The Little World of Harry Kurnitz

There is a klatsch of bright, perceptive, highly talented Americans who sit around in the suns and night spots of various climes and countries, making esoteric jokes for each other, occasionally marrying each other's wives, and somehow managing, Heaven alone knows how, to produce most of the funny things that are said and seen upon the stage and screen and television these days. The world is the Mermaid Tavern of these people; they hunt excitement from Beverly Hills to New York to London to Paris to Rome to Cairo. To get into the festive group, one must be a high roller, full of zest and a thirst for adventure; to stay in, one must keep a suitcase packed and a sharp tongue ready, for its two chief diversions are travel and wit. A complete membership list would be much too long to set down here, but some of the livelier celebrants are the novelists Irwin Shaw and Peter Viertel; the playwrights Kaufman and Hart, George Axelrod and Charles Lederer; the songwriters Cole Porter and Ira Gershwin; and such producer-directors as Billy Wilder, John Huston and Leland Hayward. There are only a few actors: the late Humphrey Bogart was one, and today there are Frank Sinatra, Martin Gabel, and young Sydney Chaplin. (continued on page 66)Harry Kurnitz(continued from page 53) Mike Romanoff, the fake prince turned Hollywood restaurateur, is the favorite host of the gang; Irving Paul Lazar, the tiny literary agent, is the mascot; and Leonard Lyons, the columnist, is historian.

The court jester of this group is a novelist-screenwriter-playwright named Harry Kurnitz, a restless, waspish man who continually commutes between the United States and other countries. "When Kurnitz says 'Memphis,' " a friend has said, "he means Memphis, Egypt." Kurnitz claims that he does his best work in airplanes, and he seems discontented when grounded for more than a week at a stretch. An art collector, authority on rare books, amateur violinist, gourmet and bachelor in the manner of the Victorian bons vivants, Kurnitz is a tall, diffident man of whom Abe Burrows once said, "He looks like a dishonest basketball player who's just dumped a game." Actually, he looks more like some minor prophet from the Old Testament; his face is full of weary experience and a touch of sadness, although his attitude and approach to life are far from sad. He lives so well and with such gusto, his appearance is automatically a signal for any gathering to liven up. Kurnitz' name is now a kind of password among members of his club; when one meets another, the first question usually is, "What do you hear from Harry?" His friends collect and trade Kurnitz remarks and spend large sums telling them to each other on transoceanic telephones.

Kurnitz is the least-known member of the club, as far as the general public is concerned. He always has preferred to remain anonymous. After working at MGM as a high-salaried, dependable screenwriter for eight years, he sold the studio an original story; a trade paper, mentioning the sale, said, "The author, an unknown, is expected to arrive in Hollywood shortly." Currently, Kurnitz is experiencing some difficulty in preserving his anonymity, for his most recent credits include the play Once More, with Feeling, a collaboration with Abe Burrows; a television series, The Dick and the Duchess, for which he created the characters; a couple of films, The Happy Road and Witness for the Prosecution, for which he wrote the screenplays; and a book entitled Kurnitz' Inferno. His four paper-backed detective novels -- Fast Company, The Shadowy Third, Reclining Figure and Invasion of Privacy, the first three of which were written under his pseudonym, Marco Page -- are selling satisfactorily and are expected to hit the two-million-copy mark before long. "Those books cover the drugstores like a mulch," Kurnitz has said. In addition to all this, Kurnitz has had screen credit on something like 30 movies, and possibly more; he cannot remember exactly how many he has written.

Impressive though this body of work may be, it is not what endears Kurnitz to his friends. They like him for his funny sayings. He will sit quietly with friends (he appears to be painfully shy), not saying much of anything until the apt, opportune moment -- and then he will cut loose with one line that usually brings an explosive laugh. He follows the line with a low, throaty chuckle composed partly of triumph and partly of the delight he takes in having thought of it in the first place. He is in the pattern of the great wits of the past -- Oscar Wilde, Joseph Hodges Choate, and Wilson Mizner come to mind -- who functioned best in social situations, and whose sharper lines were reserved for their friends. Many of Kurnitz' jokes are ego-deflating and discomfiting, and he has a disquieting ability to put a person's entire personality into one portmanteau sentence. A friend once asked him how he liked collaborating with Abe Burrows.

"Once Abe gets his own way, he's kindness itself," Kurnitz said.

When he and Burrows were collaborating on their first play (which, incidentally, never was produced), they went to a producer named Harry Bloomfield and submitted a price list of props they would need. Burrows then was an irrepressible party entertainer; whenever he saw a piano he would sit down and sing one of his original songs, such as If I Had My Life to Live Over, I'd Live Over a Delicatessen. Kurnitz had compiled the prop list, and on it was the item "Two bear traps, $110."

"Why the bear traps?" the producer asked.

"Absolutely necessary," Kurnitz said. "One in each wing, to keep Abe off the stage."

Kurnitz once went to see one of Hollywood's most noted hypochondriacs, a girl whose hobby was imagining herself the victim of all kinds of ills and afflictions. She had a bad cold, and was in bed with hot water bottles, pills and other restoratives. Kurnitz leaned toward her solicitously.

"Tell me, dear," he said, "do you suppose that cold could be partly physical?"

The girl was not offended. Few of Kurnitz' butts are. A friend says, "The key to Kurnitz' success with his jokes is his gentleness as a person. The other great wits -- Kaufman, Goodman Ace, George Burns -- are often harsh in their humor. Harry stings you so you don't really mind."

This is illustrated by Kurnitz' remark about Moss Hart, who habitually wears gold garter clasps and collar tabs and carries a pen and pencil, money clip, cigarette case and lighter all made of gold. "When Moss dies," Kurnitz said, "they'll bury him at Fort Knox." Hart enjoyed the thrust -- and so, too, did Milton Berle appreciate Kurnitz' reaction to some nose surgery Berle had had done. "Milton's nose is now so perfect," Kurnitz said, "that when he dies he should leave it to a Nose Bank."

Many of Kurnitz' gibes concern medical matters. Once, at a party, he ran into his own optometrist and failed to recognize him. "A fine commentary on those glasses you prescribed," he said. At another party, he was asked about the ability of a certain New York surgeon. "I don't want to knock him," Kurnitz said, "but I can tell you this: the only vultures in the east constantly make lazy circles in the sky above his house."

Kurnitz' most quoted observation was made when he became involved in a running feud with Lynn Loesser, then the wife of Frank Loesser, the songwriter.

"Lynn," Kurnitz said, "is the evil of two Loessers."

Frank also has been the target for some of his most acerbic comments. Loesser used to be an avid woodworking enthusiast; he was continually buying antiques, cutting them up, and making new pieces. Kurnitz took a girl to Loesser's house, and they spent the evening listening to him ramble on about the things he was building and planning to build. As they were leaving, Kurnitz said to the girl, "Honey, if you had French Provincial legs, you'd never have got out of there alive."

The girl was one of an extensive collection of pretty blondes, brunettes and redheads Kurnitz escorts here and there; although he once was married, after his divorce he claimed that he would remain a bachelor for the rest of his life. "Now I'm too difficult to get married again," he says. He considered it only once; for a time, he was engaged to Patricia Englund, an actress. Kurnitz gave her a party when they made the announcement. It began at six P.M. and at two A.M. it was still going strong. At two-thirty Kurnitz whispered to the girl, "The party must be a flop -- some of the guests are beginning to leave."

"What I remember mainly about Harry's courtship," Miss Englund says today, "is that I couldn't stop laughing." Other companions have said much the same thing. One night he took Patrice Munsel and Joan Caulfield to a Hollywood nightclub. The bill came to $167. Kurnitz frowned at it, looked at the two girls and said sternly, "Which one of you made a telephone call?"

In some ways, Kurnitz is a cautious romantic. He once met Barbara Payton, for whose affections Franchot Tone and Tom Neal had a fist fight that landed Tone in a hospital. "Barbara," Kurnitz said, "what a pass I'd make at you -- if only I had my insurance paid up."

As might be expected, many Kurnitz jokes are laced with literary allusions. When, in London, he and Moss Hart and Edna Ferber went punting on the Thames, their craft hit and stuck upon a sandbar. At the same time some kids on the bank began throwing stones at them. Shaking his head like the Ancient Mariner, Kurnitz said, "We never should have shot that albatross." George Oppenheimer, the screenwriter, told Kurnitz he was going to see Die Walküre and asked what it was about. "The story starts with a girl named Brünnhilde," Kurnitz said. "She comes from a very good family. In fact, her father was God."

Kurnitz' best jokes, says Martin Gabel, are directed inward, at Harry Kurnitz. Someone once spilled champagne on him and apologized vociferously. "Think nothing of it," Kurnitz said. "This suit has had so much wine spilled on it I no longer have it cleaned -- I send it out to be trampled by peasants." At a Hollywood premiere, a fireman gave Kurnitz a summons for smoking in the lobby. "He caught me doing 25 puffs in a five-puff zone," Kurnitz later explained. One night in Lindy's, Leonard Lyons saw Kurnitz staring moodily at a tremendous plate of sauerkraut. He asked why Kurnitz looked so troubled. "I don't know whether to eat this or stuff a sofa with it," Kurnitz said. In St. Moritz, another friend reports, Kurnitz was invited to go skiing. He said he could not go because of his religion.

"What's your religion?"

"I'm an orthodox coward," Kurnitz said.

Soon after Kurnitz arrived in Hollywood, he began spending huge sums on a complete new wardrobe. "Keep this up," one friend said, "and people will begin calling you a fop and a dandy."

"No chance," Kurnitz said, "I've got a backlog of 30 years as a bum."

That is not quite true, but it is true that he knocked about a good deal at a variety of jobs before he became known as one of the best comedy doctors and off-screen wits in the business. A comedy doctor is a man called in to make a comic picture more comical. An offscreen wit is -- well, it is what Kurnitz is. He cannot say exactly how he came to develop the special sardonic way he has of looking at life and his fellows.

Kurnitz came to his present eminence as an international playboy under tremendous handicaps. He is probably the most sought-after "extra man" now living, and a good part of each day is spent in deciding which invitations to accept. He even laughs at his own availability. Sir Alexander Korda once invited him for a cruise on his yacht. "How long is it?" Kurnitz asked. "It's a 142-footer," he was told. "Sorry," Kurnitz said, "I'll have to send my secretary."

Kurnitz is extraordinarily prolific. He thinks nothing of turning out a 10,000-word article in a day. He often finishes a job long before its deadline, then deliberately holds it back because he is afraid he will be accused of rushing. Even Kurnitz is sometimes surprised at his own speed. "Once, when I was writing a picture for Hunt Stromberg," he says, "I wrote two other pictures out of sheer boredom." When his first play, Reclining Figure (adapted from his novel), was having its out-of-town tryouts before opening in New York in 1954, Kurnitz had to go along to make revisions. Such work is time-consuming; the playwright ordinarily must work all night, every night of the tour, on changes that will be incorporated the next day. In the month the show was on the road, Kurnitz not only made all required alterations in his script but also finished his fourth novel and knocked off a piece about Italian food for a travel magazine.

Kurnitz has worked for an encyclopedia publisher, a press bureau, and as a ghostwriter of speeches, in addition to his more glamorous tasks. In 1933 or 1934 -- he does not remember which -- he began selling detective stories to pulp magazines. (He does not remember the year because he has never saved a line of his published work; he does not have a single copy of any of his novels, plays or screenplays around his Park Avenue apartment.) His success in the pulps encouraged him to try a novel, and for background material he drew upon his knowledge of the rare-book business; rare books had been his hobby dating from the time he first went to New York, and he had earned some money by acting as a scout for some well-to-do collectors. His first full-length novel won the Dodd-Mead detective story contest in 1938, and within two weeks of its publication Kurnitz was in Hollywood with a one-month contract with MGM in his pocket. He planned to stay that month; he wound up by putting in eight years at MGM.

Kurnitz' original salary in Hollywood was $200 per week, but he soon was commanding anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000 per week: "My salary went up so fast, I got the bends," he says. He also got a reputation for a fast, funny line, mainly because of cracks like these:

At a scavenger hunt, his hostess saw him tiptoeing toward the front door, list in hand. "What are you supposed to get?" she asked. "Eight hours' sleep," Kurnitz said, and vanished into the night.

Louis Calhern once asked Kurnitz if he had enjoyed his performance as King Lear, Shakespeare's most monumentally tortured character. "Of course I enjoyed it," Kurnitz said. "Didn't you hear me laughing?"

A director asked Kurnitz if Melba, for which he wrote the screenplay, was based on fact. Kurnitz nodded solemnly. "I took no liberties," he said, "except with the plot and characters."

A Russian-born, naturalized citizen once hustled Kurnitz into a $200 bet. Kurnitz gave him a check, but the man never cashed it; Kurnitz had scribbled on it, "In full payment for atom bomb secret."

Kurnitz went to buy a car, and on the test drive the salesman said, "I can see you're a car lover." "That's true," Kurnitz said. "In fact, my first wife was a Buick."

A friend from the east, newly arrived in Hollywood, asked Kurnitz how he liked it there. "It's wonderful," Kurnitz said. "In fact, the general sensation is comparable to that of sinking slowly into a giant hopper of warm farina."

One day he and the screenwriter Ken Englund were driving along one of the coastal boulevards. Englund remarked upon the surprising number of drive-in facilities that were opening up -- drive-in dry cleaners, drive-in banks, drive-in delicatessens, etc. "In Hollywood," Kurnitz said, "it's now possible to be born, live and die without ever setting foot outside your automobile."

A well-known film actress collapsed at a party, and Kurnitz attempted to console her. He offered her advice, a screen role, and finally a large sum of money. She said none of these would help. "Then," said Kurnitz, "can I blow you to a psychoanalysis?"

On one of his pictures, he was working with an especially slow-moving, methodical director. The snaillike pace unnerved him, and presently his temper blew. "If you'd been a delegate to the Constitutional Convention," he said, "this country would still be under British rule."

A Hollywood charity to which he had contributed heavily wanted to give him a testimonial dinner and an award. "My idea of an award," Kurnitz said, "would be for you to award me my money back."

Many of Kurnitz' lines were picked up and reprinted in newspaper columns, and it was not long before other, lesser wits began trying out their own jokes by attributing them to him; the name "Kurnitz," prefixing a gag, was almost certain laugh-insurance. This had the effect of embarrassing him, since the jokes were often terrible. In retaliation, Kurnitz entered into a conspiracy with Leonard Lyons. They began crediting some of his jokes to an agent named Fefe Ferry, especially those about producers and directors whom Kurnitz did not want to offend for reasons of potential employment. Eventually Ferry, who was charming but not especially funny, became known as one of Hollywood's more talented epigrammatists. He was invited to the best parties and given favored tables at Romanoff's and Chasen's. People listened to him eagerly, waiting for him to say something funny. Presently they became disillusioned. One night, after he had taken leave of a dinner, the hostess said to her husband, "You know, I don't think that Mr. Ferry's so funny -- he didn't say one single funny thing all evening long."

In company with the screenwriter Charles Lederer, Kurnitz has been responsible for some elaborate practical jokes. On their way to Europe via ship, they encountered Gregor Piatigorsky, the great cellist. Kurnitz introduced Lederer as "the eminent Hollywood musician," in such a way as to imply that Piatigorsky surely had heard of him. "I am an ignoramus about all music," Lederer has said. "Also, I dislike it. I can't stand opera, symphony or music of any kind. I thought Harry was needling me -- but he had other plans." Piatigorsky said he looked forward to talking to Lederer at dinner that night. Kurnitz then supplied his friend with a number of basic sentences to use in the conversation. The final one was, "After all, no man can play the Hora Staccato on the cello."

"My dear friend," Piatigorsky said, "I can play it."

"A dollar says you can't," Lederer said.

"You're on," Piatigorsky said, and rushed off to get his instrument. Kurnitz meanwhile began selling tickets to other passengers. "We cleaned up 19 bucks," Lederer says, "at a buck a head. The stateroom was jammed. Piatigorsky played and played. Even I liked it." Afterward, he went and shook the cellist's hand solemnly and paid him the dollar. "You've convinced me," he said.

"By the way, Mr. Kurnitz," Piatigorsky said later, "what is Mr. Lederer's instrument?"

"The drum," Kurnitz said.

On the same voyage, taking a turn around the deck late one night, Kurnitz and Lederer passed a leather goods shop with its show window displaying a collection of fine wallets. "Harry broke a small window pane," Lederer recalls, "filled the wallets with money, and ran."

One of Kurnitz' most elaborate jokes was staged some years ago for the benefit of the afore-mentioned mascot, Irving Lazar. Lazar, an inordinately dapper little man only slightly taller than an iron jockey, began to collect paintings some years ago. Kurnitz at the time had one of the best collections in Hollywood; he owned an Utrillo, a Modigliani, a Rouault, a Matisse, a Vlaminck, a Dufy and a couple of Picassos. Lazar respected the collection and often asked Kurnitz' advice about his own purchases. One day Kurnitz happened to mention that he was no longer as fond as he had been of one of his Picassos and might be willing to sell it. "I'll buy it," Lazar said, promptly. The deal was made, and he carried the painting home happily. Then Kurnitz got some friends to imply to Lazar that the painting was not genuine. Lazar was in a panic; he could not accuse his friend of selling him a phony, and yet he was not sure that he had not been rubed. He kept calling up other collectors, and asking them to come and see the picture and decide if it was a good one. The friends, all in on the joke, appeared dubious. Some of them were downright scornful: "It's probably genuine," one said, "but it certainly isn't a very good Picasso." At last report, Lazar was trying to dispose of the picture -- at a loss, if necessary. Kurnitz, meanwhile, has been telling everyone that he made a handsome profit on the sale. The picture, incidentally, is from the period when Picasso evidently was fascinated with bones and stones. It is one of the ugliest he ever attempted. Kurnitz calls it That Tooth Will Have to Come Out.

Kurnitz began assembling his own collection soon after his marriage. He met his wife one night at a party at the home of Melvyn and Helen Gahagan Douglas. Her name was Muriel Salmond. Kurnitz was attracted to her originally because of his interest in music; she was the daughter of Felix Salmond, the well-known cellist and concertmeister, who taught at both Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and Juilliard in New York. At the party, Kurnitz asked the girl if he could take her home. She agreed. As they got into Kurnitz' car he snapped on the radio. Although he prides himself on his musical knowledge, he could not recognize the composition that came on. "It was a series of horrible grunts and wheezes," he says. "I said to the girl, 'What in hell do you suppose that could be?' "

"It's the Suite for Unaccompanied Cello, by Wallingford Riegger," Miss Salmond said, without hesitation.

Kurnitz later said he had never been so impressed in his life by any girl: "When I regained control of the car," he said, "I naturally asked her to marry me."

They were married within a few months and took a house in Westwood, a fashionable residential section near Beverly Hills. "I was able by shrewd negotiating to buy a $35,000 house for $65,000," Kurnitz said. "There was so much negotiating to do, and I took such a rooking, that living in that house was an anticlimax." Later he told a friend, "It was a modest little place of 16 rooms." The house soon became one of Hollywood's more popular Sunday evening salons. There usually was chamber music, with the host playing violin in defiance of the guests' entreaties. There also was much talk and laughter. Unfortunately, after a time there was not much compatibility; Kurnitz and his wife were divorced in 1950, and he sold not only the house but also most of the first-rate collection of paintings his high salaries had enabled him to accumulate. Shortly afterward, he sold what remained of the collection in order to pay the medical expenses of a close relative who was seriously ill. At present, Kurnitz is the sole support of his mother, a sister, and a widowed sister-in-law and her family.

Kurnitz now collects small statuary which he can pack in suitcases and put out in the hotel rooms he lives in. Although he keeps a small penthouse apartment in New York ("with a magnificent view of Queens," he says), he is essentially a wanderer. He will go anywhere, or nearly anywhere, at the slightest suggestion. Once he was sitting in a Paris restaurant, pyramiding cubes of sugar. "Howard Hawks walked by," he says, "saw the pyramid of sugar, and said, 'You know, Harry, there might be a picture in that.' The next thing I knew, we were in Egypt making Land of the Pharaohs." (Kurnitz' collaborator on that was the Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner. They became fast friends.) After his trip to Egypt Kurnitz went back to Paris, stayed a few weeks, then went on to New York and Hollywood. There is something wistful about his restless movement; he seems to be searching for something he has not yet been able to find or even to define, one friend says. He is, looking at him this way, the personification of the classic clown, a man who hides his own feelings and troubles by making jokes for his friends. Kurnitz snorts at this concept of himself. "It's just that I like to travel," he says. "Also, I have this appalling ability to concentrate. I can work in crowded rooms, on steamships, railroads and airplanes.

"It used to be," he continues, "that when I turned out something bad, I blamed it on the working conditions. I can't do that any more. Once I wrote a very bad screenplay and apologized to Jimmy Cannon, the sportswriter, by saying I'd written it on a train. Jimmy said, 'Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address on a train.' Now I'm resigned to being able to work anywhere."

Kurnitz diligently keeps a rigid schedule. In his New York apartment, even when he has a thunderous hangover, he gets up very early, goes straight to his desk and writes for three or four hours. He says this is nothing but habit. With characteristic self-abnegation, he says, "I'm a hack -- that's all that I am." A friend who heard him say this once reminded him that Balzac, Dostoievsky, Dickens and many other famous writers were not only hacks but proud of it. Kurnitz refused to accept the compliment; his innate modesty came immediately to the surface. "I'm a hack," he insisted. "There's only one thing you can say about me -- I may not have much talent, but I sure can get up early." That's the way Kurnitz is.