Volume CXXXIII, Number 2 September 14, 2001 f

Life Beyond the Pines
LUDWIG RANG
Staff Writer

A new series by the author of "Two Years Beneath the Pines"

Westside Story

At International House on Riverside Drive, I had a top floor room with an oblique view of the Hudson, directly overlooking Grant's Tomb.

Ludwig returned this week to Bowdoin for the first time since 1957. He appears here in front of his old home, the former Theta Delta Chi house. (Nicholas LoVecchio, Bowdoin Orient)

Quite early one morning in October '57, I climbed onto the roof to observe a tiny man-made object streaking across the sky: Sputnik, the first satellite. The Space Age had dawned.

Down below on Planet Earth, the Cold War continued unabated. Three years later, the Soviets shot down a U-2 spy plane high over Russia. This act would wreck President Eisenhower's Open Skies plan, which had been launched at a superpower summit in Geneva.

Across the hall from me lived an aspiring black actor named Roscoe Lee Browne, who would one day star in major Hollywood films with the likes of Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and John Wayne.

Roscoe, at the time, was managing the career of his friend Leontyne Price, who had just graduated from the Julliard School of Music and was destined for international stardom as an opera singer.

He and I first got talking in the chow line of the International House cafeteria. Roscoe recommended the spinach; it would 'put lead in my pencil.'

After a recital Leontyne gave at International House, I got to know her too and was invited to a party at her place in the Village. I also met her husband, William Warfield, the original Porgy in 'Porgy and Bess.'

Like so many people I was to encounter in New York, Roscoe was gay, a term not openly used yet as many people still tried to keep their homosexuality secret.

While convalescing at Harry's from my bout of hepatitis, I began exploring Manhattan. One day, while sitting by the fountain in Washington Square, I got talking to another aspiring thespian. Though actually 'Negro', as people then still said, Ronald, with smooth black hair and light skin, could have been taken for Latin American.

A passionate fan of Big Band music and band leader Stan Kenton, he also was fond of classical music. There ensued a heated argument about the different approaches to Beethoven (his favorite composer and mine too), and of conductors like Arturo Toscanini and Wilhelm Furtwängler. Furtwängler's tempi were too slow, Ron claimed. Toscanini made the Ninth sound like Big Band music, I countered.

Born and brought up on Chicago's South Side, Ron had enlisted in the Army, still segregated and, lying about his race, been assigned to an all-white unit, that was stationed, like myself a few years later, in Germany.

Having tried without success to get into the Actor's Studio of Lee Strasberg, with whom his great idol and 'method actor' Marlon Brando had studied, Ron eventually was accepted by Herbert Berghof, another great name among drama teachers at the time.

"Wish me luck," he said, on his way to an audition, as we parted.
Next day Harry and I left for Provincetown. Along with philanthropist Walter Chrysler and the German émigré painter Hans Hoffman, Harry was to judge the painting competition held annually there.

That finished, we called on Harry's old friend Leonard Bernstein and his wife Felicitas at their summer home on Martha's Vineyard. Showing us his studio over the garage, completely bare except for grand piano and cushions strewn about the floor, the composer of Westside Story explained he did his composing lying on the floor.

"So does Herbert von Karajan," I blurted out, in reference to one of my conducting idols. Lenny gave me a long and hard look. "Fuck Karajan, Ludwig." he said.

On our return, I had a surprise call from Ron, to whom I must have given Harry's number.

He asked me if I wanted to go to Coney Island with him. Borrowing Harry's car, a Chevy convertible, I went to pick Ron up at his room on the Westside. He came to the door stark naked.

Coming back from the beach, I introduced my new friend to Harry who treated him with great courtesy, but may have guessed what would happen next.

Not long after, I blithely announced I was moving to the Westside.

I'd rented a room on 71st Street, I explained, just off Central Park West (a block from the Dakota Apartment Towers where John Lennon was to live and die). Ron was to share it with me.

"I'll see you through this," Harry said, words I've never forgotten. Naturally, I felt bad about leaving him so abruptly. All the more so, in retrospect, as Harry was tragically killed when run over by a truck, aged only 58 in 1972.

Life with Ron however wasn't to be a bowl of cherries either.

My new friend was a classical Oedipal case. Ron's father, half white, had killed himself when Ron was only eight. Henceforth the light-skinned little boy, named after matinee idol Ronald Colman, shared the deserted marital bed with his black Mom, an ardent Colman fan.

Remaining on friendly terms with Harry, I used to walk across the Park to meet him at the Collection. There was such tight security at the Frick; I would be escorted up to his office by an armed guard, most of whom were Irish.

On Sundays there were concerts in the Rotunda given by famous musicians such as Wanda Landowska, grande dame of the harpsichord. Landowska used to wear elbow-length gloves that she laboriously removed before starting to play.

After such glimpses of cultured high life on the East Side, I would, without regrets, return to Ron and low life on the Westside, less cultured but more exciting.

There was only one drawback. Having dropped out of Columbia Graduate School, with my living expenses no longer paid by my sponsor old Nellie, I had to start thinking about getting a job.