Word: carlotta
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Eugene O'Neill kept a player piano, which he had found in a whorehouse, covered with pictures of naked women, and when he could sneak away from his bossy wife Carlotta, he would go down to the basement, drop nickels into the slot and listen to ragtime. Once when Cerf was visiting, the ailing playwright crooked his finger and beckoned him downstairs, like a mischievous little boy. In the middle of a tune, Carlotta came down. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself," she screamed, "bringing Bennett down here! You're in pain, remember...
...movie is based not on a balanced view of Fields, but on the memoirs of the young woman, Carlotta Monti, who was his mistress (companion is probably a better word) during his last years. Her view of the man, of her own significance in his life, was scarcely objective or complete. Doubtless they cared for each other in a way that the movie is not clear about; doubtless she eased his passage through these years when drink wreaked its vengeance on him. Except for a certain vocal monotony, Valerie Perrine is winning as Carlotta. Like everyone else involved...
...Ibsen, wives by Strindberg. In his 40th year he left Agnes Boulton (mother of Shane and Oona O'Neill), a short-story writer who once fell asleep while he was reading a script to her. His third and last wife never made that mistake. Born Hazel Tharsing, Carlotta Monterey met her fourth husband when she played in The Hairy Ape. Once her eyes, "like wet grapes," fixed on him, she blessed and cursed the playwright with all the attention a writer could dream...
...Real Love." Carlotta played mistress (a little), mother (a lot), as well as efficient housekeeper and secretary. She intercepted O'Neill's mail, censored his clippings, and jealously screened his friends-especially women. Half a dozen innocent conversations with O'Neill put a very young actress named Patricia Neal on Carlotta's enemy list. Years later, when Miss Neal, then a star, was about to be signed for a revival of Desire Under the Elms, Carlotta vetoed the casting. Yet by her fanatical possessiveness Carlotta gave O'Neill both the protection he needed...
...Neill, Carlotta said, could feel "real love" only for his plays. Only Oona survived O'Neill's catastrophic fatherliness, which seemed to consist of a month of misleading warmth and charm followed by years of neglect, or hostility. After a brilliant start as a Greek scholar at Yale, Eugene Jr. killed himself. Shane turned to heroin, Oona turned to Charlie Chaplin, and both were eventually disinherited. But the family, the scene of O'Neill's greatest failure as a man, was the occasion for his greatest success as a writer. O'Neill is uneven...