
Speaker Would you like to know how I met Lenny? Well, really, it was Aaron Copeland who brought us together. I met Aaron when I was still in college in Mexico when Aaron was a soloist with the symphony in Mexico. And my father, who was a director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, knew Carlos Chavas, the conductor. And so when I went on a holiday, I was just a kid to Mexico. My father wrote to Carlos and said I was coming. So Carlos invited me to a rehearsal and I went and there was Aaron, wonderfully toothy, beaming away, playing his old piano concerto. And I was smitten immediately. And we became such friends that I went out to stay with Aaron out in the country, way beyond Mexico City, where he lived. And when I went back to Sarah Lawrence, I would come back to New York every time there was a Copeland concert.
Speaker And we became really very, very close friends. I was Arin’s girl, and since I didn’t have any girls, it put me in a rather special position. And Aron invited me for the weekend, unheard of to Tanglewood when he was teaching there. And he said, There’s someone I’d like you to meet. And it was Lennie who, of course, was very young then. No one had heard of him yet, but it was so clear that he would be learning. I mean, he appeared and there was this extraordinary personality. And of course, in two minutes he was at the piano playing away.
Speaker And there just was no doubt that this was some extraordinary character, that he was not like anybody else. And it was clear that he was going to have an extraordinary career. And for Lenny, I think I had a special position really because of Aaron. And he adored Aaron. Aaron was like his God. So the fact that I was Aaron’s love in a certain sense, in a very platonic sense, my you did, I think, placed me sort of way up there because of Aaron and that’s how it all started. And then, of course, he as you know, everybody knows his his conducting with the Philharmonic at the last minute and so forth and so on, the conductor to the city center. So I used to go to concerts, but very soon I went off to Europe and I lived in Paris. I was a correspondent on the arts for Vogue.
Speaker So most of the time I would then see Lenny in Paris because he came and he conducted the various French orchestras and I watched the transition, which could not have been easy for him, because when he first started with the Philharmonic as conductor, he was much younger than most of the players and they knew him as Lenny. And he had to change from Lenny to Maestro. And he did it through through sheer force of musicality and sheer talent. But it could not have been at the beginning such an easy transition. And in Paris, I think it was difficult at the beginning because Paris Orchestra was a very fractious the unions are very strong and half the time the players don’t show up for rehearsals. They send somebody else and you never know who’s going to actually show up. So Fellaini, to establish his discipline and his quality was difficult and it took, I think, a number of concerts and seasons. But he did it and then he built up a loyal following in Paris. Of course he was a protege also of Nadia Baloji, who, as you know, had taught Aaron, and little by little his reputation grew in Paris. And I would always see him there. And we jump to something like 1950 when he came to Paris with Shirley and had some time off and I had some time off. And suddenly we said, why don’t we all go on holiday together? So we decided, the three of us, we’d go to Spain and we would meet in Barcelona. So we did. We met at the Ritz. And meanwhile, Lenny had acquired a small dachshund called Henri, who was not housebroken. I mean, only Lenny would start traveling in Europe with a non housebroken little puppy. And on his way here to to Spain, he’d stayed in the south of France with Marie Blanche Topolánek, who was one of the. Great musical hostess’s and of course, Henry immediately misbehaved and Lenny did a wonderful act of my lossing I can’t see it, I can’t see Nicotero don’t take this boy, take this away. And so anyhow, he survived that. Then he stayed with a couple. I don’t know who they were in the south of France. And Lenny said in very funny way, he said, of course they both fell in love with me. So I went to bed with both of them. And it was typical in that he could not resist. Charming. He had to charm everybody, man, woman, beast, child and so forth and so on. So anyhow, there we were in Barcelona. The Ritz Hotel was absolutely horrified. Spain was very puritanical. This is 1950 at brother and sister sleeping in the same room that caused considerable alarm in the hotel, not to mention an outspoken dog. Anyhow, we started going out every night to the Barrio Chino, where the the flamenco dancers dance and where you hear this wonderful cantando the the the flamenco singing. And there was one place that he loved where there was an old man almost blind, and he would sing as though his heart were breaking. You know, he would close his eyes and put out his hands and sing. And very quickly they understood that Lenny was a musical. Nothing that he said. But his reactions, they understood. And so they would sing for him. And every night we would go there and in Barcelona, in Catalonia, they have a native dance called the Sadhana. I think it’s descended from the Greeks. They dance in a circle with their arms up like this. And it’s a very democratic dance. They dance on Sunday in front of the cathedral and everybody can join in. And when the circle’s too big, they make another circle. You just join in. And for instance, the women would put down their handbags and they’re shopping for the Sunday lunch in the middle of the circle so that you can see that nothing is stolen. But if you arrived, you could just move in and you find your place. Now, it looks simple, but it’s extremely difficult. It’s very tricky. Little footwork like that, very tricky. Leny caught on immediately because he could count the beats and he could figure out when they were groups of eight, groups of ten. And when they stopped, I would be hopelessly lost and sort of stumbling along and trying to follow Lenny. But it was difficult of him to join right in and do it and do it well. Well, I think that he he enjoyed the whole thing in Barcelona. And then we went off. We all wanted to swim. We went off to an obscure beach place. We’d heard about an island, KALODNER And there he felt that he really had to have some music. There was no music at all. This was a very primitive place. So we were led some sort of shack. And Lenny said for a piano from Barcelona, well, it was a big deal, you know, to get this piano delivered. And of course, it was way out of tune. But we would go to the shack every day. And Lennie, who always quoted poetry, would say a mansion grand in a foreign land. I think it’s on. So we would go off to our mansion grand, which was this ramshackle shack. And he and Shirley Shirley, two, had total recall and they could play and sing everything from opera to musical comedy, old fashioned operetta, anything. And remember all the words. And Lenny had no voice at all. He sang like many conductors with a really rough voice. But he knew all the words of every song, and so did Shirley. And an example of his astounding musical memory is that there was a song that we liked very much. We’re talking about 1950 called I Had A Don Juan Alva. This is a sad song about my love has become a nun like I did not want to see Amathila Damanhur. Well, I hadn’t heard that since 1950. And when a book party was given for John in the late 80s, Leni came and suddenly said to me, You remember like I did on Honolua? I said, Well, vaguely. And that’s what he’s doing in the photograph. He is singing and conducting me so that we would both. Like I it on one album. Neither was able to sing you, but he remembered all the words and in Spanish he had an incredible linguistic gift.
Speaker He obviously managed German very well with the Vienna Philharmonic, with the German musicians. I heard him speak French excellently. He obviously spoke Italian well in Milan. It may be partly the musical here, but he remembered, as I said, these words of obscure Spanish songs that we sang over 30 years before. And he would be so amused.
Speaker There was a song, another one that we used to sing about. It’s in Spanish. Instead of sending you a prop or Europe is a compliment that people launched in the street investement largely propo. I will send you love and boleros. So he would always sign his little notes to make love and boleros, which is, you know, a recall of all of our Spanish life. Well, after the we spent almost a month and then he and Shirley went off to Jerusalem and he took this bracelet. He always like this bracelet. He took it and put it on. And he said that will be a link between us. And so off he went to Israel to conduct and men didn’t wear jewelry very much in those days. And apparently this on a conductor’s wrist is extremely visible. And it caused quite some comment. And he always liked that. And years later, married to Felicia every now and then he would just take it off and put it on and then wear it for a few days. And Felicia very tactfully would send it back to me. I think she was afraid that he would lose it somewhere, but he felt that this was a link, you see, and it’s a link bracelet. And it was typical of his kind of warm affection. As you know, he had been engaged to Felicia and he described the really very poignant going on a plane with Felicia to Hollywood when they were engaged. They was supposed to be a big engagement party. And he said he looked over and he was a stranger, this pretty girl in a hat with a little veil. And he wondered who it was and wondered what had he done. And when he got to Hollywood, they broke off the engagement. Well, we go we go back now to nineteen forty eight, 47 percent. And I’m in Europe for Vogue. And I was writing about God knows what in Holland and Lenny was conducting skydiving and terrible were to say they had a music festival.
Speaker So we all met up again and I moved into the hotel with Lenny and Shirley. And one day Lenny said we ought to go riding and we didn’t have any riding clothes with man. It’s easy, but not not for a woman I probably had on some Paris suit, but I don’t know what they got me to wear, but something or other. And we got on horses and rode over the dunes and galloping across the dunes. Lenny shouted out poetry by Yod. Auden was a favorite, but there are many others. We were both great friends of Stephen Spender and he would know a lot of Fender, but he would recite, you see. And then he turned to me, said, Don’t you know any poetry? Well, I couldn’t compete with that. He was a terribly disappointed in me, didn’t work at all. But again, he was not world famous at all. But anyone who met him realized there was some extraordinary magic. And this this was not an ordinary conductor or an ordinary young musician.
Speaker There always was this extraordinary aura. Now, he was rightly immensely self-centered, immensely preoccupied with his own person, with his health. He was a terrific hypochondriac in Spain.
Speaker He and Shirley had an entire suitcase full of medicines. I’d never seen anything like it. But sure enough, being a hypochondriac, something would be always happening to him. And when we were at our beach place on the terrace, he stepped on a bee, surely thinks it was a wasp. It was either a wasp or a bee, whereupon the foot swelled up. So therefore, we have to try and find a doctor. So we found the doctor in this little tiny place who arrived in his horse and buggy, don’t really know his name was, and so don’t him. Hero immediately took a great fondness for Lenny and sang to him and then said, You must come to my study in town wasn’t very far away and I will introduce you to my brother and we will both sing for you. So we went and sat down with Helio and his brother sang and they had a song and called me Hakka. They both sang the haka and then they danced around Feleti.
Speaker I mean, where else? And nobody else probably. But Lenny still remember Don Valerio when we sang a song and dance to John’s book party, he said, Oh, do you remember, Don, that Helio and and he he he remembered all of that.
Speaker So where were we? Where were we?
Speaker Yeah, you just I thought, well, I regard this as free association because I haven’t thought of most of these things that for so many years.
Speaker I think something that that should be stressed and other people will also was I was started to say tremendously self-centered, but tremendously generous and enormously generous.
Speaker I never saw Lenny jealous of other performers. He told me once in confidence, I’m a better conductor than von Karajan. But aside from that, I never heard him put down another performer. He might be disappointed in a performance. He might feel that this one could do better, that he really had it in him to do better. But there was no pettiness of any kind, and his generosity was really boundless as as a human being from every point of view. When I had a very unpleasant divorce and came back to this country where I hadn’t lived for many years, I I’m half English and was brought up in England and France. I’d hardly have lived here. So I came back after this terrible divorce, having been really everything taken away from the French laws while the tough on foreigners.
Speaker And I had nothing and I arrived. And by a quirk I was asked to take and get a lecture excuse me, at Trinity College in Hartford. And then at the Met. Well, nobody knew me in this country and Lenny and Felicia said, we’ll give you a party after the lecture. Well, I can tell you, nobody would have come to that lecture if it hadn’t been for the party. I think there would have been five cats at the Met and the Bernstein’s guests, you say. But because they gave the party the first lecture was a success entirely. Because of them, it was both Felicia and Lenny and most of my worldly possessions had been grabbed by my former French husband and Lenny and Shirley and Felicia really sort of took me in and looked after me and nursed me along. And Lenny said to me one day, he said, you know, I’ve got some extra money and I don’t quite know what to do with it. I’d like to invest it in you. Would you like to start an art gallery? Well, I never took it up on him, up on it. But again, typical. I mean, he would have done it. He thought I was in a bad way and needed something and he would have done it. And it’s so typical that when I had only given a couple of lectures, I had to have a brochure, had to have something to send out. And I asked Lenny if perhaps he would write something, whereupon he wrote immediately the text that I showed you that is so good that I’ve used it ever since. Now, a couple of other people I knew very well, I will not mention their names. One of them, you know, I asked would he perhaps write a few lines? I was just beginning and I needed it. And this person said, oh, no, I never do things like that. Well, that was the difference between others and Lenny. He was always ready to be generous. And he he he was really extraordinarily giving as as a human being. And it would be nice if that could be stressed. I mean, other people will talk about the extraordinary gifts, about the abilities, but that human side of generosity was so much a part of him.
Speaker And I know that I think some of that may have I get the sense of that may have changed just at the very end of his life since, well, the end, alas, he was excessive.
Speaker And he became really, as the French would say, African time. You couldn’t really make dates with Lenny. You couldn’t, for instance, in Paris, because I was making so I lectured at the Louvre in French that very bravely Lenny was in Paris. And my host, who was fond of Lenny, said it’s just hopeless to invite Lenny to dinner. He will show up with ten boyfriends and two hours late and it’s just impossible. And quite aside from that, the old baron Eduardo, what she she was a sort of splendid grown dame of Paris, very musical. She wrote a book on the Carini she organized in her beautiful house with a wonderful Rembrandt and a Vermeer. I mean, marvelous things.
Speaker Organized a dinner for after one of Danny’s concerts. So I went backstage to pick up Lenny, said, we can’t go, you can’t go. You got to have a whiskey. OK, so he had a whiskey. He had another whiskey. I said, you know, I think we really ought to go. A lot of people waiting for it couldn’t touch him. Finally, we arrived very late. I was absolutely appalled. And the butler, wonderful French butler said in French. The Baron Edwar is waiting and we went into frozen silence, you know, so it did all get to be too much.
Speaker The only cloud ever on our friendship and which was a loving friendship, was when he left Felicia, because I became deeply fond of Felicia. She was the best thing that ever happened to him. But I don’t know how she had the courage to do this. But after they split, she was appearing as the soloist, as the recital or whatever you call it, for the facade, the walten facade. You know, Daisy and.
Speaker Really lazy and silly with only conducting, you know, I don’t know how she had the courage to go and do it, but she did it well. I went backstage afterwards to see Felicia and to congratulate her. But I didn’t go back to see Lenny. I just couldn’t face him. And he looked me afterwards up and he said, How could you you of all people, how could you not come back? How could you not understand? But that I really minded very much.
Speaker Can we go back to because you talked about that is breaking off. Yes. Yes. And now we’ve got to his leaving her.
Speaker But we didn’t actually get. Well, let’s go back. Shall we go back. Sure. You go back. Well, I mean, he’s complex about marrying Felicia.
Speaker Go a little bit deeper, I think, and not being sure of this.
Speaker Well, of course it was his homosexuality. And I think part of his loving dependence on me is that there was no problem. I never expected anything. And when we were in syphoning in the place with the unpronounceable name, I remember sitting at a table with Lenny and he took out a piece of paper and made a line down the middle. He wrote down here why he should marry Felicia and why he should not. And it was mainly the should not. You see. All right, we we have the whole thing in Spain that I tell you about. And we were deeply attached to each other. We we really felt a terrible wrench for the month was over. And we both wept. And I got on the plane to go to Paris. He went on the plane to go to Israel wearing my bracelet. As I told you, he then came back to New York.
Speaker Felicia had been living with a man whom she loved and he dropped dead of a heart attack. And this was so pulverising, so shattering that Lenny felt he simply had to help her and protect her and come back in her life. And before he had really made up his mind about marriage, he sent her to me in Paris. I’d never met her. And this enchanting, tiny, delicate, beautiful creature. So that arrived in my Paris apartment and he wanted me to take care of her and help her as I could. And then he he decided that he would marry. But I think that the the death of her fiancee or whatever you want to call him, I believe, had a great deal to do with it, that he felt that he did that he had treated her badly. She had then remade her life with this man. He died. And I think he felt a responsibility wrongfully.
Speaker She was with you in Paris during that first visit. Did she talk to you about any of her feelings about marijuana and was she aware of his bisexual?
Speaker Well, you see, what was strange is she could not have not been aware. But tragically, I don’t know how women can make this mistake. And I’m sure you’ve seen it a number of times. They think I will change him. And, of course, it’s the most, alas, complete deception, self-deception. And she must have known and yet somehow felt that she would change it. Well, of course she didn’t. And I think she suffered terribly. And she had a number of nervous breakdowns. She had a really a very difficult time now. She had three children. She was a wonderful mother. She was a wonderful hostess. But she would get absolutely frantic by the court that these young men. Well, Lenny gave the child Elliot Norton lectures at Harvard, as you’ll remember. And I was very anxious to hear some of them. I couldn’t hear them all. I was lecturing at Hartford myself, but I arranged with Felicia that we would meet in Cambridge and go to one together and spend the night in Cambridge. So we went. And then afterwards, as always, there was a reception and it was very crowded and more and more adoring young men appeared. And at one point police turned to me. She said, I just. Can’t take this anymore. Let’s get out of here and so we left and we went and spent a night in a in a motel somewhere outside of Cambridge, I suppose. And then we took the plane next morning from Boston to to New York.
Speaker Do you think that that when they marry that Felecia really did believe that this would be the end of that for and that he would, you know, turn his back on that and become a purely heterosexual? Do they have the understanding that?
Speaker I wouldn’t know. My my feeling was that she just wanted to close her eyes to it and really felt that somehow that he would change and that with children he would change. But of course, he never did. He was always incurably flirtatious with with women do more, particularly with men. And and of course, it got much more pronounced with the years. And until it really got to be quite embarrassing. I remember the golden Teesdale that Europeanists who played with Lenny, they played the three Mozart’s Piano Concerto told me going out on stage.
Speaker I mean, here they were, you know, concentrating on this great work. And Lenny said, did you see the cute number in the second row? You know, he was absolutely incorrigible.
Speaker So it could not have been easy for Felicia. But she, I thought, handled things with such tact as far as the art world was concerned. And she was wonderful with the children. I would have thought it awkward and difficult for the children. But I think that she always somehow managed to to keep a balance sheet. She was a wonderful, as I say, wonderful hostess. I had many meals there, including some hilarious ones, practically everyone of interest and importance who came through New York wanted to meet Lenny. And so there were many meals. And since I speak several languages, I often got invited. Now I don’t speak Russian, Russian. But one was Solzhenitsyn, the Russian poet who at that point really didn’t speak English. He did learn some English later, but he spent some time in Cuba and apparently spoke some Spanish. But we were nonplussed because he came in and they brought out, I think, some whiskey and ordinary aperitif and he said, champagne, you. So there was a flurry of activity and they didn’t have any champagne on ice. And finally a bottle was produced. And then Solzhenitsyn asked a very clear cut because the one marked that all the Russians know is that Klitschko well, it wasn’t for Klitschko, but he managed to drink that. And we had, as always, Felice’s a very nice dinner. And when we left, he and I were in the same elevator with Penelope Gilbert leaving. She called out to me in Spanish when I noticed or something like that, and I asked in Spanish and he turned to me and said to have a suspension. And I said, yes. And then he said to me in Spanish, you and I are going out. Whereupon he said in Spanish he wanted to go to a nightclub. I had absolutely no idea where to go to a nightclub.
Speaker I had no clue and he had no tie on. So we went to some place that the taxi driver recommended and they wouldn’t let us in because he didn’t have a tie on. But a very nice head waiter understanding the problem said, well, if you go to such and such a place, you’ll be able to go in. So and we went and we had the most improbable conversation because all it interested him was money. He wanted to know the price of paintings. He owned a ledger because it was a communist and he owned several paintings. So of all sort of unlikely conversations leaving Leonie’s. We sat there, the two of us, and he was saying, well, now do you think I should sell this now? And I it’s this site and it’s this color. Do you think that it should be worth this or would you hold on to it longer? I mean, a real capitalistic conversation?
Speaker Well, that was just one of many interesting people, some of the names of names, because there was a photograph of money with, you know, all kinds of people who were in and out of his house or Max von Sydow, the the Scandinavian actor.
Speaker I remember it’s hard to think of it because they were really a lot of. People were flowing back and forth. I wish I had probably come as soon as I go home, I’ll remember it.
Speaker Tell me a little bit about just the aura of glamour that surrounded Lenny in the unusualness of that at that time. But first first of all, for any American to be a major conductor was the first and the glamorous aura that was around him all the time, almost more akin to a movie star than a musician.
Speaker Well, yes. Well, I think that there was this extraordinary, I would say, animal vitality and magnetism. And that, of course, swept everybody along. And also his enormous desire to charm, which I mentioned earlier. And as far as Europe was concerned, his his great linguistic ability made a huge difference. I mean, here was this young American and he had a very good ear, obviously. So he would speak to them in French and German, Italian and Spanish. So I think that people were impressed by that. But he swept along. He had such enormous charm and vitality. And when he wanted tremendous gaiety, the reverse of the coin was also he had Great Depression. But that that didn’t show so much unless you really knew him well, late in life, long after Felicia died, Shirley called me up and said, Lenny is so depressed. This is his birthday. He’s just so depressed. Won’t you come up to Fairfield because you’ll cheer him up? So I went out Adolph Green and Phyllis went out. Who else? Bertie. Shirley. And he had been just sunk in gloom. And then he he rallied because we were all there. In fact, there was a hilarious scene. He was sitting by the pool in his bathing trunks and he needed a haircut. So we all cut his hair. We all took turns. We danced around with the scissors and snip, snip, snip, snip, snip.
Speaker Everyone got cut off a little. So the result was a little eccentric, but that that cheered him up.
Speaker And then a birthday routine was that Bertie would play the Alpen horn. You know that. What is it. You know, that enormous thing. I think it took somebody else to hold it up and then Bertie would play and then Adolph, of course, managed to cheer things up. And then the next thing you knew, Lenny was at the piano and Adolph was singing and mugging and he would rally. So he would have both this tremendous gaiety and real deep depression.
Speaker And of course, I think all of that got much worse late in life with too much drink, too much excess of of all kinds.
Speaker What do you think the Depression was? What caused it?
Speaker I think it was hereditary. I think that Sam, his father, was a manic depressive. So I’m a great believer in inheritance.
Speaker I think it was genetic because Kamekona said yes. Something. How do you think that? But I want to finish on Felicia when we’re talking about that, when the. And also talk a little bit about Lenny as a family man, and because he he was deeply a family man.
Speaker Oh, very much so. He adored his children about that and his relationship with the children. He loved his children and his desire to really be a family man.
Speaker Oh, yes. I mean, which is part of this conflict. Yes.
Speaker You know, with him, it was hard for me to talk about the conflict, but I can tell you how immensely proud of them he was. And one really adorable little vignette when Lisa was already dead, alas. But when Jamie had her last child, a little boy, 10 days after he was born, Lenny was conducting here and the Philharmonic. And Jamie, we were all there in the family box I used to when we sat in the box and the baby, 10 days old, had been left with Julia, the children made in the apartment. And we all went back to the apartment after the concert and there was this tiny creature on the bed.
Speaker And then he said probably the first Jewish president.
Speaker So I have wonderful photographs of Lenny with the children. Oh, good. And it’s so obvious that he was a wonderful father.
Speaker Well, I showed you that joke paper that he made up making over Nina to me for foreign travel. And there were just the three of us. I don’t know why we were up late at night. This was an Edinborough and probably Felecia sensibly had gone to bed and we were sitting under the piano, of all things. Lenny, Nina and I were all sitting under the piano chatting and since I knew France very well, then I got the idea that I should show Lena Nina around. And so he made out a legal document, a joke, legal document, you know, signed Elby notary public, making out Nina over to me for foreign travel.
Speaker Let’s go back to Felicia when they already are, Felicia, talk to you about the break I he left.
Speaker Well, yes, Lenny didn’t. I told you he was very annoyed with me for holding it against him. But Felicia talked about her great sadness. And Lillian Hellman, who was a great friend, gave a party for Felicia, for all of us, the Felicia supporters, to celebrate her and honor her. And so there was quite a big party. And I think that Felicia was quite buoyed up by that, because, after all, people loved Felicia. She she was an exquisite character, a wonderful friend, thoughtful, kind, really everything. Nice and very funny. Very funny. She could be a good mimic and a wonderful actress. Very good. Very, very good. And she she did. In Berlioz’s Latoya, there is a role. There are no words. But at one point, the Felicia character I’m sorry, I can’t remember the name of the character has to cross the entire stage, very big stage in mourning, showing deep grief.
Speaker And she was marvelous because to do this without a word, just by the way, you moved slowly across the stage. She was wonderful and she was very, very musical, as you know, played the piano very well. She was a pupil of Claudio Arrau and she was very good at doing the spoken parts. She did The DaVinci. What was it? It was a Daphne cycleway. And the piano is born with A, B, C. She did that so well. She did the she did the facade very well.
Speaker Very, very well. And it was such humor and beautiful diction.
Speaker She also on television, yes, because you see the golden age, I didn’t live here so that I missed a lot of that. You see, I didn’t come back to this country until 70 and then 72 permanently, so that a lot of things I missed out on, such as television.
Speaker Did she she clearly made a decision to give up a very promising career to be Mrs. Leonard Bernstein.
Speaker Yes. Yes. Did she talk about that?
Speaker Not like that. No. But for instance, it always rather amused me if she would leave a message on the telephone. Normally, I think one would say this is Felicia Bernstine. She always said, this is Mrs. Leonard Bernstein. She always used the name, but she never talked nostalgically about having given up her career.
Speaker No, she flung herself into family life and then her passion was decorating. And she she loved fixing things up and she was immensely talented. That’s another side of Alicia in making things. I admire that so much because I can’t make anything. But I mean, she would know how to make the curtains over from one room to fit another and how to do the cushions and how to make the bedspreads. And she proper and bringing up, you know, she knew how to sew a fine seam and she knew how to strip a chair. And she she would buy some battered old piece of furniture and rub all the paint off and repaint it. And she was extremely clever at doing it. All those things and very economically do.
Speaker She was very undemanding when a people I know there were many people who were angry about being angry with me for leaving Felicia. And I try to understand that. I mean, I can understand that people would be angry because she was deeply hurt.
Speaker What was it a surprise?
Speaker I mean, Lenny’s dual life was known, certainly, but but this was a completely public thing. I mean, this was an announced in the newspapers that they were separating and it was very clear that he was leaving for another man.
Speaker So that’s pretty hard to take about sort of unspoken. Yes. Yes.
Speaker Let me have the party affiliation.
Speaker Oh, there were a lot of people I wish I could remember. I remember who gave it. Of course it was. It was Lillian, I think probably Betty and Adolph and Phyllis and probably even a lot of people that I didn’t know from the from the showbiz world, which was not mine. But I know that there were a lot of people and all very warm friends of Felicia’s.
Speaker When did come back when he had the cancer. Could you just give me a full sentence? Yes.
Speaker Well, when when when she learned first of all, she was when she learned she had cancer, she was extremely gallant. And at first she she she said the very minimum. And I think I’d been away maybe in Europe again. And when I came back, I called with dismay to to say how dreadfully sorry I was to hear about that.
Speaker And she said, but Leni came back and so she had never gone into detail. But but she announced that you see as as something something positive out of this terrible thing.
Speaker And of course, we were all very, very hopeful, you know, that the treatment would work. And Alexander was wonderful. He went with her every time to the to the hospital for the chemotherapy. Every time, every time, every time.
Speaker Do you think that many, many of us think with you about his feelings after she died?
Speaker He was absolutely stricken. Oh, I was absolutely desolate and I was very touched when Lenny and the children asked me to speak at her memorial. And I did my very best, I think of one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Several people spoke. Mike Nichols spoke after me, but I was the first one. And to walk out on the stage, not to break down in tears, it was extremely difficult. And I spoke about what a wonderful person she was. And afterwards. Then he said, But you didn’t say all she did for you and I really had done everything I could. But but but you can say it might have been guilt, might have been whatever you want. But, I mean, she she was practically deified after she died.
Speaker I know that.
Speaker I’ve read that Larry felt in some way, perhaps indirectly responsible for her death. And he felt that somehow the hurt he brought on her head.
Speaker Well, people people do say that that that great sorrow, that great shock. I mean, this has not been medically proven, but it may well be. I mean, he was absolutely, really pulverise stricken by this, absolutely stricken, desperate about it. And of course, of course, all of the children.
Speaker They were extraordinary. I also think they were extraordinary when Lenny died. Oh, I must tell you, something really is so touching. I had no way of knowing that Lenny ever knew when my birthday was. I don’t remember we ever celebrated it together. And when Lenny was so ill, I was lecturing in Turkey and I read in the Herald Tribune, the International Tribune, that he had canceled all his engagements, which terrified me because I’ve been away so long, I didn’t realize that he was so ill.
Speaker And then on the plane coming back from Turkey, I read something that made it seem even worse. And as soon as I got back here, I called Shirley. And she said it’s just desperate, it’s just an absolute horror scene. The day I got back from Turkey. There was a telegram from Lenny for my birthday that arrived.
Speaker He must have died that day. It was simply extraordinary. It was like a cross two. I don’t think I’d ever heard from my birthday before and apologizing for being late. But all my love, it was the most extraordinary thing. And he obviously dictated it because it was signed. Leonard Bernstein, not Lenny, you say. But isn’t that amazing?
Speaker I got it at the same time as I heard that he died.
Speaker That’s a very touching story. And I was going to ask you.
Speaker Well, you were asking about the children. And I was I was thinking how extraordinary they were when Lenny died. And so was so was Shirley. I went and I sat with with Jerry Robbins, who’s an old friend at the Dakota, because, you know, the Jewish thing is the very least right away. And it was just unreal walking into that place where there had been so many joyful occasion for so many years. And I had never seen all these men with a yarmulke to see Adolph Green and all these people. I thought they were in disguise. Somehow it added to the unreality of the scene. And then we went into the big living room where there had been rows of chairs put out, furniture moved back, and then this enormous coffin, very shiny.
Speaker And then he wasn’t very tall. This enormous coffin sort of overwhelming us. We were right next to it. There wasn’t that much room. And then when we were all seated, Shirley came in bringing Lenny, his mother, and Shirley was so great that she was holding up this little frail woman, you know, sobbed and then the children spoke. I don’t know how they how they managed to do it, but with such dignity and presence of mind, they were they were extraordinary, just extraordinary. And you know, about the the concert that Jamie organized afterwards when the orchestra played without a conductor. And Jamie was extraordinary, the way she managed to to create some kind of gaiety and resuscitate something of the the spirit of the Dakota was an amazing achievement.
Speaker I thought the orchestra playing without conductors, rather akin to the ride of his horse.
Speaker Yes. Yes. And they played it is very difficult.
Speaker At least, you know, the overture recorded and I gather extraordinarily difficult to to play without a conductor. And they did.
Speaker It was an amazing achievement. And the the funeral I had never been to a Jewish funeral. And the a friend, it was it was the Cantor who recited the Kaddish, which is so beautiful, this wonderful sound. And as I say, I sat with Jerry and I were holding hands very tight and then some of us went out to the cemetery and you probably know this, but there were calls to take us, you know, behind the hearse. And when we went by a construction site where there were workers up on the building, you know, they all called out, yay, Lenny waved their hats. It was just heartbreaking. But so moving. You know, all traffic had been stopped in the city, at least along the path, you know, so we went along in absolute silence. And I hadn’t I hadn’t seen this before at the at the actual cemetery, the not the counter. What does he call the rabbi? And when they lower the coffin, they they he said it is the Jewish law lairy that everyone who wants to can take the shovel and put in little earth. But you can turn the shovel shovel around upside down because then you get so little earth and it shows how reluctant you are to bury the person. And I thought that.
Speaker So touching, so beat the streets of Cortez in New York with utterly closed. Yes, yes, they are unusual for an artist, isn’t it?
Speaker I think unique. But whoever they are, I don’t even think I don’t even know who the mayor was. I don’t remember. But it was it was a rage. And there was not a sound. There was a lot of traffic and a whole lot of traffic was closed. And there was just the hearse and the procession where the people lined the streets. There were people outside the Dakota. But I think probably people didn’t know which way the cortege was going, probably because there was quite a crowd outside the outside the Dakota.
Speaker I kept remember?
Speaker And I was like, well, no. But I can tell you, Lenny and I went to our friend’s last birthday. This was an unforgettable occasion because first of all, our darling Ouran already had Alzheimer’s to a very advanced degree, but he still recognized us and many people he didn’t recognize. But he would recognize Lenny and he would recognize me. And we decided we would go out and they were playing a piece of his in the little local movie theater up there. And so I went to pick up Lenny at the Dakota and he didn’t come, didn’t show up and dropped and dropped. And he finally entered coughing madly and he said choking on something, choking up something.
Speaker And he kept coughing and he said, well, we better go. And he drove. He drove. I mean, he drove in the most insane way. But anyhow, we somehow arrived alive. But with Lenny coughing, coughing, coughing, coughing, coughing.
Speaker And we went into the little movie theater and sat next to Aaron, who, as I said, knew very well who we were.
Speaker And what was terribly sweet is that Aaron, who really didn’t know much about what was going on, knew that somehow something was happening for him. And when his piece was finished and there was applause by an old reflex, he stood up and took a vow. And it was it was a great theme. But Lenny still coughing, coughing, coughing, golfing, coughing, coughing. And some little nun came up to him and said, I’m praying for you, Will. Finally, with one gigantic cough, he coughed up the casing of some pill that he had swallowed just before. And it was stuck in his throat, you see. But of course, it really seemed as though he was grabbing all the attention to himself that it was a birthday celebration.
Speaker There was there was Lenny attracting all attention. But he he was perfectly innocent. And he showed me probably. Here it is. You see. There it is. And it was a capsule with a gelatin cover, you know, and he had somehow got that stuck in his throat.
Speaker So then we were waiting.
Speaker Lenny was aware that people might think, oh, you know, you talk about the relationship company.
Speaker Yes. Well, what Lenny told me was that he worshipped Aaron from afar but had never met him. But when he was a student at Harvard, he came down to New York for a dance recital of Anna Sokoloff, and some one must have introduced him in the audience to Aaron. And he’d somehow sort of ironer some grand old man. And he was someone not that much older than he was.
Speaker And Aaron invited him to come to his loft, whereupon he sat down and played the piano for Aaron, as he always you know, he was always immediately sitting down to the piano and playing the piano and how I didn’t know about how Aaron encouraged him to compose. I know that Aaron was extremely severe with him. And he said and Aaron was a stop writing warmed over Scriabin. And I think he Lenny trusted Aaron’s judgment completely because Aaron didn’t try to get followers to write the way he wrote. I think he tried to find Lenny’s own gift and develop it. And I think Aaron was really like a lighthouse for Lenny. He was someone who was so, so pure and dedicated and completely honest and reliable, that there was a tremendous affective bond between the two when we were in Canada, this funny place in Spain, suddenly then he said to me, we ought to send a cable to Aaron. So I said, yes, let’s do that. So we reached out to Aaron. We love you. And then Lenny added, We love each other. And all of that went to Aaron. So I know that Aaron was one of the really important human beings besides musicians, you know, in his life you were talking about.
Speaker Let me ask you something.
Speaker Do you have what what is your fondest, best memory, Sam?
Speaker It’s a funny story that I couldn’t dredge up on the on the run, but he was a very funny and very amused and amusing.
Speaker But I couldn’t I couldn’t think up immediately and anything anything really appropriate, actually, the image of when flying, I am, of course, reciting.
Speaker I just want to pay for it.
Speaker Why do you think people are so fascinated?
Speaker Well, apparently he was one of the most magnetic persons that any of us ever knew. And there was this enormous, overwhelming talent which just was so, so obvious. He just was one of the elite of the world in the proper sense of the world of the word. He just wasn’t like anybody else. And I think everybody felt that there was a kind of radiance due to the personality and this tremendous vitality. You felt it was a great force, which is what comes over as a conductor, after all, including the physical vitality.
Speaker Do you think that you are aware, I’m sure that he was criticized by many of his many critics and some of his contemporaries for what they call spreading himself? Said yes. Well, what’s your feeling?
Speaker Well, my feeling was that it’s what he wanted to do. And I don’t think that we missed out on a great symphony because Lenny was writing fancy free or this and this and that. I think that his gift was to do those different things. And I’m not sure whether had he concentrated only on symphonic music, if the results would have been more impressive than they are. I think it just was part of him. And it would have perhaps, I think, a mistake to to try to to limit him. Of course, he was criticized. It’s very easy to criticize, isn’t it, people who are so versatile. But I think his problem was being so versatile. Should he be a pianist, a conductor, should he be a composer? And and his his agony was that he wanted to be taken seriously as a composer. He wanted to write a great mass. He wanted to do these things and felt that he couldn’t or maybe I think at times he felt he couldn’t. I think it’s part of his depression that he felt he was not able to create the great work that that he wanted. But in a way, he was his own greatest creation.
Speaker He also did create great work, as I understand it.
Speaker I don’t think it’s an impossible story because I’ve read it in a couple of places. Of course, we all know books can be inaccurate, but sadly, I read that at a certain point his career, he wanted it not listed in the press releases. That he was the composer was a story really.
Speaker And I find that astounding, actually. Yes. Yes. That he had.
Speaker So in a sense. But the press that said that if you were a Broadway writer, a writer, you aren’t a serious composer.
Speaker Oh, that’s a great shame. Yes. Yes.
Speaker Do you think that that Lenny’s desire to be, I think, is actually set, that his desire to be recognized as a serious and respectable composer kept him from because he stayed away from Broadway for a long time?
Speaker You stay away from theater or.
Speaker I think it’s very possible. Very possible, because various people wanted to get him to do certain things. He started doing certain things with Jerry, for instance, and and didn’t go on. I think he wanted to be a serious composer and recognized as such and did not see theater as being within that.
Speaker I think. I think.
Speaker Let him talk about his parents, his parents. Well, yes, he did, in fact, see, I met his mother and he would talk about Sam and Sam had wanted him to be in the beauty supply business and was very disappointed in him. And I think he minded very much that there was a very difficult relationship with the father, not not with the mother, but I think he wanted very much the parental disapproval rate.
Speaker And do you know, I’m sure you know that he went on to talk a little bit about some of the autobiographical elements that crept into this or did creep in so much of their trouble.
Speaker DTT Oh, yes. Why UNISUPER? Yes.
Speaker Can you believe I heard that?
Speaker Yes. I happened to be in New York at some point when when they performed traveled in Tahiti. But, you know, no, I wouldn’t really have very much to say about that, except what is what is obvious. I can tell you something totally irrelevant. But wasn’t his mother’s name Rose? Jenny. Jenny. Jenny. Jenny. Bobby Fishtails mother was called Rose. This is what I wanted to tell you. And she was a very old lady living in Chicago. And Bobby and Arthur were wonderful cooks. And they, as you know what a duo pianist and one of the grand pianos was kept in the kitchen and the other the other end of the house. And it was a very useful piece of furniture to put all the kitchen equipment on and so forth. And we often had meals in the kitchen. And one time when Lenny and Felicia were there and old Rose, Lenny sat down to the piano and played non-stop, a medley of all the songs with Rose in the title Rose of the Last Rose of Summer.
Speaker Rosemary, he went right from one of the other. I mean, it’s typical of the kind of thing that he could do that. I mean, every popular song that you can think of with Rose in the title, he immediately strung into one long composition. And of course, it was Jenny is Rose was was Bobby’s mother. But that’s typical of his amusement and memory. And by the way, the speed with which he solved the word games, it was hopeless to play with him because he was just so quick and so good with words. When we were in Spain, long car rides, we would play word games. Shirley was very good, too, but I would get totally lost because Lenny just had tremendous facility and ability with words and a memory. Hence remembering all the poetry is as well as he did.
Speaker What can you talk about? Lenny was a great reader. Yes.
Speaker And apparently a very far ranging and diverse taste in everything. Really considered incredibly well read person. Did you talk about books with him?
Speaker Sometimes, yes, sometimes. And also he wanted to he wanted to learn a little something about painting. And for instance, when we were in Holland and in The Hague and in Amsterdam, we went to museums together and he would ask me about paintings and I’d look and he’d studied he’d taken a history of art course at Harvard. And of course, he remembered everything. But in reading, he read, as you said, a great deal. And he was a great admirer of my husband, of John Russell, because he admired good writing so much. And of course, he could read in different languages. I don’t know how he had the time, but still he did somehow manage to read. He was he had a very well furnished mind. That was a good description of the world’s best.
Speaker And of course, he was said that he wasn’t showing a lot more notes and not notes of words.
Speaker And so much of his musical compositions was drawn from literary.
Speaker Yes, of course. Of course.
Speaker But I read it over and over again, people saying he wasn’t an intellectual, he was a smart, but he wasn’t an intellectual. Would that mean what do you think?
Speaker And that can cover the work, can cover a multitude of different. And since, well, I think he he was more instinctive and emotive than analytical. I don’t think he had a philosophical turn of mind. He had a very he was very influenced by Judaism. But I don’t think that he he would have the the approach of an Oxford Don. Let’s say he was not Isaiah Berlin, but he was highly intelligent. But that’s something else. Again, he was versatile, intelligent, quick. But after all, his energies were directed in another direction.
Speaker He was. However, if you look at the challenge of the kind of work that he was taking on as a composer, made even more complicated by the fact that they often had a literary attempt, quite unusual and quite unusual. But, you know, certainly for modern music. Yes. And it often took the form, it seems to me, as some kind of a dialogue with God himself in such a cottage. But what I’m saying is, I’m not I’m not I’m not going to be on camera. He I think he was profoundly looking for answers to things.
Speaker He certainly was. And he was profoundly interested in ideas. For instance, the Charles Elliot Norton lectures had a great deal to do with perception.
Speaker He was interested in a series of deconstruction in contemporary writing with I remember talking to him about the French poet, about not of me and how Mahler May said that suggestion was much more important than definition and that interested in very much I mean, ideas like that he played around with. And I I’m not capable of judging how well his Charles Eliot modern lectures would hold up in print. I mean, I’m not a philosopher. I don’t know. But he had the ambition and the wish to play with ideas. And certainly the literary text, as you said, were important to him. But the the religious text, the fundamental Jewish religious texts were of enormous importance to him.
Speaker And I think his questions of faith were important.
Speaker Very, very he started with a cross at one point, many people absolutely crazy.
Speaker Yes, yes, yes. Was one of those wild gestures. Yes.
Speaker Even weirder than my bracelet of you were there. You were in lectures. You only won. Yes. How do you feel going down with the audience, with the kids in two? In the same way that I think many years earlier, young people have been complete?
Speaker I honestly don’t think so. I don’t think so. I think that they were puzzled. I think he would carry people along by his personal charisma. But I think analytically, some of the more advanced students didn’t think that this was really thought out to the end. It was more a personal triumph of charm and magnetism than an intellectual, quote unquote, triumph, because watching the election videotape does seem, though, that lady kind of realized that it wasn’t going down quite the same way as jokes were going down.
Speaker She’s been going down the slight discomfort there. That one notes visually.
Speaker Yes, I notice. Yes.
Speaker And I didn’t know whether that was because the idea seemed pedestrian for these Harvard students or whether he had really just lost a sense of what’s just out of step with the times.
Speaker Well, it may be that the ideas were not fully the jested, that they were more ambitious than realized that might have something to do with it.
Speaker The basic theme that wasn’t trying to use the Chomsky theory of Universal and linguistics was to basically get around to the notion of the universality of music.
Speaker I’m not a philosopher. Yeah, is that wasn’t it? I think so, yes. And that it did seem a bit simplistic, perhaps.
Speaker Perhaps and perhaps the whole linguistic thing at the time seemed more fashionable than solid, but really an excuse to, in a sense, defend tonality.
Speaker Can you talk a little bit about that?
Speaker I’m not really equipped for that. You’ll have so many other people who can who can say it’s so interesting to me.
Speaker I mean, it does seem that now that actually people come around saying that it was almost prophetic. I mean, that lady was doing so much his compositional career, the fashion was against her now. Yes.
Speaker And for serial music and all the universities in the academic academy, to the extent that they exist, because, yes, he was flying in the face of that. Of course, now everybody knows. Yes. That tonality is the way to go along along.
Speaker And you know who the bad.
Speaker No, not personally, no.
Speaker I mean, I met him and I and his wife and so but not you obviously were part of the musical world because of the father being in Philadelphia.
Speaker He was a board of directors, you see, not a conductor. But I met all the as as a child. I met all the guest conductors and performers and I went the Chomsky’s concerts as of the age of five. And so I was brought up in a bar of music.
Speaker What what would be some of the qualities you would cite as about laddie’s conducting style to really distinguished him from other men, the other many conductors that she’s working?
Speaker Well, aside from the purely external things of the the acrobatics and so forth, I thought an interesting thing was that as far as I could tell, the conducting got better and better.
Speaker That the Brahms symphonies at the end, for instance, were just wonderful, wonderful. His recording of Tristan, there was more depth. I felt that he was constantly improving. And that, as I say, I think especially those Brahms symphonies were just marvelous. And his I think his tremendous interest in Mahler was of great importance. I mean, he really introduced Mahler, you know, to his passion for Mahler made it convincing. I mean, it can be rather a lot to take. But he was so convinced and so passionate about it and could can could present works with such clarity. Even when the orchestration was very sick, he could keep the balance so, so under control that you got all the different voices and the different colors. And as I say, I felt that he got only stronger as a conductor is really interesting.
Speaker Again, kind of a paradox that critically, it’s it’s very clear that as like a Walter. I mean, how many times people said that Peter Pan has finally grown up and.
Speaker Become the old master and fulfill the shoes of his early promise and in his musical life be certainly the perception, whereas in his personal life it were sliding in the other direction.
Speaker Yes, alas.
Speaker Can you talk, if you will, about the last years? Well, I think it’s so unfortunate. It’s so unfortunate in that he he really became just so excessive in the way he treated himself, the way he ruined his house. I mean, the drinking, the everything, the smoking. When Felicia died, she made him promise on her deathbed that he would stop smoking and he promised and then he just couldn’t stop.
Speaker So he smoked all the time. He drank all the time. He did everything to to to to ruin his ruin himself and doctor after doctor. I mean, I saw it happen in different countries would be absolutely enchanted by by leniency. But now, look, just give me a few days. I mean it. Just come to my clinic for a few days. Just let me take you for two hours. I’ll be able to. And he paid no attention and it almost was self-destructive, but it was very sad. It was very sad. He remained an adorable friend, but a lot of people were really very found. It’s so excessive that it was you know, they didn’t want to see him. You couldn’t invite him. This swarm of young men around all the time. All the time. All the time. Got to be a lot. I mean, luckily, I still got the good side, like going alone with Anita to Erin’s last birthday, you see. And I was not emotionally involved, so it doesn’t bother me. But I hated to see him destroy himself, which which he did really he was aware of.
Speaker I guess people I mean, some level he was aware, I’m sure, that he was doing that.
Speaker Let’s just talk about one more thing, because actually nobody’s talked about it yet, but I haven’t asked about it yet. And you raised it, which is the radical chic.
Speaker I wasn’t even here. So you. No, I wasn’t here. I only read about it. And it was mainly Felecia. I think she was it was her party.
Speaker Yes. I was really just one last question in various ways. You’ve answered this. Trying to give me that question with the answer is I’m not going to be in a thing.
Speaker Do you think that the real lady was at odds with the public image, both musically and professionally, that there was the public image of lady and then it was the way that they were at odds and that that was the source of some of his pain and trouble and distress and depression.
Speaker I wouldn’t have thought that Lenny’s depression had anything to do with a split between the perception of him that the audience might have and his own inner feelings about himself. I believe that that he really inherited manic depression since his father was a manic depressive. I think that Shirley is a manic depressive, so that I think it was much more fundamental than simply a split in perception.
Speaker Do you think that there is an actual split or do you think Lenny felt that his public image was at odds with who he really was?
Speaker I don’t think he really gave it, gave it thought because he he loved the adulation. He loved it. If he had been impatient of it, he would not have conducted himself in the same way. He he would even have a sort of little signal when we were sitting up in his box to keep applauding, to keep the applause going. He adored the adulation.
Speaker So I don’t think that that that he he wasn’t like Giuliani who wanted to, let’s say, you know, get away right after the concert and get back to his wife or whatever. I mean, he adored all that. He absolutely loved being loved. He had to be loved. As I mentioned earlier, he had to charm absolutely everybody and he had to be loved. You’ve talked about that?
Speaker No, not really. I would tease him sometimes. I would tease him when he would say, of course, I went to bed with both of them and I said, well, yes, of course, I would have laughed about it, but never had this very funny story that I adore.
Speaker He and letting those interviews was something that was new that they were playing. And they both burst into tears. And many of them said, you know, the problem with you and I said is that we want everybody in the world to love us. The problem is you can’t meet everybody in the world.
Speaker Oh, that’s wonderful. That’s wonderful. That’s wonderful.
Speaker To to have a reason to think again about Lenny. Not that I don’t think about him, but obviously the fact that I was going to come and see you and maybe call Shirley this morning, which I should have done long before, and made me think of Lenny and all all the books that he inscribed to me with such marvelous sort of outpouring of love. I can’t remember the words exactly, but in the last one he wrote, you see, for my name. And then he said, Who has never given me a moment of anything except pure joy. But isn’t that marvelous to have someone write that to you? So I absolutely cherish that love. And as soon as he met John, he absolutely embraced John, both physically and emotionally, loved John and was so happy for me. Now, that’s part of his generosity. You see, rather than being jealous of my being taken completely by somebody else, he was so happy that I was happy and just really loved John, love John’s writing, love seeing him. And there he was, almost like the proud, proud father at my wedding. The whole you see, the Felecia Lenny and Nina were officiating at my wedding with Erin. It was really like old home week or, you know, winters where we all came in. And Stephen Spender, who was also a great friend of mine, came from London for the wedding. And the actual people at the wedding were a tiny group. We had lots of people for the concert afterwards, but they were just a tiny group. So it was very nice that that the the the the burn stars were there in force with Erin and Steven. And whenever anything really important happened in my life, I always wanted Lenny there. And that’s why I asked him when I got my French decoration, when they said to me very severely the French embassy that I could have, I don’t know, 10 people, 15 people, something like that. But the ceremony had to start on the nose. And that’s why I called and said, whenever anything happens, you know, I love to have you, but don’t come because you’re going to be late. That’ll just upset everybody. And so when John and I arrived at the French consulate, there was Lenny pacing up and down long before anybody else had arrived. Watch in hand to show me that he was there, but that, again, is typical of his of his kindness. So I just would like to emphasize the the human generosity and kindness and and faithfulness through these many, many, many years. So I’m delighted that you are doing this program in his honor.
Speaker Immortalizing and beyond is already immortal.
Speaker Yes, exactly.
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