\nPhoto by Carl Van Vechten<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n I encountered Vidal just twice — once by phone, for a story I wrote after the death of Norman Mailer, speaking to other writers on his legacy, and a second time, in person, while he sipped several enormous dry martinis and consumed what I recall as a Dungeness crab salad.\u00a0<\/div>\n <\/div>\n This second, and far more gracious, encounter, was at Musso and Frank Grill, the Hollywood institution dating back to 1919, where I was interviewing various staffers — including the place’s famous bartenders — and patrons for a history of the place.<\/div>\n <\/div>\n Here’s a teaser of what I got as we talked about his experience at Musso’s going back to the early ’40s. I’m in itals.<\/div>\n <\/div>\n How long have you been coming to Musso’s?<\/i><\/div>\n<\/div>\n I’d say, since the early ’40s. I knew enough old Hollywood hands to know Faulkner comes here, Fitzgerald comes here…<\/div>\n <\/div>\n Did you ever spend time with Faulkner here?<\/i><\/div>\n<\/div>\n It was mostly eye contact — He’d be at the bar. He’d be sitting there and drinking seriously.\u00a0<\/div>\n <\/div>\n What would he drink?<\/i><\/div>\n<\/div>\n Bourbon.<\/div>\n <\/div>\n Did you ever speak to him back then?<\/i><\/div>\n<\/div>\n Not then. (Laughs.) I wouldn’t do that to anybody. Particularly serious drinkers. He went in to get drunk.<\/div>\n <\/div>\n Middle of the day, usually?\u00a0<\/i><\/div>\n<\/div>\n That was the most fun, because he was still getting paid by the studio.<\/div>\n <\/div>\n ###<\/div>\n <\/div>\n Vidal and I also spoke about his friendship with Scott Fitzgerald’s daughter Scottie. (“She was always upset about the way the Fitzgeralds were being depicted. I said, My dear, it’s all true, and because of that you live on a considerable income”), his years writing for TV (he claimed he was for a while the field’s highest paid writer), and Sarah Palin (who he described as being “hatched from a gull’s egg.”)\u00a0<\/div>\n \n Here I want to insert one of my favorite of Vidal’s quotes:\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m exactly as I appear. There is no warm, lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water.\u201d I saw that side at times, and when I interviewed him about Mailer he was smug and pompous.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\nBut at Musso’s that day, after we walked down memory lane for about 90 minutes, I excused myself, had a brief lunch, spoke to the manager, and prepared to go home. As I was leaving, I saw Vidal, his wheelchair near the bar, telling stories and jokes and completely cracking up a couple of busboys. As abrasive as he could be, his charm was pretty incredible, too.<\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" MUCH of the literary world is mourning Gore Vidal, who died at his home here in the Hollywood Hills. Vidal was important, of course, as a social and political critic as well as a as a novelist. (He was also of course, an actor, television writer, playwright, bon vivant, curmudgeon, and so on.) Photo by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[76,131,34,30,29],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-745","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-film","7":"category-hollywood","8":"category-literary","9":"category-los-angeles","10":"category-west-coast","11":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} |
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