second floor of a rundown building on
Woodward Avenue in Highland Park, Michigan.
Highland Park was then an independent city
located in the heart of Detroit. The theatre
consisted of director chairs set on platforms
arranged around an open space in the center that
was the stage. It seated 200. One of the fun World
Stage stories, from before I was associated with
it, centers around the stairwell that was located in
the rear of the theatre and led to an alley behind
the building. The actor involved was Clifford
Pellow, an actor who later became well known as
40
Flo's boyfriend on the TV series "Alice." I don’t
recall which play the theatre was doing, but it
was staged so that Cliff would wait in the alley.
On his cue, he would slam the door, run up the
stairs, and make his entrance. The sound of the
slamming door and footsteps running up the
stairs was an important part of the scene. One
night, the Detroit police were waiting in the alley
in a squad car with the lights off, apparently on a
stakeout looking for a suspect. They had been
watching Cliff in the alley smoking a cigarette.
When Cliff got his cue, he ran for the door,
slammed it, ran up the stairs and made his
entrance. The police were in hot pursuit. They
ran up the stairs and onto the stage. The audience
thought that this was part of the play, but the
police didn't know what to think. They grabbed
Cliff and threw him against the wall and began to
cuff him, and then they realized that they were
under bright lights surrounded by people. They
drew their guns and pointed them at the audience
and yelled "Don’t anyone move." When the
director, Fred Barnett, went on stage to explain,
the cops all aimed their guns his way and yelled,
"Don’t move." They then frisked Fred, who told
them, "You're on stage during a play. You're
making asses of yourselves." The police
wandered about the stage, waving their guns.
One of the cops said to the other, "I think we're
on stage during a play." The police hemmed and
hawed and mumbled to themselves and then
41
apologized, took a bow, and went out the way
they came in. Would this be classified as
improvisational theatre? The audience gave the
police a round of applause and the play
continued.
World Stage presented the works of
Odets, Miller, Shaw, Pirandello, Giraudoux,
Sartre, Anouilh, Beckett, Ionesco, O'Casey, you
get the idea, six to ten plays a year for over seven
years without ever asking for a donation. Actors
were paid according to the success of the play at
the box office.
Part of the effectiveness of World Stage
productions was due to the intimacy of the
theatre. The action was taking place before your
eyes. Unlike the movies, where the actors are not
real and appear on a humongous screen, or large
theatres where the actors must project their
voices and appear to be set apart on a stage that
is far away and removed, an intimate theatre
places the audience in the midst of the play. It can
be an experience that is not forgotten. The
problem with a small theatre is, of course, the
lack of potential income. One out of every three
productions needed to be a sell out. The area was
becoming more and more crime-ridden and the
audiences were having second thoughts about
coming to the theatre. The first time the theatre
had three box office flops in a row, it was broke.
42
Not in debt, but broke. It did not renew the lease
on the space. Fred Barnett produced one more
play under the World Stage name: The Vegetable.
It was F. Scott Fitzgerald's only play. Fred rented
a small proscenium theatre in downtown Detroit
for one month. I played a small role and acted as
technical director. It was a flop. Nevertheless,
Fred wanted to reopen World Stage in a new
permanent location. He wanted my production of
The Enchanted to be the opening play. He would
use his personal finances for the venture and we
would be partners. To me, World Stage was a
legend. This was more than I could have ever
dreamed.
We scouted for a location and found the
perfect spot at Livernois and Six Mile Road. A
few miles down the road from all the used car
lots, right across from the University of Detroit.
We converted the space to a theatre and moved
The Enchanted from the church to the new World
Stage. It was in its own building, a little smaller,
with 150 permanently installed theatre seats
arranged in a horseshoe around the stage. Fred
called all the shots, but I had the title "Managing
Director." I was now making a living in the
theatre. I was a professional.
I would never again be affiliated with a
church. It's not that my faith in God diminished
but I believed that the theatre was my ministry. I
43
still considered myself a devout Christian but had
difficulty in understanding the position taken by
many of the Christian Churches. How could a
Christian believe in the death penalty? How
could a Christian go to war and kill people? And
how about the third commandment? How could a
Christian, knowing that God made the Sabbath
on Saturday, decide to celebrate the Sabbath on
Sunday? And how about Easter? If Jesus, a
religious Jew, were to attend our Easter dinner,
would we really serve him baked ham? As you
can see, I had difficulty in understanding some
church doctrine. Jesus referred to himself as the
son of God but he also referred to us as his
brothers and sisters. Did this not imply that we
were all the sons and daughters of God?.
Although my religious beliefs may have been a bit
unorthodox, I had no doubt that I had been
selected by God and was predestined for
greatness.
My brother, Les, always found it
difficult to understand my "holier than thou"
attitude. If he did not approve of my being a
minister, he certainly did not approve of my
being an actor. He was my older brother in every
way. He cared for me and watched over me.
Les had success written all over him from
the start. He played first base for our high school
city championship team. He was also the
"Teenage MC" for the weekly radio show,
"Make Way for Youth." When I was opening the
44
new World Stage, Les was the host for the
American Airlines radio show "Music 'Til
Dawn," host for the broadcasts of the Detroit
Symphony, and the "Voice" for the Chevrolet
commercials. I lived at his apartment and he
never asked me to contribute in any way. This
worked out very well. He was gone all night with
Music 'Til Dawn and I had the place to myself.
One morning, I woke up and there was a
strange woman in my bed. I'm embarrassed to
say that at twenty, I was still a virgin. Could I
have gotten drunk and picked up a girl, made
love, and not remembered any of it? I didn't
think so. Maybe my lust was making me
delusional. I went to the theatre for rehearsal and
just left her there asleep in the bed. My brother
never said anything about coming home after
work and finding a strange girl in the apartment
and there was nothing missing so I just tucked
the entire incident into the recesses of my
memory.
It wasn't until a year later, in New York,
that I discovered the truth. As it turned out, my
brother Les had given the apartment key to a
close male friend of his who was in Detroit for the
weekend. The friend was staying with his parents
and he needed a little privacy for a few hours. I
don't know how private it was considering that
the apartment only had one bedroom with twin
45
single beds, but I apparently slept through it all.
After the friend left, the woman crawled into bed
with me. I would never have known, but I ran
into Les' friend in New York and he asked me if I
enjoyed being with Barbara. At first, I had no
idea what he was talking about, but when he said,
"As I was leaving your apartment I noticed that
she crawled into your bed." Oh my God. It
wasn't a dream. How many men ever wake up in
the morning and find a beautiful unknown
woman in their bed? How many men ever wake
up in the morning and find a beautiful unknown
woman in their bed and remain a virgin?
At Wayne University, I came to believe
that I was a local star. When I was performing in
O'Neill's Great God Brown, an usher came back
and told me that after I died at the end of act two,
a lot of the audience would walk out. He told me
that when they left, he would ask them why they
were leaving. "Martens is dead," was a common
response.
The last play that I did at Wayne U. was The
Tempest, by Shakespeare. I played Prospero.
Leonard Leone was the head of the theatre
department and directed the play. Mr. Leone
called me into his office before auditions were
held. I knew he didn’t like me. He considered me
to be arrogant and temperamental. I was
involved with World Stage and had ambitions in
46
the professional theatre. Mr. Leone was
dedicated to educational theatre and had seen too
many of his students waste their lives trying to
break into professional theatre. He told me that
he admired my work and wanted me to play
Prospero. He added that he knew I had a
reputation for being difficult to work with. "If
you agree to play this part, you must also agree to
do it my way," He said. "No arguments, no fights,
just my way." I agreed.
As a teacher, Mr. Leone would always
talk about acting and writing. "Theatre is not
about sets or costumes, theatre is about good
writing and good acting," he would say, but when
he directed, he would insist on the grandest sets
and most magnificent costumes imaginable. The
entire production was performed with the Detroit
Symphony Orchestra on stage behind a
cyclorama. This was the American premiere
performance of the score by Jean Sibelius. At
crucial moments, the shadows of violin bows
would streak across the cyclorama. Everything in
the show had to be larger than life, especially
Prospero. Mr. Leone and I would often work oneon-one late into the night. One evening, he put his
arms around me and said, "Wayne, all my life,
I've wanted to play this role, but I will never get
the chance to play it. My Prospero must live in
you." That sounds pretty corny, but I believe he
meant it. I understood what he was saying.
47
I disagreed with much of what he was
asking me to do with the role. Sections that I felt
should be small and tender, such as "We are such
stuff as dreams are made on," were done in an
overly dramatic manner. But I had learned to
respect and love this man; I would try my best to
give him what he wanted.
To me, Leonard Leone was himself larger
than life. One of my favorite stories centered on
the first time I saw him. He had directed Hamlet
at the Bonstelle Theatre and I attended a special
matinée performance given for high school
students. I was a senior at the time and had not
yet discovered my love for the theatre. The
audience of teenagers was somewhat unruly and
someone began throwing gumballs at the stage.
During a scene that involved some swordplay, a
man dressed in a suit and tie walked on to the
stage. The actors all stopped and looked at him
with amazement. The house lights went on to half
intensity as the man walked toward the footlights.
As they say, a hush fell over the crowd. He looked
up and dramatically pointed toward the balcony
and said, “You! You up there! Get out! We don’t
want your kind.” He turned and left the stage.
The audience yelled and applauded like crazy.
From then on, you could here a pin drop. That
was my introduction to Leonard Leone.
48
The Tempest opened and everyone agreed
that it was a spectacular production. The critics,
however, were not kind to me. I was panned for
the first time in my life. Mr. Leone said to me,
"It was magnificent; do not change a thing." I
had been taught that an actor’s job was to please
the director; I had also made a promise to do it
his way. If anything, I became even more intense
and dramatic. I will always think of that
performance as a highlight in my life.
After The Tempest, I gave my full time to
World Stage. I will always think of myself as an
actor, but at World Stage, I was a director, a
production coordinator, a set designer and
builder. Did I mention lighting designer?
Costumer? I would do anything to keep this
theatre alive.
I found an old printing press that had
been discarded in an alley behind a printing firm.
I rebuilt it and began to publish a monthly
newspaper promoting World Stage. So now I was
also a writer. Unfortunately, as I've mentioned, I
am a terrible speller. There may be many
“pretenders to the crown” of World's Worst
Speller, but I am certainly a contender. Regular
readers developed a game to see who could find
the most misspelled words. They got extra points
if they could find the same word misspelled
several different ways.
49
Fred Barnett worked for his father, who
owned a large truck rental firm in Detroit.
Almost every night after the theatre, a group of
us would go out drinking. Our entourage kept
growing and I always suspected that our
popularity was partly due to the fact that Fred
always picked up the tab.
The favorite hangout was a place called
Momo's. It had sofas and easy chairs and was
very comfortable. The main attraction was Phil
Gaberman. He was a very talented jazz musician,
who also was our friend. He played the piano
there three nights a week.
One night, after about a year of picking
up the tab every night, Fred was about to pick up
the check and he leaned over to me and said,
"Why am I the only one who picks up the tab?"
I could only laugh.
Fred's father sold his business to "Ryder
Trucks" and moved to California. He asked Fred
and his family to join him in a new venture. Fred
got the speech about being a husband and a
father. Fred's wife, Veronica, was an incredibly
beautiful woman. How any man could go out
drinking every night when he had a wife like that
at home is beyond my understanding. Veronica
said, "I'm going, with you or without you." Fred
50
went. He and I were partners, but he was always
the boss. Now, I would be the boss, a real
producer. I could do any play I wanted, cast
myself in any role I wanted. O Paradiso.
I got a call at the theatre one day from a
couple in Florida. They had heard that World
Stage was going to do Beckett's Waiting for
Godot. They wanted to audition. I pointed out
that one, there were no female parts in Godot,
and two, it would be a very long drive just to
audition. The odds were overwhelming that they
would not be cast. They said that she wanted to
read for Lucky and he wanted to read for
Vladimir. All they wanted was a chance to
audition. I said, "No promises, but anyone can
audition."
They came. They auditioned. I loved
them, but I still was not about to cast a woman as
Lucky. I feared that Samuel Beckett would have
a fit. At any rate, Whij was cast as Vladimir. He
was a tall thin man with radiant blond hair. I
have no idea of the origin of the name Whij. I had
never heard of it before nor have I heard of it
since.
Whij and Dee Nolde. Two beautiful
people, inside and out. Dee was short with long
hair that went beyond her waist. Neither of them
knew a soul in Detroit. I found a place for them
51
to stay and for the next five weeks we were
inseparable. Whij's interpretation was brilliant
and exciting but as rehearsals progressed, he
began to lose all of his energy. During the final
dress rehearsal he was so slow that I stopped the
rehearsal and asked to speak with him privately.
We went into my office. I closed the door and
shouted at him, "What the fuck's the matter with
you?" He looked me straight in the face and said,
"I'm dying." He then explained that he and his
wife knew that he was dying from a terminal
illness. That is why they quit their jobs and were
touring the country trying to find interesting
things to do. He said that he was sorry. He had
felt certain that he could last through the run of
Godot. His wife, Dee, and I took Whij to the
hospital. He died later that night. I never saw Dee
again, but she wrote me a letter that I have kept
to this day. Whenever I feel that life is not worth
living, I get it out. Sometimes I don't even read it.
I just hold it and cry. Just holding it reminds me
how precious life is and how every moment is a
moment to be cherished.
Godot opened. I played Vladimir holding
the script in my hand, which meant that I had to
wear my glasses. Nevertheless, it was a big
success. Godot sold out for over three months. In
Detroit, that is still unheard of.
52
I do not know how or why, but Detroit
became a critic's town. The only time World
Stage had any national press coverage was when
a national magazine was doing a special article
about Detroit. One line went something like this:
"Detroit is a cultural wasteland with the sole
exception of World Stage, a semi-professional
theatre which produces classical and avant-garde
plays." Personally, I love Detroit. That is where
my roots are, but I saw no reason why good
drama critics would be attracted to Detroit. We
had three of the best drama critics in the world,
Josef Mossman of the News, Harvey Taylor of the
Times, and J. Dorsey Callaghan of the Free Press.
Broadway producers loved to have shows open in
Detroit. If it was a hit in Detroit, it was a hit.
Period.
The Nederlanders, the entire family,
became very successful on Broadway, but they
started out as the managers of the Schubert
Theatre in Detroit. It was the respect that
Broadway had for the Detroit drama critics that
helped make their success possible.
One day I was walking down the street in
downtown Detroit discussing a new project with
Josef Mossman, the critic for the News. We ran
into Joey Nederlander and Mr. Mossman
suggested that we all have lunch together. As we
entered the swankiest restaurant in Detroit, I was
53
very nervous. I only had a few dollars in my
pocket. There were no such things as credit cards
then, but it would not have mattered, I had no
credit.
As we were looking over the menu, Mr.
Mossman looked up and said, "Which one of you
big time producers is buying?" Joey Nederlander
looked at me and said, "I guess I will." Mossman
said, "Good, in that case I'll have the Porterhouse
steak instead of the cheese omelet."
Today, only the Shuberts own more
Broadway theatres than the Nederlanders. Joey
became a good friend and we still communicate
with each other. 1959, however, was the last time
we had dinner together. Thurber Carnival had its
Grand Opening in Detroit and Joey invited me to
join him and James Thurber for dinner. I was in
such awe that I do not recall saying a word.
The owner of a very large bar/restaurant
in Detroit came to me at World Stage. He had a
proposition. His club seated 250, and on a good
night, he might have fifteen customers. If I could
fill his place with people, he would make me a
50/50 partner. It was a brilliant idea. He owned a
bar that had no patrons, I owned a theatre. There
is not much of a profit potential in a theatre, but
if I could get the theatre's audience to come and
buy booze and food, we could both be rich. Better
54
yet, the place was large enough to put on shows
right in the club.
We redecorated, built a stage, and, in
honor of the Detroit drama critics, renamed it
The Critic’s Club. I began rehearsals for a new
musical revue called Slings and Arrows. It was
written by two Detroiters and in my opinion was
a damn good show. The critics loved it and it was
a hit.
The success of World Stage continued.
The press became more and more attentive and
the audience was growing, but as successful as
World Stage was, it was still Detroit's equivalent
of a Greenwich Village, Off-Broadway theatre.
There was a group of wealthy Detroiter's who
wanted to open a theatre a little more like
Broadway.
This group of wealthy would-be
producers was given a beautiful old legit theatre
in downtown Detroit rent-free. It had once been a
successful theatre but had recently been used as a
foreign movie house. It was re-named The
Vanguard Playhouse. The elite of Detroit society
threw fund raising parties and celebrities from
New York and Los Angeles came to support the
fund raising effort. An experienced Broadway
producer, Kenneth Schwartz, was hired to
manage the operation. In addition to being one
55
of the producers of Lorraine Hansberry’s A
Raisin In The Sun on Broadway, Mr. Schwartz
also managed the Cass Theatre, which was
Detroit's second Broadway touring house, and he
produced the Northland Playhouse, a large star
system summer theatre.
I went to see Mr. Schwartz in an effort to
convince him that Detroit did not need a second
professional theatre. Instead of opening a new
theatre, he should be supporting World Stage. He
pointed to a spot on his desk and said "Do you see
that spot? That's you. Do you see my thumb?
That's me." Then he pushed his thumb on the
spot and twisted his thumb. He looked at me and
smiled. "You've just been squished," he said.
"You're gone."
Two years after this incident, World
Stage was still going, stronger than ever. The
Vanguard Playhouse was still having fund raisers
but had not opened one production. Then my
prayers were answered. A phone call came from
the chairman of the board of The Vanguard
Playhouse. "Wayne, we would like to discuss the
possibility of your taking over the management of
The Vanguard Playhouse." The producer who
threatened to squish me had quit. I was elated. I
had won. I thought I was going to get what I
wanted, a well-financed, fully professional
56
theatre. In truth, I was a lamb being led to
slaughter.
After a preliminary meeting between
Byron Lasky, the primary force behind The
Vanguard Playhouse, and myself, I was invited to
a meeting of the board of directors. In attendance
were the leaders of Detroit Society. We talked for
hours. They interviewed me extensively. It never
entered my mind that I should be asking them
questions and looking over their financial
statements. At the end of the meeting it was
decided that World Stage and The Vanguard
Playhouse would merge. I would be a director on
the board, a co-producer with Byron Lasky, and
hired as managing director of The Vanguard
Playhouse.
The Critic’s Club was doing well and
making money, but The Vanguard was going to
be big time. This would require my full attention.
One of the first things that I did was call my old
English Professor at Alma College, William
Gregory. Remember, he threatened to flunk me
in my freshman English course if I did not take a
small role in The Taming of the Shrew at Alma.
Now, I was offering him his first professional job
in the theatre. He had been teaching at another
small college somewhere in Washington State.
We had not kept in touch and I was just calling to
let him know that I was doing well. To my
57
surprise, when I offered him a job, he accepted. I
was delighted. He would be my Artistic Director.
This gave me a sense of pride. The student who
had been flunking English giving his professor his
first job in professional theatre.
In the meantime, I began to make some
rather startling discoveries. First of all, there was
no money in the bank. The hundreds of
thousands of dollars that had been raised over
the past two years had all been spent. To make
matters worse, the coupon that was used by
donors to make their contributions had a little
footnote. It said that all funds would be held in
escrow and if the theatre did not open by a
specified date, all funds would be returned.
Where was the escrow account? There never was
one.
This created a potential problem. The
deadline was approaching and if the theatre did
not open on time, all the funds raised would have
to be returned. Could spending the money that
was intended for an escrow account be a criminal
offense? It suddenly became clear that the
motivation for getting Wayne Martens, who was
already producing eight to ten plays a year,
named as managing director, was to avoid major
litigation. Just get this guy to open the theatre
and then everyone is off the hook.
I had closed a theatre that not only had a
rich history of successful productions, but was, as
58
Linda says at the end of Death of a Salesman, free
and clear, so that I could open a theatre that not
only did not have a dime in the bank, but also
was hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt
without ever having opened its doors. I may not
have realized it at the time, but as I look back on
it, World Stage was probably one of the best
“regional” theatres in the history of the country.
Seven years of artistic productions and not one
dime in debt.
If there is a fine line between genius and
idiot, I was clearly on the wrong side of the line.
About this time, Tyrone Guthrie sent out word
that he was interested in opening a new theatre in
the United States. He was requesting that cities
send him “bids.” Like rats on a sinking ship,
many Vanguard board members got together and
made an offer to Guthrie.
I went to see Al Glancy, the Chairman of
the Board. He had just spent $250,000 on his
daughter's society debut; surely he could afford
to donate enough money to get the theatre open. I
had been told that he owned a building in New
York City called the Empire State Building.
When he said no, I pointed out that as Chairman
of the Board, he could be held culpable in the
fraud that had been committed. He looked at me
and smiled. "No Wayne, I don't think so. There
will be no fraud because you will find a way to
59
open The Vanguard Playhouse and then the
money will not need to be returned. And you will
find a way to do it without spending any of my
money. It was so nice of you to stop by and see
me. Good day. Oh, by the way, Tyrone Guthrie is
going to Milwaukee.” Glancy read me very well.
Without The Vanguard, I had nothing. I was not
about to let go.
It was a clear-cut decision to come up
with the needed money or face criminal charges.
The board of directors came up with enough
money to open the playhouse with a staged
reading of Don Juan in Hell by George Bernard
Shaw. The board would only provide the needed
funds if the show was directed by an established
New York director with an all New York cast.
This production met the requirement for the
release of the non-existent escrow funds but left
the theatre without a penny to finance a season of
plays. The reading was actually very well done,
but lost a lot of money and left the playhouse in
even worse financial condition. At that point, Al
Glancy and most of the board resigned but Byron
Lasky remained as my co-producer.
Bill Gregory and I came up with a season
of plays and began selling season tickets. Our
first production was to be Peer Gynt by Ibsen. Bill
Gregory would direct and the casting would be
done in Detroit. I began recruiting new board
60
members whom I thought would be faithful to my
management.
By now, the playhouse was so far in debt
that the electric company was trying to turn off
the electricity. They needed access to the building
and we kept the doors locked. During rehearsals,
the electric company would be banging on the
doors trying to get in, but we managed to keep
them out. A regular patron of the old World
Stage, Lillian Jackson Braun, purchased season
tickets to The Vanguard Playhouse. She was very
upset to discover that her check, with which she
had purchased the tickets, had been cashed at
The Brass Rail. She had difficulty believing my
explanation that I had not eaten for some time,
and I did not think that she would mind. Ms.
Braun became a best-selling author but she never
forgave me.
Bill Gregory had cast his brother John as
the lead in Peer Gynt. I did not think that he was
very good, but I chose to keep my mouth shut.
The second production was Anouilh’s Ring
Around the Moon. John Gregory was again cast
in the lead. The friction between Bill Gregory and
myself was beginning to surface. When John was
cast as the lead in the third production, The
Boyfriend, I was beginning to realize that either
John Gregory or I had to go.
61
A new, unknown Detroit actor had
auditioned for The Boyfriend. His name was Bill
Bixby. I thought he was perfect for the lead.
"Doc" Gregory and I openly disagreed. My old
English professor had recently earned his PhD
and everyone was calling him "Doc." Bill Bixby
was cast in the chorus. Bixby told me that he
didn't mind. He was just doing this one show so
that he could get his "Equity Card." He was then
going to Los Angeles to become a star. Anyone
who watched TV from 1960 to 1980 knows that
he did just that. He was the star of four successful
TV series.
I had a problem that was not related to
the theatre but contributed to the termination of
my theatre career in Detroit. Parking tickets.
When I was a student at Wayne University,
driving a car was the only way to get to and from
school. Everyone drove but there were very few
places to park. Students who had parked on the
street would stand by their cars when they were
leaving, and sell their parking spots. My brother
Les, who also attended Wayne University, had
gotten so many parking tickets that a policeman
left a Christmas card on his windshield. The card
read, "I look forward to serving you in the
coming new year."
62
I had accumulated dozens of tickets and
had never paid any of them. I was getting
nervous. I decided to go to the Motor Vehicle
Court and see if I could get the tickets voided. I
had to stand in line forever to get copies of all the
tickets. Then I had to wait in the courtroom for
my turn to appear before the judge. When my
turn came the Judge picked out one of the tickets
and asked "September 2, 1956, 10am, innocent or
guilty?" I tried to respond, "I have no way of
remembering the circumstances…" "Guilty!" he
said. "September 3, 1956 2pm, innocent or
guilty?" "But your honor…." "Guilty!" and so it
went. When I explained that I produced the city's
only professional theatre and had been given the
Golden Key to the City by the mayor, he looked
at me and said, "Do you think your work is more
important than the work of a milkman who
delivers milk to children?" He then told me to go
over and have a seat in the empty juror's box. I
sat there for the rest of the court session.
Everyone had left the courtroom and I could
have gotten up and left. But I sat there and
waited. A policeman came up to me and said,
"Are you Martens?" I said, "Yes." "Follow me,"
he said.
He took me to the bullpen. "No, there
must be a mistake," I said. There were pay
telephones in the bullpen but I didn't have any
change. When I requested change I was told that
63
I would have to wait until I got to the jail. I was
taken to the jail by bus and fingerprinted; of
course, I was told that it was too late to make a
phone call; I should have made my call from the
bullpen. I had no idea what my sentence was.
Would I be in there a night? A month? I didn't
know.
The next morning, someone was getting
out and everyone was giving him messages and
names and numbers of people to call for them. I
gave him my brother Les' name and number.
Late that afternoon, my name was called. I
thought I was getting out. I was fingerprinted
again and put on a bus. I should have known that
something was wrong when I was handcuffed. I
definitely knew something was wrong when the
bus left the city limits and was on the way to the
countryside. I was on the way to the "Big House,"
the penitentiary. I was given a physical, given my
work clothes and taken to my cell. The next
morning I was expecting to wake up in my own
bed, but no, it wasn't a bad dream, I was still in
my cell at “DEHOCO,” the Detroit House of
Correction.. I was given my work assignment and
about to be taken some place, I don't know
where, when my name was called. The person
from the jail had made the phone call. My
brother paid the tickets. I was a free man.
64
During my three days in jail, my
signature on the Vanguard Playhouse bank
account was forged and I had been removed as
Managing Director by the Board of Directors. I
could have fought it but why? I had no fight left
in me. It was time for me to go. I never had any
doubt that I was predestined to be a big star. To
be a big star on Broadway I had to be in New
York. Good-bye Detroit.
65
66
Chapter 4
So here it is, the fall of 1959. I was only
twenty-four years old but I needed a fresh start.
There was nothing that I needed to take with me.
I left everything I owned, even my Steinway
grand piano. World Stage never did a musical,
but every Tuesday night we had jazz concerts. I
always wanted to learn to play the piano, but
that’s something I’m still looking forward to. I
got into my car and started to drive to New York.
Who needs this producing shit? I wasn’t a
producer; I was an actor. I belonged in New
York. I was going to be a star. As I drove, I
dreamed of the excitement and drama that lay
ahead in my life. Then I started to think about
my ex-girlfriend, Mary Lou. She lived in New
York now. I would have to make sure that I
didn't make an ass of myself. Sure, I still loved
her, but she didn't love me and it would be a big
mistake if I tried to get her back. I needed a new
life. You don't get a new life by chasing an old
girlfriend.
Yes, after all of my moaning and whining
about being a virgin, the moment of truth had
come and gone and I never even mentioned it, but
I thought this relationship was a lot more than
just sex. Mary Lou was my first true love. I just
couldn't believe that it was over. She and I had
67
met at the Wayne University Theatre. We had
been going together for several years and I had
always thought that we would get married.
Ondine was the last production at World Stage
before the merger with The Vanguard Playhouse.
I cast Mary Lou in the leading role. In the leading
male role I cast a New York actor, Chuck Olsen.
In addition to being a fine actor, Chuck was an
extremely handsome young man. He was married
and his wife was an airline stewardess.
Chuck, Mary Lou and I became a team
during the after-show routine, going to bars and
parties together. We always had a good time
together but I often felt that Chuck was getting in
the way of my love life. But he was alone and his
wife was traveling about the world. The show ran
for about two months, after which Mary Lou
moved to New York. Chuck stayed in Detroit and
worked with me on opening the Vanguard
Playhouse. He received a telegram informing him
that his wife may have been killed in a plane
crash. At that time airlines did not hire married
women. Chuck's wife had lied and said that she
was single. He had to fly to Ireland and identify
the body. From there, he returned to New York.
During the next few months, I traveled to
New York many times for casting and other
theatre-related business. Each time I would stay
with Mary Lou at her apartment. On one visit I
68
ran into Chuck. He asked if we could meet that
evening at Downey's, a popular hangout for
actors. Sure, that would be fun. I arrived a little
early and was enjoying a drink at the bar when
Chuck entered. He was carrying my suitcases. He
threw the suitcases on the floor. "I love Mary
Lou," he stated. "We live together. I'm sick of
moving out every time you come to New York. I
don't want you sleeping with the woman I love."
What could I say? I was stunned. He
told me how they had been in love all through
Ondine but neither one had had the nerve to tell
me. They both knew that I would be heartbroken.
They were right. I would have been and I was. All
those nights that we all spent together in Detroit,
I would take Mary Lou home and then Chuck
would take her out again. I always felt so bad that
he was alone. It turns out that I was the one who
was alone, only I didn't know it. To make matters
worse, I was the only one who didn't know. All of
my friends in Detroit and New York knew that I
was the odd man out, but no one told me. What
could I do or say? I spent the night at the Dixie, a
notorious sleaze bag hotel in Times Square.
It is now only a few months later, and I’m
driving on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, on my
way to New York to become a star, but I can't
bear the thought of being near Mary Lou. She
was the first and only woman in my life. I
69
realized that New York was not the place for me,
not at this time. I turned the car around.
I returned to Detroit and spent the night
at my parents'. The next morning, I looked in the
classified section of the previous Sunday's paper.
It had a section for drivers wanted. There was an
ad by a schoolteacher who wanted her car driven
to Los Angeles. I gave her a call. She was leaving
for Los Angeles the next morning by car but did
not yet have a driver. She was so glad to hear
from me. An old German lady and her twelveyear-old granddaughter had also answered her
ad. They needed cheap transportation to L.A.
and offered to share expenses. I only mention that
she was German because she didn’t speak
English. Her granddaughter acted as translator. I
wouldn’t need to share transportation expenses if
I could do the driving. Once again I was leaving
Detroit. This time I even left my car behind.
The first part of the trip was uneventful,
but we had all discussed whether we should go
out of our way to see the Grand Canyon. None of
us had ever seen it. We arrived about 5:30 am. It
was pitch black and we could not see a thing. I
wandered off by myself and was just waiting for
the sun to rise. It was incredible. I had always
loved Ferde Grofe's Grand Canyon Suite, but
there is no way in words or music to describe the
magnificence of seeing the sunrise at the Grand
70
Canyon. As a former ministerial student, I had
always wanted God to speak to me. He spoke to
others throughout the Bible, why not to me? I
was now alone with God. I began to sing at the
top of my lungs, "Oh, what a beautiful
morning..." A voice rang out, "For Christ's sake,
shut the fuck up!" I looked around. There were
sleeping bags and tents all around me. So much
for my moment alone with God.
We continued on our journey. We
decided to cross the Mojave Desert at night. That
meant sleeping during the day at Needles,
California. This must have been a common way
to cross the desert because we got the last three
rooms at the motel. In my room the AC did not
work. I tried to sleep in the shower but that only
left me hot and wet.
We arrived in L.A. about 4am and the
teacher dropped off the German lady and her
granddaughter. We were on an expressway, and
the teacher asked me, "Where do you want to get
off?" "I don't know," I replied. I had no idea
where I was going or what I was going to do, but
I was not in New York and not in Detroit. "Take
the next exit and drop me off," I said.
There I was, I didn't know where, in the
darkness, in a strange new land. I stood there for
71
a long time and then I began to walk. I was lucky
to have had only one suitcase.
To this day, I do not know what part of
Los Angeles I was in. I suspect that it was not
one of the choice L.A. locations. When the sun
rose, I was near a Spanish-looking hotel. It was
cheap and so I got a room. I slept all day and
went out exploring that evening. There was a
curious trolley car that traveled about 200 feet
going up and down a steep hill. Perhaps that
would be a clue to those of you who know L.A. I
was also near the Japanese area of town. Most
cities have a "Chinatown," but I've never heard
of a "Japantown." Anyway, that's where I was. I
went to a Japanese restaurant that had a floor
show. It was a lot of fun and I fell in love with the
waitress.
The next morning, I realized that I had no
idea what to do or where to go. I didn't know a
soul in Los Angeles. Fred Barnett lived near San
Francisco, so I took a Greyhound bus to San
Francisco. It was much further from L.A. than I
realized.
Fred lived in Redwood City. He came and
picked me up and treated me like a long-lost
relative. That was a very good thing considering
that I had only nine dollars left. We spent several
weeks reminiscing. Fred and Veronica took me
72
into San Francisco several times so that I could
get the lay of the land and sample some of the
nightlife.
When I first met Fred and Veronica, their
son Murray was just learning to speak. His first
word was not "Mama" or "Dada." It was "shit."
Every time Fred would say “shit,” Murray would
say “shit.” So Fred would say, "No Murray,
Daddy said 'ship', a boat." Murray's second word
was "shit-boat." I was happy to learn that
Murray had increased his vocabulary.
I got a job in a photo lab in San Francisco
and found a small studio apartment, but had no
furniture and no clock. On my first day of work,
I arrived an hour late and was certain I would be
fired before I had even started. Sure enough, I
walked in and one of the bosses asked me to step
into his office. "I thought you weren't going to
show up," he said. "I knew my partner didn't
offer you enough money. Young men with your
experience are hard to find." He offered me a $50
per week raise. I realized that I was going to like
San Francisco.
The photo lab was in North Beach. This
was in the late 50s. The "Beat Generation" was
winding down but the air was still filled with
excitement. The City Lights book store, Vesuvio,
The Jazz Cellar. Creative people roamed the
73
streets. How could I be working in a photo lab? I
needed to be part of the action.
I began to explore the streets looking for
an empty space that could house a theatre. How a
theatre could be opened without any money never
entered my mind. I found the perfect spot on
Green Street, near The Hip Bagel. It had been a
supermarket. It had high ceilings with no pillars.
I called the San Francisco drama critics. I told
them about my experience in Detroit and
explained that I wanted to open a theatre in San
Francisco. All three papers ran articles about
this theatre producer from Detroit who was
looking for a location to open a theatre in San
Francisco. I then met with the owner of the
building on Green Street and showed him the
articles and told him that his building would be
perfect. I wanted to get a six-month option on his
building. We worked out the details and made a
verbal agreement.
I wanted to have a large meeting of actors
and other creative people in the San Francisco
area so that I could introduce myself and explain
what I intended to do. There was a large
restaurant/bar next to the intended theatre space.
I went to see the owner and told her I was going
to open a theatre next door that would be good
for her business. I needed to use her space for a
few meetings.
74
I then returned to the papers and told the
critics that I had obtained a space and now
needed to hire a staff and cast a company of
actors. I would need notices in the newspapers.
They obliged but pointed out that in the future I
should hire a press agent to handle my relations
with the papers, so I did.
At the meeting, the restaurant was filled
to the brim with curious actors and theatre
lovers. The restaurant owner had never sold so
much beer in her life.
By this time, Fred Barnett had read about
the new World Stage in the papers. He couldn't
call me; I didn't have a phone. He came to San
Francisco and found me and asked how I could
re-open his theatre without him. I pointed out
that, in essence, he had given it to me. He said,
"Yes, but that was in Detroit. How could I know
that you would come to San Francisco and open
up here?"
I took him over to see the space. "How
much do you think it will cost to convert it to a
theatre?" he asked. "I don't know," I said. "How
much money do you have?" he asked. "None," I
said. "Can I be your partner?" he asked. "Sure,"
I said.
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Fred explained that he had no money
other than the savings that he and Veronica were
going to use to buy a house. If he lost that,
Veronica would kill him. He asked how I
intended to raise the money. "Sell tickets," I said.
Fred reached into his pocket and pulled out some
money. "You need to make a better impression.
Here, go buy yourself a suit," he said.
The first thing that I did with my new suit
was to go out on a date. At one of the meetings at
the bar next to the proposed theatre, a lovely
young lady stood up and said, "My name is
Norma Fire." Norma was an actress that I had
hired for The Critics Club in Detroit just before
taking over the Vanguard Playhouse. Another
director had been hired to replace me and I
regretted that Norma and I never had the chance
to work together. There she was. It must have
been fate, so I asked her out.
We went to the Sausalito Playhouse and
saw a production of Anything Goes. The tickets
were, of course, complimentary, as I was the
producer of World Stage. We were invited to a
cast party after the show. It was up in the
mountains overlooking San Francisco. We had a
wonderful time.
After the party, when we got to Norma's
apartment, she explained that I must be very
76
quiet.
Her
roommate,
apparently
an
acquaintance of mine, did not want me to know
that she was in San Francisco. She was pregnant
and giving up her baby for adoption. She
panicked when she learned that Norma was
dating a man she knew from Detroit. I had no
idea who this roommate could be.
I fell in love with Norma, but there was
no way it could work. Norma left New York and
came to San Francisco so that she could get away
from actors. It would be a Jewish doctor or no
one, but at least I was no longer losing sleep over
Mary Lou.
I quit my job at the photo lab. Opening a
theatre with no money was a full time job. With
no income, I could not afford to keep my
apartment. What I needed was to find a
girlfriend, a girlfriend with an apartment. I was
invited to a party and I thought that it would be
the perfect opportunity to meet someone. At the
party, I was making moves on every female that
would talk to me and, of course, was getting
nowhere. By the end of the party, it was obvious
to everyone that I was trying to find a place to
stay. A man came up to me and said, "I hear that
you need to find a place to stay. I live in a house
on Grant Avenue and have lots of room." I said,
"No, I'm fine. I don't need a place." He then
convinced me that he was straight and that he
77
really did have a large place with plenty of room.
I moved in that night.
This was a beautiful home, one of the last
buildings on the northern end of Grant Avenue.
After staying there a week, the young man whom
I had met at the party told me he was moving out.
I could stay there as long as I wanted. I said, "But
how much is the rent?" He said, "There is no
rent. It's too complicated to explain. I don't
understand it myself. All I know is that there is
no rent. Someone pays the electric, I don't know
who, just live here and enjoy it. Oh, there is one
problem: there are no keys. So don’t ever lock
the door when you go out." With that, he left.
About two months later, early in the
morning, I was awakened by a stranger standing
over my bed. "Where is Frank?" he asked. "Who
the fuck are you?" I asked. "We need to talk," he
said. He went into the kitchen and made coffee.
He acted as if he owned the place. Turns out he
did. He explained that he had gone to Europe
four years earlier and had let a friend of his stay
in the house. He made arrangements for his
attorney to pay all the bills for the house. His
friend apparently moved out and gave the place
to another friend, who then gave it to another
friend, etc. I was the end of a long list of free
tenants.
78
I then moved into the space we were
converting into the theatre. I opened a charge
account at a lumber company. To my
amazement, I had no difficulty in getting credit.
Fred found a closed movie theatre in Oakland.
We could have the seats free. All we had to do
was to take them out. A number of homeless
actors soon moved in with me. I applied for a
building permit and submitted hand-drawn plans
to the building department.
I ordered lumber and tools, and my
live-in volunteers and I began to construct a
theatre. Fred supplied the cash to rent a truck to
get the seats. I don't even remember how we got
the lights and light board, but I do remember
that we painted everything khaki with red trim. I
had found army surplus paint in ten gallon
containers for 20 cents per gallon. They only had
one color, khaki.
A phone was put in the theatre, and the
first calls I made were to some of my closest actor
friends in Detroit. When I told them that I was
opening a theatre in San Francisco, I failed to
mention that I had no money and that the
"theatre" was nothing but an empty old
supermarket. They drove out to San Francisco
and got real pissed off. Where I saw a beautiful
theatre, they saw an old supermarket. When I
handed them a hammer and saw and said, "Let's
79
get to work," they didn’t feel this was a role they
wanted to play, so they returned to Detroit.
The first play was to be an adaptation of
James Joyce's book Ulysses called Ulysses in
Nighttown, a play that I became obsessed with
doing. I had done it in Detroit and did it again
later in New York. I think that the basis of this
obsession lies in the fact that intellectuals revere
Joyce and I have always yearned to be classified
as an intellectual.
Casting notices were put in the San
Francisco papers and hundreds of actors came to
audition. We constructed the theatre in the
daytime and rehearsed at night. Leonard Yorr,
one of my Detroit actor friends who came out for
a few days and then left, had played the lead
character, Bloom, in Detroit. It's difficult finding
the words to describe a truly accomplished actor.
Great, magnificent, and stupendous are often
used, but let's face it, these terms should be
reserved for people who make earth-shaking
contributions to mankind, not someone who gives
a convincing theatrical performance. In
theatrical circles the word "adequate" is
considered to be an insult. I do not understand
this. I would think adequate would be a
compliment. Let me just say that Leonard Yorr
was an exceptional actor and I feared that it
would be difficult to find a replacement. After an
80
extensive search, I settled on a young man named
Paul Schoemacker. Settled is the key word. I told
him that he was the best of the people that I had
auditioned but I did not think he was capable of
playing such a complex yet whimsical character.
I'm happy to say that he proved me wrong. He
was much more than adequate.
One of the reasons that artists and
beatniks were drawn to North Beach was free
food. This was an Italian neighborhood and it
was the custom for shopkeepers to give out free
food on birthdays and anniversaries. You could
walk up and down the streets and eventually you
would find someone out on the sidewalk with a
grill, yelling, "Mangia, mangia."
North Beach was filled with Italian family
restaurants. They had no menu. Whatever they
made, you ate. If you did not want what they
made, you would go to another restaurant.
This came as more than a shock to me. I
had gone in a restaurant and was waiting for a
waitress to hand me a menu. Instead, she served
me a bowl of soup. I thought that she served it in
error. I tried to communicate with her, but she
spoke no English. I ate the soup. It was fantastic.
Then came several courses, all excellent. She
served wine in a bottle that had obviously been
re-filled. It had no label and the cork was sticking
81
out so that you could pull it out by hand. A tray
of cheeses was put on my table. I was afraid that I
would not have enough money to pay for all of
this. I had visions of doing dishes for a long time.
The tab? $1.25.
The most unbelievable give-away that I
experienced happened in The Coffee Gallery on
Grant Avenue. I was sitting at the bar. Two
beatnik types were talking to a gentleman in a
suit and tie. After listening to a tale of woe from
one of the two beatniks, the suited gentleman
handed over a ten-dollar bill. The other beatnik
said, "Hey, I'm just as hard up as he is," and out
came another ten-dollar bill. Before you knew it,
everyone was in line receiving ten-dollar bills.
The bar ran out of tens and so the gentleman
began giving out hundreds and requesting that
people run out and get change. To my
amazement, everyone that received a hundred
actually returned with the change.
It was getting late, so I left, but I heard
the next day that the gentleman was a Texas
millionaire. After giving out the tens, he invited
everyone to his suite at the Fairmont. The party
got a little too big and rowdy for the Fairmont
and he moved the party to the new Jack Tarr.
Unfortunately, there were not always
people giving out money or free food, so we
82
collected deposit bottles and bought Drake's
cupcakes, three for five cents. Once tickets went
on sale we were able to raise our standard of
living.
The theatre was built. We passed the
building inspection and were scheduled to open
the next night. The fire inspector came for a final
inspection and said, "I want another exit right
over there." "But the plans were approved," I
said. He said, "I don't give a shit about the plans.
I want an emergency exit!" The wall he was
pointing to was reinforced concrete.
Fred went out and bought a
sledgehammer. I took the first swing. How can I
describe it? I vibrated for five minutes. There
was not even a chip in the concrete. After
swinging for ten hours there was a small hole in
the wall. By now it was the morning of opening
night. Fred and I were on the sidewalk taking
turns with the hammer. Two soldiers came by
and watched as Fred and I were swinging the
sledgehammer. "Need some help?" one of them
asked. "Yes," Fred said. "Can you afford a case
of beer?" the one soldier asked. "Yes," Fred said.
"Do you have a chair?" the soldier asked. We got
the beer and set the chair by the opening in the
wall. The Sergeant sat in the chair and opened up
a beer. The private picked up the sledgehammer.
"Swing!" the Sergeant ordered. This continued
83
until the opening was large enough for a midsized human to pass through. We had our
emergency exit.
The fire inspector was a bit taken aback,
but he had to admit that this hole in the wall
qualified as an emergency exit. The show went
on.
After the show, when we were all going
out to get drunk, I realized that there was no way
to close the emergency exit. I spent the night
sleeping on a cot in front of the opening in the
concrete. The next morning we hired a crew to
finish the job and to put in a door.
The reviews came out. We were a hit.
Standing Room Only.
I got myself a small, inexpensive
apartment on Green Street, two blocks away
from the theatre. It was on the foot of Telegraph
Hill. The "view" is very important in San
Francisco. My new apartment was first floor
rear. It had a large bay window that overlooked a
brick wall about eighteen inches from the
window. That is why the rent was cheap.
The landlord would come by each month
to collect the rent. The apartment had a Dutch
door. You could open the entire door, or just
84
open the top half of the door. One morning, while
I was still in bed, there was a knock on the door. I
went to the door in my underwear and opened
the top half of the door. Standing there was my
landlord and the building inspector who had
worked with me during the construction of the
theatre. He was doing an inspection of the
apartment building. "Wayne," he said, "I didn't
know you lived here. Your landlord is in deep
shit. This place has so many violations that I may
need to close it up. Can we come in?"
I let them in and put on a pot of coffee.
The building inspector and I had become very
friendly during the theatre construction. He
would come in and say "Wayne, don't do it that
way. I wouldn't approve it. Do it this way or that
way." He was very helpful.
My landlord seemed to be very impressed
with the apparent friendship between the
building inspector and myself. The inspector
explained to me that the bathrooms were
adjacent to the kitchens throughout the building.
Every apartment in the building would need to
have the bathroom and kitchen ripped out and
rebuilt. We finished our coffee and they both left.
What happened with the building
department, I don't know. I only know that my
85
landlord never came by again to collect the rent
and I never got a bill in the mail.
Free food, two free apartments; was this a
great town or what?
All was not rosy however. The woman
who owned the restaurant next door never got
the increase in business that she had anticipated.
The cast didn’t like her and had no interest in
spending its after-show time at her establishment.
The audiences preferred to spend their aftershow money at places where the cast hung out. In
retaliation, the restaurant owner hired a twelvepiece bongo band that was lined up along our
adjacent wall. I'm not talking those little drums
that you put on your lap. I'm talking four feet
high with eighteen-inch tops. I mean loud drums.
Whenever the play started, the band started. Any
quiet tender moments in the play became totally
obliterated by the bongos.
We called in soundproofing experts to
give estimates. This was a sixty-foot wall with
sixteen foot ceilings. It would be very expensive
with no guarantees that it would work. One
member of the company suggested that we cover
the wall with egg crates, the type used for large
shipments of eggs to restaurants. They are about
eighteen inches square. Just glue them to the wall
86
and spray-paint them. A very inexpensive but
effective means of soundproofing.
This all became academic when our
landlord decided that World Stage was so
successful that he could demand double the rent
we had verbally agreed on. He knew damn well
that a renovated theatre was worth a lot more
than an old supermarket. He could easily re-let
the space at a higher rent.
One more snag. Our second production
was William Saroyan's The Cave Dwellers. Mr.
Saroyan had given us written permission to do
the play royalty-free. I was shocked when I was
served papers from Samuel French, the company
that owned the amateur rights to the play. I
wrote a letter to French and enclosed a copy of
Saroyan's consent. They wrote back that Saroyan
did not own the rights to amateur productions of
his plays. I pointed out that World Stage was a
professional theatre. Samuel French would not
accept that concept. Although the majority of our
cast members were members of Actors' Equity
(AEA), the professional actors union, World
Stage was not operating under an Equity
contract.
Only one theatre in San Francisco
operated under an Equity contract. The Actors
Theatre had a special contract under which the
87
theatre agreed to keep three members of the
union under contract at a minimum salary of
thirty dollars per week. The three Equity
members just happened to be the three producers
of the theatre. All other actors worked free, but
this was deemed a professional company. I
contacted the local AEA representative and asked
for a similar contract but he said no. He added
that we should just do our plays and not worry
about it. There were many Equity actors in San
Francisco and they worked without a contract all
the time.
The legal question of what constitutes a
professional theatre was never resolved. It would
have made for interesting litigation. What
distinguishes a professional theatre from an
amateur theatre? Many non-Equity theatres pay
a salary to the actors. Doesn’t this make them
professional? The union says, "NO." The Actors
Studio in New York puts on plays that are often
cast with some of the best-known actors in the
country. In these "showcase" productions, the
actors are not paid. Does this make them amateur
productions?
I was not about to spend the time or
money to litigate and find out. World Stage
closed. We started with nothing and ended with
nothing, but it created a lot of memories. All bills
were paid and the thirty or so people who worked
88
day and night for several months received a
check for their part of the profits. It was a mixed
feeling of humiliation and pride as I handed out
checks. I was proud that we opened a theatre
with no money and made a profit on the first
show. On the other hand, it was embarrassing.
These people had worked so hard and they were
being paid so little. This may sound a bit farfetched, but many of the actors never cashed the
checks. They were more valuable as a keepsake
for a memory they would hold for life.
Fred and I made a deal with the new
owner of the Coffee Gallery, on Grant Avenue,
similar to my deal in Detroit that created The
Critics Club. Give us fifty percent of the bar and
we would put on shows that would keep the place
packed.
We
did
one-act
plays
and
improvisational theatre. Unfortunately, we never
got a liquor license. Mayor Christopher was a
reform mayor. He discovered that North Beach
had a bar for every 50 residents. He denied all
requests for liquor license transfers in North
Beach. I decided to call it quits. Fred and Leo
Ziegler (our new partner) decided to continue.
At last, I was on my way to New York. I
had a bus ticket, a loaf of bread, a slab of salami,
a jar of mustard, and 35 cents. This should last
me the four days on the bus, I thought.
89
The bus had four stops in Nevada. Each
stop was wall-to-wall slot machines. An old lady
from the bus hit the jackpot on her first nickel.
Back on the bus, we all helped her count the
nickels. She hit it again on the second stop. By the
third stop, I could not resist. I put in a nickel and
got three nickels back. Within two minutes my
thirty-five cents was gone. The fourth and final
stop in Nevada was at a casino. I stood next to a
man with a stack of silver dollars. One after the
other they kept going in and nothing came out. I
wanted to ask for just one but couldn't do it.
I wasn't going to make it. I got off the bus
in Chicago. As I have done so many times in my
life, I called my brother Les for money. I hadn't
had a bowel movement for three days. I bought
Ex-lax. I had never had this problem before, and
did not know how laxatives worked. I bought a
bus ticket to Detroit. When we arrived at the
station, I woke up with a need to go at once. Not
soon, at once. I ran to the men's room and
discovered that they were all pay toilets and I had
no change.
Remember the episode of "Seinfeld"
where George wanted the Yankees to extend the
length of the toilet doors so that people could
have more privacy? I am thankful there was
room to crawl under. Not just once, over and
over again. How humiliating.
90
After a few days in Detroit, I was again
on my way to New York, but not by bus. I had
what they called a "drive away." I drove a new
Cadillac that needed to be delivered to a dealer in
New York. This was more like it.
91
92
Chapter 5
New York, New York. I was finally going
to live in New York. For years, when I couldn't
find an excuse to go to New York on theatre
business, I would go on my day off. I would drive
fourteen hours from Detroit, just to spend one
day in New York, and then drive back to Detroit.
I'd walk along Bleeker Street; drink a beer at the
White Horse. At McSorely's, you could get two
ales and a pickled egg for fifty cents, but you
couldn't bring a date. Women were not allowed.
There were still spittoons on the floor. A knish at
Katz's Deli on Houston Street cost fifteen cents.
By the time I was in New Jersey, my heart
was racing. This was 1960. The longest running
show in New York history was The Threepenny
Opera. The Iceman Cometh was playing at The
Circle in the Square. A new musical, The
Fantasticks, had just opened at the Sullivan
Street Playhouse. This was my kind of town.
Mallory, a friend of mine from Detroit,
was living on the lower East Side. She had been
offered a job touring with a show in Africa. She
said that I could have her apartment for three
months if I took care of her eight-year-old son,
Dennis, and her cat, Evinrude, who purred like a
motorboat. That sounded good to me. I should be
93
able to find out if I was going to make it within
three months.
Mallory loved Dennis very much, but was
determined not to let a child interfere with her
lifestyle. Dennis had been pretty much taking
care of himself since the time he learned to walk.
Mallory knew that I would have to get a job and
that Dennis would have to get home from school
on his own. I love kids and I love to cook. Dennis
and I got along very well. He introduced me to
the TV show The Twilight Zone. Dennis was a
bright, very inquisitive child and was wise far
beyond his years. His mother was a unique
woman, bohemian to the core. She was an artist
who maintained a wild, free love, lifestyle. She
always used just one name, Mallory.
I enjoyed my time with Dennis, but felt
incredibly lonely. I had a job at a photo lab with
the understanding that I could take off for
auditions and interviews. I had no social life.
Each time I returned from work, I would think of
how nice it would be to have someone waiting for
me, to hug and kiss me on my return. She would
not have to be a great beauty, just someone kind
and loving, just someone who cared about me. I
wanted to be married and raise a family.
One evening, I called Fred Barnett in San
Francisco. He wouldn't talk to me. He was really
94
pissed off. It seems that the press agent that I
hired in San Francisco sued him. She never did a
thing and I forgot all about her. I did, however,
sign a contract. She sued Fred and won. How
could that be? If it was deemed to be a personal
contract, then I was liable, not Fred. If it were
deemed to be a corporate contract then neither
Fred nor I would be personally liable, unless her
attorney somehow "pierced the corporate veil,"
which is very unlikely. At any rate, after
constructing a theatre and producing two plays
without losing a dime, Fred lost his savings
account to a press agent who he never even knew
existed. We never spoke again. Over the years, I
have tried and tried to reach him with no success.
I tried a search on the Internet and got thirty-five
Fred Barnetts. One of them was listed in Detroit
and so I gave him a call. He turned out to be a
football player with the Philadelphia Eagles.
I had an interview for a summer directing
job. The interview was on Sixth Avenue and 52nd
Street. As I walked to the subway, I passed by
Katz's Deli. In the window they had those fifteencent knishes. They looked so good and I was
hungry. Fifteen cents was also the price of a
subway token and that’s what I had, fifteen cents.
I was going to take the subway there and then
walk back, but those knishes looked so good. I
went in and ordered one. The counterman asked,
"Do you want potato or kasha?" "What's
95
kasha?" I inquired. "The germ of barley," he
answered. "Like wheat germ, only from barley."
I loved barley and so I ordered one. Yuck! It
must be an acquired taste. I couldn't eat it. I had
to walk both ways and was still hungry. It was an
easy walk. I began to realize how small
Manhattan really is. This may be a non sequitur,
but I am reminded of an article I read that stated
that if the population of the world were
concentrated with a density comparable to
Manhattan, the entire world, including China
and India, would fit into a third of the state of
Texas. Think about it.
After three months in New York, it
looked as if I was not going to make it. I was
working in a photo lab. Mallory had returned,
and I had to leave. I packed my bags and was
walking out the door when the phone rang. It was
the directing job that I had interviewed for at a
summer theatre in the Adirondack Mountains.
Not an acting job in New York but a theatre job.
Mallory let me stay with her until it was time to
go upstate.
Timberland was a mountain resort.
Everyone lived in cabins. It was one step above
camping out. It had a theatre just for its patrons.
The director the year before had been Harry
Guardino. He was on his way to being a
96
successful movie and TV actor, so I thought that I
could do the same.
The original director that summer had
been fired. I think he made inappropriate
advances toward the leading lady. This meant the
shows had all been cast and I would have no say
in the casting. We rehearsed the first production,
The King and I, in New York City. On nice days
we rehearsed in Central Park. One day people
started coming over to ask for autographs. We
were all unknowns, but more and more people
kept coming and we kept signing. You could hear
people asking, "Who are they?" and others
would respond, "I don't know." But they kept
coming. It was like being a star for a day.
I also made inappropriate advances
toward the leading lady, but instead of getting me
canned, she decided to marry me. Joan Porter
was a gifted actress. She had been married once
before and had lost a baby in childbirth. As I look
back on it, I now believe that we never loved each
other in the classic sense, we each just both
needed someone to be with. She was very
dedicated to her career in the theatre, but like
myself, needed to have a life apart from the
theatre. She was always thoughtful and
considerate and very rarely selfish. Upon
receiving news that his daughter was engaged to
be married, her father came up from Florida to
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meet me. After arriving in the mountains, his
first request was to talk to me privately. We went
for a walk in the woods. We walked for a while in
silence and then he said, "You're not going to get
a cent. Do you still want to marry her?" I said, "I
didn't know you had a cent." We continued to
walk. Then he stopped and took out his wallet. I
thought he was going to offer me money to not
marry her. Instead, he pulled out a photograph of
an enormous young woman; I'd say about 250
pounds. "This is Joan before she lost weight.
She'll probably gain it back. Do you still want to
marry her?" I was stunned. I didn't know about
"the weight" and it came as a big surprise. But I
looked him in the eye and said, "Yes." We
returned to the theatre without a word. Joan ran
up to us and asked, "How did it go?" Her father
grumbled, "He passed the test."
Joan's father was quite a character. He
had been one of the last of the "medicine men"
that traveled from town to town, selling tonics
and elixirs. While in York, Pennsylvania, he met
a man who had an idea for a business but needed
a partner with a talent for sales. I don't know
much about the business they started except that
they later sold it for four million dollars. Joan
told me that every kid in grade school knew that
one of the teachers was being kept by a "sugar
daddy." They made jokes about it. Of course, as
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it turned out, the sugar daddy was her father and
it became quite a scandal in York, Pennsylvania.
Back in the Adirondacks, I had another
type of sex scandal to deal with. One evening
after a performance, one of the actresses in the
company came up to me and was very upset. "It's
Frank," she said, "I've fallen in love with him but
the only time he kisses me is in our love scene in
the play. Why doesn't he like me?" This girl was
so young and naive that she was not aware of
homosexuality. I explained to her that I was
certain Frank liked and respected her very much
but that he was not interested in a sexual
relationship with a female. Any female. It wasn't
her fault.
The next day, Frank came storming into
my room. "How dare you!" he said. "How dare
you insult my masculinity!" "Let's go out for a
walk in the woods, Frank. We need to talk." I
explained to him that this young girl had no
understanding about homosexuality and that she
thought that if he showed no interest in her, it
meant that there was something the matter with
her. It was not fair to let her suffer. "Do you feel
that it is insulting to be called a homosexual?
Have you no sense of self worth? Do you take no
pride in who you are?" He stood silent for a
while and then looked at me and said, "You're
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right. I apologize. Thank you." I had helped
someone out of the closet.
I do not understand the concept of
"choice" when it comes to sexual orientation.
Female sexuality may be more complicated, but
with a male, it seems to me that whatever makes
his penis erect is what he goes after. Where is the
"choice?" When I was a young man there were
no "dirty magazines." I remember drooling over
the bra and girdle ads in the magazines. It just
happened. I don't recall having a choice. One of
the other traits often associated with masculinity,
aggressive behavior, was not, however, included
in the makeup of my genes.
I always chose to follow my father’s
advice about running away from a fight. Not
because I think of it as good advice, but because
whenever faced with a situation that may lead to
a fight, I get scared to death. I am without doubt
a coward, but I did hit someone once. His name
was Neil Budnick, and during the fifth grade he
stole my lunch money every day. Then one day,
out of the blue, wham, I hit him in the mouth
with a right. Then bam, a left. He stumbled back
to the brick wall behind him. Then a straight
right headed for his nose, but he jerked his head
and my fist went into the wall. Humma-na
humma-na, ooey-ooey that hurt. A classic
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situation leads to a classic lesson. When it comes
to fighting, you lose even if you win.
All of this is leading toward a most
unique response to an invitation to a fight. It was
our night off and the owner of the resort had
offered to let me use his car so that Joan and I
could go into town and see a movie. This was our
first time together off of the resort. After the
movie we went to a local bar and had a few
drinks. As we were about to leave, a motorcycle
gang came into the bar and made it clear that
they were religious. They intended to put the fear
of God into everyone they met. Joan and I tried
to leave, but they blocked the door and began to
taunt us. I was scared, I mean really scared, but I
didn't want Joan to see how frightened I was.
I walked up to one of the gang members
and said, "Please let us leave without a fight. I
don't want to fight. I don't like to fight. They
never taught me how to fight. They only taught
me how to kill. I don’t want to kill. Please don't
make me kill. Please! Please! Don't make me
kill!" By the end of this tirade, they were all
looking at me as if I were a real nut case. I looked
each one in the eye as if to say, "Do you want to
try me?" Then Joan and I walked out. When we
got into the car I was trembling, but Joan broke
into laughter.
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When the season was over, Joan and I
were married in Florida. We had a big church
wedding and my brother Randy was best man.
Outside of my family, I did not know a soul at the
wedding. I will always remember my father, with
tears in his eyes, hugging Joan and saying,
"Please, take care of my little boy." The wedding
present from her parents was two weeks in the
Bahamas for a honeymoon. It was not allinclusive. We had no money for food or
entertainment. I tried to sell back one week to the
hotel so that we would have some money. The
hotel did not like that idea. We cut our
honeymoon short and took a bus to Detroit to
visit my parents.
From Detroit, we returned to New York.
Detroit has a lot of cars needing to be delivered so
once again I used a "drive away." Only this time,
the car wasn't going to New York. It was going to
some town in Connecticut. Real close to New
York City, I was assured. We got to New York
with no problem. Getting out of New York was
the problem, no gas and little money. Nowadays,
most everyone has a credit card to deal with such
emergencies, but in 1961 it was cash only. I would
get one hundred bucks when the car was
delivered. We pulled into a gas station and I
ordered two bucks worth. The attendant filled it
up and said it would be sixteen dollars. I said, "I
ordered two bucks worth." He said, "No, you
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said fill it up." I said, "I know I ordered two
bucks worth because that's all I've got. Two
bucks." We were put on the lift and they
siphoned out all but two dollars worth of gas.
Welcome to New York.
I dropped Joan off with a friend with
whom we were going to stay until we got an
apartment. I then headed for Connecticut. I got
there without running out of gas and got my
hundred bucks. "How do I get back to New York
City?" I asked. "Go across the street and wait for
a bus that says New York on it and then wave like
crazy," I was told.
I crossed the street and I waited, and I
waited. No bus that said New York came by.
After a long wait, a car pulled over. A man yelled
out "Are you waiting for the bus to New York?"
"Yes," I answered. "They are on strike," he
yelled and then drove away. I had to hitchhike
back to New York.
I didn't get back until late that night.
Joan and I both agreed to get "bread and butter"
jobs and build up a nest egg before seeking
theatre employment.
No need to guess where I got a job. It
repeats and repeats in my life like a Greek chorus
foretelling the doomed hero's destiny, at a photo
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lab. I don't remember what Joan's job was. She
quit after two days and never worked again, at a
"job job" I mean. This is always the actor’s
dilemma. What is the point of coming to New
York to become a star if you spend all of your
time working in an office, or a photo lab, to pay
the rent?
Our apartment was on West 75th Street
with a balcony overlooking the park. It was rent
controlled, $125 per month. But with only one
salary, there would be no way to save any money.
We moved to East 11th Street for $60 per month.
It was called a "railroad flat", the bathtub was in
the kitchen and the toilet was in the building's
hallway.
My new job was with a company called
G&W Photo. It was affiliated with Black Star,
which at that time was the foremost photo agency
in the world. They handled the best-known
photographers and worked for publications like
Life and Look. Many people answered their ad in
the help wanted section of the paper, but I was
not surprised that I got the job. With my
knowledge and experience, I was clearly one of
the best-qualified lab technicians in the business,
or so I thought. After about a week I learned
otherwise. I felt totally incompetent, but I was
ready and willing to learn, and learn I did. I
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learned that if you think you know it all, you will
get left behind in someone else's dust.
G&W was a very small lab, with only the
two owners and five employees, but the
conversation between employees was incredible.
An old German man with no teeth named Henry
had fought for Germany in World War II. A
younger Polish man, Tebor Schwartz, about
thirty-eight years old, had fought for Russia.
They had been in battles against each other. They
would re-live the battles. There was no cable TV
then, but this was better than the History
Channel. Tebor was a Polish Jew. During the
war, he and his family were split up and put in
Nazi concentration camps. When the Russians
liberated Tebor's camp, he was drafted into the
Russian army.
After the war, by some miracle, Tebor's
wife and child were still alive. They were allowed
to come to the USA, and settled in New York. He
was able to get a job in his chosen profession,
photography. It was one of the most startling
days of my life when he got a call at work from
his wife; he received the news that their son had
been murdered on the street in front of their
apartment in the Bronx. Tebor remained a friend
long after I left G&W, but we never discussed his
son or how his son was murdered. I do not believe
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that I could comprehend the extent of Tebor's
pain.
Joan was cast in a children's show called
Absolutely Time. It was a wonderful show and all
the people involved were extraordinary. A cast
party was held at the home of one of the
actresses. I've always been a bit shy, and I was
not a member of the cast, so I felt a bit out of it. I
spent the evening playing with the hostess' sevenyear-old little brother. He sat on my lap and I
told him stories. If you haven't noticed, I enjoy
telling stories. His sister Ellen came by and said,
“Johnny's going to be a star one day.” I thought,
“Fine, just let me be a star first.” It was Johnny's
bedtime and he hugged me and kissed me
goodnight.
How could I have known that forty years
later, I would be telling people that John Travolta
kissed me nighty-night? Now considering that I
never saw John Travolta again, you may accuse
me of name-dropping, and of course you would
be right. But that is the very point. I spent half of
my adult life acting, and yet, one of my biggest
claims to fame is having a seven-year-old John
Travolta sit on my lap. It's like a person who
played an extra in The Ten Commandments
making reference to the last time he worked with
Charlton Heston.
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Martin Shakar, one of my closest friends
from Detroit, was in Saturday Night Fever. He
played John Travolta's brother. Shortly after the
movie opened, Marty was in a local deli in
Brooklyn. A police officer, who was in the store,
kept looking at him. When Marty left the store,
the cop grabbed him and threw him against the
wall. "No, no, no," Marty yelled. "You saw me in
Saturday Night Fever." The cop stopped and
looked at him. "Oh yeah," he said. "I thought I
recognized you from a wanted poster in the
station house. Can I have your autograph?"
Joan and I were both hired at a summer
stock theatre in Michigan, The Petoskey
Playhouse. Joan was cast as the company's
leading lady. I was hired as a character actor but
ended up playing most of the leading men. I even
played Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls. I
directed The Miracle Worker and Joan played
Annie Sullivan. When we returned to New York
in the fall, I started looking for another job in a
photo lab. I answered an ad in the Sunday Times
by mail, and on Monday I opened up the Yellow
Pages to "Photo Labs." A place called
Modernage asked me to come down and try out. I
did. I was hired. A few days later, I got a call
from the place where I had mailed my resume. I
went in and was offered a lot more money. This
was a very small lab run by the German master,
Axel Grosser.
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When I told Modernage that I was
quitting to work for Axel Grosser, Modernage
offered even more money. This went on, back and
forth, until I had more than doubled my original
salary. As it turned out, Axel Grosser was the
original manager of Modernage. He was fired
after a big fight with the owner. Axel Grosser
won the bidding war, but the owner of
Modernage told me, "You will not last a week
with Grosser. He is a mad man. And I will tell
you, here and now, that you will never work for
Modernage again!" He was right about Grosser.
He was the greatest photographic printer in
history. He was also insane. I quit after two
weeks. I was, however, re-hired at Modernage, at
my original salary. I would work on and off,
between shows, at Modernage for many years.
In Detroit, I had been treated like a
celebrity. I had, indeed, received the Golden Key
to the city from the mayor. Yet, here in New
York, no one could care less. Agents would not
talk to me and I had difficulty getting auditions.
One place in New York where I could get
an audition was the Equity Library Theatre
(ELT), a theatre run by the union as a showcase
for actors. At ELT, I was cast in every show I
auditioned for. Surely, after seeing me in a play,
some agent or casting director would give me a
108
call. But for some reason I still do not
understand, no one ever recognized me "in
person" as the person they had seen on the stage.
One evening after a performance of a
showcase, the cast and friends met for drinks
after the show, as we often did, and two lovely
young ladies sat next to me at our large table. We
were not introduced. They were talking about the
play, and one of them said to the other, "I think
that I am in love with Wayne Martens." As they
were discussing my performance, I tried several
times to join the conversation. Each time I tried,
they would turn and look at me and then
continue their conversation as if I wasn't there.
After a few more attempts to make their
acquaintance, one of them turned to me and said,
"Look, we are trying to have a private
conversation here. Would you just butt out?" I
said, "But I heard you say that you were in love
with Wayne Martens, and I am Wayne Martens."
She looked at me for the longest time and then
said, "You're full of shit."
At ELT, I was in the U.S. premier of a
play by Arnold Wesker called Roots. I was in my
late twenties at the time but was playing an
eighty-year-old Scotsman. The morning after
opening, I got a call from the office of Fifi
Oscard, a major theatrical agent. She had seen
the opening of Roots and wanted to know if I had
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an agent. I didn't. I'd never been able to get an
agent to talk to me, let alone represent me. She
said that my performance was extraordinary, and
asked if I would come by and talk with her. I said
that I was on my way. I flew to her office. My feet
never touched the ground. At last, I was going to
get a chance. That's all I wanted, just a chance.
When I arrived, I told the receptionist
that Ms. Oscard had asked to see me. She
escorted me to Ms. Oscard's office. I did not go
in. She met me at the door. She stood in the
doorway and said, "Yes?" I said, "I'm Wayne
Martens." She looked at me in a strange way, and
said, "No, you're not." I said, "Yes, I am. You
just called and asked to see me." She said, "No,
there must be a mistake. I was trying to reach the
actor who played Stan Mann." I said, "That's
me. I played Stan Mann." She said, "No, you
didn't." She then went into her office and
returned with the program showing that Wayne
Martens played Stan Mann. I showed her my
Actors' Equity Card and my driver's license. She
looked at me and said, "Young man, if you
played that part, you would have to be one of the
most gifted actors of all time." With that, she
slammed the door in my face.
This strange phenomenon of not being
recognized plagued me throughout my acting
career. I've tried to rationalize that it has
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something to do with being a good actor, but
other good actors are usually recognized. Perhaps
I'm just bland when I'm off stage.
One actor, who was never bland on or off
stage, was George C. Scott. George worked a lot
in Detroit. He had gone to the same high school as
my brother Les and I, Redford High. Les always
used George as a reason why I should not go into
the theatre. Everyone in Detroit recognized that
George was an exceptional actor, but after seven
years in New York, he had not been cast in
anything and did not have a pot to piss in. We
never worked together and were acquaintances,
not close friends. I was in the audience for
opening night at the Willoway Playhouse when he
took over the part of Willy Loman in Death of a
Salesman on a few days notice. After the
performance, I went back stage to say hello.
There was a man there who said that he was a
talent scout for MGM. He was one of the last of a
breed; I do not believe that talent scouts exist
today. The man offered George a five-year
contract for $250 per week. George looked at the
man and said, "I don't need to read it. Do you
have a pen?" and signed the contract. During the
contract period, he never did a film, but years
later, as the story goes, he was offered $500,000 to
play Pontius Pilate in the MGM re-make of The
Greatest Story Ever Told. Scott said no, but
offered to play Jesus Christ for free.
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After that night in the dressing room at
the Willoway Playhouse, I never saw George
Scott again until one evening at the Theatre Bar
on 45th Street in New York. It must have been
about six years later, around 1962. I was sitting at
the bar by myself when George came in. I was
surprised that he even recognized me. He sat
down next to me and asked how I was doing. As
we talked, I could not resist asking him a
question. I had worked with a number of actors
who became famous, but never saw any of them
after they became famous. "George," I asked,
"How does it feel now that you've made it?" He
looked at me and said, "The only thing that I
have ever made that was worthwhile was Ava
Gardner." He then explained how he idolized
Ava Gardner on the screen. During their brief
affair, he said that he would lie in bed at night
and look at her. "Jesus Christ, that’s Ava
Gardner in bed with me. I just fucked Ava
Gardner."
It was at this same bar that I overheard a
conversation that I would never forget. As with
most of the people who come to New York as
actors, I began to get that hopeless feeling. I
realized that an actor has no control over his life.
I was sitting at the bar next to three other actors.
One says, "God it's been a bad year. I did a few
small parts in a film. I did the lead in a Broadway
112
show, but it closed in two weeks. Really a bad
year."
The actor next to him says, "That sounds
like a really good year. I did a few showcases and
had an audition for a soap. At least I got a few
callbacks."
The third one looked at them both and
said, "Both of you guys had very good years. I
didn't have a part last year. I never even had an
audition. In fact I've never had a part. I wish I
could get out of this business."
All right, I didn't hear that conversation.
It's actually an old theatre joke. But it's not
funny, it’s very sad. The Bible makes reference to
“not hiding your light under a bushel basket,”
but it offers no advice as to how to get an agent.
113
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Chapter 6
I'm trying to remember when the big
New York City newspaper strike took place. It
was late 1962 or early 1963. Anyway, there was a
big newspaper strike. All of the papers shut down
except the Christian Science Monitor. During the
strike, I had this idea. Do a TV show based on the
news. Not a news broadcast but a show, comedy,
music, entertainment all based on current events.
I mentioned this idea to a friend and neighbor,
Jonathan Knopf, and he liked the idea. It would
need actors with a lot of improvising experience.
He knew someone who could help. He set up a
meeting over dinner at Frankie and Johnny's, a
well-known steak house in NYC. Jonathan and I
met Sandy Baron for dinner and we discussed my
idea. Sandy had worked with the Second City in
Chicago and was well known in the business.
Lauren Bacall and Jason Robards, Jr. were in the
restaurant along with some other people. One of
them recognized Sandy and we were all invited to
join them. I was all excited. I could say I had
dinner with Lauren Bacall and Jason Robards,Jr.
One of the people at the table kept asking
Lauren Bacall questions about Humphrey
Bogart. She was polite, but obviously did not
want to talk about her marriage to Bogart. The
guy would not let up. Robards was on the verge
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of punching the guy out. This was not an
atmosphere in which to promote my idea for the
TV show. We finished dinner and all went our
separate ways. I made several calls to Sandy
Baron, but he never returned my calls. A few
weeks later I read in the paper about a new TV
show based on the news. Not a news broadcast, a
show, comedy, music, entertainment based on the
news. It was called That Was the Week That Was.
One of the performers was named Sandy Baron.
What a strange coincidence.
Jonathan and I became involved in a new
project. We became co-producers of the
International Theatre Festival (ITF) in Windsor,
Ontario. Jonathan, as it turned out, was the son
of Edwin Knopf, the executive producer of MGM
and nephew of publisher Alfred Knopf. I thought,
"Hey, this could be big time."
We formed a limited partnership.
Jonathan and I both sold shares in our new
project. Jonathan's uncle, Alfred Knopf, invested,
and so did their family friend, Richard Rodgers.
The ITF was held at the Cleary
Auditorium on the Detroit River. This was not
the small, intimate kind of theatre I had grown to
love. This was 1,400 seats, a large proscenium
stage, full union house and full Equity contract.
The union requires each acting company to elect
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a cast member to become "deputy," the union
representative. The first time we missed the
payroll, our deputy, Philip Baker Hall, would not
allow the show to go on. As tickets were sold at
the front box office, an apprentice would run the
money backstage to give to the actors. We just
made it as the last $10 of ticket sales was handed
over to the last actor.
If you are familiar with the phrase "time
wounds all heels," you may enjoy this story about
the ITF production of A Connecticut Yankee by
Richard Rodgers. As I've mentioned, Richard
Rodgers was an investor in the ITF. He had
requested that we do A Connecticut Yankee. The
script may be a little weak, but this has some of
the most beautiful music ever written. I was
overjoyed to do it, especially considering that I
would cast myself in the lead. In the part of
Morgan LeFay, we cast Marcia Levant, the
daughter of Oscar Levant, the famous pianist and
confidant of George Gershwin. Marcia agreed to
do the part over the phone, and we sent her a
plane ticket to fly in from New York. She had not
signed a contract and when she arrived in
Windsor, she refused to sign a contract. She
couldn't decide whether to do the part or not.
The ITF was doing eight plays in eight weeks.
Under the best of circumstances, one week is not
sufficient rehearsal for a musical. Equity rules
state that no rehearsals can be held until all
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actors are signed to contracts. Normally this rule
is not enforced, but our deputy insisted that each
and every rule be enforced. Phillip was a good
actor and a good person, and from the union’s
point of view, he was just doing his job. Philip
Baker Hall may not be a name that you know,
but you have seen him in countless movies. His
starring role in the film Hard Eight is a truly
great performance. Anyway, we were not allowed
to rehearse until two days before opening, when
Marcia signed her contract. Two days of
rehearsal for a full-scale musical production. On
opening night, Marcia went blank in the middle
of her big musical number. After making her
exit, she ran to the back of the theatre and began
kicking the brick wall. She broke her foot. Now
this is the incredible part. She could have
demanded to be taken to a hospital. We had no
standbys and we would have had to stop the show
and give refunds. She insisted on continuing the
performance even though she must have been in
great pain. For the rest of the run, she performed
in a cast and used crutches.
The biggest problem we faced that
summer was caused by an entertainer named
Sammy Davis, Jr. Windsor, Ontario was the
home of a very large nightclub called the
Elmwood Casino. I had worked out a package
deal with the Elmwood that offered customers a
play at the theatre and then dinner and a floor
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show at the Elmwood, all for a very reasonable
price. This was a good deal for the patrons, a
good deal for the theatre and a good deal for the
Elmwood. That is, up until Sammy Davis, Jr.
played there.
The tickets were sold at the theatre, not at
the Elmwood. For every ticket sold, the theatre
would owe the Elmwood “x” amount of dollars.
When word got out that Sammy Davis was
playing the Elmwood, tickets started to sell like
those famous hotcakes.
Sammy worked on a percentage of the
gate. He had his staff count the money as
customers came in to ensure he got his portion of
the gross. They used the Abbot and Costello
system for counting the money. One for the
Elmwood, one for Sammy; two for the Elmwood,
one, two for Sammy; three for the Elmwood, one,
two, three for Sammy. He would not accept the
package tickets. I had a valid contract with the
Elmwood, but Sammy would not accept the
tickets. Ticket holders were outraged. They had
seen the play but were not allowed into the
Elmwood. They wanted their money back. For
every one person in line to buy a ticket for a play
there were ten people demanding refunds. They
were yelling and screaming. It was awful.
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The Festival finished the season but never
reopened. All the investment was lost and we left
Windsor under a cloud.
Did I mention that Joan was now nine
months pregnant?
We moved in with my brother Les and his
wife and daughter in Detroit. Once again, I was
dependent on my brother. The obstetrician’s
office was in Windsor, and we didn’t want to
return to New York until after the baby was
born. Shortly after taking a job at yet another
photo lab, I got a call from an actor friend at
Wayne University. James McKinney was
working as the tech director for the Association
of Producing Artists. The APA was playing in
residence at the University of Michigan. Jim had
been offered a better job, and he asked me if I
would take over his job. Ann Arbor is near
Detroit, so I could commute. Bye-bye photo lab.
October 25th, 1963. Michele Elizabeth
Martens was born.
This same day the wife of Ed Flanders,
one of the actors with APA, also gave birth to a
daughter. We went out together that night and
got blotto. Ed kept saying, "I wouldn't care if she
were deformed as long as her brain worked. But
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she's perfect. Every toe. Every finger. Perfect."
We vowed that we would be friends for life.
The next week, my staff and I had been
working around the clock for three days. I told
Ellis Rabb, the head of the APA, that we had to
take some time off. He said he wanted the set that
we were working on in place by 8am the next
morning. I told him to go fuck himself. He fired
me.
Ed Flanders and I never saw each other
again.
As it turned out, Michele had a problem.
After her birth in the hospital, she would not eat.
She was tube fed for a week before she was
released from the hospital. The doctor's last
words were, "Don't worry. She will always be
petite, but mentally she'll be fine."
Joan, Michele and I returned to New
York. Once again I said to hell with this
producing shit. I'm an actor. I'm going to be a
star. We got back to New York and, as you might
guess, I got a job at a photo lab.
I had often tried to get an audition with
Joseph Papp for Shakespeare in the Park. All of
my pictures and resumes had been ignored, and I
could not find an agent to submit me. I had to do
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something drastic to get his attention, so I sent
him a letter threatening to sue him for
discrimination if I did not get an audition. After
the initial threat, the entire letter was of a
comical nature. I told him that the heart of his
discrimination against me was that he had
accomplished everything in life that I had hoped
to do. I thought it was funny and flattering.
I got a call from Gladys Vaughan, one of
Papp's directors. She wanted me to audition for
Macbeth. James Earl Jones was playing Macbeth,
so I knew not to study that role. I decided on the
small role of the gatekeeper. After giving my
short monologue, she asked me to read from
several other parts of the play. It was going well.
Very well. She would often offer some direction
and then ask me to do the scene again. She then
looked at me and said, "Well Mr. Martens, I
must tell you that I am very surprised. You are a
very fine actor, and under different
circumstances I would love to work with you, but
you must understand that you will never work
for the Papp organization."
But.. but... but the letter was in jest. I
never intended to sue him. It was meant to be
funny. Apparently Mr. Papp did not find it
amusing. By giving me an audition, he negated
the threat of a lawsuit.
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Joan and I began getting some acting
work, but it was always out of New York. We
took turns caring for Michele. Then we were both
hired at the Triangle Repertory Theatre in
Durham, N.C. I was hired as a business manager
and she as an actress. This was one of those large
tent theatres. I may have been hired as a business
manager, but there was no way they were going
to keep me off that stage. Soon I was acting and
directing and nobody was tending to the business.
The theatre did mostly musicals, but the
occasional play was always a good one. This was
North Carolina. All of Thomas Wolfe's relatives
came to see Look Homeward Angel.
When it was announced that we were
going to do Waiting For Godot, I began to fight
tooth and nail to get the role of Gogo. I had
played the role of Didi in Detroit, but Estragon
(Gogo) was the part I was born to play. One
reviewer said, “Martens' performance was pure
magic. It seemed his feet never touched the
ground.”
One night a big thunderstorm started in
the middle of a performance. It was impossible to
hear a word said on the stage. What should the
actors do? This wasn't taught at Wayne
University.
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Not wanting the audience to miss any of
the play, I began to mouth words without saying
anything. The actor playing Vladimir, my old
friend from Detroit, Jerry Greenwood,
immediately picked up on it. We ran and jumped
and gyrated and mouthed words until the rain
stopped. During all this, the audience probably
assumed they were missing a lot of dialog because
they couldn’t hear a word. When the rain
suddenly subsided, the audience realized that, on
stage, we were just mouthing words, passing time
until the rain stopped. They began to laugh and
then began to applaud. We picked up where we
left off and continued the play.
It was in North Carolina that I first heard
the word "autism." An actor in the company,
Alex Burk, suggested to Joan and I that Michele
suffered from autism. We had never heard the
term before. It was coined by Bruno Bettelheim.
As it was explained to us, it meant that a child
was so withdrawn that he or she would not speak.
Not could not, but would not. Michele was now 18
months old. She didn't walk. She didn't talk. It
was clear to everyone but Joan and me that
something was wrong. We took her to see the
doctor often, but he never implied that anything
was wrong. We thought that she was slow but
would be fine.
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Soon, the season in Durham was over.
Joan, Michele and I headed back to New York.
Always trying to save money, we accepted an
offer of a ride back to New York from a young
couple that worked at the theatre. Their car was
a wreck. This is the stuff that adventure is made
of. It was not a question of if the car would break
down, just a question of when.
We made it to some city in West Virginia.
The fuel pump was working sporadically.
Sometimes the car would go; sometimes it
wouldn’t. We limped into a gas station. "Yep, it's
the fuel pump." "Do you have one that will fit?"
"Yep." "How much?" "150 bucks." The young
couple that owned the car had no money. I said
that I would pay for it. We had to get to New
York.
We all killed an hour in the local coffee
shop and then returned to get the car. "Is it
fixed?" I asked. "Nope." "Why not?" "Part
don't fit." "Did you put the old one back?"
"Nope." "Why not?" "That'll cost you an extra
100 bucks." "Can I use your phone?" I asked.
"You wanna call the police?" he asked. "Yep." I
said. "I'll do it for ya." He dialed the phone.
"Hey Billie, I got another Yankee who don't
wanna pay his bill." "Okay, okay, you win. Can
you get the right pump in the morning?" "Yep."
"The sign says you're open 24 hours. Can this
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young couple spend the night in their car?"
"Yep." "Are we near a train station?" "Yep,
train to New York at 11:30 pm. Wanna taxi?"
"Yep," I said.
I gave the money for the fuel pump to the
young couple and Joan, Michele and I took a taxi
to the train station. It was now 11pm. At least it
was good timing.
We were dead tired, so I splurged and got
a Pullman berth. We boarded the train and the
porter took us to our room. "Do you want
sheets?" he asked. "Of course we want sheets," I
answered. He said, "Sheets are $5 extra." "It
costs extra for sheets?" I asked. "Of course it's
extra for sheets. Not everybody wants sheets. Do
you want two sheets?" " We want four sheets," I
said. "You want four sheets?" he asked. " Of
course," I said. "We want a top sheet and a
bottom sheet on each bed." He looked at me for
the longest time without saying a word. Then it
dawned on me. He had a speech impediment. He
was asking if, in addition to our Pullman, we
wanted "seats" in the coach. I apologized and we
all went to bed. What a night.
Before going to Durham, we gave up our
Manhattan apartment. I had found a larger
apartment for the same rent in Cobble Hill,
Brooklyn. Shortly after returning to New York,
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Joan got a job out of town. I don't remember
where or which theatre, but I remember Michele
and I were alone together and I was trying to
teach her to feed herself with a spoon. The next
few weeks of my life seemed similar to the play
The Miracle Worker, which Joan and I had done
together in Michigan. I spent all of my time
teaching Michele how to feed herself and to drink
out of a glass. I bought a "walker" on wheels. She
learned that if she fell, the walker would catch
her. With the fear of falling removed, she was
running around the apartment in no time. Soon
after, she was feeding herself with a spoon and
drinking from a glass. There were many spoons
thrown across the room, many plates of food
dropped on the floor, and many glasses of milk
spilled on her clothing, but she learned. Michele
and I were soon walking down the street holding
hands. I was sure that I would soon hear "Dada."
Michele had two pull-string toys that she
adored. One was a musical toy that was strung
across her crib. When the string was pulled, it
played an up-tempo version of Brahm's Lullaby.
Michele never slept much at night, and I would
hear "la di da, la di da" into the wee hours of the
night. Her other toy was a Woody Woodpecker
puppet. When its string was pulled, it would
select at random one of several responses, all in
Woody's unique woodpecker dialect.
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When Joan returned, she and I went to
visit some distant relatives of hers in New Jersey.
The relatives had a son in his early twenties. He
and I and Michele were sitting in the living room
and the young man was talking to Michele. "She
doesn't speak," I told the young man. "Oh, is she
retarded?" he asked. "No, she's not retarded,
she's just a slow learner," I responded with a
little edge to my voice. He looked at me as if I had
hurt his feelings. "There's nothing wrong with
being retarded," He said. "I'm retarded and I
don't think it's anything to be ashamed of." He
then explained to me that he had a very low IQ
and had gone to a special school for retarded
children. It was during this conversation that I
realized I had to accept some very important
realities and learn to cope with them. I will
always be grateful for what I learned from this
mentally retarded young man.
Joan was cast in a show in Puerto Rico
and I was cast in another Equity Library Theatre
show, Earnest in Love, a musical based on Oscar
Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. It was
Joan's turn to take care of Michele and besides, it
was a brutal winter, and Michele would enjoy the
warm weather. She went with Joan and I was left
alone.
It was going to be difficult to get to
rehearsals and performances of Earnest. There
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was a subway strike. At this time, John Lindsey
was the mayor of New York. I think of John
Lindsay as the greatest mayor in New York's
history, but you would be hard pressed to find
one other New Yorker who would agree with me.
Lindsay was one of the last of a breed, a liberal
Republican.
As a Democrat and a member of Actors'
Equity, I think of myself as a strong union
supporter, but the Democrats had kissed the
municipal unions’ asses for so long that they felt
as if they owned New York. After years of
Democratic control of City Hall, the unions
decided to sock it to a Republican mayor. The
policemen's union was demanding retirement
with full pay, after fifteen years of service.
Retirement with full pay at thirty-five? Firemen
wanted anything the policemen got. Garbage men
felt that they worked harder than policemen and
firemen, and the subway workers wanted more
money regardless of what anyone else got paid.
They all went on strike.
The ELT theatre was on 103rd Street and
Riverside Drive. I walked every night from
Cobble Hill, Brooklyn to 103rd and Riverside
during one of the worst cold spells in New York
history. It was hard to get any sympathy, because
everyone in New York was doing the same.
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I got a call from a director with whom I
had done an ELT show. He was directing a new
Off-Broadway show called Dames at Sea. He said
I was perfect for the male lead. "Do not sign any
contracts for this fall," he said. "I want you for
this part." When the show opened and I had
never heard another word, I called the director.
He told me, "We rewrote the script, and you were
no longer 'right' for the part." If I had gotten it,
my leading lady would have been Bernadette
Peters. I was so close I could taste it.
Actors are often thought of as egotists,
and I believe there is some truth in that
assessment. Why else would an intelligent,
rational human being try to make a living in a
profession in which he knew there was almost no
opportunity of making a living? Most actors get
their first taste of celebrity in college or in
community theatre. After they take their first
curtain call and hear the applause, they are
hooked. Many don't dream of stardom; they just
want to make a living in their chosen profession.
Just a few months in New York or Hollywood
and they will find out if they have the right stuff.
If not, then back to the drawing board. At this
point the rejection begins. The agents won't talk
to you. "Call me when you get a role in
something. I'll try to come by and see it." You go
to open calls and get typed out, but good acting is
all about being able to play many different types.
130
How can you get a part if you can’t get an
audition? Soon you begin to think, "Why won't
they give me a chance? I'm good. Really good." It
doesn't take many more rejections before "really
good" becomes "damn good." More rejection
leads to "great." Soon you are the greatest actor
that has ever walked on a stage. The only
problem is that you do not have a stage to walk
on. It takes a strong sense of self-worth to
survive.
That next summer, I was hired at a
theatre in Eaglesmere, Pennsylvania. This was
the first and only time that I was hired as an
actor and a photographer. I photographed every
show. When I was on stage, I had an assistant do
it. I set up a darkroom and made prints for the
producers. Michele stayed with Joan. It was a fun
summer and I made some good friends. This was
the first time I did The Fantasticks. I played the
Indian, "The Man Who Dies." There was a large
resort hotel nearby, the only place to hang out
after the show. One evening I made reference to a
certain laugh that I got. The man playing the Old
Actor looked at me and said, "What do you mean
your laugh? That's my laugh." At that moment in
the play we both did these little bits that we
thought were getting the laugh. We were both
convinced that it was "our" laugh. To settle the
argument, I said that, in the next performance, I
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would not do my bit. Sure enough, without my bit
there was no laugh. That proved my point. So the
next performance I did my bit but he did not do
his. No laugh. So was it the combination of our
bits that got the laugh? We will never know. We
never got the laugh again. We lost it. It was dead.
It was at this same hotel bar that I had an
interesting experience. I was sitting alone. I was
depressed. I missed my wife and daughter. A
very, very old woman sat down next to me. She
said, "You look as if you need a friend." She took
my hand and looked at it. "Take heart," she said.
"I see before you a magnificent career in the
theatre and a life of joy and happiness." She then
got up and left the room. The bartender ran over
to me. "What did she say to you?" he asked. "Do
you know who that is? She’s Matisse's mistress.
She is a world-renowned seer. A fortune teller."
At the time, it seemed like a possible
scenario. In the spring of that year, I had
auditioned for a touring company of The
Fantasticks. In its seventh year Off-Broadway, it
was the longest running play in American
history, but this was the first time it was going on
the road. Considering that I auditioned at an
open call, my chances of getting a part were very
remote. Considering that the touring production
was called "The New York Cast on Tour," and,
at the time, I had never been part of the New
132
York cast, I probably had a better chance of
winning the lottery. Incredibly, I was cast as the
girl's father. This was the break that I had been
waiting for. The Fantasticks would be my path to
stardom.
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134
Chapter 7
The Fantasticks opened at the tiny 150
seat Sullivan Street Playhouse in Greenwich
Village in the spring of 1960, several months
before I arrived in New York. It didn’t get very
good reviews. I had no interest in seeing it; I
thought it was a musical revue. I'd been told that
the actors would beg people on the street to come
and see it free of charge. A little girl who lived
next door to the theatre would come and see it
almost every night. As the story goes, ten years
later, the little girl played "The Girl," the only
female part in the play. As I write this, nearly 40
years later, The Fantasticks is listed on many a
résumé. Not only is it the longest running show in
American theatre history, it has probably been
performed in little theatres and college theatres
around the world, in almost every language
known to man, more than any other play in
history. When I first auditioned for it in 1966, it
was already the longest running show in New
York history. One month, in the theatre listings
of The New Yorker magazine, some creative
employee who edited the listings decided to drop
the usual blurb that said something like "boy
meets girl." Instead, he put in, "Stately, plump
Buck Mulligan …,” the opening lines of James
Joyce's Ulysses. For the next several months, the
listing would continue with the subsequent text
135
from Ulysses. The implication was that The
Fantasticks would run so long that The New
Yorker could publish the entire book, a few lines
at a time, before The Fantasticks would close. At
the time, that concept seemed absurd, and The
New Yorker eventually dropped the Ulysses text
and returned to the more traditional "boy meets
girl" blurb. I cannot help but wonder how far
into the book they would have gotten during the
show's forty-year run.
A large part of the audience of The
Fantasticks consisted of people who had seen the
show over and over again. There are people all
over the country, indeed, all over the world, who
came to New York once a year to see The
Fantasticks. In spite of this incredible
phenomenon, the New York critics and the press
in general still refer to The Fantasticks as a piece
of romantic fluff, not worthy of consideration as a
serious work of art. This is such a shame. In its
simplicity, it conveys a message that moves its
audience to a renewed faith in love and life, a
message that needs to be repeated whenever the
weight of the world is more than one's shoulders
can bear.
The entire cast of The Fantasticks on tour
was from the New York production except for
two, Walter McGinn, who played The Boy, and
myself. Walter had been the star of The Subject
136
Was Roses on Broadway. I have no doubt that he
would have been a major star if he had not been
killed in an auto accident a few years after
leaving our production. We gave a few
performances in New York in order to give
credence to "The New York Cast on Tour"
promotion.
The tour started soon after the summer
season in Eaglesmere ended. I received a lot of
praise during The Fantasticks run. With due
respect for all of the actors who had played
Bellomy before me, a lot of people connected with
the show were saying, "This guy's great. Where
did you find him?" When I look back on that
time, it was one of the happiest of my life. It was
during this tour that I discovered that I was not a
toad; women could actually find me attractive. I
tried to make the most of it. I do hope that my
first wife, Joan, can somehow forgive me.
George Riddle, an actor I worked with in
Eaglesmere, was also in The Fantasticks. He and I
looked so much alike and yet we were opposites.
We were both tall and thin and wore mustaches,
but he was extroverted and I was introverted. He
was conservative, while I was liberal. The other
cast members referred to us as "Frick and
Frack." He was the only person I ever knew who
ironed his underwear. We became close friends.
His idea of a joke was to polish just one of my
137
shoes. When asked why he became an actor,
George always said, "I'm too lazy to work and
too nervous to steal."
While at the theatre in Eaglesmere, a
strange phenomenon took place. Every female
apprentice in the company became obsessed with
sleeping with George Riddle. They would wait
outside his room and wait their turn. George
could not figure it out. One of the girls told
George that the producer of the theatre had told
all female apprentices that there was an actor in
the company who had a reputation for "having
his way with young girls." The producer ordered
them to keep their distance. The apprentice girls
resented this order. They were all old enough to
make their own decisions. They held a meeting of
their own and decided, out of spite, that they
would all sleep with George Riddle. George had
no idea where the producer had gotten that
notion, but God bless him.
One evening, as George and I were
coming out of the deli next to the cast house, a
bunch of local boys in their mid-twenties were
hanging about. One was sitting on the hood of a
car. George was always a snappy dresser and
carried himself with an air of self-confidence. As
we passed by, the boy sitting on the hood yelled
out, "I hear that all actors are faggots." George
turned and walked up to him and said, "Tell me,
138
do you think faggots hit hard?" Then POW. The
guy slid off the hood of the car. I was ready to
run in fear for my life. George straightened his
tie and calmly walked away.
George had a big influence on my life.
While on tour, I even became somewhat of a
clotheshorse myself. As I said, on this tour, I was,
for the first time in my life, gaining a little
confidence in myself as a ladies' man.
On our first night in Cleveland, I spotted
a rather attractive usher as I entered the theatre
and went over to talk to her. I asked if she would
like to go out after the show. She said, "No, and
don't ask me again.”
A few nights later, she showed up after
the show at my dressing room. "Would you still
like to go out with me?" she asked. I said,
"Sure." She said, "Good, because I made
reservations at a real nice place." We had supper
and danced to live music. "Let's go someplace
else," she said. I protested because I was having
such a good time. "You'll have a much better
time at the place I want to take you.” She took me
to her apartment. When we got there, she began
to cry. I tried to comfort her. "Why are you
crying?" I asked. "Haven't you done this
before?" "I'm not crying because I've never done
this before, I'm crying because I do this so often.”
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The next morning she left me in the
apartment while she went to work. While looking
for my shoes, I found a framed photograph under
the bed. It was a photo of a friend of mine. He
had been in the previous show at the Schubert in
Cleveland. Of course, it was signed, "With all my
love."
In order to understand the next episode,
we need to go back a few years in time. Back to
when I lived in Detroit and was visiting New
York, back to the incident with Chuck and Mary
Lou. The night after Chuck brought my suitcases
to Downey's.
I was feeling very lonely and needed
female companionship in the worst way. It was
late at night and I was walking along West 49th
Street. I looked in a bar window and saw this
lovely lady looking right back at me. I was so
young and naive that I had never even heard of
"B girls.”
I went in and sat at the bar. The young
lady came up to me and asked if I would buy her
a drink. I did. We seemed to be getting along so
well that when she asked me to go to the back of
the bar to a booth, it seemed like a good idea to
me. She ordered champagne.
140
We were groping each other and I
thought I had it made. I asked her to come to my
hotel room. She took pity on me and explained
that she worked at the bar. It was her job to get
guys like me all excited and to buy her
"champagne." It was actually ginger ale. She
really did like me, but she couldn’t leave the bar.
I asked for the check.
"Three hundred dollars?" I asked. A
bouncer appeared and gave me the impression
that he would kick the living shit out of me if I
didn’t pay.
I paid the bill with traveler’s checks and
then went out to look for a policeman. I found
one on the corner and told him what happened.
He told me to go back to my hotel and sleep it off.
I told him that if he didn't help me, he would find
himself in the midst of a lawsuit.
We both returned to the bar. After a bit
of discussion, the bartender offered a settlement
of twenty bucks. He gave me back two hundred
and eighty dollars worth of traveler's checks.
So that brings us back to Cleveland.
George and I were entering a bar called The
Theatrical. They wouldn't let us in because
George was wearing sneakers. We asked to see
the manager. When the manager met us, he
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realized that we were the most theatrical people
he had had in The Theatrical in a long time. We
were asked in as his guests. We met two young
ladies at the bar who were from New York. We
were talking and exchanging stories, and one of
the ladies began to tell this story about some guy
she met while she was working as a “B girl” for
"Matty the Horse," a notorious Mafioso, who
owned a lot of bars on 49th Street in New York.
When she finished the story, I looked at her and
said, "You won't believe this, but that cute but
stupid guy was me."
We went out for breakfast together.
The Fantasticks was playing in a little
town in Pennsylvania. One weeknight after the
show, we went to a bar and saw two young ladies
with programs from the show. We moved right
in. After a few drinks, I went to the back of the
bar to use the john. On the way, I saw a young
woman sitting with a group at a large table. She
was stunning. I just stood and stared. Then I
continued to the john. On my return, she gave me
a short look. I continued back to my seat. It was
getting late and the young ladies that we were
sitting with had to go to work in the morning.
George said that he too wanted to call it a night. I
noticed that the young lady I had seen at the back
of the bar was now sitting across the aisle from
142
us. I told George that I was going to stay and
have one more drink. George left.
I approached the young lady and said,
"I'm sure that you are waiting for someone, but
perhaps we could have a little conversation in the
meantime." She said, "I've been sitting here
waiting for you to make a move. Let's get out of
here."
We went to her car and started at once to
get hot and heavy. As it turned out, she was
getting married the next weekend. This was a
small town and she knew that, as an actor, I was
just passing through. She wanted one last fling
before settling down to a married lady routine.
What a turnoff. All of my adult life, I had
been going into bars trying to pick up girls, and
at last, I did it, only to be overcome with moral
indignation. It must sound hypocritical, but the
fact that I was married didn't bother me, but the
fact that she wanted to have sex with a stranger,
before getting married, just didn’t sit right with
me. I didn’t want any part of it. I gave her a
short sermon on fidelity and asked her to take me
back to my hotel.
At least one moral dilemma had nothing
to do with sex. During a summer package tour,
we had a week off before playing Denver. Equity
143
rules specified that producers had to pay actors
full Pullman train rates for transportation,
regardless of how the actor traveled. Another
actor in the company and I decided to see if we
could find a "drive-away" from New York to
Denver. It would be fun to drive across the
country and we would make money while doing
it. I picked up a large station wagon on Long
Island that needed to be delivered to Denver. It
belonged to a family that was moving there. They
had two cars. They would drive their second car.
They must have had a lot of stuff for the movers
to take. They filled up the station wagon with a
lot of their belongings. I picked up the car and
then drove to the other actor's apartment on
Riverside Drive. The speaker on his buzzer
system didn’t work. I didn't want to leave the car
unattended, but I had to run up the stairs and tell
him that I was there. I ran up and ran right back
down. When I got back to the car, it was
surrounded by six black youths by the passenger
side door. I walked slowly by. Sure enough, they
were in the process of breaking in. I walked a few
steps away and began to ruminate. Most of the
stuff in the car was not mine. Do I risk my life to
save a stranger's stuff? Before I came to a
decision, one of the boys came over to me and
asked, "Is this your car?" I didn't know how to
answer, but ultimately I blurted out, "Yes, it's my
car." All of them began to circle me, and I was
beginning to tremble with fear. Then one of them
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said, "Man, you shouldn't leave a car full of shit
on the street like that." Then they all walked
away. My friend came out with his suitcase and
we were on our way to Denver.
The theatre in Denver was called the
Ilitch Gardens; it was located in an amusement
park of the same name. My dressing room
overlooked the part of the park with rides for
small children. I wished so much that Michele
could be with me.
One evening after the show, I was sitting
by myself at the bar in the hotel where the cast
was staying. Two lovely young ladies were sitting
at a table nearby and I started a conversation
with them. They asked me to join them at their
table. After about ten minutes of pleasant
conversation, I noticed that the drummer for The
Fantasticks had entered the bar. We traveled
with our own musicians. I didn’t like this man. I
may have been obsessed with sex, but this guy
thought he was Wilt Chamberlain. To hear him
tell it, he was the most potent male God ever
created. Every woman on Earth lusted for his
body. I was most disturbed when he came over to
join us, but I tried not to show it. One of the two
girls mentioned that Bobby Hackett, a famous
trumpeter of the time, was playing at a nearby
club. She suggested that it would be fun if we all
went together to hear him play. The other girl
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asked if she could speak with me privately. She
then explained that she and her friend were
lesbians and loved each other. She wanted to
make it clear that nothing was going to happen
between us after we left the club. I told her that it
would be fine with me if we just went as friends.
At the time, I couldn’t help but wonder if the
girls were actually lesbians, or if this was just a
clever ploy to make sure things didn’t get out of
control.
We enjoyed the concert and then we all
went to my hotel room for a nightcap. After
about fifteen minutes, the drummer and the other
girl left for his hotel room. The remaining girl,
the one who told me about being a lesbian, began
to cry. She put her arms around me and said, "I
love her. I love her so much. I can't bear this.
How could she leave me for a man?" I tried to
console her, but I couldn’t help but think, "Wow,
this drummer guy is really good. I thought he was
just a bullshit artist, but he must really be a pro
at getting women into the sack." Then there was
a banging on my door. It was the other girl. She
was crying. She threw her arms around me and
began to wail. "For the first time in my life, I met
a man who I thought I could love. I wanted to be
with him. I went to his room. We took off our
clothes and all he wanted to do was put on my
underwear." I spent the next hour hugging and
consoling two broken-hearted lesbians.
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The Fantasticks tour was broken up into
three parts. The first part, The New York Cast on
Tour, played small towns and colleges. Mostly
one night stands. What they call a bus and truck.
The set travels in the truck and the cast travels in
the bus. The second was a summer tour. The
third was the National Company, directed by the
author, Tom Jones. It played major cities, often
for several weeks at a time. By this time, many
actors had been cast in the play on Sullivan Street
and then moved on with their career. This was
the first time that Mr. Jones directed his play and
he wanted to cast the best of the best in his
production. He had seen me as Bellomy on tour
and told me that I was the best he had ever seen. I
was very flattered to be cast in his production.
On the bus and truck tour, our bus driver
Richie was a bantam rooster. A black Jimmy
Cagney. He was about 5'4" but was not afraid of
any man on earth. George Riddle and I hung out
with Richie. We were the three musketeers.
While in Lexington, Kentucky, we agreed to meet
in the large restaurant in the hotel where we were
staying. George and I arrived first and took a
table. While looking over the menu, George
noticed “Lamb Fries.” “What are Lamb Fries?”
George asked. The only reason I knew was
because, years ago in Detroit, I was going
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through a farmers’ market with a young lady
named Kathy Carothers.
Kathy and I went to high school together
in Detroit, but we weren’t really friends. We met
again at Wayne University and were often on the
verge of becoming lovers but never made it
beyond being friends. Anyway, Kathy saw a sign;
that said, “Lamb Fries.” “Oh, what are those?”
Kathy asked the butcher. “Well, lady,” the
butcher said, “Those are a… well those… they
are.. they’re… ah… balls. They are lamb nuts.”
“Oh, how do you cook them?” she asked.
“Let’s get Richie to order them,” George
said. We did. He did. He loved them. The next
morning we told him what lamb fries were. My
ability to run fast came in very handy that
morning.
On the major National Company tour, we
played for a month in Chicago. I went to a club
on Rush Street and saw a jazz singer named
Sheby Smart. I tried to talk to her after her set.
She said, “I'm going next door to catch the last
set of Buddy Rich. If you want to make a move on
me, you'll need to come with me and pick up the
tab.” I agreed. We went to the club next door and
then had drinks with Buddy Rich after his last
set. He made moves towards Sheby. When she
rejected his advances, he became obnoxious and
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insulting. Sheby said, “Can we get out of here and
just go to your place?” We did. Sheby was the
first and only woman I've ever been with who
gave me lessons in how to make love.
Do you remember the old joke about the
woman giving a lecture at a girls' school
concerning sexual abstinence? After a long
speech she ends by saying, “Remember, ladies, an
hour of pleasure is not worth a lifetime of regret.
Are there any questions?” And a girl stands up
and asks, “How do you make it last an hour?”
One of my favorite cities on the tour
turned out to be Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We
arrived on our day off, and the first evening I
went out to scout interesting places for after-show
activity.
I was walking down a street near The
Pabst Theatre where we were playing and saw a
little window about eight inches wide and twelve
inches high. It caught my attention because I was
curious as to why anyone would make a window
so small. I looked into it. There were people
inside eating and drinking. They looked as if they
were having a good time. I thought I would check
it out. One problem. I could not find a door. Not
far from the small widow was a large window.
Inside was a girl sitting at a desk. It looked like a
business office. But I wondered why a business
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office would be open at 10pm. This place at least
had a door, so I went in.
Young Lady: Can I help you?
Me: How can I get into the bar next door?
Young Lady: There is no bar next door.
Me: But there’s a little window. You can see
people inside. They seem to be having a good
time.
Young Lady: You must be mistaken. There is no
bar next door.
Me: Unless this is The Twilight Zone, there’s
something going on here.
Young Lady: Things are not always as they seem.
Sometimes you need to know the right words to
unlock the mysteries of life.
Me: Are you saying that to find the answer, I
must first find the question?
Young Lady: You were spying into that window
that isn’t there. If a spy is in the cold, what does
he need?
At that point, the goal of the game
became clear. I smiled and then leaned over her
desk and whispered, “I need a safe house.” With
those words, a bookcase swung open exposing a
dark corridor. The entrance was like the opening
of the TV show "Get Smart." Lights flashed on
and off and doorways in the darkness opened.
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When I walked into the bar, I was met
with a round of applause. Everyone in the bar
had been watching on a TV monitor. I was an
instant celebrity. Everyone wanted to meet me
and buy me drinks.
As it turns out, this was a new private
club called A Safe House, (members only). They
had an entrance in the rear on a different street.
The door was kept locked and only opened when
a member entered his password. The office in the
front and the TV camera were set up in a spy
mode for the amusement of the members. I was
the first and only victim of the joke who won
admission to the club. I had a wonderful time. I
invited one of the waitresses to come and see The
Fantasticks.
The next morning, I was walking around,
getting a feel for Milwaukee. I saw a young lady
coming near me. She was in a short skirt and my
eyes never really got above her waist. As we were
about to pass, she said, "Wayne?" It was an
acquaintance from Wayne University in Detroit.
We stopped and talked. I invited her to see The
Fantasticks.
That night was opening night in
Milwaukee. After the show, I learned that I had
two women waiting for me, the waitress from "A
Safe House" and my acquaintance from Wayne
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University. I didn't know what to do. I asked
George Riddle. He said, "Wait until one of them
leaves. That way, you'll know which one wants
you the most." I took his advice and waited. The
waitress left first. I went out with the
acquaintance from Wayne University. She took
me to another incredible bar. It was called The
Cave.
I was amazed that Milwaukee had places
that were so unique. This place was incredible.
You walked through caves to get to different
parts of the bar. There was a rock and roll room,
a jazz room and a classical room. In between,
there were little alcoves where a couple could be
alone.
My date kept asking me if I was hungry. I
said no because I was having such a good time.
Then it dawned on me that she might be hungry.
She took me to the tallest building in
Milwaukee. We went up the elevator. When we
arrived, it was nothing like I expected. It turned
out that she managed the most impressive
restaurant in Milwaukee. The restaurant was
closed for the evening. She had a full staff
awaiting our arrival. It had a view overlooking
Lake Michigan. She had a string quartet playing
for us. As God is my witness, I am not making
this up.
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After dinner, we went to her apartment
and drank cognac. I was a bit taken back when
she asked me if I was still seeing Norma Fire. As
it turned out, she was Norma’s pregnant
roommate in San Francisco.
Being in The Fantasticks was never
boring, and each town we played seemed to have
an element of adventure. They loved The
Fantasticks in Columbus, Ohio. We played there
three times. It was on the last day of our third
trip there that I learned it is not where you are
but who you are with that makes the difference.
After the last performance, I discovered a
cool jazz club. The musicians were incredible. I
met a young couple who were into the arts and
had a good sense of humor. We were having such
a good time that when the club closed, they
invited me to their home. They lived in a carriage
house on a large estate. As we drank wine and
listened to Charles Ives, I realized that I was late
for the plane that was taking The Fantasticks to
our next destination. My host offered to drive me
to the airport. We stopped at my hotel to pick up
my things and sped toward the airport. It was
6am and there was no traffic. We were stopped
by the police, and it didn't take long for them to
realize that the driver was drunk as a skunk.
They cuffed him and put him in the squad car.
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"Hey, what about me?" I shouted. I then
explained my dilemma. They called on the radio
for assistance.
I was taken to the airport in a convoy of
three police cars with their sirens blaring away.
The rest of the cast of The Fantasticks was
curbside as the police cars arrived. You can
imagine their surprise when I got out of the police
car.
During the college tour of The
Fantasticks, we played two nights at Notre Dame
in South Bend, Indiana. This was special to me,
having been my birthplace. I heard a million
times how we could look out our kitchen window
and see the golden dome of Notre Dame. I was
named after an All-American football player at
Notre Dame, Wayne Milner. For years, I had a
little toy football inscribed, "To little Wayne, I
know that someday you will be a great running
back for Notre Dame." It was signed Wayne
Milner. Considering that at eighteen I weighed
130 pounds, this never seemed a likely scenario.
I had spent some time in South Bend
during the third grade. When my family moved
from Wilmington, North Carolina to Detroit, it
was the middle of the school year. My parents left
my brother Les and I in South Bend with my
father's parents, and my parents continued on to
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Detroit. They needed a few months to get situated
in Detroit and set up household. My stay in South
Bend was awful. I can only remember two things
about it. One was trying to eat fried eggs that still
had runny whites. I tried to tell my grandmother
that I couldn’t eat them that way, but she would
just look at me and say, "Eat them!" I would eat
them and then run to the bathroom and upchuck.
The other memory was of old-fashioned inkwells
and being smeared with ink. At school in North
Carolina, we used pencils. At Measles (that was
the name of the school, Measles) we used oldfashioned pens, and each desk had an inkwell to
dip the pen into. Why anyone would name a
school Measles is beyond my comprehension.
They should have named the school
"Rorschach," because every day I came home
from school covered in inkblots.
Playing The Fantasticks at a Catholic
school reminded me of a story that had circulated
about a production of The Fantasticks done at
another Catholic university. I tend to believe that
this story is a joke and never really happened,
but it was told to me as a true story. As the story
goes, a priest was watching a rehearsal of a
student production of The Fantasticks. He
became most upset when they got to "The Rape"
song. The priest complained to the director that
such language was not acceptable for a church
university. The director explained that the term
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"rape" was meant in a classic sense, meaning
“abduction”, and had no sexual implications. The
priest suggested changing the word rape to
abduction. The director explained that the word
“abduction” would not fit into the musical
rhythm of the number. The song is done in the
style of an Arabian chant; with the word rape
being stretched over several bars of music while
the pitch fluctuates up and down. "Abduction"
just would not cut it. The story ends with the
director and priest agreeing to replace the word
"rape" with the word "snatch," apparently
oblivious to the fact that "snatch" is a slang word
for the vagina. The audience of college students
loved it.
It was in Louisville, Kentucky that I met
Toshiko. She was a jazz pianist playing a small
club. All the cast hung out there. For me,
musically, she added a new dimension. She gave
me her New York phone number. She said,
"Let's get together in New York." When I
returned to New York for a week off, I gave her a
call and invited her to see a play. After the play,
we went to a cast party. When I introduced her to
one of the cast members, he said, "You're not the
Toshiko, the jazz pianist?" She said she was. He
said, "I've got all your records." I never knew she
made a record. As it turned out, she was a jazz
star with a rather large following. She was a
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regular performer at Sweet Basil and Birdland in
New York.
This fan of Toshiko told us a fun story.
He was one of the stars of the show we had just
seen and he was also a taxi driver. He kept his
taxi parked in front of the theatre so that he
could finish his curtain call and then run out
front and get a fare from someone in the
audience. They were always somewhat astonished
to discover that their taxi driver was the star of
the show they had just seen. It made for a big tip.
After traveling about the country for two
years, my only regret was not spending more time
with Michele. She was now four years old and she
still did not talk. It was while Joan was on a
vacation with her folks in Florida that I got the
phone call that I feared the most. Joan's parents
had taken Michele to see a specialist. The doctor
said that the EEG read normal but he still
suspected
massive
brain
damage.
He
recommended that she be placed in an institution.
Joan called me to say that she had discussed the
matter with her parents, and she agreed with
them and Michele would be placed in an
institution in Florida. To me, this was like saying,
"Oh well, she's defective, might as well throw her
out. Better luck next time."
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NO, NO, NO, OH GOD, NO! PLEASE!
THIS IS MY CHILD! THIS IS MY LIFE! NO! I
LOVE HER. GOD LOVES HER! FOR GOD'S
SAKE, NO! I flew to Florida and got Michele. I
took her with me on the tour. George Riddle got
his girlfriend to travel with the show and act as
Michele's sitter. Joan and I did not split up over
this. Let there be no doubt that Joan also loved
Michele very much. We just disagreed on how to
best provide for her future.
Traveling around the country with
Michele was a lot of fun. She meant more to me
now than ever before, every smile, every touch. I
had always known that I was on this earth for a
purpose. I had thought it was to be a leader of
some kind, but now I realized that my purpose on
earth was to love and care for this child. Michele
was very curious, and whenever I was not holding
her hand she would take off to explore. We
traveled with three suitcases and a potty chair.
Toilet training Michele was very important to
me. In order to get from one place to another, I
would move two suitcases a few steps and then
run and get Michele. Then move the other
suitcase and the potty chair a few steps, then run
and get Michele. Crossing a street was next to
impossible. I would often ask a stranger for help.
When Michele became older, the question was
should I take her into the men’s room or the
ladies’ room? I got strange looks either way.
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Michele was with me when The
Fantasticks played a small town in New
Hampshire. The theatre was next to an
amusement park. It was springtime. Michele and
I had a wonderful time. She loved the children's
rides, especially the carousel. The woman who
owned the small diner next to the theatre fell in
love with Michele. She insisted on feeding her for
free. She would put money in the jukebox and
play music and dance with Michele. Michele
loved to dance. There was a large stretch of green
lawn in front of the cottage where we stayed.
Michele would run and run back and forth
through the grass. I had bought her a windmill
and she would wave it in the air and watch it
spin. One day, she was running with the windmill
and she fell and it poked her in the eye. I called
an ambulance and we took her to the emergency
ward at the local hospital. Michele cooperated
with the doctors as they tried to evaluate the
damage. They said that she would need to see a
specialist. We arrived by taxi at the specialist’s
office. This was one of only two times in her life
that she spoke. As the doctor tried to look at her
eye, she stood up and shouted, "NO!" I'm sure it
was painful for her, but no damage was done to
her eye.
The cast and the production staff were so
kind and considerate, but, of course, I had to
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leave the show. I did not want Michele to be in an
institution, but I did realize that she needed
special care and it could not be provided while
touring about the country.
When we returned to New York, I needed
to find a new, larger apartment. My real estate
broker wanted to show me an apartment in Park
Slope, Brooklyn. It had six rooms and was rentcontrolled for $87 per month. Even then, six
rooms in Park Slope would be going for about
$800 per month, so I was expecting a run-down,
dilapidated place. It was a beautiful building on a
prime tree-lined street. The broker had a purse
full of keys, but none of them seemed to fit the
lock. We couldn't get in. I said, "Look, if there
are six rooms in that building for $87 per month,
I want them. I don't care if the ceilings have
fallen down and the floors have holes in them."
There was no stove or fridge, but the ceilings and
floors were fine. The landlord said to me, "At this
rent, I'm not going to do a thing. If the toilet
clogs, you fix it." I said, "You've got a deal."
The landlord was a kind old Italian man.
I learned that he had cheated on rent control
from the start. He had lived and raised his family
in the building. When rent control was
established in the early 40s, the legal rent for the
apartment was set at $42 per month. When he
moved his family to Long Island, he charged the
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new tenant $87 per month. He then learned about
others who had cheated and had been caught.
Out of fear, he had never submitted a lease to the
rent control board and had never raised the rent
in all the years of rent control. All these years
later, he was still charging $87 per month.
As we were moving out of our old
apartment in Cobble Hill, I noticed that my
neighbor was moving out at the same time. He
had this large sheep dog. We had never met, but I
had often seen him walk his dog. As the movers
were loading up the trucks, my neighbor and I
spoke briefly and discovered that we had a lot in
common. He was a playwright.
We both
expressed a sorrow that we had never gotten to
know each other. When our moving truck
arrived at the new Park Slope apartment, the
strangest thing happened. Another moving truck
pulled up behind us and started to unload. Then
a car pulled up and out came a man with a large
sheep dog. My old neighbor, Jim Kalett, his wife,
Caroline, and dog, Olive, were moving in next
door. It had to be fate. We became friends, and
for a while we were business partners.
So, after two years of being shuttled back
and forth, Michele was about to have a home.
Joan and I had moved into our new apartment.
The question of Michele’s future became a moot
point. We discovered that there were long waiting
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lists at all of the state homes throughout the
country. At least for now, Michele would stay
with us.
I cannot explain my relationship with
Joan. All I wanted was to live with a woman who
loved me and raise a family and yet, I did
everything in my power to destroy the
relationship. How can I explain it? The little
head, between my legs, totally dominated the big
head on my shoulders. I lost the ability to reason.
One day, Joan got a call from my answering
service. A young lady with whom I had an affair
in Baltimore was trying to reach me. She was in
New York and wanted to spend the weekend with
me. Needless to say, Joan was a bit upset. When
she confronted me with this newfound evidence
that I had been fooling around, she was expecting
to hear, "I was lonely. She means nothing to me.
I'll never see her again. Please forgive me." But
instead, I told her that our marriage was over
and that I wanted to see this young lady. The very
next day when I returned, Joan packed her bags
and left.
It would have made no sense for Joan to
try to get custody of Michele, since she felt
Michele would be better off in an institution. I
cannot deny that I carry with me a sense of guilt,
but the guilt stems from the fact that many of our
mutual friends held Joan in contempt for
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abandoning her daughter. I should have done
more to make it clear that I was the guilty party,
not Joan. She has remarried several times and
has never shown a great deal of interest in her
only child, but I have never doubted that she
loved Michele. I believed that the pain was just
more than she could bear. On the other hand, I
believed that I was chosen to care for Michele.
She was the reason for my existence. I had no
idea what I was in for, but I was not frightened. I
was on a mission of love.
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Chapter 8
Everything in my life, up until now, was
only a rehearsal. This was the real thing. I was a
single parent. I had to be mother as well as
father.
Our Park Slope apartment had a small
backyard. The owner of the building used to
make his own wine, and the grapevines still
flourished along the fence to the yard. The only
way to get to the yard was through the basement,
where the wine press and other wine-making gear
still sat. Michele and I would go out in the yard,
sit in the sun, and eat grapes. Michele loved water
and I bought a little wading pool. This was the
good life. We would go food shopping together.
She would always carry one of the bags of
groceries. We were not far from Prospect Park
and we would go to the zoo. Nearby the zoo was a
carousel. Michele loved the carousel. She would
get excited as we neared it and she heard the
calliope-style music. After riding the carousel
and walking through the zoo, we would go and sit
by the lake. Michele was a very special person.
Being her father made me feel special too.
Raising a child was a full-time job. I
cooked, I cleaned, I shopped, I did the wash in the
bathtub, hung it up in the kitchen, I ironed
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Michele's pleated skirts, and I prayed. I knew it
would take a miracle for Michele to have a
normal life, but I believed in miracles. I wanted
to get acting work, but it had to be in New York.
No more traveling, no more touring.
It came as a complete surprise when my
old girlfriend, Mary Lou, gave me a call. She had
been cast as the female lead in a play at the Old
Reliable. She thought I would be perfect for the
male lead and the director was interested in
having me audition. My savings from The
Fantasticks were getting slim. I had to make some
money, but to get theatre work, I had to be seen
by agents and directors, and so I auditioned and
was cast in the part.
The Old Reliable was a bar on the Lower
East Side. The back room had a stage, seats, and
a few lights. To call the plays avant-garde would
be an understatement. You might call it audience
participation theatre. There was no admission
charge and beer was served during the
performances. After a few beers, the audience
would often talk back to the actors.
To save on babysitting costs, we often
rehearsed at my apartment. Mary Lou spent a lot
of time with Michele. She was still married to
Chuck, and I never saw a clue of any renewed
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interest in me. If there was, it remained very
subtle and nothing ever came of it.
The play gave a new depth to the concept
of theatre of the absurd. I played a sadistic priest.
In the last act, there was a scene where I would
take off my priestly robes and flog a poor young
girl with a whip. I would be standing with my
back to the audience, bare-chested. My body was
to be covered with tattoos. Each night a makeup
artist would paint my back and arms with
tattoos.
This scene was the climax of the play. It
was meant to be frightening and emotionally very
disturbing. On closing night, during this scene,
the audience began to laugh. I had no idea what
they were laughing at. The laughter grew and
grew. Now keep in mind that the audience is very
close. I was going crazy. Why were they
laughing?
It was not until after the show that I
learned that the makeup artist had not drawn
tattoos on my back that night. She had written,
"For a good time, call Jane, 567-6912."
Needless to say, this production was of no
help to my career. Shortly after this play, Chuck
and Mary Lou were divorced. Mary Lou
returned to Detroit. She told me that she had
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been so moved by the time she spent with Michele
that she was going to return to school and become
a teacher for developmentally disabled children.
Another old friend from Detroit, Clifford
Ammon, was stage-managing a new OffBroadway show, How to Steal an Election. This is
the musical I referred to at the beginning of the
book when I explained why I gave up my acting
career. I was not a member of the original cast.
As stage manager, Cliff had the authority to cast
an understudy. He knew this would be perfect for
me. Unlike a “standby,” who must attend every
performance and be ready to go on, an
understudy is only called to the theatre when a
cast member is sick or cannot, for any reason,
perform. I could earn some money and stay at
home with Michele.
This musical revue was
based on
interesting tidbits of American political
chicanery. One of my favorites took place during
a Florida congressional race. The night before the
election, one of the candidates called a press
conference to announce that he had irrevocable
proof that his opponent had once been a
"thespian." It worked. He won the election.
I understudied all five males in the show.
The show ran for several months without anyone
getting sick. Then the proverbial shit hit the fan.
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If everyone got sick at once, the performance
would have to be canceled but that didn't
happen. They seemed to take turns getting sick.
For a long series of performances, I had to play
several different roles on different nights. It was
very difficult. When I had to bring Michele to the
theatre and hear her cry backstage, it just tore
me apart. The play closed shortly after I quit.
I needed to re-evaluate my goals in life. I
needed to get out of New York. Michele and I
went to visit my parents in Detroit. While there, I
took Michele for a walk. At this time, I had long
hair and a beard. Michele's persistent urge to go
in a direction other than the one I was going led
to a lot of tugs and pulls as we walked along
holding hands. It was summertime, and hot, so
we stopped at a Dairy Queen and got ice cream
cones. As we walked back, I had to keep a very
close eye on Michele to make sure she did not
drop her cone. As we approached my parents’
house, three police cars came out of nowhere and
trapped us between their bumpers, two cars on
the sidewalk and one on the front lawn of a
neighbor's house. Two of the cops picked up
Michele and ran with her. Two others threw me
against the hood of a police car. They had guns
drawn, and every time I tried to speak, they
yelled "Shut up!" A neighbor who had been
watching all of this from his front yard spoke
with another policeman who had gone over to
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question him. That policeman then came back
toward us and yelled, “It's Okay. He's an actor
from New York." The other cops looked at me
and said, "Oh, you’re an actor from New York.
That explains it. Someone called 911 and said
that a bearded man was dragging a little girl
down the street." I explained that Michele was
my daughter and that she was retarded. One of
the cops looked at me and said, "So you're an
actor. Have you been in anything that I may have
seen?" I asked him, “Have you seen any plays
recently in New York?” He looked at me kind of
funny, as if to say, “What the hell would I be
doing in New York?”
Michele and I returned to New York. I
needed to find a way to make some money. I may
have joked about my working in photo labs, but I
am grateful to have had a profession that could
be used to make a living. Like all single parents, I
needed childcare. I had very little money but had
a large apartment, so it made sense to hire a livein sitter. I put an ad in the Sunday N.Y. Times. I
had only one response. She and Michele seemed
to get along very well, so I hired her. She was a
very nice young lady from a small town in
Michigan. She had just arrived in New York and
was very happy to get the job.
I had some things that I needed to do that
evening and went out for a few hours. When I
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returned, the new sitter was sitting on the sofa in
her nightgown, crying. She explained that she
had phoned her father in Michigan to let him
know she had gotten a job. Her father had said to
her, "You're living with a man? In Brooklyn? An
actor? Get your butt out of there at once." She
returned the next morning to the Barbizon Home
for Girls. What could I say? I knew full well how
her father felt. I would have felt the same way.
You may not believe this next one. It
happened to me and I still don't believe it.
I was going stir crazy. I had to get out. I
hired a sitter for the evening and went out and
tied one on. As I was walking home, at the end of
the evening, four young men picked me up off the
ground and put a knife to my throat. I began to
laugh. They couldn't believe this. "Why are you
laughing?" one asked. "I've never been mugged
before," I said. "For as long as I have lived in
New York, I've heard stories of people being
mugged, but this is my first time."
They went through all of my pockets and
my wallet. Then they calmly walked away. "Hey,
wait a minute," I shouted. "I'm a single parent
and I've got a babysitter at home. I don't even
have money to give her for carfare."
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One of them returned and handed me ten
bucks. I swear to God.
When I got home, my shirt felt wet. I
looked in the mirror and blood was trickling
down my neck. It was just a scratch, but my
whole body began to shake. In truth, I had some
money put away at home. I paid the sitter and
called a car service to take her home.
It was becoming obvious that I needed a
live-in sitter. This time, I put an ad in The Village
Voice. It stated that I was a single male parent. I
received hundreds of responses.
The biggest problem was that anyone
looking for a job of this nature, for very little pay
but free room and board, was more than likely
destitute. I couldn’t expect much in the way of
references. I wasn't looking for an experienced
nanny, just someone warm, kind and
understanding, someone who loved children. My
rent was only $87 per month. I could work for a
few hours each day and still make ends meet. I
just needed someone to be with Michele those few
hours.
I held dozens of interviews. I hired
someone. I don't remember whom. Over the next
few years they came and went on a routine basis.
Every time Michele got attached to someone, she
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was gone. To this day, Michele only trusts men;
women are always suspect.
For about a month, I kept getting phone
calls from a heavy breather. Michele's live-in
sitter at the time was quite attractive, and the
calls started coming shortly after she began to
work for me, so I assumed the calls were for her.
I had no way to know. The person never spoke,
they only breathed. One night the phone rang
and it was the breather. Instead of hanging up as
I usually did, I said, "You sick fucking bastard,
what the fuck is the matter with you? Do you
have nothing better to do than make phone calls
and masturbate? Why don't you buy a gun and
blow your head off?" Then I thought about what
I had said and continued with, "I'm sorry, I
shouldn't speak to you in that manner. You are
sick and you need help. I had no right to curse at
you." I began to talk about how I believed in God
and how I believed that God loves us and has
blessed each of us with life. It was as if I was in
the pulpit giving a sermon on redemption. This
went on for a long time. When I finally paused to
catch my breath, a voice responded. It was a
female voice. It was the voice of a very troubled
woman. She said that she had met me, but to this
day I do not know who she was. She said that she
wanted to speak to me because she had seen me
with Michele and knew that I was a kind and
loving person, but each time I answered the
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phone, she was frightened and didn't know what
to say. We talked for hours. I told her that I did
not want to know who she was, but that she could
call me anytime when she felt that she couldn't
cope with life. Over the next few months, she
called several times, and then I never heard from
her again.
It felt good, being of help to someone, but
in truth I needed some help myself. Having faith
is all well and good, but I needed to do something,
and I didn't know what. No one really knew what
was wrong with Michele. Some said autism, some
said brain damage, some said schizophrenia, but
most just said “retarded.”
At the time, there were two major schools
of thought in the treatment of retarded children.
The Domain-Delacado theory, known as creeping
and crawling, physically took the children and
forced them to crawl. People would hold them
down while others would move their arms and
legs in a crawling movement. I think the idea was
that the child must have missed something in
early development. By returning to the crawling
movement, the child could discover whatever it
had missed. It sounds far-fetched, but the good
thing about it was that it gave you something to
do. You could even ask caring neighbors and
friends to help. It's so frustrating wanting to do
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something to help when there is nothing you can
do.
The drawback to this technique was that
music was forbidden. I have no idea why, but
children on this regimen were not allowed to hear
music.
The other technique that was popular (I
don't remember its name,) was a form of music
therapy. So here I am, a parent of a retarded
child, I want desperately to help my child, and I
have one group telling me never to allow the child
to listen to music and another group telling me to
smother the child in music day and night.
Michele loved music. I was not about to
deprive her of one of the few things in life that
she enjoyed. While on tour with The Fantasticks,
Michele loved the piano player that toured with
us. She would grab his arm and pull him toward
the piano and push him on to the piano stool.
While he played, Michele was enraptured.
I bought her a rather sophisticated toy
piano. It sat in her room for weeks but she would
not touch it. Then one day, she walked up to it,
put her finger out and hit the keys. Dum, Dum,
Da, Dum. The first notes of “Beethoven's Fifth.”
I know that it was just a coincidence, but I
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couldn’t help but to wonder and hope. Perhaps,
in truth, she was a genius?
Michele also liked to swing. I anchored a
swing to the ceiling of her room. She would swing
for hours.
She enjoyed tearing paper. She would
take newspaper and tear it in long strips. She
would then fold each strip in a fan fold. The
Sunday Times, when torn and folded in this
manner, could reach the depth of about eighteen
inches in my living room.
She also folded paper from magazines in
a strange manner. It was like origami. When
completed, she would pull on two ends of the
paper and the center would flap up and down.
She would then stick out her tongue and the
center of the paper would flap on and off of her
tongue. She would do this for hours on end. She
seemed to know that newsprint would get soggy
and only did this with coated magazine stock.
Because Michele did not speak, many
doctors referred to her as autistic. One evening,
watching TV, I saw my old friend Ed Flanders,
the actor whose wife gave birth on the same day
Michele was born. He was the lead in a popular
hospital drama, “Saint Elsewhere.” He played a
single parent of an autistic child. I had often
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wanted to contact him and tell him about
Michele, but I never did. He has since passed
away.
One of the psychiatrists who saw Michele
told me that he would give me any diagnosis I
wanted. I should find a "school" that had an
opening. If the facility took autistic children, he
would give a diagnosis of autism. If they took
brain-injured children then he would diagnose
brain injury, etc. He said there was no known
treatment for these children, so it didn't really
matter what the diagnosis was.
One of Michele's sitters believed that she
was the new Annie Sullivan. She worked with
Michele endlessly. She was not hired for this
purpose but she was getting such good results I
was not about to interfere. Within a few months,
Michele was doing puzzles and building with
blocks. She could even tie her shoelaces.
When Michele stopped responding in a
positive way, the sitter started getting physically
abusive, spanking and hitting her. I tried to get
the sitter to stop, but she seemed to resent my
interference. I had to let her go. She had become
so obsessed with Michele that I began to fear she
was having a homosexual relationship with her.
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I took Michele to another psychiatrist for
an evaluation and told him of Michele's
newfound skills. His desk was covered with
children’s toys. He had the classic box with a
round peg for the round hole, triangle peg for the
triangle hole, etc., puzzles, and other toys
requiring a level of skill.
He tried to get Michele to perform with
these toys. Michele tried to put the square peg
into the round hole and put the puzzle pieces in
all the wrong places. He explained to me that
sometimes parents want something to be true so
badly that we believe it to be true even when it
isn't.
As we were leaving his office, Michele
broke away from me. She went back to the
doctor's desk and put each puzzle together, and
the pegs in their corresponding holes, zip zap.
She then looked at the doctor as if to say, "How's
that, smart-ass?" She then turned and walked
out. The doctor looked at me. I smiled and then
we left.
We went to see another doctor who
specialized in vitamin therapy. He prescribed
massive doses of vitamins, like sixty or seventy
pills per day. To get Michele to take them, I
would put them in a thick plastic bag, pound
them with a hammer, then mix them into a paste
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with orange juice. I would then hold Michele's
nose. When she opened her mouth to breathe, I
would shove the spoon in and cover her mouth so
that she could not spit it out. After a month of
this "therapy," I called to make a new
appointment with the doctor. We would have to
wait six months for an appointment. I decided
this doctor was a quack. I discontinued the
therapy.
At that time, there was no financial aid to
speak of in New York State. The Greenberg Law
provided about $1000 towards a fee of about
$8000 per year for a private "school."
A man from the Brooklyn Board of
Education came to see me. He had a form that he
wanted me to sign. He explained that because
Michele was not educable, I would need to sign
this form to prevent my arrest as the result of her
truancy. I was outraged because I felt it was the
city’s obligation to provide her with some kind of
education, regardless of her abilities. Arrest me, I
said, please. That would give me a chance to get
some attention so that I might find some help for
Michele.
I would not consider sending Michele
away to a residential school. I wanted to be with
her every day, but I knew that she had to have
some kind of schooling. There had to be some
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kind of private school for children like Michele. I
spent hours on the phone. I wrote letters. I was
once told to buy a pair of handcuffs and then go
to the Association for the Help of Retarded
Children and handcuff myself to a radiator pipe.
That wasn't necessary. I discovered that
there were private "schools" that would take
Michele if I paid them enough money. It would
mean full-time in the photo lab and less time with
Michele, but I was learning that Michele needed
help that I could not give her. These "day
schools" ended up being nothing more than very
expensive babysitters. Michele went to so many
"schools" that I could not keep track of them. It
always ended with a note explaining that Michele
did not fit properly into the school program.
One of my great fears was that for some
reason, I would not be there when the school bus
arrived that brought Michele home each day. I
had read of a case where a bus driver had let out
a retarded child in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and the
child wandered off and drowned in the bay. Once
I was returning from Manhattan by subway and
the train was delayed. I got off at the next stop
and I ran several miles to reach home. My heart
was pounding. I made it on time and, of course,
the bus was late.
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I did send Michele away to a summer
camp for “exceptional children.” Before we left
for the camp, I got a call from a young woman
who also had a child going to the camp. They
needed a ride. She was quite attractive and I
considered asking her out on a date, but before I
said anything, she mentioned that the only way
for her to survive would be to find a filthy rich
man. That left me out. She had just taken a job as
a waitress at an exclusive men's club that catered
to the elite. The next time I saw her was at the
end of the summer, when the children were being
picked up. She arrived in a chauffeur-driven
Rolls Royce. She looked at me and I smiled.
I still believed in God, but was beginning
to wonder if God believed in me. I could see that
there were so many people in need, so many who
were sick, hungry, and in pain. It seemed so
selfish of me to pray, over and over again, for a
miracle for Michele.
My director friend from Detroit, Cliff,
called and asked me to do a children's show on
the weekends. I said I didn't act anymore, not
since that experience with Michele in How to
Steal an Election. He pointed out that it was only
on weekends and all performances were at the
92nd Street Y in Manhattan. I wouldn't have to
work in a photo lab anymore. I could actually
spend more time with Michele. The play was
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Solomon and Ashemedai. I played Ashemedai, the
devil. My old friend Mallory was the costumer.
Remember, when I first came to New York I
cared for her son Dennis. Of course I asked how
he was doing. She told me that he was living with
her sister in California. I cannot help but wonder
how life has treated him.
As soon as rehearsals began, I noticed
this girl in the cast. I couldn't take my eyes off
her. She was much younger than I, but I thought
it couldn't hurt to ask her out. That was the
beginning of a new chapter in my life.
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Chapter 9
Why would a young, beautiful, intelligent,
creative girl be interested in me? A plain-looking
man with no visible means of support? A single
parent of a retarded child? I knew at once that
she was someone special. She laughed at all my
jokes.
Lyn Walsh. A native New Yorker. She
was a dancer who also played a few small parts. I
was the lead, the star of the show. Early in
rehearsal, it became apparent that a conflict of
styles was about to develop. I never considered
myself a “method” actor, but I don’t like to have
a preconceived concept about the role I’m
playing. I rehearse. I look, listen and study. It’s
like putting together the pieces of a puzzle when
you don’t have a picture of what the puzzle looks
like. When the character emerges, I’m as
surprised as anyone. From the very first
rehearsal, the rest of the cast members were
acting and singing their hearts out. The director
knew how I worked, but the producer was talking
about replacing me. Lyn Walsh was one of the
few cast members who seemed to understand
what I was doing. She urged everyone to give me
a chance. Once the pieces started to come
together, everyone changed their tune. By
opening day, the cast would stand in the wings
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and watch me perform. Lyn would smile and
say, "I told you so."
On my way home after a rehearsal, I
noticed Lyn standing at a bus stop. I went over
and talked to her. I asked her out for dinner. She
accepted. We had a wonderful time, but I never
made any moves on her. I wasn’t really sure if
she had any interest in me in that way. I hadn’t
even tried to kiss her after our second date. On
the third date, we were out with the play's
director and his wife. The evening was coming to
an end and we were sitting in the director's car.
He said, “Where to?” and I leaned over toward
Lyn and asked, “Do you want to go home or to
my place?” Without missing a beat, she said
"Your place."
As we entered my Brooklyn apartment at
about 2am, my daughter was wandering around
making her grunts and groans, and the live-in
babysitter was deep asleep. Michele did not
speak, but she was very vocal. She made a lot of
sounds. She had a sense of humor and would
often laugh, although I usually had no idea what
she was laughing at. Michele being awake
somewhat diminished my ardor. I put her back to
bed, but feared that her presence would be a big
turnoff for Lyn.
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I mentioned beautiful, intelligent, and
creative. How about straightforward and honest?
Lyn went directly to the phone and called home.
She was living at home with her parents.
Expecting, "The car had a flat tire," and/or, "I'm
staying with a girlfriend," I was surprised to
hear, "You remember Wayne. I'm spending the
night with him. Sorry to call so late, but I didn't
want you to be worried."
By this time, all of the passion of the
moment had passed. The lust of a first encounter
seemed to be replaced with the tenderness and
warmth of a longstanding relationship. It was
nice. No fireworks, but nice. As with most good
relationships, it got better and better as time went
on. That morning, when we woke up, I discovered
that the babysitter, my camera and my money
were all gone.
Of all the unusual people that I had hired
as sitters, this one had to be the most bizarre. As
usual, I had placed an ad in The Village Voice.
And as usual, I had a large response.
Appointments had been set up over the weekend.
That Friday night I had a party. It was an
all-night affair and the next morning I made
Spanish omelets. We were all sitting in the living
room having breakfast. The apartment was on
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the first floor, and the blinds were pulled up so
that we all had a view of the street out front.
When a large car came to a screeching
halt out front, we all looked out to see what was
going on. A man got out of the car, went to the
rear, and opened up the trunk. He then took out
two suitcases and threw them on the sidewalk.
Then he went to the passenger side of the car,
opened the door and pulled out a young lady. He
then got into the driver's seat, slammed the door
and took off.
We all watched as the young lady picked
up her suitcases and climbed the steps of my
stoop. The doorbell rang. I went to the door.
She looked like Leslie Caron in a scene
from the film Lili. In a very soft voice with a
heavy French accent she said, "I am Frederica. I
am here in response to your ad. If you do not hire
me, I will have no choice but to sleep on the
sidewalk in front of your house."
I asked her in and made her an omelet.
I'm a softy. I hired her. She was very
warm and considerate and got along very well
with Michele. It was several weeks before I
discovered her dark side. She had a classic split
personality. One day I was speaking to her and
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she turned and said, "Don't give me any of your
shit. This is not Frederica you are speaking to,
this is Rose, and Rose doesn't take any shit."
Rose knew all about Frederica but
Frederica did not know that Rose existed. Rose
was a real bitch. It was, of course, Rose who stole
my camera and money. She called me and said
that I shouldn’t be angry with Frederica because
she didn’t even know that Rose robbed me.
So that morning, Lyn, Michele and I had
breakfast. I think Lyn was impressed with my
ability in the kitchen, the cooking part, not the
dish washing and cleaning part. Lyn did the
dishes and cleaned the kitchen. Lyn was very
warm and loving toward Michele. Lyn and I
went out often, and each time she stayed over at
my apartment. She would play with Michele.
They seemed to get along very well. Lyn hadn’t
moved in, but she was soon spending more time
at my place than at her home.
When she invited her folks over to have
dinner with us, I got the idea that this could be a
long-lasting relationship. At the end of the
evening, Lyn's mother asked her, "Are you
coming back home with us or are you staying
here?" She stayed.
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Twenty-eight years later, her mother told
me that Lyn was not very good at expressing
feelings of love but she knew that evening that
her daughter was very much in love with me. I
ended up not only loving Lyn, but also loving her
parents and her siblings.
Love. It's a word that came easily to me,
but not to Lyn. I said, "I love you" over and over
again, but I never got a response. Not even "Me
too."
The first, and maybe the only, time she
said "I love you" was after our first big fight. It
really wasn't a fight. I had a large collection of
Playboy magazines and I was thumbing through
them and pointing out the girls that I found
attractive. How I could have been so stupid is
now beyond my understanding. Lyn began to yell
and scream at me, calling me names, and then she
just sat there and cried. I said I was sorry. "You
must know that I love you," I said. "I tell you
over and over again. You have never said that
you love me." She looked at me and yelled, "Of
course I love you," and then she threw all of my
Playboy magazines in the trash can.
I was offered a job directing a summer
musical theatre in Flint, Michigan. The Flint
Musical Theatre operated with a resident
company but brought in a "star" for each
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production. I thought Lyn would enjoy dancing
in the company. Working together would be fun
as well as financially rewarding.
She didn't want to come with me. I was
hurt and confused. The choreographer of our
children's show had asked her to dance in a
Yiddish show he was directing in Israel. It was
like an old time vaudeville show but all in
Yiddish. She's not Jewish. I didn't understand
why she didn't want to spend the summer with
me. One of her best friends was living in Israel
and Lyn obviously just wanted an excuse to visit.
I wrote her every day but never got a response
until the end of the summer. "If you love me,
send $200." I loved her and so I sent $200. Later,
she told me she sent the same letter to everyone
she knew.
It was a very difficult summer. Doing
eight full-scale musicals in eight weeks is, at best,
very difficult, but this was worse than usual.
There was a lot of animosity within the company
and I did not get along very well with one of the
producers. As it turned out, he was a close friend
of my first wife, Joan, and it was she who had
recommended me to him for the directing job.
I cast my friend George Riddle for the
season. He, Michele, my live-in sitter, and I all
lived in a farmhouse I had rented for the
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summer. The new sitter was from a good home
on Long Island, a very nice, intelligent girl of
eighteen. This would be her very first trip away
from home, and she was looking forward to a bit
of adventure in Michigan. The new sitter, Mary,
flew to Detroit with Michele and I, a few weeks
before the season started. My mother picked us
up at the airport. We were going to stay with my
folks in Livonia, a suburb of Detroit, before going
on to Flint. On the ride from the airport to my
parents’ house, Mary, the sitter, looked so
disappointed. We were driving along a main road
with its share of McDonald's and Burger Kings,
and Mary kept groaning "Oh no, oh no." I asked
her what was wrong and she said, "This looks
just like Long Island."
While visiting my folks in Livonia, I
noticed in the newspaper that Raymond Burr was
starring in a play at the Northland Playhouse, a
summer star-system theatre in Detroit. Its
producer was Kenneth Schwartz, who was also
the original producer of the Vanguard Playhouse,
the one who used his thumb to squish me on his
desk. My parents both loved Raymond Burr, and
so I called Kenny to see if we could get tickets. He
not only gave us "comps," but just before the
play began, he came out on stage and introduced
my parents and I to the audience. "Ladies and
gentlemen, we are honored to have in the house
this evening one of Detroit's best known and
190
loved theatrical producers and directors, the
former director of World Stage and the producer
of the Vanguard Playhouse. He will be directing
this summer at the Flint Musical Theatre. Wayne
Martens is here with his parents, and if they
would not mind standing up, I would like to join
you in giving them a round of applause."
He then invited my parents and I to come
backstage after the show and meet Raymond
Burr. My parents were very pleased and very
proud of me. It felt good.
My sister Margaret and her husband had
just bought a new car, so they gave me their old
Pontiac convertible to use. After a week with my
folks, Mary, Michele and I drove up to Flint and
met George there. When we all moved into the
farmhouse, I warned George that if he screwed
around with my babysitter, I would kill him. It
didn't do any good. She got pregnant. My
friendship with George was never the same after
that.
We opened with Annie get Your Gun,
starring Rosemary Prinz, the soap opera star.
She was a big draw. For A Funny Thing
Happened on the Way to the Forum, I cast
Michael Dunn, who was well-known for his work
in the film Ship of Fools. Michael played
Psuedolus, which was played on Broadway by
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Zero Mostel, who was a very large man. I went
the opposite direction and cast a dwarf. Michael
and I had gone to high school together. He was so
much fun to work with. He had hoped that this
role would open up a new world for him. It's so
difficult for any actor to find good parts. How
many parts are written for a dwarf? He died the
following year.
In Damn Yankees, George played the
Devil. He put his circus training to good use. He
played the part while riding a unicycle.
As the season went on, I just wanted it to
be over so that I could return to New York. I had
no social life that summer, nor did I seek any. It
was so frustrating not being able to spend more
time with Michele. We rehearsed during the day
and performed in the evening. The actors got one
day off, but a director needs to work seven days a
week.
At the end of the season, Mary, Michele
and I returned to New York in my sister's old
convertible. While in Michigan, Mary had gotten
a cat named Aries. The car had no rear window,
and the cat insisted on riding on the outside of the
car on the rear fender, at sixty miles per hour.
Every car that would pass us would pull next to
us and yell, "There's a cat sitting on your
fender!" We would yell back, "Thank you," and
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continue on our way. By the time we reached
New York, the cat was fine, but the car was
coughing and spitting up blood. It died in the
middle of a major intersection in Manhattan. I
got out and called a tow truck and bought sodas
and chips. We all just sat there eating and
drinking with the top down in the middle of the
intersection until the tow truck arrived. Then we
took a taxi to Brooklyn.
That fall, Lyn returned from Israel and I
went to the airport to meet her. I had bought
another old clunker. Her parents were there as
well. I had no idea who Lyn would go back with.
After checking in with Customs, everyone hugged
her and then her mother asked right out, "Are
you going home with Wayne or with us?" Lyn
said, "Wayne." My heart jumped into my mouth.
As we drove back to Brooklyn, she was all over
me. I was determined to make her so ecstatic that
she would never leave me again. We were taking
our clothes off as we entered the apartment. It
was the middle of the day and Mary and Michele
were both there, but we didn't care. This was
passion. This was what life is all about. “The bells
rang, the mountains shook." Instead of, "I love
you and will never leave you," Lyn said, "Oh, I
have to run. I'm going upstate to spend a week
with my grandmother." As she left, she said, "I'll
be back next Tuesday. I'll move in if you don’t
mind."
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Lyn moved in with me. Life was good.
She seemed to care for Michele. She helped me
with phone calls and letters while I was searching
for help for Michele. We went together to visit
the infamous State Institution, Willowbrook.
The children were behind bars, mostly
naked, and they used hoses to wash the shit and
piss down the drain. For this, there was a fiveyear waiting list. You could move up on the list
by enrolling in the hepatitis program. This meant
that your child would be injected with hepatitis.
"Why not?" the doctor asked. "They're going to
get it anyway." They could then experiment to
find a cure.
We went into a building for older
"clients." A young, well-endowed woman came
running up to me. She was stark naked. She kept
trying to pull my pants down. The attendant
looked at me and said, "Some places try to hide
what goes on. We don't even try."
This could not be real. I had to block it
from my mind.
I knew that my daughter would get
better. I loved God and I loved my daughter.
That love would keep her out of a place like
Willowbrook.
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Life was great. Lyn and I made love and
watched W.C. Fields movies on late-night TV. I
had never had a relationship like this. It was
perfect. Lyn was perfect.
One day, I got a phone call from Lyn's
mother. She wanted to meet with me in private.
We set up a meeting at Lyn's father's office. He
was a dermatologist.
"It is obvious to us," Lyn's mother began,
"that Lyn is very much in love with you, and we
are certain that you feel the same about her. Lyn
is very special to us and you must understand
that we only want the best for her. This
relationship is not in her best interest. You seem
to have some kind of Svengali hold on her, and
she is unable to see how this relationship could
ruin her life. Please, let her go."
"Mrs. Walsh," I said, " I love Lyn more
than you can imagine. I will do anything to make
her happy. Asking me to let her go is asking me
to put a gun to my head. I can't do it. I want to
marry Lyn and raise a family. I promise that
you'll not regret it. I'll make you proud of me."
Dr. Walsh asked if he could speak to me
privately. We went into an examination room.
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He said, "Please don't be angry with
Lyn's mother. You, more than anyone, can
understand how much she loves Lyn. Lyn is very
headstrong. She was born while I was away in the
Marines during the war and is very used to
getting her own way. If you and Lyn do get
married, I can only say, God bless you and good
luck."
During all of this conversation, there was
one thing that all of us failed to realize. Lyn had
no intention of marrying me, or anyone else for
that matter. Lyn was a free spirit.
One evening, we decided to go to the
movies. It was a double feature, Mash and Patton.
We had been told by friends that Mash was very
funny, and George C. Scott, my friend from
Detroit, played the lead in Patton. This was sure
to be a fun evening. Mash was on first. I thought
it was a riot. Soon, however, I noticed that Lyn
was not laughing. Far from it, she was muttering,
things like, "fucking sexist bastards." Suddenly,
she got up and walked out. I chased after her, but
she would not speak to me. Once outside she said,
"If you find that shit funny, there is no way that
you and I can live together." "But it is funny," I
said. "The fact that I laugh at it doesn't mean
that I agree with its sexist connotations." We
went home. Years later, I got to watch Patton on
TV. Mash became Lyn's favorite TV show.
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Lyn had pretty much put her dance
career on hold. While living with me, she had
appeared in a few concerts at Dance Theatre
Workshop, but had not entertained the notion of
going on tour, not until she was offered a national
tour with Israel 22, a celebration tour of Israel's
twenty-second anniversary. She was offered a
good role with good pay, and it played major
cities throughout the country. I was happy for
her, but I knew I was going to get mighty lonely
without her.
The money from directing in Flint was
running short, and I couldn’t bear the thought of
working in another darkroom. If I had to work in
a darkroom, it should be my own. I borrowed an
enlarger from a neighbor and set up a darkroom
in a large walk-in closet. If I could get clients, I
could make a living at home. I could spend more
time with both Lyn and Michele. Lyn had an
interest in photography. My idea was to set her
up to do children portraits in the living room
studio and I would do the processing and
printing. I would also go after other
photographers and clients who needed the
services of a custom lab. I called my brother Les
and borrowed $500, which I probably never paid
back. I built fiberglass sinks in the closet and a
workbench for the enlarger. I purchased
secondhand trays, the kind that busboys use in
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restaurants. I made safe lights out of the large
fruit and vegetable cans that are used by
restaurants. I found a photo studio that had
closed up and slipped the super of the building
$20 to let me take a lot of equipment that had
been left behind. By the time Lyn returned, the
apartment was a mess of light stands, tripods,
trays and dryers. Our apartment had high
ceilings and so to help accommodate all of this
gear, I built a loft bed. Lyn didn’t get excited
about the idea of doing portraits, but she really
enjoyed learning about darkroom work.
This was the Vietnam era. We would go
to the demonstrations and, while everyone was
handing out anti-war flyers, we would hand out
flyers for our custom photo lab to all the
photographers.
It worked. We actually got customers.
Prints were washed in the bathtub. There was
one problem. If the landlord found out that we
were running a business there, he could legally
kick us out. He wanted to sell the building but
couldn't because of the low rents. If he had a
vacancy it would increase the value of the
building. I went to the hardware store and got
four mailbox labels. Box one, Box two, Box three,
Box four. We lived on the first floor and had the
first mailbox, so the photo business was named
"BOX ONE PHOTOGRAPHIC SERVICE." All
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it said on the mailbox was “Box One.” Ten years
later, Box One Photographic Service had 5000
square feet in midtown Manhattan with sixteen
employees.
My mother had come to visit us in New
York. She had flown in, but we were all going to
drive back to Detroit in the old Peugeot I had
purchased for $75. Whenever you decide to make
a long trip in a car you purchased for $75, you
know you are going on an adventure.
None of us had ever seen Niagara Falls, so
we decided to take the Canadian route to Detroit.
About fifty miles west of Albany, we were
about to enter the NY Thruway. There was an
extra long line at the tollgate. They were
conducting auto safety checks on every car going
on the thruway. All I could say was “Oh shit.” I
knew my old car would never pass the test. We all
cheered when the inspector said, “You’re fine. Go
on your way.”
Our joy soon dissipated when about one
mile past the gate, we had a blowout. The car
shook so hard I thought it would fall apart. I got
it over to the side of the road and put on the
spare tire.
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We arrived at the falls and got a motel
room. My mother took care of Michele while Lyn
and I went for a walk by the falls. It was
beautiful. The sun was setting. A cool misty
breeze was blowing in our faces. I took Lyn in my
arms and said, "I love you. Will you marry me?"
She said "No." "Please," I begged. "No."
That was the end of the conversation.
Needless to say, the car broke down a few
more times. The fun part was when the
windshield wipers broke during a rainstorm.
Somehow, we eventually made it to Detroit.
While in Detroit, we went to visit my
sister who had just given birth to her first son.
Lyn and I were standing above the baby's crib
and Lyn was commenting on how adorable he
was. I had to try again. "Don't you want one?" I
asked. "No!" Well, I tried.
We left the car in Detroit and flew back to
New York.
Lyn was a cat lover. I was a dog man. Lyn
picked up a black cat from a friend. It was the
same day that Mayor Gibson was elected as the
first black mayor of Newark, New Jersey, so we
named the cat Gibson.
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A dear friend of mine from The
Fantasticks called and told me I owed him a
favor, and he was calling to collect. He had taken
in a cat from a friend, as a favor, and his cats
were trying to kill it. He wanted me to take his
friend's cat. "But I don't like cats and I already
have one," I said. "You owe me," he said.
When I went to pick up the cat, it was so
frightened that it couldn't stop shaking. Her
name was Blanche. When I took her home, she
seemed to sense that I had saved her life. She
followed me around like a dog. She would come
when she was called. She would even sit on
command. Actually, I had never had a dog that
would do that.
Blanche and Gibson made many babies,
and the apartment was soon overrun with cats.
The cats were not alone. Lyn became
pregnant. I was ecstatic. As they say, I was
overjoyed. I wanted to get married. She wanted
an abortion. Lyn moved back home with her
parents. By this time, her folks had moved out of
their Manhattan apartment and were living in
Rowayton, Connecticut.
We talked every day on the phone. I
begged. I pleaded. Everything I ever wanted was
about to slip off the edge of my fingertips. We
201
agreed to meet at a bar in Manhattan called The
Triple Inn. The bar was well known for its
Christmas decorations. They put them up one
year and never took them down.
We met and we talked. I promised her
that if she married me, I would make her the
happiest woman in the world. Lyn agreed to
marry me but with conditions. She wanted
Michele out of the house. This came as a complete
surprise to me; Lyn had always shown affection
for Michele. To me, her demand was like Sophie's
Choice. I had to choose between my daughter,
whom I loved so very much, and my unborn
child. I could not make that choice. I needed to
stall for time.
I offered a compromise. If, after a year,
she still wanted Michele out of the house, I would
put her in a residential facility. Lyn agreed.
Oh yeah, one minor detail. I would need
to get a divorce.
I had taken Joan to court to get legal
custody and I was awarded child support. Joan
had little or no income and rarely paid it, but at
the time it was an important legal decision
because there were not many cases of men
receiving child support.
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I filed for divorce. It went to trial. Joan's
lawyers wanted to end the child support. They
lost, but she still didn't pay. Years later, I was in
an elevator in an office building and this man
looked at me and said, "I know you, don't I?" "I
don't believe so," I responded. He said, "You're
the guy who mopped the courtroom floor with me
in that divorce case." He then got off the elevator.
That gave my ego a little boost.
Lyn and I were getting married in
Connecticut, which required a one-week wait for
a marriage license, but the judge took one look at
Lyn and said, "I think we can waive the one-week
requirement."
The wedding took place in her parents’
home in Connecticut. Lyn's sister's dog would not
stop barking. Lyn had requested that the
minister not use the standard language in the
ceremony. "I don't want any of that love, honor
and obey crap in the ceremony," she told him.
We were married August 18, 1971, and
our son Matthew Wayne Martens was born
September 4, 1971. We had time to spare. The
birth was Lamaze. Lyn was in labor for only two
hours. It's so strange and wonderful. Your wife is
screaming in pain and you, the man, just stand
there and gawk. I enjoyed every minute of it.
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Matthew seemed to know from the start
that it was important to exhibit his mental
capabilities. He walked at 10 months and talked
at 14 months. He seemed to be saying, "Look at
how smart I am." He still does that to this day.
My mother came to help us out. I thought
life was beautiful. Lyn loved my mother and the
feeling was mutual. But as soon as my mother
left, Lyn left. She took Matthew and went back to
her parents’ in Connecticut. There was no
warning, no discussion; she just left. She called
from Connecticut and told me that she could not
raise Matthew in the same house with Michele.
I knew about postpartum blues. If I'd had
a brain in my head, I would have given her some
time and just waited patiently. But no, I felt that
our agreement made at The Triple Inn had been
broken. I drove up to Connecticut, got Matthew,
and put him in the car. Lyn would have put up
one hell of a fight, but she didn’t want to involve
her parents, and so she meekly submitted and we
drove back to Brooklyn.
Lyn is not the type to forgive and forget.
She has never forgiven me.
In the song "My Way," Frank Sinatra
sings that he has too few regrets to mention. I
cannot say the same. This was just the first of
204
many such conflicts. I ended up regretting every
one of them.
Lyn must not have hated me all that
much. Within a blink of an eye, six months after
Matthew was born, she was pregnant again. This
time the labor was about 15 minutes. Shannon
Lyn Martens was born December 6, 1972 in the
hallway on the way to the delivery room. I saw
her pop out like grease through a goose.
I moved Box One out of the apartment
and into Manhattan. A photographer whom I
had met had moved out of his loft to work in
Japan. I moved Box One into his space. His name
was W. Eugene Smith. I had no idea that he was
considered one of the greatest photographers of
all time. He had a book of photographs published
that were all pictures taken out of the loft window
on Sixth Avenue.
The space was dirty. Plaster was falling
down from the ceiling and graffiti was on every
wall, but the rent was only $150 per month. Gene
carried a magic marker in his pocket, and
whenever he had an idea, which was often, he
wrote it down on the wall, on the desk, the file
cabinet, whatever was handy. His work in Japan
was an exposé on industrial mercury poisoning.
Goons beat the shit out of him and he was left
nearly blind. He continued taking pictures using
205
a little auto focus Olympus camera. On his return
to the U.S., he came by to say hello and to
reminisce about the old times in the loft.
Apparently, it had quite a history. According to
an article in a 1999 issue of Double Take
Magazine, the space was a gathering place for
jazz greats, including Miles Davis, Charles
Mingus, Thelonius Monk and Dizzy Gillespie. An
August 2001 article in The New York Times said,
“There always seemed to be many pretty young
women present, and ample bourbon and
marijuana. It was a spot where Salvador Dali,
Norman Mailer or Willem de Kooning might
show up.”
I had no money to pay for any help, so I
contacted The Village Voice and told them that I
was forming a free photo workshop. The Voice
ran a blurb about the workshop and I got a large
response. The idea was that I would teach in
exchange for work. It worked out better than I
could have dreamed. I was a good teacher, and
they were a wonderful group of students. We
cleaned and painted the loft and built darkrooms.
Each member could then, of course, use the
darkrooms. It was an arrangement that worked
out well for everyone.
One workshop member was a vice
president of the Bell Telephone Company. He
was in charge of corporate installations, so he
206
traveled throughout the city. He became Box
One's messenger. Even after all the work was
done the place still looked like a wreck and we
were reluctant to have clients see it. All work was
done by pick-up and delivery. Our competition
had the run-of-the-mill messenger types picking
up work; we had a distinguished gentleman of
forty-five in a suit and tie. He would say in a
slight English accent, "Good afternoon. It is my
understanding that you have some work to be
processed by Box One Photographic Service."
Clients were very impressed.
After about a year, business was going
well and Box One had regular full-time
employees, so the workshop was disbanded. Most
of the members kept in contact and many went
into photography as a profession. There was one
young black man of about eighteen; I had not
seen him for a long time. Then one day, he
appeared at Box One with a story that was
unbelievable.
He had decided to put his new
photographic skills to the test by traveling
through Europe. He ended up stranded with no
money in a small town in Italy. While he was
sleeping on a bench at the local bus station, a
young woman walked in and began a
conversation with him in English. He told her his
tale of woe and she said that she was going to visit
207
her uncle. He had a very large place. "Why don't
you come and stay with us?" she asked. "I'll pay
for your ticket." Thinking that it had to be better
than sleeping in the bus station, he agreed.
When the bus arrived at their stop, the
young lady made a phone call and a limousine
soon picked them up. When the limo arrived at
its destination, there was an elderly gentleman
who gave the young lady a big hug. The young
lady then said, "John, I would like for you to
meet my uncle, Enzo Ferrari."
He stayed as Ferrari's guest for over a
month. If it were not for the photographs, I
would not have believed it. He had pictures of
himself and Ferrari at the breakfast table, in the
swimming pool, pictures of them together all over
the place including, of course, a picture of him
and Ferrari, in a Ferrari.
The miracle that I had been waiting for
never came. The year was up, and Michele had
not improved. I was still hoping and praying. I
think I was beginning to realize that Michele
would never be able to care for herself. I was
praying that Lyn would change her mind about
living with Michele. Never once did Michele show
any sign of aggression or hostility toward
Matthew or Shannon. I never understood Lyn's
insistence that Michele move out of our home.
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Michele was such a beautiful child. Her face
seemed to radiate with purity and innocence. I
had previously put her name on the waiting list
for Suffolk State. To do so, I had to use a fake
address. Suffolk State did not accept children
from Brooklyn. Brooklyn children went to
Willowbrook. I had visited Suffolk State and they
had shown me quaint little cottages and pretty
little schoolrooms. A social worker who knew of
my situation had pulled every string imaginable
to get Michele accepted there.
The day came. Michele and I drove out to
Huntington, Long Island. My heart felt like it was
the size of a watermelon. It was difficult to
breathe. I refused to cry. Why would I cry if I
believed that this was the best thing for her?
When we arrived, a doctor took Michele
to be "processed." I was then shown around the
institution. What I was shown had little
resemblance to the quaint little cottages that I
had seen on my previous tour. Again there were
iron bars. The smell of feces was overwhelming. I
was shown the evaluation room. This is where
Michele would stay for her first thirty days of
evaluation. It was a cage. I was then handed the
form to sign to give my permission to inject
Michele with hepatitis.
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My watermelon heart broke. I ran and I
screamed. My daughter was not going to live
here. I would wander the streets with her and be
homeless before I would leave her at this place.
They told me that I was making a big mistake.
The waiting list was so long. They had given me
special consideration for her to be accepted.
I called Lyn. “I love you,” I said. “I love
Matthew. I love Shannon. But I can't do it. I can't
leave Michele here. Please let me come home with
her. Please.”
Over the years since then, Lyn and I have
had many arguments and many fights. I have
been accused of every sin known to man, but Lyn
has never found fault with me for bringing
Michele back from Suffolk State. For that, I am
eternally grateful.
After the pain subsided, outrage took
control. I called the Attorney General of New
York State. The treatment at these "state
schools" was criminal, and no one but the rich
could afford to send a retarded child to a private
school. He said, "I should not be telling you this,
but my advice is to sue New York State." I said,
"If I could afford to sue New York State, I
wouldn't need to sue, because I could afford to
send my child to a private school." He told me to
210
contact The Legal Aid Society. I did. We sued.
We won.
The state laws were then changed to
provide education for all children. Legal aid did
all the work, but I still take pride in the fact that
Michele and I were part of it. The interesting
thing is that after the laws were changed and the
state had to pay the tuition, the rates of $8,000 to
$10,000 per year all went up to $30,000 or more
per year.
The people who ran the summer camp
that Michele had attended also ran a year-round
boarding school. I enrolled Michele. The school
ran on a regular school schedule with all the same
vacation times. The school was located in Liberty,
New York, about 100 miles from New York City.
Without a doubt, I would need a new car. Our
old Chevy was more than falling apart. One night
a neighbor was banging on our window. "Your
car is on fire!" he kept yelling. It was right in
front of the apartment, so if it blew up it would
take our apartment with it. I had never used a
fire extinguisher before, but I always kept one
handy. It seemed like it took an hour to read the
instructions, but to my amazement, it did the job.
I will never know if the fire was spontaneous or if
some kids were just looking for a little
excitement, but there was no doubt that I needed
another car.
211
I answered a used car ad in the paper.
The car belonged to a little old school teacher
who only drove the car to school and back. When
I saw the car, it was nighttime and it was raining,
but this was not at a used car lot. The owner
really was a little old school teacher. She wouldn't
lie to me. I bought it.
My mother came from Detroit. She knew
that this would be difficult for me, so she wanted
to come along with us to the school. The car, of
course, broke down. It threw a rod. For the next
several years, whenever I went to visit Michele, I
could see my old car on the side of a junkyard
outside of Liberty, New York.
Fortunately, we were close and someone
from the school came and picked us up. I want to
describe my feelings, but I can't. I don't know if
it's a blank or if I just cannot describe it. I think
it was like a biblical character about to sacrifice
his child to prove his love for God. If I did not
leave Michele, I would lose Matthew and
Shannon and Lyn. The school was nothing much.
Most of the children were housed in trailers. The
staff seemed very nice, but I really don’t think
that I wanted to know too much about them.
There was nothing that I could do if I didn't like
them. I felt that I had no choice but to leave
Michele there. It must have been similar to
212
having an operation before anesthesia was
invented. It's got to hurt like all hell, but when it
is over, you try not to think about it. Michele
seemed to be comfortable there, but of course,
she had no idea that I was going to leave her
there. My mother and I returned to New York by
bus. There was not much conversation. She knew
I was in pain.
In order to visit Michele, I would once
again need a car. Hall Overton, the man in the
loft on the floor above Box One, had recently
passed away. He was a gentle giant of a man. I
had been told that he was a musician and taught
music at Juilliard. Later, I learned that he had
helped to make the loft a historical center for jazz
in New York. I first met him when I started the
Box One workshop. I needed chairs and went up
to see if he had any that I could borrow. I
knocked on his door and introduced myself as his
new neighbor. He asked me in. He was teaching
one of his pupils at the time and so he introduced
me. "Wayne, I would like you to meet Stan
Getz." Getz was one of the country's most famous
jazz saxophonists and, needless to say, I was very
impressed to learn that my neighbor was his
music teacher. I never saw Stan Getz again, but
my new neighbor and I became friends. We were
both O positive blood types and when he was
being operated on, I donated blood. Strange, I do
not recall what the operation was for, but Hall
213
passed away shortly after surgery. I met his wife
at the funeral. Out of the blue, she said, "Wayne,
I think Hall would have liked for you to have his
car." I gladly accepted. It was a blue Sunbeam.
We called it "Sunny." It served us well for many
years.
Whenever I visited Michele, I rented a
motel room for the weekend. Michele never liked
the motel rooms. She wanted to go home, but she
liked getting away from the school. We would
mostly drive around. Michele loved to drive fast
and put her hand out the window and play with
the wind. Going home after these visits was
always painful. This pain was offset by my love
for Matthew and Shannon. I thought we had a
good life in Park Slope. The kids were such a joy
to be with. There was a lot of laughter and so
much fun.
There were a number of neat
neighborhood bars in Park Slope. Now and then,
I would stop off after work for a drink. One night
at the Camperdown Elm, I was sitting at the bar
and a man leaned over and said, "Now don't get
excited or do anything stupid, but if you look
over your left shoulder, you'll notice that Jackie
Kennedy is here." I looked, and sure enough,
there was columnist Pete Hamill, who lived down
the street, sitting with Jackie Kennedy. At the
time, everyone ignored them or politely said good
214
evening, but as soon as they left, everyone in the
joint went crazy. Everyone went home and
announced, "You'll never believe who I saw at
the bar tonight."
Jim Kalett, my neighbor with the big
sheep dog, had an interest in photography. Not
much knowledge but a lot of interest. He began to
work with me at Box One and his mind was like a
sponge. He learned as fast as I could teach. He
had good contacts and he brought in some topnotch clients. We became partners. It was not a
good match. I'm impulsive and act on a whim,
and I'm overbearing. Jim is thoughtful and likes
to take his time in making decisions. We shared
the problem of nervousness, but Jim took it to a
new level. He would start the day pacing.
"There's no work. What are we going to do? We
can't survive without any work." Back and
forth, back and forth. Then a big job would come
in. Without missing a step, the pacing would
continue. "How can we get all this work done?
We can't do this by Friday. What are we going to
do?"
Box One was a black and white lab. I
wanted to invest in the more expensive equipment
to do color, but Jim was not interested. He
realized that the partnership was destroying our
friendship and he wanted out. We not only
215
remained close friends, but Jim became a client
of Box One.
Jim, as it turned out, made a wise choice.
The equipment that I bought didn't work. It was
a new system for color processing. The theory
may have looked good on paper but its
performance was disastrous.
It was repaired and replaced and then
repaired and replaced again. It never worked. I
had built up a reputation based on reliability and
superior quality. The toilet seat was up and my
reputation was going down.
The finance company could not care less
if the equipment worked or not. They wanted
their money. For ten years I would be paying for
something that did not work. This was before the
"Lemon Laws." I called lawyer after lawyer. The
only recourse was bankruptcy. The business was
a sole proprietorship and so it had to be personal
bankruptcy. I was allowed to keep my "tools of
trade," and so I was able to continue the business.
I had to pay the court $500 to buy back the name
Box One. We would continue on our saga of rags
to almost riches.
216
Chapter 10
Bankrupt! It was as if I had a scarlet
"B" on my chest. It created a lot of stress, and it
took a heavy toll on Lyn. She had given up her
career as a dancer so that she could marry me
and raise our children. I had assured her that we
would be happy and prosperous, but my positive
thinking had obviously lost some credibility. One
night, after coming out of the bathroom, Lyn
calmly stated, "I just took a whole bottle of
Valium." I called a neighbor to watch the
children and took her to the hospital to have her
stomach pumped.
Why would she do this? Through it all,
Lyn still seemed to enjoy the time we spent
together. She loved our children. She still
laughed at my jokes.
I helped around the house as much as I
could. I often shopped and cooked but that did
not change the basic fact that she no longer had
control of her life. Lyn had become what she
dreaded most, a housewife.
Lyn was a dancer. She needed to return
to her world. Dancers need to take class. That’s
the terminology. Dancers do not go to a class,
they take class. Box One had lost its staff. It's
217
difficult to keep people when you can't pay them.
So Lyn and I worked out a deal. She would work
at Box One doing customer service and also take
dance classes. We made arrangements with a
woman who took in children in the
neighborhood.
In the morning, Lyn would take the
children to the sitter and then take the train into
Manhattan and work until about 2pm, and then
take class. After class, it was back to Brooklyn,
pick up the kids, cook, clean, you know, the same
old routine.
During the bankruptcy, the fate of Box
One was uncertain and I answered an ad I saw in
The New York Times for a photo instructor. I
thought it would be for a YMCA or adult
education. It turned out to be the New York
Institute of Technology in Old Westbury. I got
the job. I was not familiar with Long Island and
couldn’t believe that an area so close to New
York City could be so beautiful. The fine arts
building was an old French chateau that had
been brought to America brick by brick and
reassembled. The problem was that the section
used for photography must have been the
dungeon. It was dark and damp. There was a
large machine dangling from the ceiling and I
wondered, "Why don't they turn on the
dehumidifier?" Then I looked closer. It was a
218
humidifier. That's probably why the previous
teacher left. I can hear him now. "I ordered a
DEhumidifier, DEhumidifier.”
I love learning and so I was a natural at
teaching. Learning is such an enjoyable
experience, and teaching is a natural extension of
learning. You may think that you know
everything about a subject but when you teach it,
your students force you to continue learning.
When the college learned that I had a
background in the theatre, I was asked to teach a
film technique class. Then "scene design" was
added to my schedule. As a member of the
Actors' Equity Association, I was able to get free
tickets to many Broadway shows. I would get
tickets for my class (there were only six students)
and then we would discuss how the sets related to
the needs of the play. They took the class as
artists or designers but I taught them how to
evaluate a play in terms of dramatic content. The
emphasis was on the needs of the play more than
décor. "Film Technique" was a required course
for art majors, and yet no one in the department
seemed to know what the class consisted of. The
previous teacher had quit and left the country.
On the first day of class, I discussed this dilemma
with the class. I gave them an assignment of
coming up with ideas of what to do with the four
hours per week that we would be spending
219
together. We then voted on the various ideas
submitted. It was a film technique class so we
decided to make a film using the school’s 16mm
Bolex. We wrote, directed and filmed a clay
animation movie. There was no school budget for
this project, so we all pitched in to provide the
financing. I was overwhelmed by the imagination
and creativity of the class. I provided the
photographic knowledge, but everything else was
a communal effort. I think we almost had a
brilliant film, but we ran out of time and money
and it was never completed.
One cold, wet evening in the fall, I
dropped my keys in the parking lot. The area was
covered with leaves and my keys were somewhere
on the ground. As I was on hands and knees
looking for the keys, a gentleman in a suit and tie
asked me what I was doing. After I told him, he
got on his hands and knees and helped me look.
As we looked, he asked me many questions about
the school. I answered them truthfully. He found
my keys. When I thanked him, he introduced
himself. He was the president of the school.
As Box One grew, it became more and
more difficult to take time off for teaching. In
many respects, I regret giving it up, but I'm
proud to say that I eventually paid off all of the
debts from the bankruptcy. We had a very good,
talented staff, but they spent too much time doing
220
work that did not require skill. We needed a
flunky, a gofer. I put an ad in The Village Voice;
"FLUNKY NEEDED." The response was
overwhelming. Everyone who read the ad was
certain that they qualified. We had to photograph
each applicant to remember who was who.
That Saturday, I was working alone.
When I came out of the darkroom, a young lady
was sitting in the reception area. "Who are you
and how did you get in?" I asked. "My name is
Capri; I'm here for the job," she said. "I sweettalked the Super to get in."
The first line of her resume certainly got
my attention: "Current: Dancer at the Pink
Pussycat." She just didn't seem the type. I found
out later that she worked under the name "Saint
Capri" because she would not do a lot of the
things most of the Pink Pussycat dancers did.
I can tell you that this girl was one of the
smartest people I have ever met. Her mind never
took a break. She was a learning machine. Within
two years, she was running the lab.
She was Indonesian, born in Washington,
D.C. while her father was the Ambassador to the
U.S. for Indonesia. She was raised in France
while her father was Ambassador to France.
When it became apparent that the Indonesian
221
dictator, Sukarno, was about to be overthrown,
her family returned to Indonesia just long enough
to load up six DC-10s with gold bricks and head
for Mexico. Of course, I have no idea if that is
true, but that is what I was told. She did not want
her parents' money. She was going to make it on
her own.
Her boyfriend was from Colombia. I
think his father was a general in the Colombian
Army. The boyfriend was a musician who had his
own rock band, called "The Four Skins."
After Box One moved to a larger location
down the street, we had a party every Friday
night. It started out with the staff and a few
friends, but grew into a social event. Capri's
boyfriend's band would play. The studio became
a dance floor and hundreds of people would show
up. Channel Seven "Eyewitness News" even sent
a crew out to film one of our parties. I had no
idea as to why these parties were so popular.
Lyn told me that coke flowed freely at
the parties. I couldn't believe it. I asked her how
she knew and she told me it was offered to her on
numerous occasions. I asked why it was never
offered to me, and Lyn said that everyone was
afraid that if I found out, that would be the end
of the parties. It was.
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I would never try any kind of drugs
because of my experience with cigarettes. I see
young people on the street smoking and I just
want to go up to them and pull the cigarettes out
of their mouths and yell, "Please, do not do this!"
I first started smoking at the age of
twelve. Some friends of mine had formed a club
called "the pack-a-day club." To belong, you not
only had to smoke a pack a day, you had to steal
the pack.
One day, a friend's mother was out at the
store and I was smoking in her living room. I had
not noticed when her car pulled into the drive. I
had no time to put out the cigarette. I put it in my
pocket. His mother waited as long as she could
before saying, "Wayne, you better put that
cigarette out; I think your pants are on fire."
My father always said that if he caught
me smoking, he would break my arms and legs.
In high school, I quit. It wasn't difficult because I
had never inhaled. Why would anyone want to
suck smoke into his or her lungs?
At Alma College, I attended a party at a
frat house. They called it a "Smoker." The
cigarette manufacturers gave out free cigarettes.
I didn't plan to smoke any but I took home three
cartons. Why not? They were free. This time I
223
inhaled. I was hooked within a week and have
been trying to quit ever since.
I would love to sue, but no lawyer would
take the case because I do not want any money, I
just want to quit. Put me on an island for a
month, an island with booze and women but no
cigarettes. Every night, for over forty years, I
have sworn to God that I will never smoke
another cigarette.
Box One's new location was formerly
"The New York Institute of Photography." When
I turned twelve years old, my father gave me a
correspondence course from this school as my
birthday present. The school had moved out and
Box One had leased the third floor of its building.
My new office had been the school president's
office. I only wish that my father had lived to see
this. He would have been proud.
The last few years of my father's life were
very difficult. He had been in poor health for a
long time. He had lost his restaurant and went
from job to job. He could not make ends meet.
When my mother had to get a job, he was
humiliated. He became mean and bitter.
I was not around for most of this; I was
off in New York. My brothers and sister told me
that he became impossible to live with after I left
224
for New York. He was verbally abusive. My
father, like myself, had always been a dreamer.
Even though he had never graduated from high
school, he never doubted his potential. He felt
that greatness was inside him. He followed his
dreams, but was only met by failure and
frustration. As a family, we were always well fed
and clothed and had a nice roof over our heads,
but he began to see himself as a failure. To me,
that is so sad. I know that he was a good man. He
loved his family so much. When his health began
to fail and my mother went to work, it was
humiliating for him. He was in a lot of pain for a
long time.
The last time I saw him, I had Michele
with me. The hospital would not allow her in his
room. He was pushed in a wheelchair to the lobby
of the hospital. He could hardly speak. Michele
sat on his lap and gave him a big hug. He liked
that.
I do not know if an autopsy was done, but
I was told that he died of a blood clot in his lung.
It was during this time, after my father's
death, that my mother was able to spend a lot of
time visiting with us in New York. She took in a
young man as a boarder to fill up some of the
empty space in the family house and to provide a
225
little extra income. He would care for my
mother's dog Bobo when she visited me.
After the dog died, Mom decided to sell
the house and move into a small apartment. On
the day of the sale, I got the call from my sisterin-law Jan. "Mom's in the hospital. She had a
heart attack. She'll be fine, but I just wanted to
let you know." Outside of the arthritis in her
fingers, Mom was in very good health, but she
died later that day.
As a child, I was in such a hurry to grow
up. By the age of six I referred to my parents as
Mother and Father, but as an adult I always
remember them as Mommy and Daddy.
Lyn never knew my father, but was very
close to my mother. We all went to the funeral in
Detroit. I feel very close to my siblings but it
seems the only times we are together are
weddings, funerals, and an occasional Christmas.
We live so far apart.
Lyn never liked living in Brooklyn. She's
a Manhattan person, but the rents were so high
and I did not feel that Manhattan was the best
place to raise a family, especially a family with
three children. Lyn was pregnant again.
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Christopher William Martens was born
May 13, 1976.
The plan was to use a midwife, but Chris
required an emergency Caesarean. I was not
allowed in the operating room and felt that I
missed out on something very important. Lyn's
previous deliveries were comparatively easy. The
Cesarean operation was painful and left a scar.
Come hell or high water, Lyn was determined
that Christopher would be the last of our
children.
A few weeks after Lyn and Christopher
came home from the hospital, Michele was home
on a vacation. We were all going someplace, I
don't remember where, so I went to get the car. It
had a dead battery. I took the battery out of the
car and took it to a nearby station. This all took
less than an hour, but when I returned home to
explain what had happened, no one was there
except Michele. I went out to find Lyn and the
children. I was getting frantic. When I found
Lyn, she was almost catatonic. She was
wandering about the street. She was in shock.
Matthew and Shannon were both crying, but
Christopher was not making a sound. Lyn had
gotten pissed off that I was taking so long and
had gone out to look for me. Michele had been
acting strange and crying. She did not want to
leave the children alone with Michele. She was
227
carrying Christopher in her arms. Lyn was
wearing those God-awful platform shoes that
were popular at the time. She had tripped and
fallen and Christopher landed head first on the
sidewalk.
I ran into the street and stopped a car.
"Please take my wife and baby to the hospital!" I
yelled. He did.
Christopher had a fractured skull. He
was in the hospital for two weeks. Lyn and I took
turns spending the night with him, holding his
tiny hand.
Lyn blamed me for the accident. It was
my fault because I should not have left her and
the children alone with Michele. She withdrew
from me.
One night, when I returned from Box
One, Lyn was unusually quiet. "I don't know if I
should tell you," she said. "Tell me what?" I
asked. "Matthew," she said. "What about
Matthew?" I asked. "I let Matthew go upstairs to
watch a movie at Howard's," she said. Howard
was a young man in his late twenties or early
thirties. He had been our upstairs neighbor for a
long time and had often been our babysitter. "So
what happened at Howard's?" I asked. "I think
228
he molested Matthew." "He what?" "I think
Howard molested Matthew." "Why do you think
that?" "Matthew said that Howard showed him
pictures of men with giant penises. He tried to
put Matthew's penis in his mouth."
I cannot think of many situations in
which murder is justified, but sometimes I think
that I should have gone upstairs and killed
Howard. I would have been let out of prison a
long time ago, but no, I knew that murder was a
sin. I called the police.
Two police officers arrived and Lyn told
them what had happened. They wanted to talk to
Matthew alone. After a few minutes with
Matthew, they dashed upstairs. When Howard
responded to the banging on the door, they
kicked him down the stairs. As they dragged him
to the car, Howard kept screaming, "Lyn, how
can you let them do this to me?"
There was a court hearing to determine if
there was enough evidence for Howard to stand
trial. About ten minutes before our case was
scheduled to go before the judge, a man came up
to me and said that he was the prosecutor.
"What happened here?" he asked. Before we
could tell him what happened, he was called
away. A few moments later someone else came up
and said, "I'm going to be handling this case. Tell
229
me what happened." Before we finished telling
him, he was called away. The clerk announced
our case. As we walked toward the bench, a third
person came up and said, "Can you tell me what
happened? Never mind, I'll figure it out."
The defendant got a high-priced lawyer
and our son got a prosecutor who did not even
know what the charge was.
After I testified, the judge had me
escorted out of the courtroom. He did not want
my presence to influence Matthew's testimony.
Through the little round window in the door, I
could see Matthew sitting on the judge's bench. I
wanted so much to hear what he was saying. I
tried later to get a transcript of the hearing, but it
cost $500 and I could not afford it.
When I was escorted back into the court,
the judge asked to speak with me in his
chambers. He said, "I have no doubt that your
son is telling the truth. No doubt at all. But, he’s
only five years old and New York law does not
allow the testimony of a child under twelve years
old. Without Matthew's testimony, there is no
case. I have no choice but to dismiss the charges."
I am pleased to say that the law
restricting testimony of children younger than
twelve has since been changed.
230
What could we do? How could we live
next to the man who had molested our child?
First we looked in Connecticut so we could be
near Lyn's folks but everything was so expensive
and I was planning to return to teaching at NYIT
in the fall. There is no easy way to get from
Connecticut to Long Island. Perhaps we should
look for a place to live on the Island? Much to my
surprise, Lyn seemed to like that idea. We got a
copy of The Penny Saver, a magazine of classified
ads for Long Island. After a few phone calls, we
all piled in the car and were off to explore. We
drove as far as Northport and then worked our
way west, looking at every house or apartment
that we could find. At the end of the day, in East
Norwich, we found an adorable little Cape Cod
for only $600 per month. This would be a big leap
from our $87 per month in Brooklyn, but it was
cheap compared to everything else we had seen.
We signed a one-year lease with an option for a
second year. Reality was setting in.
231
232
Chapter 11
The lease on our new home on Long
Island did not begin until the fall. Lyn and the
children spent the summer with my sister
Margaret, in Detroit.
While Lyn and the children were in
Michigan, I packed up and made arrangements
to move. Needless to say, my landlord was
ecstatic. Without legal rent control leases, the
building was next to worthless. He had offered it
to me for $45,000. With a vacancy, especially on
the first floor, he could sell the building to a
family to use as their primary residence. To show
his gratitude, he gave me a check for $700. I have
no idea how much he got for the sale of the
building, but in 2000, I saw a notice in The New
York Times real estate section that listed sample
sales in the city. My old apartment was listed. It
sold as a condo for $500,000. Not the building,
just my old apartment.
I packed up everything we owned in
cardboard boxes and then drove to Detroit and
visited for two weeks before coming back with
my family. Everything was timed perfectly. We
would drive back on the new Route 80 which
would knock off several hours from the
Pennsylvania Turnpike route. We would spend
233
the night on the eastern end of Pennsylvania,
arrive in Brooklyn in time to meet the movers at
10am, then off to Long Island. I know it's hard to
believe, but everything went off without a hitch.
Well, almost. This is so embarrassing that it's
hard to talk about. We lived in Brooklyn. I don't
want to imply that everyone in Brooklyn has
roaches, but I would like to point out that it is not
unusual for a household in Brooklyn to have
roaches. Anyway, we had roaches. Not real bad,
but we had them. I had no idea that roaches love
corrugated cardboard boxes. The little grooves
not only make a perfect home, but the glue
provides food. You've heard of roach motels, but
my stacks and stacks of boxes left untouched for
two weeks in the heat of August were more like
Co-op City in the Bronx. Forget Co-op City, this
was more like Miami Beach in the wintertime.
There were millions of them and we had no
choice but to bring them to our new home on the
island. Fortunately, a friend told me how to use
boric acid. It doesn’t kill them. They just pack up
and leave. It worked and we never saw a roach
again.
I became a commuter. It was bad enough
getting up in time to catch the 7:33am train, but
half of the time there would be no seats. The real
fun part of the move came when I had to teach
Lyn how to drive. She's a native New Yorker. She
never had any reason to drive before moving to
234
the Island. We could not afford two cars, so in
addition to needing to drive any place she needed
to go, she would also have to take me to and from
the train station. The kids loved living on the
island and that made both me and Lyn very
happy. Matthew and Shannon got involved in the
PAL (Police Athletic League) track team. They
had quarter-mile races (the 440) for children five
year old and under.
Shannon's first race was an eye opener.
About fifty little kids running. At the gun, one kid
took off like that proverbial bat out of hell. By the
halfway point, she was twenty feet ahead of the
others. "By God, it's Shannon. Lyn, it's
Shannon."
She gave out about forty feet from the
finish line. She just stopped and rested and then
walked across the line. She was last, but that first
400 yards was unbelievable. For a while, I think
Shannon was the fastest sprinter on Long Island
in her age group.
Matthew was our long-distance man. His
crowning glory was winning the twelve years and
under category at the Manhasset five-mile. An
adult friend of mine was in the race. He told me
that he thought he was doing well until this little
kid zipped past him. Years later, in his early
235
twenties, Matthew
Marathon.
ran
the
Long
Island
If you are a parent, you probably know
the feeling I am about to describe. If not, I'm sure
you have heard about it. It's when your child is
missing, and you pray to God they’re all right,
because if they are all right, you’re going to kill
them.
I got back to Long Island from work one
evening and Lyn was a nervous wreck. Matthew
was missing. Shannon told us this story about
how she and Matthew and a friend of theirs had
spent the afternoon with Rich Little, the
impersonator. He was staying at Burt
Bacharach's Inn, which was right behind us. I
called there. "No, Rich Little is not staying here,"
I was told. Shannon said, "But I was in his
room."
Shannon and I went over there, and she
showed me how to sneak in through the back
door. She took me to the room. I knocked on the
door. A woman answered. She said that it was
indeed Rich Little's room and confirmed that
Shannon and Matthew had spent a good part of
the day with Mr. Little. Mr. Little had gone into
the city for the evening. I told her that my son
was missing and she called the hotel
management. They explained that celebrities
236
often stayed there but they did not want people to
know about it. They offered a limo and chauffeur
to go out looking for Matthew. We all started
driving around looking for him. The chauffeur
asked if he might have gone to the St. Rocco
festival down by the beach. I was certain that
Matthew would not go there on his own, but
decided we should check it out.
About two blocks from the festival, I saw
Matthew and his friend walking their bikes along
the side the road. He's eight years old, it's
midnight on a school night, and he's six miles
from home. That is justification to murder your
child, is it not?
Rich Little had nothing to do with
Matthew's little escapade. He had met Matthew
and Shannon in the local deli and enjoyed their
company. They went to his room and played
games together and he entertained them.
Down the road from us was a large dance
club called The Rum Runner. Lyn and I would
sometimes hang out there. I was never much of a
dancer, but guys were always asking Lyn to
dance. It pissed me off a little, but she enjoyed it.
She also enjoyed the fact that it was not just
dancing that the guys were interested in.
237
One of my new employees was from
California and did not know a soul in New York.
Lyn and I asked him out to Long Island for a
weekend. We went to The Rum Runner. Vince
kept looking at all the girls, but he never made a
move. So I told him to pick out the best-looking
girl in the club. He looked them all over and then
pointed. I went over to the girl and said, "My
friend just came in from California. I asked him
to pick out the most beautiful girl in the club and
he picked you. Would you like to meet him?" She
said "Really? He picked me? Which one is he?
Point him out." I did. She said, "Oh, he's cute.
Yes, I would like to meet him." We didn't see
Vince for the rest of the weekend.
Vince's father had been married several
times and had many children. One of Vince's
older brothers was forty years older than Vince.
One day, while Vince was in his late teens, his
father sat him down for a talk. "At your age, you
probably think that the female ass is the most
important thing in life," his father said. "But
when you get to be my age, you will realize that
it's not the most important thing. It's the only
thing."
Our little rental house was behind a
mansion on four acres. Lyn became close friends
with Elizabeth, the woman who lived there.
Elizabeth had just read a new book, Open
238
Marriage. She wanted to experiment with this
concept of screwing people other than your
spouse and then sitting down and talking about it.
The problem was that Elizabeth was not exactly a
raving beauty. She would do things like call a
plumber and say that something was leaking and
she needed emergency service. When the plumber
arrived she would be wearing a see through
nightgown.
When her husband would come home
from his law office, she would then "share" her
experience. Her husband was a very conservative
Wall Street lawyer. He felt uncomfortable when
he was not in a suit and tie. She begged him to
have an affair. She told him it would be so much
fun. They could fuck different people and then
tell each other about it. Otto just wasn't
interested. That is until one night when we all
met at a party.
We had mutual friends who lived in a
large old house in Woodbury, on Long Island.
The founder of The New York Times had built the
house and left it to his daughter who was married
to our friend, Howard. When they were divorced,
all Howard wanted was that house. He remarried
a girl twenty-five years younger than him. They
had no money and the place was deteriorating at
a rapid pace. They had a giant refrigerator that
was always full of beer. People just came by and
239
made themselves at home. They were creative,
intelligent people, and a joy to be with.
At any rate, one night they threw a big
party, the kind of party where people jumped
into the pool with their clothes on, or were just
thrown into the pool.
Otto, the Wall Street lawyer, was a big
Dolly Parton fan. At the party, he met this zaftig
young lady who changed his attitude about life.
He had no interest, however, in sharing this
experience with his wife. Otto quit his job,
experimented with coke, and ultimately became a
country and western disk jockey in Nashville,
Tennessee. So much for "Open Marriage."
Lyn and I didn’t get out to socialize very
often and we had gotten into the habit of having a
vodka tonic, or two, in the evening. We usually
drank Smirnoff vodka. One day, to save a little
money, Lyn bought a bottle of Popov Vodka. I
tasted it and thought it was awful. I made some
comment about buying cheap vodka and put the
bottle into an out-of-the-way cabinet. Then one
evening, we were watching the show 60 Minutes
on TV. They had been running a series on how
many different brands of food and beverages
were made by the same company and packaged
with different labels. There was a clip that
showed the machine that bottled Smirnoff vodka.
240
The same liquid was poured into bottles that
were labeled Smirnoff, Smirnoff Silver, and
Popov. I immediately went and got out the bottle
of Popov and made a vodka tonic. Gee, it tasted
so much better.
One of the reasons for bringing up this
story is that it directly relates to the name we
gave our new cat. One of our new neighbors was
involved with the advertising business and he
worked on the Smirnoff ad campaign. They had
rented a large field near our new home, to shoot a
print ad for Smirnoff. The ad showed a group of
young adults having a lot of fun trying to get a
little kitten out of a tree. The ad read, "Social
climbing Smirnoff style." They had purchased
the cat at a Manhattan pet store and when the
shoot was over, they didn't know what to do with
it. Our neighbor gave it to us. We named it
"Popov." Whenever we told people the story of
how we got the cat, they would look at us and ask,
"If the ad was for Smirnoff, why do you call the
cat Popov?" I would say that it was an inside
joke.
Back at Box One, we had a new employee.
He had been a famous graffiti artist called "Chris
217." There was a movie made about him called
"Turk 182." Chris was determined to turn
around his life and show the world that he could
be a productive citizen.
241
I had saved a supply cabinet that had
belonged to W. Eugene Smith. Gene had written
puns all over it. My favorite was, "The piteous
patter of little feat." The cabinet was something
that I cherished. One morning I came in a little
late, and the cabinet had been scrubbed clean.
Chris 217 had been forced by the police to clean
up a lot of his own graffiti and he thought he was
doing a good deed by cleaning up someone else's.
To me, it was as if Picasso had painted a mural
on my wall and the house painter painted over it.
One evening after work I did some
shopping. On the commute back home, I fell
asleep and missed my stop. When I woke up, I
was in Huntington, the last stop. The train was
empty and my new clothes were gone. This must
never happen again. The only way to deal with
this was to move to Huntington, the end of the
line.
Besides, our landlady in East Norwich
was crazy. Shortly after we moved into the house,
the cesspool backed up and the floors were
flooded with toilet water. I didn't even know what
a cesspool was. When I called her, she not only
said that she would not pay to have the cesspool
drained, but that she would sue me for damages
done to her hardwood floors. She said, "Why
should I fix it? It's your shit."
242
Lyn and I started to look in Huntington. I
decided that we would buy instead of rent. I had
no money, but that had never stopped me before.
The bankruptcy could be a problem but it was
worth a shot.
We found a beautiful four-bedroom home
on a half-acre plot with an inground pool. The
owners were desperate. This was a time of high
interest rates and mortgages were difficult to get.
They had sold their house and bought another,
but their buyers could not get a mortgage and
now they were making payments on both houses.
I told the real estate agent that I had no money,
but that I knew that I could get a mortgage
through my credit union. My membership in
Actors' Equity was about to pay off. The big
problem was the down payment. I would need
$20,000. If the owners would loan me part of the
down payment as an under-the-table second
mortgage, I would ask my brother for the rest.
In those days, the banks did not ask where you
got the down payment money.
When Lyn and I returned home, the
phone was ringing. The owners had accepted my
offer. Now, all I had to do was get the mortgage. I
went to the Credit Union. For a mortgage, the
entire board had to meet, and the decision had to
be unanimous.
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This is not just a credit union; this is a
credit union for actors. Actors are at the very
bottom of the financial scale. It is the job of this
credit union to give credit to people that no bank
in the world would lend to. That was my
reasoning, and all the board members but one
agreed with it. No deal.
Then I heard about Greenpoint Savings
Bank. They had just started what they called a
"no income verification loan." It was designed
for self-employed people such as myself. It had a
higher interest rate. Greenpoint came to the
conclusion that interest rates were going to drop
and real estate values were going to soar. They
felt that this new loan would not only provide
higher interest rates, but even if the mortgage
went into default, they would make money on the
foreclosures. I got a mortgage. I was a
homeowner.
My crazy landlady refused to give back
our security deposit. I sued. We had a meeting
with a judge to try to arrange a pre-trial
settlement. When the landlady arrived the judge
said, "Betty, it's so good to see you. How's
Frank? How are the children?" I asked, "Isn't
the judge supposed to disqualify himself in this
situation?" He said no. This was not a trial. We
were going to reach a settlement. “Here's the
244
settlement,” he said. “Betty, you pay this guy half
of what he wants. You, accept half and we can all
go home.”
I needed the money, so I said, "I'll take
half if I get it now. I don't want to wait." Betty
wrote a check and we all went home.
Betty stopped payment on the check. I
sued again. This time it almost went to trial. Fate
had it that while waiting in the courtroom, I was
sitting next to the lawyer who was representing
my landlady. He was thumbing through his file
and I saw photos of damage that was done before
I moved into the house. I leaned over and said to
the lawyer, "If you are planning to use those
photographs in this case, I would like to spare
you some humiliation. My field is photography
and I can offer a chemical analysis that will prove
that those photos were printed before I moved
into the house." He got up and walked over to
talk to Betty. They talked for a long time and he
seemed to be getting angry. He then came back
with a check for the full amount. He assured me
that it would not bounce this time.
245
246
Chapter 12
The train from Huntington left a little
earlier, but I always got a seat and the train was
usually waiting. I didn't have to stand on a
freezing platform. There was, however, one
problem. Matthew and Shannon had grown very
attached to their PAL track team. Huntington, a
much larger township, didn’t have a track team.
When I suggested to Lyn that we form our own
track team, she thought I was nuts. I sat down at
the typewriter and wrote a press release about a
children's track team being organized in
Huntington and sent it to the Long Island
newspaper, Newsday. We needed to set up a
meeting place, and once again I turned to the
church. The local Presbyterian church offered its
facilities for an organizational meeting. Newsday
printed the press release and about eighty people
showed up at the church for the meeting,
including parents and members of other racing
associations that wanted to help. We formed a
team and called it "The Huntington Flash." Box
One donated T-shirts and I wanted the name to
have some relationship to photography. We had
sixteen members ranging from six to twelve years
old. Lyn became the team manager; she
organized and communicated. We participated in
events held all over Long Island. We did this to
make our kids happy, but made a lot of other
247
kids happy in the process. Within a few years, the
team became so popular that it was dominating
Lyn's free time. She wanted out and we turned
the team over to the local YMCA.
While Lyn was running the track team, I
was traveling back and forth between New York
and Huntington. People who commute every day
on the same train, in the same car, often develop
close relationships, especially in the bar car. To
this day, some of my closest friends are people
who I met on the train. What makes this
interesting is that they were all ultraconservatives. I was their token liberal.
On the first of each month there was a
mad scramble to get monthly commuter tickets.
In order to ease the congestion, the railroad put
in automated machines to dispense monthly
tickets billed to credit cards. The first time I used
one, I had difficulty finding the slot where the
ticket came out. When I figured it out and went
to take out my ticket, there were eight other
tickets in addition to mine. The name on all the
other tickets was the same, a Chinese name. I
could just picture the frustration of this man,
probably late for a train, trying over and over
again to get a ticket out of the machine and then
dashing to the train without a ticket. To add salt
to the wound, he was billed $1120 on his charge
card. I called information and his number was
248
listed, but he spoke no English. I called the
Chinese consulate, but they were of no help. I
called a train buddy who was a buyer in the
Orient. He managed to get the tickets back to the
owner and he was able to get a refund on the
extra tickets.
The train’s bar car often had
entertainment. One rider did Al Jolson
imitations. It turned out that he was a singing
waiter. Another man, in a green suit, would stand
up and shout, "Ladies and gentlemen, it's show
time." He would then proceed to tell jokes and
sing songs. I always wondered: Did he wear the
same suit every day or did he have a closet filled
with green suits?
As citizens of the United States, we are
proud of our capitalist system. The fact that the
majority of us don’t have any capital with which
to participate is often overshadowed by the fact
that, as overwhelming as the odds may be, there
is a chance that a poor working slob can beat the
system and become rich. Box One seemed to be
on such a path. It started with no money and no
clients. The odds did indeed seem to be
overwhelming. I recall reading a story in the
business section of The New York Times about
two young men who invented the folding baby
stroller. In the article, the young entrepreneurs
made reference to starting their business without
249
any money, only about three hundred thousand
dollars. I thought to myself, "These guys have no
concept of what having no money means." My
favorite on this subject was an interview in
Playboy Magazine with John Paul Getty. He said
that he started with no money. He took the
measly sixteen million he inherited from his
father and turned it into a fortune.
Box One never had a salesperson. We
grew from word of mouth. We placed flyers and
posters on trees and lampposts. At this time, we
had a number of clients in the field of dance,
including Dance Magazine, The Joffrey Ballet
and the Twyla Tharp Company. Dance
photography is very difficult because of the
extreme differences between highlights and
shadows that result from the spotlights that are
often placed on the dancers. The placement of the
feet and hands of a dancer was critical, but would
often be lost in the shadows. I had concocted a
special developing formula, which would keep
detail in the shadows. This helped Box One gain a
great deal of popularity in the world of dance.
This popularity came to an abrupt halt when a
false story of a Box One screw-up circulated
throughout New York.
One of the leading dance photographers
in New York, who will remain nameless, called
me after he received his film back from
250
processing at Box One. He explained that this
recent shoot was of a once-in-a-lifetime dance
concert and was incredibly important. The
problem was that he fucked it up royally. He said
that this could be the end of his career, and then
he said, "Please forgive me, but I am going to tell
my client that Box One fucked up the film in the
processing." What could I say? That I would tell
everyone the truth and ruin his career? Box One
was growing at a rapid pace. We would survive.
We did lose at least one client as the result
of a screw-up. I had been trying for years to get
American Airlines as a client. Once a month I
would write a note or make a phone call to Bob
Takas, the AA head photographer. Much to my
surprise, one day he called me and said, "Let's
have lunch." At lunch, he explained that he was
losing confidence in the lab he had been using. He
said, "I don't know when it will happen, but
sometime in the future I'll give you a try."
It was several months later that he called.
I was in Detroit for my mother's funeral. The lab
manager called me and said, "We got a call from
Bob Takas at American Airlines. He sent ten
negatives and wants 8x10 prints delivered to the
Americana Hotel by 2pm." I said, "Make sure
that they are beautiful prints and keep me
posted." The lab manager called back a few
hours later with the devastating news. The job
251
was done on time and delivered to a suite at the
Americana. A press conference was in progress.
As our messenger entered the room, Mr. Takas
said, "The photographs have just arrived. I'll
pass out a set of them to each of you." He then
opened the envelope and the egg began to drip
down his face. On his order, he had written, "10
negs, 10 8x10 @." He had wanted ten prints each
of the ten photos. One set for each member of the
press at the conference. We had only printed one
of each. He was very angry. We never did a job
for American Airlines again.
We had made an inroad in the publishing
field. While still in Brooklyn, an art director from
Lebhar-Friedman had seen one of our posters on
a tree. He tried us out of convenience. He lived
down the street. But soon, we were doing all the
work for Lebhar-Friedman, as well as Ziff-Davis
and Harcourt, Brace, Javonavitch, two other
publishing giants. I received a letter from the
editor of Popular Photography Magazine. He was
interested in our services and wanted more info
on me and the lab. I sent him a long, detailed
letter. He sent it back to me with blue pencil
marks all over it pointing out all the misspelled
words. Some things never change.
Box
One
worked
with Popular
Photography for many years. Many of their staff
went back to the days of my youth when I read
252
the magazine religiously. It was wonderful to
work with people whom I admired so much.
Box One also did a lot of jobbing work.
Work that other labs didn’t want or considered
unprofitable, they sent to Box One. Duggal and
Stewart, two of the city's larger custom labs, were
steady clients. One day I received a job from
Stewart for a black and white negative and print
to be made of a 4x5 color transparency. The
client was CTW, the Children's Television
Workshop. The photo was of the cast of Sesame
Street. I thought this strange because CTW was
one of our better clients. Why would they be
sending work to Stewart Labs? I showed the job
to Capri and she said that we had been doing a
lot of conversion negs from Stewart Labs with
Sesame Street characters in the photos. I called
our contact at CTW and asked why she had been
sending conversion negs to Stewart. I pointed out
that Stewart charged $15 per conversion neg and
Box One only charged $8. She explained that she
had sent a transparency to Box One and one to
Stewart, and that Stewart's neg was vastly
superior. I asked her if both labs were sent the
same transparency. She said, "no." "That
explains it," I said. "You were comparing apples
and oranges." I then told her that Box One did
all of Stewart's conversion negs, so the sample
that she sent to Stewart, which she thought was
so superior, was actually done by Box One. She
253
was a bit stunned, but from that time on, Box
One got all of CTW's work.
Another client that sent us work through
Stewart was Madison Square Garden. Stewart's
lab was way uptown and Madison Square
Garden was less than a block away from Box
One. One day, Ramón Stewart, the owner, called
me and said, “It's a pain in the ass to send a
messenger downtown to Madison Square Garden
to pick up work, and then bring it all the way
uptown to Stewart only to send it back downtown
to Box One. Then you return it uptown, only to
have us put the work in a Stewart envelope and
send it back downtown to Madison Square
Garden. Why don't we give you a bunch of
Stewart envelopes and then your messenger can
pick up the work and say he’s from Stewart?
You can put the finished work in a Stewart
envelope and return it to the Garden.” That
made sense to me, so I said OK.
This worked out fine for a long time, but
Capri apparently, on more than one occasion,
sent the work to MSG in a Box One envelope.
One day, I was buzzed on the intercom in my
office. "There's a George Kalinsky here to see
you." George was the head photographer for
Madison Square Garden. I went to the door,
introduced myself and asked him in. He said that
he was a bit confused. He had been sending work
254
to Stewart Labs, but it often came back in Box
One envelopes. Was Box One doing the work? I
told him yes. He said, “I've looked over your
price list and your prices are quite a bit lower
than Stewart's.” I said, “Yes they are.” He said,
“Is there any reason why I can't just send the
work directly to you?” He was very surprised
when I said there was a reason. I explained that
Box One did a lot of work for other labs and we
would not continue to get that work if other labs
feared that we would try to steal their clients.
George was disappointed but understood the
ethics of the situation. Fortunately for George,
but unfortunately for Box One, Stewart Labs
went belly up, owing Box One a lot of money.
Madison Square Garden became another of Box
One's longtime clients.
There are many things in life that I don’t
understand. I don’t understand why anyone
would buy a Gucci bag or a Rolex watch. For a
long time, retailers in New York were selling
"Gucci toilet paper" for $10 per roll. It had a big
"G" on each square. It was taken off the market
when it was discovered that it was counterfeit.
Counterfeit toilet paper? Another thing that I
don’t understand is the success of the other large
lab Box One did jobbing work for, Duggal Color
Projects. At Box One I had always tried to keep
the prices competitive. I naively thought a lower
price would be an inducement to new clients.
255
Baldev Duggal, the founder and owner of Duggal,
the most successful lab in New York history, had
just the opposite approach. If the service is not
selling, raise the price. I don't know why Mr.
Duggal went into the photo lab business. Most
people go into a business because they feel that
they have a talent and or knowledge of the service
to be performed. Mr. Duggal, to the best of my
knowledge, had no understanding of the
photographic process at all. I refer to him as Mr.
Duggal because he was insulted if anyone refered
to him by his first name. Even his brother called
him Mr. Duggal. Box One did all of Duggal's
black and white work. We would charge him $6
for a process and proof of a roll of film and he
would mark it up to $16 for his clients. I do
believe that the quality of work done by Box One
helped Duggal establish its reputation for quality,
and yet, when Box One raised its price from $6 to
$8, our clients yelled and screamed while
Duggal's clients stood in line to pay $16. Duggal's
mark-up averaged about 150 percent over Box
One's prices and yet Mr. Duggal was always
demanding lower prices from Box One. It was a
glorious day when I could afford to tell Duggal to
find another lab to do his work. The goal of doing
business, however, is to make money and one
cannot help but respect a man who was as
successful as Mr. Duggal.
256
Box One opened a second location. It was
located near Duggal. I called it Box One Two. I
put an ad in the trade magazine, Photo District
News. The ad had a picture of a girl in boxing
trunks, wearing boxing gloves, with a towel
around her neck which covered her breasts. The
caption read, "Box One delivers the One-Two
Punch." It went on to compare Box One's prices
with Duggal's. Mr. Duggal called me. He was
very angry. You must understand that unlike the
typical hard-driving businessman, this man was
very laid-back. His office didn’t even have a desk,
let alone a file cabinet. There was not a paper or
a pen. You had the feeling that he sat in his office
and meditated. So, for him to be angry was rare.
He told me that he was highly offended to have
his name on the same page as a nearly naked
woman. He asked me to not run the ad again. I
thought that he was seriously offended, and I
promised not to run the ad again.
Duggal had never previously advertised
in the Photo District News, but the next month he
had fourteen full pages of advertising. He has had
the back cover of the magazine ever since and
many of the ads have featured naked women. I
think I should have gotten a sales commission
from the Photo District News.
Box
One,
previously
a
sole
proprietorship, was incorporated in 1979. Many
257
lawyers and accountants advise new small
business owners to incorporate, but I never
agreed with that concept. The advantage of being
incorporated is to avoid personal responsibility
for the debts of the company. Unfortunately, this
advantage is negated because financial
institutions never issue credit to new corporations
without personal guarantees. To me, it only
makes sense to incorporate after the business is
making more money than is needed by the owner
for personal income.
One of the first problems that I
encountered after being incorporated was
collecting bad debts. Photographers are notorious
deadbeats. All aspects of the photography
business are very competitive and a lab will often
extend credit under dubious circumstances.
When I had to resort to litigation to collect bad
debts, I would save a lot of money by doing it
"pro se," without an attorney. Once, after
returning from the courthouse, I received a call
from another lab. One of my clients had used me
for a credit reference and the other lab was
calling to verify this client’s credit history. It was
the very same client from whom I had just
received a $3000 judgment for non-payment. This
guy had just lost to me in court and yet, he uses
me as a credit reference. I rolled on the floor
laughing.
258
As a corporation, I could no longer sue
without hiring an attorney. Considering that
most New York lawyers would not give you the
time of day for less than $2000, this made the
collection of debts under $2000 nearly impossible.
As the president of the corporation, I sold Box
One's delinquent accounts receivable to Wayne
Martens, the individual. That way I, as an
individual, could sue Box One's clients who failed
to pay their bills. The Civil Court of the City of
New York refused to accept the transfer of these
accounts into my personal name and so I sued the
Civil Court of the City of New York. Truth is
indeed stranger than fiction. I won.
A huge debt that I never collected was
from one of the many bogus "modeling agencies"
in the New York area. These companies place ads
in newspapers for models. When people answer
the ad, they are told they have a great potential
for success in the modeling industry, but first
they need a portfolio. They are then conned into
signing a contract for a modeling portfolio. The
photos are done on an assembly line basis. Take a
picture, change the outfit, take another picture,
change the outfit, smile, look sad, show attitude,
pay $500, and never hear from the agency again.
One of these questionable agencies
promised Box One thousands of dollars of print
work. It sounded too good to turn down. All work
259
was to be C.O.D. The first order was paid by
credit card. The second order was paid by credit
card. The third order was humongous.
A
complete portfolio of 11x14 prints for about 300
aspiring models. The day this large job was
completed was the same day that I was notified
by the credit card company that the modeling
agency owner claimed the signature on his
charges was forged. When an employee tried to
pick up the new work, I refused to give them the
work without cash payment. When notified of my
cash only decision, the owner insisted that there
must be a mistake, but the work was never
picked up. Months later, I read an article in the
paper about this agency and how it had scammed
a lot of unsuspecting prospective models. I called
the newspaper and told the reporter of my
experience with the agency. I said that I had
about 3000 photographic prints of these young
people who had paid the agency for portfolios
and never got them. I offered to give the photos to
the models free of charge. The pictures were of
no value to me and giving them to the models
made a lot of people happy.
I, on the other hand, was not very happy.
I needed a little fun in my life. Our home in
Huntington was near the Sound and I decided to
buy a boat. The whole family went to a dealer in
Port Jefferson and looked at some speedboats.
On the way back, we all discussed the pros and
260
cons and decided to buy a little "bow rider."
When I called the salesman, he told me that for
the next week he would be at a boat show in
Hicksville. Hicksville was much closer to us than
Port Jefferson. He suggested that we come out to
the show and sign the contracts for the boat. That
was a big mistake.
Matthew, Shannon and I went to the
show. We wanted to look around before going to
sign the papers. The kids ran off on their own. I
was walking around and I saw this cabin cruiser.
It was beautiful. I went aboard. Wow. It slept six.
It had a galley and head.
I went up to the salesman and said, "I'd
like to buy that boat." He looked at me and said,
"Yeah, sure," and walked away. I tried again,
and again he ignored me. So I went to another
salesman and we drew up a contract. The first
salesman couldn't believe it. "I thought you were
joking," he said.
I went and found Matthew and Shannon
and showed them the boat. They loved it, but they
also could not believe that I bought it. If you
know anyone who has owned a boat, you know
the old saying that the happiest two days in a
boat owner's life are the day he bought his boat
and the day he sold his boat. How true. How true.
261
Lyn's father's health was beginning to
deteriorate. His long daily commute from
Connecticut was getting more and more difficult.
The Walshs decided to return to New York City.
They found a small one-bedroom apartment on
the upper west side. They both loved New York
so much; I never really understood why they
moved to Connecticut in the first place.
Lyn's younger sister, Claire, left her
husband, John. He hit her and she said, "One
strike and you're out." It took a lot of guts but
she knew that she couldn’t live with a man who
would even think of hitting his wife. Claire and
John had been very close to Lyn and me. John
was not a bad man. He was a classic case of
someone taught from childhood to reach for the
stars. When he discovered that there was no way
he could come close to reaching his goals, his ego
was crushed; he couldn’t deal with the failure.
They had been living in New Haven,
Connecticut with their two children. Elizabeth
was just a baby. She and Claire moved in with
her folks in their new, small, Manhattan
apartment. Her son Gabriel was close to
Matthew’s age. He moved in with my family on
Long Island. Gabe was the most polite young
man I have ever known. When served a food he
didn’t recognize or didn’t want to try, he would
pretend to taste it and then say, "Oh, this is good.
262
I really like it. I just don't care for any right
now."
Unfortunately, Dr. Walsh’s health
continued to deteriorate. He had always worked
so hard and put in such long hours. I could never
understand how or why the family had no savings
or reserve of any kind. He had a private practice
as a dermatologist and was on staff at several
hospitals and clinics but, if he was unable to
work, there was no way they could afford to stay
in New York City. Mom Walsh had an aunt who
was once wealthy, Aunt Marion. She had fallen
on hard times but owned a large old house in
Genoa, New York, just far enough away from
Ithaca to have missed out on the real estate boom
that was going on in the area. The house was
empty and so the Walshs moved in, along with
Claire and her children.
Shortly after the Walshs moved to Genoa,
Michele's school in Liberty closed. She was
transferred to The Upstate School for Children in
Oneonta, New York. It was a lovely building and
the staff seemed well-qualified. They even had an
indoor swimming pool. Michele would have her
own room. On the surface, this place was head
and shoulders above the Beaumont School in
Liberty.
263
Michele had been at the new school about
two months when we decided to go visit Lyn's
folks in Genoa. Michele's school was only about
60 miles from Genoa, so I planned to go and see
her.
As soon as Michele saw me, she ran to me
and began pulling at me. She wanted to go home.
I couldn't take her home. What could I do? There
was a big rainstorm. We couldn't even go outside.
She began to scream and pull out her hair. She
started to bang her head against the wall. Two
big men came out of nowhere and grabbed her
and pulled her out of the room. I returned in the
rain to Lyn's folks' home. I was not crying. I was
screaming. I could not bear the pain. When I
returned, I went directly to bed. Lyn never even
came up to see me or ask what had happened.
Each time that I went to Oneonta, it got
worse. Each time Michele and I went for a drive,
she hoped that we were going home. When we
would return, the same two bruisers, who had
dragged her out of the room before, would come
out and pry Michele's fingers loose from
whatever she had grabbed on to, and carry her
kicking and screaming back to the school.
She had no hair left and had to wear a
helmet to protect her head. Her face was
contorted and disfigured. I found out later that
264
they were giving her massive amounts of
Thorazine, the same drug they use to calm
horses. As often as I could, I would bring
Matthew and/or Shannon with me on these trips
to visit Michele. Their company helped ease the
pain.
Mom and Dad Walsh were not doing well
in Genoa. This house had been in the family for
ages but no one took care of it; it was falling
apart. There were massive holes in the roof.
Upstate winters can be brutal and Claire felt that
the folks could not survive a second winter in that
house. Claire had a good job in the area and
wanted to stay, but she asked me if there was
anything I could do to help the folks. No one else
in the family had any money and so it was up to
me to do something.
Greenpoint Savings Bank had been right.
Real estate prices on Long Island had soared. In
the few years that we owned our house it had
more than doubled in value. My under-the-table
second mortgage had been paid off so I took a
new second mortgage and used the money for the
down payment on a lovely little house in
Centerport. Adorable may be a better choice of
words. It was a very old two-bedroom house on a
property that was split into three levels. The
previous owner was an architect. He had
completely rebuilt the house.
265
We all knew that the Walshs would not
accept anything that hinted of charity. I came up
with this idea: I would say that I had bought the
house as an investment. It was important to have
someone live in it that I could trust to protect my
investment. It's doubtful that they believed that,
but they moved in. The rent was to be $300 per
month. The mortgage payments were $800 for
the new house and $400 per month on the second
mortgage on my house that I used for the down
payment. It doesn't take a genius to figure out
that I didn’t do this for financial gain. To make
matters worse, I never collected the $300 per
month rent. I thought that they were not paying
it and I was not about to say anything. As it
turned out, Lyn's mother had given the money to
Lyn each and every month. Lyn kept it and never
said a word to me about it. When I found this out,
I set up a savings account for each of the kids and
asked Mrs. Walsh to deposit $100 a month into
each account. That worked out very well.
A few years later, Aunt Marion passed
away. She was a fascinating woman. She had
owned a large farm equipment company in
upstate New York that had fallen on hard times.
She still had an estate of modest size. Lyn's
mother was the sole benefactor but, much to my
surprise, I was named as the executor. Aunt
Marion trusted that, as a businessman, I would
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make sensible investments and see to it that the
estate grew rather than dissipated.
Lyn's brother Bill was a working actor
and singer. He had worked in Cats on Broadway.
He had married into a family of considerable
wealth. His wife was a bit domineering and did
not trust my investment abilities. It was true that
I had never invested in anything in my life with
the exception of my own business and two houses.
Laura, Bill's wife, brought in a financial
advisor. She had no authority to do so, but Lyn's
mother thought it was a good idea. Everyone in
the family wanted their mother to be able to do
anything she wanted with the money. This really
put me on the spot. The only reason Aunt Marion
named me as the executor was to prevent Lyn's
mother from having control of the money. If I did
my job as executor, I would offend everyone in
the family. "Just let my mother do whatever she
wants with the money," Lyn told me.
Well, a financial advisor was helping her.
It couldn't be all that bad. I had wanted to put
the money in real estate. The advisor said, "No.
Real estate has peaked. It can only go down." So
I stepped aside and let the advisor call the shots.
During the next two years, Long Island real
estate values doubled and the financial planner’s
investments depreciated by 25 percent.
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My business was doing well, but our
overhead was so high that we had no money. At
this point I was paying over $6000 per month for
the business' rent and three mortgages. Instead of
receiving a rental income from the Centerport
property, I had lost about $30,000 in potential
income by providing Lyn's parents with a place
to live.
I needed money to invest in new
equipment for Box One. I had a chance to buy a
brand new Royal Print Processor for less than
half price. This was a black and white paper
processor. We had one, but it was getting old. A
new one would cost $24,000. This one was still in
its original crate for $10,000. I asked Lyn's
mother for a loan of $10,000 at an interest rate of
12 percent, with a mortgage on the house they
were living in as collateral. She said, "No." This
stunned me. How could she say no after all I had
done for her? I was not asking that she pay back
any of the $30,000 that I had spent on her behalf.
I was asking for a secured loan with interest. I
asked that she reconsider. She did, and
reluctantly loaned me the $10,000, but she told all
of her children, including my wife, that even
though she loaned me the money, she really
didn’t want to do it. So everyone in the family,
including my wife, was suspicious now of my
motives.
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I continued to rent the house to Mom and
Dad Walsh at a substantially lower than market
rate rental and I was paying them a good interest
on their loan to me. Yet, I seemed to be the bad
guy? Go figure.
Unfortunately, the Walshs were very
isolated on Long Island. They had no friends and
Lyn and I were working most of the time. Dr.
Walsh’s health had continued to decline and Mrs.
Walsh decided to move to Ithaca. There was a
nursing home in Ithaca that would take Dr.
Walsh as a residential patient on his veteran's
pension. Mrs. Walsh grew up in the Ithaca area
and still had friends there. She decided to
liquidate her inheritance and give the money to
her children. I advised against this, but once
again all her children said, "For Christ's sake, let
her do what she wants."
Dr. Walsh could not receive the
government assistance they needed because their
financial holdings were too large. That was the
motivation for giving the money to the children. I
tried desperately to point out that home
ownership would not be included in the
government's calculations. She could liquidate
her assets and invest in a house or condo. This
way she would get the government assistance for
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the nursing home and have no rent to pay, only
real estate taxes, which are low in that area. She
would have the investment in her home as
security, and the value of the home would almost
certainly increase as time went by. She would
always have the option, in an emergency, of
getting a home equity loan. No one wanted to
hear it. I was told to mind my own business.
That really hurt. I only wanted what I
thought would be best for Lyn's parents. All of
this must have been a massive error in
communication. I considered the Walsh family to
be my own family. I loved and respected them all.
They were good, intelligent, creative people. I
don't believe, to this day, that anyone in the
family realizes that I spent and ultimately lost a
lot of money on their behalf. I don’t understand
why they were so outraged by my request for the
loan and understand even less why they seemed
to resent my financial advice.
When the estate was liquidated and given
to the children, the $10,000 second mortgage on
the Centerport house was transferred to Lyn's
name and given to her as part of her inheritance.
This really pissed her off. To Lyn, anything that I
earned was "family" money; anything that she
earned was "her" money. This money was from
her mother, and so it was "her" money, and she
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did not want her money tied up in a mortgage.
Lyn didn’t have much understanding of financial
matters, but she was certain that I had done
something to prevent her from getting all of her
inheritance. She was out for revenge and she
knew how to hurt me. She no longer laughed at
my jokes.
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272
Chapter 13
It was 1978. Small computers were just
coming on to the market. Radio Shack and Texas
Instruments both offered computers for under
$500. I knew nothing about computers but was
interested in getting one for the business. I
discussed this with a computer programmer
friend from the train. He said, "No, they are way
too small. They're just toys." He knew of a new,
more sophisticated, small computer made by
Ohio Scientific. It cost about $3,000, but would
save the business a lot of time and aggravation.
His experience was all on main frames. He
recognized that small computers were going to be
a hot item. He wanted to get experience on one.
He said that if I bought it, he would write all the
software I needed. I didn't know what software
was, but it sounded like a good idea.
After being on a waiting list for three
months, my friend called me and said, "I've
canceled the order at Ohio Scientific. Radio
Shack has a new computer called the Model II.
It's head and shoulders above everything else on
the market." "Radio Shack?" I asked. "I thought
you said they were toys." "Trust me," he said.
Now I was on the waiting list at Radio
Shack. By the time the computer arrived, my
273
friend had divorced his wife, quit his job and
moved to New Jersey. I had put $3600 into a
computer that I had no idea what to do with. I
still didn’t know what software was, but was told
that there would not be any available for the
Model II for at least a year.
I decided to take a self-taught crash
course in computer science. The first thing I
learned was that my computer was worthless
without a disk storage system and a printer;
another $7000. This was big bucks. I would have
to learn how to make this computer work for me,
or die trying.
I studied "Basic." X=X+1, For Z = 1 to
EOF(2), If, Then, Else. I've always been awful at
math, but once I realized that computers run on
logic, not math, I had it made. Computers are
dumb. They only know what the programmer
teaches them; they only do as they are told. Now I
knew what software was. Software was the
master. Software told the computer what to do,
how to do it, and when to do it. I began writing
my own software. My accounting package was
finished four months before Radio Shack's
version came onto the market. I liked mine a lot
better.
Both The New York Post and the trade
magazine Photographic Processing wrote articles
274
on my "Do it yourself" software. The article in
The Post had a photo of me, my computer, and
two lovely young ladies in bathing suits. The New
York Post always had a marked propensity
toward bathing beauties.
I would continue writing and upgrading
my software for almost twenty years. I sold my
software to a company called Symplex. They
specialized in equipment for custom labs. My
software was called "Data /Lab."
There was a big photo convention in
Miami, Florida, put on by the Photographic
Marketing Association, the PMA show. Symplex
paid me to present my software at the show. The
whole family went. We stopped in Orlando at
Disney World.
When we all got to the motel in Miami,
the first thing the kids did was jump in the pool.
The following day, Shannon and Christopher
both came down with the measles. The motel
manager had a fit over Shan and Chris being in
the pool and asked us to move to another motel.
They drained and cleaned the pool.
This was an omen of what was to come at
the convention. My software ran on the Radio
Shack Model II. Radio Shack had agreed to
supply me with computers and the equipment
275
that I needed. The computers did not arrive until
the last day of the show and then it turned out
they had not sent the necessary cables.
I spent a lot of time at the show looking at
other exhibits. To close the convention, there was
a big party. Lyn and I got a babysitter and went
to it. Lyn likes to go off on her own at parties.
When she returned, she had made three friends.
She introduced them to me: A man and his wife,
and another man with a thick German accent.
You could see the look of disappointment on the
German man's face when she introduced me as
her husband. We all left the party and continued
drinking at a Miami bar. We had not talked shop
and I had no idea who they were or what they
did. Toward the end of the evening, one of them
asked me, "Did you see anything at the show that
you wanted to buy?" I said that I would love to
get an Ektachrome processor for my lab, but they
were all way out of my price range. It was then
that I learned that the German man was one of
Germany's foremost photographic equipment
manufacturers. The other man was his U.S.
distributor. He said that they needed to break
into the New York market. They would loan Box
One a processor if we would let them use it as a
demo in New York. What seemed to be a total
waste for "Data/Lab" turned into a good deal for
Box One.
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When the hard drive was invented, I
bought two of them. They weighed about 45
pounds each and held a whopping eight megs of
data.
Box One upgraded its computers to
Tandy Model 6000s. These operated on Unix and
were the first small computers that could be
networked. I had to rewrite all of my software.
By far, Box One had the most sophisticated
computer system of any photo lab in the country.
Tandy stopped making the Model 6000, and as
new hardware came on the market, none of it was
compatible. I had no choice but to switch to the
IBM PC clones, which required all of my
software to be rewritten again. By this time, I was
sick of learning new systems and new ways of
programming. I knew that it would be a neverending process; I would always need to learn a
new system and rewrite my programs. I decided
to use the last version of my programs even after
my computers were considered to be antiques.
Today, when I need a program, I buy it, just like
everyone else.
I studied computers only to learn how to
get the computer to do what I wanted it to do. I
have no doubt that, if I had taken a class in
computer science, I would have flunked it or
dropped out.
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There was an article in The New York
Times about an old friend of mine from Detroit.
If you haven't noticed, most of my old friends are
from Detroit. The article said that he was doing
very well and living in New York. I decided to
look him up. I had to do a bit of research, but I
got his office number and gave him a call. His
secretary was very nice. I explained to her that I
was an old friend from Detroit. She said, "I'm
sure that Ivan would love to talk to you, but he's
in kind of a jam right now and I really don't
think that he's going to be able to call you back."
The next day the headlines read: "Ivan
Boesky Indicted for Fraud." She was right; he
didn't call me back. For readers who are too
young to remember Ivan Boesky, he was
arrested, found guilty of insider trading, and
sentenced to three and one half years in prison
and fined $100 Million.
Ivan went to Wayne University and had
done a bit of acting. He was the manager of his
parents’ bar, The Brass Rail, the longest bar in
Michigan. It was around the corner from The
Vanguard Playhouse, and I used to hang out
there. Ivan showed me his file on rich young
women. He was determined to marry someone
filthy rich. He even offered to get me in on the
action by fixing me up with some of his rejects.
He kept a file on every rich girl in the Northeast.
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It contained financial data, personal interests,
family tree, things like that. Maybe I should have
listened to him.
The Brass Rail was a bar and restaurant
upstairs and a strip joint downstairs. At that time
almost every bar in Detroit had a strip show. One
night while sitting at a booth, I saw a young
woman walking down the aisle. This is why I
mentioned that The Brass Rail had the longest
bar in Michigan. I got to take a good look as she
was coming my way. I was all prepared to turn
my head so that I could watch her as she passed
by, but she stopped in front of me and I found
myself staring at her on an eye-to-crotch level.
"Are you Wayne?" she asked. "Yes," I
said. "Hi, I'm Bambi. Ivan thought that you and I
had a lot in common, and thought that maybe
you would like to take me out after my show." I
don't care what anyone says. Ivan Boesky will
always be a great humanitarian in my book.
One night, at a different bar, in a
different life, I was crying in my beer. I was at the
Canterbury Ales in Huntington, Long Island. I
was feeling sorry for myself because Michele
needed me so much and there was nothing I could
do. A man sitting next to me inquired about my
sadness. I told him about Michele. He said that he
knew someone who could help. I had heard that
279
one so many times. He asked for my phone
number, but I was certain that nothing would
come of it.
Michele had become so self-destructive
that she had to be transferred to another school.
This one was in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Soon
Michele would be twenty-one and state financial
aid would end. What would I do? The courts had
forced most of the state institutions to close, and
placement had to be found for all of the
institutions' “clients”. There was no place for
them to go. The state was financing small homes
and group home living for the handicapped, but
local residents were burning them down as fast as
they could be built. No one wanted “retarded”
people in their neighborhoods.
Six years after my night of self-pity at the
Canterbury Ales, I received a phone call. "You
don't know me," he said, "but years ago I made a
promise to a friend of mine. I promised him that I
would find a good place for your daughter,
Michele. I have the funds to open a group home
in Manorville, New York on Long Island. All the
openings but one must be filled from the state
institutions. I saved that one spot for Michele."
The man on the phone was Walter
Stockton. He headed an organization called
Independent Group Home Living, IGHL. I had
280
never heard of him or IGHL. He made reference
to a friend of his. I don’t remember his name, but
he was a psychology professor at the University
of Long Island, C.W. Post. This professor had
called Stockton six years previously and told him
of my dilemma. He referred to me as a friend; he
did not mention that we had only met once, at a
bar. Stockton was moved by my story and
remembered it all those years later.
This was a lifetime placement in a
beautiful home in the woods not far from where I
lived. Michele could come home for weekends.
The law required Michele to be interviewed
before formal acceptance to the school. I drove
up to Pittsfield and picked her up. At the
interview, one of the teachers dropped a piece of
paper on the floor. I was proud of Michele when
she got up from her chair, picked up the paper
and returned it to the teacher. It's such a small
thing, but it reinforced my feelings that Michele
was not an idiot; there was some reason why she
was the way she was. There was a wonderful
human being inside her that, for some unknown
reason, could not get out.
The bottom line is that after twenty years
of writing and calling and pleading for help, it
finally came as the result of getting drunk and
sharing my tears with a stranger at the bar.
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Lynne was not overjoyed at the prospect
of Michele coming home more often. Lyn was
now spelling her name Lynne. I do not know if
there was really any significance in the change of
the spelling of her name. I checked her birth
certificate and it read Lynn. For some reason, I
felt that this change symbolized the end of our
relationship. Maybe Lyn loved me but Lynne did
not. By this time, I had told her that I loved her
so many times that the words had taken on a new
meaning. My love for her seemed to represent all
that was wrong in her life. She hated to hear
those words.
Lynne was, by now, well known on the
Island as a dance teacher. She had her own
friends and her own life. She returned to school
and received her bachelor's degree at C.W. Post.
She loved our children and was an excellent
mother, but she saw me as the enemy.
She began to tell me to find someone else.
"Don't make me feel guilty for not loving you,"
she would tell me. "Go out and have an affair;
just don't tell me about it." She even talked about
"fixing me up" with someone.
It's one thing to feel lonely because you
are alone. It's something else to feel lonely
because the person you love, who is in the same
room, refuses to acknowledge your existence.
282
I am reminded of a poem that I read
while at Alma College. I do not know the author,
but part of it read, "I find my loneliness selling
itself the image of you, sitting there, in an empty
chair, sipping from an empty glass, and I begin to
hate a little the man and woman who make a
plaything of a bed."
But for me, the chair is not empty. She is
sitting there, she is sipping from the glass, she is
lying in my bed, but I am alone.
Lynne and I began to fight over
everything. Our biggest fights were over napkins.
She bought those little toy napkins that are used
at children's parties. I wanted a napkin that you
could open up and put on your lap. How could
two intelligent people allow their lives to be
destroyed over napkins? I would buy full-sized
dinner napkins and she would throw them out.
Our second most common argument was about
garbage. I didn’t like to mix wet garbage with
dry garbage. Raccoons or dogs or something
would get into our trash every night and spread it
all over the driveway. I would save old milk
containers for wet garbage. Anything wet and
gooey could be scraped into milk containers and
they wouldn't drip. This would cut down on the
odor emanating from the trash. Milk cartons on
the kitchen counters drove Lynne up the wall.
283
After each fight, we would then argue over what
the fight was about. "You said…..," "I didn’t say
that, I said……," "No, you said…." I bought a
tape recorder so that we could record each fight
and, when needed, go to the instant re-play. This
ended all fighting and created an eerie silence.
Once the recorder would go on, Lynne would not
say a word. One evening, I returned home from
Box One and found the tapes in shreds. The
recorder had been smashed with a hammer. We
had one hell of a good fight over that.
I spent more and more time at work. I
had opened a new business at the same location
as Box One. It was called Picture Yourself. It was
my own invention. I took electronic strobe lights
and designed the circuitry so that many different
studio lighting effects could be controlled by a
knob on a switch box. I rebuilt a Nikon camera so
that it could fire off of a remote control. It was
placed behind a piece of 60/40 glass. This glass
had been developed by the CIA and was used for
spying. The result was that an actor or model or
even a businessman, needing a headshot, could sit
in the privacy of the Picture Yourself booth, see
themselves in the 60/40 mirror, adjust the
lighting to their taste, turn on a little music and
take their own pictures. This was nothing like the
booths where you put in a quarter and get a snap
shot. This was a professional studio headshot.
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Picture Yourself was heavily advertised in
the theatrical trade magazines, and before I knew
it, I was meeting beautiful women by the dozens.
I had been doing some "test shoots" with models,
but that was one or two a month. Women loved
Picture Yourself because they could see
themselves in the mirror and know exactly how
each shot was going to look. They all fell in love
with their photographer... themselves. They stood
in line for it.
I hadn't taken any time off from work in
a long time. I needed to have some time to
myself. I decided to take a vacation, a cruise to
Bermuda. Lynne thought that it would be selfish
of me not to take the kids. The cruise ship offered
a "bring a friend for 1/2 price" deal and my kids
wanted their friends next door to come. Our
neighbors’ mother decided that if her kids were
going, then she would go. OK, I would take
Lynne, our kids, the neighbors and their kids on
a cruise to Bermuda.
I shared a room with the kids, and Lynne
shared a room with our neighbors. I didn't
understand it. I don't know how it happened, but
here I was, on the way to Bermuda, with no hope
of sleeping with my wife or anyone else. Everyone
had a wonderful time. Everyone but me.
So was this marriage over or what?
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Business was good. Lynne and I decided
that we would separate without separating.
Lynne loved the city so much: the people, the
nightlife, the theatre and the dance. We would
buy an apartment in the city. We could use it as a
family when we all went into the city, or we could
use it to get away from each other. We would
alternate living in the city.
Near this time, I met two young ladies
from St. Lucia. Alison Lord needed headshots of
her son, Donny. She thought that he had star
potential. Her sister, Sandra, was a "personal
manager" for theatrical talent, and wrote a
column for Show Business, a New York theatrical
trade magazine. She and her sister thought
Picture Yourself was an innovative concept.
Sandra wanted to write an article on it. Would I
give some time for an interview?
Sandra and I went out for dinner. She
was taking notes. This was going to be a good
interview. It would make an interesting article
for her column, and the article would help the
business.
How we got from Picture Yourself to,
"My wife doesn't love me," I do not know. Then
it was, "My boyfriend doesn't appreciate me,"
286
etc, etc. The next thing I knew, it was two o'clock
in the morning. I decided to stay over in the city.
That was the one night that I stayed in the
city without letting Lynne know. It would not
have been so bad except it was our 16th
anniversary. We had not celebrated an
anniversary for a long time, so I was surprised
when she made such a big deal out of it.
"Come and get your shit or I'll throw
everything you own in the street, you fucking
bastard."
That was in the morning. I had to work
all day. I was a nervous wreck. I planned to go
home that evening and load the car with stuff and
return to the city. I didn't want to do it, but I
guessed that she was right. It was over. I loved
her so much, but it was over.
I made a point of not riding in the bar car
that night. Things were bad enough; I didn’t
want to do or say anything to make it worse.
When I got home, I stood outside the door
for a long time. I didn't want this to happen, but
it did. What could I do? I went in. Lynne came to
the door and threw her arms around me. We
went upstairs and made love. I wish that I had
287
dropped dead that night. I would have died a
happy man.
What happened? Why did it happen? I
don't know. Did the thought of living without me
stir up dormant emotions? For several months I
lived in Utopia. The Lord sisters and I became
very close friends. Sandra encouraged me to go
back into the theatre. She wanted to be my
manager. I hired Alison Lord to work at Box
One. Sandra and her boyfriend went out on
double dates with Lynne and me. For about two
months "God was in his heaven and all was right
with the world." But then Sandra and her
boyfriend split up and the Lords moved to
California. I had hoped this would help cement
my relationship with Lynne. It had the opposite
effect. Lynne again became distant.
Lynne referred to those few wonderful
months as our renaissance. How true. How sad
that it ended. I assume it was my fault.
Everything seemed to be my fault.
She went to see a lawyer and discussed
divorce, but nothing ever came of it. I thought of
divorce, but feared it. It was my own lack of selfcontrol that frightened me. I feared that without
Lynne, I would become a drunken degenerate. As
the marvelous song from England during World
War I says, "I don't want to join the Army. I
288
don't want to go to war. I just want to live in
London and fornicate my bloomin' life away."
Life went on.
Box One had a new manager, Alex
Vadell. He had started out as a printer but made
it clear from the start that he was management
material. Capri felt threatened. Remember,
Capri was first hired as a flunky. She worked her
way up to become manager. She demanded a
huge raise. When she didn't get it, she took a
management position with Color Wheel, one of
our competitors.
Years later, I heard a story from Color
Wheel about Capri. They were working on a
presentation for Revlon or one of the other large
cosmetic companies. Capri kept rejecting the
prints. She had been named account rep for this
client and she only wanted the best. Photo
printers always assume that management knows
nothing about printing. The printer involved with
this job tried to explain to Capri why it was
impossible to get what she wanted in this
particular print. Without saying a word, she
walked in the darkroom and zip, wham... she
produced the print she wanted. The technician
was in awe. From then on she was treated with
the utmost respect.
289
Alex Vadell was also a master. Soon
clients didn’t even know who I was. It used to be
that with any problem you would hear, "Let me
speak to Wayne." Now it was, "Let me speak to
Alex."
With Alex doing so much of the work, I
had a little more free time. This would give me a
chance to re-establish ties with my siblings. We
all felt close to each other, but rarely called and
never wrote. My brother Randy is the only one in
the family who has lived a somewhat normal life.
He has had a storybook life. He married his high
school sweetheart and they continue to live
happily ever after. They have two children and
two grandchildren.
The most frightening event in Randy's life
was when he was born. It took a week for the
doctors to realize that he was born without a
complete esophagus. He almost died of
starvation. He was a small baby and the
operation must have been very difficult. As a
middle-aged man, he had another operation, and
the doctors discovered that as a result of his
operation as a baby, nothing inside him was in
the right place.
My sister Margaret was now living with
her two boys in Houston, Texas. She left Detroit
after she found out that her husband, also her
290
high school sweetheart, was living a double life.
He had a second home and was living with
another woman. My brother Les had been
helping Margaret a lot. Every time she and I
spoke on the phone, I asked her if she wanted to
move to New York and work at Box One. She
always said no. This last time, she said yes.
The people who were renting the
Centerport house were scheduled to move out the
next month. Their lease was up, and I told them
that my sister would be moving in, so I could not
renew their lease.
Margaret drove from Houston with her
two dogs and one cat. Her two boys were staying
with their father for the summer in Detroit.
There was only one problem: my tenant refused
to move out. He looked me in the eye and said,
"I'm not going to move out and I'm not going to
pay any rent. You can kiss my ass." Someone
who knew New York real estate law must have
advised him. He was right. It took me six months
to get him out on a court order. When I asked the
judge about the back rent, the judge said,
"Which do you want? To get him out or to
receive the back rent?" "Can't I get both?” I
asked. "No."
During those six months, Margaret lived
in our dining room. Her cats and ours just
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ignored each other, but the dogs never stopped
fighting. It got a bit cramped when her boys
returned from Detroit and started school.
At Box One, Margaret did the payroll
and filing, and helped with customer service. She
and Alex hit it off very well. Margaret became
close friends with Alex's wife and son.
One of the first things I told Margaret
about being in New York City was to watch out
for bicycles, especially bicycles going the wrong
way on one-way streets. She was hit by a biker
the very first time she went to cross a street by
herself.
Margaret suffered from a rare blood
disease. It had taken years to diagnose. Only a
few doctors seemed even to be aware of this
disease, let alone know how to treat it.
Margaret didn't like New York, but she
loved Long Island. She made friends and the kids
were doing well in school. One Sunday while I
was out on the boat, a big yacht went cruising by.
A voice yelled out, "Wayne!" I looked up and it
was Margaret.
I had lived on Long Island for years and
didn't know a soul with the exception of my train
buddies. My sister Margaret had become a
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community leader within a year. She was active
in a local church and became very close to the
minister. Her boys, Brian and Jamie, were doing
well in school. Her blood disease seemed to be in
remission. Margaret thanked me for bringing her
to the Island. She told me that she had told her
boys, "You better enjoy living here in Centerport
because this is as close to heaven as you can get."
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Chapter 14
The theatre, I wanted to make one more
effort to succeed in the theatre. I had raised my
family and fulfilled my obligations. I needed to do
something for myself. More than that, my
children had grown up not knowing me. They
didn’t know who I was. That man who got up in
the morning, went to work and came home drunk
half of the time, that was not me. I was an actor, a
bohemian, a creative genius. My children had
never even met the real me. I never kept
keepsakes or souvenirs, and there was not even a
scrapbook of my past that they could look at.
The producers of The Fantasticks tour
had put together a book of clippings and
showbills from the tour. The inscription from the
producer read, "Wayne, you are the best Bellomy
(Girl’s Father) I've ever seen. Enough said." My
children would sometimes look through it. They
could not identify this man in the book as their
father. This was a fictional character created by
their father who made up wild stories and
exaggerated tales which he repeated over and
over to his children.
When I started doing The Fantasticks, I
thought that it was the beginning of a path to
stardom. Instead, it was the end of a path, a dead
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end. I always had Michele as an excuse. Maybe,
just maybe, something would have come of my
career if I had not ended it to care for Michele.
Did I have any regrets about ending my career to
care for Michele? No. None. I only wish that
somehow I could have been a better father for
her. I cannot help but believe that she would have
gotten better if I had been a better father.
Bringing Michele home for weekends had
become more and more difficult, and I brought
her home less and less frequently. At night she
would smear feces all over herself, and in the
process would often smear it on the walls and
floors.
In an effort to stop this activity, I
purchased a sewing machine so I could design
pajamas that zipped up the back so that if she did
it in her pants, she wouldn’t be able to get easy
access to smear it. I would then sleep on the floor
by her door so that if she got up at night to go to
the bathroom, I would be there to unzip her.
She was so strong that she just ripped the
pajamas apart.
Michele loved the water. She loved taking
baths. I determined that she smeared the feces so
she could have a bath in the middle of the night.
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One night, I couldn't take it anymore. I
had always tried to be loving and understanding,
but this night I yelled at her. I told her if she did
it again, I would not be able to bring her home
again.
It never happened again. Did she
understand what I was telling her? I don't know.
Sometimes I believe that Michele understands
every word I say, and other times I don't believe
she understands a word. Maybe it was the fact
that I yelled at her, or perhaps she understood
when she saw me cry. I don't know.
I want so much to be able to understand
life. It seems to be a crapshoot. All those millions
of sperm and only one makes it to the egg. If it
had been a different sperm, would I be someone
else? Would I not exist at all? How can anyone
imagine a world without oneself? I just don’t
know.
Once, when I first came to New York,
one of my co-lab workers and I were having a
philosophical discussion. I turned on an enlarger
and adjusted it so that it projected a small ring of
light on the baseboard. This circle of light, I
explained, is our knowledge. The ring of darkness
around it is our ignorance. Then I raised the
enlarger. "Notice that, as I raise the enlarger and
the circle of our knowledge becomes larger, you
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become more aware of the extent of darkness
surrounding the light. As your knowledge
increases, you become more aware of your
ignorance."
Every Christian who claims to have any
understanding of who or what God is seems to
have a few quotes from the Bible to back them
up. I make no such claims but I do have some
favorite quotes. “I have come that you might have
life and have it more abundantly,” is one of them.
Whenever you give a gift to someone, it is hoped
that the recipient will enjoy it. If God's gift to
man is life, does it not seem reasonable to think
God would like his gift to be enjoyed? So why
does church doctrine so often stress the concept
of living with pain and suffering so that we can
enjoy ourselves after death?
In the 15th chapter of Luke, Jesus tells
three parables about being lost. A lost sheep, a
lost coin and a lost son. In each parable there is
rejoicing when the lost is found. But before we
can truly find ourselves do we not need to first
recognize that we are lost?
Jesus did not give us answers, he only
asked us questions. He wrote in the sand,
knowing that the wind and water would wipe
away the text. Perhaps he was saying that each of
us needed to search for our own answers. I’m still
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searching. Is the theatre a religion? Stanislavsky
said, "Acting is believing."
So if I were going to return to the theatre,
how would I start? Where would I start? I had
difficulty in getting auditions when I started out.
Why would it be any easier now? Perhaps I
should try voice-overs again. I had once made a
tape of commercials showing a range of voices
and characters and had it sent out to all the
agents. I never got a response. I did do one voiceover for Mary Quant, the British cosmetics firm.
I was assisting a photo shoot for Mary Quant at
the Box One studio and the director said to me,
"I love your voice. Would you do the voice-over
on our new commercial?" That was fun, but it
didn’t lead to anything else.
No, if I were to stand a chance of
succeeding, I would once again have to be a
producer.
Without a doubt, Beckett's Waiting for
Godot is my favorite play. As Clive Barnes wrote,
it is a true masterpiece. Why not produce it OffBroadway and star myself as Estragon (aka
Gogo)? It baffles me that Godot is so often
referred to as an experimental play. The joy of
Godot is its simplicity and lighthearted comedy. I
once did a special preview performance of Godot
for a boys' reform school in North Carolina. They
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had no difficulty in figuring out the play. They
laughed and laughed, but by the end, they knew
that this play was about them. They were all
waiting to get out of "jail." We wait to be born,
we wait for the bus, we wait to get out of school,
we wait for dinner, we wait for things to begin,
we wait for things to end, then one day there is
nothing left to wait for and we wait to die. After
death, we wait for the unknown. "We are born
astride a grave." Think about that. "The
gravedigger lingeringly puts on the forceps." The
gravedigger is the obstetrician. We experience a
flash of light, a journey from the womb to the
tomb. "We have time to grow old." When done
properly, Godot makes you laugh and laugh, and
then scares the shit out of you. This is good
theatre.
I did some research and discovered that a
man named Jack Garfein held the rights for
Godot. I wrote him a letter. He was living in
Paris, but often came to New York where he ran
The Actors and Directors Lab, as well as The
Harold Clurman Theatre.
He called me and we met at Sardi's for
lunch. He told me that Lincoln Center wanted to
do Godot with Steve Martin and Robin Williams.
They had offered him a lot of money for the
rights.
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Garfein asked a lot of questions about my
background in the theatre. He seemed to be
impressed.
Jack told me that, living in Paris, it had
become very difficult for him to continue running
The Harold Clurman Theatre. Would I consider
taking over the operation?
This Off-Broadway theatre company was
founded by Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward,
and Roger L. Stevens. The Harold Clurman
Theatre had won many Obie and Drama Desk
Awards. Would I be interested in taking over the
management? My mind said, "You bet,” but I
just said, “Let me think about it."
I did some research on Jack Garfein. He
is an incredible man. Everyone I spoke with
referred to Jack as a crook, but they did so in a
kind, loving way.
Albert Poland, one of the producers of
The Fantasticks on tour, had been on the board of
The Harold Clurman Theatre, so I called him.
"Don't ask me about Jack Garfein," he said. "I
love the man. I don’t wish to say anything bad
about him. On the other hand, I don't want to say
anything good about him either. So just don't
ask."
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From what I could gather, at the
beginning of World War II, at the age of twelve,
Jack had been placed in a Nazi concentration
camp. He survived, and was liberated by the U.S.
Army. He had a good career as a director of film
and theatre, but seems to have been best known
for being married to the actress Carol Baker.
In order to understand the status of The
Harold Clurman Theatre, it would help to
understand the contract between New York City
and what was (and is) known as "Theatre Row."
In the early sixties, a man by the name of
J.I. Rodale was a food faddist, a very wealthy
food faddist. He believed that we were all killing
ourselves by ingesting salt and sugar. Today,
most nutritionists would agree with him, but at
the time, he was considered a nut. He wrote,
produced and directed plays about the evils of
poor nutrition. His financial losses as a result of
these Off-Broadway productions were staggering.
He and a man named Maidman bought a lot of
property on 42nd Street, west of Ninth Avenue,
and built their own theatres, thinking this would
cut production costs. I never saw any of these
productions but they were usually thought of as a
joke. How interesting can a play be when its plot
revolves around how much sugar you eat?
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Rodale died of a heart attack in 1971
while being interviewed on the Dick Cavett Show.
When he appeared to fall asleep, Cavett quipped,
"Are we boring you, Mr. Rodale?" The episode
was never broadcast. Ironically, Rodale had
bragged a day earlier that he would "live to 100
unless I'm run down by some sugar-crazed taxi
driver." He was 72 at the time.
After Rodale stopped producing plays in
the area, the theatres became strip joints and
whorehouses.
There was a lot of clamor to clean up the
area. In 1977, Bess Myerson and Ed Koch had
this idea: they would encourage theatre groups to
relocate in the area by offering cheap rents. To
offset the problem that all of these buildings were
going to be torn down, they offered the theatre
groups "new theatres," to be included in the new
buildings that were to be constructed on the site,
at the same low rents.
To accomplish this goal, New York City
formed the UDC/Theatre Row Redevelopment
Corporation; it was administered by The FortySecond Street Local Development Corporation.
From here out, I'll call it "The Corp."
The rents were indeed low, but the
"theatres" were not even raw space, they were
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garbage dumps that still had used condoms stuck
to the floors. And the new theatre tenants had to
finance their own renovations. But there was that
carrot on a stick: new theatres in new buildings
built by The Corp.
Theatre Row was born. Theatres and
restaurants sprang up all along the block. All of
this land belonged to New York City, with the
exception of one building that belonged to a
company called Washington Beef. The managers
of Playwrights Horizons, a production company
on the block before Theatre Row existed, bought
the building. I don’t know if this was just a fluke
or if Playwrights Horizons' managers were all
geniuses. Either way, it was a brilliant move. By
owning the one piece of land not owned by the
city, they could now have considerable influence
on The Corp. Playwright's Horizon's land was in
the center of the block. In order to proceed with
any plans for construction, the city would have to
deal with them.
Jack Garfein rented a large space on
Theatre Row. He had The Actors and Directors
Lab and The Harold Clurman Theatre, and then
he took over the lease belonging to the Black
Theatre Alliance and renamed it The Samuel
Beckett Theatre.
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Theatre Row was a big success for the
city, but the theatre groups themselves were
experiencing many problems. Producing OffBroadway is very expensive and almost all of the
plays lose money.
The building boom in the city had come
to a halt, and prospects of a new development on
the block looked dim. There was no longer the
need for new construction because Theatre Row
had turned this slum into a beautiful, thriving
area. The managers of these theatres were faced
with a dilemma. They could continue to produce
plays and lose money (most had already lost
every cent they could lay their hands on), or rent
the theatres out to other producers and make a
profit.
It was in the best interest of The Corp to
get the theatre producers out of Theatre Row.
For each theatre company evicted, there would
be one less theatre that needed to be constructed
in the new development. Also, in the interim, for
every tenant The Corp could get out, they could
raise the rent for a new tenant. A theatre group
that paid $500 per month in rent to The Corp
could sublet the space for up to $8,000 a month.
After the first few years, most of the theatres
were being sublet at a huge profit. The Corp
decided that to sublet was in violation of the
lease. They were trying to evict virtually all of the
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Theatre Row tenants. As of July 1986, that was
Lion Theatre, Intar, Nat Horn, South Street, The
Harold Clurman, The Samuel Beckett, Douglas
Fairbanks and the John Houseman.
Especially targeted were Jack Garfein
and The Harold Clurman Theatre. Garfein was
living like a king in Paris off of the rental income
he was receiving from The Harold Clurman
Theatre and The Samuel Beckett Theatre. If he
were evicted he would be without an income.
If Wayne Martens took over The Harold
Clurman Theatre and produced plays, Garfein
would no longer be subletting and could not be
evicted. It would seem that such an arrangement
would fill my needs as well as Jack’s.
I discussed all of this with my family, and
everyone said "Go for it."
I called Jack and told him I was flying to
Paris so that we could discuss the matter further.
Lynne had lived in Paris in her late teens. She
was not about to let me go without her.
We rented an apartment through a bed
and breakfast agency. It was on the left bank, just
a block from Notre Dame. Jack and I negotiated
over several lunches. He took us to a number of
"in" places. I had an advantage over Jack. I had
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learned that he had cooked the books. All assets
were posted to the accounts for The Actors and
Directors' Lab. All the liabilities went to The
Harold Clurman Theatre. Jack needed to get
someone to pay off the theatre's liabilities and to
produce plays so that he could continue to receive
an income. Don't get me wrong. Jack knew and
loved good theatre, and he was very close to
Harold Clurman and his wife, Stella Adler. He
did not want schlock work done at The Harold
Clurman Theatre. I was certain that if I could get
control of the theatre without spending a lot of
money, I could turn it into a profitable enterprise
and establish myself as a director and ultimately
as an actor.
In the evenings, Lynne and I were on our
own. One night, we went to a jazz club. We met
the owner and were invited to his private booth.
All the drinks were on the house. The owner was
there with his girlfriend. They both spoke
English. We were having a great time, but every
now and then, the owner and Lynne would speak
in French. I couldn’t understand a word. After
we left, I asked Lynne what she and the owner
were talking about. She said that he had an
apartment in the building. He wanted to create a
diversion to distract me so that he and his
girlfriend could have a "menage a trois" with
Lynne. She admitted that it was very tempting. I
could only think, "How French."
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Lynne and I had a wonderful time in
Paris, but it was after this trip that our
relationship came to a total stop. I believe that
returning to Paris and having such a good time
only reinforced her feeling of having lost her life,
her dreams, her adventures, and her romances.
They were all gone, and it was all my fault. I was
the bastard who got her pregnant. She loved the
children so much, but it was now impossible to
ever return to the life that she once had. She
would never know what life could have been.
Garfein flew to New York to finalize our
deal. He called a board meeting. I was named to
the Board of Directors and then elected
Chairman of the Board. Then Garfein and the
others all resigned from the board so that I could
select my own directors.
Part of the deal was that I would produce
Judgement by Barry Collins. John Russell Brown
of The National Theatre of London was set to
direct.
Judgement is a one-character play based
on a true story about Russian soldiers who were
held as prisoners during World War II. The
Germans retreated and left the Russian prisoners
in a dungeon to starve to death. They resorted to
cannibalism to survive. The play's only character
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is the one survivor who is asking to be judged for
his conduct.
It was a very well-written and
provocative play, but not something to create
boffo box office.
I was now the only authority for The
Harold Clurman Theatre, but the theatre
building had been rented out to Perfect Crime on
a run-of-the-show contract. Perfect Crime was a
hit. Judgement was being produced under the
aegis of The Harold Clurman Theatre, but was
performing at The Samuel Beckett Theatre.
If that's a little confusing, it's because you
need to make the distinction between a theatre as
a production group or company and a theatre as
a building with seats and a stage.
While Judgement was in rehearsal, I got a
phone call from a woman named Jean Sullivan.
She was head of The South Street Theatre, but
was also the secretary of Theatre Row Inc., the
group set up by Bess Myerson and Ed Koch to
govern Theatre Row. I was told that I had just
been elected president. Wow, great. Of course the
first thing I learned was that Theatre Row Inc.
had no authority at all. It was at my first meeting
that I learned how The Corp was trying to kick
us all out.
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By the end of the first week of Judgement,
all the original investment had been lost and I put
up closing notices.
This was a last ditch effort. If I failed, I
knew I would never again be involved with the
theatre. I needed money. I couldn't risk spending
time trying to raise it. As I've mentioned, Long
Island real estate had increased by over 100% in
the past few years. I took a second mortgage out
on the Centerport house. In order to do this, I
had to pay off the existing second mortgage for
$10,000, which had been given to Lynne by her
mother.
This reopened an old argument. Was this
Lynne's money or family money? As a
compromise, I suggested that the money be put in
a CD and held for the kids’ college expenses.
When Matthew was about to enter college, I
inquired about the CD. Lynne’s only response
was, "What CD?"
I announced the first season of plays
under my management of The Harold Clurman
Theatre. We would open with (what else?)
Ulysses in Nighttown.
The second production would be The
Fifth Column, Ernest Hemingway’s only play. It
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was originally directed on Broadway by Harold
Clurman.
I hit a snag getting the rights to The Fifth
Column. I called George Bobrinskoy, the lawyer
who handled Hemingway's estate; he said, “NO
WAY.” There was a feud going on in the family
and no one could agree on who owned the rights
to the play.
I then wrote to him with a proposition.
The letterhead for The Harold Clurman Theatre
listed its founders. I proposed that the play be
produced royalty-free. If everyone in the family
agreed that the play should be done, it would not
matter who owned the rights. That matter could
be settled later.
Bobrinskoy called me and said, "Paul
Newman? Joanne Woodward? Roger Stevens? I
didn't realize that your theatre had such good
credentials. I spoke with everyone in the family
and they all agree. Do the play."
The third production was to be Tobacco
Road by Erskine Caldwell.
When I started Box One, I used a
workshop to get free labor. I used the same
technique at The Harold Clurman Theatre. The
HCT workshop had one hundred volunteers. In
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return, they got the use of the theatre for
meetings and would be given the theatre rent-free
for their own production. The workshop was set
up as an independent entity and elected its own
officers. They ran the show, so to speak.
Casting began for Ulysses. I would direct.
Meanwhile, back at Box One, there was a
minor snag: Box One was being audited by the
IRS. That was OK. We had nothing to hide. My
accountant would represent me at a cost of $250
per day.
A nightmare of gigantic proportions was
about to begin. It was a strip search: every item,
every receipt, every general ledger entry. The
audit ended up taking over a year. Needless to
say, I could not afford to have my accountant
continue to represent me.
"Fred" from the IRS would come in at
8:30am and stay all day. He got to know every
employee. “Good morning, Alex,” “Good
morning. Fred,” “Good morning, Richard,”
“Good morning, Fred,” etc, etc. Sometimes he
would bring in coffee and donuts for the staff.
He didn't trust computers. He would
write down every figure in that tiny handwriting
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that only accountants can master. Then he would
add them up by hand, over and over again.
He loved his work so much that he would
not leave at night. One night after telling him I
was leaving and that he would be locked in, I left.
I locked the door. It could not be opened without
a key. I went out and had a drink and when I
came back he was still sitting there, “6 + 5 = 11,
carry the one.”
I cleared out the studio so that we could
rehearse at Box One. That way I could run back
and forth between Fred and rehearsal.
"I need to see the receipts for the
chemicals that you purchased May 12, 1985."
“Fred, I'm in rehearsal. I can't get them right
now.” "Fine, if rehearsal is so important, try to
rehearse in jail."
The actor I cast as Bloom, Steven Coats,
was brilliant. If this production were a hit, it
would make him a star. I knew this. He knew
this. His fate was in my hands. He could see that I
was distracted by this audit and it frightened
him, rightfully so.
The situation became even more
complicated when I got a call from the
Huntington Hospital. My sister Margaret’s blood
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disorder was out of remission. She had been
admitted to the hospital for tests and observation.
She was being transferred to the critical care unit
at Sloan Kettering. Someone needed to be there
to check her in and pay the ambulance drivers.
Pay the ambulance drivers? I swear to God that's
what they told me. My sister was in critical
condition and they wanted to make sure that
someone was there to pay cash to the ambulance
drivers. I guess they feared that if she died, they
wouldn’t get paid.
Reason, at this point, would say cancel the
show. But this was an Off-Broadway production
under the auspices of the unions. There were
contracts that could not be broken. "The show
must go on" is not an old saying; it's a union
demand.
I got a call from our press agent saying
that John Simon of New York Magazine couldn’t
make it on opening night. He wanted to come that
night. "But this is our first rehearsal on stage
with props and costumes," I said. "I urge you to
let him come," the press agent said. I told him,
“If Simon comes tonight, He must agree to state
in anything he writes that he saw a rehearsal, not
a performance. He must not pretend he was at a
performance and write a review."
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I didn’t want Simon to be alone in the
theatre during the rehearsal. I called Actors'
Equity and asked them to post a notice that union
members were invited to this evening's rehearsal.
That may have been a mistake. Unemployed
actors do not make for a good audience.
Having never met or even seen John
Simon before, I hesitate to say that he was
inebriated. He may always seem that way.
About twenty-five members of AEA
showed up to augment Mr. Simon's presence.
I went up on stage and made an
announcement that this was only a rehearsal, not
a performance, and it was our very first rehearsal
with props and costumes. I then sat down and
waited for the house lights to dim. The lights
dimmed a little and then stopped. It seems there
were theatre "work lights" on and no one knew
how to turn them off. It took a few minutes to
find the switch for the work lights. I went back on
stage and explained what happened. I ended by
saying, "I hope you enjoy the show." A loud,
clear voice answered back, "It stinks so far." I
really don't know if that voice was Simon's, but
after reading his review, I assume it was. It
implied that he was present on opening night. He
ripped the production apart.
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During the rehearsal, most of the
audience sat quietly, but one man was rolling on
the floor with laughter. My press agent came up
to me and said, "We've got to get that man out of
the theatre or find a way to keep him from
laughing." "Joe," I said, "It's supposed to be
funny. He's the only one who's getting it." Joe
said to me, "But it's James Joyce. How could it be
funny?"
Opening night went well. Lynne and the
kids were there. Lynne's mother was there.
Margaret was still in the hospital. My brother
Les was almost there. He left a message at the box
office that he had been called back to Detroit on
an emergency. I knew that the play could have
been so much better, but I still thought that it
stood a chance of winning some awards.
After the opening, the actual reviews
came out, and they were kind. No raves, but kind.
Burgess Meredith had directed a production
years earlier with Zero Mostel. The production
took so much of Joyce's text literally that I had
found the production void of imagination. Valerie
Bettis had provided marvelous choreography, but
I failed to see what all those dancers leaping
about the stage had to do with the play. Zero
Mostel was very funny as Bloom, totally wrong
for the part, but his sense of comedy was
extraordinary.
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We ran for twelve weeks. A respectable
run, but certainly not a hit.
I had been certain that the play would
receive good reviews. My biggest fear was that
the academic world would rip my interpretation
apart. After receiving mediocre reviews, it was a
joy to receive a letter from a Joyce scholar at
Yale University.
In part, the letter read: "Last night a
couple of us from the faculty who have taught
Joyce's work celebrated his birthday by
attending your production, and we loved it. We
had along a couple of people who'd never read
any Joyce at all, and they loved it. I find this
unanimity to be satisfactory proof that there are
some New York reviewers with their heads too
far up their snotty butts to credit an outstanding
production. I assure you that your work will have
sent me back to Ulysses with newly-opened eyes,
so that my teaching will in the future reflect a
good deal of what I saw last night. For that, I am
very grateful."
"I don't know that you need such a
message to know you've done something great,
but if it's appropriate please pass on the great
thanks of our little party to the cast. We all felt
that applause was nowhere near adequate as
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response, and we walked up Eighth Avenue each
recalling different wonderful moments. I'll
remember the production for a long time."
Wow. He will never know how good his
letter made me feel.
I was counting on the income from
Ulysses to finance The Fifth Column. There was
no money left. The "season" was over. I made
arrangements with another theatre company to
accept The Harold Clurman Theatre "season
tickets." That eased the guilt. The Harold
Clurman Theatre Workshop put on its
production of Schnitzler's La Ronde. The theatre
company did not close, but we did lose the lease
on our theatre. Periodically, we produced
dramatic readings and a few Off-Off-Broadway
showcases, but never another major full Equity
production.
The motivation for all this was my desire
to return to the theatre as an actor and yet I had
not played a single part. Not one. Why didn't I
choose a play that had a starring role for me? I
could have had my fifteen minutes of fame. To
rub salt in my wound, shortly after Ulysses
closed, I got a notice from The Actors' Equity
Pension and Welfare Department. One of the
benefits of being a union actor is medical
insurance. I was informed that my insurance was
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canceled. In an effort to cut costs, they had
altered the eligibility requirements and because I
had gone so many years without working, I was
two weeks of work short. I no longer qualified. I
would also no longer be eligible for a pension. If I
had cast myself in a small roll in Ulysses, or even
hired myself as an assistant stage manager, I
wouldn’t have lost my medical insurance and I
would now be receiving a pension. Sometimes
things just don't work out right.
As of this moment, new theatres are
under construction on Theatre Row. The Harold
Clurman Theatre and The Samuel Beckett
Theatre are being renovated, but The Corp will
lease them to new tenants at market rates. To the
best of my knowledge, not one of the original
contracts for Theatre Row was honored. All of
the people who, at their own expense, cleared out
the slum and built a beautiful, vibrant
neighborhood on West 42nd Street, were kicked
out on their butts. As president of Theatre Row, I
tried to find an attorney to represent the Theatre
Row tenants pro bono, but perhaps I was just too
tired. No one seemed to care. There have been no
outcries in the press, no rallies, no
demonstrations, just the quiet death of an
important episode in American theatre.
I am very curious to see what name The
Corp places on the marquee of the renovated
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space. Do they understand the fact that they have
no legal right to call it The Harold Clurman
Theatre? As I said before, there are theatres and
theatre companies. If I rented The Helen Hayes
Theatre to put on a production, it would still be
The Helen Hayes Theatre after my show closed.
But if Playwrights Horizons, a production
company, moved to a new location, I would not
have the right to rent out their old space and call
it Playwrights Horizons. The Harold Clurman
Theatre is the name of a non-profit production
company that once leased space on 42nd Street. It
is no longer at its previous location. The current
legal address for The Harold Clurman Theatre
may be in my imagination.
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Chapter 15
Between the IRS audit and my absence,
Box One was in bad shape. The outcome of the
audit from the IRS' point of view was nil. Outside
of disclaiming my exemptions for the boat and
the condo, they came up with nothing. A large
corporation can purchase a fleet of boats and
claim that they are used for business, but if a
small corporation that is owned by one person
tries to deduct expenses for a boat, the IRS
laughs in your face. When they wanted to see the
condo, which I had claimed as office space, I had
to run out and buy a desk. It was to no avail. The
damage that a one-year audit did, in terms of
time taken away from Box One and the theatre,
was devastating. But Box One would survive,
largely due to the efforts of Alex Vadell. Alex,
however, had no appreciation for the theatre. He
could not grasp why I would risk a successful
business in order to put on a play. He never even
came to see it.
One of Box One's longtime employees had
moved to Milan, Italy. Milan had become a world
center for fashion photography, and he wanted to
give it a try. I saw an ad in the paper from
Eastern Airlines with ridiculously low fares to
Europe. You had to book six months in advance,
and surely Box One would be back on its feet in
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six months. How could I turn down a fare of $150
round trip? So I booked for Milan. Again, this
would have been impossible were it not for Alex.
The day I was scheduled to leave, Alex
called in sick. Alex was never sick. It had me
worried. Should I cancel? There were no refunds,
but it was only $150. Alex went into the hospital
for some tests. Alex said go, the staff said go, and
so I went.
I called everyone from the airport. I just
wasn't sure that I was doing the right thing. After
being reassured that everything would be fine
without me, I got on the plane to Milan. My
luggage, of course, went to Rome.
From the airport, I took a bus to the city
and then a taxi to my friend's apartment. He
lived with two young ladies. It was early morning
and he was at work, at a photo lab. I just
wandered around for the rest of the day. That
evening, my friend and I and one of his
roommates went out for dinner. The next day, I
was again alone while the others were at work.
They worked at the same place. His other
roommate was out of the country. I decided that I
would shop and make dinner that evening.
Remember, I love to cook.
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I went into a supermarket and found
everything I needed. At the checkout, I just held
up a wad of money and the girl took out what was
needed. When I got back to the apartment, I
realized that we had no onions. I went to a little
market and picked up one onion. I couldn’t
understand a word the old lady in the market
said. I had the feeling that even if I spoke Italian,
I still wouldn’t understand a word she said. I held
out some money and she took it. I was expecting
some change. She grabbed on to me and would
not let go. I held up some more money. She took
it but still wouldn’t let go. When I got back to the
apartment, I sat down with pen and paper and
figured out that I had just spent $15 for one
onion.
After dinner I called Box One. My worst
fears had come true. Alex had colon cancer. I had
to return at once. The next flight was the next
afternoon, but it was fully booked. I would have
to go to the airport and get on a standby list.
I left early the next morning. I arrived at
the standby window at about 7:30am. As it
turned out, the window would not open until
1pm. I made myself comfortable and sat at what
would become the head of the line. When the
clerk arrived I was still the only one in line. She
had not set up yet, and so she took my name and
flight info and wrote it on a piece of paper. I then
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went to get something to eat. When it was
boarding time, all the prospective standbys were
put together in a group. By now there were about
fifteen of us. But of course I knew that I was the
first in line. "So and so," they announced.
Someone got up and got their ticket. "Mr. and
Mrs. So and so." I thought that maybe they
didn't announce standbys in order of appearance.
"And the last standby available, So and so." "Uh,
excuse me, but why wasn't I called?" "It's first
come first serve." was the response. "But, uh, I
was first." "No you were tenth" was the
response. "I was in line at 7:30am," I said. "More
than five hours before anyone else was in line."
The attendant went in the back and spoke
with the young lady who had made up the list. He
came back and said, "I'm sorry, but there does
appear to have been a mistake. But yours was a
heavily discounted ticket and it was decided that
you should have to wait until tomorrow."
"A close relative of mine in New York is
dying. If I do not make that flight I may never see
him again. I will sue you. I will sue you in the
morning, sue you in the evening and sue you in
the afternoon. Do you get my meaning?” I yelled.
I flew first class on Alitalia.
They operated on Alex, and the doctors
felt that it went well. They thought they had
324
gotten all the cancer. After a long period of
chemo, Alex seemed fine. He bought a house
near mine in Huntington. His wife Jan and son
Justin seemed to enjoy living on the Island. Box
One began to recover financially and all seemed
well with the world.
It lasted about two years. Alex went for
regular checkups but, as it turned out, the
doctors were not looking in the right places. By
the time the new cancer was discovered it was too
late. Alex enjoyed his work. He wanted to
maintain his regular routine. He worked on the
day he died, at 36 years old.
Without Alex, I couldn't cope. I let the
business deteriorate. My sister Margaret had
become very close to Alex and his family. She
could not take going into work each morning
knowing that he was not there. Her boys had
graduated from high school and she decided to
move back to Detroit.
Matthew and Shannon had also
graduated from high school, and after a year of
traveling about Europe, they were off to college.
My son Christopher, however, was having a
difficult time at high school. Throughout his
schooling he had been classified as a slow learner.
He had fallen in with a bunch of bad kids. He
wanted to disassociate himself but couldn't do it.
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Lynne and I didn’t fully appreciate Christopher's
dilemma until we came home to find our house
vandalized, with holes in the plaster and broken
windows. Chris’ friends did it while they were
alone in the house. When we asked why he didn't
stop them, he said, "They would have beat me up.
Besides, they are the only friends I've got."
I went to a meeting at his high school to
discuss this problem. While talking about my
hopes for Christopher's future, I mentioned
something about college, and one of his teachers
interrupted and said, "You shouldn't think in
terms of Christopher going to college. Perhaps he
would qualify for a trade school." Well, that
pissed me off. I knew Christopher was
exceptionally smart. The teachers were so set in
their ways of what to do and how to do it, that
they couldn't see it.
Lynne was planning to leave me. She was
going to get an apartment in Northport. She had
heard that the Northport school district was more
into the arts and less into sports. She felt that
Christopher would do better in the Northport
schools. Before my meeting with the Harborfields
High School, I thought that Lynne was nuts.
Harborfields had one of the best ratings in the
country. But after hearing this shit about a trade
school, I changed my mind.
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Lynne and I stayed together. I stayed
with her because I loved her. She stayed with me
because she needed me to pay the rent. We sold
our house in Huntington and rented a house in
Northport. I was deep in debt by this time and we
needed the money from the sale of the house. Our
house in Centerport had been rented out to an
executive with the investment banking firm
Lehman Brothers.
No one could have anticipated the effect
the new school had on Christopher. Within one
year, he was on the honor roll. He was popular.
He was a lead actor with the school’s theatre
troupe. He had a girlfriend.
I found out that my new tenant in
Centerport loved boats. I invited him out. One
day we were working on the boat together,
putting in a new starter. I had a lot of pain in my
shoulders. I mentioned that I needed an
operation but didn’t have medical insurance. He
asked what kind of work I did. I told him about
Box One. "Do you do slides?" he asked. "Of
course we do slides," I told him. I didn't know he
was referring to computer-generated slides. Box
One did slides. You put slide film in your camera
and take pictures. Then Box One develops it and
puts each frame into those little cardboard or
plastic mounts.
327
"My department at Lehman Brothers
spends about $50,000 per month on slides," he
said. "I could probably send the work your way."
My life was about to be altered in a major
way.
When I discovered that the slides he was
referring to were computer-generated, I
explained that the slides he used were a little
different from the ones we did at Box One. Box
One would need to invest in some new equipment
to be able to service Lehman Brothers.
He said, that was fine. We should just let
him know when we were ready to go.
I knew nothing of what I was about to get
into. I started to call around to find out what I
would need. First of all I would need what was
called a film recorder. I could get one made by
Polaroid for about $15,000. That was a lot of
money, but I was going to be doing about
$50,0000 per month, so it was no big deal. Now
let's figure this out. Lehman needed about 300
slides per day. This $15,000 film recorder did one
every ten minutes. That's six per hour. On a
twenty-four hour shift, we could produce 144
slides per day. Back to the drawing board. What
kind of film recorder is being used by their
current vendor? A Management Graphics
328
Solitaire. How much does one cost? $140,000.
Hmmm. I sold my house for $167,000 and
thought I had a good deal. I had about $60,000
left from the sale but I had planned to use that on
debts. That would make a down payment, but I
would be broke again. What if this thing didn’t
work out? There must be a better way.
I found a film recorder that I thought
would do the job for about $30,000. I paid cash.
This film recorder would not work, however, off
of any of my computers. Mine are PC-based and
Lehman's slides are Mac-based. I would need the
biggest, fastest Mac on the market, about $3,800.
OK, I'm ready to go. Wait. Wait a minute. You
need what? No, we don't have a glass mounter.
OK, we'll get a glass mounter. I found one for
$6,000. The slides are what? They are not
perfectly centered in the mounts? We need a
what? Oh, a pin-registered glass mounter. Oh.
OK, $12,000. But you can't use a pin-registered
mounter without a pin-registered camera on the
film recorder. That's another $6,000.
OK. We're ready to go. Did you mention
what? That we need to be open twenty-four hours
per day, seven days a week? No. No, you didn't
mention that. OK. We'll have to hire and train
some more help. A lot more help.
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Make sure our film recorder can do
what? EPS? What's EPS? Encapsulated Post
Script? I'll have to find out. I'll get back to you.
No, our film recorder did not do EPS. We
would need to spend another $35,000 for one that
could do EPS. And then, the EPS recorder could
not work off of the Mac. We needed a program in
the Mac that would convert the files to a PC
format and then shoot the slides off a highpowered PC... in other words, another $10,000.
OK, we are rockin' and rollin'. Then
comes the phone call. "Wayne, we want you to do
Cibachrome."
Cibachrome is a form of
photographic print that is made directly from
slide film. I really didn't want to do Cibachrome.
It's difficult and expensive. So I told them no.
"You don't seem to understand, Wayne. If you
want to do the slides, you have to do the
Cibachromes." I got the message.
I started pricing Ciba processors. For the
volume we would need, they started at $150,000.
But at last, I got lucky. I found a used machine.
They were asking $30,000, but I knew this was a
white elephant. There was no market for it and it
would take a large crew to disassemble and move
it out. We were talking 100 square feet of tanks,
rollers, gears, and pumps. The owner had to sell
or pay to have it thrown out, but I could not play
330
a waiting game. I offered $5,000. He accepted. It
took another $6,000 to disassemble, move and
then re-install the processor, but Box One was
now doing Cibachromes. Because the prints were
made from a constant digital source, all
exposures were constant. Once the correct
exposure and color balance was set for the first
print all the rest would be the same. This turned
out to be easier than printing money.
One evening while making Cibas, I was
really feeling good. Slides were making money.
Cibas were making money. I was really excited.
Too excited. I felt pains in my chest. I lay down,
but it didn’t seem to help. My staff called an
ambulance. The emergency room at the hospital
was a mad house. Screaming and moaning people
were all over the place. They were packed. I was
given an EKG as soon as I arrived, but then I was
just left there for hours. I was feeling better. I got
up to see if I could get any info. I was told that
the EKG was normal, but the doctor wanted to
examine me. I waited another hour and then
decided to leave. It was probably indigestion. A
doctor stopped me. He poked around and asked
me some questions. The next thing I knew I was
in the intensive care unit. They ran a lot of tests. I
was told that it was not only a heart attack, but
also, that it was not my first. My heart was badly
scarred. That meant that at least a few of the
331
other times when I thought that I was having a
heart attack, I really was.
Once, while living in Oyster Bay, I felt
chest pains while at home. Lynne called an
ambulance and I was taken to Syosset Hospital. I
was being hooked up to the EKG when word
came of a massive auto pile-up on the Long
Island Expressway, many dead and many
injured. Everyone ran out of the room. They had
a real emergency to deal with. I waited about half
an hour and then took off those gooey gizmos on
my chest. I got dressed, walked out and took a
taxi home. I was fine. Now, I'm thinking, it really
was a heart attack.
This time I was in the hospital about two
weeks. Many of my friends came to visit, but
Lynne only came by once for a short visit. At
least I had gone two weeks without a cigarette.
332
Chapter 16
Box One was now open 24 hours a day,
seven days a week. Investment banking is global
and Lehman Brothers would often send in work
by modem at four o'clock in the morning and
want it done and delivered by eight o'clock the
same morning. Once a job was late due to a
technical problem on their end. They called and
explained that the job had to be in Tokyo the next
day. They wanted to know if we could deliver it. I
said we would if they paid for the plane ticket,
but a Lehman employee took it instead.
There was a little penthouse on top of the
building, just one small room and a bathroom.
After picking up the phone in the middle of the
night and hearing, "They want blah, blah, blah,
and I don't know how to do it. Please come and
help," I rented the penthouse.
It was kind of neat. The 5,000 square foot
roof was my terrace. Lynne wanted me out
anyway, so this was perfect. Or so I thought.
My night man wanted to quit and I was
not about to work 24 hours per day. I would need
to find a replacement. My friend and former
employee had returned from Italy and needed a
job. I could train him on the computer and when
333
there was no slide work, he could do conventional
photographic printing. He had his own photo
studio in New York but was not making ends
meet. He assured me that he would be able to
work all night. It worked out well for a few
weeks, and then at 8am, I got a call from Lehman
Brothers. A job that consisted of 50 slides was
delivered with half of the slides missing. I ran
downstairs in my bathrobe. I checked the
computer and sure enough it indicated that half
of the slides had not been shot. I finished the job
and apologized to Lehman. By now, the daytime
staff had arrived and was going to work. Our
black and white technician came to me and said,
"The Royal Print Processor is jammed." Oh shit,
that’s all I needed. I went into the darkroom and
began to disassemble the unit. It was jammed
with prints. Not Box One prints; these were
obviously prints from my friend’s studio. He had
fucked up a Box One job because he was busy
doing his own work at my expense. If he had not
been such a good friend, he would have been
fired at once. I told him that using my paper to
do personal prints while he was being paid to do
work for Box One constituted theft. I would not
tolerate it. But even worse, he had sent out a job
to our largest client without even looking at it to
see if it was done properly. If anything like this
ever happened again, he would be fired.
334
This would not be a story worth telling
unless he did it again. When he was fired, he said,
"Fine, now I can collect unemployment." I told
him that he could not collect unemployment
because he was not being laid off, he was being
fired for cause, and I would have to replace him.
He, of course, applied anyway. When I contested
the decision by the Department of Labor to give
him unemployment, I was told that his using the
copy machine for personal use was not cause for
termination. I sent a long letter explaining the
difference between using a copy machine and
making custom 11x14 photographic prints.
My friend yes, I still think of him as my
friend collected unemployment for nearly a year
before the Department of Labor conducted a
review. During the review, they discovered that
he was running his own photo business while
collecting unemployment. He was accused of
fraud and had to return all of his unemployment
compensation and was given a hefty fine. This
man, whom I loved as a son, now hated me and
considered me the personification of evil. I hope
you can understand why I have not used his
name.
The loneliness of living away from my
family took its toll. I began to realize that I had
my priorities all mixed up. People change. Lynne
had changed; I had changed. Did that mean that
335
the marriage was over? Kaput? I hoped not. To
this day, my children all believe that they would
have been better off if Lynne and I had divorced.
They may be right. I have no way of knowing
what could have been. Shannon once told me, "I
love you and I love Mom, but I hate the two of
you together." But I believed that our children
would be better off if Lynne and I stayed
together. I believed that then and I believe that
now. Right or wrong, you have to do what you
think is right.
I made Lynne an offer she couldn’t
refuse. We would sell the Centerport house and
buy a large co-op in Manhattan. Our condo on
East 34th Street was much too small for the family
to live in and it had been leased out. Christopher
was going to go to the School of Visual Arts, and
Shannon was a dance major at NYU. So
Manhattan would work out very well. Besides,
Manhattan is the only place where Lyn, or
Lynne, has ever wanted to live. Matthew was
graduating from SUNY Plattsburgh, so he could
also live with us. Needless to say, Lynne loved the
idea.
An interesting note about Shannon going
to NYU: Shannon had been a dance major at
SUNY Purchase, but she wanted to transfer to
NYU. The problem was that she needed to
336
audition to get in and the auditions were over.
She was heartbroken.
I noticed in a brochure from NYU that
the Chair of the Dance Department was a lady by
the name of Kay Cummings. I quickly called a
friend who had been in The Fantasticks with me.
"Mike, the Kay Cummings that is head of Dance
at NYU isn't the same Kay Cummings who
played my daughter, is it?" "It sure is," he
responded. I called Kay, and Lynne and I met
with her. Shannon was accepted into the NYU
dance program without an audition.
My whole family was apartment hunting
in Manhattan but it was Matthew who found the
apartment that we eventually bought, 1800
square feet in the West Village, but near Soho. It
was zoned for "live-work." We would be able to
move Box One into the space. The big problem
was the house in Centerport. As soon as we told
the tenant, the executive at Lehman Brothers,
that we wanted to sell, he moved out. An empty
house on Long Island is a scary thing. As soon as
the high school kids find out about it, it becomes
a party house. It's hard to show when it's covered
in beer bottles and riddled with holes in the walls.
I felt so much pressure to sell fast that we sold for
a fraction of what we had hoped to get. At the
closing of our new co-op in the village, I had to
use credit card checks to cover the closing costs.
337
As large as this new apartment was, it
was still way too small to accommodate a lifetime
of stuff. From four bedrooms, a garage, and a full
basement to a Manhattan apartment is a tight
squeeze. Add to this the 5000 square feet from
Box One, and you've got 8000 square feet being
squeezed into 1800 square feet. It didn't fit. The
new tenant in Box One's old space was also a
photo lab. I left them the large processors as well
as many cameras, strobes, enlargers, computers,
tools and parts.
Our main slide client was still Lehman
Brothers. They went through a total shake-up of
their staff. Everyone was fired, including my
tenant, who had gotten me the work in the first
place. The new management sent out requests for
proposals to all of my competitors. They were
looking for faster service for less money.
Lehman
decided
to
stop
using
Cibachromes. They wanted to use "Fierys"
instead. This process resulted in a much lower
quality but at a much lower price. The cost of the
equipment to do Fierys was way out of our price
range. Box One would continue to make the slides
for Lehman but no longer made Cibachromes.
This was good news because, even though Cibas
were making money, the processor was way too
large to fit in our new apartment. By downsizing
338
Box One and moving it to the apartment, Box
One could eliminate its $4500 per month rental
expense and cut the staff from sixteen to six
without greatly reducing our monthly gross. We
would still have a color and black and white
darkroom, but the overwhelming amount of work
was computer slides.
When making computer slides, the
computer did most of the work. Hit two keys on
the computer and then wait half an hour. Then
hit another key and wait for the computer to do
its job. Living and working at the same place
worked out well. I could punch a few keys, then
go up and have a beer and watch the news. Then
go down, hit a few more keys, then go back
upstairs and eat dinner.
Speaking of dinner, Matthew and
Shannon were now both vegetarians. When
Lynne became a vegetarian, she stopped cooking
for me. I would cook for her, but she would wait
until I went to bed before she would eat it. She
would not sit at the same table with me except
when we were eating out.
After moving to Manhattan, I maintained
close relationships with many of my train friends.
Our new apartment was near the subway line
that went to the Long Island Railroad Station,
and my train buddies would stop off to say hello.
339
We, of course, would then go to the nearest bar
and have a few for old times’ sake.
My relationship with one of my train
friends, Michael DiMartini, seemed particularly
incongruous. He was a young man in his early
thirties, always immaculately dressed and so
conservative that he considered The New York
Times propaganda for the communist party. He
was shy and quiet but had a good sense of humor.
He had a mind like a steel trap; he retained
everything he ever saw or heard, a quality that
must have come in handy in his law practice. We
disagreed on everything, but that made for good
conversation. It's no fun talking to someone who
agrees with everything you say.
I knew that he was about to be married. I
was pleased that he invited me to the wedding,
but when he asked me to participate in the
ceremony, I was overjoyed. He knew that I was
once an actor, and he knew that I had studied for
the ministry. He asked me to read a passage from
the Bible: the "hope, faith, love" sequence
written by the apostle Paul. At the wedding,
Michael seemed calm and relaxed but I was a
nervous wreck. I am not sure if it was because it
had been so long since I had been in front of an
"audience," or if it was because it had been so
long since I had even been in a church, let alone
spoken from the altar, but I fear that my
340
performance may have been a little overly
dramatic.
The wedding was held in Manhattan, but
the reception was on Long Island. All of the train
gang was there and we had a wonderful time.
It's strange. I think of myself as the only
person in my family who is "religious." Lynne
was brought up as a Protestant, but claims to be a
firm non-believer. She did, however, want the
children to go to church, just as she had. I did not
object, but I did not encourage it either. I wanted
the children to be free to have their own moment
of truth. None of them share many of my beliefs,
but each of them, in their own way, is religious. I
know that they search for an understanding of
life. We all share a love of mankind and a desire
for all living things to be treated in a moral and
just manner.
None of my children were baptized. This
was not a result of negligence. This was part of
my religious beliefs. As I saw it, Jesus came to be
baptized by John the Baptist. Upon realizing who
Jesus was, he said something to the effect of, "I
baptize with water," but Jesus would baptize
with the Holy Spirit, not in a public ceremony but
a private revelation of the personal relationship
that God has with each and every one of us. To
have your children baptized with water would
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seem to me to show a lack of faith. I trust that
the Holy Spirit of God will baptize my children. I
seem to interpret everything that I read in the
Bible in a manner that is the opposite of accepted
practice. I have no doubt that my children will
have a greater faith and understanding of God
than I have ever known.
While at Alma College, I considered
becoming a vegetarian. It does seem barbaric to
kill innocent animals and then eat them. Human
beings have this incredible ability to rationalize.
My decision to eat meat is rooted in what the
church calls "communion."
There seems to be a debate as to whether
the Last Supper was or was not a "Seder," a
celebration of Passover. If it were a Seder, it is
not likely that the Jews, during Passover, would
have given Jesus a trial and turned him over to
the Romans. That would put a fly in the ointment
of the entire Easter story. But regardless, Jesus
and the disciples were having "supper" at the
Last Supper.
Most of our Judeo-Christian
culture knows the story, the bread and the wine.
“This is my blood, this is my body. Do this in
remembrance of me."
What were they doing? They were eating
and drinking. In my mind, I see Jesus pointing
out to the disciples that life exists as the result of
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sacrifice. For us to live, we must eat. For us to
eat, living things must die. They are sacrificed so
that we may live. He was setting them up for the
realization that he was about to be sacrificed.
"Do this in remembrance of me." When you eat
and drink, remember me, remember that Jesus
also made a sacrifice so that we could live. Every
time you eat or drink, take a moment and
remember. This idea is very different from the
wafer and grape juice used at a communion in a
church.
It still bothers me that animals are killed
to provide us with meat, but this concept of
sacrifice eases my conscience whenever I dig into
a Porterhouse steak. I mentioned this line of
reasoning to my son Matthew and he responded,
"Hey Dad, whatever works for you. But I don't
think you can compare Christ giving his life for
humanity to millions of cattle hung up at the
slaughterhouse for no reason other than man’s
appetite."
My family enjoyed living in Manhattan.
Life was good and we prospered, but the new
relationship with Lynne that I had hoped for
never developed. As she became more
independent she also became more remote. We
slept in the same king-size bed, but never
touched. Lynne would stay up at night later and
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later in hope that I would be asleep when she
came to bed.
It was now more difficult than ever to
bring Michele home. She no longer had a
bedroom, but even more important, we no longer
had her bed. Michele liked to sleep in her own
bed. The one common denominator throughout
all of our moves to new locations was her bed. We
were not able to move it with us to Manhattan.
The one time that I brought her home to Houston
Street was when everyone in the family was going
to be away for the weekend. I picked her up on
Long Island and we stopped, as we always did, at
7-Eleven, and picked up soda and Oreo cookies.
She always loved Oreo cookies. Once, when she
and I lived together, we went shopping and I
picked up a box of Hydrox cookies and put them
in the cart. She took them out and returned them
to their place on the shelf. She then found the
Oreos and put them in our cart. So I knew to
always get Oreos. When Michele and I arrived at
our Manhattan apartment she made herself at
home, but when it got to be bedtime, I had a
problem. The bed in Matthew's room was similar
to her bed, and I didn’t anticipate a problem, but
I could not get Michele to go into the room.
There was something, I don't know what, that
frightened her. On her own, she checked out the
other rooms, but walked out when she saw that
her bed was not there. She ended up spending the
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night sitting up in the living room. I pulled out
the sofa bed around 4am, but she wouldn’t get
into it. She stayed up all night. When I took her
back to Long Island, it hurt even more than usual
to say good-bye.
My sister Margaret, now back in Detroit,
was again in the hospital. She needed a bone
marrow transplant. I was the only one in the
family who matched. I flew into Detroit several
times for tests. At the final visit before the
transplant, I was given a prescription for a drug
to be injected every day up until the transplant. It
was needed to increase some kind of platelets in
my blood. I sat with the needle in my hand for
half an hour. I couldn't stick it in my arm. Lynne
wouldn't try. I had to go to the hospital and pay
to have it done.
The hospital in Detroit decided that I was
not healthy enough to use the conventional
transfer operation. They tried a new
experimental technique. It seemed to work.
Margaret lived for another two years. She was
with her son Jamie and her grandchildren when
she passed away. She was happy. Her minister
friend from Northport, Long Island gave the
eulogy. She was 53. Lynne came with me to the
funeral.
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I couldn’t help but think how sad it was
that my brothers and sister and I had spent so
little of our adult lives together. And now we
would never all be together again, unless, of
course, there is indeed a heaven. It made me
think of my brothers who I never met. My
mother had given birth to triplets when I was five
or six years old, Don, Dan, and Dean. They all
died after a few days in the hospital. Would I
meet them for the first time in heaven? Would
Margaret be with them now? It’s a concept that’s
difficult for an intelligent person to grasp. It
would be so comforting to believe so. Of hope,
faith and love (charity), I have a lot of hope and
love. It's the faith part that is getting a little
weak.
It was now 1998. Box One had been doing
slides for Lehman Brothers for over six years.
Suddenly the volume of work began to decline
drastically. Slide shows were being replaced by
electronic presentations. In other words, instead
of going into a conference room and setting up a
slide projector, the conference rooms were
equipped with computer monitors. The slides
were no longer needed. Everyone could watch the
presentation on a monitor.
This marked the beginning of the end. My
health was deteriorating at a rapid pace. I could
not quit smoking. Emphysema was becoming
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advanced. Diabetes was becoming uncontrollable.
The pain in my legs and feet made it nearly
impossible to walk. The fear of another heart
attack was ever present.
I began to investigate the possibility of
retirement.
During our three and a half years in the
Village, New York City rentals had gone through
the roof. I was told by a rental agent that we
could get a rent of $4,700 per month for our coop. Our mortgage and maintenance costs were
$3,400 per month. That would mean that we
could make a profit of $1,300 per month by
renting out the co-op.
I was 63 at the time. I could qualify for
Social Security at the lower rate. The weird thing
about Social Security is that you are limited as to
how much income you can earn if you work while
on Social Security, but you can make as much as
you want from "unearned income." So, if a poor
person retires, he is allowed to work and earn say
$700 per month; if he exceeds that amount, he
loses his Social Security. If a rich person retires,
there is no limit as to how much he or she can
earn from stocks and bonds and real estate
investments. So I would be able to retire and get
$900 per month from Social Security. Added to
this would be an income of $1,300 per month
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from the rental of the co-op, and I could work
part-time and earn another $700 per month.
By this time, Matthew and Shannon had
moved out of the house. Shannon was living with
her boyfriend in San Francisco. Matthew had
moved in with his girlfriend on Long Island.
Chris had transferred from The School of Visual
Arts to SUNY Purchase in Westchester County,
so he was gone most of the year.
Lynne and I could move into the little
condo we had been renting out. I could retire.
Lynne didn’t like this idea one bit, but
fuck it. Everyone has what I call a fuck it level. I
had reached mine. I needed to have some fun. For
nearly forty years I had wanted to return to San
Francisco and if I retired, I would be able to go.
It was now or never. I sold the little business Box
One had left and I filled out the Social Security
forms. Christopher and I flew out for a long
weekend in San Francisco. We arrived late at
night and slept in a motel near the airport. The
next morning, as the taxi entered the city, I knew
that I would spend the weekend with tears in my
eyes. We had a two-room suite at the Tuscan Inn
on Fisherman's Wharf. Shannon and her
boyfriend, Jeff, would drive down from Marin
County, where they were living, and spend the
weekend with us. We went to see the house on
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Grant Avenue where I had stayed rent-free for
several months. Outside of a fresh coat of paint, it
looked just as I had left it. The free apartment on
Green Street, however, was gone. The building
violations must have caused its demise. We went
into the Coffee Gallery, where World Stage had
put on improvisational theatre. The stage was
gone, but otherwise it still looked the same. We
all walked down Grant Avenue, past the City
Lights Bookstore, to Vesuvio, one of the main
hangouts of the “Beat” generation.
Vesuvio's was so much smaller than I
remembered it. I used to make food money in
Vesuvio by arm wrestling. As I've said, I was a
very skinny, nerdy-looking guy. One of the actors
at World Stage would act as my shill. He would
go up to patrons at the bar and say, “See that
nerdy-looking guy over there? He's stinking
drunk and thinks that he can out arm wrestle
anyone in the joint.”
Like so many of us skinny, wiry guys, I
was pretty strong, but the key was to psyche out
the opponent. I rarely won by pulling the other
guy's arm down. When he was pushing with all
of his might, I would say things like, “You can
start any time you’re ready,” I was good at
lighting a cigarette with one hand. When I lit up
while they were pushing like all hell, they would
usually quit. I lost a few when the other guy put
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my arm down so fast that I had no time to try my
tricks.
La Bodega was a flamenco bar and
restaurant that had been across the street from
Vesuvio. It had since moved to a new location.
They once served Coors on tap with a large slab
of Gouda cheese and hunk of hard bread for a
dollar. When it was served, the waiter would
thrust a sharp knife into the wooden table so it
would go “twang.” Flamenco guitarists played
every evening. It was here that I once came close
to killing a man.
This was before World Stage had opened,
when I was dating Norma Fire. After dining out,
Norma and I had stopped off at Mr. Otis, my
favorite hangout, for a drink. Norma's roommate
had left San Francisco and Norma was staying
with her brother down the peninsula. The last
train left at midnight, so she had to leave soon.
Norma and I had been joined by a few friends,
and in the group was a Flamenco guitarist who
played at La Bodega. He said that he lived near
where Norma was going. She could stay as late as
she wanted because he could drive her home. We
all stayed into the wee hours. When it was time to
go, I walked with Norma to the guitarist's car.
She gave me a long, long kiss as we said
goodnight and then they drove off.
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The next morning, I got a call from
Norma. This fucking bastard took her to his
place. When she refused his advances, he kicked
her out of the car. It was what we used to call,
“My way or the highway.” She had to call her
brother to come and get her.
I went every night for a week to La
Bodega, but the guitarist never showed up. He
didn't work there anymore. Good thing. I would
have taken that knife that went “twang” and
stuck it in his throat. That's pretty tough talk
coming from a wimp. In truth, I'm just the
opposite of Teddy Roosevelt. I speak loudly but
never carry any sticks.
After visiting Vesuvio, we did it. We went
to see the old, new, World Stage. It was a
restaurant now, but there it was. It hadn't been a
dream. I just stood and looked.
I tried to find The Purple Onion and The
Hungry Eye. I didn't know if they had closed or if
I just couldn't find them. It was while in line
outside The Purple Onion that I had met Dick
Clark. He was standing in line ahead of me. We
were both going to see a new comedienne, Phyllis
Diller. I still remember Diller’s best line, “My
'Living Bra' died.”
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Shannon and Jeff told me about a show
that had been running in San Francisco for years
called Beach Blanket Babylon. They wanted to see
it, but it was all sold out. I called the theatre and
they remembered World Stage. We got four press
tickets for Saturday night. It was nothing like
anything I would have done, but it was a lot of
fun. The next day, Jeff took us for a ride to Mill
Valley and then along the coastline. I had never
had a car in San Francisco, so I never did much
sightseeing. It was spectacular. Chris and I
returned to New York with smiles on our faces. I
was ready for the next adventure into the
unknown... retirement.
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Chapter 17
The lease was up on the rental of my
studio condo and I notified the tenant that I
would not renew it, I was moving in. I told my
real estate agent to find a prospective tenant for
the co-op, we were moving out. The agent put an
ad for an open house in The Sunday N.Y. Times
but, to my surprise, no one showed up. No one.
Zip.
Someone did call her office though, and
requested to see the apartment that Tuesday.
Two young men showed up. The ad had read
"live-work." That’s what they were looking for.
They wanted to open a holistic medicine practice.
Would that be okay? As far as I knew that was
okay. I was running a photo lab in the building
and people on the next floor were running a
massage and yoga business. They took one look
around and said they wanted it. They placed a
deposit with the real estate broker. We needed to
negotiate the fine points of the lease before it
could be turned over to the co-op board for
approval. All of the negotiations were done with
just one of the two men. His name was Danny. I
never saw the second young man again. He
offered $4,500, $200 less than I was asking. I said
that would be OK if they accepted the apartment
AS IS. No painting, no floor refinishing. I also
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mentioned that I did not have room in our new
apartment for most of our furniture. If they
wanted the leftover furniture, they could have it.
If not, I would give it to the Salvation Army.
These negotiations went on for two
months. He wanted the lease in his corporate
name. I told him that a corporate lease would not
be acceptable. He wanted this, and then he
wanted that. He kept bringing people over to look
at the apartment; he must have seen the place a
dozen times.
During this time, I thought it strange that
no one else was ever shown the apartment. Even
after a deposit is made, it is standard procedure
to continue showing the apartment and to even
accept backup offers. As it turned out, my real
estate agent had been fired from her job. She
pulled our records out of the office files. If
anyone else rented the apartment, she would not
get her commission.
Both Danny and his partner signed leases.
The starting date was January 1, 1999. The
leases, financial data and references were all
turned over to the co-op board for approval.
When the board approved the tenants, I assumed
it had done so with full knowledge of the holistic
medicine.
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Danny, the real estate agent and I all met
at the apartment for a final walk through. The
other tenant did not show up. Danny said they
didn’t know what pieces of my old furniture they
would keep. He said, “Don't throw anything out.
If we can't use it, we can always throw it out.” It
seemed as if we were all ready for a smooth
transition.
I closed Box One. Lynne and I moved into
the condo. She was not happy about it but she
had no other place to go.
Several days had gone by after the movein date for the co-op and I hadn’t heard a word. I
stopped by to see how they were doing and was
surprised to find that no one had moved in. When
I got back home, I called Danny. He said that he
had been sick and had not even been in the
apartment.
A couple of weeks later, Danny called and
talked to Lynne. He yelled and screamed. “This
place is a filthy pigsty,” he said. “I'm not moving
in until the place is painted and the floors are
sanded and refinished, and all your old furniture
is thrown out. And I'm not paying any rent
either.”
Lynne and the kids had worked so hard
cleaning that apartment. They scrubbed the
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floors, cleaned the bathrooms and the kitchen,
and washed the windows. How could he say that
the place was a pigsty? I went over to check it
out. There was one spot between a sofa and end
table that had been missed. Otherwise the place
was immaculate. What was this guy up to?
We set up a meeting at the apartment to
see if this matter could be resolved. Danny told
me that he was bringing his attorney (his sister),
so I invited my real estate agent. I also asked the
chairman of the co-op board to be present. As the
rest of us walked through the apartment, Danny
and Jim, the chairman, were talking. Suddenly
we all heard screams. "You lied to me!" we all
heard Jim yell. We all ran to the room where the
argument was coming from.
“You told me that you were in
construction and that all you needed was a desk,
a phone and a fax. You didn’t say a word about a
holistic medical center,” Jim yelled.
“I am in construction,” Danny yelled
back. “If you wanted to know about the holistic
medicine, you should have interviewed my
partner. He's the one into holistic medicine.”
Jim turned to me and said, “I'm sorry,
Wayne, but I'm going to call an emergency board
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meeting and we will void the board's approval.
You don't want this lying bastard as a tenant.”
Great. I've closed my business and moved
out, and now I don't have a tenant in the co-op. It
could take months to find a new one. The tenant
in our studio condo moved out so that Lynne and
I could move in. So it's costing me $5,000 per
month for mortgage and maintenance fees on the
two properties, and my only income is $900 per
month from Social Security. Retirement is off to a
wonderful start.
Danny had paid the real estate company
$20,500. The first month's rent, two months
security, and the rest for the commission fee. He
demanded a full refund. I told him he had better
help find a new tenant because I was going to
charge him rent until a new lease was signed.
He sued me. I was going to represent myself. God
knows I’ve done it before, but when Danny’s
lawyer spoke with me, he tried to scare me. He
used some of my own techniques and implied that
he was looking forward to making me look like a
stupid asshole. As it turned out, this attitude
turned out to be a mistake on his part. He
frightened me into looking for my own attorney.
At first, I couldn’t find one. I left messages with
several attorneys but they never called me back. I
came to the conclusion that they were not
357
interested because there was not
opportunity for them to make any money.
much
I wrote a letter and sent it to six lawyers.
It described the situation but then stated, “I will
come into your office and give you $250 cash, no
receipt required. You will spend one half an hour
with me and answer my questions in regards to
the law pertaining to this case. All six lawyers
responded. I selected one and made an
appointment. He asked me if I wanted to get any
money for damages or if I just wanted the lawsuit
to go away. I said I just wanted it to go away. He
told me that for the $250 he would draft the
response and send it on his stationery. He would
attempt to scare off the other lawyer. He made it
clear that if the scare tactic didn’t work, he
would not represent me in court. This was a oneshot deal. His response stated that because it was
a live-work lease, commercial rent laws applied.
He countersued for $108,000 for rent due for the
duration of the lease and sued for $2,500,000 in
damages.
I sure got my $250 worth. Danny
withdrew the lawsuit and I never heard from him
again. I wish I could have seen the look on his
lawyer's face when he got that response.
This was my second bad experience with
renters. I decided to sell the co-op instead of
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renting it. We would lose some income but we
made a nice profit on the sale. Lynne had become
certified as an instructor in the exercise regimen
called Pilates and was beginning to earn a nice
living. I was beginning to think that she had
adjusted to life in the condo, but a few months
later, she split. Her brother Bill had remarried
and bought a co-op apartment in Washington
Heights, but he was once again on the road, this
time with Phantom of the Opera. Lynne moved in
with her brother’s new wife, Sue.
At the time, I thought that this was a good
thing. After a few months living away from me,
Lynne would realize how lucky she was to have
someone like me to love her and care for her. She
would soon be back and we would, once again, be
happy together.
In order to prevent the loneliness from
turning into madness, I decided to resurrect The
Harold Clurman Theatre Workshop. My little
condo was at 34th Street and Third Ave. There
were thirty-four restaurants within a two-block
radius. I did a little research to find out which
ones had separate party rooms. Then, I
investigated to find out which of these restaurants
were doing well and which ones were “hungry.” I
found a beautiful restaurant at 33rd and Third
Avenue named Bellew. It had a large party room
in the basement that was decorated with covers
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from old Theatre Magazines from the thirties and
forties. It was perfect. I asked to see the owner. I
then explained that I was the Artistic Director of
The Harold Clurman Theatre and we had lost
our lease. I was looking for a space to do
showcase productions of new plays. It would not
cost him a cent and I could guarantee thirty
people or more an evening for dinner and drinks.
He just looked at me and said, “When do you
want to start?”
I put a casting notice in the trade paper
Back Stage, and much to my surprise, for a nonpaying job doing showcase productions, I
received about 4,000 pictures and resumes.
Without even reading the resumés, I narrowed
them down by selecting only actors who lived
within an easy commute to 33rd Street and Third
Avenue and who had e-mail addresses. I knew
this was going to require a lot of communication
and I didn’t want to be tied up on the phone or
spend a lot of money on mailings.
The important thing to keep in mind is
that we did not charge for the performances, and
these were really full performances but without a
lot of sets or costumes. The money was made by
selling dinner and drinks... not during
performance, but before and after the shows. By
not charging admission, we sidestepped many
issues of union contracts and royalties.
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This was all going very well until one
evening when we arrived at the restaurant to find
it closed and padlocked by the IRS. I quickly
contacted the son of Richie Brew, who managed
his father's famous restaurant on 34th Street,
Brews, and he said, “I can’t do it on a regular
basis, but if it would help, you can perform here
this evening.” I felt like Orson Welles directing
our audience to the new location.
Unfortunately, the owner of Bellew did
not survive the pressure of the IRS. He died of a
heart attack and the restaurant was closed. We
finished our scheduled shows at The Lambs Club,
but that was the end of The Harold Clurman
Theatre Workshop.
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Chapter 18
Lynne never came crawling back. She
never came back at all. The Fantasticks closed.
After forty years, it just closed. I cried. I feared it
was an omen. In the distance, I could hear the
swan singing. I’ve had a few laughs and my share
of tears; it's been one hell of a ride. I may go
tomorrow or I could last another twenty years.
Either way, I intend to go with a smile on my
face.
I once saw myself as someone who would
alter the course of history. As it turns out, I
would be very happy to be remembered as a good
father and a loving husband.
Shannon had broken up with Jeff and she
returned to New York City and lived in the
village for a while before moving to Burlington,
Vermont. There, she met the love of her life and,
like her mother, got married just in time. Wow, I
was a grandfather. Jami Lashua was born
January 28, 2002. I bought a house for them, with
the understanding that I could live there rent-free
for the rest of my life. After graduation from
Purchase College, Chris had no place to go, and
so he moved in with us. Matthew, who had been
getting his masters degree in library science, was
laid off from his job at the Queens Library. They
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laid off twenty-five percent of the work force, so
Matt will be moving in with us very soon. I’m
going to be living with all of our children and our
only grandchild. If neither Lynne nor Lyn comes
back to join the family, I give up.
I know it’s schmaltzy, but not a day goes
by that I don’t hope to hear her say, "I love you."
If my life had been a play and I had written the
script, I would be on my deathbed and as I
shuffled off this mortal coil, Lyn would be
holding my hand. "Of course, I love you," she
would say.
"I have always loved you."
Mussorgsky's "Great Gate of Kiev" from
Pictures at an Exhibition would be playing in the
background. The music would swell. Not a dry
eye in the house.
I can't explain it, I can't tell you why.
Lyn lived with me for nearly three years before
we were married and for the next thirty years we
shared the same bed. During that time she was
pregnant six times. No, I do not approve of
abortion and I swear that I will never have one,
but being a mother is obviously an important
part of life and only the woman has the right to
make that decision. I fully support a woman's
right to choose. This is in truth “the right to life.”
Have you ever noticed how the people who
consider abortion to be murder are the same ones
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who support capital punishment and always seem
ready to go to war?
Yes, there is a lot that I do not
understand. How Lynne could not love me is just
one of them. Now it's true that she did not want
to get married in the first place and she did not
want children. But, nevertheless, she loves her
three children so very much. How could she not
love me, their father? It is also true that I
promised to make her the happiest woman on
earth. It sure looks as if I failed to come through
on that one.
But a more important question is why do
I still love her? How could I love someone who
seems to enjoy causing me pain? Then I think of
my first wife, Joan. She loved me and I treated
her like shit. I do not know why but I do know
that it was the result of a shortcoming in me, not
Joan. In many ways, Lyn is just giving me a taste
of my own medicine. Lyn, or now Lynne, has
moved to Burlington, Vermont. She comes to my
house every week to do her laundry. She does not
speak to me unless it is absolutely necessary. In
her mind, she is coming to her daughter's house,
not mine. I do not want to go into her sex life. I
do not know if she has one or not and I do not
want to know. I have not been intimate with a
woman for over fifteen years. Not even a kiss. I
get very lonely.
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But as much as I love Lyn, my children
are the joy of my life. They fill me with pride. I
haven't seen Michele for several years now. I
often think about having her move to Vermont so
that I could be with her, but I fear that such a
move would be more for my sake than hers. I
always felt a sense of awe and humility that God
chose me to be Michele's father. She was never a
burden, only a blessing. It may be best for
Michele not to see me again. I don't know. I only
wish my tears could bring her happiness. If only I
could hear her say, "Dada."
At this point (it is Friday, May 16, 2003)
my life will go on, but I am bringing this book to
a close. I am waiting to go to the Essex
Community Theatre where my son Christopher
is performing one of the leading roles in I Hate
Hamlet. I have also been cast in a play. Actors'
Equity, the performers union, gave me
permission to work in a non-union production in
Stowe, Vermont. I will play the Girl’s Father in
the Stowe Community Theatre Guild's
production of The Fantasticks. This is the longest
running show in theatre history and it has been
performed all over the country and the world.
Can you imagine the look on the director's face
when I came to the auditions and handed him a
note from Tom Jones, the author of the play,
saying that he considered me to be the best girl's
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father in the history of the show? He did,
however, still make me audition for the part.
Is this my swan song or just another
beginning? I have no idea.
I came into this world knowing nothing
and I shall leave it knowing nothing. But I have
so many memories of the days when I knew it all.
The End
November, 2005
Michele was found dead on the floor of
her bedroom. 42 years old. Cause of death
unknown. God had faith that I would care for her
and protect her. I let both God and my daughter
down in a big way. I will never spend another
night without tears running down my cheek.
On the bright side, I have a
granddaughter, Emma Lyn Lashua. She and my
grandson Jami bring me so very much joy. I am
again reminded of a book I nearly finished,
Kahlil Gibran's little book, A Tear and a Smile.
We need them both, don't we? But somehow, the
tears are always a little bit more precious.
Keep going...There's more to come.
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More Memories
When I told Barry LaVine that I believed
in reincarnation and flying saucers, he thought I
was crazy. When I met Judy Lieberman at a
party, I thought that she was the most beautiful
girl in the world. She wouldn't give me the time
of day, but after she played opposite me in
Strindberg's Miss Julie, she said that she would
love me forever. It was too late. By then, I was in
love with Mary Lou. The time Mary Lou cut her
finger and bled into the creamed tuna, it was very
tasty. Knowing that Martin and Diane Shaker
are still my friends. Strapping a fifteen-inch
woofer to my chest so that I could feel Beethoven.
My dog Tippie and my horse Happy. Matthew in
his Jolly Jumper. Connie Martin in the fourth
grade. Holding Katy Manthos in my arms and
her telling me that she loved someone else, my
roommate at Alma, Bob Fritz. But she added that
she knew I would someday be a "great man."
My brother's deep voice saying, "Good morning.
Welcome to Music '`Til Dawn." Throwing a party
at Studio 54. Christina Crawford's cat that only
walked backwards. Seeing a documentary about
Iwo Jima and discovering that my friend,
Richard Ramos, was not only there during World
War II, but was a hero. He had told me, but I just
didn’t believe him. He was only 14 at the time
and was awarded the Congressional Medal of
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Honor. Listening to “Musetta's Waltz” from La
Bohème, Berlioz's “Symphony Fantastique,”
“Brahms 1st,” “Tchaikovsky's 5th and 6th,”
Cesar Frank's “Symphony in D Minor,” Dave
Brubeck and Paul Desmond, Jeri Southern, Stan
Kenton, and The Four Freshmen. The New Music
Society, which played every Monday night at
World Stage. Yuseff Lateef, Thad and Elvin
Jones, Kenny Burrell. The raven that landed on
my head while I was hanging up laundry in Flint,
Michigan. Talking to Sir John Gielgud on the
telephone. Being broke and finding a twenty on
the sidewalk. Betsy and Elliot, my first two
computers. Bob and Doris Camposa. Fred
Eberstadt. Mike Heffernan. Richard and Amy
Hutchings. The greatest dentist in the world,
Randy Kay. Woody King, Jr. Jackie Mason
taking his own photos at Picture Yourself.
Christopher in A Christmas Carol. My mother
holding Matthew in her arms. David Little-Smith
and his wife, Roxanna. Marco and Joyce. Trying
to get the nerve to talk to Beverly Shoemaker on
the bus to Redford High School. Taking my kids
to The Monkees convention in Philadelphia.
Developing my first roll of film. My father
cooking his famous Bar-B-Que. Kahlil Gibran's
The Prophet: "Even as love crowns you, so shall it
crucify you." Namath and the Jets winning the
Super Bowl. The Sun Parlor Playhouse. My
friends at Alma College: Bob Woods, Tom Scholl,
Bob Fritch, Gary Hahn, Eddie Stoltz, Bud and
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Alice Davies. Cliff Ammon telling me, before
going on stage without any rehearsal, "Piece of
cake." Jim Becker building a TV station in his
garage. Carolyn Edwards, the first girl I kissed.
Being hypnotized to quit smoking. Douglas Kahn,
my best friend when I was five years old.
Walking Randy and Margaret to the Holcomb
Grade School. Phil Gaberman playing "My
Funny Valentine." Lorette Yore, singing at my
"Detroit Actors" party in 1983― the voice of an
angel. Years later, when she was married, I stood
in for her deceased father, Leonard, and gave her
away. I loved her father very much and it gave
me great pride to march down the aisle with his
daughter on my arm. Henrietta Hermelin, a great
actress, whom I could easily have loved if she had
only let me. Being on stage with Yvonne Doolittle
in The Crucible, and saying, "Life, woman, life is
God's most precious gift. No cause, however
glorious, justifies the taking of it." Shannon's
purple hair. Our dog Snuffy― he was, indeed,
my best friend. Christopher's smile.
My work in Heaven Can Wait, The Cave
Dwellers, The Great God Brown, Children of
Darkness, Bus Stop, Gideon, The Teahouse of the
August Moon, Candida, The Bald Soprano, Jack,
The Waltz of the Toreadors, The Time of Your
Life, You Never Can Tell, The Enchanted, Ondine,
Miss Julie, A Shot in the Dark, A Taste of Honey,
The Vegetable, The Physicist, Look Homeward
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Angel, The Little Foxes, You Can't Take It With
You, The Miracle Worker, Shadow and the Rock,
The Epidemic, Awake and Sing, The Curious
Savage, A View From a Bridge, The Glass
Menagerie, The End of the Beginning, Bedtime
Story, Roots, The Immoralist, Invitation to a
March, The Beautiful People, My Heart is in the
Highlands, The Harmfulness of Tobacco, The Best
Man, Tobacco Road, The Marriage Go Round,
The Twentieth Century, The Crucible, Under The
Yum Yum Tree, Waiting for Godot, End Game, On
A Clear Day, Annie Get Your Gun, The King and
I, Brigadoon, How To Succeed at Business, Once
Upon a Mattress, The Boyfriend, The Streets of
New York, Guys and Dolls, Connecticut Yankee,
Carousel, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way
To The Forum, Damn Yankees, Earnest in Love,
Plain and Fancy, and, of course, The Fantasticks.
It's not over yet?
Over the many years that I wrote and re-wrote
this book, many short stories were included that
ended up excluded. So I have put a few of them
here at the end. A few more tidbits... just a few
more interesting little episodes in my curious life.
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High School Romance
I hope I didn't give the impression that I
never dated during high school. One of my most
memorable dates was one I had for a school
dance. It was with a girl I had met at my church.
She was beautiful and intelligent. In addition to
documenting my lack of sophistication, this story
will also illustrate the extent of the differences
between then and now, at least when it comes to
sexual awareness.
At this dance I saw a girl: it was love at
first sight. I kept looking at her and she kept
looking at me. I went up to her date and asked to
speak with him. As I had hoped, he found my
date attractive and so we decided to trade dates.
Neither of the girls seemed to object to the idea of
a trade.
Later that night, my new date and I
began kissing and making out in the car. When I
French kissed her, she began to scream and hit
me. After she calmed down, she explained to me
that her mother had told her that a man putting
his tongue in a girl's mouth was how babies were
made. Carolyn Edwards became my first
girlfriend. Our song was the theme from Moulin
Rouge by Percy Faith. The first lyric is, “When
ever we kiss, I worry and wonder.”
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The Dance of Bees
One of Alma College's science professors
had worked on the Manhattan Project. He was
the one who sent the letter to Einstein. Aside
from his part-time teaching, he was retired. He
had a bee farm near the school. Dr. Harold Potter
taught a class in bee communication. It was
intended to be for students who may have had
difficulty with Science courses.
If, however, you have ever had difficulty
with a foreign language course, then you know
that the teacher soon conducts the class in the
foreign language and if you don't know enough of
the language, you have no idea as to what is going
on in the class. Thats what happened to me when
I took a course in French. Much to my surprise, I
passed it with a “C.” My professor must have
confused me with another student. I knew that I
never understood a word of what was going on
and so I took French I again…. and again…. but
I never passed again. So if I could not learn to
speak French, what chance did I have to learn
"Bee?" After four weeks, the class was conducted
in bee talk. As we entered the classroom, the
assignment would be written on the black board,
showing the vibrations of a bee's bottom that had
just entered the hive. We were to read the bee
dance and then follow the bee's instructions. The
instructions on the blackboard generally pointed
the way to a food source. The class was required
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to evaluate the speed and angle of the vibrations,
and then go out and find the food. If even one
student had known what he was doing, everyone
would have followed him, but no one did. We
would each aim our arm at the sun to determine
the angle, and then wander around the campus
until class was over. No one ever found the food.
Dr. Potter, bless him, couldn't flunk everyone.
We all got “C”s.
Swan Lake
The son of a close friend of my mother
raised parakeets. They all could talk. It would
appear at times that they were actually carrying
on conversations. My parakeet, Mikey, never
learned to talk, but wow, could he sing. This was
before stereo but hi-fi was very much in vogue. I
had a powerful amp and a Stevens 15 inch coaxial
speaker. I had a very wide range of musical taste
but there is no doubt that Mikey’s favorite was
Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky. Whenever I played
it, he would sing along.
One day, I went outside to our backyard
and I suddenly realized that Mikey was on my
shoulder. I didn’t panic. I walked very slowly to
the back door to the house. I slowly walked up
the steps and opened the door but, just as I was
stepping inside, Mikey flew off. He flew to a
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branch of a tree in our backyard. We could see
each other and I kept asking him to come down.
Eventually he flew off. I searched all over the
neighborhood. By evening, I was in a panic. Then
I had a brilliant idea. I set up my hi-fi system in
our yard. Needless to say, I put my LP of Swan
Lake on the turntable. At full blast, Swan Lake
could be heard for miles. Within a few minuets,
Mikey was in a tree above the hi-fi singing away.
It was getting late and my parents told me that
the neighbors were beginning to complain.
To this day, I cannot listen to Swan Lake
without thinking about the night that I
introduced classical ballet to a blue-collar
neighborhood in Detroit, Michigan.
Quick Study?
At Wayne University Theatre in 1956,
each student had to direct a student production
to pass the directing class. A friend of mine was a
senior and he could not graduate without
directing a play. He called me at World Stage and
begged me to play the lead in Swan Song by
Chekhov. This is a one-act play about an old
actor who retires from the theatre. After his final
performance, the cast throws a party for him in
the theatre. He gets drunk and falls asleep in the
dressing room. Everyone goes home and leaves
him there alone.
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I told my friend that it was a part that I
would love to play but I had no time to do it. He
said, "It won't take long, it has to be done this
Friday afternoon." "But this is Wednesday," I
said. He said "So, you can rehearse tomorrow
and do it on Friday. Please! You're the only actor
who could possibly do it." I reluctantly said yes. I
knew that I would not be able to learn the whole
play by Friday, but I would have a good grasp of
it and keep a script nearby offstage.
I cannot explain how or why it is. I cannot
spell and I have difficulty reading. If I call
information to get a phone number, I cannot
remember the number long enough to dial it. Yet
I can read a script a few times and pretty much
know it, not word by word, but idea by idea.
So now it is Friday and it is show time.
My makeup is done and I am ready to go. The
first moments go smoothly. The old actor wakes
up and finds himself alone in the theatre. He
begins to reminisce about his career; the plays he
has done, the women he has loved. But soon I
draw a blank. No problem, I'll walk off stage and
look at the script. Oh yeah, a little problem. I
don’t have my glasses on. I never perform with
my glasses on, but I can't read without them. No
problem, I mutter something about leaving my
glasses in the dressing room and went to get
them.
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Then came the real problem. This was the
1950s. The Xerox machine has not yet been
invented. There were only two ways to print out
copies of a script. One was called Mimeograph,
which was very difficult, and the other was called
Spirit Duplicator. This was easier but the type
was always blue. The only light on and off stage
was blue. The type was invisible in blue light. I
could not see a thing. I could not read a thing.
What could I do?
As I said, the whole play was about an
actor reminiscing about his life and experiences,
so I began to substitute my personal experiences
for the characters.
Most of the audience consisted of theatre
students. They instantly recognized the stories I
was telling. Many of them had taken an active
part in these stories. They rolled on the floor with
laughter. The teacher thought the director did
this intentionally and he got an A for direction
class. I do hope that Chekhov will forgive me.
Ah, sweet mystery…
For many years after leaving San
Francisco, I received letters from the actor who
played Bloom in Ulysses. One day, I received a
letter from a friend, Gary Maxwell, who was in
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Paris with The Paper Bag Players. He told me
about meeting a young lady in Paris at a bar. He
mentioned to her that he had worked at World
Stage in Detroit. She said, "Oh, then you must
know Wayne Martens. I worked with him at
World Stage in San Francisco." She went on to
say that she had been madly in love with me. This
came as a shock to me because, outside of my one
fling, my love life in San Francisco was not much
better than it had been in Detroit. My friend,
Gary, could not remember the name of the girl he
met in Paris. I was so curious as to whom it might
be and I wrote my friend who had played Bloom,
and asked if he had any idea who the girl might
be. He never answered and he never wrote to me
again. I later learned the young lady in question
was his wife.
Marijuana
In the sixties, after trying for nearly ten
years to quit smoking cigarettes, I was not about
to try marijuana even though everyone else I
knew was smoking it. I did expect it to eventually
be legalized and I was ready to make a fortune
off of it. I planned to form a company called
“Bird” that would sell marijuana cigarettes. The
slogan would be, “GET TWO STONED WITH
ONE BIRD!”
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Burglary in Brooklyn
After the birth of Matthew, my mother
was visiting to help with the baby. She slept in the
bedroom and Lyn and I slept in the living room
on the Castro. One night, very late, I woke up
hearing the sound of a window opening. We lived
on the first floor and the window was about four
feet off ground level. Sure enough, a man was
shimmying through the open window. I picked
up a large, heavy, cut glass vase and slid along
the wall to the window. He was balanced on the
ledge with his feet off the ground. He had not
seen or heard me. I didn’t want to make any
noise that would wake up my mother. I lifted the
vase over the man’s head and softly asked, "May
I help you?" He looked up and in the same
whispering tone said, "No thank you. I must have
the wrong apartment." He slid down and went on
his way.
Four Flat Tires
When we moved to Huntington, Long
Island, there was one big problem: no parking
space at the train station. All the spaces were
filled up by 5am. My train left at 7:30am. I would
park as near to the station as possible, on a
residential street, and walk to the station.
Understandably, the local residents were not
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happy about their streets being filled up with
commuters’ cars. It was not unusual to return
from work and find a nasty note on the
windshield.
One evening, after working very late, I
found my car with a broken window, broken
antenna and four flat tires. As strange as it may
sound, the broken window was a common
occurrence. It was later determined that a local
auto glass company was paying a gang of teens to
go about the area smashing car windows. But
four flat tires? I took a taxi home. The next
morning I called a garage and asked how I could
deal with four flat tires. The mechanic asked me
if the tires were slashed or if the air had been let
out. As far as I knew, the air had been let out. He
asked, “Do you have a bicycle pump?” I thought
he was crazy. A bicycle pump for an automobile?
It worked like a charm. I didn’t even break into a
sweat. Ever since, I have wondered why a bicycle
pump is not standard equipment in a car trunk.
After pumping up my tires, I drove up
and down the block where I had been parked,
yelling out the window, “Twenty bucks to anyone
who can tell me who vandalized my car.”
On about the third trip, a little black girl
came running up to my car. She gave me the
name and address of the girl who did it. That’s
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right, the girl who did it. I handed over the
twenty and the little girl went running back into
her house.
I drove up to the address given to me,
walked up to the front door and rang the bell,
several times. No one was home. As I was
traveling that block one more time, on my way
home, a woman was standing in the middle of the
road waving at me. I stopped. It was the little
black girl’s mother. “Mister, we are the only
black family in this neighborhood. If word gets
out that my daughter is a snitch, our lives will be
ruined forever. Please take your money back.” I
told the mother that I understood her dilemma
and promised not to go after the culprit. On the
other hand, her daughter had provided the
information I was seeking, and I felt that she
should keep the money. The mother reached in
through the window and gently touched my face.
“You are a good, kind man,” she said. “Thank
you.” Suddenly, all of my anger was gone.
Just one more short one.....
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Heresy
Forty-five years after my calling to the
ministry, I discovered that my religious beliefs
had a name. Lynne and I had gone to a small
party, and after a few drinks I began to
sermonize. It soon developed into an oldfashioned bull session like many of us had in
college. Lynne was bored and wanted to go home.
On the way back, she said that she was
embarrassed because I made an ass of myself.
A few days after the party, a package
arrived at our apartment. One of the party guests
had sent a book. It was "The Kingdom of God is
Within You" by Leo Tolstoy. I had no idea that
Tolstoy was such a great religious thinker.
Apparently, this book had a great deal of
influence on Mahatma Gandhi. I'm certain that I
skipped a few pages but I almost read the whole
book. For the first time, I realized that I am not
alone; I belong to a group, a group that wants to
discover the truth about life and our personal
relationship with God. I am a heretic.
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