WE DON’T NORMALLY associate the late, great French leader Charles de Gaulle with merriment, but he was once heard to say that “One must take one’s fun where one finds it.” I have lost track of the biography in which that remark appears, but I certainly can agree with the general, while possibly adding the caveat that movie premieres and awards ceremonies, whether glossy or drab, are events where one is very unlikely to have anything that could accurately be called fun.
Previous to the chariot race of Brokeback I had only attended two premieres: a very modest one for Hud held in Fort Worth in 1963, and a more elaborate one in Hollywood for The Evening Star, which Diana and I and some friends more or less crashed. We may have been sent tickets to this bespangled event, but that doesn’t mean we were made to feel welcome when we arrived. I have been told that differences abounded during the making of this strange film, one result of which was that Polly Platt was sent into exile, after which a general feeling of malaise held the production in its grip. The director was Robert Harling, the star was Shirley MacLaine, who about that time was the victim of a classic put-down, delivered by the late Walter Matthau. The put-down occurred at Irving Lazar’s eightieth birthday party, held in Le Dome, a French restaurant on Sunset where Irving liked to hold court.
Diana, Sara, myself, Angie Dickinson, Walter Isaacson (then the editor of Time), were ticking off all the places we had flown in from. Angie Dickinson said Aspen, and we said Tucson when Shirley MacLaine came over and sat next to Walter Matthau, who looked at her skeptically and said, “Where did you fly in from, Uranus?” Shirley MacLaine did not respond.
I don’t know her, but, a year later, while presenting an award, I was sitting alone in an old theater when a scaly hand suddenly grasped mine. It was Shirley, who was receiving an award for The Evening Star. “What do I say,” she asked, “if they ask me why I wanted to play Aurora?”
Fortunately I had an answer ready.
“Well, it might be,” I suggested, “because she always parks a yard from the curb so as not to scrape her tires.”
That was good enough for Shirley, who used it in her speech.