Наташа Купер: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, No. 1. Whole No. 767, July 2005

The sexual attraction between them was immediate and combustible. They bedded quite famously during the course of filming, which set off a colossal furor in 1950s America, since each of them happened to be married at the time — she to a Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback, he to a well-known British actress. When the ink dried on their respective divorce papers, they were married. Their wedding picture made the cover of Life magazine. They stayed together for eight stormy years of highly publicized spats, separations, and infidelities. His with, among others, Marilyn Monroe and Natalie Wood. Hers with, among others, Clark Gable and the director Elia Kazan. They divorced in 1962, remarried in ’64, divorced again in ’70 — only to end up back together yet again, breaking up each other’s marriages once more in the process.

Quite simply, Darrow and Beck were Coward’s Amanda and Elyot, those warring exes who have just gotten married to other people only to find themselves honeymooning, horrors upon horrors, in the very same French resort hotel.

The show’s publicist, Dick Jefferies, assured me that a sit-down interview with the happy couple would be no problem. Neither would a house seat for that evening’s show.

I got to the theater a half-hour early and sat there, giddy with anticipation, as the audience members slowly streamed in. For a small-town kid from the Midwest, it was a genuine thrill merely to be in one of the hallowed temples of American theater, seated before a stage where the likes of Brando and Barrymore had once performed. When the lights went down, and the curtain started to rise, I felt certain that I was the luckiest young person in town.

I was not disappointed. The production was sprightly and energetic. And Darrow and Beck were marvelous. She was a ditsy, buoyant, and beautiful Amanda, a role that Coward had created for Gertrude Lawrence. As Elyot, the role Coward himself had originally played, Anthony Beck was masterfully dry and deadpan. The laughter that spilled almost continuously out of the packed house was genuine and knowing. After all, Private Lives wasn’t merely about Amanda and Elyot — it was about these two great stars as well. And we were all in on the joke together.

My only critical reservation had to do with the supporting players. Due to the hefty salaries commanded by Darrow and Beck, the critical roles of Victor and Sybil, Amanda and Elyot’s new and soon-to-be suffering spouses, had gone to relative lightweights. After all, the indignant Victor had originally been played by some guy named Laurence Olivier. In the Darrow-Beck revival, Lord Larry’s shoes had been filled by John Jefferson, a square-jawed beach boy whose claim to fame was a short-lived ABC series in which he’d played a private eye with a sidekick who was a talking dog. As for Sybil, Elyot’s sweetly clueless young bride, they’d cast a tall, pretty blonde named Leigh Grayson whose Playbill credits topped out with some regional Neil Simon and two years on Guiding Light. She was talented enough, light on her feet and engaging. But she hadn’t the experience or the moxie to hold her own against stars of such magnitude.

Mind you, neither did I. I just didn’t know that yet.

Next morning I rode the subway uptown to the Carlyle Hotel in my corduroy sports jacket and raincoat. It was coming down in torrents that day, a cold, sooty November rain. The wind was blowing hard out of the northwest.

The happy couple was expecting me at eleven. I could have one hour with them, according to Dick Jefferies, who would not be there to chaperone me — Barbara Darrow had taken an intense personal dislike to him and declared him to be unwelcome in her physical presence for the rest of his natural life. Apparently, she was somewhat temperamental. So I’d be on my own, which was nothing unusual in those days. Stars weren’t nearly as inaccessible to journalists then. Nowadays, a reporter is never permitted to encounter a star minus his or her highly paid posse of publicists, image consultants, personal assistants, and bodyguards. All questions must be preapproved. Not so then. You just showed up, notepad in hand.

The Carlyle was, and is, on Madison Avenue in the very posh East 70s. Directly around the corner from the hotel there’s an adjoining sixteen-story apartment tower with a narrow, private lobby guarded by two doormen. One of them called upstairs for me on the house phone, then directed me to the elevator. I got in and rode up to the penthouse. It was a very nice elevator, lined with hardwood and appointed with gleaming brass work.

When it reached the penthouse, the door opened directly into the happy couple’s foyer, which was substantially larger than my entire apartment and had a copper fountain burbling away in it. French doors led out onto a terrace, which faced west and offered a fine view across the rooftops to Central Park in the rain. A doorway opened into a grand living room with cherry wainscoting, an antique pool table, and a fireplace, where a fire crackled invitingly. On the mantel sat the Oscar statuette that Barbara Darrow had won for the Kazan movie. Anthony Beck had been nominated twice for an Academy Award, but had never won.

Standing there in that penthouse foyer, my raincoat and porkpie hat quietly dripping onto the marble floor, I felt less like a journalist than I did an orphan who had come to beg for a hot meal.

Anthony Beck came out of the living room to greet me. Offstage, the great Shakespearean actor looked every bit of his sixty years. His stride was not so much jaunty as it was arthritic. His mane of uncombed hair was more silver than it was blond. He had not shaved yet. His chin stubble was white, his face puffy, his complexion rather blotchy. He definitely had alcohol on his breath at eleven in the morning. And his piercing pale blue eyes were exceedingly bloodshot. Beck was not very tall, only about five foot nine. But he had a huge head and chest, and an even huger presence. He was wearing a shawl-collared paisley silk robe and a pair of black velvet slippers that had little gold foxes embroidered on them. His bare legs were pale, hairless, and quite thin.

“The fellow from the afternoon tabloid, are you not?” He extended his hand to me.

“That’s right,” I said, gripping it firmly. It was a soft, manicured hand, unused to work. There were liver spots on it. “Timmy Ferris, Mr. Beck.”

He arched a regal eyebrow at me. “Timmy, you say. Timmy, is it?” He rolled my name around on his tongue several times, sampling it, savoring it. He seemed highly amused. “And how are you this morning, Timmy?”

“Fine, sir.”

“You don’t look fine. You look wet. Quite wet.”

“That I am.”

“Care for a drink?”

“It’s a bit early for me.”

“Coffee?”

“Nothing, thanks.”

He looked me up and down, his eyes lingering on the puddle at my feet. “Still, you shall have a towel.”

“Really not necessary.” I peeled off my raincoat and hung it on the coat stand by the elevator. “This is a wonderful apartment, Mr. Beck.”

He gazed around at it curiously, as if noticing it for the first time. “Belongs to some captain of industry. An agency handled the sublet. Come in, come in. Let’s see if we can’t find the mad little trollop. Ah, here she is...” he exclaimed, glancing past me.

Barbara Darrow had appeared behind me in the doorway to the bedroom corridor, silent as a cat. She was a dainty little thing, barely five feet tall, exquisitely delicate and fine-boned. She wore no makeup that morning. Her cheeks were flushed, and there was a sheen of perspiration on her forehead. Evidently she’d been having a workout. She wore a black leotard and tights. Her jet-black hair was tied back in a ponytail. Standing there that way, she looked less like the great screen star of my youth than she did one of those tiny girls who compete in gymnastics at the Olympics. Except Barbara Darrow was no girl. She was a beautiful forty-six-year-old woman. On close inspection, there was something a bit strained about her beauty. She weighed nothing, for one thing. Barely ninety pounds. Her lustrous dark eyes were almost too big for her narrow face, her nose and ears too tiny, mouth too wide, cheekbones too exposed. She looked high-strung. She looked starved.