Free Dropped Names by Frank Langella Page B

hand leapt up from the table in a gesture of carefree flamboyance as if I’d invited him to bungee-jump with me, and the voice sounded out clear as a bell:
    â€œWhy not!”
    I came round the table as he pushed back his chair and placed my hand under his elbow. He gratefully accepted my aid, wrapping his fingers round my forearm. But once up and steady, he gingerly preceded me out the door.
    The bar of the hotel where we were in residence was dark, mirrored, and opened into a small dining room. Still in costume, he ordered champagne. “Let’s start it off right, shall we, dear boy?”
    Once several glasses had been downed he seemed to drop ten years and there was a swaggering manner in how he leaned on the bar, gestured, and took a stance away from it from time to time.
    â€œNow you will help me out with this, won’t you, dear boy? Help me sex up the character a bit?”
    â€œYou’re not going to play helpless with me, are you?” I said.
    Placid face, steely eyes, champagne chugged. “Cheers,” he clipped out. “Let’s eat.” And he sailed quite confidently into the dining room.
    Whatever it was we did eat that night, he ate it with immense gusto, ripping hunks of bread, slathering them with butter, shoveling in the meat, flinging down glass after glass of red wine. The early talk was of acting styles. “Your Ethel Merman,” he said. “Your Chita Rivera. They’re ab-so-lutely marvelous. That’s what you Americans do best. Big, vulgar musicals. I adore them.” The “a-” and the “-dore” were separated by a tiny pause, and the “-dore” was punched out with even more voice.
    â€œWe just can’t do any of that. I don’t mean sentimental shit like A Chorus Line . Oh, and your Gwen Verdon in Once Upon a Mattress . Fan-tas-tic.” I had a hard time convincing him it hadn’t been Gwen but Carol Burnett.
    â€œNow you’ve had a great success with this in America, haven’t you dear boy! All camp and winky-winky, was it?”
    Dracula had indeed been a phenomenal hit on Broadway, supported by the black and white Edward Gorey designs. I launched into a description of how I intended for the film to be played in a Gothic, romantic style, not Hammer Studio camp. I would wear no fangs, I told him. There would be no wolf’s eyes, no blood dripping from my mouth.
    â€œHave you read the book, dear boy? You know it’s Van Helsing’s story.”
    It was now 2 a.m. and both Sir Laurence and Larry were stinko. A young assistant appeared in the doorway. “Mr. Langella, I have your per diem with me. Would you mind signing here?” I did and he handed me a packet of my expense money. The young man turned to leave, looked over my shoulder, and realized that the tiny little person in full period costume slumped over next to me was Sir himself. “Oh, Sir Laurence,” he said. “Forgive me. I didn’t know you’d arrived. I have yours in the car; do you need it?”
    â€œ Need it? Need it? Of course I don’t need it, dear boy. I just like to collect it. Go get it.”
    Over the course of the first several weeks we had dinner together most evenings and he could be vastly entertaining. The stories poured out of him in well-rehearsed rhetoric. The one constant in his endless repertoire was the actress Vivien Leigh, whom he referred to as “my late wife.”
    â€œI got the call that she was gone, and I rushed over to remove some papers and such before the fuss began. There she was laid out on the bed, dead. I tiptoed through the apartment, almost going ass-over-teakettle to the floor. I looked down and there was a small puddle at my feet, between the bedroom and the bath. She must have gotten up in the night and couldn’t make it to the bathroom so she just stood and peed herself. You know, she was a nymphomaniac! And I’m a premature ejaculator! Not a good