Dear Sweetie:
This is the old man’s last long journey anywhere except perhaps to the cemetery. Every citizen should be compelled by law to take a trip abroad—all expenses paid—so as to know how to vote.
Skelton is a big hit at the Palladium notwithstanding all manner of handicaps. It is a hot June with all kinds of sports events going, and Danny Kaye failed to introduce him (as is the hitherto unbroken tradition) on Sir Danny’s last night at the Palladium. Tell me, honey, is it possible for any man to be bigger than himself? And is momentary glory too precious to be shared with a fellow American and a fellow trouper? It is quite true that we cannot share personal grief, but we can and should share happiness or success.
Gene
P.S. It is not true that I have been knighted.
When they got back, Red bought Gene a car to say his thanks, but Gene would have none of it. He clung like a limpet to his ramshackle jalopy, growling: “I didn’t go to London with you for a present, but because I’m a friend.”
Gene wasn’t around to help when Red and his wife, Georgia, took their son, Richard, on his last, long journey to see the world after doctors at UCLA Medical Center told them the boy was doomed with leukemia. The British press venomously accused Red of publicity seeking in taking Richard to see the Pope. The boy read the papers and realized for the first time that his illness was fatal. Wounded to the heart by the stories, Red brought his family home to Brentwood, to wait for the inevitable. Gene was one of the pallbearers at Richard’s funeral. Mickey Cohen was among those at the ceremony.
I was working in a television studio next to Red’s soon after that day. In the corridor he said shyly: “Do you suppose you could do something for me, Hedda?”
“Anything, Red.”
“My wife is mourning, just as I am. I get home tired from working and burst into tears, and so does she. She says everybody knows how I feel but nobody thinks of her. Could you write something about her, how she’s having a bad time, too?”