Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal: Falling in Love Letters

Posted on February 29, 2016 by ronbase — 1 Comment

Before the other night, the last time I saw Ryan O’Neal was on an elevator at Toronto’s Park Plaza Hotel. He was accompanied by his daughter, Tatum O’Neal, Helga Stephenson, at the time the Toronto film festival’s director of communications, and longtime pal, Lee Majors, television’s Six Million Dollar Man.

As the elevator reached the ground floor, Lee turned to Ryan to say goodbye. “By the way,” he said, “when you get to L.A., do me a favor and look up Farrah. Make sure she’s all right.”

Farrah, of course, was Farrah Fawcett-Majors, at the time Lee’s wife. Ryan did as his pal asked. Farrah and Ryan promptly fell in love, and the rest is a certain amount of tabloid-fed show business history.

Until then, Ryan O’Neal’s central claim to fame was Love Story, the literary and movie phenomenon of 1970. The film and the subsequent bestselling novel were both written by a Harvard professor, Erich Segal. I got to know Toronto author and journalist Merle Shain who had once dated Segal. She told me that at one point in their relationship, before he wrote the book, they had a terrible fight. Segal phoned to apologize. “Erich,” Merle responded, “love means never having to say you’re sorry.”

The rest is, well, more show business history.

In my life as a journalist, I never encountered Ali MacGraw. She blazed so brightly and was extinguished so quickly, but she left a generation of young men, myself included, slightly dazed and not a little lovesick in the wake of her appearances in Goodbye, Columbus and Love Story.

So when it was announced that O’Neal and his Love Story co-star were appearing in a road show production of Love Letters, A.R. Gurney’s enduring two-hander, I had more than passing interest.

Hand-in-hand on a recent Saturday night, Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal came onto the stage at the Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall in Fort Myers, Florida. Iconic Jenny and Oliver are long gone. She is seventy-seven (her birthday is April 1); on April 20 he turns seventy-five.

The coltish beauty who married movie mogul Robert Evans and then ran off with Steve McQueen when they made The Getaway together, resembles someone’s elegant grandmother, still slim, her gray-streaked hair pulled back into a bun.

O’Neal, the California kid who started out as a boxer before movie stardom and a whole lot of unpleasant headlines involving children on drugs and the death of Farrah Fawcett, has put on weight and a pair of glasses. Now he could play the Ray Milland part of the wealthy father in Love Story.

This night they are Melissa and Andrew, not so far from Jenny and Oliver, except this time she is rich and he is not so rich. Seated at a table on a bare stage they face the audience and read the letters addressed to each other over a tempestuous fifty-year friendship. MacGraw is still the free spirit, goading and poking at the preppy O’Neal through two lives swerving from childhood to college and careers, marriages and divorces, success and failures, the two of them alternately fighting to be together and to stay apart. Are they friends or lovers—or both?

Gurney’s play inhabits a stylish fantasy land wherein the participants have money, go to Ivy League schools, pursue interesting careers, and in an age when no one writes such things, manage to write letters that are often more like smart volleys in an ongoing tennis match.

Reading back and forth seated on a stage is not generally regarded as the way to keep modern audiences mesmerized. But somehow Love Letters works a certain magic, aided by Gurney’s wit and restrained sense of pathos and also by surprisingly fine performances from the two stars. As much as we all loved Ali MacGraw in her brief heyday, she was never much of an actress. By the time the producers of Love Letters came knocking, she had long since retired to Santa Fe, New Mexico to pursue her interest in yoga and put acting behind her.

However, on stage in Fort Myers she delivers a delightfully natural and nuanced performance as a brittle, witty young women spinning into middle age and beyond, battered along the way by alcohol abuse and bad marriages.

O’Neal, as he did in Love Story, must carry much of the emotional load, and he does this exceedingly well as the conservative college jock growing into prosperity, the law, and, eventually, the U.S. senate, all the while trying to put the love of his life behind him—discovering he can’t quite do it. He must forever write her one more letter.

As Love Letters unfolds over the course of an hour and a half, it evokes a series of emotions and memories, thoughts of loves won and lost, of time passing—the young man encountering the movie star on an elevator; a fragile Merle Shain fondly recalling how she inadvertently provided the catch phrase that has long outlived her.

At the end, there is a damnable but unavoidable catch in the throat, the emotion you swear you are going to avoid, but that you can’t as Ali and Ryan take their bows and then, shamelessly playing to audience expectations, kiss before exiting, wrapped in each other’s arms.

You leave the theatre, walking into a cooling Florida night, hugging the co-star of your own love story a little more closely.

Tagged with: A.R. Gurney, Ali MacGraw, Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall, Farrah Fawcett, Helga Stephenson, Lee Majors, Love Letters, Love Story, New Mexico, Robert Evans, Ryan O'Neal, Santa Fe, Steve McQueen, Tatum O'Neal, The Getaway
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The Four Wives Book Tour Continues…

Posted on January 31, 2016 by ronbase — 2 Comments

A new year, a new Sanibel Sunset Detective mystery…The Four Wives of the Sanibel Sunset Detective Book Tour 2016 is off and running. Here are a few of the locations where author Ron Base will be appearing. Check ronbase.com for more updates.

Franklin Shops—Friday, Feb. 5, 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. 2200 First St., Fort Myers.

Bailey’s General Store—Sunday, Feb. 7. From 10 a.m. 2477 Periwinkle Way, Sanibel Island.

Fort Myers International Airport—Monday and Tuesday, Feb. 8 and 9. From 10 a.m. At Coastal News on the main concourse.

Annette’s Book Nook—Wednesday and Thursday, Feb. 10 and 11, 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Santini Mall, Estero Blvd., Fort Myers Beach.

Adventures in Paradise—Friday, Feb. 12. From 11 a.m. 2019 Periwinkle Way, Sanibel Island.

Bailey’s General Store—Saturday, Feb. 13. From 10 a.m. 2477 Periwinkle Way, Sanibel Island.

Annette’s Book Nook—Wednesday and Thursday, Feb. 17 and 18, 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Santini Mall, Estero Blvd. Fort Myers Beach.

MacIntosh Books—Friday, Feb. 19. From 10 a.m. 2330Palm Ridge Road, Sanibel Island.

Sandman Book Store—Saturday, Feb. 20. From 11 a.m. 16480 Burnt Store Road, Punta Gorda, Fl.

More dates to be announced soon

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Hello Sweetheart…Get Me Val Sears

Posted on January 24, 2016 by ronbase — 8 Comments

Hello, sweetheart. Yeah, get me rewrite will you? One of the giants has fallen, Val Sears, a newspaper legend out of a time of newspaper legends.

Whaddya mean you don’t know who Val Sears is. Val wrote features and covered politics in Ottawa, Washington, and London for the old Toronto Telegram and later for the Toronto Star. He wrote the great Canadian memoir about the Toronto newspaper wars of the 1950s, Hello Sweetheart…Get Me Rewrite.

Val was class, let me tell you; elegance and grace personified, both in print and in life. He was sort of the Scaramouche of newspapermen, blessed with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.

Yeah, hold on a minute, will you, sweetheart, while I brush away a tear. This is one of the tough ones. I loved the guy. When I grow up, I want to be a newspaperman like Val Sears. He was tall, laconic, with snowy hair pushed back from a smooth face, mouth turned at an angle as if he knew instinctively that whatever words came out of it were going to be laced with acid, and he was already savoring them.

Val moved slowly when he came into a newsroom or a bar or a cocktail party, taking in the world at his leisure. If he didn’t already know everyone in the joint, he soon would. Val was on the press plane when U.S. presidential candidate Ronald Reagan insisted a female reporter run her fingers through his hair to demonstrate that he didn’t dye it. Val still didn’t believe him, of course. Val never believed much of anything that a politician ever said.

The first time I met him, it was at a press reception then-Opposition leader Joe Clark threw in the garden of his Stornoway residence. I was in Ottawa doing a magazine piece on a controversial Progressive Conservative member of Parliament named Tom Cossitt. Cossitt is forgotten now, but at the time he had caused the Conservatives considerable embarrassment with his outbursts against bilingualism.

I wanted to talk to Clark about Cossitt. However, the people around their leader didn’t want anything to do with the story. They told me I could come to the reception but to stay away from Clark.

I was standing there wondering what to do when Val entered, lazily taking in his surroundings and then sauntering over. We introduced ourselves; he wondered what I was doing in town. I told him I was writing about Cossitt, but they wouldn’t let me talk to his boss.

“Joe?” Val said with that crooked, sardonic grin of his. “Hold on a minute.” He immediately went over to Clark spoke to him, nodded in my direction, and the next thing I knew I was talking to the Conservative leader, getting the quotes I needed for the story.

After that, Val and I became friends—or I liked to think of him as a friend. I was dazzled by him, his intelligence, his humor, the way he carried himself, the way nothing seemed to faze him, certainly not politicians, newspaper editors or women.

Okay, hold on, sweetheart. Maybe women could shake him up a bit. After all, he was human.

I always looked forward to our encounters, listening to that easy patrician drawl as it declaimed about the politics of the day in Ottawa, Washington, and in that particularly scabrous hotbed of gossip and rumor, the Star newsroom.

The homages to Val all pointed to the time in 1962 when Prime Minister John Diefenbaker called an election, and Val strolled into the press gallery—he never would have hurried—and announced, “To work, gentlemen, we have a government to bring down.”

But my favorite Val aphorism was “I’ve been around since the earth cooled.” Well, you got that right, sweetheart, I’ve now been around long enough to use the phrase myself, and I always think of Val when I do.

Yeah, I guess I am a little choked up. When I heard about Val’s death at the age of eighty-eight, I sat alone for a few minutes and let the tears flow. Yes, of course for Val, sweetheart, but also for the era that’s gone with him.

It’s probably mostly in my imagination at this point, but in those days newspapermen—a few women back then, but mostly men—were colorful, larger-than-life characters, livelier than most of the people they covered, world-weary, cynical, not taking guff from anyone. I was a kid then, freshly escaped from small town Ontario, newly arrived in this enthralling newspaper world, totally in awe of these guys.

Val, well, he loomed larger than any of his contemporaries. He was certainly more colorful, a little more world-weary and a lot more cynical and funny, with an added dash of sophistication thrown in for good measure. In his heyday, Cary Grant could have played Val. Or maybe it was Val who was playing a variation on Cary Grant. Hard to tell.

So that’s it, sweetheart, let’s dry the tears and put 30 on this. Whaddya mean you don’t know what “30” means? That’s the newspaper term for the end of the story. When you saw 30 back in the day, you knew it was over. Finished.

So you put “30” on Val’s life, will you? Hate to do it. Hate to think he’s not around anymore.

If I still drank, I’d lift a glass to Val Sears and the lost newspaper era in which he flowered. As it is, I think I’ll just sit here for a while and remember the guy who’d been around since the earth cooled. That earth is a little duller today.

Yeah, thanks, sweetheart. Tell you what? Why don’t we get together later at the press club for a drink? Listen, if my mother calls, don’t tell her I’m a newspaperman, okay?

She still thinks I’m a piano player in a whorehouse.

Tagged with: Cary Grant, Joe Clark, John Diefenbaker, Ottawa, Press Gallery, Progressive Conservative Party, Tom Cossitt, Tornto Telegram, Toronto Star, Val Sears
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At Lunch With Orson Welles

Posted on December 30, 2015 by ronbase — Leave a comment

Unlike most of the people writing about him on the hundredth anniversary of his life, I actually met Orson Welles.

As I stood to shake his hand, I do remember thinking, Wow, here I am shaking the hand of the man who made Citizen Kane.

I had seen Welles a couple of times before, lunching on the patio at Ma Maison, sitting alone, a great, bearded Buddha in all his vast magnificence glaring out at the other patrons. At the time, Ma Maison on Melrose Avenue, was the hottest restaurant in Hollywood. Watching him, I thought, here was the genius who made what even then was generally regarded as the greatest American movie in the history of cinema, surrounded by the town’s most powerful movers and shakers. Yet he was not making Hollywood movies. Everyone was basically ignoring him. He certainly didn’t look happy, on display for all to see. Here I am, he seemed to say—what are you going to do about me?

CITIZEN KANE, Orson Welles, 1941, astride stacks of newspaper

This is the paradox of Orson Welles discussed endlessly over the course of his centenary year, the enigma of the boy wonder who could create Kane and then do—well, what did he do? Did he make more masterpieces or did he roam the world, illusive, unable or unwilling to repeat that early ground-breaking greatness? That’s the ongoing dispute, isn’t it?

It’s been played out constantly this year in new biographies, documentaries, as well as an exhaustive article in a recent issue of New Yorker magazine (The Shadow: A Hundred Years of Orson Welles).

There is even talk of another Orson Welles movie, The Other Side of the Wind, a feature he shot over many years with a cast that included directors John Huston (also long gone) and Peter Bogdanovich. Unlike so many Welles projects, this one was actually finished, but unedited and mired for decades in legal entanglements. It was supposed to have been released this year, but like so much about Welles, that promise was never fulfilled. Even in death, Orson somehow never quite shows up.

In the days when I wrote about movies, Welles fascinated me—how could anyone interested in film not be fascinated? I could never walk through the vaulted archways along Windward Avenue in Venice Beach without thinking that this is where Welles shot the famous opening border sequence for Touch of Evil, the last Hollywood studio picture he ever made (click HERE to view the opening sequence).

I drove into the hills of Malibu to interview John Houseman who had played such a pivotal role in Welles’s early career. Houseman hired him to direct a landmark all-black production of Macbeth for the Federal Theatre Project in the thirties, produced Welles’s controversial radio version of The War of the Worlds, and was also involved in the production of Citizen Kane, an involvement that had led to the dissolution of their partnership.

Two things I remember about my encounter with Houseman, who by that time had made The Paper Chase, won an Oscar for the role, and was best known to the world as an elderly, rather patrician character actor.

The living room of the hilltop house in which he and his wife lived was dominated by a huge indoor swimming pool. The furniture where we sat was arranged on the deck surrounding the pool. I’d never seen anything like it. The couple loved it, they said, and swam every morning in their living room-pool.

The other thing I remember is the otherwise affable and welcoming Houseman’s reluctance to talk about Welles. “That was all a long time ago,” he said, more or less closing down the subject. He had not seen his old friend and colleague for many years.

Charlton Heston with Janet Leigh in “Touch of Evil”.

Charlton Heston was much more willing to talk. I spoke to him a number of times, always proud that he had persuaded Universal Studios to hire Welles to not only appear in but also direct Touch of Evil.

I also spoke at length to Robert Wise who had directed a few classics of his own, including West Side Story and The Sound of Music. Wise was the middle-class, no-nonsense antithesis of the flamboyant Welles. He had started his career as a film editor and while at RKO worked on the editing of Citizen Kane and then, notoriously, it was Wise who was assigned to do reshoots and edit Welles’s next film, The Magnificent Ambersons, after Welles disappeared to South America in order to make a documentary.

This was a pivotal moment in Welles’s career, the beginning of the perceived self-destructiveness that was to haunt him for the rest of his life. Wise, sitting in his office on South Beverly Drive, still couldn’t believe Welles had so callously abandoned his own movie at a crucial stage.

He was defensive about taking over the production. “We did the best we could with what we had,” was the way he put it with a shrug. The result, while containing hints of greatness, is generally considered a mess and was a box office failure (Kane had not been a hit at the time, either), pretty much ending the freedom Welles had enjoyed working inside the studio system. (View the restored Ambersons opening HERE).

When I finally met Orson Welles, it was at Ma Maison. I was having lunch with a publicist named Michael Maslansky. “There’s Orson,” Maslansky said with a wave in the direction of where Welles was seated at his usual table.

A few minutes later, Welles abruptly appeared at our table, a great lumbering figure of truly enormous proportions. The only person I’ve ever met who could match Welles’s girth was the actor Raymond Burr.

I stumbled to my feet, flustered at meeting the Great Man. We shook hands, I mumbled something inane about how much I admired him. He nodded vaguely, and then brusquely turned to Maslansky who by now was also on his feet. Welles wondered if he could speak to him for a minute. The two of them walked a few feet away, engaged in a short, hushed conversation before Maslansky returned to our table and we finished lunch. We didn’t discuss what they talked about. The last I saw of him, Welles was back at his table, keeping a malevolent eye on the people who would no longer hire him.

At the end of all the arguments and speculation over Welles’s career and life, we are left with Citizen Kane. It remains, despite various attempts to knock it off its perch, everyone’s go-to choice as the greatest film ever made.

If it were not for Kane, it’s doubtful Welles would get the attention he has been receiving lately. His other films have their ardent defenders, but generally no one much remembers Magificent Ambersons or The Lady from Shanghai or The Stranger (his most commercial film), his Macbeth or Chimes at Midnight. Even the most famous of the Welles films that he didn’t direct, Carol Reed’s The Third Man, right up there when it comes to the greatest films ever made, is mostly forgotten.

Is Kane the greatest movie? Whatever your view, it remains a shimmering black and white feat of filmmaking, innovative, edgy, and cynical, refusing to give into the typical Hollywood happy ending of the time, and therefore timeless.

Recalling that brief encounter at Ma Maison, I think of the masterpiece Orson Welles made when he was only twenty-five. All the other debates about its creator fade away. Citizen Kane endures, and that is more than enough.

Tagged with: Charlton Heston, Chimes at Midnight, Citizen Kane, John Houseman, John Huston, Ma Maison, Macbeth, Magnificent Ambersons, Michael Maslansky, New Yorker, Orson Welles, Peter Bogdanovich, Raymond Burr, Robert Wise, The Lady From Shanghai, The Other Side of the Wind, The Paper Chase, The Sound of Music, The Stranger, The Third Man, Touch of Evil
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The Lost Comics

Posted on December 22, 2015 by ronbase — 2 Comments

Even though they had already been hugely popular in North American newspapers for at least twenty years, King Features, the granddaddy of newspaper syndicates, is celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of a lost, all-but-forgotten art form: the comic strip.

As far as anyone can figure, the first newspaper comic strip originated in 1895 from an artist named Richard Outcault. He created a strange, bald-headed little boy in a nightshirt and called him The Yellow Kid. The Kid spoke in balloons, hung around a squalid tenement area called Hogan’s Alley, surrounded by a recurring cast of characters.

By the time media baron William Randolph Hearst acquired The Yellow Kid as part of his newly-formed King Features, the strip was already hugely popular. Hearst had learned that one of the best ways to attract readers was to give them comic strips. As the century progressed, and big city newspapers became more and more competitive, their comics sections were powerful circulation boosters in ways unimaginable today.

Large numbers of readers did not buy the paper for news, but for the comics, particularly with the introduction in the 1930s of the continuing adventure strip. In 1934 alone, such enduring comic characters as Flash Gordon, Jungle Jim, Li’l Abner, Mandrake the Magician, and Terry Lee of Terry and the Pirates came into existence.

Terry was drawn by a young cartoonist from Ohio by the name of Milton Caniff. Initially, a boy bouncing around what was then known as “the Orient”, Terry was aided by his journalist pal, Pat Ryan, outwitting a band of pirates led by the mysterious but very sexy Dragon Lady.

What brought the stories to life was Caniff’s superb draughtsmanship. He created beautifully-drawn panels, black and white through the week, blazing with color on Sundays, done in shadow and light and changing points of view reminiscent of the movies.

Through the thirties and forties, Terry became the most popular comic strip in America, his adventures followed daily by thirty-one million readers, his creator dubbed the Rembrandt of cartoons. In the 1940s, Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were crudely-drawn comic book characters. The real talent in both illustration and story-telling was found in the comics section of your daily newspaper.

I grew into a teenager idolizing Caniff and the way he drew, wanting to become a newspaper cartoonist just like him. Back then, the daily newspaper strip was a way of escape. Movies could be visited at most once a week. Television was limited and closely watched over by parents afraid it would rot my brain.

That left comics. They would rot brains, too, so I was restricted to one comic book a week. However, nobody ever objected to the weekend comics section of the newspaper.

By the time I discovered Caniff, he had abandoned Terry for a new character, Steve Canyon, an Air Force colonel, blond like Terry, but much more the two-fisted, womanizing (in a gentle sort of way) globe-trotting adventurer. It was not lost on my youthful eyes that Caniff, in addition to being able to summon far-off places filled with fascinating characters with a few strokes of an India-inked pen, also produced the most alluring heroines (and villainesses) in the comics. In those days, one took sexuality where one could find it, and, curiously enough, it often could be found inside the panels of Steve Canyon.

Caniff inspired me to become a cartoonist. I enrolled in the John Duncan Correspondence School of Comic Art. Duncan, a professional cartoonist who lived in Florida, sent me four thick binders full of instructions on how to draw. There were assignments to be completed and each week I would mail my drawings off to John Duncan who made corrections and sent them back. Each time I opened the corrected assignments, my heart sank as I realized I was not making a whole lot of progress as a cartoonist.

Nonetheless, I kept at it, obsessed, sitting hour after hour at the drawing board I had constructed, set up in my bedroom, in front of a window overlooking main street in Brockville, where we were living.

I even created my own Steve Canyon-like adventure comic strip. My hero was Garrett Champion. Gregory Peck in The Guns of Navarone, became the model for Champion. Like Canyon, my guy was a two-fisted adventurer, some sort of secret government agent as I recall, embroiled in various international intrigues that invariably involved my idea of a scantily-clad femme fatale.

By the time I gave up in frustration, I had drawn hundreds of panels on lengths of Bristol board. I’m not sure what happened to them. I suspect my father threw them away after I moved out. However, as an experiment, I sat down the other day and tried to recreate one of those Garrett Champion panels, discovering that I am no better today than I was all those years ago (the shaky results are on view above).

By necessity, Caniff spent his life sitting at a drawing board. This is made clear in Meanwhile… the fine, nearly one thousand-page biography of the artist written by Robert C. Harvey.

Adventure strips in their heyday ran seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, no repeats, no summer hiatus. What’s more, Caniff had to do it so as to keep reminding readers of the plot and at the same time, keep the story churning forward complete with a daily cliffhanger. Then he had to rearrange the story for the full-page Sunday color installment so that readers who didn’t follow the story during the week, could also keep up with it.

In the early days of Terry and the Pirates, Caniff and his wife lived in a Manhattan apartment. They were, according to Meanwhile…, quite the sophisticated party people—except the party came to them. Late into many nights, their apartment filled with friends fresh from the theater or a movie, sitting around drinking cocktails, gossiping, while in a corner Caniff sat at his drawing board completing the day’s quota. Not until late in life was he able to visit any of the exotic locales he drew.

Caniff’s remarkable artistry and story-telling feats finally have been preserved in a series of beautifully-produced books from the Library of American Comics. Flipping through these volumes, my heart aches that they weren’t available when I was a kid. If I’d had them back then, I would have thought I’d died and gone to comic heaven. As it is now, a much older man can only flip through their pages in head-shaking admiration at what Caniff was able to accomplish.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but even if I had been any good at cartooning, I had arrived too late at the party. As I daily devoured Steve Canyon, that sort of continuing adventure strip was dying, killed off by television and the movies.

Even though Steve Canyon’s readership had dwindled to almost nothing, King Features did not have the heart to fire Caniff. He died in 1988, still at his drawing board. As soon as he was gone, so was Steve Canyon. Even though Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon are mostly forgotten today, Caniff’s influence remains strong. Those crudely drawn superheroes of the 1940s have become pop culture icons, rendered in comic books and graphic novels with the sort of artistry, cinematic movement, and attention to detail that almost certainly is inspired by Caniff.

Also, it’s hard to imagine that Terry and the Pirates didn’t provide at least some inspiration for George Lucas and Steven Spielberg when they created the Indiana Jones adventures.

As for that frustrated teenage cartoonist in Brockville, thankfully, he discovered he was somewhat better at writing stories than he was drawing them. But all these years later, still a glutton for artistic punishment, he finds himself back at the drawing board, trying to get Garrett Champion right.

And, of course, failing.

Tagged with: Flash Gordon, George Lucas, Gregory Peck, Indiana Jones, Jungle Jim, King Features, Li'l Abner, Mandrake the Magician, Milton Caniff, Richard Outcault, Steve Canyon, Steven Spielberg, Terry and the Pirates, The Guns of Navarone, The Yellow Kid, William Randolph Hearst
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Blowing Out the Candles at Frank Sinatra’s Birthday Party

Posted on December 1, 2015 by ronbase — Leave a comment

Frank Sinatra will not attend his hundredth birthday this month. However, Frank was at his eightieth birthday party. I know because I was there with him. You might say I helped him blow out the candles.

Mind you, we weren’t alone. The Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles was filled with hundreds of well-wishers. An eclectic gathering. You could turn around and nearly bump into Louis Jourdan, the star of Gigi, still looking great all these years later. Were Frank and Louis friends? Who knew?

Not far away, Gregory Peck, a longtime Sinatra pal, huddled with Anthony Quinn, and you couldn’t help but think, Wow, the two stars of The Guns of Navarone together again.

A petite young woman sheathed in white, looking absolutely spectacular, floated past. This turned out to be the then-unknown Selma Hayek. Was Selma a friend? Was I?

Well, no, not really, and probably not Selma, either. I had encountered Sinatra once before in 1975 when he returned to the concert stage after a brief retirement. Ol’ Blue eyes was back and appearing at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens. Harold Ballard, who owned the Gardens (and the Toronto Maple Leafs), had gone to a great deal of effort and expense to attract Sinatra and there was excitement of the kind ordinarily reserved for visiting royalty and heads of state.

I thought of Sinatra as not much more than a talented thug, what with his organized crime connections, his disdain for the press, and his increasingly throwaway movies (Dirty Dingus Magee, anyone?). In the youth-obsessed, disco world of 1975, Frank Sinatra seemed an anachronism, the boozy, chain smoking, broad-chasing personification of Las Vegas cheesy.

With that kind of attitude, of course I was assigned by Toronto’s Sunday Sun newspaper to do a piece in advance of his visit. I phoned around the country, talking to anyone I could think of who might be able to provide insight into the Sinatra legend.

I interviewed everyone from Hank Greenspun, the editor and publisher of the Las Vegas Sun, who knew Sinatra personally, to Nat Hentoff, the respected arts critic of the Village Voice, who had written about him extensively. Somewhat to my surprise, everyone I talked to had mostly good things to say about him. Greenspun said he had never seen his friend’s dark side. Everyone talked about how generous and caring he was. Good ol’ blue eyes.

By the time I finished the article, I was intrigued enough that when my wife at the time, Lynda, managed to get her hands on concert tickets, I reluctantly went along, expecting to see an aging crooner, just out of retirement, voice fading, leaning hard on past glories.

But from the moment he stepped on the circular stage running through the Gardens he cast a spell and created an excitement that even a skeptic like myself couldn’t resist. It helped that we sat close enough that I could have reached out and touched him.

Dressed in trademark black tie, backed by a full Nelson Riddle orchestra, he transported us all back to a mythical world shimmering in black and white, where beautiful women in evening gowns sipped martinis in smart night clubs, and the music swept you away.

When he sang Harold Arlen’s “One For My Baby (and One More for the Road)”, the highlight of the evening, I was choking back tears. My wife and I, along with everyone else, floated out of the Gardens when it was over. It was one of the most romantic evenings I have ever spent, and I spent it with Frank Sinatra.

Nearly two decades later, November 19, 1995, at the Shrine, the night celebrating Sinatra’s birthday was more head-scratching than it was romantic. At the beginning, Sinatra was trotted out, once again in black tie, looking pretty darned good, it seemed to me, considering his age and the fact that he had spent most of his years drinking Scotch, smoking cigarettes, and staying up to the wee small hours chasing dames.

He was introduced by Bruce Springsteen, the first in a series of unlikely musical guests. Sinatra smiled, waved, more or less acknowledged the standing ovation, and then Springsteen escorted him over to a small table with a red table cloth to the left of the stage where he was seated with his wife, Barbara. That was the last we heard from him.

Springsteen was a fellow Jersey boy, so that more or less explained his presence. Bob Dylan, who followed, was an admirer. Patti LaBelle, Hooti and the Blowfish, Tony Danza were more problematic, as was Little Richard, who, if anything, represented the rock n’ roll Sinatra detested and that at one time nearly put him out of business. There was no sign of Dean Martin, Sammy Davis (who had died five years before), Shirley MacLaine or any of his pals from the Rat Pack era.

The only performers you could readily associate with Sinatra’s past were Vic Damone, Steve Lawrence, and Eydie Gormé. Tony Bennett, who Sinatra once said was the singer he most admired, was there, too.

It was hard to imagine what Sinatra thought of all this. Those of us in the theater spent the evening staring at the back of his head. The subsequent television broadcast cut occasionally to him smiling—or not—generally looking slightly distracted. After all, he had spent a lifetime being feted and celebrated, this night with people he barely knew, wasn’t going to shake him up too much.

At the end, everyone gathered on stage to sing, not “My Way,” which might have been expected, but “New York, New York,” forgetting for a moment we were all in Los Angeles. Sinatra was brought onstage for the finale, and he actually sang into a microphone, although you could barely hear him.

Afterward, at the backstage after-celebration celebration, the Birthday Boy was a no-show. Springsteen sat for a time with his wife Patti Scialfa. Mike Myers chatted with Martin Short while I wondered yet again at the strange mix of celebrity the night had attracted. Out back, the TV crew who had worked on the broadcast wasn’t looking at what they had taped. They were mesmerized by a special about lost Beatle songs that recently had been released.

That night pretty much marked the last time Sinatra appeared in public. Less than three years later, suffering from various illnesses, including dementia, he died of a heart attack.

The years since have been kind to him. Freed from the constant stories about his mob connections, his women, his temper, the whole Rat Pack thing having lost its louche trappings and taken on a kind of hip nostalgia, we have Sinatra singing, the way he was that long ago romantic night at Maple Leaf Gardens, the way he wasn’t at the Shrine auditorium when everyone showed up for his eightieth birthday.

I was there, too. Good ol’ Frank. My pal. Did I mention I helped blow out the candles?

Tagged with: Anthony Quinn, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Dean Martin, Eydie Gorme, Frank Sinatra, Gigi, Gregory Peck, Hank Greenspun, Louis Jourdan, Maple Leaf Gardens, Martin Short, Mike Myers, My Way, Nat Hentoff, Patti LaBelle, Rat Pack, Sammy Davis, Selma Hayek, Shirley MacLaine, Shrine Auditorium, Steve Lawrence, Tony Bennett, Tony Danza, Vic Damone
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The New Tree Callister Mystery Is Now Available on Amazon

Posted on November 17, 2015 by ronbase — Leave a comment

The Four Wives of the Sanibel Sunset Detective has just become available on Amazon. You can download an ebook copy immediately or pre-order the print version and have it on your doorstep when it is published November 21.

For your copy of the new book, simply click HERE.

I think The Four Wives is the most intriguing Tree Callister novel yet–certainly it is the most complicated since it involves matters of the heart.

Tree, happily married on his fourth try, must nonetheless confront his past when his three ex-wives show up on Sanibel Island. All three wives are in some kind of trouble. Tree must try to get them out of the hot water his exes find themselves in, free his best friend from prison, outwit a Russian oligarch who doesn’t like him, solve a murder or two…

And, oh yes, deal with Marilyn Monroe who shows up with marital advice.

It’s another page-turning fun read in the Sanibel Sunset Detective series of mystery novels.

Order your copy now. I think you’ll enjoy it!

Get your copy of The Four Wives of the Sanibel Sunset Detective HERE.

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Justin Trudeau’s Dad and Me

Posted on October 22, 2015 by ronbase — 8 Comments

In Donald Brittain’s powerful 1978 television documentary The Champions, about the lifelong battle for Canada’s destiny between Pierre Trudeau and René Lévesque, there is a shot of Trudeau being interviewed in the midst of the 1968 Liberal leadership convention.

Days away from becoming prime minister, Trudeau is seated in a glass-walled TV studio in the midst of the convention. The camera pans around delegates and members of the media pressed against the glass for a look at this emerging phenomenon.

The panning camera comes to a stop and briefly focuses on a skinny kid in a trench coat fumbling with a camera.

That skinny kid is me, in grainy black and white, trying to take Pierre Trudeau’s picture. I must say, I am no better with a camera today than I was way back then.

To my amazement, I found Brittain’s documentary online (at the National Film Board’s web site). I sat watching it on my computer screen, fascinated all over again, not only by my (very) brief appearance but overwhelmed by the realization I have now lived long enough to witness not only the ascension of Pierre Elliott Trudeau into Canadian life, but now his son, Justin.

To view scenes from that convention all these years later is to be reminded how much we have changed in this country.

Today, as Pierre’s son becomes Canada’s twenty-third prime minister, I’ve become an old man, contemplating the end of things, not their beginnings. Back then I was just starting out, everything in front of me, a not-very-enthusiastic student at Ottawa’s Algonquin College journalism school. Somehow, our teacher, a quiet, patient man named Merv Kelly, had scored accreditation so our class could attend the Liberal convention.

I can’t imagine the press today having the kind of unfettered access we had that weekend at the Ottawa Civic Center. It seems to me we could wander just about anywhere, and rub shoulders with all the candidates, although, in truth, the only one that interested me was Trudeau. I trailed him around everywhere.

Friday night we all crowded into the lobby of Ottawa’s Chateau Laurier Hotel to hear the folk duo of Ian and Sylvia–very popular at the time–performing live. Suddenly, there was a stirring at the back of the lobby, followed by a wave of excitement as Trudeau appeared unexpectedly and was hoisted through the cheering crowd. If there was security, it wasn’t evident. There seemed to be only Trudeau up on a makeshift podium with Ian and Sylvia, making an impromptu speech, the crowd going crazy.

None of the other leadership candidates caused anything approaching this kind of excitement. They all seemed old and worn out. Trudeau, on the other hand, not unlike his son nearly five decades later, was new and exciting. No one had seen anything quite like him; he was a breath of fresh air in what was then such a staid and conservative country.

Anyone who looks back on those times and remembers the good old days probably didn’t have to live through them. It was a mostly all-white society, in many ways still under the colonial shadow of Britain (Canada had achieved its own flag amid much rancor only a couple of years before). The white men who ran the country closed everything up tight on Sundays. You could not even go to a movie.There were still separate tavern entrances for men and women.

If you wanted to buy booze, you went to the government-operated liquor store, filled out a form, signed your name, and then took it to the counter and handed it to a clerk who then disappeared behind a partition to reemerge minutes later with your purchase in hand–in a plain paper bag, so no one would know you were a shiftless drunkard.

Everything was overcooked and bland. There were only a few decent restaurants and eating out was still considered a special event. In retrospect, Trudeau’s major achievement other than repatriating the constitution from Britain, may have been opening the flood gates to immigration, thereby making it possible to get a good meal in this country.

Books such as Peyton Place, James Joyce’s Ulysses, and Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer were banned outright in many quarters. In Toronto, people went to jail, literally, for displaying art that was considered pornographic.

The first time I encountered Trudeau, I was still in high school. Our Brockville Collegiate Institute class came to Ottawa to tour the Parliament buildings–you could just walk into the place back then.

We were supposed to meet with John Matheson, our very popular Liberal member of parliament (probably the last time Brockville ever elected a Liberal). However, Matheson, whom I admired tremendously, was ill that day. He did speak to us over the phone, though, and said he was sending a close friend to substitute for him.

In walked Pierre Trudeau, who was, at the time, Minister of Justice. What did I think of him that day? Was I mesmerized by the man who was soon to lead the country? Not at all. I thought he was boring.

But not at the convention a couple of years later. By then, Trudeau was electrifying the country. Those of us who were part of that time never quite lost our affection for him or forgot the sense of excitement he brought to dull Canadian life. As most Canadian politicians do, he over stayed his welcome, and, as has been the case with President Obama in the U.S., the reality of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau never quite lived up to the promise of the sports car-driving, movie star-dating young maverick (not so young after all; it turned out Trudeau was forty-eight when he was elected leader of the party).

I won’t be so melodramatic as to say that weekend at the Liberal convention changed my life. But certainly much changed that year. A couple of months later, school behind me, I was a reporter working for a daily newspaper, The Oshawa Times, while Pierre Trudeau crisscrossed the country in his first election campaign as prime minister, mauled by huge crowds everywhere he went. Trudeaumania was in full flower.

My first day at work I was preparing to cross the street to the Times when I glanced around and saw a lanky, bald-headed man standing on the corner. I realized with a start that this was Robert Stanfield, the leader of what was then called the Progressive Conservative Party, the guy running against Trudeau to be prime minister. I couldn’t believe it. He was all alone, not a soul around him. I went over and shook his hand, understanding at that moment Stanfield didn’t stand a chance in the election. And, of course, he didn’t.

Much has happened since Pierre Trudeau stepped into Canadian life, both to me and to the country. Now, as Justin Trudeau becomes Canada’s second-youngest prime minister, I suppose there is a certain closing of the circle.

I wonder if Justin would like his picture taken.

Tagged with: Brockville Collegiate Institute, Justin Trudeau, Liberal Party, Oshawa Times, Ottawa, Pierre Trudeau, Progressive Conservative Party, René Lévesque, The Champions
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First Look: Ron Base’s new novel, “The Four Wives of the Sanibel Sunset Detective”

Posted on October 20, 2015 by ronbase — 2 Comments

Tree Callister and his old friend Rex Baxter were having lunch on the screened-in terrace at the Lighthouse Restaurant, just off Sanibel Island, when Rex said, “I’m getting married in the morning.”

“The song from My Fair Lady by Lerner and Loewe,” Tree said.

“No,” Rex said. “I’m getting married in the morning.”

“I would argue My Fair Lady is the best musical of all time,” Tree said. “The blend of story and song in exactly the right measure, the ability of Lerner and Lowe to conjure a Shavian sensibility that echoes the original play without being slavish to it. The inspired, witty score, each song a singular achievement in that once you hear it, you can’t stop humming the tune.”

Rex looked irritated. “Have you gone completely nuts? Don’t answer that. This has nothing to do with Lerner and Loewe. I, Rex Baxter, plan to marry tomorrow morning.”

Tree looked at him in amazement. “You’re getting married?”

“Tomorrow morning,” Rex repeated.

“Who are you marrying?”

“Who do you think?”

“My ex-wife?”

“You see?” Rex said. “People underestimate you. Given the opportunity, exercising a little patience, you can figure these things out for yourself.”

“You’re marrying Kelly. Kelly Fleming.”

“You seem to be having trouble with the concept,” Rex said.

“You have talked to Kelly about this?”

“I may have passed the idea by her, yes.”

“I see,” Tree said.

“I’d like you to be my best man,” Rex said.

Most of the luncheon diners on the terrace had departed. The marina beyond the restaurant sweltered in the afternoon sun, the lines of yachts, glistening white, unmoving, hardly a stir in the air.

Finally, Tree cleared his throat and eased himself forward, leaning his elbows on the table. “I’m going to be the best man for my best friend who is marrying my ex-wife.”

“Do you have a problem with that?” Rex asked.

Tree thought about it for a moment. “No,” he said. “I don’t suppose I do.”

Rex and Tree had been friends, as Rex liked to say, “Ever since the earth cooled,” or at least going back to Chicago when Tree was a newspaperman and Rex, a former actor in mostly B pictures, hosted an afternoon movie show on WBBM-TV. This was before Rex became the station’s weatherman, beloved of all the Chicagoans who ever wanted to know when the next snowstorm would batter the city. By the time Tree, and his wife, Freddie, moved to Sanibel-Captiva, Rex was already embedded in the community, the president of the Chamber of Commerce, once again beloved, and therefore in his element.

It was Rex who had found an office for Tree at the Chamber of Commerce Visitors Center so that Tree could set up The Sanibel Sunset Detective Agency, a move Rex had lived to regret, Tree’s misadventures as a private eye on Sanibel Island having caused him untold amounts of grief, and had, according to Rex, interfered with the thriving tourist trade.

Now Tree supposedly had retired, tired, he said, of the constant jeopardy he found himself in on an island where nothing ever happened—except to him. Rex, meantime, had met and fallen in love with a former Chicago newscaster, Kelly Fleming, who, as it happened, was once married to Tree—the second of Tree’s four wives.

In fact, Rex had originally introduced Kelly and Tree.

Life certainly could be complicated, Tree mused. Well, he was open-minded about these things, wasn’t he? As long as his friend was happy, that’s all that counted. Wasn’t it?

“This is all happening pretty fast,” was all Tree could think to say.

“Not that fast,” Rex countered. “I’ve actually known Kelly longer than you.”

“That’s true,” Tree had to admit.

“Besides, I wanted to get her before she changes her mind.”

Rex was kidding, Tree thought. Wasn’t he?

A heavyset woman appeared at their table. She focused on Rex. This was not unusual. Rex had been a star television weatherman throughout Heartland America. Sanibel attracted tourists of a certain age from that Heartland, all of whom seemed to recognize their old TV pal.

The woman said in a gentle, breathy voice that Tree immediately recognized, “Rex? Rex Baxter. Is that you?”

Rex gaped in surprise before he said, “Judy? Judy Blair?”

“It’s me, Rex,” she said with a big smile.

He lumbered to his feet in time for Judy to embrace him. “I thought it was you,” she said. “I can’t believe it. What are you doing here?”

“Well, for one thing,” Rex said, “I’m having lunch with someone you might remember.”

She turned and for the first time took a good look at Tree. Her eyes widened. “Tree!”

Now it was Tree’s turn to rise awkwardly. Only Judy didn’t embrace him. Various emotions played on her smooth, round face—a face Tree barely recognized after all this time. Rex said to Judy, “You don’t recognize the guy you married? The father of your children?”

“Yes, of course,” Judy said, the warmth in her voice cooling. She mustered a smile. “It’s been a long time, Tree.”

“Yes,” Tree said.

A man appeared behind Judy. Tree had a quick impression of a large, extremely solid fellow with a bull neck, a dramatically-lined face topped by bristling hair he immediately identified as dyed—the male of the species, no matter how prosperous, seemingly incapable of hair coloring that looked at all natural.

Judy turned nervously and said, “Alexei, there you are.”

“Yes, I am right here,” her companion said. “Would you like to introduce me?”

“My husband, Alexei Markov,” Judy said. “Alexei, these are friends from Chicago. Rex Baxter and Tree Callister.”

“Good to meet you,” Rex said, sticking out his hand.

An attempt had been made to hide the bulk of Alexei Markov beneath a radiant Tommy Bahamas shirt, not tucked in at the waist. The attempt had failed. When he smiled, the dramatic lines of his face softened somewhat and you were given the impression that behind that rock-hard countenance there lurked the charm that would have attracted Judy. He took Rex’s hand in his.

“A pleasure,” he said. Then he turned to Tree, and the soft smile was wiped away. “I think you are less a friend, more the ex-husband, am I correct about that?”

“I’m afraid so,” Tree said. He was holding out his hand.

Alexei Markov looked at the proffered hand but did not take it. “I have heard so much about you,” he said. “None of it very good.”

“Alexei, that’s enough,” Judy said in a stricken voice.

Tree took his hand away and looked at Judy. “It’s good to see you, Judy.”

Judy gave another nervous smile. “Yes, certainly a surprise.”

“How long are you here for?” Rex asked.

“We have bought a house here,” Alexei Markov said. “We plan to spend much time in this beautiful place.”

“I’m the president of the Chamber of Commerce on Sanibel and Captiva,” Rex said. “If there’s anything I can do to help you settle in, please let me know.”

Rex handed Judy one of the business cards he seemed able to produce with a magician’s sleight of hand. She took the card and gave a fleeting smile. “That’s very kind of you, Rex. You always were so kind.”

Tree noticed he was not included in Judy’s kindness category.

Markov, demonstrating an equal ability at sleight of hand, plucked the card out of his wife’s fingers. “Yes,” he agreed. “That is kind of you, Mr. Baxter. We are most appreciative.” He looked at his wife. “Judy, I believe he had better have some lunch.”

“Good to see you,” Judy said to no one in particular.

Markov shot Tree one final, speculative look before taking his wife by the arm and leading her away. Rex watched them disappear into the dining room. “This confirms my suspicion that if you live long enough on this island, you will eventually meet everyone you ever knew from your past life.”

“Hard to disagree with you,” Tree said.

“Judy didn’t seem very happy to see you,” Rex said.

“I can’t blame her,” Tree said. “I wasn’t much of a husband.”

“You’ve improved,” Rex said. “What’s more, it only took you three marriages to do it.”

“I’m a slow learner,” Tree said.

“That’s certainly true,” Rex said, getting to his feet. “Just make sure you’re at the Island Inn tomorrow morning at eleven.”

“You’re getting married at the Island Inn?”

“I’ll be the guy on the beach with a big smile on his face,” Rex said.

“I’m happy for you, Rex,” Tree said. “You know that, don’t you?”

Rex gave his old friend a skeptical look.

And then he winked.

The Four Wives of the Sanibel Sunset Detective will be published in November by West-End Books.

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A Month In Provence: What? I’m Not In Provence?

Posted on September 9, 2015 by ronbase — 3 Comments

The black bulls are charging outside our apartment in Uzès.

We are in this medieval French town to spend the next month experiencing the joys of Provence. Who knew about bulls?

Les tauraux are part of the tradition and commerce in the region, and we have arrived for the Fete Votive, an annual celebration highlighted by the running of the bulls along the Boulevard Gambetta, the town’s main drag—an unexpected start to our time in Provence.

Except, monsieur, désolé, but you are not in Provence.

Huh?

As usual, my geography in these matters is shaky, although in fairness, pinpointing what part of France we are in depends on who you talk to. Peter Mayle, author of A year in Provence, a local resident and something of an expert in these matters, while acknowledging the confusion over what exactly constitutes Provence, pronounces that anything east of Avignon is Provence. Anything west is not.

Uzès is, ahem, slightly west.

For the purposes of tourism, and with a bow to a certain amount of snobbism, there is an inclination to attach the town to Provence, my lame (and snobby) excuse for thinking that’s where we were headed. Accuracy and the French government places it in the department of the Gard, in the region of Languedoc-Roussillon in the arrondissement of Nîmes.

Never mind. Wherever you choose to locate it, Uzès occupies its own unique space, a sort of timeless French Brigadoon rising out of the misty countryside, surrounded by vineyards and fields of lavender, graced by plane trees, overseen by The Duchy, not quite a fairy tale castle—too many rough and tumble architectural influences for Disney-type fantasy—but a looming reminder that this is an ancient town of old stones, medieval stones built upon Roman stones topped by Renaissance stones.

Someone has lived here since the dawn of civilization. The Romans put it on the map, constructing an aqueduct from a spring in Uzès that ran fifty kilometers to the town of Nîmes where the first century inhabitants enjoyed running water and flush toilets.

That ended after five hundred years with the arrival of the Visigoths who did not wash, thus entering an unfortunate era where nobody much bathed, which led to the invention of French perfume. But perhaps we are getting ahead of ourselves.

The remnants of what used to be called Gaul are very much in evidence throughout the region, from the Roman ruins in Lyon to the well-preserved amphitheater in Nîmes (where they still hold bullfights twice a year) to the region’s piece de resistance, the Pont du Gard, not far from Uzès, built to bring water across the Gardon River, and still very much as it was in Roman times—except now you can kayak on the river beneath the bridge’s arches, something that presumably the Romans never did.

Our large, airy apartment overlooks the Place aux Herbes, known for its Saturday morning market, bursting out of the square, crowding both sides of the Boulevard Gambetta. In August, the market attracts almost as many visitors as the bulls. You can hardly move for people clamoring for figs, and melon de Cavaillon, strawberries, locally produced sausage, olive oil, chickens with their heads still attached (so you know they are fresh?), lotte, durade (or sea bream), tuna the size of a small shark, pâtés, men’s and women’s clothing, local art.

Not everything you can imagine, but close, all of it erected in a clamor beginning at five in the morning, disturbing the starlings in the plane trees, waking the weary outsiders in the apartment above the square, ready by nine o’clock and then stripped down again at one.

The merchants around the Place aux Herbes are delighted with the influx of tourists. Business has never been better, they say, what with all the French families here for the traditional August holiday. In the cafes surrounding the square and on Boulevard Gambetta you can barely find an empty seat. If you do, you are soon reminded of an abiding fact of French life in the twenty-first century: everybody still smokes.

It remains an astonishing phenomenon coming from the comparatively smoke-free environs of North America. Here mothers stroll along pushing a carriage or pulling a child with one hand, casually and unselfconsciously puffing on a cigarette with the other hand. Cigarette butts are everywhere, clogging the cobblestones.

In Paris, the problem of cigarette butts is so great—three hundred and fifty thousand tons collected each year—that you can be fined for dropping one on the street. That doesn’t appear to have changed anything. The streets are littered not with dog merde but discarded cigarettes.

There is no escaping the smokers, but you can drive out of Uzès to investigate the neighboring towns, each featuring a singular attraction.

Nearby, Saint Quentin la Poterie is known, as its name suggests, for pottery. Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, picturesque under a blazing sun on the Sorgue River, boasts antiques markets. The hilltop redoubt that is Ménerbes is the scene of author Peter Mayle’s bestselling A Year in Provence, although he no longer lives in the farm house outside of town featured in the book.

Avignon provides ancient fortress walls, Le Palais du Papes, or the Papal Palace, the seat of Western Christianity during the fourteenth century, and the iconic le Pont d’Avignon, the bridge across the Rhône River that doesn’t quite reach across the Rhône, but never mind, everyone comes to stand on it, anyway.

An hour or so away, the seaside town of Le Grau-du-Roi offers—exactly what it offers eludes this visitor, save for sea views, a wide plage, and impressive sand castles whose artists accept a Euro or two in payment for your admiring looks.

Anduze sits not far from the Grotte du Trabuc, twelve kilometers of vertigo-inducing underground caverns that only Nature’s wildest imagination could create. Anduze itself turns out to be an unpretentious gem with a restaurant, Le Cévenal, offering more luncheon escargots that this lover of snails has ever seen.

You can quickly become caught up in the dreamy, sun-drenched rhythms of life in the Gard: the walks through cobbled streets, the daily ritual of the baguette, the Comté cheese, the duck liver mousse (definitely the duck liver mousse), the morning smell of freshly baked croissants escaping from the local patisserie, not to mention—God help you—the cheap allure of accordion music drifting up through open windows into your apartment from the Place aux Herbes. All the clichés of living in the south of France that you swear are not going to seduce you, seduce you.

This is the fantasy of a life in France, of course, the unreal made real for a time. Not so far away thousands of desperate refugees fight and die to escape Middle East wars while European governments procrastinate and debate. In Paris, the government wrestles with what to do about a growing and restive ethnic population, not far removed from the horrors of the Charlie Hebdo massacre.

None of this penetrates the timeless stones of Uzès. Brigadoon dreams on through the summer heat, making it far too easy to ignore reality.

Soon enough, though, August is swallowed into cooler September and the crowds abruptly are absent from Place aux Herbes and the Boulevard Gambetta. Everything quiets. It is nearly time to return to a place where no bulls run on the street, where they do not bake the baguettes daily, and where, sadly, you can once again understand what people are saying, and where, most of the time, you don’t need your wife to translate.

There is a final romantic dinner in the garden at Le Bec a Vin, a last moonlit stroll through the old town, shadows dancing off the stone walls, those old, old stones, a saddened sense that you are leaving…where?

Well, you are not leaving Provence. Or are you?

Tagged with: A Year in Provence, Anduze, Avignon, Boulevard Gambetta, Brigadoon, Comté cheese, Fete Votive, France, Gardon River, Grotte du Trabuc, Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, Languedoc-Roussillon, Le Bec a Vin, Le Grau-du-Roi, le Pont d’Avignon, Ménerbes, Nîmes, Paris, Peter Mayle, Place auxHerbes, Pont du Gard, Provence, San Quentin la Poterie, The Duchy, the Gard, Uzes
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