Hello Goodbye Hello: A Circle of 101 Remarkable Meetings - Hardcover

Brown, Craig

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 145168360X ISBN 13: 9781451683608

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2012

Synopsis

From “one of the funniest writers in Britain—wise, clever, hilarious, and a national treasure” (Helen Fielding, author of Bridget Jones’s Diary) comes this delightful book of “101 ingeniously linked encounters between the famous and the infamous” [The Observer (London) Best Books of the Year].

Hello Goodbye Hello is a daisy chain of 101 fascinating true encounters, a book that has been hailed by reviewers in London as “howlingly funny” (The Spectator), “original and a complete delight” (The Sunday Times), and “rich and hugely enjoyable” (The Guardian). Or, as the London Evening Standard put it, “the truth and nothing but the plain, bonkers, howling truth . . . It is partly a huge karmic parlour game, partly a dance to the music of chaos—and only the genius of Craig Brown could have produced it.” Who could imagine such unlikely—but true— encounters as these:

Martha Graham meets Madonna

Igor Stravinsky meets Walt Disney

Frank Lloyd Wright meets Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe meets Nikita Khrushchev

President Richard Nixon meets Elvis Presley

Harpo Marx meets George Bernard Shaw

Cecil Beaton meets Mick Jagger

Salvador Dali meets Sigmund Freud

Groucho Marx meets T.S. Eliot

Brilliant in conception, Hello Goodbye Hello shows how the celebrated and gifted—like the rest of us— got along famously or disastrously or indifferently with one another, but, thanks to Craig Brown, always to our amusement and entertainment.

From an opening story in which Adolf Hitler survives being knocked down by a careless English driver in 1931 to the Duchess of Windsor’s meeting with the Führer over tea, and 99 others in between, Hello Goodbye Hello is the perfect example that truth is stranger than fiction (and infinitely more enjoyable).

About this title

About the Author

Craig Brown has been writing the Private Eye celebrity diary since 1989 and is a columnist for London’s Daily Mail. He has also written parodies for many publications, including the Daily Telegraph, Vanity Fair, The Times, and The Guardian. The author of several books of fiction and nonfiction, he lives in London.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

MARILYN MONROE

WEARS HER TIGHTEST, SEXIEST DRESS FOR

NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV

The Café de Paris, Hollywood

September 19th 1959

In her bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Marilyn Monroe is preparing to meet the Soviet Premier, Nikita Khrushchev. When she was first invited, his name hadn’t rung a bell, and she wasn’t keen to go. It was only when her studio told her that in Russia, America meant two things, Coca-Cola and Marilyn Monroe, that she changed her mind. ‘She loved hearing that,’ recalls Lena Pepitone, her maid. Marilyn tells Lena that the studio wants her to wear her tightest, sexiest dress. ‘I guess there’s not much sex in Russia,’ she concludes.

Her preparations are lengthy and elaborate, involving a masseuse, a hairdresser and a make-up artist. When they are halfway through, the president of Twentieth Century-Fox, Spyros Skouras, arrives, just to make sure that, for once in her life, Marilyn will be on time. As agreed, she squeezes into a low-cut, skin-tight black lace dress. Her chauffeur drops her at the studio before noon. The parking lot is empty. ‘We must be late! It must be over!’ gasps Marilyn. In fact, they are far too early.37

Nikita Khrushchev’s American tour has had more than its share of ups and downs. He is a temperamental character, apt to flair up at the slightest provocation. Perhaps because of this, the American media cannot get enough of him. ‘It’s Khrush, Khrushy, Khrushchev!’ writes a columnist for the New York Daily News. ‘The fellow’s all over the dials these days ... The pudgy Soviet dictator is smiling, laughing, scowling, shaking his forefinger or clenching his iron fist.’ Others have been less generous. A rival columnist in the New York Mirror describes him as ‘a rural dolt unwittingly proving a case against himself and his system’. The three main television networks show live coverage of his visit, repeating it every night in special thirty-minute bulletins. He is followed everywhere by 342 reporters and photographers, the largest travelling media group the world has ever known.

On the fifth day of his tour, Khrushchev arrives in Los Angeles, in time for lunch for four hundred people at Twentieth Century-Fox. There has been such demand for places that spouses have been banned unless they also happen to be stars. There are one or two couples – Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh – but they are few and far between.

Khrushchev enters a packed room. Everyone who is anyone is here: Edward G. Robinson, Judy Garland, Ginger Rogers, Kirk Douglas, Shelley Winters, Dean Martin, Debbie Reynolds, Nat ‘King’ Cole, Frank Sinatra, Maurice Chevalier, Zsa Zsa Gabor. Mrs Khrushchev is seated between Bob Hope and Gary Cooper. Conversation proves stilted.

‘Why don’t you move out here? You’ll like the climate,’ suggests Cooper.

‘No,’ replies Mrs Khrushchev. ‘Moscow is all right for me.’

Khrushchev is on the top table, next to Skouras. Lunch has its awkward moments. When Khrushchev is told that his spur-of-the-moment request to visit Disneyland has been turned down, owing to security worries, he sends the American Ambassador to the UN a furious note. ‘I understand you have cancelled the trip to Disneyland. I am most displeased.’

The after-lunch speeches are awkward. Khrushchev heckles Skouras during his speech of welcome, and further heckles Henry Cabot Lodge as he speaks of America’s affection for Russian culture. ‘Have you seen They Fought for Their Homeland?’ he yells. ‘It is based on a novel by Mikhail Sholokhov.’

‘No.’

‘Well, buy it. You should see it.’

In his own speech, Khrushchev grows very bullish. ‘I have a question for you. Which country has the best ballet? Yours?! You do not even have a permanent opera and ballet theatre! Your theatres thrive on what is given to them by rich people! In our country, it is the state that gives the money! And the best ballet is in the Soviet Union! It is our pride!’

After going on like this for forty-five minutes, he suddenly seems to remember something. ‘Just now, I was told that I could not go to Disneyland. I asked, “Why not? What is it? Do you have rocket-launching pads there?” Just listen to what I was told: “We” – which means the American authorities – “cannot guarantee your security there.” What is it? Is there an epidemic of cholera there? Have gangsters taken hold of the place?’ He punches the air, and starts to look angry. ‘That’s the situation I find myself in. For me, such a situation is inconceivable. I cannot find words to explain this to my people!’

At last he sits down. The Hollywood audience applauds. As he is being shown to the sound stage to watch the movie Can-Can being filmed,38 he recognises Marilyn Monroe and darts over to shake her hand. All wide-eyed, Marilyn delivers a line that Natalie Wood, a fluent Russian speaker, has coached her to say. For once, she gets it right first time: ‘We the workers of Twentieth Century-Fox rejoice that you have come to visit our studio and country.’

Khrushchev seems to appreciate her effort. ‘He looked at me the way a man looks on a woman,’ she recalls.

‘You’re a very lovely young lady,’ he says, squeezing her hand.

‘My husband, Arthur Miller, sends you his greeting. There should be more of this kind of thing. It would help both our countries understand each other.’

Afterwards, Marilyn Monroe enthuses, ‘This is about the biggest day in the history of the movie business.’ But when she gets back home, she has changed her tune. ‘He was fat and ugly and had warts on his face and he growled,’ she tells Lena. ‘Who would want to be a Communist with a President like that?’39

But she is pretty sure that the Premier enjoyed their meeting. ‘I could tell Khrushchev liked me. He smiled more when he was introduced to me than for anybody else at the whole banquet. And everybody else was there. He squeezed my hand so long and so hard that I thought he would break it. I guess it was better than having to kiss him.’

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 145168360X
• ISBN 13: 9781451683608
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 384