Lee Hill - A Grand Guy: The Art and Life of Terry Southern

The Art and Life of Terry Southern

For
Esther and Claire Hill
and
Patty Johnson

For Love, Art, and a Lot of Money

This is where it all happens!

postcard from Terry Southern to Random House editor Joe Fox

M emory flash, Los Angeles, California, July 1964. Place-in-the-sun time. A convertible moves smoothly down Sunset Boulevard. The car radio seems to play Dionne Warwicks Walk on By and the Beach Boys I Get Around constantly. The buoyant music is silenced occasionally by the latest news of the Beatles Visigoth-like sweep through Americas stadiums. Of course its not all fun and frolic. News bulletins also mention LBJs war on poverty and aid to Vietnam. Down in Georgia, a certain Lester Maddox is using ax handles to threaten black customers who enter his restaurant. However, the music and the news are just background to the two passengers in the car.

The driver, a tall urbane man with sunglasses dark as night, occasionally glances to the side. His crisp white shirt reflects the glare of the sun. In the passenger seat, Steve Schapiro, Life magazine photographer, meticulously frames and shoots picture after picture.

The car drives past a billboard that reads METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER IN ASSOCIATION WITH FILMWAYS PRESENT THE LOVED ONEFOR THOSE WHO REALLY CARE ! The driver allows himself a secret smile at these words. And why not? He is, after all, adapting Evelyn Waughs classic novel along with the noted English scribe Christopher Isherwood.

The latest subject of the Luce empires scrutiny is a forty-year-old Texas-born writer named Terry Southern. After serving his country in World War II, he received an English degree at Northwestern University and studied philosophy at the Sorbonne. His short stories and articles have appeared in Harpers Bazaar, the Paris Review, and Esquire. This courtly and reserved man of letters is also the author of Candy, a dirty book with precise comic timing. Funny, sure, but still dirty enough to get banned in Paris, France! It was written with a pal, Mason Hoffenberg, who is some kind of junkie poet. Newsweek describes their collaboration as a Greek tragedy rewritten by Nathanael West and S.J. Perelman.

Southern is the author of two other books, Flash and Filigree and The Magic Christian, which are downright weird. Flash is a detective story, but the villain, a car-crazy dermatologist, never gets caught. In The Magic Christian, a fabulously wealthy businessman with untold millions at his disposal stages elaborate pranks to discover if it is indeed true that every man has his price.

In its efforts to provide its readers, Mr. and Mrs. Front Porch, a full and balanced portrait of an up-and-coming author and commentator on morals, manners, and society, Life must ask some tough and probing questions. Is Mr. Southern a beatnik like Jack Kerouac or Allen Ginsberg? Erwell, he doesnt look like one. More the tall, dark silent type, especially with the monstro shades. Is he a pseudointellectual writing naughty books for the chattering classes? Hmmm. Tough call. He seems quite serious about writing. He always carries a binder or satchel full of yellow lined paper and pens. Maybe he is a communist? He worked on the script for the hit movie Dr. Strangelove, which put an odd spin on Americas nuclear defense policy. It satirically suggested that a lone mad general could override the presidents fail-safe protocol to plunge the world into all-out thermonuclear combat. Well, hey, nobody wants that. Dr. Strangelove got people to talk about the Cold War in a relaxed and open way, but without the gloomy last-night-on-earth confessionals la Fred Astaire and Ava Gardner in On the Beach. In fact, Dr. Strangelove is very funnya unique blend of slapstick and agitprop. Who would have thought the end of the world could be so exhilarating?

These are contradictions Time-Lifes phalanx of editors will have to sort out as they pore over ace reporter Jane Howards copy and Schapiros elegantly composed snaps. This Southern guy doesnt add up. He has an attractive young wife and a cute three-year-old boy. Life has already taken shots of Southern and family on the bucolic grounds of his farm in Connecticut. There was even a family dog, a German shepherd. But what about the way Southern talksjust what part of Texas is he from?

Its a slow, seductive lilt that is the oral equivalent of mercury. There are moments when his voice eerily recalls Peter Sellers as Clare Quilty in Lolita. The accent is displacedadrift between America and England. At other times, the voice evokes the measured diction of an Oxford don. Then it assumes a mock-heroic quality, especially in response to an ambiguous question. How do I like to be addressed? Southern might bark, followed by a sudden shift into country bumpkin mode, Why you can call me anything you want! Just dont call me late for chow! Ho ho.

Hot off Dr. Strangelove, Southern is out in La-La Land to work on The Loved One, an irreverent adaptation of Waughs caustic satire of Hollywood and the Denial of Death as epitomized by gaudy cemeteries like Forest Lawn. As Southern told a reporter just the other day, Im treating the script as I like to think Waugh would do it if he were writing today. Its an attack on smugness and the fantastic illusions of our way of life.

Unlike F. Scott Fitzgerald, Southern doesnt seem to be holding his nose as he performs what he calls tightening and brightening. Then again, The Loved One is hardly typical boy-meets-girl silver screen fare. The director, Tony Richardson, is a young Brit who staged John Osbornes Look Back in Anger at the Royal Court Theatre. He made last years Best Picture, Tom Jones, a delightful Technicolor romp, complete with New Wave jump cuts and aerial photography. The Loved One promises to be of more interest to the readers of Cahiers du Cinma than to the lunch crowd at the Brown Derby.