Folly Beach - Dorothea Benton Frank [116]
“Then we’ll be back by lunch.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Setting: Show slides of the theater in Boston, then of the theater district in New York.
Director’s Note: Show picture of the Gershwins with DuBose at a piano and then a head shot of George.
Act III
Scene 3
Dorothy: When Porgy and Bess opened in Boston, we knew from the enthusiasm of the audience on opening night that we had a hit on our hands. Gershwin of course went out to take a bow and got a standing ovation. DuBose was there, too, standing behind him and you can hardly see him in the pictures. In any case, Boston loved it! But when the critics got hold of it they started to chew. Was it an opera? Not exactly. An operetta? Not technically. Was it a musical? Not really. The critics worked themselves into a snit trying to decide whether it was a white show or a black show and all sorts of really stupid remarks were made. Rouben Mamoulian, who was our director, summed up the bickering pretty nicely. He said, “You give someone something delicious to eat and they complain because they have no name for it.” Isn’t that the truth?
Anyway, the Boston run gave us confidence for opening in New York and there was one thing everyone agreed on—it was too long. So George began hacking away at it and in my opinion I think he destroyed a lot of its integrity. The New York run was only 124 performances. Now that’s great for an opera but not great for a musical. Needless to say, George and DuBose lost their shirts. Another problem was the segregation laws. Oh, what a mess that was, especially here in Charleston! It couldn’t be staged here until what? 1970?
Anyway, poor old George was never to know what a controversial piece of theater he created with us. He was performing in Los Angeles, working on The Goldwyn Follies, and began getting these terrible blinding headaches. He said he could smell burning rubber all the time. He thought the headaches were a result of getting hit in the head with a golf ball. He complained of being extremely sensitive to light. People thought he was just being dramatic. But then he began to have seizures. Finally, during a performance, he collapsed.
Not to get too involved in medical terminology, which I can barely pronounce, the kind of seizures he had were called automatisms, which made him do very bizarre things. During one of these seizures, he opened the door of a moving car and tried to pull the chauffeur out. He said he had no idea why he would do such a thing. Another time someone gave him a box of chocolates and he smashed them up into a pile of goop and smeared them all over his body.
Doctors finally decided he had a brain tumor and they operated on him at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. After the operation his temperature went up to almost 107 degrees and his pulse beats were almost 180 a minute. Poor George never regained consciousness and he died. He was only thirty-eight years old.
The world was robbed of his incredible genius and DuBose and I were shocked and inconsolable.
Fade to Darkness
Chapter Twenty-six
Aunt Daisy
“I forgot my purse,” Patti said.
“Where? At the hospital?”
“No, at Aunt Daisy’s house.”
“So, we’ll stop and get it. I know the alarm code.”
“Okay, thanks. I hate when I forget things. Don’t you hate getting old?”
“No, I love getting old. In fact, I don’t know which part of it I love the most. Maybe the sagging jowly thing. How about you?”
“I was thinking memory loss but on second thought I’m gonna go with memory loss.”
“Nice.”
We got back to Folly Beach and were approaching Aunt Daisy’s house just as the mail truck was pulling away.
“I’ll go get it,” Patti said.
I pulled into the driveway and parked. I got out and stretched while Patti unloaded the mailbox.
“Boy, they sure do get a load of junk! There must be fifty catalogs here.”
“Here, give me a pile of that. Ella said that ever since Aunt Daisy broke her foot she’s been ordering stuff like a crazy woman. I think they breed.”
“Oh, I see. Catalogs