PAT YORK: In 1966 I was invited to photograph the actors Marlon Brando and Robert Forster in the film version of Carson McCullers’s novel Reflections in a Golden Eye. It was a night shoot starting at dusk and continuing until daybreak, with the location at the Mitchel Military Base on Long Island. . . .
As usual on a film set, there was time spent waiting for scenes to be set up. During one of those breaks a handsome mature man approached me and started a conversation. He kept telling me he loved my voice and also asked many questions about my views on certain topics, my likes and dislikes. There was no opportunity to ask him about himself, as he was questioning me without a break and kept telling me how much he liked my voice. I thanked him but could not understand his obsession with my vocal cords.
Finally he mentioned that he could not believe I had no trace of an accent and inquired what part of Italy I was from. I told him I was an American who had been born in Jamaica and attended a French school in England and had also been tutored in Germany, with the rest of my education in the States.
He looked stunned. He told me that he had been asking various people who I was and had been told by at least three that I was Italian. We both laughed, and I introduced myself and he then gave me his name: J. D. Salinger. . . .
I knew that Salinger had become a recluse, and I couldn’t equate this fact with the man I was speaking with so freely. I told him how much I loved “The Catcher in the Rye” and that my young son, Rick, had just read the book and could talk about nothing else. Its author said he would like to be in touch with Rick and asked for his name and address. . . .
J. D. Salinger did have a correspondence with my son. A few years later, Rick was studying in Paris. We met for dinner one evening and he was desolate. His apartment had been ransacked and, among other items, the suitcase where he kept all Salinger’s letters had been taken. He didn’t care about losing many other possessions, but he couldn’t accept that his idol’s correspondence had been stolen.