The Magnificent Elmer

My Life with Elmer Bernstein

Pearl Bernstein Gardner

Gerald Gardner

Copyright

The Magnificent Elmer: My Life with Elmer Bernstein

Copyright © 2014 by Pearl Bernstein Gardner and Gerald Gardner

Cover art, special contents, and Electronic Edition © 2014 by RosettaBooks LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Cover design by Carly Schnur

ISBN Mobipocket edition: 9780795341861

Pearl and Elmer with their son Peter and dog Hamlet in their Hollywood Hills home, 1952

To many this may sound like a cautionary tale.

Let me tell you something.

I wouldn’t have missed a day of it.

—Pearl Bernstein Gardner

CONTENTS

Chapter One: The Door Opens

Chapter Two: Rise and Fall

Chapter Three: The De Millennium

Chapter Four: Eine Kleine Moses Musik

Chapter Five: The Big O

Chapter Six: Atticus

Chapter Seven: The Magnificent Elmer

Chapter Eight: “That David Copperfield Kind of Crap”

Chapter Nine: Things Change

Chapter Ten: Hollywood Be Thy Name

Chapter Eleven: To Russia with Love

Chapter Twelve: Next Year in Jerusalem

Chapter Thirteen: Odets, Where Is Thy Sting?

Chapter Fourteen: Sweet Smell of Hollywood

Chapter Fifteen: Art Isn’t Easy

Chapter Sixteen: Thoroughly Modern Elmer

Chapter Seventeen: Fine and Danny

Chapter Eighteen: Ole Blue Eyes

Chapter Nineteen: Comedy Tonight

Chapter Twenty: The Maestros

Chapter Twenty-One: Bernstein’s Complaint

Chapter Twenty-Two: “Her or Me”

Chapter Twenty-Three: Score One for Me

Chapter Twenty-Four: I’m Still Here

Chapter Twenty-Five: Tribute

Chapter Twenty-Six: Why Is This Woman Laughing?

Author’s Note and Acknowledgments

Appendix: The Elmer Oeuvre

Photos of Elmer and the Family

Elmer’s Tunes

CHAPTER ONE

THE DOOR OPENS

“Don’t ever change!

This is how an artist should live.”

—Sidney Buchman

Elmer and I met at a Berkshire summer camp where he was the resident young genius and I was a struggling waitress from Philadelphia. Every Wednesday evening, Elmer would play a concert of classical music in the recreation hall. He was brilliant. The waitresses would squat in an adoring semi-circle on the floor, as the dark-haired young pianist confronted the keyboard. One evening, before he began the recital, Elmer stood and faced the audience.

“I want to dedicate this performance of The Appassionata to Pearl.”

“That’s me!” I thought acutely.

My fellow waitresses stared at me in awe, wondering how they had failed to notice this simmering love affair. I was puzzled as there was no simmering affair for them to notice. I turned beet red and tried to disappear between the floorboards. Beethoven and Bernstein—what an aphrodisiac.

I guess it is too easy to look down the hallways of one’s life and to say with any assurance, this is how it all started—this is how the door swung open—but that moment when the brash, handsome pianist said, “This is for Pearl,” that was surely the way it all began.

In the days that followed, we became an item. There was a fresh spring in my step as I carried eight bowls of onion soup through the swinging doors of the kitchen. “Coming through!” I would squeal. And when the guests at my table were finished eating, Elmer cleared the plates. The most overqualified busboy in the Berkshires.

When we returned from camp, I met Elmer’s parents and he met mine. Six months later we were married and living in our little flat in old Manhattan. The first floor of the building was occupied by the Ship Ahoy Bar. Our apartment was on the fifth floor with no elevator. By the fourth floor, a dozen oranges felt like five dozen. The living room was the largest of the three rooms and was dominated by a Steinway grand piano. The room was about 200 square feet with barely space for all 88 keys. Orange crates contained books and record albums, and a cot doubled as a sofa when we threw a blanket over it. Out the window was Broadway, and across the avenue was a Chinese restaurant where you could get two meals for a dollar-fifty. Street noises sounded like Bradley tanks. But the sounds I remember best were composed by Bartok and Chopin.

My life with Elmer was topsy-turvy. We slept till noon, arose and did our household chores. Then Elmer would practice on the piano for a couple of hours for an upcoming concert. Listening to his music come flooding through the apartment was like standing under a waterfall on a very hot day.

I would teach students in their first and second years, Elmer would teach them from the third-year up. Like most Jewish girls of that era I had had the obligatory piano lessons. So I was able to teach groups of five-year-olds the essence of melody and tempo. Elmer’s students had greater gifts and grander goals. We were a great tandem team, Elmer and I, and together we generated a modest income that managed to keep the wolves at bay.

Many of our evenings were spent at concerts given by young pianists who were just coming on the scene, their eyes sparkling with hope, as indeed were Elmer’s. Other evenings we would spend attending the second acts of Broadway plays whose tickets we couldn’t afford. For fifty cents we could come in after Intermission and see half a show from the second balcony. We knew all the songs from the second act of On the Town, with music by that other Bernstein guy.

***

We were growing up together. We were a couple of kids. All we had was a little room, a crust of bread, a glass of wine. The summer heat, the shouts from the street. Squalor, love, music. Can you visualize it? Of course you can. It’s Gershwin, Porgy and Bess, Act Two.

That was our life on the memorable day when my life turned from Marjorie Morningstar into The Way We Were. If a screenplay were to describe the action that morning, it would read: FADE UP on APARTMENT, THE COMPOSER sits at the piano playing Beethoven, THE YOUNG WIFE is in the kitchen slamming around pots. The phone RINGS.

Elmer answered the call and engaged in a brief conversation. When he finished, he came into the kitchen.

“Who was that?”

“That was Millard Lampell.”

Elmer had met Millard at a North Carolina army post during the Second World War. While Elmer was playing piano for the brass, Millard was writing scripts for an army radio network. After Millard left the service, he wrote a novel called Saturday’s Hero, about the exploitation of college athletes, and Columbia Pictures bought the screen rights. That’s when Elmer’s old army buddy phoned the struggling concert pianist.

“What did he want?” I asked.

“You know that book he wrote? He’s recommended to Columbia that I write the musical score for the movie.”

“Would that be in Hollywood?”

“I very much think so.”

I was twenty-one. I had traveled from Philadelphia to New York and from the Fulton Fish Market to the Aquarium. To me, the United States resembled the Steinberg drawing that begins with Ninth Avenue and looks west across the Hudson River to Kansas and the Pacific.

“Sidney Buchman, the head of production at Columbia Pictures, is coming to the apartment,” said Elmer.

“This apartment?”

“Unless you have some other one.”

I caught my breath. “When is Mr. Buchman coming to the apartment?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Elmer—we can’t have him climb five flights of stairs. He may be old or handicapped.”

Elmer shrugged aside Mr. Buchman’s possible infirmities. He looked around the apartment, trying to see it through the eyes of a Hollywood executive.

“Elmer, we have no idea how to entertain a movie producer.”

I had heard they did a lot of heavy drinking in Hollywood.

“We should buy a bottle of liquor.”

“Okay,” Elmer replied.

But since neither of us drank, we had no idea what to buy. We had both heard people asking for Scotch in drawing room comedies. We decided to buy a bottle of Scotch.

Then I recalled that my mother would always offer guests something to eat when they visited our home in Philadelphia.

“We should buy some food,” I said. Elmer agreed.

We settled on a cake.

The next day I bought a bottle of Scotch and a chocolate cake.

That evening at the appointed time, the doorbell rang and there he stood—Sidney Buchman, head of production at Columbia Pictures, Hollywood USA. Sidney Buchman had produced the successful movie The Jolson Story which had seemingly done the impossible—it enhanced the size of Al Jolson’s ego. Before that, as a contract writer at the studio, he had written the screenplays for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Here Comes Mr. Jordan. Now he was producing Columbia’s newest gem, Saturday’s Hero.

I could hardly catch my breath. Sidney Buchman stood in our doorway. He was six feet tall, in Sevile Row tweeds, a yellow shirt, and the perfect tie to complete the ensemble. He had thrown over his shoulders a coat that looked like the purest camels hair. Only it turned out to be vicuna. It was a wondrous sight to behold. But I knew that that coat did not belong in that apartment.

We invited him in. Sidney Buchman gave me his vicuna coat to hang up. But we did not have a hall closet in which to hang it. Our only closet was elsewhere in the apartment and was jammed tight with all our belongings.

I took the coat into the bedroom, sat down at the bed, and stroked it.

When I returned to the living room, Sidney Buchman was looking around the cramped little place. He looked like he was searching for something to despise the most. I feared the first words that would escape from his beautiful Hollywood mouth. Mr. Buchman looked out the window onto Broadway, then returned his attention to our shabby apartment. Suddenly he threw his arms out and said: “Don’t ever change!”

“I beg your pardon?” Elmer said.

“This is how an artist should live. You don’t want Hollywood or the money. It will spoil you. This place is glorious.”

“Would you like a shot of Scotch and a piece of cake?” I asked.

Sidney Buchman kept pacing the room, extolling the artist’s life.

The producer refused any refreshment and never asked to listen to Elmer’s music. He was too enthralled by the glorious apartment. In fact, he never mentioned Millard’s movie or offered the job to Elmer. Then, donning his vicuna coat, he winked at Elmer and said, “Get yourself an agent.” With these pregnant words, our fairy godfather Sidney Buchman was out the door and descended the five flights of stairs to the street below.

CHAPTER TWO

RISE AND FALL

“How would you like to buy a practically new eight millimeter camera?”

—George Wilner, Elmer’s new agent

Elmer lost no time in getting himself a Hollywood agent. “I got you top dollar,” said George Wilner. “Six thousand big ones—six weeks. Get out here by the end of August.” We packed some books from our orange crates—Schulberg, Bradbury, Kerouac—and some clothes from our jam-packed closet. We took ourselves to the Buick showroom on Lexington Avenue. We kicked a few tires and put down a minimum deposit of $150 on a $3,000 car. Then we locked the apartment, cast an uneasy glance at the drunks on the stairs above the Ship Ahoy Bar, and with love in our hearts and a song on our lips, we pointed the hood of our new green convertible toward California.

***

When we arrived in Los Angeles after seven days on the road, we had seventy-five cents and the car. We were immediately confronted with an important decision. Would we spend the seventy-five cents on gas or on breakfast? We decided to put gas in the car. We drove to the producer’s office and told him our problem. He thought a moment and said, “It’s Friday and I can’t get to the bank. Would two-hundred handle you for the weekend?” That was five months rent in New York. Elmer said it would probably do. From the producer’s office, with seventy-five cents worth of gas in our tank and two hundred dollars in our jeans, we drove to the offices of George Wilner, Elmer’s new agent. In the waiting room there was an actual palm tree. I had never seen a palm tree, let alone in an office. George Wilner smiled and suggested we all go out to the Beverly Hills Tennis Club where he was a member. The sparkling swimming pool was surrounded by lounge chairs, many of them occupied by actual writers, actors, and directors. Everyone looked very healthy and solvent. With all these successful people, I wondered where tomorrow’s failures were going to come from.

As we were leaving the club that afternoon to return to the apartment that Columbia Pictures had rented for us, Agent Wilner invited us to come to his Beverly Hills home for brunch that weekend. We arrived there Sunday morning prepared to be impressed, and we weren’t disappointed. Their living room was as spacious as the Grand Canyon and brimming with elegance, a symphony in gold and beige.

We had barely settled onto a sofa when George Wilner said: “How would you like to buy a practically new eight-millimeter camera?”

It seemed an odd question. Wilner knew we had no money to spend on a camera. Food was even a challenge. Before we could answer, he gestured toward the two club chairs that flanked the fireplace.

“Would you be interested in a sofa and two chairs for next to nothing?”

These curious offers continued to punctuate the morning until nearly everything in the house had been placed on sale. We never did get around to brunch.

Next day we realized what had triggered this odd behavior. The year was 1950 and the subpoena servers of the House Un-American Activities Committee were out in force all over town. To escape their clutches, George Wilner and his family were preparing to leave the country. They were trying to rid themselves of all their possessions.

***

Columbia had made arrangements for Elmer and me to stay in an apartment on Rossmore Avenue. The studio also rented a battered upright piano on which Elmer could compose the music for his football drama.

Columbia Pictures was the skid row of Hollywood. Indeed most of the major movie studios were not in Hollywood at all—MGM was in Culver City, and Warners and Universal were in the San Fernando Valley. When Elmer and I reported to Columbia’s sprawling music stage, we found Morris Stoloff, director of the studio’s music department, on the podium facing the large Columbia Studio orchestra. The motion picture Saturday’s Hero would be projected on a screen, and an orchestra of eighty musicians would play the music cues that Elmer had written on the upright piano in our apartment. When Stoloff brought his baton down and the music poured forth, well, what can I say? Elmer’s music was romantic, melodramatic, fantastical, colorful, comic, tragic, melodic!

Harry Cohn was head of Columbia. Cohn’s combative nature was such that when doctors found a tumor in his alimentary canal, many were disappointed when it proved to be benign. After the surgery, Herman Mankiewitz said, “What a pity—to remove the one part of Harry Cohn that is not malignant.”

His corrosive reputation notwithstanding, I always had the utmost respect for Harry Cohn’s creative instincts. Midway through the music session for Saturday’s Hero, a Columbia executive crossed the sound stage, bent over Elmer, and whispered something urgently in his ear. Elmer shook his head a decisive no and the man retreated.

“What was that about?” I said.

“Harry Cohn likes what he’s hearing about my music. His man just offered me a contract as a staff composer at twenty-five thousand a year. What do you think?”

Our income in New York was three thousand a year. Hollywood offered year-round sunshine, oranges, and you could make right turns on the red signal. There was only one intelligent response to such an offer.

“Absolutely not,” I said.

“I’m glad you feel that way,” Elmer said.

Elmer prized his independence. He did not want to surrender his right to say no. He did not want a job where he was required to score whatever lousy movie showed up on the schedule. Tarzan’s New York Adventure. Andy Hardy Goes to Prison.

Hence, the next day we were back in our apartment on Rossmore Avenue, making plans to return the rented piano, and gas up the car for our return to New York.

That’s when the phone rang. It was an agent at George Wilner’s office. Columbia business affairs had phoned. Would Elmer be willing to write the music for a new racetrack movie that starred William Holden, one of the studio’s up-and-coming stars? And after that, would Elmer be available to score the new Roz Russell movie?

“Better keep the piano,” Elmer said.

***

Elmer’s career in movie music was on the rise. Hard on the heels of Saturday’s Hero came Boots Malone, Never Wave at a WAC, The Eternal Sea, Dieppe Raid, Make Haste to Live, and Sudden Fear. But Elmer’s fecundity was not confined to the piano. All during our walkup years, we had been trying to add to the baby boom, but to no avail. Then suddenly Peter arrived… and then Gregory. “By God,” said Elmer, “this place really does make things grow—not just avocadoes and casabas.”

But the sunny weather had a way of attracting more than storks. All those glittering movie stars tended to attract the attention of congressmen driven by ambition unmarred by conscience. It was proving a good season for blacklisting and witch-hunting. The Red Scare was at its most intense, as our furniture-shedding agent demonstrated.

Neither Elmer nor I had ever been members of the Communist Party, but we both were liberal in outlook and that made us fair game for the House Un-American Activities Committee. I had knitted socks for the Russians during the war and Elmer had accompanied Paul Robeson when he sang at Madison Square Garden.

Hollywood is the only town in America where every lease came with a tube of sun block and a subscription to the Hollywood Reporter. Suddenly a story appeared in the Reporter that a “cooperative witness” to the dreaded House Un-American Activities Committee had testified that he had seen Hollywood’s hot young composer and his wife at a left-wing ranch in New Mexico. The witness was an undercover FBI informer. (He later recanted his testimony, was prosecuted for perjury, and went to prison. But by then the damage had been done.) I remembered the ranch. On our first drive west, someone had suggested we visit “this great ranch” in New Mexico where we could spend a free night. It is my subversive recollection that we spent the evening singing folk songs around a campfire. Jimmy Crack Corn and I Don’t Care.

Suddenly we cared a lot. When the story appeared, our life changed. We were suddenly on the lookout for men in dark suits serving subpoenas. Here’s how it worked. The word would be out that the Committee was planning to hold hearings in Hollywood. All over town the engines would roar. Elmer and I would rent a motel room outside of Hollywood, take the baby, the cocker spaniel, and the necessities of life, and remain there until word reached us that the emergency had passed. We chose a motel that was nestled in a grove of Eucalyptus trees so we could park the car under a canopy of leaves where it couldn’t be seen from the street.

On one occasion we didn’t get out of town soon enough. One afternoon, when our son Gregory was three months old, I was home taking care of him while Elmer was at a studio meeting. The doorbell rang. I opened the door to find two men dressed in dark suits and ties. I sensed something was wrong. The only people who wore dark suits in Hollywood in the summer were representatives of the William Morris Office.

“Can I help you?” I said.

“FBI,” he said. “Are you Pearl Bernstein?”

I admitted I was.

“Did you teach at the School of Music on Seventy-Third Street in New York?”

“Yes, I did,” I said.

“Did you know Pete Seeger who taught at the school?”

“I met him.”

From that point on the conversation went downhill. Gregory started spitting up.

“Did you know about a Communist cell at the school?”

“Garble,” said Gregory.

“Did you ever encounter Pete Seeger at a cell meeting?”

“Mergle,” said Gregory.

“Look,” I said, “I have a baby to feed, so if you have any questions about Pete Seeger, I suggest you ask him.”

And with that I slammed the door.

CHAPTER THREE

THE DE MILLENNIUM

“There were the ten commandments in easy-to-take tablet form.”

—Elmer Bernstein

The major studios refused to hire Elmer. Work dried up and the only assignments he could get were sci-fi cheapies. He was reduced to turning out music for low-budget movies like Robot Monster and Cat Women of the Moon.

“I’m not important enough to be blacklisted,” said Elmer wryly. “I’m being grey-listed.” The movie producers who hired him were willing to take a chance because they could hire Elmer to score their movie for only six hundred dollars. And we sure needed the money.

Elmer was never able to disguise the talent he brought to these terrible pictures. Elmer used to say, “If I’m going to do a really bad movie, at least I’m going to do one that is at the top of the bad-movie lists.” Then he would add ruefully, “I guess Robot Monster would qualify.” It certainly did. I remember that it was about a little boy named Johnny who dreams that the earth has been attacked by an alien named Ro-Man who uses a “calcinatory death ray.” I also seem to recall that Ro-Man was an actor in a gorilla suit with a diving helmet. Today they would do it with computer graphics.

The downward spiral of Elmer’s career continued. I felt like Dorothy in the tornado. I was supplementing our plummeting income by teaching piano again. I was able to line up three young students, and on one occasion I was in the den with my pupil with the TV on in the next room. Suddenly I heard a familiar voice. It was Sidney Buchman, the man who had brought us to Hollywood. I went in the next room. Sidney was appearing before the Committee and taking the Fifth Amendment. I had only seen him twice, once when he and his beautiful vicuna coat visited our apartment, and once when he came to the sound stage during the scoring of Saturday’s Hero. I never saw him again.

As Elmer’s fortunes declined, he got a job as rehearsal pianist for Agnes DeMille who was choreographing the dances in the screen version of Oklahoma! One evening I looked out of our bedroom window and saw Elmer, Agnes, and the entire corps de ballet assembled on our front lawn. And they were singing. No, they weren’t singing “There’s a bright golden haze on the meadow…” Nor were they singing “Chicks and ducks and geese better scurry…” All those apple-cheeked lasses, those corn-fed ballerinas, had raised their voices in a chorus of that Rodgers and Hammerstein perennial, “Happy Birthday to Pearl.” What a guy, Elmer. “People will say we’re in love.”

Agnes realized that somehow Elmer seemed a little overqualified to be leading her dancers through the brothel ballet. How did she know? Well, there was the Copland Connection. Agnes had gotten her start when she choreographed Aaron Copland’s Rodeo, and that led to fame on the Broadway stage with Oklahoma!, Carousel, Brigadoon, and Paint Your Wagon. Agnes knew that Copland had discovered Elmer and predicted a luminous career for him. That and the emanations that one genius gives off to another. So one afternoon on a drafty soundstage she said, “You should meet my Uncle Cecil.” Uncle Cecil was at that moment shooting a movie. It was called The Ten Commandments.

***

It happened that Cecil B. DeMille needed some incidental music for the dances in his biblical epic. Elmer came home from his interview with C.B. and told me about his conversation with the famous director. Some of the props from the grandiose new saga were scattered around DeMille’s office—Moses’ staff, Dathan’s cape, a stone containing the Ten Commandments in easy-to-take tablet form.

“How did the meeting go?” I asked.

“DeMille had only one question. He said—‘Mr. Bernstein, do you think you could do for ancient Egyptian music what Puccini did for Japanese music in Madame Butterfly?’”

“What did you say?”

“I gave him the only answer that would have gotten me the job. I said, ‘I don’t know, Mr. DeMille, but I’d like to try.’”

And so Elmer got the assignment to write the incidental music for the songs and dances that were spotted through the movie.

DeMille’s usual composer of choice was the very talented Victor Young and he had been signed to write the score for The Ten Commandments. But a funny thing happened on the way to the Red Sea. Victor Young had gone to New York to work on a Broadway musical called Seventh Heaven. The show was a turkey and had placed Victor under great stress. It was very debilitating. As Larry Gelbart said, “If Hitler is alive, I hope he’s on the road with a musical.” When Victor returned to Hollywood he was ill and decided he wasn’t up to scoring The Ten Commandments. Not even a few of them. So DeMille turned to Elmer for the whole enchilada. Wow!

***

History has a sense of humor. Mr. DeMille was Hollywood’s most legendary director, but he was also a dinosaur in his ultra-conservative politics. As such, he was one of the principal architects of the blacklisting that tyrannized a generation of moviemakers. He was the hard-hearted fellow that had poisoned the atmosphere and driven Elmer from the Steinway grand to the rehearsal piano. As a robust crusader against Communism, C.B. was devoted to keeping red propaganda off the screen. But as a sound businessman, he was as anxious to keep Paramount out of the red as he was to keep the reds out of Paramount. So one day he summoned Elmer to his office.

“Elmer, I want to talk to you,” he said. “I love my country and I love liberty. I am devoted to guarding our cherished freedom. I despise Communism and everything it stands for with every fiber of my soul and my being. So we must be ever vigilant, Elmer, ever vigilant. Now I ask you—are you a Communist?”

“No, I’m not,” said Elmer.

“That’s good enough for me,” said DeMille.

CHAPTER FOUR

EINE KLEINE MOSES MUSIK

“Trust me, Elmer. It will work.”

—Cecil B. DeMille

“How did it go?” I asked.

Elmer had just spent half a day at the director’s Paramount office.

Elmer shook his head in bewilderment.

“I played some themes for him on the piano. I’m a concert pianist so I played them very elaborately.”

“And?”

“And he said he didn’t want that. He wanted to hear the themes played with one finger. He wanted to hear the tune.”

“And did he like the tunes?”

“Most of them.”

“Well, that’s good.”

Elmer shook his head again. “DeMille is a great believer in leitmotif. He wants every character in the Bible to have his own motif.”

“Every character?”

“He wants every character to have his own theme. He wants to hear it whenever they’re on the screen.”

“Hmm.”

“And another thing. The best scene in the movie is the big exodus scene. Moses is standing on the bank of the Red Sea, leading his people out of Egypt.”

“I know, I read the book.”

“Then you remember how Moses brings his staff down on the ground, the seas part, and the Hebrews march off.”

“He smote a rock with a rod, as I recall,” I said.

“Yes, but when DeMille shot the movie, he didn’t use Hebrews to play Jews. The Hebrews were played by members of the Egyptian Army. The scene was shot in Egypt. DeMille was on good terms with the Egyptian government, so he was able to get five thousand troops from the Egyptian army to act in his movie.”

Elmer described the scene he had been shown in a Paramount screening room.

“The army moves out slowly and deliberately. Very slowly. So I had written a solemn, ponderous anthem.”

“I’m sure it was splendid.”

Elmer was shaking his head again. “DeMille hated it.”

“What was wrong with it?”

“He said it was too slow.”

“But you said the army was moving slowly and deliberately.”

“Exactly. I told him I was reflecting what was on the screen.”

“Naturally.”

“I said, ‘Mr. DeMille, this is a ponderous movement of thousands of people.’ And he nodded and said, ‘I hate it,’ and I said, ‘Mr. DeMille, won’t it seem strange if I write something very up-tempo? Very fast?’ And he said, ‘Elmer, if the music is fast, the Hebrews will be fast.’”

“Sounds like a commandment,” I said.

“He said, ‘Trust me, Elmer. It will work.’”

“What exactly does he want?”

“He wants something like Onward Christian Soldiers.”

“He wants Egyptian soldiers playing Jews and marching to the tune of Onward Christian Soldiers?”

“You’ve got it,” said Elmer.

Thus wrote Elmer, and thus the great exodus of Jews occurred. And years later Elmer would reflect, “I learned a great lesson from DeMille that day. Music can make an army move faster than it’s actually moving. It defies the laws of physics, but there you are.”

And lo, the tablets containing the ten commandments were shattered, the profane punished, and the wicked tribes were made to wander in the wilderness for forty years. But not my Elmer. He had not even finished his work on DeMille’s grandiose epic, when he started work on another film with a somewhat more contemporary setting.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE BIG O

“Now ve begin.”

—Otto Preminger

The soaring strains of The Ten Commandments were still echoing across the Sinai Peninsula when Elmer began creating the screaming sounds of jazz for The Man with the Golden Arm.

Hollywood was shocked and delighted. The town was not used to such versatility. In the movie business it was tough enough to be typecast. If you were a composer, well, at MGM they had a composer for Sand Epics and another for Ocean Epics. But Elmer was new in town and didn’t realize these generic restrictions. Here he was, successively hitting the two basic poles of American values—the biblical and the narcotic.

Of course, there wasn’t a great deal of call for composers of narcotic films. Drugs and dope were specifically forbidden as subjects for motion pictures. Drug addiction was recognized by the moralists of the time to be one of the subjects whose depiction was dangerous to mental health. Other such taboos were nudity, profanity, prostitution, and costume design.

So the Hays Office, the censorship arm of the movie business, had decreed that were anyone reckless enough to turn The Man with the Golden Arm into a film, it would be denied the Hays Office seal of approval. That should have ended the matter. Usually, filmmakers bowed to the censors’ wishes. (That’s why most of the sex in Hollywood wound up on the cutting room floor. I know it sounds uncomfortable, but that’s Hollywood.)

But Otto Preminger was not bashful about pursuing the most incendiary themes, whether they be justice (Anatomy of a Murder), Judaism (Exodus), dirty politics (Advise and Consent), or sex (The Moon is Blue). But you know those autocratic Prussians. Say “no” to a Prussian and they do one of two things: they ignore you, or they invade Poland. So Mr. Preminger purchased the screen rights to Nelson Algren’s novel The Man with the Golden Arm in which Frankie Machine is a would-be drummer, an expert card dealer, and a man with an arm aching for a fix.

The day before Elmer was to meet Otto Preminger for the first time, he phoned his friend and fellow composer Ernest Gold. Ernie had worked with Preminger a few years before.

I watched Elmer as he listened to his fellow composer’s assessment of the director. Finally Elmer thanked his friend and returned the receiver to its cradle.

“Well?” I asked.

“Well, Ernie said he didn’t really like the man.”

“Why not?”

“He said he found Preminger obsessive, demanding and self-indulgent.”

I processed this.

“Well, so far he’s describing you. What didn’t he like about him?”

Elmer grinned. “You’re a pal.”

***

Another warning came from screenwriter friend Irving Ravitch. He and his wife Harriet Frank were two of the most famous names in the Hollywood writers’ colony. They had been commissioned to write a screenplay for Preminger, had handed it in, and been summoned to his office. The director nodded them to seats, moistened a thumb, and turned to the first page of their script.

“Ve begin,” said Preminger, without preamble. “Ve rewrite every page—ve look at every scene—ve study every character—ve examine every line.”

Irving and Harriet rose as one.

“Ve quit,” said Irving.

***

At their first meeting, Elmer was a little more outspoken than is usual for a novice composer speaking to a celebrated director, perhaps out of a desire to seize the initiative from the overbearing filmmaker.

“I have an odd idea about what I want to do with the score,” he said. Preminger lifted a Teutonic eyebrow. “This movie is about a jazz drummer,” said Elmer. “I think the whole score should be driven by jazz.”

“Jazz?” said Otto Preminger, tasting the word and the idea. “Jazz?” The producer made the one short word sound like a query, a challenge, and a paradox.

He was silent as he absorbed this absurd unorthodoxy.

“Jazz?” said Preminger.

“Jazz,” said Elmer.

Preminger sighed ponderously. “That’s your department. If that’s what you want to do—do it.”

***

Elmer’s jazz score signaled a new era of film music. He augmented the traditional orchestra with a small jazz group that he assembled. He used to love the jazz music that his father played on their living room phonograph, but never dreamed he would one day be bringing that sound to the movies. The group Elmer put together included legendary trumpet player Shorty Rogers, drummer Shelly Manne, and a dozen other jazz greats. The success of Elmer’s music helped drive the success of the film, along with Sinatra’s performance as the drummer. The LP album of Elmer’s score was an instant bestseller. There were countless other recordings of his main-title theme. The McGuire Sisters even recorded a vocal version of Elmer’s theme, with lyrics by Sylvia Fine, wife of Danny Kaye.

***

If Elmer had assumed after his first meeting with the ostensibly agreeable Preminger that he would be working with a malleable boss, he definitely had the wrong number. The Big O was no pussycat. He was a very hands-on employer who knew what he wanted and wasn’t shy about demanding it. One back-lot wag had said: “Otto is no Nazi like the ones he played in movies. He is a civilized man. His favorite hobbies are Flemish painting, classical music, and torture.” One of the forms that torture assumed was in requiring that his composers be on the set from the first cast reading to the final day of shooting. Elmer would have infinitely preferred to be at the keyboard, but Otto wanted him close at hand.

I remember one spring morning Elmer was sitting on a sound stage at the Goldwyn Studios watching a lighting man set up for a shot. Kim Novak and Eleanor Parker were in their trailers. Sinatra was doubtless somewhere studying a Nelson Riddle arrangement. And I was in our kitchen mixing some brown salad. The phone rang.

“Hello?” I said brightly.

I heard the sound of Elmer growling.

“What am I doing here?” he demanded.

“Keeping the wolf from the door,” I suggested.

“What on earth am I doing here!” he repeated. “I am watching actors read the Hollywood Reporter. I’m drinking cold coffee from a cardboard cup.”

“No Danish?”

“Did you know that this director is michuganah?”

“I suspected it but I didn’t know the precise medical term.”

“This man is obsessed. Ernie is right. He mistakes himself for God. I keep wanting to ask him ‘How are the apostles?’” Elmer sighed. “I’m coming home. We’ll take in a ballgame.”

“Elmer, if you leave now, doesn’t that create a problem for Otto?”

“Otto’s problem began when he was born. He was strapped to this table, and then the scientist yelled, ‘It’s alive!’”

“The Dodgers are playing the Cubs. Koufax is pitching.”

“That settles it. I’ll pick you up in thirty minutes.”

So you see, composers can be every bit as peremptory as Viennese directors.

A bit of baseball context. The year before our beloved Brooklyn Dodgers had moved to Los Angeles. Dodger’s owner Walter O’Malley had persuaded the L.A. city fathers that they could perform no greater civic duty than to evict several hundred Latino families from their homes at Chavez Ravine. The previous summer, like many other refugee New Yorkers, Elmer and I had marched through the loose soil that was to become an infield, he had pointed to a patch of sand (a gesture not unlike his signaling for more woodwinds) and said, “We want our seats there.” Now, as the Dodgers and the Bernsteins waited for their new stadium to be built, as the venerable Ebbetts Field felt the wrecking ball of Brooklyn, the boys of summer—Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese, et al.—were playing their games in the Los Angeles Coliseum on the USC campus.

In our transition seats at the Coliseum, Elmer and I watched Sandy Koufax set down the Cubs one after another. For once the easily bored L.A. fans were not trying to beat the traffic. Ears pressed to transistor radios, thirty thousand souls, included the composer and his wife, listened to Vin Scully render the events unfolding before them. Koufax walked to the mound to pitch the eighth inning. He had struck out eleven.

“We got something going here,” said Elmer. “It could be that extraordinary thing in baseball—a perfect game. No runs, no hits, no one reaching base!”

Koufax conferred with his second baseman on the infield grass. And having seen the stress of these past few days on Elmer, I watched with satisfaction as his face settled into placid lines, far from the demands of megalomania. There was nothing that could assault Elmer in this magical retreat.

“Batting for the Chicago Cubs, Number 14, Ernie Banks…” said the public address announcer.

Then a pause. Then the voice resumed.

“Elmer Bernstein—please phone Otto Preminger!”

CHAPTER SIX

ATTICUS

“Like Ss-ss-spellbound and Duel in the S-sss-sun.”

—Gregory Peck

A good friend of mine, an actress who shall remain nameless, fell in love with every leading man she ever appeared with on the stage. I would not want you to think I fell in love with every leading man Elmer ever composed a movie around. And he had some humdingers. But I was always able to hold my feelings in check.

Take Charlton Heston of The Ten Commandments. I could never get my mind around his politics. And his acting was not exactly riveting. At the Academy dinner the year they released the DeMille epic, Bob Hope said, “Is Charlton Heston here tonight?” and when someone shouted, “Yes,” Hope said, “Why?”

Frank Sinatra was the leading man in The Man with the Golden Arm, but I had always been able to resist the charms of Ole Blue Eyes, at least since I’d outgrown bobby socks. Call me aloof, call me irresponsible, but Frank’s reputation as swinger, drinker, fighter, lover, always left me cold, as did his pals in the Rat Pack.

Burt Lancaster, who played the loathsome Winchellesque columnist in Sweet Smell of Success, always turned me off. Though his politics were flawlessly progressive, my negative impression of Burt was borne out by the story of how Burt had punched out his leading lady on a movie set in Ottawa.

None of the seven leading men of The Magnificent Seven moved me terribly—Yul Brynner didn’t really excite me till he shaved his head for The King and I, and I always suspected that Steve McQueen’s long silences concealed a lack of acting ability.

Indeed, there was only one of Elmer’s leading men for whom I harbored deep feelings of longing, dare I say lust, and that was Gregory Peck. Such an image of handsome decency, such intelligence and unpretentiousness, such dignity and nobility.

I had met other purportedly irresistible movie stars at house parties. Sprawled on the living room floor at one such farrago, Cary Grant had made an indecent proposal to me that involved an upstairs bedroom. I hastily declined. As the Grant legend has grown, any friends who hear this anecdote usually smite their brows at my bad judgment. Admittedly, it was not my finest hour. Or even my finest half-hour.

But Gregory Peck. Now, there is a mockingbird of a different color.

When I learned that Elmer had been asked to write the score for the screen version of Harper Lee’s bestselling novel To Kill a Mockingbird and that Gregory Peck was playing the widowed lawyer who defends a black man wrongly accused of raping a white woman—well, I was in midair. What perfect casting. The perfect actor had found the perfect role. And I’m sure the producer, Alan Pakula, felt he had found the perfect composer.

Yet somehow Elmer found the film a daunting assignment. I had never seen him stumped before, but this time he was definitely flummoxed. He had found the right notes to convey the Jews crossing the Red Sea, Sinatra going cold turkey, and seven mercenaries saving a Mexican village. But how to convey the themes of racism and poverty in the Depression-era Deep South?

You must understand something about the invisible art of movie music. Hollywood composers have a limited time to write the score once the picture has finished shooting. And so the clock was ticking. Film had to be edited, prints produced, advertising designed, publicity primed, entertainment writers informed, reviewers had to review, and a release schedule met. Time was money.

Elmer was usually a very brisk composer. Talent and genius were married to inexorable timetables. His talent always seemed to gush when the clock started ticking. But this time the Muse was late.

Elmer had certain clues to the qualities of the music he was seeking. He knew it had to be understated. He knew it had to have an American sound. He knew it had to be intimate. But what form should it take?

“Why do you suppose the theme is so elusive this time?” I asked him.

Elmer shrugged. “I don’t know. There are certain things that are obvious about the film, but they’re a little too obvious. It’s a film about really serious themes—racism and poverty. And the raising of children. And it’s about the South that lands you some place musically. But where?”

It took Elmer six weeks. But one day it hit him what the film was really about. It was all about these sober issues—injustice, segregation, hatred, racism—as seen through the eyes of children. Elmer’s music was warm, lyrical, buoyant, all qualities of a child’s life.

Years later, Elmer conducted the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in the performance of Mockingbird’s whole rapturous score. At the time he said, “I started to think about this piano being played one note at time. The way kids do. The childlike sounds. A lot of harps, a lot of bells, solo flutes, simple melodies…”

The simple score was played by a small ensemble. At times he used single piano notes, like a child picking out a tune. Those hesitant notes took me back to our fifth-floor walkup when I was teaching a nine-year-old and Elmer was looking on distractedly, his nose peeking over a copy of Newsweek. But apparently he had been listening.

***

I had always adored Gregory Peck. I had seen him in The Keys of the Kingdom, The Yearling and Gentlemen’s Agreement. And now battling for justice in a Southern courtroom. So you can imagine my excitement when Elmer said, “Put on your hat, Pearly. We’re having dinner tonight with Gregory Peck.”

Gregory Peck! I’m having dinner with Gregory Peck!

There would be seven of us at the table in Chasen’s—Peck and his wife Veronique, director Robert Mulligan and wife, and Alan Pakula, the film’s producer.

After we surrendered our car to the valet, we were directed to the table. My heart was not behaving. Peck and his wife had already arrived; the producer and director had not. I hastily took the seat next to Gregory Peck. He was wearing a dark blue suit, a white shirt and a figured blue tie.

I was sitting at a restaurant table beside Gregory Peck, for God’s sake! There beside me was the rangy frame, the shock of black hair, the dark brows and hazel eyes, the aquiline nose, the sensual lips. And I would soon be hearing that deep, fluid voice. Gregory Peck turned to Elmer and spoke. “You know Elmer, that theme music is beautiful. I’ve heard it several times and it’s impossible to tire of such a piece of music.”

Well, no, that’s not exactly what the voice said. What Gregory Peck’s voice said was more like: “I’ve heard it s-ss-several times and it’s imposs-ssible to tire of ss-such a piece of mus-sic.”

Because Gregory Peck spoke with a pronounced sibilant “S.” Why had I never heard it before?

“I think Mockingbird is going to be a classic,” said Veronique.

“Like SS-spellbound and Duel in the S-ssun,” said Gregory Peck.

“Atticus Finch is such a wonderful character. So real and human,” said Veronique.

“So compass-ssionate and ss-sympathetic,” said Peck.

“Are you ready for drinks?” asked the waiter.

“A double vodka for me,” I said.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE MAGNIFICENT ELMER

“Daaa-da-da-da-da-daaa.”

—Ted Danson in Cheers

Elmer’s music for Magnificent Seven rang in a new era for the Western film. The vigorous main theme quickly outgrew its source material to become, via the Marlboro Man commercials, the most memorable advertising theme of all time.

Elmer was never a man to hide his light or his music under a bushel. The robust theme that he reprised several times in the film brings to mind all that is gallant about the Wild West. Small wonder that John Wayne chose Elmer to score eight of his films. Elmer also must take some credit for the spate of spaghetti westerns that lifted Clint Eastwood to stardom.

One of my favorite moments in the sitcom Cheers was when bartender Ted Danson and his barroom buddies leave for his home at midday. “Where are you going?” asks Shelley Long, the resident intellectual. Danson waves a videotape of The Magnificent Seven. The boys are off to wallow in their favorite macho movie. Shelley registers disdain. And the guys exit singing, Daaa-da-da-da-da-daaa…”

***

Perhaps I should make it clear that Elmer was born in Brooklyn and raised in Manhattan. His upbringing was in sharp contrast to the setting of the Western that United Artists and Walter Mirisch had signed him to score. And yet there was an authentic vibrancy to Elmer’s music that came pounding through the house.

The sound lifted me from my chair, drew me down the corridor and through the open door of Elmer’s studio. As I entered the room, I was caught up in a sweeping melodic portrait of the western countryside. Then a menacing, Latin-flavored theme that I would later learn was for the bandit chief who was played in the film by Eli Wallach.

Elmer stopped when he saw me. “I want you to hear something,” he said. “This is the main title theme.” There followed a furiously syncopated musical sound. “What do you think?”

“I love it! It has such energy!” Elmer always brought a great excitement to his work, but there was a special verve today. He returned to the keyboard as I slipped out of the room. But my ears were wide open for the rest of the day, listening to the sound of his piano for more of the sounds of the Western countryside…

The Magnificent Seven for me, was always one “magnificent” short. Elmer and his music were number eight. His theme helped make the film one of the most admired of the sixties—the Gone with the Wind of the West. In it, as everyone knows, a destitute Mexican village is pillaged by a ruthless band who perceives that their victims will always surrender the fruits of their labor. The peasants travel to a nearby village in search of a group of lethal mercenaries. Eight, not seven!

***

Frank Mankiewicz, whose father Herman Mankiewicz had written Citizen Kane, once told me that his father had died at 56, before he fully grasped where his incredible film stood in movie history. I found that very sad. It made me think: Thank heaven Elmer lived long enough to see where his music to The Magnificent Seven stood in the musical canon. It thrilled people in the eleven hundred theaters in which the film was first released, and on millions of TV screens since. Part Copland, part Rossini’s William Tell, part Ferde Grofe’s Grand Canyon, and all Elmer, it became a staple of the musical scene—exhilarating movie audiences everywhere, as a punchline on Cheers, in a Bush-bashing Michael Moore documentary, in the sounds of Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass. And of course it made Marlboro the most powerful force in selling cigarettes in Europe, Asia, and (until the commercials were banned) in the United States. Every time they needed soaring brass and hoof beats, there was the music from The Magnificent Seven.

And, despite the ubiquity of that infectious theme, I think I know when Elmer most enjoyed hearing it. Many years later, he was driving through the tiny town of La Bisbal outside Barcelona. His rented Vespa—whitened by mountain travel until it was almost indistinguishable from the dust that swirled around it—sizzled under the Spanish sun. He pulled the car over to the veranda of a squalid café. As Elmer sipped a cool drink, a little boy of six or seven appeared. He was dressed in ragged jeans and his face wore a look of despair. As Elmer watched, the child mounted a mechanical horse that stood on the veranda. He fished a coin from his pocket and deposited it in a slot in the horse’s flank. The horse began to buck and pitch, and seconds into the ride, the robust theme of The Magnificent Seven filled the plaza. The boy’s face lit with joy. And then observers agree that, for some unaccountable reason, the face of the Americano with the cool drink was suddenly wreathed in a satisfied smile.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“THAT DAVID COPPERFIELD KIND OF CRAP”

“Pvt Bernstein is assigned TDY to write arrangements for Mjr Glenn Miller of AAF band eff 25Apr42.”

—Army Order No. 057776

In one of the most famous opening lines of an American novel, Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye says, “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap.”

Well, if that’s what you’ve been waiting for, I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint you. From the day I began this memoir, I decided that it will not be a formal biography of Elmer or a schematic autobiography of me. I was not going to give you the kind of story that begins: “There was joy in the home of Eddie and Selma Bernstein that April day in 1922 when their son Elmer was born…” and then proceed, step by step, to trace his life and career.

***

Suffice it to say that Elmer was born during the Teapot Dome Scandal, President Harding’s version of Watergate. It was the year when self-improvement courses were running wild, the most popular motto of which was “every day in every way I am getting better and better.” Elmer didn’t need such guidance. Every day he was getting better and better without really trying. In fact, by the time he had reached thirteen, Elmer had acted, composed, painted, written, and danced. His piano teacher was especially impressed by his gifts at the keyboard and introduced him to legendary composer Aaron Copland. Copland steered Elmer to teachers who could refine his style. But Elmer’s ascent was temporarily stalled by World War II. Elmer went into the army. He played the piano in an officers club in a training camp in North Carolina. And when an arranger on the Army Radio Network went AWOL, a colonel asked Elmer: “Can you arrange and conduct?” Elmer, being Elmer, saluted and said, “Yes, sir.” (It was essentially what he said to DeMille ten years later, without the salute, which got him the breakthrough job on The Ten Commandments.) Elmer was thus introduced to the art of scoring music. He was assigned to writing orchestral arrangements of folk songs for Major Glenn Miller and the Army Air Force Band. Later he scored a dramatic radio program for the Armed Forces Radio Service. By VE Day he had composed music for eighty-two Air Corps radio shows.

Now, if you really want to know, let me tell you about my David Copperfield crap. First of all I should tell you that, during the early years of the twentieth century, girls did not play the piano in officers clubs or write arrangements for Glenn Miller. Unless you were an actress or a Washington madam, you did not reach fame and fortune. Society’s glass ceiling was unyielding. My brother went to college and became a lawyer; little Pearly went to secretarial school and became a taxi dispatcher.

When I was seventeen, a new boy moved into my neighborhood. We started to walk to high school together. His name was Leon Uris. He didn’t want to carry my books. He wanted to write them. And he wanted to get married. I wanted to see the world. So I rebuffed him. So Leon joined the Marines and he saw the world. Mainly he saw the South Pacific during the war with Japan, as a member of Fox Company, Sixth Regiment, Second Marine Division, on Guadalcanal and Tarawa. He sent me a letter every day, and since he had joined the Marines because of me, my guilt about his safety was overwhelming.

After the war Norman Mailer wrote The Naked and the Dead, Irwin Shaw wrote The Young Lions, and Leon wrote Battle Cry. “You’re the girl in the book,” he told me. I saw myself more as the drill sergeant. After the war, Leon distributed newspapers for the San Francisco Chronicle, and when Battle Cry cried out to the MGM story department, the studio optioned his book and launched Leon on a prolific career.

Leon came to Los Angeles to write the screen adaptation of Battle Cry, and by then, Elmer and I were settled there. Leon and his wife were living a mile from us on Laurel Canyon Drive, and we often saw one another. As Elmer wrote his movie scores, Leon wrote other novels, among them Exodus, QV VII, Topaz, Trinity, and Mila 18 (which incidentally forced Joseph Heller to find a new number for his own war novel, Catch 18).

Now, moving on to my life at eighteen. That is the age when I got a job as a waitress at a summer camp in the Berkshires where the politics were so progressive that, as Rubin Carson said, “When they produced a play about the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, Sacco and Vanzetti were acquitted.”

Elmer was working on the entertainment staff. He played the piano at the musical shows, and Wednesday evenings entertained the guests with Beethoven and flashing black hair.

It would be a dozen years before Elmer would write the score to The Great Escape, a movie about men escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp in World War II.

Our own escape, to Hollywood, affluence and glory, came sooner.

CHAPTER NINE

THINGS CHANGE

“Dear Mr. Bernstein, We regret that the saxophones are unacceptably suggestive.”

—Letter from the Hays Office

When Elmer and I left for Hollywood in 1950, there was no way that the feisty thirty-year old that was Elmer when he arrived in L.A. could know his talent and industry would carry him through five decades in the changing worlds of movies and music. And there was no way that I could know what lay ahead for me in the worlds of motherhood and law, love and loss. It is said that God made the world round so that we could not see too far down the road. How else could we stand the fear of pain or be patient for the pleasures to come.

In the twenties, when Elmer and I were born, the life expectancy was 53 for men, 54 for women; 32,000 men got college degrees, 17,000 women; milk was 17 cents a quart and bread 12 cents a loaf. By the time we set out for California in 1950, life expectancy was 65 for men, 71 for women; annual income was $2,992 (a figure we just barely reached); 60 million Americans went to the movies every week; milk had crept up to 21 cents a quart, and bread to 14 cents a loaf.

People will tell you that the sixties was a time of the most fantastic changes, a time of social and political upheaval. True enough. But ah, the fifties! From where I sat, the fifties were the pivotal decade in the life of the century, and certainly the pivotal decade in the life of the Elmer Bernsteins.

The fifties were supposedly the bland decade, but I found it anything but bland. The fifties were the decade of conformity, but Elmer was anything but a conformist.

When we arrived in Hollywood, radical changes were afoot in the film capital that would transform the movie business and the business of scoring movies. Never fall in love during a total eclipse, they say, and never move to a company town where the company is going bust. That Elmer could succeed amidst of the death of the studios was extraordinary, and the greatest testimony to his talent and resourcefulness.

The movie industry of the thirties and forties was a pyramid scheme, as imposing as any of DeMille’s Egyptian pyramids. It linked production, distribution and exhibition. The fifties were a time of conservative politics and button-down conformity. Everything was neat and trim, from the sweeping lawns outside the Thalberg Building to the Swedish modern boardroom at Universal. Movies were junk food for drive-ins, from Rock Hudson & Doris Day to Ben Hur. Russia had the bomb, but the bomb had Hollywood.

***

When we drove into Hollywood in our spanking new green convertible we didn’t hear the sound of collapsing industries. Maybe if we had had the top down. Johnny Carson said, “Three days after death, hair and fingernails continue to grow, but phone calls taper off.” When all those phones stopped ringing in the Thalberg Building, they should have known something was up.

The period from the introduction of sound in 1929 to 1950 is referred to by film historians as “the Golden Age of Hollywood.” A lot of folks who remember those old films may dispute the adjective. In an artistic sense, the age wasn’t all that golden. Foremost among the things that inhibited quality was the matter of censorship. Elmer wryly observed that fortunately music was not a literal art form, so the censors had to leave the mangling of his scores to the directors. Elmer was free of the moralizing and meddling that Hollywood screenwriters had to deal with daily. (Can you picture a letter from the Hays office? “Dear Mr. Bernstein, We regret that the saxophones are unacceptably suggestive. Please replace all the blue notes.”)

It seems very disorderly, but I think a paragraph ought to be wedged in here to point out that the censors created a whole goddamn mythology of life. They really did, as Holden Caulfield would say. The most impressionable among us grew up believing all of the following myths: 1) married couples always slept in twin beds and that’s all they did there; 2) honeymoon nights were a series of farcical mishaps; 3) criminals were always punished; 4) women had no navels since we weren’t permitted to see them; and 5) copulation was rare, though we were sometimes provided with clues that a couple had gone beyond hand-holding. These visual metaphors included logs crackling in the fireplace, waves crashing on the beach, fireworks exploding in the air, and my own favorite, a fire hydrant gushing water.

But to get back to the story. The studio system was the method of film production dominated by a small number of studios. The term “studio system” refers to the practice of large movie studios producing films on their own lots, with their own people under long-term contracts stretching from thirteen years to death, and dominating the movies’ exhibition in local movie palaces near you.

The system was challenged under the anti-trust law in a 1948 Supreme Court ruling that separated the production of films from their exhibition. Thus, by the time Elmer had really hit his stride, the era of the big studio was over.

***

When the system collapsed, ironically, it was good for Elmer’s career. Suddenly a new school of film music replaced the symphonic sound of the thirties and forties. More and more movie music became an American sound, and first among the creators of this sound was Elmer.

Of course, the death of the studio system brought problems for Elmer as well. The Hollywood studios, for all their hidebound conservatism had a cadre of contract musicians under contract, ready to serve their composers at the drop of a baton—orchestrators, copyists, musicians, editors. All the composers had to do was, well, compose. But suddenly with the demise of these dinosaurs, every time Elmer scored a movie he had to become a mini-music department.

***

Hollywood is such a volatile, unstable, capricious place, that a fifty-year career is almost unimaginable. How do you do that? How do you span a period from Gershwin and Rodgers to hard-rock and hip-hop?

I can’t quite get my mind around a man whose talent began in the era of Cecil B. DeMille and Otto Preminger, went sailing through the era of John Landis and Martin Scorsese, and came out in the era of Todd Haynes. Most composers, screenwriters, and actors can barely survive a decade in this town, let alone most marriages.

When I look back at the mid-century mark when Elmer and I headed west, America was certainly another country from what it was in the millennial year when Elmer was to write his last movie.

In 1950 North Korea invaded the south. And Joe McCarthy said, “I have in my hand a list of 205 names of communists in the Department of State.” And Harry Truman wrote a letter to the music critic who had harshly reviewed his daughter’s debut: “Some day I’m going to meet you and you will need a new nose and a supporter as well.” Old Gold cigarettes said: “We cure just one thing, the world’s best tobacco.” They got that right. On TV you could see Martin & Lewis, George S. Kaufman and Abe Burrows on This Is Show Business, Bennett Cerf and Arlene Francis on What’s My Line, and Groucho Marx on This Is Your Life. Since there is no one even remotely resembling these people today, I am not going to even attempt a comparison.

CHAPTER TEN

HOLLYWOOD BE THY NAME

“Hate California, it’s cold and it’s damp…”

—Larry Hart, “The Lady is a Tramp”

When Harry Cohn extended an invitation to desert the Big Apple for the Gold Coast, Elmer’s first reaction, as recounted earlier, was distinctly negative. But his distaste for abandoning New York for L.A. was as much geographical as musical. He liked the predictable arrangement of the streets of Manhattan, and he was a little intimidated by the randomness of the winding roads of Los Angeles. East 57th and Madison were in a position you could always count on, neat as the lines on his manuscript paper. Hollywood streets were all over the map.

And yet… and yet… the town had something…

I should now like to say a few words in defense of Hollywood. God knows the town has taken its share of hits from the eastern elites who visited or settled here. Oscar Levant said, “No matter how hot it gets in the daytime, there’s nothing to do at night.” Mel Brooks said, “The difference between Hollywood and yogurt is that yogurt has a living culture.” Truman Capote said, “It’s a scientific fact that for every year you stay in California, you lose one point off your IQ.” Neil Simon said, “When it’s 40 degrees in New York it’s 72 in Hollywood. When it’s 100 in New York it’s 72 in Hollywood. Unfortunately, there are 8 million interesting people in New York and 72 in Hollywood.”

Okay. Now here is the case for the defense.

In Hollywood, I knew the cinema history that had unfolded a stone’s throw from my living room. For example—

I was a mere thirty-two blocks from the spot where David Selznick’s brother Myron stood on a tower beside Vivien Leigh at the burning-of-Atlanta scene, and said, “Okay, Genius, meet your Scarlett O’Hara”; I was twelve blocks from the theater in Westwood where Charlie Chaplin had entered a Little Tramp look-alike contest and come in second; I was nineteen blocks from the Burbank motel where Clark Gable had first bedded Carole Lombard who reported to friends, “The old man is not great in the sack”; I was two miles from the Bel-Air home of Jerry Lewis where, after Jerry suffered a heart attack, he was handed a prescription by his cardiologist that read, “Work alone”; I was fourteen blocks from where Hedy Lamarr was arrested for shoplifting in the May Company; I was a mere three blocks from where a shy Walt Disney showed his rough sketches of a talking mouse to a movie mogul and pleaded for a loan; and I was twelve blocks from where Lillian Hellman first saw Dashiell Hammett on his way to the men’s room at the Cocoanut Grove, fell in beside him, and began a journey that would last thirty-two years.

I mention these colorful contretemps to show why the Hollywood citizen cannot fail to be profoundly affected by the history of the place. You are, after all, in the middle of a town where icons have lived, where you have to always be prepared for the worst and willing to settle for the best.

If you think back on the apocalyptic scene in Nathaniel West’s Day of the Locust, you know that Hollywood should have destroyed itself a long time ago—the place should have been destroyed by flames or rebellion or self-delusion. But somehow it hasn’t.

***

I’ve been remembering, as I try to construct this memoir, what it felt like as a young woman to live in a town of giants. When Elmer and I first arrived in Hollywood, his personal giants were Bernard Herrmann, David Raksin, and Max Steiner. Mine were a clutch of writers, directors, and actors. I was burning with a steady passion, because I was in the same town as Billy Wilder, Clifford Odets, Dorothy Parker, George S. Kaufman, and God forgive me, Otto Preminger and the Three Stooges. And whenever I drove down the 800 block of North Roxbury, the street where George and Ira huddled over a piano and tried to parse romance, the pavement seemed to shudder under my wheels.

Hollywood was a land full of young movie worshippers, each depending on his wits to stay afloat, each with his own stable of giants, from Miklos Rozsa to the Ritz Brothers.

No, it wasn’t Mecca. And unlike New York, it didn’t smell like it.

It was Hollywood, damn it, Hollywood!

Now, how would you like to see The Ten Commandments again, this time taking place completely on a PT-boat? You wouldn’t? That’s all, step down. The defense rests.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

TO RUSSIA WITH LOVE

“If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.”

—John F. Kennedy

There were also giants on the world stage in those days. Kennedy in the White House, Khrushchev in the Kremlin, Adlai at the UN, de Gaulle in Paris. And they led us to the first great crisis of the nuclear age. In October of 1962 JFK learned from photographic evidence that Russia had implanted in Cuba missiles bearing atomic warheads. That was the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a confrontation between the two great nuclear powers that brought the world to the abyss.

In July 1963, a mere eight months after we nearly had a nuclear war with Russia that brought an end to mankind, Elmer and I were off to Moscow. After coming close to Armageddon, America and the Soviets, doubtless chastened by their near-death experience, had stepped back from the brink and had contrived a Hollywood ending. We were planning, heaven help us, a film festival!

***

Elmer had written the rousing score for a prison-camp movie called The Great Escape. It was thick with testosterone, and a dazzling cast that included Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, and Jim Garner, as a bunch of blow dried boys in one of the great “popcorn” movies of all times. (Years later a British soccer team paid a lot of pounds to Elmer to use his stirring theme to welcome their athletes to the stadium each week).

But the movie was not exactly Citizen Kane. There were quite a few better American films that year. Indeed, Elmer had scored a better movie himself, a story about a scoundrel in the tradition of Sammy Glick. It starred Paul Newman, and was written by some good friends, Irving Ravitch and Harriet Frank. But the commissars of the Kremlin’s Cinema Office knew enough about the political requirements of the Cold War not to nominate Hud. They were willing to honor an escape movie in the mindless American mold, not one in which Hollywood mocked America’s capitalist spirit. They also passed up the chance to nominate other worthy American movies—Hitchcock’s The Birds and Marlon Brando’s The Ugly American. If they had a taste for kitsch, they could have chosen Cleopatra, on whose Roman set Liz Taylor and Richard Burton fell hopelessly in love.

The Russian Film Festival was scheduled for Moscow during the second and third week of July. The invitation reached us late, so we had to pull strings to get passports. Barely three days before the plane left for Moscow, we had them.

Danny Kaye was on the plane. He was not a nominee at the festival. Danny had no film that year to command attention. His best work in movies was a decade behind him. His fascination with all things Russian—culture, language, literature—began when he was lifted to stardom by an Ira Gershwin lyric that Danny sang in the Broadway musical Lady in the Dark. The memorable show-stopper was called “Tchaikovsky.” In it Danny rattled off the names of forty-nine Russian composers strung together by Ira Gershwin in a tongue-twisting inventory. Danny did it in less than a minute. Matter of fact, he did it most nights in thirty-nine seconds and managed to stop the show every time. During Danny’s number, the ostensible star of the show, Gertrude Lawrence, “the lady in the dark,” was sitting on a swing onstage, watching him as he stole her show. And each night, the audience cheered its appreciation of Danny’s tour de force, and each night as they kept applauding, Danny kept bowing and bowing.

He recalled the song with satisfaction.

“At each performance,” he crowed, “I tried to break my speed record in reciting those names. The orchestra couldn’t keep up with me!”

“You should have done it a cappella,” said Elmer dryly.

The plane that carried us East contained such seriously famous Hollywood celebrities as Danny, Steve McQueen, Stanley Kramer, and my composer husband.

“I’d like to see the story in the Times if this plane went down,” I said.

“I wouldn’t make the first paragraph,” scowled Elmer.

“Maybe an inside page,” I said.

***

As our aircraft hurtled toward Moscow, on the same approximate route that our strategic bombers had traveled eight months earlier, Elmer idly leafed through the packet of press material that had been given to the luminaries aboard. The Moscow International Film Festival, it declared, was to be held at a newly built auditorium of twenty-five thousand seats that had opened two years earlier and was designed by two distinguished architects.

Elmer scanned the mimeographed material.

“Do you realize that there are a hundred-fifty movie houses in Moscow?” he said in surprise. “That makes Moscow one of the cinema capitals of the world.”

“I can’t believe that,” said Danny.

“Ask Stanley,” I said.

Stanley Kramer, who bore no grudge with the Soviets for failing to nominate his 1963 release, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World, was acting as the scoutmaster and administrator on our trip. He distributed the press releases and kept everyone from changing planes in Prague.

The Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation which ran the affair had been wise enough in the ways of capitalist public relations to invite various celebrities who were not actually nominated for anything. Thus Danny Kaye and Stanley Kramer whose current work was too commercial to warrant an actual nomination, were invited along with Steve McQueen and Elmer Bernstein whose work was deemed culturally worthy. For their presence the Russians provided the cost of two round-trip airline tickets and four-day hotel accommodations.

Stanley Kramer had a reputation for serious work, though often as heavy-handed as a Pravda editorial. Stanley had created some fine progressive themed films on topical subjects in recent years—Inherit the Wind, Judgment at Nuremberg, and On the Beach, and in the years ahead he would produce Ship of Fools, and the paean to integration Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. It was said that by the cynics of the back lot that Stanley Kramer could always be depended on to fight liberal battles three years after they had been won. But I had to admire his attempts to moderate prejudice.

***

The Tverskaya Hotel at 2 Pushkinshaya Square in Moscow was an old and elegant affair. Security checks were heavy. A sturdy middle-aged Russian woman sat at a desk on each floor, checking the comings and goings. A young KGB agent was our constant companion and he saw that we took no photos of sensitive military installations. Although we, as international guests, had relatively easy access to the festival screenings, tickets for movie-crazed Muscovites were hard to come by. At the main ceremonies, Stanley Kramer was given a special medal by the Soviet government for building a cinematic bridge to peace between the Russian and American people.

More moving for me was the presentation of an award to a Russian director who had recently been released from a Russian gulag in order to be present at the festival. His release was part of the détente and liberalizing spirit of the Soviet government in the early sixties on the heels of Cuban Missile Crisis. He sobbed about having gained his freedom and described his incarceration.

When Elmer and I deserted our enormous high-ceiled hotel suite, it wasn’t to attend a screening of Czarne Skyrzdla in the original Swedish. Some of the screenings held scant appeal to even such eclectic souls as Elmer and me. We spent a lot of our time doing what Americans like to do best: sightseeing. We had never visited Moscow before and naturally had to see the stores. Gumm’s was the city’s famous retail emporium, but we were surprised and depressed to see that the massive Gumm’s, like the many less famous stores, were as empty of merchandise as they were of customers. The major outlet for Russia’s manufacturers at that time seemed to contain little beside ball-point pens, picture postcards, and nested figurines.

The mercantile market had moved outdoors onto Moscow’s grim gray streets. A black market was thriving. Venders who had rescued product from the backs of trucks were busy on the spider streets that grew out of Red Square. That summer the big deal was blue jeans. The citizens of Moscow that had survived Hitler’s armies had just surrendered to the comfort and strength of blue jean fabrics, and this formed a sartorial kinship with their American visitors.

One evening the visitors to the festival were invited to a nearby movie theater to see another American film that had recently been released to great acclaim in the Soviet Union. It was the American version of the Leonard Bernstein–Stephen Sondheim musical West Side Story. It had been hailed in Russia as a movie landmark. American musicals had usually been attacked by Soviet critics—in story, in literature, in content, they were considered insubstantial. That was the basic criticism in Russia of all things American—a lack of substance. We offered a sports car to the Soviet tractor. But after all, West Side Story was Shakespeare updated to the mid-century world. And it didn’t hurt that it painted a picture of American prejudice and poverty.

The movie-mad buffs in the Moscow audience were thrilled by the camera work in the film’s opening shot of New York City. It established the slum locale and brought applause from the audience, an ovation before the movie had even begun. Then I heard a whispered commotion begin at the front of the theatre. Heads turned as word spread of something epochal at work. Finally we learned its cause as a thick-set Soviet woman in the row ahead of us turned and whispered to us in an agony of excitement.

“Bernstein—he’s here!”

There was evidently some confusion. In Moscow all those Bernsteins looked alike.

“Bernstein—he’s in the audience!” said a bald, black-bearded Russian in our row.

I saw Elmer’s hands grip the arms of his seat. I detected a naughty look in his eye that I knew too well.

“Don’t you dare stand up!” I hissed.

***

On the first day of the festival, I picked up a copy of the New York Times at a kiosk on Red Square and read a story about a speech that President Kennedy had just delivered as a commencement address at American University. It seemed to augur well for our relations with the Soviet Union. Without a recommendation from Congress, Kennedy had announced that America would cease testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere. It was a bold unilateral step, and JFK took it, he said, “to make clear our good faith.” America had just lived through a toxic era of McCarthyism. Kennedy had decided to make a speech about peace. We had lived through a lot of warnings of Soviet treachery and imminent destruction. It felt good to hear an American president insist that war was not actually inevitable. He said, in the soaring rhetoric that I would come to miss, “Our problems are man-made, then they can be solved by men… If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is the fact that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”

“It’s possible,” I said to Elmer. “Maybe he can do something.”

Four months later, Kennedy was shot down by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas.

CHAPTER TWELVE

NEXT YEAR IN JERUSALEM

“Don’t be humble. You’re not that great.”

—Golda Meir

Elmer and I were not the most religious of Jews, but we could not help but be moved by the efforts of the Jews to create a verdant country in the sand. In 1948, the United Nations, with a strong assist from Harry Truman, took a sliver of the desert and created the state of Israel, totally surrounded by angry Arabs.

By the early 1960s, Israel was ready to declare their culture in a new concert hall in Tel Aviv. Jews had always had a taste for fine music. Dorothy “Buff” Chandler learned this when she set out to raise $18 million to build the Los Angeles Music Center and bring culture to the wasteland. Buffy liked music, which is why she saved the Hollywood Bowl when they threatened to turn it into a parking lot. She found her strongest supporters, it was said, not in the cultural elite of her Pasadena neighbors, but in the show-business Jews of Beverly Hills. Jews know three things: Suffering, good Chinese food, and classical music.

When the Israeli government was ready to open its beautiful new concert hall it invited the celebrated concert violinist Isaac Stern, and the well known Hollywood composer Elmer Bernstein. Elmer and I flew to Tel Aviv from Moscow at the conclusion of the film festival.

***

I grew up in Philadelphia during an era when bigotry against Jews was pronounced. It was W.C. Fields who said, “On the whole, I’d rather be in Philadelphia,” but he wasn’t Jewish, and he was being sardonic. So, as a vulnerable teen, I was always looking over my shoulder in fear of imminent assault. When my parents, my brother and I visited nearby Atlantic City, gateway to glorious Camden, I could not ignore the signs outside certain distinguished hotels that read: “No dogs and Jews allowed.” When I graduated high school and got my first job as a dispatcher at a Philadelphia cab company, the first thing my employer told me, along with the location of the restroom, was that I was the first Jew they had ever hired, and they “would be keeping their eye on me.”

The events of our arrival at the airport in Tel Aviv must be seen in the context of this life experience. As our plane circled in its approach to Ben Gurion Airport, the cabin was suddenly rich with music. They were playing “Hatikvah.” Two uniformed Israeli army officers met our flight in an olive-drab sedan. In Russia the guard assigned us kept us under surveillance, but in Israel, they were making sure we were secure and protected. Not that there was anything to protect us against. Everywhere there were Jews! The policemen, the doormen, the sales clerks, the children, the teachers, everyone! What a feeling of security and acceptance.

And what a sense of humor our protectors had. With the border this close, Elmer felt a little apprehensive about the proximity of fanatic groups that might not wish us well.

“What would you do if the terrorists tried to kidnap us?” he asked.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Bernstein,” said the guard. “We won’t let them take you alive.”

The Ben Gurion Airport is on a thin sliver of land between Jordan and the Mediterranean. If the plane had overshot its landing strip by a hundred yards, we would either be surrounded by enemies or in the water. And yet, with my new feeling of empowerment, I was sure that if the plane came down at sea, I could get out and walk.

The schedule gave us two days to get acclimated before the day of the opening of the concert hall. On Day One we found an old Roman road into the Judean hills. We explored the ruins of Caesarea, the ancient Roman capital that Caesar’s legions had constructed. We looked at the wide walls of the aqueduct that the Romans had built to carry water to the village. We visited a kibbutz, a lush communal farm, and tried to learn serenity from the camels.

On day Number Two we were taken to Jaffa, an artist’s colony south of the city of Tel Aviv. We saw artists, painters, sculptors, potters. But there were no fences. The Arabs seemed to be staring down our throats.

“Where does Jordan begin?” I asked our guard.

He pointed. “The brown area is Jordan. The green is Israel.”

“Shouldn’t we be afraid?”

“They should be afraid, not us,” he said complacently.

He was right. Just how right the world would learn four years later during the Six-Day War, when Israel would overpower the surrounding Arab armies.

The Six-Day War was fought between June 5th and June 10th in 1967. On one side was tiny Israel. On the other were Egypt, the United Arab Republic, Jordan and Syria. The outcome was a swift and decisive Israeli victory in which Israel took control of Gaza, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

***

The night before the concert hall opening event, we dined with Isaac Stern. During the day-long ceremony, Stern performed, as well as a choral group that had won a statewide competition among Israeli Kibbutzim (collective farms). Elmer and I sat among a group of dignitaries from the arts and government. One of the dignitaries was an amiable middle-aged woman from Milwaukee who happened to be the Prime Minister. Her name was Golda Meir.

The modern new hall was filled to the rafters. Golda took the stage and made the awards to Stern, to the chorales, and to Elmer. The hall roared its approval.

By 1963 Elmer had been nominated for six academy awards and had lost them all, but I suspect that this award was more important to him than the ones that had eluded him on the red carpet. After the ceremonies, a few special guests were invited back to Golda Meir’s home. It was in a row of houses, and aside from a tiny guard shack outside the front door, you would never know that it was the home of the Prime Minister. Inside Golda’s home was a swarm of dignitaries. She disappeared into the kitchen and emerged holding a large tray of soft drinks. She offered it to Elmer and me. “Have a glass of soda,” she said. “It’s good.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ODETS, WHERE IS THY STING?

“We’re paid as much for obedience as talent.”

—Ben Hecht

We had arrived back in Hollywood to learn that Clifford Odets was dying. He was in Cedars of Lebanon Hospital suffering from colon cancer and he was not expected to survive.

We had first met Clifford at a party at the Beverly Hills home of Danny Kaye. When Clifford met me he grasped my hand and said, “We should go to a mountain cabin in a snowstorm. We’ll bring along a lot of steaks and plenty of Beethoven.” It was Clifford’s way of saying hello.

I had always been easily seduced by Beethoven. When Elmer first said, “I dedicate The Appassionata to Pearl,” I was doomed. And when Clifford mentioned a cabin in a blizzard with the Emperor Concerto playing, I was putty in his hands.

And now Clifford lay in a small hospital room on Fountain Avenue, fighting for what remained of his life. His chest and arms were wafer thin. A tube led from his side, removing the wastes from his frail body. A nurse rubbed ice on his dry lips.

“His father was here earlier,” she said dourly. “He seemed bothered by all the attention Mr. Odets is getting from the staff. He said, ‘You know my boy isn’t exactly Eugene O’Neill.’” I had often reflected, as I watched our sons sit in awe of Elmer at the keyboard, that it was tough having a brilliantly successful father. Now I thought: Yes, and it’s tough for some having a brilliantly successful son.

Clifford kept flexing his fingers, those same long fingers that had invoked the sirloins in our fanciful mountain cabin. His friend Elia Kazan would later recount how the playwright had extended his arm at full length, shaken his fist at the hospital ceiling, and shouted, “Clifford Odets, you have so much still to do!” I suppose he was anxious to redeem the sixteen years he felt he had wasted in Hollywood.

When Clifford went to the hospital, his fifty-seventh birthday was approaching. He had a bellyache. Of course, gastric distress was not an unfamiliar complaint of Hollywood writers. The scribes were at the bottom of the totem pole. They learned to live with gastric distress. (“We’re paid us much for obedience as talent,” said Ben Hecht.) A third of them became alcoholics. But Clifford was not that concerned when he went into Cedars of Lebanon for some tests. He feared it was ulcers. The red badge of courage for copywriters and screenwriters. It was somewhat worse than ulcers.

Clifford held court every day in his hospital bed, seeing the array of theatrical and movie royalty who were his friends. As the days stretched into weeks, Clifford grew weaker. He gathered his strength to try for an understanding with his father. They had been estranged for a long time. And with his son struggling to survive, Louie Odets reminded his boy’s caregivers that he never wanted his son to be a writer. “He didn’t choose to follow his father’s good advice,” he scowled.

***

As Clifford’s condition worsened, his friends sat helplessly by. My thoughts roamed back to the summer that Elmer and I met at camp. The staff had staged Clifford’s riveting labor play Waiting for Lefty. We were all profoundly moved by this radical Depression-era play about a taxi strike.

When they produced Finian’s Rainbow, Elmer played the leprechaun. And in Waiting for Lefty he was a cab driver desperate for a raise. “Strike! Strike! Strike!” he yelled as the curtain fell.

Looking back across the decades, I can’t help comparing Clifford and Elmer, the man who changed the theatre of the thirties and the man who changed the movie music of the fifties. Both were radical in their thinking, both wanted to swallow the world, both were very appealing to women. But their backgrounds differed. Clifford came out of an unread family and was a high school dropout. Elmer’s parents were teachers and their friends were educated Bohemians. Elmer would often wake up with a poet reading Yeats at his bedside. Clifford would often wake up with a drunk nearby. Elmer’s father thought he was another Mozart. Clifford’s father thought he wasn’t Eugene O’Neill.

When Clifford died, the obituaries adopted a variety of attitudes, from the dismissive to the panegyric. Time magazine, which had put Clifford on its cover back in the thirties, was having second thoughts about his place in American culture. It dismissed his passing with a few contemptuous lines, “A man of promise had sold out to the fleshpots of Hollywood.”

When George Gershwin died in his thirty-seventh year, John O’Hara said, “I read that George is dead. I don’t have to believe it if I don’t want to.” And that’s how I felt about Clifford. America had lost a playwright of real stature, and Elmer and I had lost a wonderful friend.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

SWEET SMELL OF HOLLYWOOD

“I’d like to take a bite out of you. You’re a cookie full of arsenic.”

—J.J. Hunsecker to Sidney Falco

Look in the 2000 edition of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations and you will find an expression called “sweet smell of success,” the seductive power of money over principle. It is what they will tell you lured Elmer away from Carnegie Hall, Clifford away from the Broadway theatre, and many other good men from Faulkner to Fitzgerald, to the tinsel of Hollywood.

“Sweet Smell of Success” is a phrase invented by an assistant to a Broadway gossip columnist. His name was Ernie Lehman and before he graduated to writing such great thrillers as North by Northwest and such saccharine stuff as The Sound of Music, he wrote a corrosive novella about a malignant gossip columnist in the tradition of Walter Winchell. Ernie worked for celebrity press agent Irving Hoffmann. He knew the sleazy world of nightclubs and cigarette girls, and he serviced the columnists of the time with gossip items. Winchell was a rabid anti-communist who resided in the side pocket of J. Edgar Hoover. Sweet Smell of Success appeared in Cosmopolitan magazine in 1950, ten years before Helen Gurley Brown would turn Cosmo into catnip for working women.

Clifford had always been cynical about the sweet smell of success in the movie business. So when Ernie Lehman grew sick during the filming of Sweet Smell, Odets was called in.

Burt Lancaster played the odious columnist J. J. Hunsecker, and he produced it along with his pal Harold Hecht. I always found Lancaster a bit of a bully, conversationally and physically. Ernie Lehman had bowed out of the screenwriting chores of Sweet Smell when he suffered from a tension-induced spastic colon the size of a fist. (It is fitting, I suppose, that writers should have problems involving the colon.) Ernie planned a therapeutic cruise to Tahiti, and Burt Lancaster confronted him. “You’re not that sick! You’re ruining my movie! I’m going to beat you up!”

“Go ahead,” said Lehman. “I could use the money.”

***

Clifford sat in the back of a prop truck outside New York’s 21 Club on West Fifty-Second Street, a typewriter in his lap, and a blanket thrown over his shoulder for protection against the midnight cold. The street looked like the staging site for the Anzio beachhead. There were equipment trucks, trailers, honey wagons, lights, extras, grips, detail cops, and a nest of cables. In the midst of all this glorious debris, Clifford sat typing his acidic dialog for the next scene in the schedule. “Falco enters club, looks about for J.J.’s table…”

Elmer had been hired to write the movie’s score and the result was the hottest sound since he had brought jazz to Otto Preminger’s Man with the Golden Arm. There was a lot of perilous jazz around the year they filmed Sweet Smell of Success. And of course, Elmer knew New York well. We had lived two miles north of the action of the story. “The section is between Columbus Circle and Times Square,” observed Elmer, “and in that tiny area careers were made and destroyed by the gossip columnists.” Elmer’s music reflected the anguish that was in the air.

The movie was American film noir of the highest order, and it created the most exciting words and music team you’ll ever see—words by Clifford Odets, music by Elmer Bernstein.

The movie presents the bitter relationship between J.J. and Sidney Falco, Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis. For ninety minutes you sit and watch two despicable guys tearing one another to pieces with their bile and cynicism.

Elmer really took to this setting, and Clifford really took to this Manhattan melodrama. Clifford stretched the two-week assignment to four months, deconstructing every one of Julie Epstein’s scenes and virtually every one of his sentences.

In capturing the big city Elmer and I had deserted for Hollywood, I thought that Sweet Smell captured better than any film I’d ever seen the atmosphere of Times Square, the excitement of big-city journalism. When I urge friends to see the movie, as I do to this day, the main incentive is the chance they’ll have to hear Clifford’s pungent dialog and Elmer’s wonderful music. We live today in an age of digital magic and special-effects illiteracy. So you will have to forgive my special affection for good words and good music; I was corrupted early by them.

A lot of people took some cheap swipes at Clifford Odets for “selling out” to Hollywood, for wasting himself on the celluloid city. Arthur Miller, a pretty fair playwright himself, was never one of Clifford’s detractors. He never blamed him for squandering his gifts on screenplays, or for not returning to his roots in the theatre. “I mean,” said Miller, “to what theatre was he supposed to remain faithful? There was very little to return to—only show business and some real estate.”

Watching Clifford Odets huddled over a typewriter in a prop truck on Broadway was a graphic reminder of what was for me the greatest by-product of marriage to a successful Hollywood composer—the propinquity to genius. As wonderful as it was to see Clifford at parties in an old tuxedo and a vest and a martini in his hand, he was more romantic still in that prop truck at 3 a.m.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

ART ISN’T EASY

“Movie producers have to ask for changes.

It is how they justify their existence.”

—Budd Schulberg

Hollywood, as everybody knows, is the great defrauder of genius, enticing it away from purity and virtue with counterfeit promises and easy money. Of course, this is not quite true. All this talk about Hollywood as the giant money pot, where the gravy train never stops, is a lot of nonsense.

Take the case of Elmer. Here was a man of immense talent whose music had moved millions. He had written the music for The Magnificent Seven, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Escape, The Man With the Golden Arm, The Ten Commandments. Yet his work to a lot of directors was just a dispensable product on the open market, to be approved or rejected.

Elmer’s unused work offers an absorbing picture of a Hollywood system that often ran amuck, squandering talent right and left. Here is a brief review of Elmer’s rejected music that occurred at the collision points of trade and talent.

Martin Scorsese threw out Elmer’s complete score for Gangs of New York. Robert Redford threw out Elmer’s complete score for A River Runs Through It. Roland Joffe rejected Elmer’s score for The Scarlet Letter. Charles Shyer rejected Elmer’s score to the Julia Robert’s romantic comedy Love Trouble. Robert Houston rejected Elmer’s entire score for Murder in Mississippi. Pat O’Connor threw out Elmer’s score for Daniel Day Lewis’ Stars and Bars. William Richert rejected Elmer’s score for A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon. The Disney studio threw out his score for the coming-of-age drama with John Cusack, The Journey of Natty Gann. Marty Ritt discarded his score to the Walter Matthau romantic comedy Casey’s Shadow about a boy and his race horse.

I was overcome by puzzlement at this long inventory of rejection. So I consulted a composer friend with long experience in these sanguinary affairs.

“How could they do that?” I asked. “I mean, he was Elmer Bernstein, for God’s sake.”

“Well, yes, there’s that.”

“All this music was written and recorded?”

“Every bar,” said my friend.

“Then why?”

“What is the one thing that all these films had in common?”

“What did they have in common?” I asked.

“They were a mess.”

“Ah-hah!” I said.

“They were desperate to try to fix things. What could they do? Re-imagine the concept? Rewrite the script? Hire new stars?”

“They threw out the music,” I said.

“Ah-hah!”

***

As hurt as Elmer was when his music was jettisoned in its entirety, he was almost more aggrieved when a producer, with little judgment about such matters, would order him to alter it, to mangle it. He would have liked to say: Keep your hands off my music. Don’t change it. Don’t improve it. It works.

It was something that one could not really say to a movie producer. As Budd Schulberg remarked: “Movie producers have to ask for changes, it is how they justify their existence.”

Elmer’s favorite composer anecdote was about Billy Rose, the bantam theatrical producer and impresario. He was assembling a Broadway musical called Seven Lively Arts. It would contain samples of all the lively arts, comedy, drama, music, ballet, everything. The music would be supplied by Igor Stravinsky, Benny Goodman, and Cole Porter. Rose thought that everything was improvable under his golden touch. He thus cabled Stravinsky: YOUR MUSIC GREAT SUCCESS STOP COULD BE SENSATIONAL SUCCESS IF YOU WOULD AUTHORIZE ME TO HAVE ROBERT RUSSELL BENNETT IMPROVE YOUR ORCHESTRATIONS.

Stravinsky cabled back:

SATISFIED WITH GREAT SUCCESS.

***

In Hollywood, even when you win you lose. For in each category of the Oscars, among the five nominees are four who will lose and one who will win. I haven’t tabulated the numbers, but after years of such rejection, Elmer seemed like the most nominated and least awarded composer in film history. Here is the box score.

In 1955 Elmer was nominated for Best Musical Score for The Man with the Golden Arm. And the Oscar went to Alfred Newman for Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing.

In 1960 Elmer was nominated for his score to The Magnificent Seven, and he lost to Ernest Gold for his score to Exodus.

In 1962 Elmer was nominated for To Kill a Mockingbird and lost to Maurice Jarre for Laurence of Arabia.

In 1966 Elmer was nominated for Hawaii, and lost to John Barry for Born Free.

In 1983 Elmer was nominated for Trading Places, and lost to Bill Conti for The Right Stuff.

In 1993 Elmer was nominated for Age of Innocence and lost to John Williams for Schindler’s List.

In 2002 Elmer was nominated for Far from Heaven and lost to Elliot Gondeldthal for Frida.

***

Why all the fuss about the Academy Awards? Well, the Oscars is a very American institution. There is something special about all that wealth and monomania packed into one theater. Indeed, whenever you put a thousand celebrities into one place—all those self-absorbed stars, directors, agents, and producers—you get a really pleasant combination of gossip, panic, spite, and sham.

There is something special about the first anything. If you are a writer, it is the first time you see your words in print; if you are a teenager, it is your first kiss; if you are a baseball player, it is your first home run. And if you are a moviemaker, it is your first Oscar ceremony. I remember our first one very well. Elmer had been nominated for the musical score for The Man with the Golden Arm.

One of the first things I noticed was the way they put all the nominees for the same award together. A convenience to the TV cameramen? A nod to envy and pathology? A threat to mental health? Whatever the reason, there seated cheek and jowl were the five nominated composers and their wives, all grinning in terror. There, in a tight group, were Max Steiner, Alfred Newman, Alex North, George Duning, and my darling Elmer.

George Duning, who had said yes to Harry Cohn at Columbia, became a staff composer, and wrote the nominated Picnic, as well as the unrecognized Three Stooges in Space; Alfred Newman had written the score for Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, a piece of featureless mush from Fox; Alex North had been nominated for the music to Tennessee Williams’ The Rose Tattoo; Max Steiner had written the score for MGM’s Battle Cry, which was based on the first novel of my old high school beaux Leon Uris; and Elmer had written the driving jazz score to Golden Arm.

I remember our preparations for the Oscar that year.

“I could buy a dress for the Oscars for two hundred dollars, or buy the fabric and a pattern and make it for one hundred.” I unpacked the portable sewing machine I had brought West for just this kind of situation.

If you will cast your mind back to 1955, you know that Marty swept the Oscars, winning best actor, best director, best picture, best nearly everything. Elmer lost to Alfred Newman for Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing. I lost the best gown award to an extra from Republic Pictures. And that was the ’55 Oscars in a nutshell, a fitting receptacle.

The most exciting moment for me? It was when the ceremony ended and the horde of famous folks strode up the red carpet, in triumph or humility, and boarded their stretch limos. It was then that the platoon of valets in serried ranks assembled, hustled off to bring the cars. It was then that Little Pearly stood unabashedly by the valet’s podium.

“Mr. Peck’s car,” said the chief usher.

And I watched breathlessly as Mr. Peck slid into the back seat.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THOROUGHLY MODERN ELMER

“Thousands of voices saying silently:

‘Let it be me… but if not me, not him.’”

—Bob Hope at the Oscars

Stop the presses! Alert the media! Elmer was finally nominated for an Oscar and won. Was it a tale of searing injustice? A challenge to the human spirit? A story of high adventure? Not exactly. It was a movie about a flapper with bobbed hair in twenties America.

Thoroughly Modern Millie was the only score Elmer ever wrote that won the Academy Award. “To think,” he mused, “I lost with To Kill a Mockingbird. I lost with The Magnificent Seven. I lost with The Man with the Golden Arm. Then when I finally won it was with, of all things, Thoroughly Modern Millie.”

Millie was the only major score Elmer ever wrote that has never been recorded in its entirety. Coincidental? I don’t think so.

Elmer loved the music of the twenties, and in scoring the Ross Hunter spoof, he put a lot of love and nostalgia into his work. “I had a wonderful kind of Paul Whiteman sound in that score,” he recalled. “There were no highs and no lows, it was like the old radio sound. It was a very tinny sound of the period and I worked hard to get it. And then Ross Hunter recorded it with Andre Previn and a thousand strings.”

Mind you, I love Elmer’s delightful theme, which thankfully was included in a collection of his work released by Film Music Masterworks three years after his death. This compilation was the only collection in which any of his Millie music ever appeared, with its wonderful gaiety and spirit.

***

The music of the twenties had always held a special appeal for Elmer. When we first returned to New York from our new home in Hollywood, it was to catch up on the shows on Broadway. We saw Herman Wouk’s Caine Mutiny Court Martial, Maxwell Anderson’s Bad Seed, and Clifford Odets’ The Flowering Peach. And of course there were the musicals. By this time we were able to afford tickets to see complete shows, unlike during our impecunious days in a walkup. We saw all of The Pajama Game, Fanny, and Threepenny Opera. But the show we enjoyed the most was The Boy Friend, the buoyant British musical for which Sandy Wilson wrote the songs. Feuer & Martin, who were like a brand name for hit musicals in those days, brought The Boy Friend to America as one of their extraordinary string of smashes, most of them by Frank Loesser and Cole Porter.

Elmer was delighted by the sound of the show, the twenties-era moaning saxophones that got standing ovations for the overture. Elmer loved the music and the beat, the banjos and the wood blocks. Cy Feuer had found a young music-hall performer named Julie Andrews to star in The Boy Friend, and a few years later, film producer Ross Hunter was determined to make his own takeoff of the twenties. He signed Julie Andrews to star, and when he was unable to secure the screen rights to The Boy Friend, he concocted his own send-up of the jazz age. He called it Thoroughly Modern Millie.

The movie soundtrack album, if you listen to it today, includes the title tune, by Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn, a few authentic songs of the twenties such as “Baby Face” and “Poor Butterfly.” And if you listen very carefully, you can even hear bits of Elmer’s score, struggling to be heard.

“And the Oscar goes to Elmer Bernstein for the score to Thoroughly Modern Millie—”

Almost worth waiting for.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

FINE AND DANNY

“The pellet with the poison’s in the vessel with the pestle.”

—Danny Kaye

The phone call from Danny Kaye had come when Elmer was suffering from the depredations of the blacklist—what Elmer chose in later years to dismiss as the grey list. The call from Danny Kaye was a definite Eureka moment.

Elmer pointed to the phone receiver, I picked up the extension and listened to the actual voice of Danny Kaye. Danny was to star in The Court Jester for Sam Goldwyn. “The pellet with the poison’s in the vessel with the pestle,” Danny would famously say. He needed Elmer as a rehearsal pianist to work with him on the movie. His wife Sylvia Fine, was the brilliant, protean woman who many said had created Danny, writing the dazzling comedy and music that had fueled his career. Sylvia needed someone to translate her tunes in the movie into genuine songs. Danny’s bravura performances of Sylvia Fine’s witty patter songs brought out all that was best in Danny. His career would last fifty years and embrace seventeen films, most notably The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Inspector General, Hans Christian Anderson and The Court Jester. He also received the French Legion of Honor. “They’re giving that to everybody,” Danny laughed.

Danny and Sylvia looked on Elmer and me as the new kids on the block. We were at every party the Kayes threw. Those parties were where the movers and shakers in town flowed in and out. Glenn Ford, Jack and Mary Benny, Truman Capote, Lauren Bacall, Laurence Olivier, Clifford Odets. The cast of characters was constantly changing and always stimulating.

Danny got some tips from Elmer on the physicality of conducting a symphony orchestra. These enabled Danny to be authentic as well as hilarious when he appeared as a guest conductor with virtually every major symphony orchestra in America in behalf of their musicians’ pension funds, raising over ten million dollars. Watching Danny from backstage at the Los Angeles Philharmonic was a delight. He would appear in glistening tails, gripping a quiver of batons. He would judiciously select one, lose it in his first gesture, take another and conduct the orchestra. He mimed an argument with the first violinist, conducted the audience in a greeting, then flawlessly lead the orchestra in a medley of Ravel, Tchaikovsky, Verdi, Beethoven, and John Philip Sousa.

***

Danny had a passion for the things that interested him. He was fascinated by medicine, Chinese food, piloting his own plane, and the Los Angeles Dodgers. I loved the moments when Danny, Elmer and I would arrive at Dodgers Stadium. As we walked down the long corridor to our seats, the crowd would part like the waters of the red sea in the DeMille epic, and then close as inexorably after us.

As we watched batting practice, Danny once recounted to us how Sam Goldwyn presented him with the script for one of his favorite films, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. “Mr. Goldwyn sits there with his right forefinger pressed firmly against his nose, he hands me this red binder and he says, ‘It’s a good role for you, Danny.’ And I say I’m looking forward to reading it. And Mr. Goldwyn says, ‘The only trouble is, it’s a little blood and thirsty.’ And I say, ‘I am flabber and gasted.’”

Elmer asked Danny if the story he had heard from Garson Kanin was true. When the famous playwright had first been interviewed by Goldwyn for a junior writer’s job, an impassioned Goldwyn had explained why he loved making movies. “It’s not the money or the power,” said Goldwyn. “It’s an education! Right now I’m making a movie about a man you’ve never even heard of—Alexander Hamilton.”

Elmer and Danny couldn’t keep from talking shop. One evening they were grousing about the vacillation and indecision of Hollywood producers.

“D’ya know the man who’s made the greatest impact on the movie business during last thirty years?” said Danny.

Elmer weighed the question. “Mayer? Zanuck? Goldwyn?”

Danny shook his head. “He wasn’t a movie mogul. He was a man named Zeke Bonura and he played first base for the Old Washington Senators.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“It’s true,” said Danny solemnly. “Zeke Bonura was the worst fielding first baseman in baseball, but every year he ended the season with the best fielding average in the major leagues.”

Elmer was skeptical. “That isn’t possible, Danny. The worst fielder and the best fielding average? How is that possible?”

“Because,” said Danny, “he understood one rule in baseball better than anyone else. You can’t be charged with an error unless you touch the ball.”

“Ah-hah!” said the composer.

“So he assiduously avoided touching anything that looked the least bit difficult.”

Elmer grinned. “And that has become the guiding principal of the whole damn movie business.”

“Exactly,” said Danny.

“Play ball!” shouted the home plate umpire.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

OLE BLUE EYES

“As a performer no one could touch him.

As a person no one wanted to touch him.”

—Neil Simon. The Sunshine Boys

Frank Sinatra ate scrambled eggs off a call girl’s belly.

Frank Sinatra paid a bartender to punch Dominick Dunne in the face.

Frank Sinatra threw darts at Elmer’s face on Sammy Cahn’s dartboard.

All right. I admit it. Frank Sinatra is a singer, and the important thing with a singer is the music, as it is with a composer. The twenty thousand bobby soxers who pressed against the doors of the Paramount Theatre back in those days adored him. The millions who were touched by the magic of his talent loved him. He was the touchtone of his time and that’s what matters, isn’t it?

But still—hurling darts at Elmer’s face at the bulls-eye of Sammy Cahn’s dartboard? Sammy Cahn? Not even Johnny Mercer? Sammy, the man who they said never joined the rat-pack because he couldn’t pass the physical?

Why the dartboard? Elmer had written the music for The Man with the Golden Arm, the movie that had lifted Sinatra to a career in the movies when his career lay fallow in the mid-fifties. No good deed goes unpunished.

Three years later Columbia Pictures had hired Elmer to score Sinatra’s next film. It was called Some Came Running, and starred Frank, Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine about life in a small town. It would feature a song written by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen called “To Love and Be Loved.”

Elmer’s music for Some Came Running was among the best work he did in the 1950s. It combined his uncanny ability to write cool style jazz with touches of Americana. Sinatra told director Vincent Minnelli that he wanted the music of “To Love and Be Loved” used prominently in the film, though he didn’t want to sing it himself, nor did he want Dean Martin to sing it. Elmer chafed. But he swallowed hard and used it in the film with a male trio singing the song in a nightclub scene. And he wove the melody into the underscoring late in the picture. That was as far as Elmer felt comfortable in ceding to another composer the job he had been hired to do. When you hire Cole Porter to write a song, you don’t ask him to put a little Berlin in the chorus and a little Gershwin in the release.

That was when Elmer received a phone call from ole blue eyes.

“Hello, Elmer—this is Francis.”

“Arlene or the talking mule?”

“Funny, Elmer.”

“What’s up, Frank?”

“I’m anxious to have the melody from Sammy’s song under the main title. And the end credits. And in your score throughout the movie.”

Elmer took a deep breath. “I’m going to tell you something that Otto Preminger told me when I first talked to him about the music in Golden Arm. I said I’d like to do the score in jazz, and Otto said that’s your department. Frank, this is my department.”

“Don’t challenge me, Elmer…”

So this was Hollywood in the trenches. It wasn’t just dog eat dog. It was dog implies you’ll never work in this town again. It was: “I’ll be waiting for your answer in the legal department.” It was: “Don’t challenge me, Elmer.” That was the point at which a whole lot of correspondence, heavy with threats, started flowing through the mailrooms of MCA, the William Morris Office, Columbia Pictures, and the offices of Mr. Sinatra’s lawyers.

“I hate show business,” said Elmer. “I like the show but I hate the business.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

COMEDY TONIGHT

“If you score funny scenes seriously, they might be funnier.”

—John Landis

Nothing succeeds like success, but in Hollywood nothing fails like it, too. You become yesterday’s “big thing.” Or last year’s. Or last decade’s. And there is scarcely a movie star who is not afraid the phone will never ring again. There’s no business like show business; it’s neurotic, paranoid, and thoroughly terrifying. Elmer was going through a patch of insecurity. His agents didn’t call. And when the phone rang it was a recorded political message, or someone selling bossa nova lessons. Then, serendipity being what it is with successful men, at this lethargic point in his career, the phone rang.

It was John Landis. He was a friend of our son Peter when they were teens at Oakwood, the Sherman Oaks school founded by actor Robert Ryan. The last Elmer had seen of John Landis was when he had taken the boys to see the Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl. I had given John and Peter a 16-mm camera that was gathering dust in our guest closet. They used it to film an animated movie by pasting photos on the garage door. John had known what he wanted to do from an early age. He had little interest in anything but film. He pursued his passion and grew up to direct some of the most successful comedies of the ’70s an ’80s. He was wired into the talent at the quixotic new TV show, Saturday Night Live, and he did well. He directed The Blues Brothers (with Aykroyd and Belushi), Beverly Hills Cop and Coming to America (with Eddie Murphy), and he made Michael Jackson’s bestselling video, Thriller.

“It’s John,” said a telephone voice to Elmer. “John Landis.”

“Oh, hello, John, what have you been up to?”

“Well, Mr. Bernstein, I’d like you to take a look at a film I just shot. It’s called Animal House.”

“What’s it about?”

“It’s a wild comedy set in a frat house.”

“I think you’ve got a wrong number.”

“Well, Mr. Bernstein, I’ve got a little idea. I was thinking it might be fun if you scored the movie. And scored it like a drama.”

“A drama.”

“Yes, score the scenes as if they were high drama.”

John Landis did not tell Elmer that he was running into the same raised eyebrows among the blue suits at Universal. Elmer Bernstein? Comedy? It was the same tone that Frances Ford Coppola encountered when the Paramount brass said, “Marlon Brando as The Godfather?”

Elmer went down to Universal Studios and looked at a rough cut of Animal House. It starred the great John Belushi as the campus barbarian with a cast of lovable cretins. At the time, the movie ran for three hours and it was very, very, very funny.

Elmer was quite the iconoclast himself. He did not find the idea of scoring a farce with dramatic music all that absurd. Certainly no more absurd than speeding up a languid army with up-tempo music. Elmer composed and conducted in his familiar dramatic way, and the result was quite funny.

So it came to pass that Elmer Bernstein, creator of the music for To Kill a Mockingbird, The Magnificent Seven, and The Ten Commandments, wrote the musical score for Animal House.

Animal House was the most successful movie of the summer in which it appeared, and Airplane!, which Elmer scored as a melodrama, was the most successful comedy of the following summer. And over the next decade, Elmer found himself scoring a whole raft of zany comedies, including Ghostbusters, Trading Places, Three Amigos, Stripes, and The Blues Brothers. He became the most successful composer of comedy music in town. Now you couldn’t make a comedy without music by Elmer Bernstein, as in decades past you couldn’t make a western without him, or a drama, romance, or jazz-oriented movie about junkie drummers or Broadway lowlifes.

***

Now, a word about Elmer’s creative gifts. A reading of critics on Elmer’s work will reveal an overuse of words like “versatile,” “prolific,” and twisted phrases like “a man for all genres.” It was hard to get your arms around the scope of his talent.

Then one evening at a dinner party, over the chatter, I heard the voice of another composer. Elmer had just won an Emmy for his score to The Making of the President, a TV documentary on Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign.

“God, the man will do anything for money. Television, Westerns. Now I hear he’s writing comedies! Did Eugene O’Neill write comedies? Does Neil Simon write dramas?”

I didn’t want to dignify this backbiting with a reply. I am essentially a benign person. But if I did, I would have said, “Well, yes, O’Neill did write a comedy, and Neil Simon did write a drama.” As it was, I am not a vindictive person. So I didn’t respond to his remarks. I didn’t sink to his level. I just slipped some arsenic in his Chardonnay.

CHAPTER TWENTY

THE MAESTROS

“I have to keep reminding myself that music is the least important part of the movie.”

—Leonard Bernstein

Troubled marriages, bacchanalian tastes, left-leaning politics, princely fees, insatiable hungers, great good humor. Bernstein East and Bernstein West had not a few things in common.

As the wife of one of them, and madly in love with both of them (with Lenny, alas, from afar), I had a chance to observe the talents and tastes, the triumphs and trials, of the Maestros Bernstein.

Of course, the two celebrated composers were not related but they knew one another and were friendly rivals. Indeed, many said they shared a certain physical resemblance, which I could never see. Lenny and Elmer had a similar gusto and charm, they were both composers, pianists and conductors, and their work formed musical parentheses that embraced the second half of the twentieth century.

Bernstein East and West both were into progressive politics. Elmer played the piano for Paul Robeson at the famous Madison Square Garden concert that landed him on a Hollywood blacklist. The liberal Lenny triggered “radical chic,” as Tom Wolfe labeled it in a derisive New York magazine article. Lenny had thrown a notorious party at his swank uptown apartment for the leaders of the Black Panther movement.

Both Bernsteins were captivated by J.M. Barrie’s classic story of perennial childhood, Peter Pan. Elmer was the rehearsal pianist for the Mary Martin production that produced a long run on Broadway. I attended every rehearsal in its Los Angeles tryout run. (“You can still see the wires!” complained producer Leland Heyward.) And a few years later, Lenny wrote all the songs for a different stage version of Peter Pan that starred Jean Arthur, who at 49 was a bit long in the tooth to play a flying pixie. (“You can still see the wires!” complained Lenny.) Now, I wouldn’t want to imply that Elmer and Lenny were both attracted to the Peter Pan fable because they were both middle-aging children who refused to mature. I wouldn’t say that at all. But you’re welcome to draw your own conclusions.

Both of the Bernsteins brought their gifts to the Broadway musical theatre, Lenny with somewhat greater success. In On the Town and Wonderful Town (with Betty Comden & Adolph Green), in West Side Story (with Steve Sondheim), and finally in Candide (with Lillian Hellman, which became a cult musical), Lenny had a spectacular stage career. Elmer would have settled for a cult musical.

It was early in 1956 when Lenny’s and Elmer’s orbits intersected briefly in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel. Lenny was visiting town with his parents, Sam and Jenny; Elmer had been writing The Ten Commandments. Elmer and I were coming out of a meeting of arrangers when we encountered Lenny and his folks in the lobby. Their greetings were warm as befits a musical axis.

“I still get some of your ASCAP statements,” mused Lenny.

“And I yours,” said Elmer.

“Your checks are bigger.”

Both Bernsteins were remarkably prolific. I would marvel at Elmer’s productivity, and if anything, Lenny was even more so—conductor, pianist, composer of symphonic and show music, and recently he had become America’s music teacher in a series of lectures on TV’s Omnibus. Lenny joked about his strategy for disarming competitors: “When I’m with composers I say I’m a conductor. When I’m with conductors I say I’m a composer.”

Elmer mentioned that he had just been invited to be a guest conductor at the Prague Symphony Orchestra. Lenny had some advice: “Try to keep the five violinists who hate you away from the five who are still undecided.”

“I’ll try to remember,” said Elmer.

I asked Bernstein East what had brought him west. He explained that he was here to meet with film producer Sam Spiegel for whom he was writing the score for On the Waterfront. (Spiegel boasted that he “had given Leonard Bernstein his big break,” which he had done in the same sense that he had given Lawrence of Arabia his big break).

“My last visit to town was fortuitous,” said Lenny. “I met Arthur Laurents at the swimming pool here and we decided to work on a Broadway musical about gang warfare in New York.”

“That turned out well,” I said.

Elmer praised Lenny on his brilliant young collaborator in West Side Story, Steve Sondheim. Lenny observed that their work habits did not always mesh.

“Steve likes to work late into the night, and with my conducting schedule, I prefer to work in the morning.”

“When you’re a Jet you’re a Jet all the way,” I said.

The Maestros fell into a heated discussion about the dubbing process that Lenny had discovered when On the Waterfront had been dubbed with his music. It happened that the facility was the same one where Elmer’s first few scores had been mixed, the huge dubbing room on the third floor at Columbia Studios. Elmer, having had his own experience with composing for movies, could commiserate.

“At a certain stage,” said Elmer, “you become so wrapped up in your score that the music seems the most vital part of the movie.”

“But it isn’t, is it?” said Lenny.

“No, it isn’t,” said Elmer.

“I had to keep reminding myself,” said Lenny, “that to the producer and everyone else, the music is the least significant thing in the movie. To them, a spoken line of dialog that is buried under music is lost. But a bar of music that’s lost because of a line of dialog—well, it’s only music.”

Elmer nodded ruefully.

“The moments I resent,” said Lenny, “are when they have a general discussion about cutting a piece of your music, and they talk about it as though you weren’t even there.”

“Well, nobody ever asked me to come to the dubbing sessions,” said Elmer. “I usually have to fight my way in.”

Bernstein East sighed.

“You score a lot of movies, Elmer. How on earth do you handle the frustration?”

Elmer shrugged.

“Screaming, sobbing, and cursing work for me,” he said. “And then I call my agent.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

BERNSTEIN’S COMPLAINT

“It should have been called How to Try in Business Without Really Succeeding.”

—The New York Herald Tribune

Along with his immense talent and versatility, I sometimes think that the other qualities that drove Elmer to excel were his frustrations and impatience. One sensed that he always felt the music of motion pictures deserved more prominence and respectability than it received. The so-called “invisible art” had its fans and aficionados, of course. But it was Gershwin and Porter and Kern who were called “the masters.” Elmer sensed that the talents of Victor Young and John Williams and Bernard Herrmann were just as great as that of the composers who wrote thirty-two bar melodies for Ethel Merman and Fred Astaire.

Elmer was an advocate for film composers and that led him into more crusades than the Holy Roman Empire. He actually sued the major film studios in an attempt to get them to grant composers some ownership of the music they wrote. It took a lot of nerve to sue Goldwyn and Mayer and the brothers Warner. Elmer led a composers strike and it cost him some work. But he was always willing to put his money where his music was.

***

Elmer made it better to be a composer in Hollywood and he made his own career seem thrilling at a time it threatened to sink like a stone.

When the 1960s ran into the ’70s, his big pictures were few and far between. He did smaller films and a lot of television cop series. He waited for another break. And while he waited, he led a composer’s strike. And he recorded other composers’ scores. And he financed a library of LPs. Hell, he virtually invented the film scoring business. And he preserved the thoughts of his peers in a series of published interviews that he called The Notebooks.

Was he a promoter? An entrepreneur with an artist’s flair? In musical terms, I prefer to think of Elmer as a swashbuckler. What a book publisher he would have made. Or a magazine editor. Or a Kamikaze pilot. He was so incredibly eclectic. I always felt he would succeed at whatever he tried. His detractors, and they were few, said he hungered for success. Well, he didn’t hunger for failure.

***

Elmer’s “Film Music Notebooks” were quarterly journals that contained interviews with the great film composers of the 20th century, most of them conducted by Elmer himself. There were also analyses of scores, profiles of the composers, and historical assessments of the world of movie music.

Elmer’s “Film Music Collection” contained the scores of Max Steiner, Franz Waxman, Miklos Rosza, Bernard Herrmann, Alfred Newman, Alex North and Dmitri Tiomkin. He conducted all this music himself in England, and how he enjoyed it!

Elmer was a chameleon of movie music—composer, conductor, impresario, historian, publisher. And wherever his curiosity led him he was a true and faithful servant. He was brash at the age when other composers were becoming dyspeptic, and boyish when they were becoming irrelevant. “After I’m dead,” said Cato the Elder, “I’d rather have them ask why I have no monument, than why I have one.” Elmer has his monument, several of them. And no one has ever had to ask why.

***

There were times when Elmer reached out for the validation of Broadway. He judged, I think, that a Broadway musical would bring to his work the independence and luster it deserved. On Broadway, music drove the action, it didn’t merely underline it. But Elmer’s Broadway exertions were never successful. Perhaps he was a Rodgers in need of a Hart, no pun necessarily intended. The first time at bat was with actor Vic Morrow as his collaborator. Elmer and Vic wrote a musical called Everybody Loves Willie. Willie was a basset hound, like our dog “Thurber” who crouched by Elmer’s piano bench. I baked mountains of ruggalah and brewed oceans of coffee for the backers’ auditions at which Elmer and Vic narrated and played their show for prospective investors. One of the “angels” was less than angelic. Elmer ground his teeth at the middle-aged vulgarian in the loud checked jacket who crossed his arms, chewed a piece of ruggalah, and said: “It’s a nice show, Elmer. Don’t get me wrong. But you know what it needs?”

“What?”

At which point loud-sports-jacket descended to his knees, stretched out his arms and sang, “I love Paris in the springtime—”

“What does that have to do with a basset hound?” said Elmer.

“Keep an open mind, Elmer. I love Paris in the springtime—”

The second of Elmer’s Broadway musicals was How Now, Dow Jones, on which he collaborated with lyricist Carolyn Leigh. Some of the lyrics that Carolyn Leigh handed Elmer to musicalize rhymed “Gina Lollobrigida” with “they’d only get fridgider,” and “Saud Araby” with “hock the baby.” Where’s Yip Harburg when you need him? How Now, Dow Jones was a Wall Street satire and Brooks Atkinson in the New York Times said the show was “shy a few things, like an amusing book, melodic songs, lyrics with life, and dancing.” And Walter Kerr in the Trib, recalling the corporate musical whose success had inspired the show, suggested “the show should have been called How to Try in Business Without Really Succeeding.” Well, you know how people love to criticize.

Elmer’s third and final assault on the beachhead of Broadway was less an Anzio than a Gallipoli. It was a musical called Merlin that was a sort of showcase for illusionist Doug Henning, and it too closed after a brief run. Elmer’s infectious melody for the show’s big song, “Put a Little Magic in Your Life,” failed to put enough magic in the show. Don Black, who had written the lyrics for the title songs in several of Elmer’s movies, did the show’s lyrics. In one of them Doug Henning levitated magically and flew above the stage with no visible support. I always felt this was a metaphor for Elmer on Broadway. Not enough good support.

***

There was even a time when Elmer’s frustration with Hollywood drove him out of music entirely. He turned from music to words. Elmer decided to write a novel. He was scoring a movie that Clifford Odets was writing and directing at Fox. It was called The Story on Page One and starred Rita Hayworth and Gig Young. He asked the famous dramatist to give him some tips on construction and dialogue in entering the unfamiliar terrain of the novel. For about three weeks, Elmer attacked the keyboard of his typewriter as ardently as he usually attacked the keyboard of his Steinway. Then the machine-gun bursts of typing went to small-arms fire, and finally gave way to the familiar sounds of melodies and chords.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“HER OR ME”

“When you reach a fork in the road, take it.”

—Yogi Berra

Elmer always got what he wanted, whether it was a string of race horses, a 40 foot boat, or more violins in the string section. It stood to reason. He always felt he should have anything he wanted. It was that way during his childhood, when he was merely precocious. Now he saw no reason why at this stage in his life, when he had become Hollywood’s hottest composer, he should not be entitled to indulge his every whim.

Now, so far the attentive reader will have noticed that everything I’ve said about Elmer has been pretty laudatory. He was funny, talented, charming, affectionate. But I suspect some of my less credulous readers may be saying: Wait a minute. Had this guy no faults? No vices? No weaknesses? What was he anyhow, a saint? Was he the perfect husband?

Well, no. Elmer wasn’t perfect. You take Agatha Christie. Now, she had the perfect husband. He was an archaeologist. Agatha always said: “With an archaeologist, the older a woman gets, the better she looks.” But alas, Mrs. Christie’s experience was rare. Young women look good to men. It is nature’s little joke.

Now, I have an announcement to make. We have reached the moment in our story where Eve enters stage right, smiling gently and exuding aplomb.

***

Eve was a young woman of twenty. Long legs, tiny waist, high cheekbones, her hair rippled when she walked, a bit of elegance, British accent. Eve had poise, charm, education, all the things that women need if they don’t have looks, and she had looks too.

Throughout our marriage, Elmer was not exactly a monk. There were a few others along the way—actresses, Agnes DeMille dancers, women who were overcome by the sensual qualities of his music. It is a scientific fact that women are often swept away by the power of music played by large orchestras. Music could be quite an aphrodisiac. But this was different. This was a woman who Elmer would marry and love for the rest of his life. Not exactly a fling.

But I didn’t know any of this the day I confronted Elmer about Eve. At that moment she was “the other woman.” And I was “the wife.” The loyal willing helpmate. The woman who stood by him, never leaving his side, even in the darkest moments. I was “the little woman,” determined not to let her husband ruin his life by trying to get along without her.

“I hear you’ve been seeing another woman,” I said. “Do you love her?”

“I think I do,” said Elmer.

He stood there, hands deep in his pockets.

“It’s her or me, Elmer.”

Elmer begged me not to present him with this painful choice.

“Her or me,” I said.

Elmer and I had grown up together, we had shared the hard knocks going up and coming down. He taught me a lot of things. He was my Pygmalion, and now he had found a new Galatea. And I sensed that she was something special. Well, Elmer was no longer a child and it was time for me to teach him about being a grownup. He had to make a choice.

“Got to make a decision, Elmer,” I said. “Her or me.”

Elmer chose her.

Oops.

***

It was what the romance novelists used to call a pregnant moment. Elmer stared out the window, and speaking with the speed of a man dictating to a stonecutter, God bless him, he tried to explain.

“When you and I met, Pearl, I had just come out of the army. I had played the piano at that officer’s club in North Carolina.”

“Taking requests from second lieutenants.”

Elmer nodded. “Then we moved into our walk-up on 110th Street. Then the excitement of New York. Rehearsing for my debut at Town Hall. Then the sudden offer from Hollywood. The thrill of hearing my own music on the Columbia sound stage. Losing the Oscars, the House committee, DeMille…”

“The Egyptians playing Jews marching to Onward Christian Soldiers…”

“In some crazy way, Pearl, when I met Eve, it made me feel young again. I guess that’s how I’m feeling now. I’d like to take it from the top—I have the urge to start it all over again.”

“Frankly, Elmer, I can’t see you playing piano in an officer’s club today.”

“You know what I mean, Pearl.”

And God help me, I did know what he meant. The trouble with us liberals is we can always see both sides of the question, even our husband leaving us. I could understand wanting to relive those years when love was young and life was full of promise. Who wouldn’t want to do that?

On the other hand, as we liberals also say, it was a shock. Our lives seemed very good. What could be missing? We had a lovely home in the Hollywood Hills, two sweet boys, a great basset hound, we played charades with Danny Kaye, we had dinner with Gregory Peck, we drank cream soda with Golda Meir, we were tracked down at Dodgers games by Viennese directors, Elmer kept losing the Oscar, the Philip Morris Company was paying him an obscene sum to use his music to spread emphysema throughout the world. What could be wrong? Was something missing? Evidently.

***

After Elmer moved out of the house, my life seemed to go into slow motion. The days were long and my ego was bruised. I passed a pawn shop on Ventura Boulevard, saw a revolver in the window, and thought fleetingly of buying it and shooting Eve. But no. The feeling passed. I decided that murder led to theft and theft led to deceit. Besides, I couldn’t bear the thought of the headline in tomorrow’s Hollywood Reporter: ELMER BERNSTEIN’S WIFE SLAYS HIS LOVER. The kids would be teased unmercifully at school.

Our friends chose sides. Try to guess which side. Most were musicians who worked for Elmer. From the day we separated, I never heard from them again. Not so much as a grace note. I can understand their loyalty, but that did not assuage the pain. I got the children and the in-laws. Elmer got the orchestra.

***

I had always admired Elmer so much. He had opened the world of music to me. Music was his bible. So I was a little disappointed. Yes, I thought, Eve is attractive. But what about his love for music? Why didn’t Elmer have a fling with someone in the orchestra? Some nice girl in the string section. Perhaps a cellist. Then I could have kidded him about the instrument between her legs, we could have had a good laugh, and that would have been the end of it. But no. I had to say the memorable words. “Her or me.” Probably not even grammatical.

***

Elmer and I had come a long way together. But it was time to move forward along different paths. As Yogi Berra so wisely said: “When you reach a fork in the road, take it.” I took it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

SCORE ONE FOR ME

“You’re a lonely, misunderstood woman who’s been getting a lot of dirty breaks.”

—Groucho Marx

When your marriage has fallen apart, you have lost your husband, your friends have cut you off, and your life is a shambles, if you can pick yourself up and dust yourself off and start all over again, then you don’t understand the extent of the problem.

For myself, I understood the problem all too well. And I had, if not a remedy, at least a poultice for the wound—something I always did in the face of calamity. I would get behind the wheel of my car and drive along Mulholland Drive until it ended. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the topography of Los Angeles, Mulholland is a road that winds its way through the green hills of the city. On one side you look down on the West Side, on the other the vista of the San Fernando Valley. Driving along Mulholland it is impossible to feel anything but blessed. It is also very dangerous, since if your mind wanders even for a moment, you will find yourself in a ravine.

Hence I took a drive along Mulholland. It helped, for about twenty minutes.

***

The year Elmer and I broke up, Gregory was eight and Peter was twelve. I did not want them to suffer unduly from the rupture of their family. I knew that broken homes could have a harmful effect on kids, nearly as bad as the effect of intact ones. Says Holden Caulfield: “I keep picturing all these little kids playing in a big field of rye. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. And I’d be the catcher in the rye.” Well, every mother is a catcher in rye. I wanted to catch my boys before they went off the cliff of our separation. So Elmer and I never had a formal visitation agreement for him to see the children. He came over to the house almost every day. It was almost as though he had never left.

***

If there is a secret to life after a midlife crisis, it is reinvention. I should have learned this from Elmer. He was always reinventing himself. After the biblical epics and the jazz opuses of the fifties, when his career lay temporarily fallow, he reinvented himself with westerns, and then with comedies.

All through the years of our marriage, I was the little girl from Philadelphia married to the iconic composer. In the company of Hollywood’s elite, I would be careful never to contradict or challenge him. I was living in the shadow of the composer. But as Nietzsche said, what the fire doesn’t destroy, it hardens. And the breakup had led me to an important discovery: I had a brain. My thoughts had value and even, on occasion, wit. On a trip to London, Elmer asked me to join him and a lady friend for dinner at the Savoy. He would bring a date for me. We had a great time at dinner, and Elmer called me the next morning. “You were wonderful—They loved you!” he exclaimed. What a vote of approval. My ex-husband and his lady friend found me great company. Like winning the Good Housekeeping Seal.

***

Then one evening at a dinner party, I met a writer who had been having his own share of post-marital anguish. His name was Michael Morris. He was good-looking, smart, and funny. Mike and I were two people with broken hearts. “It’s the old story,” he said. “You’re a lonely, misunderstood woman who’s been getting a lot of dirty breaks. Well, we can clean and tighten your brakes and change your oil, but you’ll have to stay in the garage overnight.” Mike confessed he had borrowed the line from a Marx Brothers movie. I knew he had character because he attributed the source, something Hollywood writers seldom do.

I started to feel like my old self, which some of my friends would observe is the worst thing you could say about anybody. After my relationship with Mike had matured, I told Elmer I wanted a divorce. He was stunned. He wanted to continue to enjoy the best of both worlds—a loyal wife to care for the kids, and a tall, skinny British girlfriend. But that isn’t how it works. Life has a way of moving on.

Eighteen months after my separation from Elmer, Mike and I flew to El Paso, and took a cab across the border to the town of Juarez, where (a) I got a divorce, (b) I had a taco, (c) I got married. Juarez is a dangerous town. The Americans who came there for quickie marriages often found their nuptials marred by violence, promiscuity, and even murder. And the town was pretty dangerous, too.

Then we drove back to El Paso and flew to San Francisco where some friends had flown up for a wedding celebration; thence we drove back to L.A. Mike’s arrival seemed to bring an element of stability to the home that had been shaken by our passing storm. So I was glad to see that the boys seemed to have survived the melodrama. For a long time I had been submissive and broadminded. But the streets of Juarez were littered with the bones of men whose wives were no longer submissive and broadminded.

Mike was occupied as a story editor for the television sitcom Bewitched, where co-star Paul Lynde was hilarious when he wasn’t infuriating. Paul’s infectious sarcastic wit made him stand out as one of the show’s most memorable characters. But Paul tended to read Mike’s lines in erratic ways, and when Mike’s eyebrows climbed his forehead, Paul would say, “You’ll learn to like it.”

As reality returned to our household, I realized I couldn’t go through the rest of my life hanging out at home. By this time, Peter was at college and Greg had reached the age of self-sufficiency. Mike was at the studio all day and into the evening. My life had no focus. I was not one of “the ladies who lunch” who spend their day choosing a hat. If I may be excused for using the C word, I was looking for a career.

After much soul-searching, I decided to attend a seminar at UCLA for “directionless women.” One of the speakers was the dean of the USC law school. But I was ambivalent. I raised my hand.

“Yes?”

“Do you realize, when I graduate law school I’ll be fifty-one?”

“Do you realize,” said the dean, “that if you don’t go to law school, you’ll still be fifty-one?”

That line closed the deal.

***

As I write this, the women who are getting law degrees outnumber the men. But when I graduated law school in the late seventies that was not the case. I recall wearing my navy blue credibility suit and low-heeled shoes, and with the handful of other new lady lawyers, receiving cautionary instructions from a judge in the Los Angeles Courthouse.

“Women lawyers are not to wear pants in court.

“They are not to wear heels.

“They are not to wear red.

“They are not to wear bows. But if they must wear bows, the bows are to be tied snugly about the neck. And on no account are said bows to be thrown over the shoulder.”

I decided that at my age—I was pushing fifty-one—I was too old to take instructions from others. So I hung out my shingle in my own office. I was practicing general law. Some of my more credulous friends sought my help in legal matters—a will, a trust agreement, a real estate document. Then I joined a small practice that focused on intellectual property and patent law, and in an era before computers and data bases, this meant trips to the U.S. Patent Office in Washington. Other cases took me to other world capitals, from Bombay to London, from Rome to Paris. I practiced family law, and usually represented the wife. I sought to secure the rights of women in society, their social and political empowerment.

With every fresh document and legal challenge, the soap opera of my breakup with Elmer faded further from my conscious thoughts.

Now, there is a theory that has been propounded by my son Gregory that had Elmer never left me I would’ve never become the woman I became. Which explains, I suppose, why the Chinese use the same symbol for the words “crisis” and “opportunity.”

Or as Mr. Sondheim says in a lyric from a song about marital breakup: “That’s the killer—Now you grow.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I’M STILL HERE

“The accordionist knows three songs—‘New York, New York,’ the theme from The Godfather, and ‘When the Saints Go Marching In.’”

—Minister at the Venetian Hotel

After a long struggle with colon cancer and Alzheimer’s, Mike died in 2003 at the Motion Picture Home.

I met Gerald Gardner at a birthday party that our friend Bernie West threw for his wife Mimi at the Peninsula Hotel. In one of those “what if” moments, Bernie seated us together. We talked and laughed all evening. We spoke about politics and show business and other things. Gerry loved music—he was caught in a time warp bounded by Gershwin and Cole Porter—he admired Elmer’s work. When Gerry told me he lived on Camden Drive in Beverly Hills, I started thinking about a boat and a beach house. I didn’t realize till later that Camden Drive runs all the way to the airport.

Six months later, Gerry and I were taking some real vows on a faux bridge over a faux canal at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. The young minister said, “I’ve been married a long time, so let me give you a little advice—” Since between us Gerry and I had been married eighty-two years, we don’t remember much after that. Then our young minister gestured toward the accordionist and said, “He only knows three songs—‘New York, New York,’ the theme from The Godfather, and ‘When the Saints Go Marching In.’”

Only Gerry’s children and grandchildren, and my own, were at the ceremony, but it was memorable. The Venetian setting, the painted sky, the tourists staring at the geriatric couple as our gondola glided upstream toward the restrooms.

We’ve had some fun. It’s been a good life, cushioned in music and books. Perhaps the sugar is all at the bottom of the cup. We went on a cruise to Alaska. We went to both presidential conventions in 2004 and watched a young senator named Barack Obama give a keynote address. Gerry tried to learn golf and fell into a sand trap. Even when we hit a dry patch, we leavened it with laughter. When I said, “Gerry, it was so much fun at the beginning. Tell me the truth, is it waning?” he replied, “No, but it’s dwizzling.”

Gerry was at work on a book called 80 in which eighty famous octogenarians talked about what keeps them young. So I had the unique pleasure of answering the phone at all hours and hearing the voices of Carl Reiner, Studs Terkel, and Ben Bradlee. Whenever anyone asked who was the most intriguing of his subjects, it was no contest. It was the brash and incorrigible Elaine Stritch. Her advice to one and all: “Suit up, show up, wear comfortable shoes.” Was it tough producing a nightclub act at her age? “I’ve got the prostitute’s complaint,” growled Elaine. “It’s not the work, it’s the stairs.”

Gerry was surprised by the eminence of the people who were taking the time to contribute their thoughts to his book on old age. On the day he spoke to Norman Corwin, Ray Bradbury and Mike Wallace—and it was not yet noon—he said to Helen Gurley Brown: “I’m surprised at how many famous folks are taking my calls and talking to me at such length.”

Helen Gurley Brown laughed and said, “Don’t be surprised, Pussycat. These people are survivors. They’re proud of it. And they want to talk about it.”

Which I suppose is why I am writing this book.

Elmer’s journey to the big 8-0 and the passions that kept him the youngest guy in the room were always worth observing and emulating. He never tired or retired.

Elmer died in his sleep at his Ojai home at the age of eighty-two.

Of course, the years are never quite long enough between the overture and the final curtain for men like Elmer.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

TRIBUTE

“His favorite words were ‘grace’ and ‘joy.’”

—Peter Bernstein

Three hundred of Elmer’s friends, family and colleagues gathered to say goodbye at a memorial tribute at the Paramount Studio Theatre in October of 2004.

Driving to the Paramount lot that evening, I was racing past the juncture of La Brea and Sunset when a light flashed in my eyes. It is God winking at me, I thought. No, on second thought it is the LAPD telling me I have been photographed jumping a red light. When the photo and the summons arrived a few days later, I knew it was the latter. And somewhere I knew Elmer was sitting at God’s right hand and nudging him: “It’s Pearl—she drives like that.”

If a bomb had gone off that night at the Paramount Studio Theater, with its assembly of composers, musicians, lyricists, and arrangers, all the movies in town would have to depend on Jolson solos. Director John Landis, who tempted Elmer to score Animal House and its numerous progeny, was the host.

Peter told how, at the age of nine, he watched breathlessly as his father conducted the original score for The Magnificent Seven. He related that his father’s two favorite words were “grace” and “joy.” And when Gregory spoke, he talked of his father’s “fearlessness.” He told of how, days after Elmer had undergone surgery for the cancer that finished him, he was back piloting his boat and planning future projects.

Greg also recalled Elmer’s “problem with authority figures,” and told of him outrunning a motorcycle cop who actually thought he could chase Elmer down for a speeding ticket. Greg wasn’t so tactless as to mention that Elmer’s loathing of authority figures embraced some famous directors. There were too many of them in the front row.

Lyricist Don Black remembered working with Elmer on the score for the original True Grit, including the Oscar-nominated title song; and the Broadway musical Merlin. Don observed that Elmer “had enough energy to light a small town,” and concluded, “I shall miss his wit, his boyish bounce, even his turtleneck sweaters.”

Director Martin Scorsese talked about how Elmer had “bridged the gap between the old and the new Hollywoods.” And lyricist Marilyn Bergman mused that “when I heard Elmer had died, I thought, ‘That doesn’t sound like him.’”

Before the evening ended, Elmer had been described as the greatest composer in the history of motion pictures, a man of brilliance, versatility, and crowning talent. Elmer was always a man of grace and modesty who felt that most things, including music, profited by understatement. I recalled one occasion when he was presented with an award in such extravagant terms that he visibly blanched. When Elmer finally ascended to the podium, he said, “I want to thank you for that wonderful introduction. I only wish my parents were alive to hear it. My father would have enjoyed it and my mother would have believed it.”

The ninety-five minute tribute concluded with a montage of film clips from twenty-five of Elmer’s movies. Then we said goodbye to the man who had changed the face of movie music.

***

I was not invited to speak at the memorial service. I wasn’t hurt and I didn’t feel excluded. I was just a former wife. You start letting the former wives talk, and the next thing you know everybody will want to say something. You have to draw the line somewhere. And it’s given me a little time to gather my thoughts. So here is what I would have said:

The words that the name Elmer Bernstein bring to mind are words that equally describe his music—flair, gaiety, gusto, brilliance, warmth, joy. Whatever Elmer did in his life and in his work, he did with all his mind and spirit. He had the kind of talent that, if you made movies, you wanted to make him a part of them. He was the sort of mentor everyone needed to guide them; the sort of teacher you wanted to learn from; the sort of advocate you wanted in your corner. A lot of the people who Elmer loved and guided and mentored and fought for are here today. I have a suspicion that they came not so much to mourn his passing. It was more likely to mourn their loss.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

WHY IS THIS WOMAN LAUGHING?

“Eighty percent of married men cheat in America, and the rest cheat in Europe.”

—Jackie Mason

So let’s sum it up.

I am glad that I met and married Elmer Bernstein, and I will tell you why. It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all. Marrying Elmer let me walk on a lot of red carpets, to see my husband honored in many cultural capitals, it let me enjoy the performance of his work by large orchestras, and gave me the pleasure of seeing his music bring to life some very good motion pictures. It let me meet a lot of smart, funny, famous people, for though it embarrasses me to admit it, some of the best times I have had in my life have been spent in the lap of the gods.

The problems of our marriage were foreseeable. When my father met Elmer he gave me fair warning. “You want to marry a musician?” The wandering ways of music makers are well known in our society. They are not all Lawrence Welks.

After Elmer and I broke up, life did not end. It never does, much as we fear it will. My suggestion to women who find themselves as I did, in a troubled marriage, is: Relax, don’t let yourself become a victim, don’t be obsessed with the situation. My advice to my clients when I practiced family law was to learn self-esteem, take control of the situation, be the hammer, not the anvil.

Men must be trained and endured. And when the situation is beyond endurance, get out! Go!

So I went on to another marriage with a man I loved and respected; and when he died, to my present husband. I passed the bar and practiced law, honorably, I hope. And I watched my sons mature and meet wonderful women and raise wonderful children.

Some unimpeachable source such as Confucius or Mohammad said that every man should have two pockets in his coat. In one pocket he should keep a scrap of paper that bears the message: “I am nothing, a grain of sand on God’s desert.” But there should be a second pocket in his garment. And in that one should be a piece of paper that bears a very different message. It should read: “The whole earth was created for me. For I am the center of the universe.”

So whenever I get bad news, I always think: “Disregard previous message. All will be well.”

One more bit of advice for my kids and their kids. Try to put more into life than you take out of it—try to seek work that engages your passion—and keep your friends close but your enemies closer. (No, that was Don Corleone.)

But the most precious piece of advice I could give them, they will decide for themselves, as each generation insists on doing. “There are no perfect mates, and there are no perfect marriages. If you are looking for a perfect man, chances are that when you find him, he will be looking for a perfect woman. If you are perfect, relax.”

So, I would like to thank Elmer for making me the temporary partner to his fame and talent, the Galatea to his Pygmalion, and the woman he loved.

AUTHOR’S NOTE AND

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In writing this memoir of my life with Elmer, I was convinced that soon as I had it all nicely set down, all paragraphed and punctuated and neatly divided into chapters, I would be able to move on. But I can see that in this, as in much else, I was mistaken. All our years remain a permanent part of us, particularly the years when we are young.

Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter once observed that there are three stages in life—you’re young, you’re middle-aged, and then you’re wonderful. So now that I’m wonderful, I feel empowered to study my marriage with wisdom and insight.

My memory has been augmented by the memories of some surviving friends. They talked to me about those golden days and helped me remember.

The talker-in-chief was my darling Gerry. He continued to prod me with questions about my life with Elmer, not all of them rude. Together we excavated events of which I seemingly had no memory.

Gerry also polished my halting prose. I wrote the words and Gerry wrote the music. He has been the most patient in-house editor a woman could have, as well as my perfect partner in life.

***

In many ways, this is not so much a memoir as an exorcism. In it I have tiptoed through the mine field of memory. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. And if I have returned from the battlefield of recollection without a lot of wisdom, at least it has brought the roses to my cheeks.

Of course, my life surged every time the theater darkened, the screen lit up, the main-title music swelled, and the words MUSIC BY ELMER BERNSTEIN faded up in its constant variety of fonts.

***

On the other hand, to any woman in her eighties who thinks she has a book in her, I would advise that that’s an excellent place for it.

Think about it. Most of your best sources are no longer around; dialogue is impossible; names are fading fast. How often have I said, “You know that guy in the hat… and the shoes…” and it’s thirty minutes before anyone realized I’m talking about the Pope.

Which is prefatory to one final author’s note. Before you send me an email pointing out that the Dodgers didn’t move to Los Angeles until two years after the release of The Man with the Golden Arm, take pity on a senior citizen.

My dear old friend Bob Shiller, who created I Love Lucy and has the royalties to prove it, could’ve been speaking of my memory as well as his, when he said, “My short-term memory is poor, but my long-term memory is good. But I may have that backwards… I’m not sure if I told you that.”

***

Now back to my acknowledgments. Here are a few others who deserve my gratitude.

As the reader may have observed, I am a sort of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people are out there plotting to make me happy. Chief among these conspirators are my sons Greg and Peter, who I thank for their support.

I also thank Hillel Black, that grey eminence of publishing who emailed me promptly after reading my manuscript to say, “I loved you, I loved Elmer, and I loved the book. Funniest thing I’ve read since the original manuscript of M*A*S*H.”

Eric Weissmann, my attorney and friend, is surely entitled to much gratitude for his help and encouragement throughout the entire process.

Dalia Mansouri of Beverly Hills Secretarial Services, who continued to type and retype the manuscript of The Magnificent Elmer, provided the truth of the reflection that books are never finished, they are abandoned.

Then there is Anna Olswanger, my marvelous literary agent. I want to thank Anna for her marketing skill, her good judgment, her editorial guidance. We love you, Anna!

Then there is Arthur Klebanoff of Rosetta Books, who embraced the book so immediately and unconditionally. One of Arthur’s oldest friends and bosses was Pat Moynihan, sage of the Senate. When John Kennedy was killed, columnist Mary McGrory said, “God, Pat, we’ll never laugh again!” And Pat Moynihan said, “Heavens, Mary, of course we’ll laugh again. We’ll just never be young again.” Thank you, Arthur, for making me young again.

***

The bulk of my gratitude is, of course, for Elmer who should have been this book’s author, not merely its subject. For years he talked about writing a memoir. He took notes and he planned. But there was always another movie to write. And then it became a running joke. And I tried to motivate him by threatening to write it myself. And I began my investigation. I would say, “Elmer, which was your favorite score?… Who was your favorite director?…” And he would laugh. And later that night I would say, “Okay, be mulish. But tell me what Sinatra said.” And Elmer would say, “Finish your wine and come to bed.” And I would say, “Please, Elmer, I have to get it right for the memoir!” And he would say, “Pearl, if you ever happen to write a memoir it will turn out to be the history of a girl from Philadelphia with an occasional reference to her composer husband.”

Well, now I have written the goddamned memoir, and I wish I knew where to send it so he could see how he misjudged me. He would see it’s all about the composer. For three big reasons: (1) he was my most beloved friend, (2) he was one hell of a composer, and (3) who would publish the memoir of an unknown girl from Philadelphia?

APPENDIX

THE ELMER OEUVRE

From the 1950s

Saturday’s Hero, 1951

Boots Malone, 1952

Sudden Fear, 1952

Battles of Chief Pontiac, 1953

Cat Women of the Moon, 1953

Dieppe Raid, 1953

Never Wave at a WAC, 1953

Robot Monster, 1953

Make Haste to Live, 1954

Miss Robin Crusoe, 1954

Silent Raiders, 1954

The Bar Sinister, 1955

The Eternal Sea, 1955

The Man with the Golden Arm, 1955

Storm Fear, 1955

The View from Pompey’s Head, 1955

The Ten Commandments, 1956

Drango, 1957

Fear Strikes Out, 1957

Men in War, 1957

The Sweet Smell of Success, 1957

The Tin Star, 1957

Anna Lucasta, 1958

The Buccaneer, 1958

Desire Under the Elms, 1958

God’s Little Acre, 1958

Kings Go Forth, 1958

Saddle the Wind, 1958

Some Came Running, 1958

The Miracle, 1959

From the 1960s

From the Terrace, 1960

The Magnificent Seven, 1960

The Rat Race, 1960

The Story on Page One, 1960

By Love Possessed, 1961

The Comancheros, 1961

Summer and Smoke, 1961

The Young Doctors, 1961

Birdman of Alcatraz, 1962

A Girl Named Tamiko, 1962

To Kill a Mockingbird, 1962

Walk on the Wild Side, 1962

The Caretakers, 1963

The Great Escape, 1963

Hud, 1963

Kings of the Sun, 1963

Rampage, 1963

Baby the Rain Must Fall, 1964

The Carpetbaggers, 1964

Love with the Proper Stranger, 1964

The World of Henry Orient, 1964

The Hallelujah Trail, 1965

The Reward, 1965

Seven Women, 1965

The Sons of Katie Elder, 1965

Cast a Giant Shadow, 1966

Hawaii, 1966

Return of the Seven, 1966

Thoroughly Modern Millie, 1967

The Bridge at Remagen, 1968

I Love You, Alice B. Toklas!, 1968

The Scalphunters, 1968

Guns of the Magnificent Seven, 1969

The Gypsy Moths, 1969

The Midas Run, 1969

Where’s Jack?, 1969

From the 1970s

Cannon for Cordoba, 1970

The Liberation of L. B. Jones, 1970

A Walk in the Spring Rain, 1970

Big Jake, 1971

Doctors’ Wives, 1971

See No Evil, 1971

The Amazing Mr. Blunden, 1972

The Magnificent Seven Ride!, 1972

Cahill: United States Marshal, 1973

Deadly Honeymoon, 1974

Gold, 1974

McQ, 1974

The Trial of Billy Jack, 1974

Mr. Quilp, 1975

A Report to the Commissioner, 1975

From Noon Till Three, 1976

The Incredible Sarah, 1976

The Shootist, 1976

Slap Shot, 1977

Animal House, 1978

Billy Jack Goes to Washington, 1978

Blood Brothers, 1979

Meatballs, 1979

Zulu Dawn, 1979

From the 1980s

Trust Me, 1980

Airplane!, 1980

The Blues Brothers, 1980

The Great Santini, 1980

Saturn 3, 1980

An American Werewolf in London, 1981

The Chosen, 1981

Going Ape!, 1981

Heavy Metal, 1981

Honky Tonk Freeway, 1981

Stripes, 1981

Five Days One Summer, 1982

Genocide, 1982

Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, 1983

Trading Places, 1983

Ghostbusters, 1984

Marie Ward - Zwischen Galgen und Glorie, 1984

Prince Jack, 1984

The Black Cauldron, 1985

Spies Like Us, 1985

Legal Eagles, 1986

Three Amigos!, 1986

Amazing Grace and Chuck, 1987

Leonard Part 6, 1987

Da!, 1988

Funny Farm, 1988

The Good Mother, 1988

A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon, 1988

My Left Foot, 1989

Slipstream, 1989

From the 1990s

The Field, 1990

The Grifters, 1990

Cape Fear, 1991

Oscar, 1991

A Rage in Harlem, 1991

Rambling Rose, 1991

The Babe, 1992

Mad Dog and Glory, 1992

The Age of Innocence, 1993

The Cemetery Club, 1993

The Good Son, 1993

Lost in Yonkers, 1993

Devil in a Blue Dress, 1995

Frankie Starlight, 1995

Roommates, 1995

Search and Destroy, 1995

Bulletproof, 1996

Buddy, 1997

Hoodlum, 1997

The Rainmaker, 1997

Twilight, 1998

Bringing Out the Dead, 1999

The Deep End of the Ocean, 1999

Wild Wild West, 1999

From the 2000s

Far From Heaven, 2002

Photos of Elmer and the Family

Elmer at work on the score for the film Saturday’s Hero, 1950

Pearl and Elmer contemplate their new addition to the baby boom generation in their Hollywood Hills home, 1951

Pearl, Elmer and their son Peter enjoy the as yet unblemished beach at Santa Monica, 1952

Pearl and Peter exchange their views on the meaning of life and other complexities in Malibu, 1952

Elmer calls balls and strikes for his sons at a Sherman Oaks baseball diamond, 1961

Gregory (in the driver’s seat) discovers the perks of a celebrity father, namely a visit to the Paramount lot (where Elmer had scored The Ten Commandments) and a ride in the Batmobile, 1963

Pearl and Elmer with Carl Rowan, JFK’s new ambassador to Finland, at an LA dinner, 1963

ELMER’S TUNES

To read a book about the world and the work of Elmer Bernstein without hearing the music—well, it’s like looking at a sunset in black-and-white, or like reading about van Gogh without seeing his brushstrokes. To see the colors and the brushstrokes of Elmer’s music, and even enjoy a taste of the films, just click on one of the links listed below.

Elmer Bernstein: A Musical Tribute

To Kill a Mockingbird—Stephen Bennett on harp guitar

The Magnificent Seven Suite—Elmer Bernstein

Cat Women of the Moon (1953)

The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)

Elmer Bernstein on “Walk on the Wild Side”

Slipstream (1989)

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Chapter One: The Door Opens

Chapter Two: Rise and Fall

Chapter Three: The De Millennium

Chapter Four: Eine Kleine Moses Musik

Chapter Five: The Big O

Chapter Six: Atticus

Chapter Seven: The Magnificent Elmer

Chapter Eight: “That David Copperfield Kind of Crap”

Chapter Nine: Things Change

Chapter Ten: Hollywood Be Thy Name

Chapter Eleven: To Russia with Love

Chapter Twelve: Next Year in Jerusalem

Chapter Thirteen: Odets, Where Is Thy Sting?

Chapter Fourteen: Sweet Smell of Hollywood

Chapter Fifteen: Art Isn’t Easy

Chapter Sixteen: Thoroughly Modern Elmer

Chapter Seventeen: Fine and Danny

Chapter Eighteen: Ole Blue Eyes

Chapter Nineteen: Comedy Tonight

Chapter Twenty: The Maestros

Chapter Twenty-One: Bernstein’s Complaint

Chapter Twenty-Two: “Her or Me”

Chapter Twenty-Three: Score One for Me

Chapter Twenty-Four: I’m Still Here

Chapter Twenty-Five: Tribute

Chapter Twenty-Six: Why Is This Woman Laughing?

Author’s Note and Acknowledgments

Appendix: The Elmer Oeuvre

Photos of Elmer and the Family

Elmer’s Tunes

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Chapter One: The Door Opens

Chapter Two: Rise and Fall

Chapter Three: The De Millennium

Chapter Four: Eine Kleine Moses Musik

Chapter Five: The Big O

Chapter Six: Atticus

Chapter Seven: The Magnificent Elmer

Chapter Eight: “That David Copperfield Kind of Crap”

Chapter Nine: Things Change

Chapter Ten: Hollywood Be Thy Name

Chapter Eleven: To Russia with Love

Chapter Twelve: Next Year in Jerusalem

Chapter Thirteen: Odets, Where Is Thy Sting?

Chapter Fourteen: Sweet Smell of Hollywood

Chapter Fifteen: Art Isn’t Easy

Chapter Sixteen: Thoroughly Modern Elmer

Chapter Seventeen: Fine and Danny

Chapter Eighteen: Ole Blue Eyes

Chapter Nineteen: Comedy Tonight

Chapter Twenty: The Maestros

Chapter Twenty-One: Bernstein’s Complaint

Chapter Twenty-Two: “Her or Me”

Chapter Twenty-Three: Score One for Me

Chapter Twenty-Four: I’m Still Here

Chapter Twenty-Five: Tribute

Chapter Twenty-Six: Why Is This Woman Laughing?

Author’s Note and Acknowledgments

Appendix: The Elmer Oeuvre

Photos of Elmer and the Family

Elmer’s Tunes