I Hated to Do It: Stories of a Life by Donald C. Farber Read Free Book Online Page A

caring woman. Of course the dinner was a lot more formal than what I was accustomed to. The scotch before dinner was usual for us, and the wine at dinner we were into, but another part of the dinner was a bit of a surprise.
    What did I know, a hick from Nebraska? So when the finger bowl was placed before me by the maid, Annie knew I mistook this ritual as a serving of soup and managed to warn me before I drank the contents.
    What I should have known, but how could I, was that in proper society after the dinner plate has been cleared, the waiter brings each guest a finger bowl, which is a small bowl filled with water, often with a slice of lemon floating in it.
    There is an urban myth about the guest who drank from her finger bowl, who like me thought the clear liquid was a kind of soup. In order to put her guest at ease, the hostess did the same thing and drank her bowl of water intended to cleanse the fingers.
    I didn’t give Joan an opportunity to put me at ease by drinking the contents of the finger bowl after I did, because I didn’t drink it.
    John too was a very unpretentious, kind man. He and a film star of that time, Zachary Scott, in the thirties or forties, were vacationing from Hollywood in Mexico and were so bored they just got drunk and did the unthinkable, at least then it was unthinkable: they got their ears pierced and put in earrings and were trendsetters, the beginning of the practice of men wearing earrings in this country.
    A few years later John Emery died. After the funeral service there was a meeting of some friends at the apartment of Joan’s daughter Stephanie Wanger. Annie, always anxious to help, asked Mr. Steinbeck, who was also attending, if she could get him a drink. He took both of Annie’s hands in his and said to her, “Am I going to have to call you Mrs. Farber, or will you please call me John?” Annie returned with a drink for John. What a kind gentleman.
    Our Friend the Chancellor
    Harvey Perlman was our friend who had been the youngest dean of a law school in the country before he became the chancellor of the University of Nebraska. About twenty years ago, we took Harvey to dinner one night and he noticed I was limping along in pain. After dinner we were in front of the restaurant on 79th Street near 2nd Avenue at about midnight, and Harvey said that I didn't have to limp around in pain. The chancellor of the University of Nebraska took off his shoes under the lamplight and pulled out his orthotics to show me what an orthotic is. I got orthotics after that and could walk. I have been indebted ever since to the chancellor whose contribution to my education allowed me to walk pain-free. Don't ever underestimate the knowledge of our educators.
    Shepard Traube, Zia in Boston, and Alan Alda
    Shepard Traube, a film and stage producer, wanted to produce a play in 1963 and wanted to hire Zia Mohyeddin for the cast, since Zia was hot at the time, having received the rave reviews for
A Passage to India
. Zia really didn’t want to do it, so he asked for an outrageous fee about three times the offer, and he got it. Traube had become somewhat well-known in the business for having produced
Angel Street
, a play that also became a movie entitled
Gaslight
that starred Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman, who had previously gained real fame for her role opposite Humphrey Bogart in
Casablanca
. So Traube engaged Pippa Scott, a sought-after ingenue, Zia Mohyeddin, an overpaid hot performer at the time, and a young aspiring actor, Alan Alda.
    The play previewed in Boston and was a total flop. We were in Boston to see Zia perform. It was such a lousy play I don’t even remember the name of it, and as confirmation of how lousy it was, I can’t even find it on Google. The play closed even before opening, or right after opening, and again I am not sure when, and we were on a train from Boston to New York. There was a bridge game going on with Zia and this handsome young guy Alan Alda, and Annie and I were