On my last day at the 2018 TCM Classic Film Festival, I was looking up the movie-star wife of a college acquaintance on IMDb and I found out my fellow alumnus had died of a heart attack about six months ago. It was reported in all the LA papers but my range in California news rarely gets south of the BART. The story made me sad but I hadn’t kept up with him and we were not really that close to begin with. It was more disturbing that the age of falling leaves seems upon me.
Indeed, most of the movies I had enjoyed at the Festival were peopled by actors and actresses that had died during my lifetime. Perhaps I had a chance to befriend them; now, I never will. It was poignant to see Eva Marie Saint show up all alone; her husband of 65 years, Jeffery Hayden, died in December. Buck Henry was there but stroke-bound to a wheel chair. Dyan Cannon pushed his chair and helped him introduce Heaven Can Wait, a story about an athlete dying too young. “It’s been 40 years?” she asked host Ben Mankiewicz in horror. “Did I say 40? No, my math skills are terrible. 20. 20 years,” Mankiewicz quickly recovered.
You learn all sorts of odd trivia at a film festival. I found out that Lee Wallace’s (87 and still breathing) splendid performance as the Mayor in the quintessentially NYC story, The Taking Of Pelham 123 was NOT based on Ed Koch. John Lindsey was still the mayor in 1974. I found out from the horse’s mouth that Billy Friedkin (all of 82) DID base Cruising on the serial murders subsequently committed by The Exorcist’s walk-on actor, as the Internet insisted. Take that, Snopes. When Nancy Olson (going strong at 89) showed up for the first day of Sunset Boulevard, the great Edith Head, told her, “Just wear your own clothes.” And, finally, according to the Dude himself (a mere infant at 67), no one knows what has happened to the peed-on carpet. Somewhere out there - - in a room well-pulled together - - the rug abides.
Someday, these wonderful people will all be buried along with so many great stories. And someday all the love that movie nerds feel for these people will be existentially unrequited. Someday, all those wonderful nerds out there in the dark will be dead, too. And then someday, the silver screen itself will be gone and you’ll be reading this on your wristwatch. Oh right, already happened.
OK, OK . . . everything dies. We know that. Film physically dies, too. We get that. All life is suffering. But consider this: last week I watched Sunset Boulevard mock the impermanence of fame in the same theater it might have premiered in 1950 with the last living member of the cast - - the hand-off of that place and time from Nancy Olson to me. It’s not the star that lives forever. It’s the moment when they nail the performance and you get it. It’s Gloria floating down the stairs, snaky armed, her crazy eyes burning into yours and then . . . the dissolve to white light. The dissolve is what lasts forever.