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I had my taxes done last night.
Annual events such as my tax consultation elicit from me an odd mix of aniticipation and melancholy. My tax consultation feels almost like a holiday (more Easter than Christmas, I guess, since my appointment doesn't fall on the same date every year) in that it signifies the passing of another year and, if I'm lucky, I get a little present in the form of a refund.
My accountant lives in my old neighborhood, the Upper East Side. I lived there for the first seven or eight years after I moved to New York (save the very first three or four months, when I was subletting a tiny apartment from a friend on the Upper West Side). In fact, he's located just two blocks south of my old place. And if he weren't, I'm not sure I'd have returned to the old neighborhood more than once or twice in the fifteen years I've been gone.
I had a roommate in that apartment, a buddy I've known since high school, and neither of us were terribly fond of the the place. Our apartment was hardly luxurious -- a one-bedroom (I slept in the "living" room") walk-up on the sixth floor -- and there was precious little to do in the surrounding area. When we had an evening free, we nearly always headed downtown or to the west side. So we jumped at the chance to leave when an offer was made (the new owner of the building had designs on taking it co-op and offered us a buy-out to vacate).
And I feel no fonder of the area now, when I make my annual tax season pilgrimage to the neighborhood, than I did then. I certainly have no desire to move back there. But I can't help but feel a little wistful, too, when reminded of the struggles we endured (and two young men new to the big city after growing up in the suburbia that is Oklahoma City are assured of struggles), of the lousy jobs we had then, the women we loved.
My roommate married the woman he loved while we lived there, though, sadly, that marriage didn't last terribly long. They're no longer in contact with each other.
My great love of that era left New York not long before we vacated that apartment to return to Seattle and then Japan. She's now an ordained Buddhist monk. We have very occasional contact (in fact, I owe her a letter), but mostly lead lives as separate as my buddy and his ex.
I arrived early at my accountant's office and so, with some time to kill, veered north to wander down my old block -- something I'd not done, I don't think, since we moved away fifteen years ago. It seemed hardly changed at all (though the avenues at either end of it have been developed extensively -- the area has much more to offer now than it did in our day). I peeked in the front door of our old building; the entryway was just as I remembered it, though with a fresher coat of paint and cleaner floors than when we'd lived there.
As I stood gazing in, wondering if, in fact, the landlord had found enough buyers to take the place co-op, a young woman came down the interior stairs and out the front door. As I stepped back to let her pass, I asked, "Would you mind telling me, is this a rental building or has it gone co-op?"
"It's all rentals," she said, a little suspicious at the question. I quickly explained that I'd lived there years before, that I'd taken a buy-out to leave the place and I'd always wondered if the landlord had managed to swing the deal he had in mind.
He hadn't, obviously.
I returned to my accountant's apartment, only to find that he was still with some other clients, a married couple who were roughly my age (though probably a few years younger). Introductions were made -- they seemed to be lovely people -- and I sat on a couch a few feet away and waited while they completed their consultation. Though I tried keep my focus on the weeks-old issue of The New Yorker I'd brought along, I couldn't help hearing some of what was said.
He was an investment banker and I'd guess she had a profession, too, though I didn't catch what it might be. They'd spent some portion of 2003 out of the country and harbored hopes that the money they'd earned while abroad might be taxed at a lower rate (I'm not sure it was, but again, I was trying not to listen). In the end, they were told that they would be receiving a refund of some seventeen thousand dollars. They seemed mildly disappointed.
Me, I worked two jobs for much of last year, and neither took me to London, Paris, Rome, or any of the other romantic, far-flung locales in which I imagined the banker and his wife had spent their working sojourn. At the end of my consultation, I learned that I would be receiving a refund of just over two hundred dollars. I was thrilled, given the fact that I've owed money to the government the past couple of years.
I will admit to feeling a certain amount of envy toward that banker and his wife. They seemed awfully happy together, and they obviously make a great deal of money. But then, there are so many others who would like to earn what I do -- and no doubt even a few who might envy my free and easy single lifestyle (little do they know).
So I can't complain. Or, at least, I shouldn't.
Two guys in their early twenties board the Queens-bound F train at the 2nd Avenue station.
The tall, lanky one with the white mesh trucker's cap with a maroon bill plops on a two-seat bench where someone has left a battered copy of the day's New York Post. The front page blares in giant letters, "TARGET U.S.A.: Hamas vows revenge -- against America."
He picks up the paper and considers it at some length. Now holding it so that his companion, an Asian-American in baggy jeans and a black knit cap pulled low, can see the front page from his seat across the aisle,
"Dude, if Israel did it," asks he, "why are they pissed at the United States?"
Stocking cap shrugs and says, "We gave 'em permission or something."
There's a pause.
"You know, 'cause there's been all these bombings and shit."
The tall one again looks over the front page as he lets this wisdom sink in.
After five or ten seconds, he tosses the paper aside. "Dude," he says to his pal, "you have got to see Dawn of the Dead."
I'm thoroughly enjoying Charlie LeDuff's collection of pieces he wrote for the New York Times, Work and Other Sins: Life in New York City and Thereabouts.
LeDuff specializes in brief, incisive, and evocative portraits of Average Joes and Jills, and in portraying them, he offers an indelible portrait of the city in which they reside.
As I read the book last night (staying with it far too late, which I knew I'd regret this morning), it occurred to me that, as engaging and fascinating a work as it is today, it's a volume that will prove to be a greater treasure in years to come. Imagine stumbling upon a tattered copy of this book in a used books store (should they still exist) in fifty or even a hundred years; what a treasure it will be. I'd certainly pay a pretty penny today for a contemporary account of the people of New York as they lived in 1950 or at the turn of the last century.
An acquaintance of mine once wrote of New York City and its denizens, "Even New Yorkers who have lived here all their lives are happy to sit back and chat away about the place as if they'd just come across it. It's a regular topic of conversation. And what's nice is that it's neither particularly narcissistic nor self-loathing, this chatter, but more curious and delighted."
I couldn't agree more. I've been in New York for more than twenty years now, and I remain as fascinated with the place as when I'd only just arrived. I love to hear New York stories -- from fellow NYers, those who wish they were NYers, and perhaps even a few who are glad they aren't.
If you feel the same way, LeDuff's book is a must-have.
Last July, on a jet from Los Angeles to New York, I was seated by a pair of charming young women from surburban St. Louis. In the neighborhood of twelve years old, they were both at that delightful point between childhood and adolescence when the world's possibilities seem to be opening up before you.
I attempted to break the ice with the young women by jokingly offering to trade the baby carrots that came with our in-flight meals for their brownies. "No way," they exclaimed, not sure what to make of a soul so confused as to even suggest such a swap. But my silly offer did indeed allow us to begin chatting.
One of the two girls was on a family vacation, and she'd been allowed to bring her close friend along. They'd spent ten days in Malibu and had made it into Los Angeles for only a day or so.
"So what did you see in L.A.?" I asked. They had, they said, done lots of shopping. Oh, and they went on a tour of movie stars' homes!
I'd made such a tour myself, I told them, though mine was self-guided. I asked whose homes they'd seen, and they reeled off a long list of contemporary names -- Tom Hanks, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Julia Roberts, among them.
"Whose homes did you see?" they asked in return. "Oh, mostly older stars' homes," I admitted, feeling slightly guilty at letting them down. "You probably wouldn't know most of them."
"I did get to see Jimmy Stewart's house," I added, thinking that they would surely recognize Stewart's name, if not those of Spencer Tracy, Nat "King" Cole, Mary Pickford, and the dozens of other stars whose houses I'd driven by.
I was mistaken, of course. Stewart's name rang not the tiniest of bells with them. "Have you never seen It's a Wonderful Life," I asked, thinking that surely they had, that they simply didn't know it was Stewart who had starred in it.
But no, they had not seen that traditional holiday classic.
Suddenly feeling beyond ancient, I changed the subject. We talked about their lives in Missouri, about what they wanted to be when they grew up, and others among the topics that tend to arise when the ground between the young and not-so-young is not particularly common.
Eventually, the flight attendant came around, asking if we wished to buy headsets for the in-flight movie. "What's showing?" I asked. "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days," came the response.
"Oh my god!" my young companions squealed. "That is so good. You've got to watch it!"
"You've seen it?" "Yes, and it's sooo good. We're going to watch it again."
So I watched the romantic comedy with my two new friends. I enjoyed it less than they did, but it was fun to watch it with them.
A few minutes after the movie ended, I scrounged in my carry-on for a piece of paper and a pen. "I have a movie to recommend to you -- The Shop Around the Corner," I said to the girls, scribbling the title on the paper scrap. "It's a romantic comedy, like the one we just watched. Now, I must warn you, it'll seem a little old-fashioned at first -- it's in black-and-white, even -- but if you give it a chance, I think you'll like it. And, best of all, it stars Jimmy Stewart, so if you see it, you'll know who he is from now on."
Before they deplaned in St. Louis, my new friends promised they would watch for the movie on TV or maybe even ask their moms to rent it for them. Of course, it's likely they were just humoring me, but I like to think that they kept their word. And I hope they found something to enjoy in what is one of my favorite pictures.
I thought they might like The Shop Around the Corner in particular because of the pen pal romance carried on between Stewart and Margaret Sullavan. In this era of text messaging and email, of IMs and chatrooms, it occurred to me that these girls might get a kick out of seeing how strangers wooed one another in days gone by. I hope I was right.
I was reminded of my encounter with my young friends by the occasion of Sullavan's 93rd birthday (IMDB.com says she was born on May 16th, actually, but Turner Classic Movies is offering a birthday tribute tonight). She's something of an enigmatic figure, is Sullavan, but she had a memorable, if brief, career.
She made only 17 pictures, a relatively paltry output for the golden years of the Hollywood studios, but then it's said that Hollywood was never where her heart was. She was born in Norfolk, Virginia, and studied acting from childhood. She'd reached Broadway by the age of 20 and at the age of 22 starred in her first film, Only Yesterday (1933).
After three years at Universal, Sullavan really blossomed at MGM, where she made six pictures. She won the New York Film Critics' Best Actress award and her lone Oscar nomination for Three Comrades (1938), in which she played Robert Taylor's ailing wife. She was delightful opposite Stewart in The Shopworn Angel (1938), and of course, in the aforementioned The Shop Around the Corner, which is rightly considered a career highlight for Stewart, Sullavan, and director Ernst Lubitsch. In all, Sullavan and Stewart made four pictures together.
It's said that Sullavan never really took to film acting, that she always preferred the stage, and indeed, when she was on the outs with the various studio heads, as she reportedly often was, she would return to Broadway where she felt more at home. She was known for being difficult in those days, and it's possible she was, of course, but even today, women are often held to different standards in the workplace, so one can only imagine how it must have been in the thirties and forties. (By contrast, Humphrey Bogart, for example, certainly made life difficult for his share of studio heads in those days -- he kept a store of funds he called his "Fuck You" money, so that he could tell studio heads just where to get off and not be unduly harmed by the suspensions that usually followed -- and yet it's rare one hears him described as "difficult.")
Sullavan left Hollyood for good (almost) in 1943, returning only once, in 1950, to make another picture, No Sad Songs for Me. In the interim, she returned to the Broadway stage and met with great acclaim and success.
Through the fifties, Sullavan was forced to fight a losing battle against deafness -- and despondency. She died, on New Year's Day of 1960, of a barbituate overdose. Her death was ruled a suicide.
Sullavan was married four times. She was wed to Henry Fonda for only a year and to William Wyler for less than 16 months. Her marriage to financier Leland Hayward lasted eleven years (they had three children together), and she had been with Kenneth Wagg ten years when she died.
She had a lovely voice, did Sullavan, and there's a certain sweet sadness that comes through in her work. Perhaps it carried over from her life. She could play innocence, as she did in the lovely The Good Fairy (1935; directed by William Wyler and written by the great Preston Sturges) and a certain prideful toughness (there's certainly no pushing around her haughty, if heartbroken, store clerk in The Shop Around the Corner), but through it all shines a melancholy that makes Sullavan's work especially memorable.
Tonight's five-film tribute on Turner Classic Movies, which begins at 8 p.m. Eastern, features, in order, Three Comrades, Cry Havoc (1943), The Shopworn Angel, The Shining Hour (1938), and The Mortal Storm (1940). I was disappointed to see that Shop and The Good Fairy, my favorites among Sullavan's films, were not included in tonight's line-up, but I'm looking forward to catching the four of these five pictures I've not yet seen.
Whether Sullavan's name rings a bell with you or this is the first you've ever heard of her, I recommend you crank up the Tivo or VCR tonight so that you can see these five films. You've got a treat in store. (If, like me, you're already a fan, you don't need convincing.)
I heard a usage last night that was new to me. In JIMMY THE GENT, a 1934 comedy starring Jimmy Cagney and Bette Davis, Davis states that another character has gone out for "a deck of cigarettes."
I kind of liked that. If a pack of cards can also be called a deck, why not a deck of cigarettes?
And it got me to thinking -- one could have, I suppose, a deck of chewing gum. A deck of baseball cards. A deck of lies. A deck of wolves.
But could you say that Frank, Dino, and Sammy were in the Rat Deck? Nah, that doesn't quite work.
But a deck of gum. That has a nice ring to it.