Tell All

ACT II, SCENE ELEVEN

Professional gossip ElsaMaxwell once said, “All biographies are an assemblage ofuntruths.” A beat later, adding, “So are all autobiographies.”

The critics were willing to forgive Lillian Hellman a few factual inaccuraciesconcerning the Second World War. As presentedhere, this was history—but better. It might not be the actual war, butthis was the war we wished we’d fought. For that, it was brilliant,dense and meaty, with Maria Montez slittingthe throat of Lou Costello. After that, Bob Hope tap-dancing his signature shim- sham stepthrough a field of live land mines.

Compared to the opening night of Unconditional Surrender, no doughboy crouched inthe trenches nor GI in a tank turret ever shook with as much fear as myMiss Kathie felt stepping out on that stage. She made a ready targetfrom every seat in the house. Dancing and singing, she was a sittingduck. Each note or kick step could easily be her last, and who wouldnotice amidst the barrage of fake bullets and mortar shells that rockedthe theater that night? Any wily assassin could squeeze off a fatal shotand make his escape while the theatergoers applauded Miss Kathie’sbursting skull or chest, thinking the death blow was merely a veryeffective special effect. Mistaking her spectacular public murder forsimply a plot point in Lilly Hellman’s epic saga.

So Miss Kathie danced. She occupied everyinch of the set as if her life depended on it, constantly dodging andevading any single location on the stage, climbing to the forecastle of abattleship, then diving into the warm waves of the PacificOcean, the lyric of an Arthur Freedsong bubbling up through the water, and Miss Kathie breaking the azuresurface a moment later, still holding the same HaroldArlen note.

It was terror that invested her performancewith such energy, such verve, spurring the best Miss Kathie had givenher audience in decades. Creating an evening which people would recallfor the remainder of their lives. Imbuing Miss Kathie with a kineticvitality which had been too long absent. Peppered throughout theaudience we see Senator Phelps Russell Warnerseated beside his latest wife. We see Paco Espositoin the company of industry sexpot Anita Page.Myself, I sit with Terrence Terry. In fact,the only empty seat in the house is beside the haggard Webster Carlton Westward III, where he’s lovinglyplaced the massive armload of red roses he, no doubt, intends to presentduring the curtain calls. A bouquet large enough to conceal a tommy gunor rifle. The barrel perhaps equipped with a silencer, although such aprecaution would be wholly unnecessary as deafening Japanese Zerosdive-bomb the American forces at Pearl Harbor.

Tonight’s performance amounted to nothingless than a battle for her identity. This, the constant creation ofherself. This strutting and bellowing, a struggle to keep herself in theworld, to not be replaced by another’s version, the way food isdigested, the way a tree’s dead carcass becomes fuel or furniture. Inher high stepping, Miss Kathie endlessly blared proof of her humanexistence. In her blurred Bombershay stepshere was a fragile organism doing its most to effect the environmentsurrounding it and postponing decomposition as long as possible.

Framed in that spotlight, we watched aninfant shrieking for a breast to suckle. There was a zebra or rabbitscreaming as wolves tore it to pieces.

This wasn’t any mere song and dance; here wasa bold, blaring declaration howling itself into the empty face ofdeath.

Before us strutted something more than MissKathie’s past characters: Mrs. Gunga Din or Mrs. Hunchback of Notre Dame or Mrs.Last of the Mohicans.

No one except myself and TerrenceTerry would take note of the sweat drenching my Miss Kathie. Ornotice the twitching, nervous way her eyes rattled in their attempt towatch every seat in the orchestra and balcony. For once, the criticsweren’t her worst fear, not Frank S. Nugent ofthe New York Times nor HowardBarnes of the New York Herald Tribunenor Robert Garland of the New York American.

Jack Grant of Screen Book, Gladys Halland Katherine Albert of ModernScreen magazine, Harrison Carroll ofthe Los Angeles Herald Express, a legion ofcritics take rapturous notes, racking their brains for additionalsuperlatives. Also, columnists Sheilah Grahamand Earl Wilson, a group that any other show,any other night would constitute what DorothyKilgallen calls “a jury of her sneers,” thisnight those sourpusses would clamor with praise.

In my seat, I jot my own notes, making arecord of this triumph. Tonight, not only Miss Kathie’s triumph andLilly Hellman’s, but my own personal victory; the sensation feels as ifI’ve seen my own crippled child begin to walk.

At my elbow, Terry whispers that producer Dick Castle telephoned, already angling for thefilm rights. Looking pointedly at my feet tapping along to the music, hesmiles and whispers, “Who died and made you EleanorPowell?” His own tense hands carry a constant stream of colorful Jordan almonds from a small paper sack to hismouth.

Onstage, my Miss Kathie belts out anothersurefire gold-record hit, wrapping herself in the smoldering, snappingflag of the USSArizona. Throwingherself from stage left to stage right she displays the panicked, manicstruggle of an animal caught in a trap. Or a butterfly snared in aspider’s web. Spangles flashing, vivid eye shadow, her hair colored andsculpted beyond the lurid dreams of any peacock, the smile she displaysis nothing more than a jaws-open, teeth-snarling rictus spasming inoutrage against the dying light. Bug-eyed in her forced enthusiasm, MissKathie thrashes through each production number, a frenzied, vicious,frenetic denial of impending death.

Her every gesture wards away an unseenattacker, keeping the invisible at bay. Her every freeze, drop, drag andslide constitutes a fight, sidestep, evasion of her imminent doom.Pounding the boards, my Miss Kathie spins as a flapping, squawking,frantic dervish begging for another hour of life. So upbeat, so animatedand alive in this moment because death looms so close.

Backstage, desperate for an encore he knowsthe audience will demand, Dore Schary alreadyplans to A-bomb Nagasaki. For a second andthird encore, he’s chosen Tokyo and Yokohama.

According to WalterWinchell, the entire Second World Warwas just an encore to the first. Onstage, Miss Kathie executes a violent,furious Buffalo step, transitioning to a Suzy Q even as Manchuriafalls. Hong Kong and Malaysiatopple. Mickey Rooney as HoChi Minh leads the Viet Minh intobattle. The Doolittle Raid rains fire on Nora Bayes.

And in the seat next to me, Terrence Terry clutches at his throat with bothhands and slides, lifeless, to the floor.