A Fistful of Stars

By Marvin Silbersher

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 24, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469181288

Marvin Silbersher

In a career that involves all the aspects of theater, television, and film, Marvin Silbersher has embraced them all starting with his appearance in the first production of the then newly minted Paper Mill Playhouse (1937) at age thirteen in his hometown of Millburn, New Jersey, connecting with various national radio series. Let’s Pretend (CBS), “ainbow House (WOR-MBS), in 1940 and joining the company of Sky over Britain playing opposite distinguished actors such as Basil Rathbone, Edna Mae Oliver (losing the hand of Dorothy McGuire to Tyrone Power in A Yank in the RAF). After combat service in WW2, he devoted four years to his drama school class, was part of the founding of “Off-Broadway,” “The Interplayers” (1947), joined CBS Television (1950), and became a director of a wide variety of cultural programs. His book of poetry and archival photographs The Bells of Hell, a memoir of the Eighth Air Force in WW2, has just been published.

Book preview

CAN YOU IMAGINE?

Not so long ago, there was a class in theater school from which would emerge luminaries who would change the American cinema and television and theater forever!

I was privileged to be in that class (1946–1949), The Dramatic Workshop (the New School). We were at the President Theater, 247 W. Forty-Eighth, in the midst of the Broadway Theater District.

Among my classmates were Marlon Brando, Walter Matthau, Elaine Stritch, Bea Arthur, Gene Saks, Anne Meara, Harry Belafonte, Tony Curtis, Judy Malina, Ben Gazzara, Anna Berger, Anthony Franciosa, Mike Gazzo, Joseph Sargent, Everett Chambers, E. W. Swackhamer, Robert Hilliard, Vinnette Carroll, and Richard Jessup.

This memoir is dedicated to my class and our maestro Erwin Piscator, a major figure in the European Theater before World War Two, inventor of The Epic Theater (theater as a totality of all the performing elements in a union of text, acting, choreography, light, and sound to achieve a narrative that spoke the truth to the audience).

1

Walter Matthau leaned over and whispered to me (hoarse and trembling), Marvin, the bookies are after me. I’m $20,000 behind on a baseball game! (He had the terrified expression of an ichthyosaurus, pale as a ghost.)

"I understand you live in the wilds of New Jersey. Would you help me save my life and take me there tonight? I can’t go back to my room in the President Hotel across the street. I’ll never show up alive for our next performance of Twelfth Night!" We were taking off our makeup from Shakespeare’s comedy. (The cast included Elaine Stritch as the clown, Bea Arthur as Lady Olivia, Marlon Brando as Antonio, Walter Matthau as Sir Toby Belch, and I was Sir Andrew Aguecheek.) The school was called the Dramatic Workshop of the New School for Social Research at 247 West Forty-Eighth Street at the corner of Eighth Avenue (led by a great German director, Erwin Piscator, who had astonished Europe with his Epic Theater productions that fused all the performing arts into revolutionary forms). Matthau and I were in the intensive four-year course class every day, peformances at night. (Happiness!)

We grabbed the Hudson Tubes at Thirty-Fourth and Sixth and took the Lackawanna at Hoboken to my hometown of Millburn, forty minutes away as Newark dissolved into East Orange and Brick Church, lights flashing in the distance. Walter told me something of his life and gambling. Last week, I was ahead $40,000. Today, behind $20,000, so Millburn is the ticket! (We were at school on the GI bill, living on a subsistence of $60 a month for rent/food/etc.) In many of the same classes, we became close friends, admiring each other’s acting skills. (There were only 125 of us in the student body in the spring of 1946, a paradisical situation for a young actor, personal attention from the faculty, who were all accomplished players.) You did thirty-five missions over Germany, Walter remarked. I’m also an Eighth Air Force graduate, but I perfected Texas Hold’em at my base, did so well. It’s hard to stop. Sixty bucks a month is like a man talking with a paper asshole! Arriving at Millburn, the aroma of the spring hit him like a bolt. Does it always smell like this? Everyone was asleep in the house; we removed our shoes, climbed to the second floor without a sound. We were headed to the big room in the attic and had to go through my sister’s room to get to the stairs. As the light from the hall fell on my sister’s face, Walter being so tall—his shadow couldn’t be helped as he stood under the globe momentarily—and she woke suddenly, saying, Who’s this?

Shirley, I replied, this is my classmate, Walter Matthau. He’s come to stay for a while. Walter was enchanted by the attic room and fell asleep in the twinkling of an eye. In the morning, I made him breakfast, Dad having gone to the job painting a house with his crew in Short Hills, Mother gone to open the paint store. Walter elected to consume everything I put in front of him. Pancakes were followed by a three-egg omelet with sliced onions, tomatoes, and lots of rye bread and butter.

At school, I explained Matthau wasn’t feeling well, and his understudy went on for Toby Belch. Chouteau Dyer, our second in command, asked me if Walter’s indisposition was very serious. I answered that I thought he would be fine in a few days. (Meanwhile, he was so enjoying being on Wittkop Place in Millburn as Mother was making him meals he perhaps had never seen since he was $40,000 ahead of the bookies.).

When I arrived in his third day, he was much recovered, having the attention of my parents and siblings, Shirley and Paul, regaling them with his matchless storytelling gifts. He confessed to me that all things being equal, he might consider going to work in the family’s paint store; life seemed so sensible away from the President Hotel and its assassins. His intermezzo in Millburn had opened up new possibilities.

The March of Drama, a lecture-demonstration conducted by John Gassner, From Sophocles to Shaw, would soon approach the Elizabethans and Marlowe’s Tragical History of Dr. Faustus. I was to be Dr. Faustus, and I memorized and rehearsed the lines to myself every waking moment. Our theater was empty at this hour (only the balcony front-rail lights had been left on, and the orchestra was in complete darkness). Stand still, you ever-moving sphere of heaven! I repeated to myself as Dr. Faustus. That time may cease and midnight never come! The stars move still, the clock will strike, and Faustus must be damned! (At this moment, Marlon Brando, for no special reason, appeared on the stage, gazing at the unoccupied thronal chair where Orsino, the duke of Illyria, would sit during Twelfth Night. The duke’s cape hung on the back of the chair, the promptbook for the actor to take over for Orsino lay open and highlighted in yellow pen on the seat.) With a sudden step, Marlon picked up the cape, threw it around his shoulders, took up the promptbook, and began acting the speech of Orsino. (Marlon was playing Antonio, a much smaller part.) The written text went If music be the food of love, play on! Give me excess of it, that the appetite may sicken and so die! (We all admired Marlon’s acting in modern works, but today’s attempt at Orsino made me hold myself in the gravest of check. It took all of my wits and stamina to keep from exploding into laughter.) In Marlon’s locution, the opening speech came out as Uff myoosick beee thefooood duv luv, plaaayy yon! Give meee egsess uff it thattheee yappetight maaaysickken andd sooo die! In the darkened theater, our maestro, Piscator, happened in to audit the progress of the new Orsino. (Piscator had let Chouteau direct the play, according to his staging, and was surprised to see Marlon up there on the stage in costume and bearded makeup, saying the words of Orsino.)

Marlon repeated, Uff myoosick beeee thefooood duv luv, plaaaaay yon! Give meeee egsess uff it thattheeeyappetight maaay sikkcen annnnd sooo die! Piscator, offended by what appeared to be a major miscarriage of justice, called out like thunder, Stop! Marlon, breathless, that Piscator, unseen, was present at this ad hoc expostulation, embarrassed and terrified at the impertinence of his even mouthing the lines of Orsino, replied in the darkness, Uh, Mr. Piscator, I didn’t see you there! (Pause.)

Piscator, invisible: You don’t see me, Marlon, but I see you! Orsino’s replacement goes on this weekend! (Piscator has no inkling that Marlon is not the replacement) Vunce more from ze beginning!

Marlon clears his throat and bravely sallies into the opening lines: Uff myoosick bee the foood duv luv, plaaaay yon!

Piscator stopped him cold! Marlon! Vat iss ze first word in ze speech?

Marlon, sweating, hesitated and was not sure. "First word, Mr. Piscator, is uff!"

Piscator rose from the dark and came down to the edge of the stage where Marlon could see him. "Marlon, what is zis word uff? Would you spell ze word for me?"

Marlon pronounced the two-letter word: I-f!

"I-f! Jah, Marlon! Iss pronounced ‘if’ not ‘uff!’ ‘If music be ze food of love, play on!’ Vy does Shakespeare begin ze play viss ze word if?"

Marlon was unable to reply.

Piscator said, "He starts ze play viss ze word if because if iss ze conditional word from which Twelfth Night springs from! ‘If music be the food of love, play on!’ You see?"

Marlon, not understanding, shook his head in agreement. Piscator asked him to start again.

Marlon:

Uffff myoosick beeee the foooood duuv luv, plaaaaay yon!

Piscator:

Stop! I stand here a few feet from you, and I don’t understand vun single word! And it sounds like ze voice comes from under ze beard!

Marlon:

Mr. Piscator!

Piscator:

Enough, Marlon! Take off ze costume. You won’t play ze part!

Marlon (fighting for his life):

Mr. Piscator! You’re . . . you’re some kind of evangelist!

Piscator (furious):

Vass ist? Vass ist? Evangelist?

Piscator leaped up on the stage, and for a moment, it looked like a fifteen-round match was going to take place! Marlon backed away and yelled, I’m not going to play orsino! I’m playing antonio! Piscator stood there, beet red, his Prussian temper at the boiling point. He jumped back into the darkness and disappeared! All this proceeded before me. Piscator had no idea I was there, wrestling with Dr. Faustus, or Marlon, who replaced the promptbook on the seat and threw the cape back over the duke’s throne! As he disappeared, I stood and whispered from Marlowe, Was this the face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium? Mountains and hills, come and fall on me! No? No? Then I will charge into the ocean and be chang’d to little water drops! Adders and serpents, look not so fierce upon me! (The clock strikes.) It strikes! It strikes. Ah, Mephistopheles! I’ll burn my books!

2

Walter reappeared reinvigorated, refreshed by Millburn and home-cooking, rewarded by Chouteau placing him back into his role as Sir Toby Belch. (Due to the phone calls he made from my house, he was joyfully $10,000 ahead on a basketball game in a superb mood.) So we were again the two drunken noblemen gabbling like tinkers in an alehouse.

(On stage) Toby: Oh, knight, thou lackest a cup of canary! When did I see thee so put down?

Andrew: Never in your life, I think unless you see canary put me down. Methinks, sometimes, I have no more wit than a Christian or an ordinary man!

In a triumphant gesture, Matthau invited me around the corner on Seventh Avenue for a feast at Roth’s Grill. We began with plates of corned beef and pastrami and potato salad and coleslaw and pickles, etc. Walter started telling me how he came to acting and Piscator. "One day, about to enter the water closet on the fourth floor of East Sixth Street, where we lived, my mother Rose, my brother Hank (and occasionally my father), a good-looking young lady arrived at the door at the same instant to make an ablution. I had a handful of tissue wrappings for oranges (there was no toilet paper), so I insisted she go first and employ as many wrappings as she wished. Her name was Anna Berger. We became close friends and wrote back and forth during the war. After I was back, Anna told me she was taking classes at the Henry Street Settlement House and suggested I come along. It was about theater, acting. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do those days beside gambling. She got me interested, and I joined the classes. Anna was like a light to me. When she started going to Piscator, she asked me to audition for him, so I did a speech from Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet. Piscator walked me slowly to the door, touching my shoulder lightly, and paused, Mr. Matt-au! Ziss vass an interesting rendition of Mercutio! Viss all honesty, I think zat acting iss not your true profession. Perhaps you might excel as a clothing salesman! If I wasn’t totally demolished by his suggestion, only Anna’s telling me to audition again, but with something contemporary, so she worked with me on Tom’s speech in The Glass Menagerie, and Piscator took me! (From four-handed Klobbiash to Epic Theater.). We were sated and filled ad refilled and the conversation flowed. Leaving nothing out, tell me how you came to acting instead of the paint store. I began with the paint store. Antoinette Scudder, an elderly lady who owned most of the newspapers in New Jersey, came into the paint store to buy art supplies. One winter day, she appeared at the door, frozen, with torn jeans and a wafer-thin jacket. Mother immediately sat her down, brought her a steaming cup of tea and honey and lemon. As she defrosted, she suddenly called out loudly, Louie! (to my Dad) "I’m thinking of buying the old Sam Campbell paper mill where the kids play back by the brook and making it into a theater.