To New York by Concorde, three hours
of flying so high, you feel you’re between heaven and hell, and with no jet-lag - the only way to travel.
Concorde’s superstructure is timelessly beautiful. No hideous graffiti here - remainder of the fleet please take not. Walking the streets of Manhattan, you feel like an extra in a harrowing scene from Blade Runner. Rain fell constantly and a heavy greenish pallor hung over the smoggy city like watercress soup - no so much the Darling Buds of May as Escape from Alcatraz. But the relentless, horrible weather does little to diminish the New Yorker’s joie de vivre. They all thrive on attending three or four events every night. Truly a city of hyperactive insomniacs.
American’s gone Viagra crazy. No New York dinner party is complete without an enthusiastic discussion of the wonder drug.
They say it must be swallowed quickly to avoid getting a stiff neck. But for some it’s not all moonlight and roses. Several of my female friends, past the hormonal high that comes with gilded youth, confessed that their husbands’ long-dormant libidos bursting once again into full bloom has caused them to reach for the headache pills. Have we let slip the dogs of war for yet another battle for the sexes. Surfing the morning chat shows, I’m horribly fascinated by the dysfunctional weirdos dominating American’s airwaves. On Jerry Springer’s squawk show, few of his quests are not circumferentially challenged, or indeed mentally. In their clownish costumes of tight leggings, baggy T-shirts and enormous trainers they are real life Dumbos.
Nothing seems too gross to shock any more. ‘My pimp runs my family’, ‘I made love to my mother’s boyfriend while she watched’ and ‘I’m 12 and have unprotected sex’ are just some of the salacious subjects that help to sell Americans their Shredded Wheat.
But I must confess it’s riveting television watching these grotesques air their dirty linen. They seem to let it all hang out, but the unwritten law of political correctness still reigns supreme. Although dozens of subjects are considered politically incorrect, it seems that bad language and discussion of bodily functions are not, and on Mr Springer’s show nothing is left to the imagination. Unfortunately it’s spreading. Last month at the BAFTA awards a so-called comedian informed those of us in the audience, ‘I’m so nervous, my pants are full.’ What a charming visual image.
I was admonished for smoking in the crush bar of the Haymarket recently - ‘Oh dear, that’s so politically incorrect,’ a famously fragrant lady tut-tutted. The following night I saw on television several homosexuals (I guess that word’s acceptable) discussing the delights of cruising Hampstead Heath at night in search of casual sex.
Is this, then, politically correct? Who was it who said a great civilization is not conquered from without until it had destroyed itself from within? On the New York to LA flight they screened the hit movie As Good As It Gets To my surprise various words had been bleeped out. When Jack Nicholson hissed to a table of restaurant patrons, ‘These are Jew at my table’ the world ‘Jew’ was bleeped out. And when he cheerily introduced the waitress to the gay guy with, ‘Carole the waitress, meet Simon the fag’, that f-word was also censored. Isn’t it about time just to call a spade a spade? Why is it fine to smash a human being to a bloody pulp in the movies, yet be forbidden so much as lightly to slap an animal? In As Good As It Gets, Jack had to be very gentle when dropping the little dog down the garbage chute.
I’m also confused by the habit of some liberal intellectuals wanting to mix up the genders to promote so-called equality. I do not wish to be called either man, father or uncle, yet it seems this could be where we’re heading.
At a signing of my autobiography in Manhattan, a young woman asked me to inscribe her copy, To my fellow actor Jeannette’. I asked her why she referred to herself as an actor when she was clearly female. ‘Because I’m a liberated woman,’ she announced proudly. ‘Oh really?’ I said. ‘I consider myself a liberated woman too, which is why I refer to myself as an actress.’ There are those, I’ve been told, who churlishly suggest that my last Diary (21 March) was ghost-written. Sorry to disappoint, but these words are all my own. As an actress one needs to develop a thick skin - mine, over the years, has had to become like the earth’s crust.
‘You gotta love livin’, ‘cos dyin’s a pain in the ass.’ Thus spoke the Chairman of the Board himself, the iconic Francis Albert Sinatra. Arguably the greatest entertainer of the 20th century, Frank did it his way, all the way. I first met him at a Hollywood party when I was very young. His brash charm, sex appeal and supreme self confidence scared me to death.
He was fooling around with Humphrey Bogart. They took great delight in teasing ‘the limey broad’, as they referred to me, by pulling at the elastic on my off the shoulder blouse in a display of macho flirtation. A few years later, we ran into each other again, this time at Shepperton Studios, where he was making a quest appearance in an awful Road movie I was doing with Hope and Crosby. His way with women was at its irresistible zenith, and he was creating enough electricity on the set to power a small country. So I finally made up my mind to take the plunge. My stand-in, however, arrived bleary-eyed but triumphant the next morning. ‘Frank asked me to come over last night’, she whispered. ‘He was wonderful.’ Pipped at the post, I decided to stand down. Our paths crossed my more times. I last saw him 18 months ago, when we sat next to each other at a dinner party. He was as charmingly irascible and charismatic as ever. I remember him telling me that when Who’s Who had asked him to write his own entry, he’s said that three words would suffice: Sinatra, Frank. Baritone. We’ll all miss you, Frank, and we will never see or hear your like again.
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