The Celebrity Effect

Arthur Miller & Ayn Rand

I met the playwright Arthur Miller in the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan, where it turned out we were both staying.

I’d landed up there when I was fired, in person, by my boss Tony Godwin, the Chief Editor of Penguin Books, who had sent me, their youngest editor, to find out why Penguin America wasn’t doing as well as they hoped.

I was 23, not known for my diplomatic skills, and I decided the easiest and most direct way of discovering what was going on was to ask people in the New York publishing scene for their thoughts.

Within minutes of my first interview, the editor I’d been talking to was on the phone to the guy who ran Penguin America, wondering if he knew that some dumb British kid was asking dumb questions about him. The Penguin guy rang Tony, who flew over to apologize, and fire me for putting him in such an embarrassing position. He apologized for that too, and offered to give me a reference for another job in British publishing, but after I’d recovered from the shock - what was wrong with being honest and straightforward? - I blew my nose and said I’d rather stay in New York for a while, as I’d sort of fallen in love with it.

I’d only packed for a week’s stay, I was living on expenses, it was the fall of 1964, I had no responsibilities or long-term plans other than earning enough to be a full-time author, though I had no idea whether I should try a novel or persevere as a scriptwriter, despite the cold water poured on that ambition by Don Ogden Stewart (see my earlier post). It never occurred to me that I wouldn’t get a job in New York, I knew nothing about work permits or green cards, I was full of fathomless ignorance and equally boundless confidence, and aware that my British accent was considered quite cute. Who wouldn’t want to employ a promising young editor who’d just been sacked for incompetence?

First I had to find a cheaper place to live than the old Royalton, into which Penguin had booked me, and whose most appealing feature, it seemed to me, was its ‘Magic Fingers’, an automatic massage device attached to the bed. It promised that if you put in a quarter you would be gently lulled to sleep by its soothing motion, which sounded irresistible to someone suffering from jetlag, and the aftermath of a bad oyster at my London farewell lunch that led to me being sick in a Regent Street shop where my mother was helping me choose a winter coat to equip me for my first trip to America.

I put in my quarter. The ‘Magic Fingers’ cranked into action. It was like trying to sleep on a hard bed on an old train that was constantly clacking over points. I lay there stiff, sore, and shaking long after my quarter ran out. Maybe not the best introduction to the city, but things could only get better, right? Such as getting fired.

All I knew of the Chelsea Hotel was that it was cheap, bohemian, and Dylan Thomas had died there, from the booze. The elevator was operated by a (to me) elderly gent in a shabby shiny uniform who claimed to have letters from Eugene O’Neill. I took a small room with a single bed and a grimy washbasin. I wrote letters (we didn’t have email then) to all my friends in UK publishing telling them what had happened, where I was, and if they knew anyone who might give me a job in New York.

One of them told me Arthur Miller was also living in the Chelsea and said I should use her name if I wanted to meet him. She also gave me the contact details of one of her American writers and said I might enjoy seeing her. I was in bed with her when I was offered (by telephone) a job with Victor Weybright, who had himself run Penguin America until he too was fired by Sir Allen Lane, Penguin’s founder and chairman, and set up New American Library, which rapidly became the biggest and most successful paperback publisher in America.

A pleasing symmetry there, we both thought, and when I started work I had a desk in Victor’s outer office. One day he introduced me to Ayn Rand, on their way to lunch. She was a small lady with pinched features, penetrating eyes, and a floor-length fur coat: I’d never read her work, and only knew that her views on the primacy of the individual over the collective were opposed to my own, and had made her a bestseller. She reminded me of my brief encounter with the Queen, except her hair was less bouffant, and I have remembered it because who forgets meeting a legend? Legends are memorable because of their achievements, even if you don’t rate them very highly, and seeing them in the flesh reminds you how human they are. That slight resentment most of us have about others’ successes, especially if we are not as successful as we expected to be, enables us to boast of our encounter at the same time as belittling it. It has no effect on the legend, but it makes us feel better.

In between job-seeking and sex, I dropped Arthur Miller a note and suggested a coffee in the lobby. He was the kind of writer I aspired to be, apart from having been married to Marilyn Monroe: principled, dramatizing serious issues by making the political personal, standing up for progressive causes, being venerated by respectable critics while making serious money. Our meeting lasted maybe ten minutes. He was taller than I had imagined, with serious glasses and a serious expression on a face that was furrowed rather than wrinkled, wearing (as I recall) a white T-shirt under an open-necked shirt (I wore a tie). He was courteous rather than friendly, and I couldn’t help wondering what on earth Marilyn, that goddess to all schoolboys of my generation, saw in him.

Our meeting nevertheless confirmed my ambition to be taken seriously as a playwright, and the only other time I encountered him was many years afterwards, when we both had plays on at what was then the Haymarket Theatre, in Leicester - his in the studio, mine in the main house. I saw his, which was very short - I think he’d dramatized it from a story. As far as I know he never saw mine, which was about a brass band that bumbled along perfectly happily until a newcomer tried to whip them into professional shape, which caused them to fall apart. It was called All Together Now, it required a cast of sixteen people who could play brass instruments as well as act, and it taken as a critique of Thatcher’s Britain, though all I’d intended was an affectionate portrait of my local band. It very nearly made it to London’s West End, and if it had, maybe I would have given Mr Miller a run for his money.

I lacked his seriousness, yet that brief meeting at the Chelsea somehow cast a glow, like a stained-glass window, on my time in New York, kicking off a fantastic year that ended with me being drafted into the US army with the threat of being sent to fight in Vietnam.

If you had a green card, which thanks to Victor I had easily obtained, then you’re liable to the draft. As someone in their twenties, with no ties to US voters, I was perfect cannon-fodder. I took legal advice, and was advised to say I was gay, a drug-addict, or a communist. I demurred, partly because I’m a terrible liar (I reckon my honesty caused me to be fired), and partly because I discovered that one of the conditions I had signed up to when getting my permit was that I wouldn’t seek exemption from the draft. I rather hoped they would find me unfit to fight - the only exercise I got, apart from sex, was marching on anti-Vietnam demonstrations - but to my astonishment I was classified 1A (those were desperate times).

Rather than being returned in a body bag I left America and full-time publishing to try and become a full-time writer. I may have had certain doubts about Ayn Rand and Arthur Miller, but I was inspired by their royalties.