Read Online My Life as a Mankiewicz by Tom Mankiewicz - Free Book Online Page A

version of his hit Broadway play The Best Man in 1963. It was the first film I worked on after college. I also wrote for The Pean , the school yearbook. The editor was Peter Benchley (who wrote Jaws) , then a couple of years ahead of me. I came full circle with Peter while doing a major rewrite on the screenplay of his second novel, The Deep , filmed some twenty years later in the Caribbean.
    Mother rarely came up, so I was surprised when she called one day and said she was coming to Boston to spend the weekend with me. We went to the theater on Saturday night. It was a play heading for Broadway, starring Louis Jourdan (of Gigi). After the performance, the three of us had dinner. I didn't know she even knew him. Then we went up to his suite. After some strained small talk, the situation seemed pretty clear to me: they were interested in each other. I excused myself politely and went to my room. On Sunday, Mother and I saw the sights in Boston and she put me on the train back to Exeter. No mention of Louis. Looking back on it now and considering Dad's record of serial infidelity, I suppose a little turnabout was fair play.
    Westchester
    We started renting a house out of town every summer. Once in Long Island, then repeatedly in Westchester County, where Dad was eventually to spend the final decades of his life. Our favorite place was Mount Kisco. Our best friends up there were Bennett Cerf (Random House publisher and permanent panelist on What's My Line) , his wife, Phyllis (later married to New York mayor Robert Wagner), and their son, Chris, who was my age. The area was and continues to be (along with Bedford, Katonah, and Pound Ridge) a rustic haven catering to the wealthy.
    Mother wasn't doing well. She took a great many prescription pills, sedatives mainly, in an attempt to control her illness. I met my first steady girlfriend in Mount Kisco. Her name was Freddy Espy. It was puppy love run amok. Endless teenage necking without consummation. She was a talented artist and sent me countless letters at school filled with hearts of all sizes and idealized depictions of herself as a love-smitten pixie. Freddy would later marry the celebrated George Plimpton Jr. (author of Paper Lion) , the editor of the Paris Review and a wonderfully literate and amusing man with whom I would later spend delightful evenings in New York and L.A.
    One Bad Fall Day
    I was already back in school for the fall term. The family's lease on the Mount Kisco house didn't expire until later. One Saturday night I was having dinner with a couple of classmates at a diner in the tiny town of Exeter. I remember it was very cold outside. I was also smoking a cigarette, which was absolutely verboten at the school. There was a rap at the diner window. I turned and saw the dean staring in straight at me. Shit, I thought. I'm going to get thrown out. The dean gestured for me to join him outside. I started for the door, trying to think of an excuse, any excuse. Once outside: “Dean Kessler, I know this looks…”
    â€œYour mother is dead,” he interrupted. I blinked. “I know it may seem cruel to just say it like that, but I've been through this before and I've found it to be the best way.”
    My head started to swim. A reservation had been made for me on the next train to Boston. I would be met at the station by a female psychiatrist who would then accompany me on a plane to New York. Did I need company on the train? It could be easily arranged. I shook my head.
    The next days were and are a blur to me now. I remember what seemed like an endless reception of the great and the near great coming by the apartment to pay their respects. Mother's psychiatrist, the eminent Dr. Lawrence Kubie, was there. Did I want to talk to him, get things off my chest? No, that's okay. Don't worry about it, I'll be all right. I barely remember her funeral. It was at Kensico Cemetery in Westchester. I couldn't even tell you who attended.
    How did Mother die? This