Hart Christopher - Act one: an autobiography

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Contents

For my wife,

Kitty Carlisle.

The book that she asked for.

FOREWORD

I WAS TEN years old when I first saw my father disappear into his little tentlike contraption (he called it a cabana) facing the sea in front of our house on Long Beach Island and begin to write what was to become his memoir, Act One . Long Beach Island was about sixty miles, as the seagull flies, from where he planted his behind on Brighton Beach, some thirty years earlier, to write the first draft of Once in a Lifetime, the big hit that launched his career. Writing in longhand, on yellow legal pads, facing the sea, with a couple of Hershey bars, seems to be all he needed to get the juices flowing.

There was no disturbing Dad while he was in the cabana, but if you caught him in the ocean or walking on the beach, he was fair game. On rainy days when we had a house full of guests for the weekend, wed read plays, usually one of his, of course. My first exposure to The Man Who Came to Dinner was playing a one-line convict while listening to the man who wrote that line play Sheridan Whiteside.

He finished the book when I was eleven and he took great pleasure in the rave reviews as well as the fact that both The New York Times and the Herald Tribune put Act One on the cover of the their book review sections, a seldom achieved coup. Id been telling people I wanted to be an actor and he made a point of taking me aside to say that he thought I might want to wait until I was a bit older, perhaps seventeen or eighteen, to read the book because it would mean more to me then.

He died when my younger sister, Cathy, was eleven and I was thirteen. I didnt wait all those years to discover the wonders his memoir contained. I didnt become an actor, but I do work in his beloved theater as a director, producer, and writer. What makes the book so wonderfully accessible and universal is the story of his struggle through crushing poverty, as a child, and his indomitable spirit to achieve a far-fetched dream of making a life for himself in the theater. What makes the book and the writing so unique is that he was finally able to use his own voice rather than the voice of his characters to tell his story. I have directed and produced many of his plays over the years and I make it a point, at first rehearsal, to read a short passage from the book because the voice emanating from the page is the same one I heard around the house. The actors can hear it, too, and most of the time I get choked up as I hear him speak again. He loved actors and they can feel it, but you dont have to be a member of the Theater Tribe to appreciate his struggle or cheer for his ultimate success.

Christopher Hart
November 2013

These memories, which are my lifefor we possess nothing certainly except the pastwere always with me. Like the pigeons of St. Marks, they were everywhere under my feet, singly, in pairs, in little honey-voiced congregations, nodding, strutting, winking, rolling the tender feathers of their necks, perching sometimes, if I stood still, on my shoulder or pecking a broken biscuit from between my lips; until, suddenly, the noon gun boomed and in a moment, with a flutter and sweep of wings, the pavement was bare and the whole sky above dark with a tumult of fowl.

EVELYN WAUGH

PART ONE

T HAT AFTERNOON, I went to work at the music store as usual. It was just around the corner from where we lived, and I worked there every afternoon from three oclock until seven, while its owner, a violin and piano teacher on the side, gave the lessons which more or less supported the store. There was apparently no great passion for music in the Bronx at that time, and the sparseness of the customers, other than Mr. Levensons pupils themselves, allowed me to finish my homework as rapidly as possible and then pore greedily over as many copies of Theatre Magazine as the library would allow me to take out at one time.

It was, as far as I was concerned, the perfect job. There was usually even enough time, before Mr. Levenson returned at seven oclock, for a good half-hour or so of pure, idle dreaming; a necessity as basic to a twelve-year-old boy as food and drink. I was thoroughly conscious of the fact that my own dreams of glory were quite unlike those of the other boys on the block, for the fantasies and speculations I indulged in, after I had reluctantly turned the last page of Theatre Magazine, were always of Broadway. They were fantasies because though I had been born in and had lived in New York City all of my life, I had never actually seen Broadway.

In my twelve-year-old world it was permissible to work after school; it was, in fact, rather a necessity. The four dollars I earned every week was an item that counted heavily in the shaky family budget, but the rules did not permit my going downtown alone. True, I had passed underneath Broadway many times in the subway on the way to visit relatives in the far reaches of Brooklyn, but the family had never yielded to my entreaties that we get out at Times Square and have a quick look around, and the anguish of being directly underneath my goal and yet not able to see it was well-nigh insupportable.

This afternoon, however, a kind fate was arranging a far more impressive look for me than I ever could have arranged for myself. As I entered the store, and before I could even toss my books and magazines on the counter, Mr. Levenson was speaking. Apparently he had been waiting impatiently for me to arrive.

Do you think, he said, while I was still in the doorway, your mother would let you go downtown alone, just this once? I need some music for tomorrows lessons. All you have to do is to get off the subway at Times Square, walk two blocks east to Schirmers, pick up the music, and then get on the subway again. Do you think she would let you do it? I dont want you to go without telling your mother.

I nodded solemnly, not wishing to put into words what I knew was going to be a barefaced lie. I had no idea, of course, of asking for my mothers consent. This was the excuse I had been longing for. I took the slip of paper he held out to me, tossed my books onto the counter, and bolted straight for the subway station, by-passing our house on the dangerous chance that my mother might be looking out the window or talking to a neighbor on the stoop.

On the journey downtown I determined to pick up the music at Schirmers as quickly as possible and then have a long and glorious look around. I can still recall my excitement as the subway doors opened at Times Square, and I shall certainly never forget the picture that greeted me as I dashed up the stairs and stood gaping at my first sight of Broadway and 42nd Street. A swirling mob of happy, laughing people filled the streets, and others hung from the windows of nearly every building. Vendors moved among the crowd selling confetti, noisemakers and paper streamers, and policemen on horseback circled slowly and good-naturedly around the Times Building, pressing the throngs, with no great success, out of the street and onto the jammed sidewalks. Nor can I deny that my first thought was, Of course! Thats just the way I thought it would be!