Yours As Noted

THE LETTERS OF S. J. PERELMAN

My senses bruise easily,' observed S. J. Perelman, "and when they are bruised, I write.'' Putting to good use "a large strain of Comanche," he assembled twenty books of "sportive essays," most of them appearing over a period of fifty years in The New Yorker. "In the realm of satire, parody, and burlesque, he has, from the beginning, bowed to none," wrote E. B. White. At the end Perelman still hadn't bowed to many, although his restless search for copy in an endless round of worldwide travels was beginning to tell on his spirit, never sanguine: "The whole world is becoming so mechanized and so ordered that girls in Bangkok are sucking Eskimo Pies between temple dances." It also told on his resilience. In 1978, accompanied by a friend and a mechanic, he set out to drive his 1949 MG from Paris to Beijing in hopes of writing a series for the London Sunday Times—the first and last assignment he was ever unable to complete. In 1979, at the age of seventy-five, he died in his apartment at the Gramercy Park Hotel in New York. The extracts that follow are from Perelman's correspondence, which I have edited for Don't Tread on Me: The Selected Letters of S. J. Perelman, out this month from Viking.

-PRUDENCE CROWTHER

Ruth and Augustus Goetz were playwrights and Bucks County neighbors of Sid and Laura Perelman's.

Hollywood December 4, 1939

Dear Kids [Ruth and Gus Goetz],

.. . Here we are cached for the time being in the Hollywood Knickerbocker, where every prospect pleases and only price is vile. It is the kind of place that I imagine Mrs. Goetz and Mrs. West and other ladies with iron-gray permanents flock to; they're all sitting on a glassed-in porch downstairs listening to their veins cracking like ice in a Maine pond. Every so often a Cadillac shlurrs up to the door and a chauffeur lifts out somebody's mother and gives her the fireman's carry to a wicker chair. After she gets her breath, she starts bragging about how much money her son makes a year.

The kids and Lula got here in fine shape and are comfortably installed at Laura's brother's [Nathanael West, who had published The Day of the Locust a few months earlier]. ...The Campbells [Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell] seem to be in similar good shape, Alan is delighted to be out here and is chirruping like a Kentucky cardinal, Dotty is a little less delighted and most of her improvisations on the four-letter words are already familiar to you. Otherwise the whole god damned place smells exactly like a laundry and the people have the fierce deranged stare of paretics. Coming back to the hotel from lunch in the only Hebe delicatessen in town with Laura, I just saw a lady of sixty strolling down the boulevard wearing a pair of shiny black silkateen pajamas with a lace collar and a brooch at the throat. She obviously wanted to tell me how much money her son was making, but 1 beat her to a stop light and hid behind a bougainvillea. . ..

And here I am rattling away about poor little me and not a word about you. How is everything on Featherbed Lane in Kellers Church and Hicks Street in Brooklyn? Come on, give. Laura, of course, sends you her dearest locked inextricably with mine.

Sid

Beverly Hills April 26, 1940

Dear Gus,

. . .Laura's brother up and married Ruth McKenney's sister Eileen last week and there has been a lot of talk out of them about buying a place in Penna., so if you see anything likely, let us know. . ..

As regards our homecoming, it doesn't look as if we would get back much before late September or early October. The bankroll has the rickets bad, and it isn't being helped any by the current layoff. . . . We think we have a good show, with a lot of comedy and plot, and if we could get such a show on in January might make a few rugs and enable us to stick around for a real while. By then the country will be at war and everything will be hunky-dory. Laura will be sent to Plattsburg and I'll sew bandages for the Red Cross.

Why don't you answer my questions? I asked you repeatedly how that big dogwood of yours moved and whether it is in leaf. And why don't you send me a locket containing some of your pubic hair? What do you think I'm made of—stone? And if so, on how many levels?

WRITE WRITE WRITE WRITE WRITE WRITE

Sid

Nathanael West and his wife,

Eileen McKenney, were killed in a car crash on December 22, 1940.

Perelman was a co-writer on the

Marx Brothers pictures

Monkey Business and Horse Feathers.

New York City April 7, 1943

Dear Groucho,

Your initial broadcast reminded me that I was long overdue on a reply; and not to wear out my welcome, thank you for that splendid bit of sewage about Leo (Sunshine) Fon-a-Row and a lot of laughs (spelled "laffs") on the Blue Ribbon show.... 1 have been tied up since mid-January on a musical with

Ogden Nash and Kurt Weill [One Touch of Venus], which we finished the end of this past week. . . . It's the story of a small schniickel of a barber who accidentally brings a statue of Venus to life, and it has turned up a lot of pretty funny and dirty complications. The music and lyrics thus far (about two-thirds finished) are grand, and we're dickering with several leading women currently. . ..

Otherwise the usual routine; I've been doing a piece every other week for the Satevepost and random New Yorker things, though the musical crowded out the latter lately. Also, just to make everything really giddy, I've been taking a course in bacteriology in my spare time, and if you need a fast Wassermann any time this spring, mail me the bottle. I'm putting up posters in subway washrooms after June 1st: "MEN: why worry ? See Dr. Morty Perelman, night or day— no more expensive than any quack.''. . .

Well, cuddles, my best to yourself and all the pretty girls on the bridle path, and let's know the news. Did you, or are you still planning to, make The Heart of a Cityl And are you getting much? In fact, what about a scholarly little monograph on "Muff Memories of an Old Trouper''?

Love,

Sid

Perelman met Leila Hadley in 1948 just before leaving on a trip round the world with his wife and two children.

San Francisco January 21, 1949

Dear Leila,

. . .The steamer is scheduled to leave at 4 this afternoon and other than rushing down Nob Hill to buy a couple of athletic supporters (pure swank, of course), getting duplicates of trunk keys, phoning a bookshop to rush a travelling copy of the Book of Hours to the wharfside, paying the bill here, repairing a lighter, tracking down my young, and half a dozen minor errands, I am booted and spurred for Cathay.

... I feel as if we had met at a lonely hearts ball, shared a sherbet, and been abruptly plucked from each other. Between us, reading from right to left, are three continents and about fourteen assorted oceans. But I will traverse them, never you fear. . . .

Yours as noted,

Sid

February 22, 1949

Dear Leila,

Pardon me for feeling somewhat like one of those inept, five-color illustrations in the window of Thomas Cook & Son at 48th St & Fifth. But for the record, I'm seated at the exact moment under a vast white tarpaulin stretched over the after deck of the "Tjisadane," dressed in khaki shorts, a faded gingham sports shirt bom in Penang two years ago, Chinese slippers, and a pair of Ray Ban sun-glasses. Out of the left comer of my mouth dangles a 6-inch long Filipino cigarette and the cool, balmy breath of the west monsoon blowing up from the Malacca passage between Sumatra and Malaya ruffles my scant curls. To my right, less than five miles away, are the headlands of West Borneo. Last night at one o'clock, we crossed the equator; I celebrated this notable experience by expunging with the heel of my slipper a gigantic flying cockroach which zoomed into the cabin, and according to the poor slattern who bears my name, tried to pin her to the bulkhead. Typical feminine hysteria; it merely wanted to cuddle....

The psychopathic little bastard reached an absolutely indescribable pitch of dementia."

You ask about W. S. Maugham. . . . Well, we had a thoroughly fine afternoon with the Old Party. . . and at SF he plied me with the most effusive compliments, proving what has always been evident, that he has exquisite manners. . . .

Beaulieu-sur-Mer, Alpes-Maritimes, France June 17, 1949

Leila dear,

. . .Tong Cha is perfect. Friend, in that mynah bird's heart 1 see no guile; he loves me and I love him. When I feed him his morning half a banana and stroke his breast, we both achieve a type of Karma. His eyes roll backward in his head and he gives forth a series of shuddering little sighs only Pierre Loti knew how to describe. This procedure is also extremely soothing to my vanity, since I'm the only one he allows to handle him. Maybe I ought to give up threading literary beads for a livelihood and become a wild animal trainer like Mr. Court of the Ringling show. He undoubtedly looks better than I would in a tunic and jackboots, but I bet you those black panthers would be niggling up to me in jig time.

Sid

E. B. White knew Pereltnan through his lifelong association with The New Yorker magazine. White's Here Is New York was about to appear.

New York City November 17, 1949

Dear Andy,

As I understand the theory and technique of the fan letter, it always begins with a pompous statement to the effect that the writer is not commonly given to writing fan letters, so that the reader is supposed to experience a grateful glow for being singled out on this particular occasion. The writer then goes into his bootlicking for a paragraph or so, abruptly breaks off to warn the reader that he had better toe the mark and not fall below his standard if he wants to keep the fan's devotion, and Finally asks the object of same for all his out-of-print works, his autograph, and maybe the loan of fifty dollars until Easter.

So you can see how refreshing this letter is going to be, completely devoid of all this snide and fulsome nonsense. In fact, I shall end it right here and subscribe myself

Yours always, Sid

P.S. However, just to hold the franchise, I'd like to add the final thought that your appraisal of New York was all that I had heard abroad and much more. I read it twice—once for sheer enjoyment, and more slowly a second time to find out how you did it. Laura says you have some kind of magic ink or a feather pen or something. That's what Laura said. I see where I'll have to read it out loud to her a third time.

Perelman had begun his work on Around the World in 80 Days

for Mike Todd.

Leila darling,

London

Auguest 21, 1955

The past five weeks have been so chaotic that I seem to have lost all sense of time, place, and identity, and if this letter appears slightly deranged, just chalk it up to the hysteria that envelops everything concerned with Mike Todd plus exhaustion, a second-hand Olivetti, and the remains of a dramatic head-cold. . . . The journey over was a trancelike experience, divided up between Mike's puttering with the dialogue I'd hastily written for our London scenes (manfully trying to make it as illiterate as possible) and his playing gin rummy with the rest of the party. By skilful arranging, we succeeded in missing our Madrid connection by ten minutes. This gave him a splendid opportunity to rush us all to the Dorchester, where a suite had been emptied of the King of Trans-Jordan or somebody so that Mike could place five or six international phone calls and dispatch thirty or forty cables to all parts of the world. In between, he chartered a small eight-passenger aircraft called a Dove, into which we were all piled together with quantities of roast chicken and box lunches, and we took off on as bumpy a 3-hour trip to Bordeaux as ever recorded in the annals of aviation. After a Gargantuan lunch absorbed at top speed, we zoomed forward again over the Pyrenees and got in late at night, disrupting the entire Spanish customs. The next four or five days consisted of frequent visits to Chinchon, dramatic conferences and arguments with his director, John Farrow—who has since quit the picture, taking most of his technical staff with him—dinner-parties with potent Spanish types, matadors, and French film tycoons, and such a melange of intrigue, gossip, and back-stairs knifing as you can't imagine. The actual bullfight stuff at Chinchon was very colorful; Luis Miguel Dominguin, the matador whose pants have often been perilously ripped by Ava Gardner, dispatched three undersized bulls with considerable elan, and one of our three leads, Cantinflas, did what seemed to be an effective comic bullfight. Inasmuch as my sympathies were at all times on the side of the bewildered and brutalized bulls. . .1 didn't toss my beret quite as high in the air as my confreres. Anyhow, by Sunday the shooting was completed, Farrow and Todd had dissolved their union, and Todd, loading another half-dozen of us into the Dove, whipped off to Biarritz so that he could subdue the baccarat tables. I left the casino at 1:45 when he was 3 million francs ahead, but thanks to the unvarying law of percentages favoring the house, he was even again by 5:00 a.m.... The only consolation is that thanks to Mark Hanna's relentless maneuverings behind the scenes, I am extorting a weekly fee that would cause a brigand to blush, and also there is the negative satisfaction that I haven't yet been asked to pose in my underdrawers....

Sid

New York City September 16, 1955

Darling,

. . .The whole schmier of five weeks—from Madrid through Paris up to this past Sunday night when we took off for home—was just about as brutal, unnerving, and distasteful as possible, and it gives me great pleasure to report that as of 48 hours ago, I've managed to disentangle myself from Todd's slimy tentacles and return to private life.

Just to get him out of the way, all I need say is that as the days drew on, the psychopathic little bastard reached an absolutely indescribable pitch of dementia, enraging everyone about him and treating the entire organization to such outbursts of temper and petulance as have rarely been seen outside children's playgrounds and mental hospitals. He became increasingly fixed on the idea that I had to be at his bidding every hour of the twenty-four.. .rang up Joe Liebling one morning at 1:30 (though he didn't know Liebling) to trace me because I'd been missing for several hours, and altogether qualified himself for admission to a looney bin.... There were some lovely high-spots—as, for instance, when he ordered me to run to the wardrobe to fetch a hat-pin for Hermione Gingold prior to a scene we were shooting, etc.—and perhaps one day, when I've cooled off sufficiently, I can use a portion of all this as copy. Anyhow, and only to round off the recital, he at last got around to financial mayhem in the final two weeks and that broke the spell.... Previous to that, of course, Todd had been painting a rosy future in which I was cast as a coach-dog running at his heels and fulfilling myself as his major-domo in charge of purchasing his cigars. At the moment, I'm somewhat in the breathless state of a sand-hog who's been propelled at jet speed from the river floor to its surface, but each day I feel a trifle calmer, and by the beginning of this next week, I should bear some resemblance to myself....

Sid

New York City October 24, 1956

Leila dearest, . . .Around the World etc. opened last Wednesday night and is a sensational hit—columnists raving, tickets reportedly selling in the black market for $75 and $100 apiece, all that dreck. About all I can say is that it appears to have justified Todd's predictions, which everybody regarded as maniacal but which have in actuality been surpassed. I went

to the opening (though I hadn't intended to but was cozened into it by Todd) and I must shamefacedly admit that it was very soothing to the ego. Dick Rodgers, Moss Hart, Max Gordon, and assorted ilksters were all over me like a swarm of gnats at the party following the premiere, unleashing superlatives, and the press next morning, as these samples indicate, caught up the view halloa.. ..

Sid

Erwinna, Pa.

June 16, 1957

Leila darling,

.. .Last Wednesday night, Laura and I allowed our better judgment to be prevailed on, and pretending we were led on by curiosity, went to dinner at Billy Rose's. . . . Rose paid half a million for [the house], and has spent between two and three more in furnishing it. Items like the wall-to-wall carpeting—cost, $44,000—will give you an idea of the scale of the operation. The pictures are mainly Raeburns, Romneys, and portraits of that sort, massed up in front of which are Hebraic silver candelabras, ikons, and other religious totems reflecting Billy's deep devotional preoccupations. In his bedroom, fully authenticated, is the massive writing desk on which Swift composed Gulliver's Travels, and facing it, a French military officer's brass travelling bed, in which Tom Thumb Rose sleeps.... We sat down at a table easily 75 feet long excised from a castle in Wales; Billy, at the head of the table, was barely discernible over the edge, and at that was, I believe, seated on a pillow. He and Joyce, his wife—who was seated at the other end—exchanged dialogue in a shout, cupping their hands around their mouths. This dialogue, and that of all the rest of the guests with the exception of A1 and ourselves, dealt with boasts about worldly possessions, opinions on arts and letters delivered as certainties, and corresponding betiseries. There wasn't a single moment of the evening when one's cheeks weren't aflame with embarrassment at the spectacle of how gauche and full of effrontery people can be....

I find I haven't mentioned a number of things. . .Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim, which I've only just got around to reading but which I thought was very, very funny indeed (and could make such a funny film if Alec Guinness were starred in it); and a hilarious movie called The Green Man with Alastair Sim—and especially a sensationally comical man named Terry-Thomas.. ..

Sid

Ogden Nash and Perelman remained friends as well as collaborators

afterOne Touch of Venus.

Erwinna, Pa.

June 21, 1965

Dear Ogden,

Thank you 1000 times for sending along the Boston Herald editorial. [My] anointment as [Litt.D.] took place on what was possibly the hottest a.m. in Providence history, and the anointees had to walk at least two miles from the Brown campus to the 1st [Baptist] church & back.. .. The very next morning I had. to fly to Washington to a reception for Presidential scholars at which J. Cheever was a great help. Also present at this was that eminence grise, J. O'Hara, and that somewhat younger eminence & literatus, J. Updike. The latter read extracts from three works of his to the assembled scholars, which 1 didn't personally hear as 1 was overtaken by the characteristic nausea that attacks me when this youth performs on the printed page. But Cheever brought me tidings that all three extracts dealt with masturbation, a favorite theme of Updike's. When 1 asked Cheever whether Lady Bird was present, he informed me that she was seated smack in the middle of the first row. What are we coming to?. . .

It is my considered opinion that Lilly Hellman has begun to confuse herself with George Sand "

Sid

After Laura's death in April 1970,

Perelman sold his Bucks County farm and moved to England.

Irene Kemmer ivas an American friend.

November 30, 1971

London

Irene, my darling,

. . .What's cooking over here? Well, not a whole lot. I've been solitary a good deal of the time—have seen a few people, been to a couple of parties in a rather determined, mechanical way out of a conviction that I needed to see more people. One of them was a big crowded buffet of George Weidenfeld's, my publisher, the kind he packs full of literary folk like Ken Tynan, Edna O'Brien, Cyril Connolly, etc. Everyone stands around, balancing plates and wine-glasses, and twittering. The insincerity and infighting is ferocious . . .and I blew the joint as soon as I could.. . . Still another gathering I went to, a cocktail do, was a trifle better; here at least was George Axelrod, who, while pretty Hollywoodoriented, isn't repressed and strangulated like the British contingent; and Douglas Fairbanks, who I'd never met before, turned out to be an appreciative fan of mine, which helped my wilted ego. Then, for contrast, there was a dinnerparty, just two couples, in a grand and cheerless flat off Eaton Square. . . .-has got himself involved with a hor-

rid old bag, some Lady So-and-So, who always gets pissed and very reactionary. On this occasion, she was all wound up on the way they've expropriated the rich in Chile. So for two and a half hours I was forced to sit there—undrinking—and listen to the hardships wreaked on Senora This and Doha That.. . . The week's social activities concluded with a luncheon for six in a freezing cold basement flat near here in Kensington. I could write, and one day hope to, a diatribe about the English hatred for heat. We sat there chewing tough little partridges with teeth literally chattering with cold; what conversation there was dealt exclusively with horse racing, of which I know nothing and care less.. . .

Maybe this is only my temporary and/or current state of mind, but I think it's the foregoing attitude, combined with

English smug self-satisfaction, that has bugged me increasingly and will eventually bring me back home. Also important is the uneasiness I've always felt at cutting myself off from my idiom, the American habits of speech and jest and reaction, all of them entirely different from the local variety....

Sid

Pat Kavanagh was Perelman s British agent from 1977 until his death.

New York City October 18, 1976

Dearest Pat,

[After a visit to Martha's Vineyard in August] I ended up spending a night with Jerry Salinger, up on the Vermont border, in his eyrie. We hadn't seen each other for six years, and I'm glad to report that he looks fine, feels fine, and is working hard, so you can dispel all those rumors, manufactured in Hollywood by the people to whom he won't sell Catcher in the Rye, to the effect that he has taken leave of his senses....

I finished reading Lilly Heilman's Scoundrel Time, and it is my considered opinion that Lil has begun to confuse herself with George Sand. I see all the preliminary symptoms of folie de grandeur; she regards herself as a historical character, and as someone who has known her since 1928 or thereabouts, I am becoming alarmed lest those men in the white jackets armed with butterfly nets suddenly appear and entice her into their wagon. In all fairness, I quite realize that Lil may often have mused to herself that I am barmy also; that is the prerogative of old friends; but honesty compels me to say that in this book she has finally told the presumptive reader more than he wants to know about Dashiell Hammett and her fine old Southern background. Have you read it? And, having read it (or not), what's your opinion?...

Sid

Perelman sought out Paul Theroux in London after Theroux had favorably

reviewed Vinegar Pussin 1973.

jqew York City

October 18, 1976

Dear Paul,

. . . My air-mail subscription to the Times of London brought me your review of Tom Dardis's Some Time in the Sun. . .. The honest truth (as opposed to the dishonest truth) is that I now have a snootful about this subject. I'm sick of these innumerable books about Fitzgerald's Sturm und Drang in Hollywood. ... To what purpose all this crud, anyway? Generally speaking, all the parties concerned (except Agee, who was movie-struck and a determined self-destroyer) worked in Hollywood because it was the decade of the Great Depression and they couldn't earn a living elsewhere. They none of them made any real money (Continued from page 89) in the Hollywood sense out of it—only the screenwriters on the inside, whose names wouldn't mean a thing to the public, except Ben Hecht's, made the big dough—people like Robert Riskin, Norman Krasna, Harry Kumitz, Bright & Glasmon. These last were the Roman candles, the Catherine wheels of that epoch of movie writing, and their names now are writ in water. They've been superseded by the Robert Townes (Chinatown), Steven Spielbergs, and other infant geniuses who demand and receive $400,000 per script, and who in turn will be replaced in a couple of years by other unrecognizable names. If you want to know who's turning out the present movie feces—i.e., what writers—just read Variety for a couple of weeks; 1 guarantee you won't recognize the name of any writer you ever heard of, even on the Playboy level. . .. But just to wrap it all up—1 say as I've said for years: if you want to know what writing for the movies is like, just read Raymond Chandler's two pieces on the topic in Raymond Chandler Speaking. I think of very few others who have been able to capture the disgust and the boredom of dealing with the Yahoos who run that industry. Their names are no longer Louis B. Mayer, Irving Thalberg, and Darryl Zanuck, but their mentalities are the same, or I should say even baser, because today's tycoons are all agents, ten-percenters whipped and worn smooth by the hot blast of television. . . .

(Continued on page 115)

Yours As Noted

Sid

Caskie Stinnett, as editor of Holiday and Travel & Leisure, commissioned many of Perelman's travel pieces.

New York City

April 15, 1977

Dear Caskie,

... I assume that you must have missed the Academy Awards broadcast and thereby Lil's ovation from the celebrants; she must have been gratified indeed at their tribute, and she got in some good rabbit punches in her speech. The high-light of the evening for me was Norman Mailer, who never fails to provide pure horse-cock. In case you missed it, he began thus: "It is related that on one occasion, Voltaire was taken to a male bordello in Paris." (A hush fell over the assemblage; after all, who other than Proust—who operated one—has ever been associated with such a filthy enterprise?) "On emerging," he continued, "he was asked how he had enjoyed the experience. He replied, 'Once a philosopher, twice a pervert.' The award for the most distinguished cinematography by second cameramen," he said, fumbling open the envelope, "goes to Milton Zeltzberger for She Opened His Drawers."

Boston as a winter niche for your activities sounds very worthwhile.

... I'm going off to London about May 7 and soon after to Shropshire to see some more of it, perhaps nosing around for a simple pad there where I can wear a Tolstoyan blouse, stump around with a gnarled stick, and mystify the rustics... .

Yours ever,

Sid

Mary Blume was an American journalist and friend based in Paris.

New York City

April 26, 1978

Dear Mary,

I am.. .making a move that'll cut down the distance between us: coming over to London for a month that begins with 3 days of enforced TV and related garbage in behalf of a couple of books Methuen's publishing there. . . . My principal errand is to sort out a project that Harry Evans, ed. of the Sunday Times, and I have been cooking, wherein I drive my 1949 MG from Paris to Peking. As you can gather, it's got a lot of bugs, not the least of which is furnishing me with a support system, in effect a pursuit or backup car to carry some vintage replacement parts, petrol, and band-aids I might need. Carefree, adventurous Harry Evans thinks this would detract from the romance of the adventure, and fearful, jittery SJP thinks it might hearten the occupants of the front seat....

It will give you some index of my activities that last night the lady on my left was 90 years old (albeit her name was Lynn Fontanne) and that the reason I am terminating this letter now is because I am going to a cocktail party celebrating the 85th birthday of a lady writer (albeit her name is Anita Loos). My purpose in telling you this, I needn't assure you, has nothing to do with name-dropping. Rather it is that now I'm in the sere and yellow leaf, I tend to be numbered increasingly among the geriatrics. Perhaps this is why I'm striving to drive from Paris to Peking—one last chuck of the dice.

Love,

SidD