City
of Angels, I thought, amused. I got my fire-engine-red Geo out of the garage—a
test of courage and skill every time, though I tried to make sure that no one
could tell by looking—and drove to Twenty-sixth Street again. Brecht’s
cube-shaped house, where he had had long discussions with Adorno and Eisler and
Laughton and reflected on the insoluble ethical problems of the Galileo play,
was now occupied by a man I sometimes saw on his front lawn and who definitely
did not know who had lived there before him. How many times would Brecht have
left this house to drive downtown? Or to visit the Feuchtwangers at Villa
Aurora, high above the Pacific cliffs at Paseo Miramar, which my Geo brought me
to as well? Where once, years before, on an unforgettable afternoon, Marta
Feuchtwanger had shown you and G. her husband’s library and where there were
now contractors in clouds of stone dust busy in the emptied rooms. Where Brecht
could discuss political and literary problems, and agree about them, with the
“little master” who, with iron discipline, dedicated all his days to his work.
While Brecht avoided the other master, Thomas Mann, as much as possible. Had it
ever happened in modern Europe that a country’s intellectual elite, almost
without exception, had had to flee? Weimar Under the Palms. Where did I hear
that term? Oh, an old actor said to me on the green lawn behind the Schoenberg
house on North Rockingham Avenue, where we were standing together, each holding
a margarita glass, I’m Norman, and he introduced me to his wife, Peggy, who
looked straight out of a Chekhov play: white hair pinned up in a hairdo from
the turn of the century; long, old-fashioned strings of pearls around her neck;
heavily made up with deep purple lipstick; her blouse and dress also typical of
that era. Norman, with blue, amphibian eyes and white hair with a precise part,
and a rather small face, still unlined, was dressed in a correct suit and tie,
even in the heat of this winter day. He didn’t look like an actor, but that
changed the moment he started to talk. His voice still carried and he delivered
his stories accompanied by well-chosen gestures. He had something he needed to
tell me: He had worked with Brecht. He was one of the managers of the theater
in Beverly Hills where the second version of Galileo was premiered. He knew
stories about the rehearsals with Laughton, not entirely suitable for polite
company, that he enthusiastically told me anyway: How Laughton, as Galileo at
the dress rehearsal, his hands in the deep pockets of his roomy robe, “was
playing with his genitals.” How Brecht then instructed him, Norman, over the
phone to make Laughton stop, which he, Norman, refused to do, even when Helene
Weigel joined Brecht in making the request. The next day, though, before the
performance, a furious Laughton was seen chasing the costume director, who
insisted that it wasn’t his fault: The pockets had been removed from Galileo’s
robe. And, Norman asked, do you know who was responsible for the costumes?
Helene Weigel!
*
Hanns
Eisler, for example, Norman’s neighbor on the Malibu coast, once had a
circulatory collapse and Lou Eisler, worried, called them to come over. Eisler
was lying on the ground, Norman said, and I asked him, Hey, what’s wrong? How
do you feel? Eisler told me: I feel like a thousand frogs are having sex on my
tongue! That man’s life is not in danger, we thought.
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