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  Famous

  By

  Stan Charnofsky

  © Copyright 2017, Stan Charnofsky

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

  ISBN: 978-1-387-27393-5

  ISBN: 978-1-970-02489-0 eBook

  Prologue

  Applause reverberated in and around every velvety corner of the multi-tiered theater, the elegant audience, in their elegant fall garments, wild with appreciation, so that Harry, nagged by insecurity, was convinced they were a claque hired by his agent to impress, indeed to influence, the critics.

  “Everyone in this grubby business knows,” Nan, his effervescent agent, had told him, “that the first night’s reviews mean everything. You get the big boys calling it a smash hit, a triumph, even a success, and the investors clean up, the dramaturge is delirious, and you, my boy, are all at once, famous.”

  Winning the role was, for Harry, the ultimate reward for his ten years of a furious, sometimes tedious, always intense investment of time, energy, heart, in fact every facet of his life, so that his personal wants had become shriveled, his professional progress the only thing that mattered.

  And here it was. Not only had he earned the lead part, he had pulled it off ne plus ultra. Nothing in his amateur career, no element of school victories, no previous audience responses in the minor leagues, could have prepared him for this, for Broadway’s lavish approbation. It was, as a fellow actor once whispered to him, when they both experienced Sir Laurence Olivier in Hamlet, “…Performance perfect, setting ideal, the house aware and properly adoring: the ultimate orgasm.”

  BOOK ONE

  SOWING THE SEEDS

  ONE

  H arry Schiff was the fortunate recipient of what experts might label benevolent childrearing. It was not until later, until his adulthood, that he had the necessary perspective to realize there were holes in the parental garment. Not openly oppressive, nothing like that, no physical punishment, rarely a raised voice, but steady pressures that forced him into a posture of an implacable, uncompromising dichotomy of success or failure. There were no in-betweens, no nonsense. You made it big, or you were worthless. He absorbed that pervasive message silently, unexamined. It became part of his being, of every challenge that faced him.

  In middle school, the eighth grade, he was given the lead in Bye, Bye Birdie, a musical paean to Elvis, and though his teacher and fellow students praised his performance—and audiences showed appreciation—his mother said, quietly but with a familiar bite, “Over the top, my son, strong but nothing subtle about it.” His father, when they got home, told him, “It was a yeoman’s job, but we, in the family, know you can do better.”

  He did not comprehend the constant denigration, was not aware enough even to weep about the incessant message labeling his work as ordinary, and that he had yet to get things right.

  He went to a good university, known for its theater arts program, and won a couple of roles in serious dramas: Sigmund Freud in The Far Country (he had to be superannuated with makeup for that one), Willy Loman’s son, Biff, in Death of a Salesman. By then, he was far enough away from his parents, geographically, to avoid their spears of condemnation. But, nonetheless, they had already imbedded themselves in his psyche; he had become his own worst critic.

  It was at college that he had his first real romance, though in high school he wanted one desperately, thwarted by the internalized declaration that he “…didn’t have time for such nonsense.”

  Her name, magical in theatrical venues, was Juliet.

  TWO

  W hen he was a child, Harry had only a vague image of what he might want to be when he grew up. Different from other pre-teens, he never entertained ideas of firefighting, police work, exploring the universe, or discovering a new cure for cancer. It may well have been his parents’ influence already grouting the layers of his ambitions, so that, subconsciously, he was being primed to seek the limelight. All he knew, in some mysterious undertone of urgency, was that he had better do whatever he did with excellence. After all, his mother was an excellent Beverly Hills pediatrician, his father an excellent film industry attorney.

  Had he ever thought to contemplate what adulthood for him would be like, he might have roared in protest, risen up against the seemingly inevitable tide pushing him to be what someone else wanted. It never occurred to him, never absorbed a minute of his energies. His life was a steady glide toward a mystical, fuzzy destination, its vehicle theatrical, its end product the abstruse promise of exhilarating fame.

  As a young adult, in college, he saw how fellow students handled family pressures, actors, athletes, musicians, others in the world of entertainment, so much more aware than he about the process of escaping from the heavy hand of their progenitors. He slowly began to resent. In correspondence, he was prone to belligerence, first his mother, then his father scolding him for the “attitude” he’d developed at “that school.”

  One morning, at the start of his fifth semester, at which time he had reached the wise, and in the language of the day, cool, age of twenty, enrolled in a class with a most desirable instructor, a former actor, now grizzled, venerable and retired from the stage, he sat with anticipation among sixteen drama students, four of whom he had never met. One was Juliet Marsh.

  The professor had asked each student to prepare a monologue from a list of prestigious dramas, including King Lear and Julius Caesar, by Shakespeare, The Crucible by Miller, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof by Williams, and one that Harry had already acted in (though the instructor, being new, did not know), Death of a Salesman also by Miller. In a gesture of good sportsmanship, Harry eschewed playing Biff and chose instead, a soliloquy from Julius Caesar. Students had to sit in the audience for their classmates’ presentations and be ready to critique them.

  Third up was a petite young woman, ravishing even by Hollywood standards, and certainly a standout among the many female drama students, who, having been adored for their looks since childhood, gravitate into a field where appearance does indeed open doors. She was more than cute, with a dimpled chin and enormous blue eyes, which made her seem impish. As a teen, fellow students had dubbed her “Froggy,” a label that no longer applied, since her growing up process, as so often happens from teen to twenty, had sculpted her features into a rare and appealing, and yes, stunning, countenance.

  She had selected for her reading some lines from Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, the award-winning, harsh and acerbic, southern drama by Tennessee Williams. She took a moment to organize her emotions, somewhat like a pitcher in baseball, turning away, taking deep breaths, steeling himself for the first pitch. Her penetrating, sapphire eyes take on an eerie, transcendent look as she speaks the lines to Brick, her husband: “I’m not living with you. We share the same cage.” She goes on to ruminate, “You have that rare sort of charm that usually only happens in very old or helplessly sick people, the charm of the defeated—you look so cool....”

  Mr. Benjamin, the professor, broke into applause when she finished her four-minute monologue. His comments began with a question: “Young woman, tell us your name.” When she replied, “Juliet,” he leaped into a narrative on capturing the essence of a character’s spirit, closing with, “And this Juliet, this namesake of the most revered young lover in all of dramaturgy, just now allowed herself to disappear, and the persona of Maggie to emerge beau ideal. My dear, you have set a standard. Beware, fellow students, of your challenge.”

  Harry was, in that electric moment, hopelessly seduced.

  Ah, but what to do about it. His subliminal conditioning had prepared him not one whit for the culture’s time-honore
d, man-woman dance. He was worse than an amateur, more pathetic than naïve, lost on the barren plain of incompetence as a charmer—he had, indeed, as her role had illuminated, the charm of the defeated, even before he started.

  Then, an odd thing happened. His was the final reading, and when he finished with, “…But, when the noble Brutus struck, ingratitude, more strong than traitors’ arms, quite vanquished him, and down, even at the base of Pompey’s statue, which all the while ran blood, great Caesar fell. Oh what a fall was there, my countrymen, and you and I and all of us fell down, whilst bloody treason flourished over us!”—when he closed out his monologue, Juliet took the lead among several students who leaped up in appreciation, applause generous, admiration conspicuous.

  While already tuned in to audience adulation, this honoring of Harry’s work by his classmates caught him by surprise. Mr. Benjamin, in fact, took the floor, a wide smile spreading his gray-bearded cheeks to their limits, and said with undisguised pride, “It looks to me as if we have a rather skillful crew here. I believe I shall enjoy working with this class. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can substitute for talent, though I will tell you that talent can be cultivated. The seeds must be there, the gifts, if you will, after which, with proper guidance, they can be nurtured into the loveliest of gardens.”

  When class was over, the students gabbed animatedly in the cozy, verdant patio area beyond the bungalow door. Many had appeared, as had Harry, in earlier productions, but this year, under the tutelage of Garth Benjamin, they saw their stars on the rise, this year would be the break each and all needed for their careers to be launched.

  Juliet quietly approached Harry.

  “I loved your reading. Felt as if I were transported into the porticos of old Rome.”

  “Oh,” was all he managed to say.

  “If I were a member of the crowd, I would go mad for Mark Antony, would believe every word, follow him anywhere.”

  Shyly, but with an underlying touch of conceit, he said with mock authority, “Well, he died in 30 BC. Suicide.”

  She smiled, impressed, or at least showing respect for his historical acumen, and replied, “He was a great general, and spoke eloquently in defense of Caesar after the assassination. You caught all of it. Great job.”

  “You,” Harry said, “did the great job. I was stunned by how you got immersed in the language and the heart of Maggie.”

  Less shy than he, Juliet said, “I struggle with every part I play, tutor myself not only in the words, but the psychology of the character. If I can’t capture what I see as the deeper essence of my role, I beg out, give it up. I refuse to produce something mediocre.”

  He had heard that message many times, though in his world it had always come at him, an admonition, while here, with Juliet, it was a proclamation.

  Courageously he asked, “How did you absorb that attitude? I mean did you have someone beating it into you?”

  “Like parents or something?”

  “Yes. Parents or some zealous mentor.”

  “My parents didn’t care what I did with my life. They were divorced and were busy bad-mouthing each other to me, wounded specimens, infected by their own poisons. I grew up without solid guidance from either, but I did have a tyrant of a drama teacher in high school. He wouldn’t let any of us get away with anything.”

  Ah, Harry, thought, we both were afflicted with despots, our every move under a microscope of censure, each performance held up against a hypothetical image of perfection. That must be what it takes, he concluded, to reach success in this entertainment business, an uncompromising pedant cracking the barbed whip, settling for nothing less than the gold medal, the laurel wreath, top gun, ultimate mega-star.

  “I’m familiar,” he said timidly, “with tyrants demanding perfection. Unfortunately, mine were my parents.”

  “Do you hate them?”

  “Hate them? No, I don’t think so. But I do resent them.”

  Instantly, after his words left his lips, his internal critic rose up in distress, trying desperately to haul them back in; he could not remember ever openly demeaning his mother and father before. The subtlety of their disparagement would completely disarm him, confuse him, so that he was never sure it was censure; in some twisted way, he, as teenagers say, owned his shortcomings, faulted only himself. Since starting college, his awareness had burgeoned, he understood more clearly the pressures he had been subjected to, but never, not even with his roommate or one of his few close friends, had he revealed his family secrets to anyone. It was understandable, for as extroverted as he could be on stage, he was taciturn in his private affairs, a demeanor that tended to attract, as friends, others like him, hams in the theater and complete mysteries personally.

  “I mean,” he quickly added, “they were a bit too demanding, insisted on flawless performances.”

  “Well, of course you would resent them. Who wants to be told he’s never good enough.”

  “Oh, they didn’t exactly…”

  “Say, would you like to get some coffee over at the Exchange? We can relax and talk there.”

  He could hardly believe what he heard, this adorable and talented and interesting aesthete asking him to spend time with her! He had been about to say that his parents had come to see each of his plays here at college, criticism implicit in their guarded praise, but, as he perceived it, less acute than when he was an adolescent—that then they would depart at once, returning to their demanding schedules, leaving him with a sense of progress, measured as it was.

  “Yes,” he blurted out, and catching himself with a little laugh, tacked on, “My treat. Those same oppressive but affluent parents give me a generous expense account.”

  THREE

  H arry had read somewhere—in a novel, he thought—that lust for a woman could be considered as despicable as any overt act of solicitation. His family practiced no formal religion, so that his parents would never ascribe such a notion to some sort of mystical morality. They did, however, tacitly communicate to him that he had better mind his Ps and Qs, stay focused, and avoid hot-blooded entanglements that could inhibit his progress as a thespian. The way he absorbed their message was to look at sexual urges as distracters, bodily desires as devilish seductions that could deter him from his true path.

  But, with all that, he kept having them, urges, desires, intense yearnings, yes, lust for women he would see in his classes or, as with many men, on television or in the movies.

  Now, with Juliet, he was terrified that he would misinterpret the outing and, because of his frustrating years of calculated self-denial, confuse Juliet’s friendliness with some kind of romantic intent. He did not know the difference. Ought he to approach a woman with this ache in his heart, this burgeoning desire for a never-experienced sexual adventure, or court her respectfully, methodically (how does one even do that?), with a friendship-to-loving goal in mind?

  In his naiveté, he did not realize that, with all his agonizing, it was not entirely up to him; in the ambience of modern-day dating and courting, either gender can make the move, take the lead, push for intimacy.

  “I saw you in Death of a Salesman,” Juliet said. “Didn’t know you at the time, and hadn’t seen you in any classes. ‘Course, I’m only starting my second year.”

  “I’m in my third,” he replied, the topic a lot safer than the one he feared she would introduce. He was hardly ready for the “us” agenda to be laid out.

  “You were good. Willy Loman, of course, is the focal point of Miller’s brilliant play, but the son has an important role. You pulled it off beautifully.”

  He flashed on his parents’ sparse comments about his work, and said, “I appreciate that, coming from you. My father thought I was miscast in the part. Said I wasn’t experienced enough in life.”

  “Biff didn’t understand his father’s frustrations. Inexperience is the right image for him. You brought just the proper amount of youthful frustration to the role.”

  He realized he was staring shamelessly
at Juliet’s extraordinary eyes, and hoped she wasn’t irritated by it. She had a look about her of pristine delicacy, the dimple in her chin, eyes the size of an owl’s but the color of sky on a wind-swept day, her expressions marked by an eerie mixture of simplicity and profound complexity. He was dazzled by this woman, not by any one trait, but by the whole package—and he was sick at heart about his complete lack of sophistication. Was this feeling normal? Would he feel the same way about any woman who showed interest in him? Was Juliet too much for him? How terrible, he thought, for a twenty-year old to be burdened by such insecurities!

  “I’ve been lucky,” he said, detouring his passions for the moment, “with the parts the drama department have given me. I think the chair likes me—I mean, I don’t want to be cruel, but I think he’s gay and that he likes me.” He stopped, unsure whether he had trespassed onto some unmentionable territory, but realizing also that there could be implications about him in his declaration, so he blurted out: “I’m not gay! It’s just that I’ve heard rumors.”

  Juliet smiled at the subterranean message, the urgent intent on Harry’s part to assure her of his eligibility. It was not appropriate, she thought, to address that issue at this time, and instead replied, “I don’t see it as luck. Whether old man Withers is gay or straight, you’re a talented actor and deserved those parts.”

  She placed her hand on his, an unpremeditated act of support, which he, in his bewilderment did not know how to handle. He was about to…what? Grab her hand and smother it with kisses, yank his away in fear, change the subject to something safe?

  “There you are,” came a voice from over his shoulder, a laconic voice, weary, burdened, as if it had expected again, and discovered again, some familiar transgression on Juliet’s part, heavy emphasis on the word ‘there.’

  Juliet looked up, herself with a weary expression, perhaps irritated at her discovery, or worse, the tracking of her down that the voice implied, as if the hunt had been on, as if she had broken a rule, been naughty, played hooky.