I met Roger over thirty years ago in London. I’d known about him for a couple of years before that, not just as Nicholas Nickleby, but as the love interest of my best friend, Rick Elice.
I watched in those early days as Rick flew to London every weekend, and I’m not exaggerating, so they could be together while Roger was performing in the West End in Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing. Rick and Roger were, in fact, the real thing. Rick was so devoted to Roger and made so many trips across the pond that British Airways actually sent him Christmas presents. And I’m not talking about pins and totes and blankets. I’m talking cashmere sweaters from Burberry, beautifully wrapped and hand-delivered.
So I was curious to meet the man who inspired all that mileage. And when I did, I understood immediately. Roger and I quickly discovered how much we had in common. We both loved theater. We both loved Rick. And we both loved wine.
In fact, we loved wine so much that Rick became sort of our personal sobriety coach. And Roger became part of my support group. He never failed to tell me one of his stories that always ended, “And there but for the grace of God and Rick go I.” Like the New Year’s Eve party they attended, when a particularly lubricated guest decided to leave but couldn’t find his coat. Hardly able to stand, he demanded that the host—some actor fellow named Laurence Olivier—locate his missing Burberry immediately. Roger’s hilarious reenactment of the drunk foreshadowed his brilliant Lord Marbury on The West Wing. But mostly, he said, he was always so grateful he would never have to be that person again.
Roger had three defining qualities: gratitude, responsibility, and a unique talent for loving. It was gratitude that distinguished Roger from the crowd. When given the choice to see what he lacked or rejoice in what he had, Roger never made the wrong choice. He was most grateful, of course, that he had found Rick, and Rick’s family, to love.
Yes, when Roger loved you, he loved your family, too. The whole mishpachah—as he would say, after he converted to Judaism. One winter night years ago, when my parents were visiting from Washington, we all had dinner. They had tickets for The Phantom of the Opera, and Rick and Roger volunteered to walk them to the theater. Later, back at their hotel, they were all atwitter—and this was long before Twitter—and my mother explained that Phantom had not really been my father’s cup of tea, but that Rick and Roger had been waiting in the snow outside the Majestic Theatre to walk them home. “That was our favorite part of the night,” my mother said. Lily Tomlin said it even better: “The show was soup. The walk home with Roger was art.”
It was also responsibility that set Roger apart. Responsibility that began with the audience. Roger, who never said an unkind word about anyone, made an exception for movie stars who skipped performances to do promotion for an upcoming film. He felt that the little old lady in the balcony was somebody’s mother who had paid her hard-earned money to see that show, and all the actors, even the stars, owed it to her to show up.
You see, everyone Roger loved was some version of the mother he loved so well. In South London, on Wandsworth Common, was the tiny row house where Roger’s mother, Lucy, lived.
When the house next door was for sale, of course Roger bought it so he could be close by. And so nobody would ever have to go outside to visit the other, he knocked down a wall between the two homes.
You think he put in a door? He did not. He built a secret bookcase that swung open to reveal a whole house on the other side. If Lucy needed Rog, she needed only to lean on the collected works of William Shakespeare, and Roger would be right there behind them.
Roger’s talent for loving never dimmed, even on his dying day. On my last visit to see him, he whispered to me one question: “Will Rick be okay?” And I assured him, as I suspect many of us did, that Rick would be okay and that we’d all see to it.
I have only one regret: Roger and I promised each other that, on his eightieth birthday, we would toast our mutual sobriety with very expensive champagne. But I’m consoled by the belief—a belief so strong that it almost passes for knowledge—that at 8 p.m. on July 10, 2015, the moment Roger left us, the role of Saint Peter was being played by that same Laurence Olivier who greeted Roger with a hug and two silver flutes. One, being played by an angel. The other, filled with God’s own house champagne. I can hear Roger toasting us all.
“Cheers.” One word that, whenever we hear it, we’ll know that sweet, gentle Roger is near.