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BRIT 6/21/2014 6:26:29 AM
BRIT – June 21, 2014
I had just shared a cab with a certain well-known sportscaster back to my hotel in St. Louis after having watched the Cardinals defeat their opponents in the 1967 World Series (my son, Bobby, who always accompanied me on these jaunts, had already returned to the hotel and used up both our return transportation vouchers from the stadium).
Deciding a drink was proper I popped into the hotel’s bar, and the first person I saw, sitting alone in a booth, was Cary Grant — pure mop of white hair and all!
I jumped into the booth beside him, and said in my best Cary Grant imitation ever, “Ah, Cary, old man, how good to see you! I missed you at the ball game!”
Grant looked up, mesmerized. “Do I know you?”
“Name’s Mills.”
“John?”
“No; hardly. Robert.” I shook his hand. “I’m an American. No relation to the English actor.”
“So, you’re not, now then?”
“No — yes,” I said, confused by the English idiom. but keeping up my phenomenal imitation. “No more British than — Robert Shaw! In fact, I believe he’s Irish!”
“I think you may be right!” (We were both misinformed.)
“May I buy you a drink?”
He glanced at the one he had barely touched. “I think not. I’m waiting for some others. . . . Let me ask you: do you always intrude on people you don’t know — but vocally sound a good deal like — and offer to buy them drinks?”
“No. Unless I suspect they are famous, and I’ll never see them again.”
“So . . . Do you think I’m, ah, famous?”
“I’ve seen all your pictures.”
“Even TURN OF THE BOLT,” he asked, incredulously.
“Of course,” I replied, equally incredulously.
“All, even TAMING OF THE SHREWDEST?”
“Wouldn’t have missed it for the world!”
“I see.”
I ordered a drink for myself, a vodka/tonic. While waiting for it to be served, we talked with my new friend of the various beauties with whom he’d co-starred.
“I was offered the part of Rhett Butler in GWTW in ’38, but it was taken by Gable — he didn’t care a whit who his female lead was — I always thought Leigh was a pig — but when Olivia de Havilland signed on, I had second thoughts; they already had Gable’s ‘John Hancock’ on the contract, so that was that. As a consolation, they offered me a part DAYS OF GLORY, but Peck at twenty-seven was a hell of a lot cheaper. I was twenty-six when I made my first flick, and it won an Academy Award.”
“Who was the most desirable, most gorgeous, sexiest woman you ever worked with,” I insisted on knowing.
Not hesitating a nanosecond he said, “Sofia Loren.” I couldn’t have agreed more.
At this point, three others joined us in the booth, a lady and two gentlemen—one white and the other black; a Negro, I later learned was Sidney Poitier.
“This is Miss Fran Doolittle, from L.A., my secretary. The fellow with the not so gray moustache and goatee is my manager; name’s Arnold Chatsworth from London’s East End; I haven’t a clue as to the ‘Negro’ — probably a fan, or someone either Doolittle or Chatsworth met and picked up in the lift.”
“Howdja do,” came around the table. I stood half up and shook hands with Chatsworth. I sat back down as my drink was served. I touched the waiter’s arm and offered a repast for the newcomers.
“No, thanks.”
“Not at the moment.”
“Still not yet,” said my Hollywood idol.
Poitier merely shook his head.
The white actor, to fill in the awkward silence, said, “So, er, Robert, what brings you to St. Louis? What do you do?”
“The World Series. I’m an actor, of sorts, myself, a weatherman on NBC-TV back home. I promised my son I’d take him to the World Series each year I got the time off — and free tickets from Jack Buck, or some such.”
“Where is he this hour?”
“Buck?”
“No. Your kid? We are all to meet at Stan Musial’s place tonight for dinner — care to join us?”
Poitier spoke for the first time: “I’m to have dinner with Bob Gibson, an old school buddy, and meet Spencer Tracy and see if his friend Katharine Hepburn and he are compatible to be my hosts for GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER.
Another silence. Then Grant cleared this throat, and said, softly to me, “And you? What about you and your boy?”
You kidding? A chance to dine with Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy, Grant’s staff, Bob Gibson and Sidney Whatshisface at Stan Musial’s — the reply prompted me to say, “I’ll be there!” too enthusiastically. “I’ve always been a fan!”
“Same reason,” Grant said, quickly, the British idiom having caught up. “I have, too. Almost —a fan, I mean, of American baseball and the movies. Since becoming a citizen of the United States. Since, ah lemme see, since 1942, or thereabouts — baseball, I’m talking abour; the movies, forever.”
“Oh.”
Miss Doolittle spoke up then: “Cary, you have to make an appearance tonight. You asked me to make a reservation for 6:30 at Musial’s for dinner. I hope it’s definitely not going to be a Q&A session!”
Good lord, you don’t s’ppose they know all about Scotty and me — do you?”
“You know how Americans are, Archie — even macho men love stories about European gays, especially those who go both ways!” Chatsworth added, with a girlish giggle.
Cary looked at me. “Is that true?”
“I dunno.”
He looked at his manager. “What time is it?”
Chatsworth glanced at his Rolex. “Quarter of five.”
The three of them slid out of the booth then, and within fifteen seconds I was alone in the bar. I signaled the waiter.
“Want ‘nother?” he asked.
I shook my head. “How much I owe you?”
“Four seventy-five.”
I dropped a fin in front of me, from my wallet. “Keep the change,” I said, hoping it was enough — considering whom I had just met and whom I was going to meet.
Despite the many times I was to be in New York City, Los Angeles or Hollywood, I never ran into or saw Cary Grant again — or Spencer Tracy or Sidney Whatshisface — except on the silver screen.
Once at dinner at the Hotel Roosevelt in Hollywood Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau and Maureen Stapleton were at a nearby table when Matthau got up suddenly and dropped his pants, saying, “I’ve always want to do that, especially on my birthday!”
Jack Lemmon was then called to the house phone. I excused myself from my two partners and an agent from my home office and followed Lemmon out of the restaurant.
But that’s another story, for another time. . . .
Copyright . 2014 Robert A. Mills, all rights reserved, not to be published, re-written, or broadcast without the author’s permission
