Читать книгу Tosh - Tosh Berman - Страница 9

My mother is the daughter of Roudolph and Martha Morand. My grandmother, born Martha Jensen, came from Hamburg, Germany. My most vivid memory of her is as a butcher at the Hollywood Ranch Market on Vine Street. It always struck me as a weird occupation for a woman, but there was something very practical about her ability to cut up a side of meat. Of our family, she impressed me as the most hands-on. Way before America and her career as a butcher, she had been a teenage cabaret performer in Hamburg. No wonder I weep whenever I hear Lotte Lenya sing the cabaret theater songs by her husband Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, even though I don’t know my grandmother’s repertoire. She left the German port town sometime in the 1920s to become part of a traveling circus called 101 Ranch Wild West Show.

Martha’s traveling circus took her from Oklahoma to Cuba and then to California, where she quit to escape her first marriage to a cowboy trick rider by the name of Hank Durnell. Durnell was a stunt rider for the famous Tom Mix. Mix is legendary now as one of the first great cowboy movie stars. His horse “Tony” was as famous as he was. Mix and Tony were a big part of the 101 Ranch Wild West Show, which over the years also featured the talents of Buffalo Bill Cody, as well as the great Will Rogers. Martha and Durnell had a child by the name of Marcela, but the marriage ran aground when Durnell’s drinking got out of hand. Martha left the circus, and she eventually married Roudolph Morand, better known to his family and friends as “Dodo.”

At the time they met, Dodo resembled a young Cary Grant and was an iceman serving customers in the Hollywood area. He supplied ice to Mae West, who once gave him a car. This seems like an excessive gift for an iceman’s service, but, as I say, he was quite handsome. As a tot, I knew him to be entirely lovable, but he apparently had a temper and a touch of cruelty. For me, he was the perfect grandfather. When I knew him, he kept odd hours because he was a security guard for Howard Hughes’s plane. Since he worked the nightshift, he saw Hughes many times. Howard was very responsive to my grandfather. Dodo watched over the H-4 Hercules, better known as The Spruce Goose, which was Hughes’s huge plane made of birch wood. Commissioned by the government in 1942 during the Second World War, the plane was a failure, even though Hughes worked on it obsessively and went way over budget and time; he was still struggling with it up to 1947, well after the war’s end. Hughes kept the plane in a giant hangar until his death in 1976. My granddad once told me he was in the hangar in the middle of the night when Hughes came in unannounced. He wanted to fire up the plane to see how it was running. Hughes asked my grandfather to go to the right wing to see if the engine was working properly. The wingspan is 320 feet long. Once Dodo reached the precise spot, he signaled Hughes to start the motor. Instead of turning on the right side engine, he turned on the left. My grandfather told me that this was typical of Hughes’s sense of humor.

I have an early memory of my mom’s parents living very close to the Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. They eventually moved to Topanga and lived in the Fernwood section of that haunted canyon. Like our house on Crater Lane in Beverly Glen, their house was a shack, but still a very comfortable two-story cabin with a newly built swimming pool and bar. I loved playing in the wet bar area, because it seemed so grown up, and there was something aesthetically pleasing about having an outdoor bar with stools and water faucets. I never saw a water faucet in a backyard before, so to me, that was a complete novelty. Also, the whole area smelled like a forest. A lot of trees brought a fresh scent as the year went on, and their house was a perfect location for Christmas Day and family gatherings. I was never big on nature unless it was a controlled environment. But having a bar, three or four bar stools, and a swimming pool seemed to me like a divine version of nature.

Martha, Tosh’s maternal grandmother

Wallace would often play an extended version of gin rummy with Martha, who like my father had a great love for card games. Also like my dad, she was a very experienced player and quite competitive. Her manner in the game was serious, even when she played with me. My grandmother had a determined look on her face whenever she was playing, and when she won (which was often), she would give a charming, brief smile all of a sudden. Martha played to win, and not to pass the time. She and Wallace got along extremely well. Famously, there’s supposed to be tension between the son-in-law and the wife’s parents, but I never heard or saw any bad vibes between Wallace and my mother’s parents. Like my parents and my uncle, they were totally accepting of almost any social group, and very undemanding but supportive people.

My mom went to Hollywood High School with David Nelson of Ozzie & Harriet, the big brother of Ricky, and with Carol Burnett. Shirley and Uncle Don were truly part of the romantic Hollywood neighborhood years. Somewhere on their block lived the Robert Mitchum family with its various kids. There were plenty of children in her community, and in some ways, it must have been like a 1940s Hollywood family film. Unlike in the movies, however, my grandfather checked out of the household to live with another woman. He eventually came back to the family, after being with a pair of women (separately, as far as I know) named Virginia and Georgia. When he reappeared, my uncle asked if he’d run out of states.

As a child, until she was a teenager, my mom was interested in expressing herself through dance. She studied ballet under Michel Panaieff, who was the principal dancer for the Belgrade Opera and a member of the original Ballets Russes. He eventually settled in Los Angeles during the Second World War. Panaieff opened a dance studio in Hollywood, where my mother, through a large window facing Hollywood Boulevard, saw the first two major loves in her life. One was a boy name Fergie, who saw her dancing through the front window, and the second, some time after Fergie, was my dad, looking through that same window. Eventually, she landed on her foot the wrong way, which caused permanent damage to her ankle. She could walk easily but couldn’t dance anymore. The injury was a major disappointment, and it seems to have been a goodbye to having a creative life under her name. I don’t believe she had a Plan B, and the marriage angle was a natural progression to exiting the family home.

WALLACE BERMAN / Roudoulph Morand (“Dodo”), Tosh’s maternal grandfather

I can’t speak for Fergie because I never met him, but Wallace—although very gentle, and even an artistic genius (as he was in life, as well)—was very much an American male of that era. He required a woman who would support his one-way route to art-life and not put restrictions on his time and his need for attention. If I’d been her, I wouldn’t have married him, which might seem to be an odd thing for the offspring of that relationship to say. But the women of that era had a bad deal in terms of gender equality. It was almost an act of cruelty in that one could see a window of opportunity opening up for them. But the counterculture itself was no better than the previous generation. At best, women were expected to be the backup in case the male fell apart. In the world of the beats, if you were a woman, and not an artist or writer, you tended to be treated as an individual who supported the male author/artist. You were supposed to keep the home intact, as well as clean up after the artist, and cook the meals. And, God forbid, if you had a child, you pretty much had to take care of that as well, due to the artist or writer spending long hours in the studio focusing on his art, and preoccupied with the thought of the female as Muse. Every artist needed one to encourage the work. Of course, it was the worst kind of horseshit, because it was a power play; it gave the female credit for something she didn’t do and therefore served as a safe ground culturally to both praise and condemn the woman. But if the work didn’t happen, whose fault was it? The Muse’s?

As a child, I never picked up on any of this, but as an adult, I can now clearly see the horror that was the hippie and beat dream, which was geared towards the male. There were more opportunities for those who knew how to carry out the hustle. In the scene in those days, there were basically two types of women. There were wild ones like Loree, who embraced the criminal life, and who were chemically/naturally insane. Then there was my mom: sweet, obviously smart, terrific instincts in supporting a family, and, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful women at that time. Lucky for me, she was the greatest mother. I lived like a good book on a bookshelf. On one end was my mom and the other was my father, both holding me in place between their loving arms.

But being married to Wallace wasn’t easy. For instance, my mother had been keeping a diary, and Wallace made her stop. My dad was either afraid how he would turn out or that his private life would be exposed, but I can’t imagine how cruel that is, to stop my mom from keeping a journal. The proper husband should always support the wife doing whatever she wants to do. Surely one would think that “love” could only go so far. But I believe that it was very clear that Wallace wanted to be the househusband, working on the artwork and taking care of my basic needs, while his wife got a salary of some sort—in other words, very much the street mentality of a hustler and pimp.

It pains me that my mom wasn’t allowed to keep a journal of the years she spent with my dad. Not simply because he’s a known artist, but because there’s very little literature from the beat era from a female point of view. Carolyn Cassady wrote a book about her relationship with Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady, and there’s Diana di Prima’s memoir of being a writer during that era, but there aren’t a lot of books from those crucial countercultural years written by women. To this day, I can never forgive Wallace for not allowing my mom to keep up her journal.

But though it was a selfish act on his part, I think he believed he was doing what was right for his wife and son. The gray areas where one lives were important for Wallace. I don’t think it was intellectual, but more of an emotional response to how he saw the world between his life and the life outside his environment. Looking back, I often wonder why Wallace had such a desire to maintain his privacy. I suspect he had a profound distrust of the outside world. Somewhere down the path to becoming an artist, he’d had to reject parts of the straight world that he couldn’t see eye-to-eye with, and the post-war years in America were harsh for that particular type of individual. Someone like my dad, who felt very much part of the black American underworld of jazz and street culture, just couldn’t accept the mainstream. I suspect he felt that the straight world was out to destroy him and his chosen lifestyle. But this was the code that my father belonged to, and it wasn’t like he had other choices in his life. He couldn’t do anything else except be Wallace Berman: brilliant, iconic, magnetic, and a pain in the butt. In theory, genius is great, but God forbid anyone has to share the artist’s world, because it is often frustrating for one who isn’t allowed to get off the ride.

My mom is likely the most captivating person I know. She is perceived as deadly quiet, but she witnessed the most enchanting aspects of midcentury bohemian culture. Like Wallace, she attracted attention, obviously because of her looks, but also due to her aura; she has that “it” quality that you can’t learn or acquire. You have to be born with “it,” and that’s very much part of Shirley’s character as well. My parents didn’t learn to be who they are; they simply were born with unique characteristics, almost like royalty. If Wallace had the knack to choose the right place and time, so did my mom, in her own fashion. Both were quiet. My mom was even more reserved, but like my dad, she has great instincts, and I would never doubt her opinion or position on something. She tends to react emotionally, which I think is good. Ten minutes later, she allows the emotion to pass, and then usually gives great advice. Wallace was also a man of emotional torrents. There was a quietness about him, but he never was shy in conveying an opinion, and he had a way of looking at something, whether it was mere entertainment or a serious work of art, that separated the bullshit from the package designed to make the shit not smell. Both of my parents were very honest.

By the end of the ’50s, my mom had become an iconic figure and a muse of sorts, not only for my father, but also for photographers such as the very heterosexual Charles Brittin, and the very homosexual Edmund Teske. The ironic thing is, she doesn’t like to have her picture taken. Wallace for sure hated to be photographed by someone else, but Shirley’s attitude to the camera is that it’s a machine that is bumping into her intimate space, and therefore her stance is one of not caring how or by whom or why the photo is made. Probably the most iconic image of my mom is the cover for Semina 4. She stares right into the camera with a mixture of anger, defiance, and not giving a fuck. All three attitudes at the same time in front of a camera are very attractive, hence the portrait’s iconic status. She told me many years later she was suffering from a migraine when that photo was taken. My dad took it, of course, and he should get some of the credit, but I feel it is my mom’s personality that makes her such a great subject as a model for her three photographers. She’s beautiful, but it’s not her beauty alone that carries the image. Her attitude is part of the package, and it is quite remarkable even in this day and age to see someone so cool and willing to take the circumstances with that stance.

WALLACE BERMAN / Shirley Berman, Beverly Glen, 1959

My mother was 19 when she gave birth to me. My father was 28, almost a decade older. This is a huge age difference between an adult who’d been around the block a few times and a teenager who was getting over her disappointment due to the end of her dancing career. For a man, marrying a very young wife is perhaps less of a risk than marrying someone the same age, who knows the bullshit of life. Shirley was just a teenager and her options restricted by the partnership of society and married life. She met my dad shortly after the cat-around-the-neck sighting. It made quite an impression on her. She must have been fated to meet Wallace face to face. Jean Cocteau’s Blood of a Poet (1930) was the attraction that led both of them to stand in line at the Coronet Theater. My uncle escorted my mom to the film, and he introduced her to Wallace, who was a regular customer at the Coronet Theater film series.

In the early 1950s, the Coronet Theater was showing “underground” or, more accurately, “art” films. Wallace must have taken it as a good sign to meet the very young Shirley Morand at what was a vital art house theater. The Coronet was the kind of place that screened experimental films with D.W. Griffith in attendance. Hollywood always was and still is in a certain sense a classless society, due the ability of people to make up their individual identities there. Concerning cinema, there has historically been a bridge between the experimental film and mainstream Hollywood. Many filmmakers had their start in underground cinema, then eventually began to make narratives for a wider audience. Cinemagoers are people who want to explore the world via the inside of the movie theater, and most, if not all, like to travel without a passport between the two film cultures. With this in mind, the Coronet seems like a perfect spot for two people to come together and eventually alter the world, through Wallace’s art and, I would argue quite passionately, my birth on this planet, as well.

Uncle Donald discovered my dad through curiosity about the world outside family life. Drawn towards figures who participated in the nightlife, Don obviously would have to be in contact with Wallace, who by all accounts was the main conduit between the art world and the street life of narcotics, jazz music, and swing dancing. By the time of their meeting, my father had had enough of the hustle of the gambling world and was looking forward to the life of an aesthete. He required a partner in crime who totally supported his quest for all things that were compelling in the world. Everyone agreed that Wallace finding Shirley was a magnificent thing.