Mark Dunn - Ibid - A Life

WILLARD (animated): That wasn’t what I asked, Mr. Blashette. I asked if this letter — the one I hold now in my hand — (He brandishes the letter.) — may, in point of fact, address the very complaint which my client has made. Perhaps each of these letters — (now holding up several pieces of paper in his other hand) — calls the safety of your product into serious question.

BLASHETTE (angry, defensive): We sell Dandy-de-odor-o to millions of men. A few hundred letters of complaint represent a negligible percentage of our sales.

WILLARD (thundering): YOU STILL HAVE NOT ANSWERED THE QUESTION!

TAMMEY (with growing belligerence): Mr. Willard, my client, who I’m certain resents this assault on his character—

(BLASHETTE nods.)

— is not going to sit at this table and admit to you that his product is defective on the basis of a handful of letters from an allergic few. Because it is not. If the product were defective, Mr. Blashette would not be here. Mr. Blashette, sir, would be out of business.

WILLARD (very nearly a growl to Tammey): The question is still a valid one — is still of paramount importance to our pursuit of this claim. Let’s be frank. Dandy-de-odor-o gives men rashes. Even President Truman admitted to such a rash.

BLASHETTE (angrily): He most certainly did not—

WILLARD (interrupting): That isn’t what Bess told the distaff members of the White House press corps!

BLASHETTE (rising): Are you here for purpose of discovery, Mr. Willard, or to take shots at me and my company? (Pulls his extra leg up onto the table.) Why don’t you make fun of my subsidiary leg while you’re at it?

TAMMEY (helping Jonathan remove the leg from the table): We’ve made our point, Jonathan.

WILLARD (snide, to Tammey): It appears that your client has had a bit too much coffee this morning.

BLASHETTE (exploding): OH, YOU THINK SO? Then, why don’t you finish my last cup? (HE grabs up his cup of coffee and flings its contents at Willard.)

WILLARD (crying out from contact with the liquid): AHHHHGGGG!

TAMMEY : Let’s take a break. We all need to calm down.

WILLARD : I’M SCALDED, YOU FREAK BASTARD!

BLASHETTE : You aren’t scalded. It wasn’t even luke — say, what did you just call me?

WILLARD : Freak. Bastard. FREAK BASTARD!

(BLASHETTE snatches up Tammey’s cup of coffee and flings it at Willard, as well.)

WILLARD : AHHHGGG! He did it again! He did it again!

(BLASHETTE settles back in his chair, a self-satisfied grin upon his face.)

WILLARD (turning to the court reporter as co-counsel endeavor to mop up some of the spatter of coffee from his neck, suit jacket and shirt collar): Court Reporter will note that Mr. Blashette has tried to scald Plaintiff’s attorney with coffee. Twice!

COURT REPORTER (with a smile): Already noted.

BLASHETTE (breaking into laughter): Homph, homph, heh, hickle, heh, homph.

16. “I asked him, ‘Don’t you think you’ve had enough? Can you get home?’”Jonathan’s Diary, 10 November 1953. Failure to prevent Welsh poet Dylan Thomas from imbibing that fateful eighteenth straight whiskey at the White Horse Tavern left Jonathan feeling guilty and depressed for days. He subsequently made a pledge to suspend these sodden encounters with the great, the pre-great, and the post-great by avoiding all public drinking establishments for the remainder of his life. Jonathan never lost his taste for alcohol, but he had lost his tolerance for public drunkenness — demonstrated not only by others but also by himself. His vow was put to the test on several subsequent occasions. The following observations (some of suspect veracity), which I have taken from journal entries made during the last eight years of his life, speak to the strength of his commitment. Without a single exception none propelled him, in spite of obvious impertinent curiosity, to accompany the participants and thus go back on his promise.

Singer Harry Belafonte arm-in-arm with British actor Arthur Treacher, singing “The Banana Boat Song” as they stumbled into Philadelphia’s Top Hat Bar and Grill.

Economist Milton Friedman pressing his nose against the window of the L & L in Chicago, licking his lips, patting his pocketed wallet and proceeding into the warm smoky duskiness of the bar’s interior.

French premier Charles de Gaulle, singer Maurice Chevalier, molecular chemist Linus Pauling, Brazilian soccer player Pelé, anthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey, and comedian Morey Amsterdam moving in a large boisterous clump into the Oak Bar of New York’s Plaza Hotel.

Actress Elizabeth Taylor flying out the door of the Brown Derby in Hollywood, followed by an angry Debbie Reynolds, swinging a large handbag and snarling epithets.

Deposed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, rock balladeer Roy Orbison, television newscaster Chet Huntley, Ethopian marathon runner Abebe Bikila, singer Ethel Merman, and Harlan Davison glimpsed through the window of the St. Elmo Steak House in Indianapolis, drunkenly pelting one another with handfuls of beer nuts.

17. “I like bikes. I don’t like Ike.”Jonathan supported Eisenhower until June of 1953 when the president refused to commute the death sentence of the Rosenbergs. Jonathan Blashette to Senator Estes Kefauver, 2 January 1954, carbon copy in JBP.

18. It was another missed opportunity.Davison was never able to tell southern writer Flannery O’Connor how fond he was of her work. Walking up to her house in Milledgeville, Georgia, he tripped over one of her ubiquitous peacocks and was shouted off the property. Davison’s Diary, 28 February 1954.

19. Nor was he able to tell Vladimir Nabokov the same.Settling into Nabokov’s living room Davison knocked over a glass case containing a portion of the controversial novelist’s prized blue butterfly collection and was shouted out of the apartment. Through the heavily accented barrage of profanity, Davison caught the sentence, “Flannery warned me about you!” Ibid., 3 March 1954.

20. “I am the Tenzing Norkay of this organization.”The reference was to Sir Edmund Hillary’s sherpa guide on his successful climb to the summit of Mount Everest. Davison compared his contribution to the health and success of Dandy-de-odor-o, Inc. to that of Mr. Norkay, who, in Davison’s opinion, was equally unacknowledged and unappreciated. Memo to Jonathan Blashette, 12 March 1954, Dandy-de-odor-o Corporate Records.

21. Davison did it again.Griswold Lanham, “Harlan Davison,” Entrepreneurial History , 13 (1990), 25–42. As Davison’s behavior become more unpredictable, Jonathan’s unshakeable allegiance to his right-hand man became increasingly difficult to defend. While none of the Dandy lieutenants ever suggested either publicly or privately that Davison should be asked to resign, they never hesitated to bring his mishaps and increasingly bizarre corporate strategies to the boss’s attention. The following letter found its way to Jonathan’s desk on May 3, 1954.

I REMEMBER MAMA

April 27, 1954

Harlan Davison

Executive Assistant to Jonathan Blashette

Dandy-de-odor-o, Inc.

388 Park Avenue

New York City, New York

Dear Mr. Davison,

Thank you for your letter of April 20. I have reviewed your suggestions and shared them with Mr. Nelson and the producers of the television program I Remember Mama. We, like you, are happy that sponsorship of our show has been a successful undertaking for your company, and we look forward to continued success in the future.