Gene Wilder - Kiss Me Like a Stranger - My Search for Love and Art

MY SEARCH FOR LOVE AND ART

To Karen,

without whom I would be

floating like a cork in the ocean

COVER

TITLE PAGE

DEDICATION

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1. FIRST MOVEMENT

CHAPTER 2. CAN A FEW WORDS CHANGE YOUR LIFE?

CHAPTER 3. “TAKE ME”

CHAPTER 4. THE “DEMON” ARRIVES

CHAPTER 5. MY HEART IS NOT IN THE HIGHLANDS

CHAPTER 6. A YANK AT THE OLD VIC

CHAPTER 7. SHADES OF GRAY

CHAPTER 8. DON JUAN IN NEW YORK

CHAPTER 9. THE WORST OF TIMES, THE BEST OF TIMES

CHAPTER 10. MOTHER COURAGE

CHAPTER 11. A TASTE OF FREEDOM

CHAPTER 12. THE KING IS DEAD. LONG LIVE THE KING!

CHAPTER 13. “FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST. THANK MARGIE WALLIS, I’M FREE AT LAST”

CHAPTER 14. “SORRY I CAUGHT YOU WITH THE OLD LADY”

CHAPTER 15. SECOND MOVEMENT: SPRINGTIME FOR HITLER

CHAPTER 16. BLACK IS MY FAVORITE COLOR

CHAPTER 17. “I HAVE A REASON – I JUST DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS”

CHAPTER 18. NEW YORK, NEW YORK

CHAPTER 19. THE BIRTH OF A MONSTER

CHAPTER 20. LE PETIT PRINCE

CHAPTER 21. SHERLOCK HOLMES HAS A JEWISH BROTHER

CHAPTER 22. CRISIS IN BLACK AND WHITE

CHAPTER 23. LEO BLOOM HAS HIS PICTURE TAKEN

CHAPTER 24. SIDNEY POITIER AND I GO STIR-CRAZY

CHAPTER 25. HANKY-PANKY WITH ROSEANNE ROSEANNADANNA

CHAPTER 26. I DON’T BELIEVE IN FATE

CHAPTER 27. THIRD MOVEMENT

CHAPTER 28. COMEDIENNE – BALLERINA 1946–1989

CHAPTER 29. IT’S ALWAYS SOMETHING

CHAPTER 30. STOLEN KISSES

EPILOGUE

INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PRAISE

COPYRIGHT

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

Suppose you’re walking out of the Plaza Hotel in New York City on a warm spring day. You breathe in the lovely fresh air as you step outside and walk down the red-carpeted stairs, saying a quick, “Hi, again!” to the uniformed doorman.

You want to go directly across the street to Bergdorf’s Men’s Shop on Fifth Avenue, but the Plaza fountain is directly in your path, with people from all walks of life sitting on the ledge of the fountain, eating sandwiches in what’s left of their lunch hour, talking to their friends from the office, maybe flirting with some new acquaintance and whispering arrangements for a love tryst that night. Perhaps some are taking a short sunbath on this first beautiful day of the year or even sneaking in a quick snooze as they lean their backs against the famous fountain where Zelda Fitzgerald once jumped in fully clothed.

You can get to the shop on Fifth Avenue by walking around the fountain on the path to your left, or by taking the path to your right. I believe that whichever choice you make could change your life. I’m sure everyone has had these mysterious brushes with irony, perhaps referring to them years later as “almost fate.” Here are a few of mine.

1962 – New York

I walked into Marjorie Wallis’s small office on West Seventy-ninth Street. I was very nervous.

“What do I call you?” I asked.

“What do you want to call me?”

“I heard Dr. Steiner call you Margie on the telephone … is that all right?”

“Margie it is! Sit down.”

She indicated the plain couch in front of me. There were no pictures on the walls. Margie sat in a comfortable-looking armchair, with an ottoman – which she wasn’t using – resting in front of her. Her face wasn’t warm, but it wasn’t stern, either.

“What seems to be the trouble?” she asked.

I couldn’t bring myself to look at her.

“I want to give all my money away.”

“How much do you have?”

“… I owe three hundred dollars.”

She looked at me silently for four or five seconds.

“I see. Well, let’s get to work, and maybe by the time you have some money you’ll be wise enough to know what to do with it. In the meantime tell me about …”

And then she asked me a lot of questions. “Your mother was how old? … How did you feel when the doctor said that? … Have you ever tried to blah, blah, blah?” I took so many long pauses before I answered each question that I thought she might throw me out, but she just sat there, with her feet up on the ottoman now, and waited. When I did start talking again, she made little notes on a small pad that rested on her lap.

What I couldn’t understand was this: why on earth was I thinking about a fifteen-year-old girl named Seema Clark during all my long pauses in between Margie’s questions? Seema kept popping into my head while I was talking about my mother and doctors and heart attacks and my Russian father and masturbation.

I thought Seema was Eurasian when I met her the first time – she certainly didn’t look Jewish – but when we both came out of the synagogue together I realized that she must be Jewish. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. I was only fifteen, but I had seen a lot of movies and I thought she looked like a very thin, teenage Rita Hayworth. I was her date when Seema had her fifteenth birthday party. There were eight or ten other kids at her house that night, all laughing their heads off at some wisenheimer who was “hypnotizing” one of the girls. I thought he was pretty stupid, but I enjoyed watching the cocky little faker who thought he knew how to hypnotize people because he’d read his uncle’s book on hypnosis.

Seema held my hand while we watched the “hypnotist” go through his fake talk. I knew she really liked me. She looked so pretty that night, with a pink barrette in her hair and wearing a brand-new yellow angora sweater. Her mother served all of us birthday cake and some delicious coffee. When all the other kids had gone home, Mrs. Clark showed me the coffee can, because I had said how good the coffee tasted – it was A&P’s Eight O’clock Coffee – and then her mother said good night and left Seema and me alone.

We sat on the couch in an almost-dark living room and started kissing. I was shy, but I didn’t want Seema to know how shy I really was, so I put on an act as if I were used to all this kissing in the dark with no one around. I thought that she was probably more experienced than I was and I decided that it was about time for me to feel a girl’s breast. Well, I can’t say, “I decided” – I was just going on what I’d heard from all the other boys my age, especially my cousin Buddy, who was nine months older than me.

It took me about eight minutes to get my hand near the start of Seema’s breast – the hairs of her new angora sweater kept coming off in my fingers, which certainly didn’t help any. After another three or four minutes, I finally put my hand on about one-third of her breast. As soon as I did, she jerked away. My mouth went dry. She looked at me with such disappointment in her eyes and said, “You’re just like all the other boys, aren’t you?” I flushed so hot I thought I’d burst. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t say anything during all the kissing and creeping up the fake angora. Why didn’t she just say, “No,” or, “I don’t want you to do that,” or anything but what she did say? I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t at all like all the other boys, that I thought she would like what I was doing, that I thought she was waiting for me to do it. But I was too embarrassed to say any of those things. I just said, “I’m sorry, Seema,” and then wished her happy birthday and got out of there as fast as I could.