The city and thecountry – 10 – July 23 2014

My other NYC. An unfailing routine: every Wednesday, after breakfasting at Columbus Circle with Linda Langton, my agent, and her dog, Princess, I proceed to the streets of the Upper West Side – empty as in a post-apocalyptic movie, on a weekday mid-morning – to work with my darling composer, Broadway’s Jimmy Roberts, with whom I’m working on my Hollywood musical. ‘Rabinowicz!’ I greet him (his real name) when he opens his apartment door. ‘Harisiewicz!’ he replies as we embrace. (In truth his Jews are Russian, mine Polish, but we adapt the names to our fancy.)

We work for 2 hours and I emerge again into the elegant calm of 103rd Street, its brownstones, its fanciful, even Babylonian touches.

Then it’s Brooklyn once more. In ‘Tar-jhay’ I hear a lady mourn the absence of sardines. I answer about the lack of cans of tuna in olive oil. She is a darkish-skinned, squat woman; her name is Victoria Red Sky; we start to talk; ‘What part of England?’ she asks, before I’ve said more than 10 words. We discover that her mother came from Lancashire, as did my father. And this is only the beginning. ‘You remind me of Rex Harrison,’ she ventures. ‘My father,’ I explain. It turns out that her mother was Jean Simmons’ stand-in, in movies.

Simmons hated her stand-in because, Victoria says, Victoria’s mother, who she said looked exactly like Vivien Leigh, was more beautiful than Jean Simmons. (Herself, I shrank from pointing out, astonishingly beautiful.) Victoria’s mother was pals with Peter Ustinov, Ralph Richardson, James Robertson Justice, John Mills – and other actors of the period whom I knew well in my childhood. (Ustinov was in love with my mother; I with Mills’ elder daughter.) All this in the Flatbush Avenue Target. We exchange phone numbers, and go our way, wondering at these strange cross-threads in the weave of life.