Ben Stein's Diary: Guys and Dolls and Angels
Stein, Benjamin J.
STEIN kfr: by Benjamin J. Stein Guys and Dolls and Angels Thursday H ere I am in Washington, D.C., hurtling along North Capitol Street in my rented Buick to a conference at the Catholic...
...And so am I. Why...
...But on the other hand, Williams College, where my father went, shows a lot of interest in him, and I don't believe it's sectarian any longer...
...In the group was beloved Rabbi Lyle Fishman, the rabbi who spoke at my mother's funeral and who hosts my father's faithful visits to the synagogue...
...Sunday afternoon, after I finished bicycle riding on Santa Monica beach, I called my wife to check in...
...Just stunning...
...Read...
...He is such a great guy that he does not mention an obvious fact: the rabbis are much more, shall we say, corpulent than the priests and sisters...
...The audience is assumed to know how to play craps, what the Salvation Army is, what a marker is, what Ovaltine is, what Rogers Peet is...
...Ben, read...
...But has anyone else from Columbia shown any interest in me...
...I beg your pardon...
...I was taken as a five year old to see Guys and Dolls, the Broadway show, when it came to Washington's National Theater in 1950...
...By quarter four, our coach, a foreign fellow with a foreign name, was yelling and screaming like a madman at our boys...
...She was just sick a short time and died en route to the hospital...
...But when I think of that angel and her frail, beautiful Mom, and the father sitting so silently in the living room, I really have a hard time catching a breath...
...He played well, even daringly, as we lost 5-3...
...Chris Gersten has founded a group he calls Institute for Religious Values to try to get out the message that Jews are for life, but he's up against a giant media monolith...
...The deal with Dana was that we could have her at our beck and call—at a very, very high rate of pay but worth every last dime of it—if she could bring with her on every occasion her little daughter, to whom she was fanatically devoted...
...Charlie is about as friendly and kind a man as I know...
...I can say with perfect assurance that no human in our house has ever been as happy to see me come through the door as that child...
...That's what it's all about...
...A man from Columbia who reads this journal asked for a memoir of my times there for the alumni mag, which I did...
...To be able to buy one's clothing all of the time at the Brooks Brothers Man's Shopthat would be bliss...
...On the fifth floor was the "346 Shop," for young executives on the way up, suitings, shirtings, and trouserings slightly more expensive than at the University Shop...
...The truly successful out here wear clothes from Giorgio, where the silk handkerchiefs cost as much as a suit at Brooks Brothers...
...My wife and I played bridge night after night and lived like hippies while still learning from great profs like Bob Bork and Larry Simon...
...Then she got pregnant, and at the same time, her husband changed jobs and got a much higher paying position as a headhunter...
...I am not sure...
...Saturday B ack in L.A...
...After a long rest I went out to Pepper-dine to have dinner with a group of friends of the school...
...He cried but also showed extremely bad sportsmanship after the game...
...Good health...
...77 How I used to love Brooks Brothers...
...Every time I'm on campus, friendly faces greet me by name...
...It seems so obvious to me that life is sacred, but I guess it's not clear to many powerful men and women...
...In the Nixon White House, I worked among the finest, most concerned people in America...
...Again, I am paraphrasing...
...Is this because Pepperdine is a Christian college...
...She was, in short, an angel...
...He's a handsome, approachable rogue, and I was delighted to see him in our number...
...The audience was extremely polite, as always, and I felt glad to be there...
...After all, he's ii...
...In quarter one, while the Puppy-Wuppy and I watched, Tommy missed several plays...
...Not one bit...
...Even then, even at the overture, I could tell I was about to see something great...
...Parents who love you...
...Free from material cares...
...Tory will be buried on Friday...
...Two weeks ago, as you will recall, he was being charged at by a larger than life Mexican-American boy who obviously knew soccer the way Tommy knows video games...
...Amazing as it might seem, I have never been to CU before...
...We ate in a lovely dining room, the very same room where I heard Kenneth Starr give a speech years ago...
...But you played well...
...The pride of a parent is a sloppy, overflowing thing...
...Value and solidity...
...How I cherished it...
...This was a great era in the creation of fantasy...
...About three years ago, I wrote in a magazine that I needed an assistant...
...Her husband, Vince, was also young...
...What an amazing experience...
...Dana's church group has filled her home with flowers and food...
...In that situation, when you terminate that life, you are killing a unique creation of God's...
...His Evita is one of the only truly great shows of the last generation...
...But I was never here until today when I am speaking to a group of mostly orthodox rabbis and a few priests and sisters about Right to Life...
...That's just how I felt when the show started tonight...
...It was the height of the half decade of love...
...I owe them in many ways...
...She talked for an hour and her husband sat in a chair across from me and just looked as if his soul had been stolen...
...I really love Pepperdine...
...This is forbidden by God's commandments...
...Nobody gives me a hard time about having worked for Nixon...
...They were patient with my shenanigans...
...I have a new talk show pilot starting next week, and tomorrow I am off to be the host of the Western Cable Show with John Malone...
...She was just a little angel, and every family that has a little girl who behaves like a doll knows her...
...I was so excited for him...
...Wlady is very kindly keeping me company...
...We readily agreed, and for about eighteen months or maybe more, Dana and her daughter, Victoria, lived in our house for most of the day: she picked up Tommy at school, brought him to soccer, brought him to Subway for his monster sandwiches, brought him to his handwriting class, to chess, and then sat with him while he did his homework...
...He cried and limped, but refused to be evacuated...
...Still, when I heard that line about "the breakfast-eating Brooks Brothers type," I went into a spin indeed...
...It's a game...
...We are playing the best team in our division...
...The folks there smile and show interest and follow through...
...The salesmen were all pale, highly deferential Irishmen, often smelling ever so slightly of gin, eager, oh, so eager to please...
...When I lay down for my endless naps, she would try to climb up on my lap while holding a book, and when she couldn't, she would say, in a soft voice, "Help me, Ben...
...Our team, the Green Hornets, was in a poor situation earlier in the season...
...That's been two days ago now...
...John Raitt, yes, the famous John Raitt, sang "More I Cannot Wish Ya" so touchingly I thought my seat neighbors and I would drown in tears...
...There was lavish carpeting to go with the suiting and shirting and trousering...
...Yes, in the cruel chambers of Hollywood, I have found that there is warm, concerned, non-jealous blood pumping in many a heart...
...The games are over at a huge field near the Fox lot...
...Suits are for servants, like a sort of livery...
...I taught over a hundred students there, and except for my students no one ever said good-bye...
...Off at an early hour with Tommy to play soccer...
...Now, we have a musical like Stomp, where men—grown men—bang on trash can lids for over an hour...
...I would read her a page and she would hand the book back to me and say, "Read, Ben...
...She was never at Morton's...
...She died of a sudden viral infection that basically demolished her lungs...
...But I am far and away the most famous grad of that class...
...I spoke sharply to him about good sportsmanship...
...Tory will be in heaven with Ginger and other angels...
...The powers that be invite me to event after event...
...Susan is amazingly easy to talk to and to look at...
...They gave me a lavish scholarship...
...Then, now that I think of it, across 44th Street there was J. Press, much, much smaller, but also with lavish clothing, and endless, magnificently worked ties with little whirls and whorls on them...
...The show was totally professionally sung, danced, and costumed...
...On the entrance hall wall of my frat house (Alpha Delta Phi) were photos of three men from the early nineteenth century...
...Not a bit except to ask for money (and I am happy to give it...
...Is it because the rabbis (and I) lack discipline about what we eat...
...ly clear-cut to the orthodox...
...After Yale I taught at American University in Washington, D.C...
...He got tripped many times and came up playing every instant...
...I should know...
...There was not much for me to add when I spoke at the lunch...
...You have little to complain of...
...I realized as I said it that my father had said the same thing to me while I was bitching and moaning about not winning enough games on my show...
...But by quarter two, he was really into it...
...Monday L et me tell you about a little angel going home to the rest of the angels, and this is a story that takes place in Los Angeles, but has nothing to do with Hollywood...
...I often drive by the lovely campus at Ward Circle, but I have never heard a single peep from the folks at the Communications Department of AU...
...I got a letter from a lovely red-headed housewife in the San Fernando Valley offering her services...
...I sat through a small part of a morning session in which one rabbi brought me to tears...
...I went to Yale Law School and had a great time there...
...This would go on most of some afternoons...
...Tommy's man kept getting away from him and the other boy who was guarding him...
...Then, the holy of holies, the Man's Shop, where suits might have been as much as $250, or maybe I have it wrong and they were $15o...
...Something to do with spitting, which I will not even repeat because it's too disgusting...
...There's something to be said for styles that stay the same...
...sent me into a spin of thought and feeling comparing the 1950's and today.44 It was wine and roses every week, with lavish orgies that would have impressed Larry Flynt...
...A rabbi said that Jews were letting the most reform and worldly rabbis and laymen speak for them, when really Jewish law protecting life is extremeBENJAMIN J. STEIN is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Hollywood and Malibu...
...The daughter was at first crawling and would crawl over to me as I lay in bed and climb up on my chest and just stare at me...
...Then on floor six, as I recall, was the University Shop, with slightly thinner, much less expensive suits, jackets, "shirtings," and trousers...
...I want Tommy to go there...
...I have a fairly well-known name in securities law and securities fraud...
...Ninety-nine percent of the time, though, her mother, who really is more beautiful than any movie star I know of, would read to her, play games with her, feed her, and soothe her when she became over-tired and cried...
...Alas, despite everyone's best efforts, the other team was just too good for us...
...Alex and I went to see Dana and her husband yesterday out in the Valley, very far from Beverly Hills...
...Pepperdine was smart enough to rent sets and costumes from the not-currently-working road show of the musical...
...He just saw that Victoria was an angel and He called her to Him...
...If anyone doubts the serious devolution of modern culture, I refer him to Guys and Dolls and then to any modern musical...
...She told us she was not mad at God...
...Today is different...
...My old girlfriend, Pat, went to Library Science School here from which she got her great job at the IMF...
...As always, everyone was friendly and outgoing...
...I have very sad news," she said...
...He's a defensive back, and although he usually starts slow, he kicks more than his share of balls away from our goal...
...I was a pretty good student there, and more than that, my parents paid full tuition and room and board...
...I think I'll call my Morn tomorrow and tell her all about this show," I thought...
...When I went off to Columbia, my roommate David Paglin, my dear friend Stuart Reynolds, and I would wander the floors of Brooks Brothers inspecting the merchandise, rarely able to afford anything...
...Morgan in suits with vests and watches hanging from chains taking a few weeks off each year from credit analysis to weave herringbone suits for their fellow plutocrats...
...I love Pepperdine...
...Chow...
...He worked two jobs to support Dana and their baby, a lovely little blond-headed child named Victoria...
...Two weeks ago, Dana took off for a time to have another baby...
...You are as handsome as anyone could be...
...Anyway, I added, "And in the great game of life, you are winning, winning, winning...
...Events happen, and lead to other events...
...They can run, pass, do great headers, operate like a team...
...and had an astoundingly good time there...
...No such luck...
...whether I was alive or dead...
...Times were lush and the living was easy...
...In fact, Bill Clinton would envy the times I had...
...Real human feelings come in and out and good values such as love and faith in God are reinforced...
...The Nixon family has treated me like gold throughout my life since I met them...
...I talked for a long time to Tom Hatton, a radio personality here whom I listen to faithfully and appreciatively on KNX talking about Hollywood...
...In 1959 or 196o, when I was still in high school, my father came back from a trip to New York with a Boys' Shop blue oxford cloth Brooks Brothers shirt...
...I was also impressed, as I always am, at how sophisticated the references, story line, and jokes of Guys and Dolls are...
...We have Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk—or maybe I have it backwards—which is largely just, well, noise and funk...
...When she learned to walk, she wouldwalk down to the little room I use as a writing office and grab my arm, hand me a book of Babar the Elephant, and say, "Read, Ben...
...I know I've told you this before...
...And no, it's not Andrew Lloyd Webber's fault...
...The Brooks Brothers," we used to call them...
...She's going to have to be twice as cute...
...On the other hand, I developed a body of criticism and analysis of media that has since been copied nationwide:looking for the implicit political messages of movies and comparing those views with the views of the powers of Hollywood...
...The performers are more or less perfect...
...But has Yale showed any interest in me since I left...
...In Hollywood, supposedly a spiders' nest of cunning and viciousness, I have made lasting friends, including some of the most upright, trustworthy people I have ever known: Al Burton, Norman Lear, Michael Chinich, George Diskant, Gary Salt, Michael Davies, Andrew Golder, Anne Miller, Terry McDonnell, DeAnne Barkley, and many others have been there for me every inch of the way...
...I can't recall the name right now for those little marks—oh, yes...
...She worked for me for about a year and a half...
...Tommy got kicked badly in the shins, and was only partly protected by his shin guards...
...No one shows jealousy because I have a career in Hollywood...
...When one compares modern fantasy making with the creations of the 1950's, it's as if the barbarians not only breached the gates, but took over the stages and cam54 February 1999 • The American Spectator eras and started to make barbaro-pix instead of real drama...
...The sets were perfect...
...But, wow, do we have a struggle...
...Charlie Runnels treats me like a long lost brother every time I see him...
...That happened very frequently, and Victoria's crying was a leitmotif of our household...
...Whatever the reason, Pepperdine people are enthusiastically interested in me, and I am likewise interested in them...
...The school was extremely kind and generous to me in many different ways...
...When our team won, the whole parental cheering squad gave Tommy a shout, and our coach told Tommy he was outstanding player of the game...
...That woman's name was and is Dana Madsen...
...She watched him practice soccer and called out, "Tom, Tom" for an hour at a time...
...As we rode back to our still unlivable manse in Beverly Hills, I said to him, "Tommy, this was one game...
...And I would help her and read to her...
...It matters not whether you win or lose, my boy, but how the game is played...
...The bosses wear jeans and sneakers...
...They also have a big forward who is rarely able to be contained...
...I think Thomas Arnold said that...
...My wife or I would say, "Ginger's gone away," and Tory would run over to Ginger's brass urn and hold it and say, "This is Ginger...
...She was a hard-working, well-organized woman named Tina...
...When I stopped teaching there in 1972, I never heard another word from them...
...But of academic places, only one has shown any heart: Pepperdine...
...He was running and really trying to get his foot on the ball...
...Except that one angel will be AWOL...
...I'd like to try to explain why...
...My frat brothers were the greatest but as an entity, the school might as well have been a stone...
...As Wlady said long ago, "Life is personal, not political...
...I cannot recall his exact words, but he basically said, "Even if you believe a fetus is not quite a full human yet, it is about to become a unique, original human being and no other human will ever be quite like him or her again...
...On the first floor on Madison Avenue were fine socks, shirts, and Peal shoes...
...But instead, he slid into the ball, blocked it, knocked it out, and also tripped the Hispanic lad and sent him flying...
...After American, I went to the Santa Cruz campus of the University of California...
...A spectacular future and a brilliant present...
...When Ginger died, Tory went from room to room in our house saying, "Ginger, Ginger...
...There is something to be said for a world where men dress like men and not like little boys...
...The audience is assumed to know what Brooks Brothers is, what Scarsdale is, what it means to eat breakfast...
...I once offered to conduct a seminar there for free about the lessons of the Drexel fraud and to invite lawyers who disagreed with me for a fuller picture...
...As I said, this story is about angels and has nothing to do with Hollywood...
...They told me about Tory's last moments, when she coughed and asked her Mom, "Mommy, help me," the way she used to ask for help finding a book, and then how she simply stopped breathing and her eyes dilated and the hospital did their best, but nothing could be done...
...Jews are extremely persistent and articulate, he said, and Jews should take the lead in protecting life, not in killing it...
...The kid was bearing down on Tommy and I would not have blamed him a bit if he flinched...
...Has Columbia ever shown me the slightest interest, shown any alertness about44 Chris Gersten is trying to get out the message that Jews are for life...
...I sat in a chair and cried and could not talk, and since then I have felt as if I could not breathe most of the day...
...And still is...
...04 The American Spectator • February 1999 55...
...I have been teaching there since 1985...
...Fortunately, the conference is about something far more weighty than weight—life...
...Ray Price, Dave Gergen, Peter Flanigan, above all, John Coyne and Aram Bakshian, were great friends and truly supportive...
...I talked a little about how if a hundred rabbis put an ad in Variety urging the Jewish community in Hollywood to speak out in favor of life, that would have a big impact on the media's treatment of the sanctity of human life...
...I was tempted to simply remove Tommy from the game altogether...
...That famous song, "I'll Know When My Love Comes Along," with the line, "You have wished yourself a Scarsdale Galahad, the breakfast-eating Brooks Brothers type...
...But I had to leave because the head of my college there was such a racist and very bad guy...
...Tina decided to quit...
...That is, in the warm, protected, sheltered groves of academe, the people running the academy tended to be soulless, to pay little attention to the individual, or at least to me...
...That's about as much interest as the school, except for Professor Lowell Harriss, showed in me when I was there...
...And tell Victoria we miss her...
...I keep expecting to open the door and see her there with her Babar book saying, "Ben, read...
...When things have calmed down a bit, just call me and we'll all come see you...
...She did not have an agent...
...Paisley...
...Largely thanks to the fine defensive play of Tommy Stein though, the team has improved dramatically...
...Definitely, the kindness of Pepperdine people has to do with the fact that they have decent values and revere ethical behavior...
...Victoria who...
...But she recommended to us a fellow member of her church who needed work...
...She also loved Tommy, and would follow him every step he took...
...Did anyone even answer my letter...
...Except for coming with Dana to watch me do my show and bring me stomach medicine, she was never on a stage or a studio lot...
...She was excited and jazzed with the joy of now having twochildren...
...Do they invite me to speak there...
...Brooks Brothers clothes seemed to me to be the emblem of success, making it in the big wide world, solid accomplishment, and material plenty...
...When I came home from my show or from a commercial or from anywhere, Tory would meet me at the door and say, "Hi, Ben...
...Meanwhile, in places that the ordinary citizen might think were cruel and tough, I found kindness and care...
...Tommy was crushed and blamed himself for the loss...
...She did not know the good tables or the names of the captains at Mr...
...I didn't bring him there to be yelled at by someone from another country...
...52 February 1999 The American Spectator However, Tommy was fully into it, so I let him stay...
...Then I talked for a long time to Susan Runnels, daughter of Pepperdine's chancellor, Charlie Runnels...
...When I heard that Dana had her new baby, I called her...
...They allowed me to be valedictorian of my class...
...Actually, he plays and I watch...
...Victoria has died...
...And I know that I still have to smile at my new baby and make her smile," she said as she held Sydney, her lovely two-week-old girl...
...She was in her early twenties, spectacularly pretty, with perfect Irish features, lively, intelligent blue eyes, and stern, frowning lips when Tommy needed a frown...
...Dana looked even more frail and beautiful than ever in her red pajamas...
...Victoria loved our dogs, the ancient hound Ginger most of all...
...Start with the fact that I went to Columbia College, the undergrad part of Columbia University...
...Little did I dream that when I moved to Hollywood, Brooks Brothers clothing would be considered sturdy and appropriate for an accountant or a junior clerk...
...Not one bit...
...Gosh, it gave me a huge pull at my heartstrings to recall walking up to the second balcony with my Mom and Dad...
...Dana will come back to sit with Tommy and play with Sydney and life will go on...
...I wish him well in his and my quest...
...Living in a free country...
...You lost it...
...Our faith tells us that...
...I still love a well-tailored suit, and I still feel good when I walk into Brooks Brothers...
...There were also some very dicey calls from the referee, but we do not want to blame him...
...There, the lights were low...
...After dinner, we went over to beautiful Smothers Theater for a student performance of Guys and Dolls...
...Tory is going to go crazy with that competition," I used to tease Dana...
...Dana's daughter, Victoria," Alex said...
...There are boys from my class who've made more money than I have, one of them vastly more...
...Smart...
...It was wine and roses every week, with lavish orgies that would have impressed Larry Flynt...
...No one on the faculty or in the administration ever showed me the slightest hint of human kindness...
...The clothes themselves were solid, immaculately well worked, "in our own workrooms," as they used to say— conjuring up an image of bankers from J.P...
...Then many rabbis talked about how misunderstood the Jewish position on Right to Life was...
...STEIN kfr: by Benjamin J. Stein Guys and Dolls and Angels Thursday H ere I am in Washington, D.C., hurtling along North Capitol Street in my rented Buick to a conference at the Catholic University Law School...
...Number eleven, he is, and a brute of an n year old...
...I had a great time in the film society...
...We even have "classics" like A Chorus Line, in which selfishness and self-obsession are praised, not criticized...
...I asked, not dreaming for an instant that it could be anyone I knew at all well...
...His wife, The American Spectator February 1999 53 Amy Jo, is like an older, kind sister...
Vol. 32 • February 1999 • No. 2
