S2 Ep10 Laughton

Network Sting: MSW Media

Martin: Hello and welcome to the second season of the Martin Sheen Podcast with yours truly, Martin Sheen, of course. And I’m delighted to be back hosting this podcast pilgrimage where the destination is still the journey itself. Along the way, I plan to share stories and personal memories of some of the many people, place places and events that have helped to shape my lifelong happy and continuing struggle as an artist and a man to unite the will of the spirit with the work of the flesh. I also hope to explore poetry as a powerful form of expression and communication by proxy, as it were, and how poetry is such a vital and necessary component of our spirituality and our public discourse. And from time to time, I’ll invite friends, fellow actors, poets, scholars and family members to join our pilgrimage and discuss what inspires their artistic journey. And so, friends, let us begin.

Martin: This particular selection is a series of poems by Charles Frank Laughton from a collection published privately by Al Pacino, with special permission from Mr. Laughton’s daughter, Deirdre.

I met Charlie Laughton in the summer of 1959 when he came to teach a scene study class at the Actors Co-Op, a group I belonged to that pooled its resources and rented a loft across from the old Madison Square Garden on 50th Street and 8th Avenue, where we showcased our budding skills and prepared auditions for agents and producers. Charlie’s wife and Dierdre’s mother was Penelope Allen, a brilliant actress and teacher. Charlie was also Al Pacino’s closest friend and lifelong mentor. Here now are some of the New York City poems from the 1960s by Charles Laughton.

You start with the city and you look for the words. The westing sun, a bronze corner high in the sky, ashes of birds beneath five blank windows, a storefront and a sign in big gold letters says, “The light of the world is Christ.” And an elevated train cuts it off and rushes at the sky.

I’m on an el train moving through the Bronx in late autumn. Far down in the street, a local mug leaves the side of a building, rushes into the middle of a sidewalk and begins swinging his fists at the air. Down there, shanghaied within a grieving world, he’s a mute man in a stocking hat, cocked and menacing. We slow through the station and ad guffaws. We pick up speed. I look back and see cobbles, buttocks and sleeves scatter, lampposts loosen, walls slide back, making room for the crazy man down there, still swinging like a punch drunk, alone on a prairie. And the sky stretching away.

Just before the sun leaves it throws a red scarf in the middle of the street. Just that. And an empty vegetable stall on three rickety legs faintly glowing. That. And the rising of a high thin voice three blocks down the street. Just that. And a back horizon filling up with yellow windows and white stars.

The wind in a naked costume is making nests in a kid’s pockets. The kid is standing on a high roof whistling to a flock of pigeons: holding a silver seance with the sky! Down in the streets, scattered faces and winter coats. Bits of paper and yellow scarves look like painted patches on the wind, while the wind knocks off hats, spills berries from a lady’s basket, tips over a vessel of laughter. And there’s five red mouths on the wind, patches on the wind and the wind wears a naked costume.

The city streams into your life – on cold winter nights you find it asking for alms down in the bowery – or it’s star studded across a frozen sky- It’s the cry in your loins, the empty grasp – daily it topples to your feet. Or it’s the one night sojourn in the faded flat – and her sad life now is a new picture to carry along the pavements – through the tenement halls. Something else almost gathered in your arms, almost remembered – Her life now an extension of the farthest star, the tavern, the prophet leaning against the bar.

After all is said and done I like a goodbye as much as anyone but I wish I could have said it like I said hello when the past was yet empty and just sunning itself on a white column where we first met and leaned.

Somehow I got through the night again. I tip toe up the dawn. Safe! I look down. What a world! The huge disaster like a dark balloon goes soft right below my eyes. The echoes, the toppling of things, the strips of pavement and alleys” all wrinkled and wheezing.

I’m all right now, just a few splotches of paint on my face, a few vague yellows and half lights. I feel the nightmare spin itself out in the palm of my hand.

It’s spring. Across the street hands, faces and cigarette butts look like paper cutouts on a slate board. Just one building on the block is lit up saffron. A torn mattress is flung over one of the upper sills, airing out its winter loves. A man stands by an open wind holding a pale blue cup in his hand and grinning. A high storied wind takes the shade cord and flings it against the window frame. It falls back, groggy. Then it begins spinning.

The summer staggers through the city, swelters around the corner and leaves five men in undershirts sprawling on stone steps drinking beer out of cans. A tenement cocked at the sky and a lady in a second story window laughing and calling down saying how they all ought to go to some nice cool place by the sea. “Okay.” “Yeah. O.K.”

Long, like all that’s left of the jazz is the static on the windowsill. Like all that’s left of the sundown is the sound of the church bell in the distance. Like tomorrow is going to be another hot one and you rattle the ice cubes. Long like how many times do I have to tell you? I don’t know. Like you say you love me. No. (alright) but say it with grace.

Autumn is out there! It’s in the streets again. It’s an old newspaper whipping around a pole and blabbering to the wind. It’s alpaca and ballooning skirts, the moat in my eye and a dwindling tenth story window. Belfries are sending out showers of pigeons. Deep in the ghetto now, kids shoot by on roller skates – they pass all night fruit stands – where autumnal fires and metal barrels like gutter pyres – flare – and high up cornices whisper with the wind and a summer phoenix.

A woman bursts out the doorway. Only the wind tries to push her back inside, but she finally makes it down the three stone steps bent on saying. Only the wind scatters her words and an awning just behind her bellows and snaps and the kid she’s shouting to shakes his head and backs off into the wind and then suddenly the whole street tips to the wail of a siren two blocks over and when it tips back she’s all confused and she has on a flimsy dress and she’s just about freezing and she casts a last pensive eye at the kid and with tight lips she bends back up the three stone steps and is gone.

Down a battering avenue, two people sweep together in word puzzlements they can’t quite make out because the wind is making their meanings totter and the hem of her red slicker is stuttering against her knee and his umbrella shoots out and he grabs for her hand and they go all awry in the wind and are driven out of sight.

Across the street a lady with a baby carriage, eyes of pity and a quiet hand testing a quilt.

The dark has come upon the city. I see a lady on a stoop cradle it in her arms. It’s in a kid’s eyes as he shouts it to another kid across the street. It’s the wind on my face, the turn of my head where I see a lone figure on the corner talking to nobody in this world but the dark.

Many nights I would walk down that street and look up at the rooftops. And the voice would fall from somewhere calling, Emilio. Emilio must have been a great bandit. A nocturnal gadfly. A purple desperado. Yes, a bandit many times. Sometimes that voice would bring rain and I’d put up my collar. Sometimes it would stop before I reached the corner and die on the face of a summer sky. Always it ran in ancient blood down my own veins. Sometimes I’d hear it till I hit the big Ave. Till I turned the corner. And like a toy when the spring is sprung, I sped, shot, zigzagged down the lights of the City. And when I came home, I’d know that I too had only Emilio, only the calling. When I moved just a suitcase. I watched that voice bequeath its last colors to the setting sun and unlit the whole street. I watched my hands grow dark.

Charlie Laughton was born in Paterson, New Jersey on March 30, 1929. And he was raised, of course, during The Depression. As a young man, he was a singer with traveling shows, as well as a poet and actor and a wonderful acting teacher all of his life. Charlie Laughton died on June 4, 2013. He was 84 years old.

We’re gonna take a little break here, but I assure you there’s much more to come. Stay tuned. Welcome back and thanks for staying with us.

And now hear this from the open mic. When we had finished recording his poetry, I found myself at the open mic sharing impromptu stories with my producer and engineer about my early days in New York and my friendship with Charlie Laughton.

Yeah, yeah, Charlie Laughton. I always have to call him Charles Frank Lawton because of the actor Charlie. Charles Laughton. Yeah. His wife, Penny Allen, is great actress, wonderful lady, and he had, they had a daughter. He lived very frugally. He didn’t care about money, but he was just one of those guys, you know, and he just lived an honest life, you know. But Charlie Laughton had a really profound effect on all of us at his, uh. And he was just, you know, it was like, you would, uh, you know, somebody would say to him, well, you know, he got a job. He said, oh, did he have to? It’s the honest to God truth. This is a story that his wife told. He made, he made less than $1,000 a year now, uh, even in 1961 that was nothing, but that was his recorded income. Uh, his rent was like, $34. He lived in what they called a doll’s house on 2nd Avenue, it’s called. You had to stoop to get into it, where they lived. And he made his living by delivering papers and by moving furniture. You know, and if he didn’t feel like moving the furniture, it was too hot or too. He’d write poetry. He wouldn’t do it. He just wouldn’t leave the house. Or he’d leave the house and go for long walks, or, he had a bike. He’d go for endless bike rides. He’d go all over town. He’d write poetry. He’d do anything. He’d teach. He’d hold seances with the sky, whatever he did. And, uh, he was from, um, Paterson. He was from Paterson, New Jersey. He talked about his mother. He brought her a mop one day, and she couldn’t get over it. He wrote a poem about his mom. At any rate, uh, he was called down the IRS, and they questioned. They said, Now, Mr. Laughton, you’ve got a fraudulent, uh, claim here. This is very serious business here. You’ve claimed less than $1,000 for last year’s income. He said, yes, that’s all I made. I put it all down there. They said, um, Mr. Laughton, you have a wife? He said, yeah, yeah, yeah. She shares, uh, you know, whatever she can. What do you eat? He, uh, said, well, mostly we eat spaghetti. That’s the cheapest thing. We all like spaghetti. Occasionally we have a salad and so forth. And the guy says, Mr. Laughton, you have a child. What about the child? He said, oh, we give her some. He wasn’t kidding. Uh, he just lived an honest life, you know, and we used to babysit his daughter, and we became very close friends. And there was a group of us. There was Matt Clark and, uh, Johnny Darin and myself. And, uh, we were all actors and all in the early sixties in New York and just, uh, scrubbing for a living. We used to work for Matt. Matt had a moving truck, and we used to move furniture for him and paintings. Some of the great painters. We didn’t have a clue who they were. They were these famous painters. And Matt was bonded. So he could move them from their studios to their homes and then take them up to their summer places and all paintings by some, you know, some of the great modern painters. You wouldn’t believe the names of painters. We were moving and we had no clue. And, um, at any rate, busy Moving Pollocks and stuff. Yeah, like Pollock and all those guys. de Kooning? de Kooning was one. Yeah. And so, uh, uh, Emilio was born. We were living in the Bronx. Emilio was born. And I called him. I called him and said, uh, well, they knew Janet was pregnant. Any day now. Emilio was born May 12th. And so I called him and I said, we had a boy. Oh, congratulations. What are you gonna call him? I said, Emilio. Oh, I like that, he said. And I took the subway home. Went back to the Bronx. And I came back the next day. It was Mother’s Day, to see Janet. And while we were there visiting, Charlie walked in with this poem. He’d written it overnight, and it was a tribute to Emilio. Yeah, that’s what it is. Yeah. And he became. And did I say Al Pacino? Because Al was part of that group. It was Al and I and Matt and Charlie and Johnny Darin and like that. And we were all, you know, struggling actors and all just crazy. And Charlie became, like, Al’s mentor, his teacher, and basically his father. And so even till the end of his life, Charlie was. He got MS, and slowly he just, you know, we would visit him. And they moved out here, and she looked after him, and, yeah, they lived in Santa Monica. Yeah. Charlie Laughton. Yeah.

I invite you to delve further into the works of the poets I shared with you, and I hope you seek out writers and poets whose works speaks to your hearts and minds with the power to inspire your life. If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard here, please subscribe to my podcast, The Martin Sheen Podcast, with your host, yours truly, Martin Sheen, of course, wherever you find your podcasts. Yeah. I have to say that. You can find a complete list of the poets and titles of their poems that I’ve chosen at our website themartinsheenpodcast.

I want to thank the people who make this podcast possible. Our producer and research assistant, Renee Estevez, who assures me that the Internet is a real thing and a safe place if not used off label. And our sound engineer and editor, Bruce Greenspan, the man behind these rich and seamless recordings. And to his dog, Gracie, our studio mascot, who snores in perfect pentameter.

And so, friends, we part with the prayer from Tagore.

Where the heart is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action—

Into that heaven of freedom (my Father) let our country awake. Amen

The Martin Sheen Podcast. All rights reserved. No part of this podcast may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form without prior written consent of the author and TE Productions.

The poems of Charles Frank Laughton from his book “Poems” 1963, are included here with the granted copyright permission of Deirdre Laughton, who we thank for the opportunity to share her father’s poems.