Lucy’s neighbors are Mary and Jack Benny, who’ve never changed marriage partners or their way of life. Jack doesn’t stop working; Mary, like Gracie Allen, refuses to set foot on a TV sound stage again.
Up the street, you find Jeanne Crain and Paul Brinkman and their six children, all happy as hooligans. Better look sharp as you pass or you’ll trip over roller skates, a tricycle, or a baseball bat on the sidewalk.
Next door is a house of sorrow—Rosemary Clooney and her five children live there with no husband or father to guide them. José Ferrer moved out. Also on this street are the Ira Gershwins; the Thomas Mitchells; Aggie Moorehead in the house where Sigmund Romberg used to make music and feed us every Sunday night. In this block, too, stands the Spanish house where Liz Taylor lived with her parents when she was making National Velvet, too young to be interested in men or even boys.
Then I pass what was once the home of Sir Charles and Lady Mendl, a monstrous Spanish affair that Elsie Mendl made over into a thing of beauty. Never was an off-color joke allowed to be told when she was present. Ludwig Bemelmans, who had a Rabelaisian sense of humor, repaid her hospitality by adorning the powder-room walls with some outrageous pictures. She took one horrified look and ordered the walls repainted immediately. Elsie, ninety-five pounds of energy, fun, and good taste, received Sir Charles in her bedroom only after she had granted him permission via his valet.
Charles and I used to walk by the mile together, apparently the only residents of Beverly who applied their legs to such purpose. Though he’d known seventeen European monarchs in his day—including the Duke of Windsor, whom Charles didn’t much care for—he steadfastly turned down my pleas for him to write the Mendl memoirs.
Charles earned his knighthood as press attaché to the British Embassy in Paris when Ramsay MacDonald was Prime Minister. MacDonald, unsophisticated as a newborn baby, fell into the clutches of a wise and beautiful woman. He was indiscreet enough to write her letters that a schoolboy would have blushed over. The problem was how to recover them without scandal or the outlay of a mint of money.
Someone thought of Charles Mendl, who had a way with the ladies and adored them one and all. He was delighted to accept the assignment. The lady was so pleased with him that she produced the letters for them to read together, roaring with laughter. She presented them to him as a souvenir of many happy hours, and she collected a few thousand pounds for her trouble. The Empire was saved; Charles was knighted.
* * * * *
No wonder psychiatrists flourish in our town. There are nearly two hundred of them. Bedford Drive and Roxbury Drive, where their consulting rooms are concentrated, are known as Libido Lane and Couch Canyon. Louis Mayer once had his whole family analyzed by the same woman. I went to her once to see how she’d react to my being a patient.
“You’d have me on the couch in nothing flat,” she said. “Out you go.” I went.