It’s nearly impossible to think of Geoffrey in the past tense; he was imbued with what Shaw called the “Life Force”—which isn’t about being lively, but rather about making the most out of life and leaving a robust, positive, inspiring legacy behind. That he certainly did.
Most folks who knew Geoff as a teacher will no doubt recount meeting him for the first time as a large, intimidating presence who was immune to flattery, obsequiousness, or incompetence. Certainly for me, in the fall of 1983, when I first was introduced to him as my directing teacher, in the arid, eucalyptus-perfumed fields of Stanford California, I was in a state of shock and awe. I had mentioned how, the previous summer, I had seen a brilliant actress in a Noel Coward play on the West End, Maria Aitken. “What, Maria?,” he name-dropped…probably the first time I had heard anyone call anyone famous by their first name. An expert card-player, Geoff trumped me.
But, I quickly fell under his spell and became his willing (and uncritical) disciple. Perhaps because I learned early on how much he liked to laugh, I dispensed an unending stream of Jewish jokes, formed in the crucible of my New York background. Geoff quickly assembled a coterie of loyalists around him—Fritz, Rush, Tom—that would do his bidding at a moment’s notice; I suppose I functioned as court jester: “But, seriously, folks. . . .” He guided me through two very difficult years at Stanford, always in my corner in his own idiosyncratic way. For years, he mercilessly mocked an essay I had written for my Shakespeare analysis class, but asked me to write or adapt more than a dozen projects for him. There were times when Geoff asked me to take over rehearsals so he could go to the opera or a concert instead; I may have resented it then--or been just plain scared--but looking back, I revere those opportunities.
After Stanford, the distance between us—New York and San Francisco, New York and Atlanta, New York and Chorleywood—served more as a promise than as an obstacle. I used to quote Bottom from Midsummer Night’s Dream to him all the time: “When my cue comes, call me and I will answer.” We worked together whenever possible on an insane stream of projects—usually Brecht, but always with a topical, anarchic, hilarious sensibility. Once, in Atlanta, he brought over a Danish actor to play Christopher Columbus in a Dario Fo political farce. The actor and I clashed on every conceivable front; Geoff, in his typically conflict-averse stance, ran in the opposite direction every time. But, when I wrote a scene in which Columbus gets shot at by angry natives with rubber-tipped arrows, Geoff ordered the props department to buy as many arrows as they could find. “HIT him! HIT him!” he yelled at the actors with uncharacteristic enthusiasm.
As time went on, our visits were more personal than professional. I’ll always cherish the visits to Playtime. Geoff and Rose and Lucy and Sophie made me part of their deeply affectionate and supportive family. I have one memory of Geoff making me watch a film noir with Robert Mitchum on the telly after I had been up all night on a transatlantic flight. Another memory is of celebrating my one and only Boxing Day, where I was so drunk, I deleted all my memories during the month of December. And to this day, I can’t pass a Duty Free Shop in an airport with thinking, “I must get Rose her cigarettes and Geoffrey his bourbon.”
Nothing made me happier than being able, as I made my way in the profession and in life, to repay Geoffrey for his many kindnesses. He was the best possible person to take to the theater. Once, after he had been sacked from a directing job in New York, he pleaded with me to take him along to see a stage production of an old Marx Brothers musical in Washington, DC: the perfect antidote to a never-to-be-expressed injury. He laughed harder than anyone in the theater. When I brought him to see a not-very-good musical on Broadway, written by his revered Stephen Sondheim, he got up at the curtain call and yelled “Rubbish!!” at the actors. He was right about that.
Geoff was a role model in the best sense; he showed us what one could aspire to be, as an artist, as a family man, as a citizen. Being human, he was, of course, full of contradictions. He had personal and political convictions that outweighed his professional ambitions. He was full of sentiment, but never sentimental. He was deeply generous but often chose to wield his stiletto-like wit on less nimble personalities (which would include most of us). Still, he showed his colleagues that it was possible to use art to make the world a better place; that it was possible to revel in the finer things in life, which have nothing to do with the brass ring of approbation; that it was possible, to paraphrase Shakespeare, to turn the accomplishment of many years into a wine glass.
I saw much less of Geoff and his family than I would liked in the 21st Century. I was able to dedicate a book about Billy Wilder to him. One of the last things he said to me, about a radio program on Broadway music I’ve hosted for five years, was “you were born for it.” My only regret is that he never met my wife, Genevieve, or my son, Miles. They would have all enjoyed each other.
I like to think of the two of us, at the conclusion of a black-and-white Hollywood film from the forties, walking away from the camera as it pulls back: Orson Welles and Woody Allen, improbably thrown together by fate, “the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” The music swells. “The End”? Not bloody likely.
--Larry