A Very Human Story

It was on broadway not long that I bumped into Bosley Feibush, who had been a college classmate of mine longer ago than I care to remember. He was wearing a belted lavender jacket over an open shirt with a decolletage so deep that it exposed almost all of the black cloud of hair that blew across his chest. Below the waist he had on kelly green linen slacks and gold buckskin shoes with crepe soles as thick and juicy as six-dollar steaks. He also wore the indomitable smile which had been his trade mark from his days as bus boy in the borscht belt to his subsequent successes as social director and Hollywood writer.

"Bosley Feibush!" I cried. "What are you doing here?"

"Hya kid," he shouted, hugging me carefully as though I were an aunt or an unwelcome girlfriend. "Great to see you!"

"Aren't you living in Hollywood?"

"Brentwood," he corrected me. "I have

(Continue on Page)

a quiet little home in Brentwood. I've come back to my old haunts to do a little research."

Human story

(continued from page 15)

"For a new movie?"

"Got to consult with some important people on a tremendous new script. It's a human story, kid, a very human story."

I indicated a cafeteria just behind us. "Do you have a few minutes? Let's have some coffee, and you can tell me all about it."

Bosley Feibush shuddered delicately, like a man who is informed that a business rival has just contracted a nasty disease, "If anybody saw me crawling into that hole... That's death, kid, sure death." He gripped me firmly by the arm and led me up the street to Lindy's

"Don't worry about the tab," he said kindly as he steered me through the door. "Order what you want– Leo knows me."

When we were settled at a table with Bosley facing the window, he had turned away from the waiter to whom he had given our order and looked at me with sudden suspicion. "Say, didn't I hear that you're doing publicity stuff now?"

"Something like that," I admitted.

"Can you assure me that everything I tell you will be held in strictest confidence?"

"I guess so."

"I don't like to exact promises, kid, but I've got my teeth in a property that is so unique, so tremendous, that – well, I've got to be careful as hell. Too many downs figure they can steal the ideas of a creative writer. Today, if you can take a red hot discrimination theme and make a really human story out of it, they'll give you the keys to the city. That's why I've got to play them right up against the chest, see? No aspersions on you."

"I won't tell a soul unless I'm sure that you want me to. But what's the story?"

He sighed resignedly. "You dragged it out of me. The main character, the hero, is a nice colored boy named George Washington Goldstein."

"But Goldstein is a Jewish name!"

Bosley's eyes shone. "That's it," he whispered. "He's a Jewish Negro, and he– he stopped abruptly as the waiter brought out order; and did not go on until he was sure that the waiter was not hovering around. "Georgie is a boy who has suffered a lot – we see this through a series of flashbacks. You probably don't know it, but there are anti-Semites in Harlem, These Negroes don't accept him because his name is Gold stein, and the Jews don't want him because his skin is black. As a matter of fact, everybody either hates him or is embarrassed by him, but that doesn't spoil his dis position. George is a very sweet guy."

"What does he do?"

"He's a G.I."

"Hasn't the G.I. theme been overworked?"

Bosley smiled craftily. "Sure it has. But Georgie is a special case." He poured his celery tonic without looking at it, his eyes roving tensely about the restaurant like a woman searching for her errant husband.

"Georgie has been with an heroic Negro outfit in Korea."

"I see."

"He's been shipped back because he was wounded fighting the Reds. Matter of fact, he's been castrated."

"Can you do that?"

"That's the beauty part of it. You can intimate it see? You can get it across to the public without slapping them in the face with it. Naturally, when he comes home without his manhood, his girl is very sore– especially since she hasn't been able to make a Commie out of him."

"Is she a Commie?"

Bosley looked at me pityingly, as though I were a hand-painted tie on which he had just spilled some celery tonic. "That's what wraps the whole thing up. We show subtly how a misguided girl becomes a stooge for the Reds simply because she's an Eskimo."

"A what?" I put down my coffee hastily.

"Well, she's really only part Eskimo," he conceded. "Her grandpa was a Negro sourdough who went to Alaska during the gold rush. Any way, she's bitter about losing the Miss Rheingold contest just because she's slant-eyed. Then Goldstein comes back from Korea unable to be the father of her children, and not even resentful about it, or about the fact that he's illegitimate."

I said with some annoyance, "You didn't say anything about that before."

Bosley Feibush waved the celery tonic bottle casually at me. "I can't get every-thing in at once, kid. George Washington Goldstein is a bastard, and believe me..." he uttered a short loud barking laugh which made our waiter leap up as though a dog had sunk its teeth into his pants,"...I've known enough bastards to write about this boy from the heart. But seriously, he's had lots of trouble getting a job, simply because his mother was wronged by a bootlegger back in the Roaring Twenties."

"Is she colored or Jewish?"

"That's just the kind of detail that the creative artist can't bother with. It'll depend on whether it's more economical to shoot the flashback scenes in Harlem or on the lover East Side. What counts is that she dies from syphilis just before sulfa is invented. This has an effect onGeorgie, even more than the fact that she left him with the black mark on his birth certificate."

"You've certainly given him his share of problems."

"Now you're catching on. But does it faze Georgie?" Feibush shook his head savagely, the corners of his mouth drawn down. "Except that he's trying to win his girl back to American ideals, and in order to humor her he starts going to a psychoanalyst."

"I was wondering if you'd be able to work that in."

Bosley chuckled triumphantly. "I've even got a new wrinkle. This kindly old Viennese psychoanalyst has a 90-year-old mother back home who is being held as a hostage by the Russians to get him to do their dirty work. He hates to, but he conspires with the Eskimo girl to turn Georgie into a traitor."

"How?"

"He tries to persuade Georgie to be better. He says, 'It isn't natural for a man to be a colored Jew, to be illegitimate, to have his mother die from a social disease, and then to go and get castrated by the gooks, without losing his temper. You're repressing your hatred. You should discharge your aggressions by fighting for peace with the progressives.'"

"How does it work out?"

Bosley lowered his eyes modestly. "It's got a punch that – well, you'll think I'm bragging if I tell you how powerful it is."

"Don't quit now. Please go ahead."

"The three of them – George Washington Goldstein, the Eskimo girl and the kindly Viennese analyst – are sitting around and chatting one day, something like the people in The Cocktail Party. But I've got a gimmick Eliot never thought of. In my story the analyst and the girl are converted by Georgie, by the sheer purity and sweetness of his character. There's like a blinding light"

"What kind of light?"

"I'm using a figure of speech, kid," he replied sharply. "We leave things like that to the special effects men. Georgie's faith in our way of life affects his girl and the kindly doctor so much that they get converted, in a manner of speaking. They realize that it's more important to live for the future than to gripe about the past. In other words, they admit that his way is right, and they agree to stop undermining him."

"Bos," I said simply, "this is terrific. But what about the psychoanalyst's mother in Vienna?"

Bosley shook his head smilingly. "Don't underestimate me, kid. While the three of them are still on their knees, giving thanks for all their blessings, the kindly

(continued on page 69)

Human story

(continued from page 26)

doctor gets a cable that his mother has been dead from old age for a month already. The Russians have been keeping it a secret to have something to hold over him, and he realizes in the nick of time that he would have been betraying his country and his patient ironically all for nothing.

"So there is a quiet but colorful wedding in a Harlem synagogue, with the analyst acting as best man. We'll have some beautiful choral singing, Negro spirituals and Hebrew melodies. Know something, kid? With all this religious material my own training as a Coptic comes in pretty handy." Bosley dug into the decolletage and drew forth a massive crucifix in jeweler's bronze from its resting place deep feeling in the nest of black hair. "I got a deep feeling of sympathy for every single character in the story."

"Is that how it ends, with the wedding?" I asked.

"You're a generation behind, kid. Pictures don't end with those cliches anymore." Bosley looked away politely while I picked up the check. "Life is a struggle, kid, and we're depicting life. Now after the Eskimo girl agrees to give up Communism, and Georgie agrees to give up fighting--"

"You didn't say anything about fighting--"

"How else could Goldstein make a living, except in the dirty fight racket? When he was a kid, he wanted to be a harpist, but who ever heard of a bastard harpist? Now that he's married the Eskimo, he quits the ring and goes to technical school under the G.I. Bill. While he's in school, he invents a cheap process for color television based on the way you pluck harp strings. There's a fortune in it, and he buys a nice home in a fashionable Negro neighborhood. Everything would be copacetic, only the Eskimo girl is still pining away for children, and Georgie can sense it in the hungry look of those slanty eyes of hers."

"So what happens?"

"The final scene is in Boys' Town, where the kindly Irish padre who runs the place receives George Washington Goldstein and his bride with open arms. They pick out six colored kids, all of them suffering from terrible diseases, because they want to prove that everybody can overcome handicaps like Georgie himself. We fade out on Georgie and the Eskimo girl walking hand in hand to their station wagon, followed by the six kids hobbling along behind them."

Bosley Feibush looked carefully at me. I rose to the occasion by shaking my head slowly and murmuring. "A smash, a smash." Bosley smiled happily.

When we were once again on the sidewalk I said, "You're going to make (concluded overleaf) history with this one."

"Thanks, kid. I think so too. It's a shame I won't be able to see you before I hop the Chief."

"Why not?"

"As soon as I finish my basic research, I'm holing up at Yaddo to knock out a very human novel from that story. No money in it, but it's worth its weight in prestige, and besides it won't hurt the exploitation on the picture." Bosley looked around cautiously. "I might as well tell you that I bumped into the top songwriting team in the business, at a protest rally in the Garden. Can't divulge any names, but they're dying to do the book and lyrics on my story. They figure it'll be another South Pacific... Well, when you hit L.A., give me a bell. Maybe I can give you a push at one of the studios, just for old times' sake. Stay loose, kid."

Bosley Feibush raised his arm in farewell and turned away to breast the Broadway crowd, his shoulders hunched forward and a set smile on his shoulders hunched forward and a set smile on his face, like a Sunday swimmer striding through the surf at Coney Island. Then as I watched he disappeared into the yawning mouth of a taxi, a swimmer sucked out of sight by the fierce undertow.

"There's like a blinding light," said Bosley.