Father's Day

Never use the same word twice in any Thank You note,” my father said. He was sitting at the big wooden desk in his bedroom in his pajamas and robe. My parents were deeply in love. They had a powerful allegiance to each other’s talents and ambitions. But my father’s most profound devotion was to spiritual and political causes. Every script he wrote, every picture or play he wrote and produced, was about a cause. From Oscar-winning Boys Town about Father Flannigan who rescued abandoned boys, to Sunrise at Campobello, about FDR’s rise from polio to the Presidency. Each story was about accountability and commitment.

On weeknights, writers would come for dinner, then gather in the den to edit and work out scripts. And on Sunday evenings, it was all family and close friends. Everything in this time of my life now reminds me of my parents. Last night there was a powerful wind conducting the palm trees, the branches waving with a smashing rustle. Reminding me of the sound of my mother’s long full emerald green taffeta skirt. She’d reach and pound at the piano keys until it was time for dinner.

Her nights really began in her room where she’d sip at sherry, read books, and tell me stories I was never supposed to know.

My father’s day began early. As screenwriter he’d be in his robe finishing scenes to give to Lucy, his secretary at the studio. He wrote the way he taught me to write, on yellow legal paper pads with palm tree green lines. You wrote on these pads because whatever lawyers said was meant to be true. And you wanted a scene to be true. Even if you made it up, you felt you were there. He also wrote with yellow Ticonderoga pencils with the double green band by the eraser. He had a big sharpener and because he wrote fast, he’d start the morning by spearing six or seven pencils right away.

“Isn't it faster to type?” I’d asked him once.

“Yes but a great writer told me, when I interviewed him for the New Jersey paper I worked on, to write with a pencil or a pen, because your brain picks up the rhythm, the beat or voice of a character, the pace and feel of where you’re going. It gives your work action and character.” He loved the word character.

Writing by hand made sense. I couldn’t imagine Gene Kelly dancing on a motor boat.

My godfather Leonard Spigelgas was also a screenwriter. His best friend then was Gore Vidal. They both were sleek and funny in a crisp and stylish way. If I wrote three pages of a story, I could sometimes read aloud to them at dinners. My best friend Josie had that sharp voice like her father Herman Mankiewicz. This was the New Yorker magazine voice you could not fake. I tried to practice writing a story about Jane Fonda and Maria Cooper who rode horses to school, but Mr. Vidal said “I’d rather hear a story you’re not supposed to tell. Maybe something about your friends’ parents.” He lifted one eyebrow and gave me quirky smile. I could’ve written about how Josie and I had spied on Marlon Brando changing into his toga for his role as Mark Anthony. We saw him without any clothes on at all.

My life goal each day was in some way to please my father, to get his attention, to be the object of his smile. My father was sometimes distracted, but he listened well, a rare gift in Los Angeles. He was deeply private and capable of keeping secrets, which is why many stars trusted him; he fought for their rights, something very unusual. Stars were often treated as merchandise. My father was more of a consultant, someone you could confide in and turn to. I remember his top five message pictures. He was taunted for making them definitively liberal. Part of my father’s appeal was the way you felt at ease with him. He had a certain shyness. He was embarrassed by four letter words and rough guy jokes, horrified by prejudice and immorality.

I never slept well as the asthma medication kept me awake, so the nights were of more interest than school. On one night I heard the furry heft of a Chrysler limo coming up the driveway. I ran down the hall to the wide steps and opened the front door. There was Montgomery Clift struggling out of the car in a white terry cloth robe covered with blood. I felt my father’s hand on my shoulder.

“Jill,” he said, “I’m here.” As I turned to go back inside I saw my father put his arm around Mr. Clift. “Monty, what’s happened, come inside.”

This was how my father was. As an esteemed storyteller he never turned away; he was a caregiver and listener. I remember watching as he’d get ready and go to MGM as a writer or to RKO, running it for Howard Hughes. He'd dress with a sports coat and a tie and his manner was easy and open. He'd smile as I watched him in the mirror. But when he became head of MGM, he was a different actor. He wore suits and combed his hair in the strict manner of command for this office. He’d see me watching and smile over his shoulder. It was a new role, but it never changed him.

When I was at Stanford to study design, so I could write for Vogue one day, I called my father and told him I hated the rules, the structure, the control of having to work a sewing machine.

“Jill,” he said, “Go sit under the redwood trees and write a story you need to tell.”

I wrote and wrote, turned in three stories and was accepted into the writing class.

“When you feel helpless,” my father said, “you pick up a pen or a pencil and start to write.”

When I was writing my first novel Perdido, I lost the sense, the voice of one of the main characters. I called my father.

“So,” he said, “tonight, write the character a letter, tell her what you’re missing. Put the letter under your pillow with a pencil, a Ticonderoga of course, next to the bed, and a yellow pad. Then,” he added, “when you wake up, don't wait. Write down what you feel, what you see, all you have from that last dream. And what you need will be there.”

He was right.

A couple of years ago, someone suggested I should write about my father. I wasn’t sure how to write real; to go into the deep devotion, the gifts he’d given which I find in my son and daughter, in my grandchildren—the inspiration of an eternal compassion.

My father had passed away forty years before, but I wrote him a letter.

“How would it be if I write about you? Tell your story?”

I put the letter under my pillow. The next morning I woke up from a dream: I was in this huge auditorium, the kind where my father would address the ACLU or the ADL or the Academy…one of his favorite causes.

He was walking from the podium toward me wearing a grey herringbone sports jacket I had never seen before. It was unbuttoned, his arms wide, a fine smile on his wonderful face!

I laughed as I caught the dream close. A new book needs a fresh “jacket.” I can tell my father’s story. Yes.