bib
MAUREEN HOWARD
In
Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone,
he's fudging all the way.
Leo Proudhamrner, a Negro celebrity (actor not novelist) suffers a heart
attack on stage at the height of his career, forcing him to a lengthy
playback of his life. The boyhood in Harlem is well done. After that it's
a Hollywood success story that ends in dreamland - "Barbara had
rented a penthouse, and her wide, wide windows faced the bay." While
awaiting the arrival of his young love, Black Christopher, he is attended
by his former white mistress who has earned equal billing on stage and
screen but has slipped to a warm matronly role in his affections. They've
had their ups and downs, but the limp Noel Coward banter they've
developed keeps them in a colloidal harmony.
She [at the bedside]: "How nice to have you back."
He: "It was worth the journey .. . just to have you say that."
She laughed again, "Dear Leo!"
"I have the feeling that you're making fun of me, but I don't know
why."
"Because you're funny," she said.
"Bon. Bravo pour le clown."
Oh well, this may be the worst of it, but they did once start out as stage–
struck kids stealing out of the supermarket and went through all those
wrenching scenes from "Pinky" and "Gentlemen's Agreement."
With young Christopher, however, the great star is tuned in on
Youth, Black Power: "Christopher and his friends, boys and girls,
dancing to the hi-fi set. They were teaching me a great deal; made me
wonder where I'd been so long...." There is a coda in which Baldwin's
hero, like some Westchester dad, is taken by his boy to a discotheque to
observe what's happening, and before his departure for that much-needed
rest on the Riviera (contract signed for the next big film), dear Leo is
agreeing that his young cat does need guns - that's what's happen–
ing, too.
Good roles here for Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft. Baldwin, by
the way has taken the trouble to assure us, in a
Look
piece on Sidney
that the actor is not the model for his hero. That article has a lot to say,
in a confused way, about how fame, the big money and the obligations
of race contribute to the films of one and the novels of the other.
The photograph of John Rechy on the jacket of his book
Numbers
is the very image of his hero Johnny Rio
(l.R.!),
a "very butch number"
who in tum admires himself in the mirror. Lest any delightful Naboko–
vian game of identity is suggested, it should be noted that the narcissism
