Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [156]
A drink in the early evening with Charles and Frank, whom we met last night. They live together in a wooden house on stilts with a fine view from the top of a hill. We drink whisky sours. Frank, whom I like a great deal, gives me a book of early Maurice Sendak drawings, not usually available. He knows Sendak apparently. However cynical one may be of this clean, bland American way of life, the people are exceptionally generous to strangers.
To bring us back to reality with a bump, we watched the first of the new Monty Python series to be shown in the States. It was the ‘Scott of the Antarctic’, ‘Fish Licence’, ‘Long John Silvers v. Gynaecologists’ programme. Strange how many of its items have become legendary, and yet looking at them, TJ and I were amazed and a little embarrassed at how very badly shot everything was. Ian really has improved but, judging by that show, he needed to. Was this really the greatest comedy series ever? Steve slept through it.
Monday, September 8th, New York
Steve wakes us at 6.10. We leave the barn just as it’s getting light – about twenty to seven.
We arrive at Grand Central Station – in dark, dingy bowels, which make Liverpool Street look like some exquisite classical drawing room – at 10.10. Spend the morning and lunchtime and afternoon working on alterations to the Fegg material, in our room at the Navarro.
At 6.00 an historic moment. After three trips and at least a dozen phone calls, I meet Al Levinson, my new American friend, for only the second time. He and wife Eve come to the apartment. Al, big, bronzed, an almost olive colour; his face, I notice, like the bust of the Greek emperor I saw today in the Metropolitan Museum, fine, firm features. He looks serious underneath it all, as though the troubles of the world hung heavy on him when he stopped to think. Anyway, the great relief is I really do like him – and we get on easily, without infatuation on either side.
Nancy arrived to join us, so quite an impromptu party got under way before myself, Al and Eve left to have a look at Al’s new house in Gramercy Park, which is right in the heart of nineteenth-century New York. They both clearly love it. The apartment is small, but in a four-storey brownstone which stands on its own, next to a Quaker chapel of the 1860s which has a preservation order on it.
We wound up at Nancy’s drinking wine till after midnight. Met Dave Hermann, DJ of WNEW’s morning show – he promised to wake me in the morning. He tells the story of how he was playing the ‘Fairy Story’ from the Pythons’ second German show on the air and managed just in time to bleep the word ‘tits’. (These progressive stations still have to be careful – after all, they’re spending advertisers’ money.) Then a phone call came through and Dave left the record playing only to hear, as he was winding up the phone call, ‘Because she’s a fucking princess.’
Tuesday, September 9th, New York
Listened to DH’s early-morning programme. Sure enough, at 9.45 he told his audience that somewhere in NY MP and TJ of Monty Python were waking up. He played some music for us, which was very kind and silly.
To Sardi’s restaurant, where we had a truly appalling meal, but did meet Arthur Cantor, a Broadway impresario with a fine sense of the absurdity of it all.
Cantor talks straight and doesn’t try to impress. He would like to know if the Pythons are interested in a stage show in New York at the City Center Theater for three weeks starting April 11th 1976. The theatre is owned by the City of New York, it’s old and has an ornate interior and a seating capacity