"I Oughta Be In Pictures"
Nollson, John
"I Oughta Be In Pictures" Every now and then, General Ulysses S. Grant (U.S. Army, Retired) invites me to visit him for a drink in his condominium at Leisure Barracks. I enjoy it. I'm...
...Why, many's the night that Doug and I have refought the battles of his Pacific campaign down to the last detail, and I'll be the first to admit he taught me a thing or two about amphibious operations...
...If Robert Redford ever starred in Grant, that would sure button MacArthur's lip...
...Have you talked to Lee about it...
...By now, I thought all us military geniuses had learned how to live together...
...It is an honor moreover which has replenished a bank account Coming Next Issue: Joseph Adelson Assessing Freud's Theories Christopher DeMuth Do We Need An Agency for Consumer Advocacy...
...But he was not at ease...
...True, Doughas been played by Gregory Peck, but you are ahead of him in one significant respect...
...Fact is," Grant answered, "Bobby and I aren't speaking...
...He had brought a stenographer with him and insisted that his remarks on that occasion be recorded...
...Worst Book of the Year Award previously rendered nugatory...
...For the first time in years, he strapped on that silly pearl-handled .45 of his and challenged George Custer to an old-fashioned quickdraw shootout...
...In fact, I'm working on the screenplay myself...
...we've all had absolute command over hundreds of divisions and we know how that can swell a man's head...
...Look at George Patton...
...And yet it is an honor of not unambiguous poignancy, for this singular accolade has dissolved the substance of my immortal utterance on the fate of old soldiers...
...His feet were propped up by a pillow that rested on a case of Falstaff empties...
...I looked the place over...
...You oughts talk to Miss Dora," he said, pointing to his left and downward...
...Nick Castrogiovanni...
...Anyway, the two of you should stick together...
...Army in Italy, come back and opened the bar in 1924...
...The tiny saloon enjoys wide renown for its smooth and flavorful drinks, and that night, as always, the place was crowded...
...I can still remember Caesar fuming that Hollywood had no sense of the classical period...
...And with Eric's company and that of a blonde schoolmate I did...
...And he produced another sheaf of papers, much thicker than the first...
...He was at his most expansive...
...And with that, he produced a thick sheaf of papers...
...And he probably wanted the nomination...
...Besides," I continued, "I think you have no reason to be jealous...
...THE GREAT AMERICAN SALOON SERIES by Joseph P. Duggan Nick's Big Train Cafe At 2800 Tulane Avenue in New Orleans, across from the Dixie Brewery, stands a blighted little frame building with peeling paint and a disclaimer hung above the door: "WE DO NOT SERVE DIXIE BEER...
...Grant could make Truman himself blush...
...He really had learned how to talk turkey...
...He had begun to think of himself as a second-class citizen...
...She was outfitted complete in nurse's garb, cap and white sneakers and all...
...So I expected the usual convivial atmosphere at Leisure Barracks...
...And beneath it on an overstuffed easy chair sat a frail man, up in years...
...well, maybe Redford and Paul Newman would have been better, but we couldn't get Newman because he says it's against his political principles to play generals...
...It's this damn movie...
...It's MacArthur," Grant complained...
...Nick muttered where he wished Tex would go and he murmured Italian blandishments to the blonde...
...A towering Negro named Jimmy, wearing a white, busboy's coat four sizes too small and whose hair was buzzed like a Marine's, shook the blonde's creamy drink...
...True, Grant had been President of the United States...
...You became President of the United States, which is more than anyone will ever be able to say for MacArthur...
...It would be hard to get financial backing for the kind of project he envisioned...
...What about Prohibition, we wondered...
...Yes," Grant acknowledged, "we are a rare breed...
...I say to you: I have not died...
...A lot of people forget that...
...Oh," I responded unenthusiastically, remembering that I had finally finished reading Grant's memoirs—and had found them none too scintillating...
...I'm a civil-war buff, and the General has more than his share of yarns to spin...
...No one had ever made mention of a language called Carthaginian...
...He's become just plain intolerable since they made that movie about him...
...said Grant as he bit off the tip of a cigar and spit the piece of tobacco out onto the floor, showing outstanding coordination of teeth and tongue...
...We had no problem figuring out the co-stars who ought to play us...
...There's no doubt," I said, breaking into Grant's rendition of MacArthur's remarks, "that Doug was among the more eloquent of the generals...
...we are both Republicans...
...Joseph P. Duggan, former assistant managing editor of The American Spectator, is an editorial writer for the Greensboro [North Carolina] Record...
...We caught a lot of elbows from the crowd...
...Jimmy was sloshing more bourbon into my...
...Maybe we can still work something out," Grant concluded...
...Well, all right," he muttered...
...Wasn't enforced...
...Robert E. Lee is a large part of the story, so we will need co-stars who mesh...
...We had just seen All the President's Men and we knew that Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffmanwould be the perfect pair...
...A crapulous fat fellow in cowboy clothes who called himself Tex harassed the blonde in Cajun accents...
...Sitting beside him in a straight-backed chair and holding his hand was a hangjawed woman with big glasses tumbling over her nose...
...bellowed Grant...
...You've never seen him operate...
...Bah...
...Two ceiling fans, one missing a blade, spun over our heads...
...The nurse warned us not to get Nick too excited, and since my Weller had gone watery, I decided to inch back toward the bar...
...I have not even faded away...
...The blonde ordered a Black Velvet Smash, I a Weller and water...
...As soon as we began to discuss it, I had the worst argument of my life with him...
...Okay, sweetheart," he said, "what ya got here is the next Star Wars, a genyoowine blockbuster that's gonna rewrite all the records, ya understand...
...glass and I asked him if somebody could tell me more about the place...
...Son-of-a-yellowbellied-rebel...
...And after the news got out that President Nixon had seen the film every night for a month, there was simply no living with him...
...Can you imagine that?—especially since Robert Redford is so obviously the perfect me...
...Eric had told us how Nick, the Grand Mixmaster himself, was out of commission with a broken hip, and filling his place behind the bar we found his younger brother John, who is 82 years old...
...Maybe he'll have an idea or two...
...I couldn't blame Grant...
...Nick said he had slipped coming out of the can and broken his hip, but that wouldn't keep him laid up for long...
...I mean, we'll tolerate a little eccentricity...
...down on Poydras Street some 83 years ago, he told us...
...As it is, I have an option on Steve McQueen...
...Yes, old "Unconditional Surrender" himself was suffering from low self-esteem...
...The man has no shame...
...I began to get a sense of what was eating at Grant...
...Grant understood as much from the look of concern on my face...
...High on the wall across the room was a mural, painted in a sort of urban primitive style, of a big train...
...He organizes matinee theater parties...
...Still, I'm man enough to admit that I'm just plain jealous...
...How's that...
...24 The American Spectator December 1977...
...John P. Sisk Pornography, Censorship, and the Cult of the Wild West R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...And it's not that I'm unwilling to give another man his due...
...He even roped Hannibal and Julius Caesar into going...
...I asked...
...I have to maintain my image among a bunch of guys who have been played by the biggest stars The American Spectator December 1977 23 in the world: Rommel by James Mason, Napoleon by Marlon Brando, the Mandi by Lawrence Olivier, Lawrence of Arabia by Peter O'Toole, Dwight Eisenhower by Soupy Sales...
...Instead, the General was definitely out of sorts, far more cranky than I had ever seen him...
...It's Nick," he said, and we began to shove our way across the floor...
...They were mostly from Tulane and Loyola, flush-faced frat rats in rugby-striped alligator shirts and smooth-faced, slender girls, quiet and tastefully coifed...
...Doug strode into the billiards room, his corncob pipe giving off a whisp of smoke...
...John Nollson "I Oughta Be In Pictures" Every now and then, General Ulysses S. Grant (U.S...
...Casting," Grant went on, "is turning out to be something of a problem...
...His most recent invitation reminded me that this was indeed the time of year when President Lincoln sends him a case of his favorite Bourbon...
...Perhaps he still felt the implicit rebuke of Mark Twain's famous remark: "I would rather sleep with Lillian Russell naked than with Ulysses S. Grant in full-dress uniform...
...He'd gone overseas in the War, served with the U.S...
...he's a good leader of men, but does he really deserve all that much attention...
...asked Grant...
...I nudged Eric and pointed...
...He said: Never did I think when I was but a plebe at the Point so many decades ago that I, heir though I was to a military tradition of some meaning through my paternal forebears, might find occasion to serve this magnificent land in a manner which would bring to me an honor greater than that bestowed on any other general officer who served under the flag of our indomitable Republic—the honor of being portrayed in the cinema by Gregory Peck...
...But nowadays, he doesn't say a word about military history...
...there aren't many of your kind left...
...Anyway, it was easy enough to agree on Redford and Hoffman, but that muleheaded Bobby Lee insisted that he should be played by Redford...
...Eric, could that be...
...even at the university, I could recall no courses in the subject...
...The fool damn near blew his own foot off...
...It was a side of Grant I had never seen before...
...Sometimes I think I'm the only person around here who hasn't been seen in Panavision...
...I had often thought how wonderful it would be to be played by Robert Redford...
...his likeness appeared on coins that were available in strictly limited editions from the Franklin Mint of Philadelphia...
...John dribbled my Weller into a glass...
...What's more, I have a special problem...
...schoolchildren could recite his name in proper sequence...
...Friends and comrades-in-arms...
...It took us several minutes of determined squirming to reach the bar...
...My friend Eric Wedig had been urging me for months to come and visit Nick's...
...And both of them swore to me they would never go to another Hollywood feature—after they had been grossed out by Victor Mature's portrayal of a Roman gladiator...
...Narrow wooden slats sticky with chipping varnish made up the ceiling, and out of them poked four naked incandescent bulbs...
...Ha...
...It's science fiction they want these days, isn't it...
...It can go to a man's head, believe me...
...What's that...
...He reads Variety every week to get the latest figures on the gross receipts...
...I had not realized that Grant knew Hannibal, and I was about to ask him about something that had been on my mind since the seventh grade: We had been taught that Hannibal was from Carthage, but what language did he speak...
...Not much he can do about it, though," I said...
...You should have seen Old Blood and Guts the night George C. Scott won that Oscar for playing him...
...He also spit out a string of expletives, reminding me that his reputation for plain speaking was not undeserved...
...none of them will do for me...
...All he's interested in is his damn movie...
...You know," Grant said, "sometimes I think I would make a wonderful subject for a film epic...
...But before I could frame my question, Grant was at it again: "None of us will ever forget the world premiere of MacArthur...
...It was obvious, from just that one remark, that Grant was hopelessly out of touch with the mass taste...
...Yes, he was born right here in N.O...
...He says he'll kill himself if MacArthur doesn't do better than Patton...
...This is Nick's Big Train Cafe, a celebrated watering-hole in a city famous for its fonts of refreshment...
Vol. 11 • December 1977 • No. 2
