Walter Matthau as Heathcliff
Julie Burchill
AMONG THE PORCUPINES by Carol Matthau Orion, £15.99, pp. 302 The popular idea that stars have 'that extra something' or 'ingredient X' which makes them stars is one of the greatest snowjobs of modern times. On the con- trary, what helps make someone successful, whether in showbusiness or international finance — be my witness, Madonna and Murdoch — is not so much that something extra as that something missing; some aching little hollow, painful like a phantom limb, which drives them to seek mass adulation where for most people the home and hearth will do nicely, thank you.
This never becomes so obvious as when we read the autobiographies of the famous. The bigger the name, the bigger the gap where wit, irony and total recall should be. To read a truly great autobiography, first find a name you don't recognise.
The best autobiography I have ever read is Barbara Skelton's Tears Before Bedtime, a brilliantly funny account of her life with Cyril Connolly. (She also married George Weidenfeld, and dallied with King Farouk.) And in many ways Carol Matthau is a more generous Jewish American Princess version of Miss Skelton; a beatitN, silk-stocking Bohemian, fatally attractedlo,Great Men.
William Saroyan married her twice, not cottoning on for years that she was Jewish and he was anti-Semitic; he comes across as an extremely nasty piece of work, despite Mrs Matthau's natural sense of chivalry. Capote, Tynan and Agee wrote about her; Rex Harrison used her to help him catch Kay Kendall (who called Mrs Matthau Wifey.') She ended up with Walter Matthau. Talk about nice work if you can get it. But she was also the best friend of both Gloria Vanderbilt and Oona O'Neill Chaplin. Now, I find few things more irritating than what I call the Relative Values mob; those types who become known for being the daughter/wife/son/ sister of someone famous. That this book is not just written by one who broadly fits that description, but that it deals at some length with another two of the species without becoming dull is a great tribute to Mrs Matthau's skill.
She has an excellent perspective and eye for timing. So many of those writing about their lives seem convinced that the world and his Significant Other are interested in everything from their first posset to their first precocious pronouncement, and we are spared nothing. But with the timing of a good director we come straight into I3-year-old Carol Marcus' life as she sits sobbing at the movies over Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights; three shows a day for four days. Baptised in this grand passion, she sets out to find love, and indeed the idea of Walter Matthau as Heathcliff is a nice one; `For the love of Mike, Cathy, leave me alone, will ya? No way can I go out on the moors wit ya today — Fast Eddie Linton bagged a brace of tickets to the Mets!' Then she meets Capote and Vanderbilt; before she's 15. At 16 she's married to Saroyan. She goes on to confirm my worst prejudices about every- one, which I have always seen as a sign of great intelligence in people. Henry Miller is 'a slug' who writes books which are `a little boring and a little dirty' and demands, completely sober, to be shown Mrs Matthau's pubic hair on their first (and only) meeting. Greta Garbo is a cretin, a Sphinx without a secret. The Germans are all pigs. And of course Walter Matthau is a sweetheart beneath all that grump.
If Mrs Matthau has one fault, it is a ten- dency towards the haiku or Hallmark school of writing:
Oona was brave. Oona, that beautiful bright red rose. But the wind was blowing softly, taking petal by petal. Oona Chaplin died of a broken heart.
Taken separately, such Thoughts For Today can become a little nauseous. But shot through with the citrus-twist zing of her stinging wit, they work.
Above all, the people Carol Matthau writes about seem worth knowing; not the deadly geek chorus of most autobiogra- phies. They are glamorous, in a strapless- Stork-Club-chain-smoking style which is now considered both amoral and unfashionable. To anyone bored with modern Hollywood, and its poor little rich kids who wear dressed-for-distress dunga- rees to premieres and look more likely to exchange organic beetroot juice from their allotments on That First Date than bodily fluids, this parade of highly-strung, well- shod studs and starlets will have the appeal of a very superior soap told by a writer who has a talent which manages to be both mature and very fresh, in both the English and American senses of the word. If Carol Matthau can be this fascinating while keep- ing within the laws of libel, what couldn't she do with a cast of characters who bore No Relation, Living Or Dead?
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