The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir

by Griffin Dunne

At the moment when Mrs. Griffin had been notified of her husband’s death, she was in bed with her lover at the Hotel del Coronado in California, and took the news that she was a widow rather well. She untwined herself from the arms of Admiral Paul Henry Bastedo who served under Secretary of the Navy Franklin Roosevelt, and proposed they get married in the morning so he could be her date at her late husband’s funeral. To the tabloids’ delight, the newlyweds took Helen Prindeville Griffin Bastedo’s private railway car to Lake Forest, Illinois, to attend the service. The act so outraged the Griffin family that they used their juice with Union Pacific to divert the train and the unlucky passengers coupled to Helen’s private car. The train choo-chooed deep into Wisconsin, denying the newlyweds their grand entrance to the funeral.

Though my mother romanticized her parents’ relationship, she was a lonely child on the Yerba Buena, pained by her father’s absence during World War II, when he served in the Pacific as a captain in the navy. She once told me, after one too many Pinot Grigios, that when she was a little girl, she walked into her parents’ bedroom and thought her father had come home because an officer’s uniform was crumpled at the foot of the bed.

“Who was the officer?” “He was an admiral.” “The Griffin gals sure had a thing for admirals. Who was he?” The television was on as usual in her bedroom. John McCain had just been released from the Vietnamese POW camp known as the Hanoi Hilton, and his painful walk on the tarmac to his waiting family was playing on the late-night news. She pointed to McCain, the young naval pilot on the screen, who had also been raised in Arizona, and said, “That guy’s father.”

I knew enough to know that the future senator’s father was Admiral John S. McCain, commander in chief of Pacific Command.

Mom was sent to Miss Porter’s School for girls in Farmington, Connecticut, a year before Jacqueline Bouvier would graduate. Miss Porter’s was a proving ground for young ladies to perfect their penmanship for dinner invitations and provide a suitable résumé for future husbands out of Harvard or Yale who were bound for greater things.

That made perfect sense to me and was the first time I considered that failure could also be looked upon as success, an insight I would draw on for encouragement when faced with future disappointments.

Dr. Thomas Hepburn, the father of the blue-blooded Katharine Hepburn, lived across the street from Dr. Dunne, but neither wealth nor their common profession could overcome centuries of prejudice, and the two families never spoke. Those early years of being snubbed, or “high-hatted,” as Dad used to say, laid the groundwork for a social insecurity that never placed him in the right club, but just across the street from the swells who “belonged.” Horatio Alger tales embarrassed him, and he preferred to describe Poppa Burns as “a wealthy banker” rather than a grocer who fought his way out of an Irish slum.

I pictured my father as a boy half my age and two inches shorter, surviving in conditions I knew only from novels by Vonnegut and Mailer. How could I have been surprised that he would defy an order to retreat to save a wounded comrade? His reporting had brought him death threats and blackmail attempts. He was an Irish terrier in a Turnbull & Asser shirt, who struck fear in the hearts of those who had it coming. An image crossed my mind so absurd that I smiled. As Dr. Dunne tries to beat the sissy out of my father, the defiant little boy yells out the last line of Now, Voyager: “Don’t let’s ask for the moon, we have the stars.”

Lenny, as Mom was known, was dating Dad’s best friend Howard Erskine, a Broadway producer who brought her to see his out-of-town run in Hartford of a now forgotten play called Late Love, starring Arlene Francis. Howard and my father knew each other from Williams College and were in the same acting club with Dad’s other best friend Stephen Sondheim, who played opposite him in Clifford Odets’s Waiting for Lefty.

The couple took the New Haven Railroad (with Griffin wheels), and my father met them at the station. The moment Nick laid eyes on Lenny stepping off the train, he was a goner. After showing Lenny the guest room, my grandmother pulled Dad aside and whispered, “That is the woman you are going to marry.”

He chose to overlook the fact that she accepted a lifelong commitment as if agreeing to attend a dinner party, but in the next decade would see her reply as a perfect yet cruel metaphor for their marriage.

Elizabeth Montgomery, who later played Samantha in Bewitched, was my first babysitter.

Alex slowly put his hand out and landed it gently on her crown. He looked so happy, as if someone had finally arrived whom he could say stuff to that he’d never tell his big brother. “Can I kiss her?” he asked. Mom nodded and held Dominique up to him, and when he kissed her, she opened her eyes and smiled as if waking from a wonderful dream. In that moment a connection between them was born and, in me, a worry that I might never be included. “You can give her a kiss, too, Griffin,” Mom suggested. I did, but Dominique’s gaze never left my brother.

Dad’s love for my mother was unabashed. He never missed the chance to tell me how beautiful she looked when she entered the room, or how smart and well read she was, how lucky he was to have married such a “class act.”

“Griffin, there is something wrong with my eye. I think it’s falling out.” I stood paralyzed, not knowing whether to get help or see where this was going. “Wait, it’s coming loose,” he said, gripping his hand as if trying to get ahold of his eye socket. “Hold on. It’s coming out. Ow, this hurts. Wait…I got it!” he said, pulling his hand away from his face. “Want to see?” He held out his hand, and there, in his palm, rested an eyeball. I stood dumbstruck, not so much scared as very curious. I got closer to inspect it, almost daring to touch it, when I realized it was fake.

It’s made of glass. Doesn’t it look real?” He was delighted with himself, and I thought him the funniest man in the world.

On Mom’s birthday, Dad and I gave her the sapphire ring. She looked at us and started to open the gift with a “what are you boys up to” expression that had us snickering. But it took her forever to unwrap it. It was a little blue box with one ribbon, but for some reason she was dragging it out.

It didn’t occur to me that she might not want to open it. That if she didn’t see what was inside, she wouldn’t have to pretend to be grateful for a gift from a man she was thinking of leaving. All I knew was that to be given a present and not want to tear it open was alien behavior.

I couldn’t take it anymore and cried out— “It’s a blue sapphire ring and I picked it out!” “Griffin, you ruined the surprise,” Dad complained. “Just open it!” I was on the verge of crying and peeing at the same time. “All right, honey. Calm down. Jeez.” She opened the box and peered at the ring. An unreadable expression settled on her face.

“It’s beautiful, Griffin. Thank you.” Her delivery and choice of words were exactly the same as when I’d given her an ashtray I’d made out of putty for Christmas. “Well, I paid for it,” muttered my father, the joy of our earlier adventure a thing of the past. “It looks like the ring Richard gave Elizabeth,” Mom said. “Well, it isn’t,” Dad and I said in unison.

In an effort to impress 007, I jumped in the deep end before I had mastered a decent dog paddle and sank like a stone. I saw the reflections of people smoking and drinking from below, like an underwater Hockney painting, oblivious to my efforts to reach the surface. I was certain I would drown and not be found until Tuesday, when the pool man came. Suddenly, in one swift motion, a hand lifted me by the butt and placed me at the pool’s edge. “A wee bit early for the deep end, sonny,” said James Bond.

Within the decade, Joan would be famous for taking positions contrary to popular opinion, accepting the vitriol that followed, and not straying from an inner strength she called “character.”

Whenever I tried to coax Bosie into a walk around the block, he’d look at me like George Sanders in All About Eve. Many years later, when it came time to put him down, he seemed eager to get to the vet, grateful to be rid of crass Americans who couldn’t tell the difference between a Burgundy and a Côtes du Rhône. If he could have written a farewell to us, I imagine his manicured paws would have penned the same words George Sanders left before overdosing on Nembutal: Dear World. I am leaving because I am bored. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck.

My fragile identity at that time was tied to a father who couldn’t throw to third and gave me two French poodles named after famous homosexuals. What I secretly longed for was to have a father like my hotheaded uncle. It took me many years to understand what it meant to be a man, and by then I realized I’d been raised by one all along.

“Why do you treat him like that?” I asked. “Who?” “Alex. It’s as if you don’t even like him.” My father blushed a shade of shame, looking into the mirror of the medicine cabinet for a time before answering. “It’s because he reminds me of me.” Maybe he saw in his sweet, sensitive son the same little boy whose father beat him with a Brooks Brothers belt. The same little boy who was so alien to his father and brothers and sisters that they couldn’t have cared less about the plot of Becky Sharp.

In 1964, Nick chose to overlook that his wife no longer wanted to hire Lew Wasserman’s parking valets or the bartender who poured for Nancy Reagan, or perform any other social obligations. He instead chose that year to throw his biggest party ever—a “Black and White Ball” to celebrate the tenth anniversary of his marriage to Lenny. There would be no eleventh, as Mom would file for divorce before the end of the following year.

And he was right about Truman Capote bringing the fun to the dance floor. He cha-cha’d and caramba’d the night away, having so much fun that he decided to give his own Black and White Ball the next year. Nick Dunne was not on the guest list.

He stormed into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him while I tidied up. When he emerged, my list of the day’s activities was in his hand. “What the fuck is this?” he asked. “You have to remind yourself to beat off?” Even I couldn’t believe I’d added masturbation to my to-do list.

Years later, my uncle John wrote a character into his novel Dutch Shea, Jr. who was so stupid, he had to write himself reminders to beat off. When I asked John where he got the idea, the memory made him smile.

It’s a toss-up which of the two continues to irk me more: that Dad shamed me that day and then made a joke of it in public, or that his brother stole my shame and mocked me in a novel. If you grow up around novelists, someday you will be collateral damage for a good story. My aunt Joan had an aphorism that I was to learn the hard way: “A writer is always selling somebody out.”

When Dad dropped by the house unannounced, as he had been asked not to do since the divorce, my mother’s anger, which once seemed overblown, now made perfect sense.

I didn’t feel judgmental, just sad when I imagined the burden of secrets he’d had to carry for so long. I felt sadder for my mother, whose burden it was to look the other way and pretend she didn’t live in a house of lies. Now that I knew my father’s secret, I kept it from him as he did from me, and joined my parents in their subterfuge.

Clinging to small talk, he asked me how school had been, and I considered telling him how I’d been flogged and fondled, but didn’t have the heart. In Dunne family tradition, I kept it pleasant and my secrets close.

So when I say it’s time to leave, I don’t want to hear any guff.” “Well, if I’m talking to Janis, don’t yank me out the door in front of her. And for God’s sake don’t say ‘guff.’ ” Mom always got me and took my narcissism in stride. “No, of course not,” she said, suppressing a smile. “We’ll have a signal. When it’s time to go, I’ll give you a wink like I’m just some pretty girl at the party trying to get your attention.” “That’s perfect!”

I explored my surroundings in search of Janis, completely ignored except by some guy who said, loud enough for all to hear, “What kind of parent would bring a child to this place? It’s shameful.” I whipped around with a dirty look and saw it was only Uncle Earl McGrath, madly giggling at his own prank. Earl was a family friend I’d met a year earlier at a party we gave on Christmas Day for people who had nowhere to go.

When I told them about Colonel Klink and the bad acid trip, they went into such hysterics I had to let them catch their breath. “Griffin, that wasn’t the guy from Hogan’s Heroes,” John said. “That was the director Otto Preminger.” I had no idea who that was, but the trill in Joan’s laugh delighted me. They told me that Preminger was a tyrant film director who came close to actually burning Jean Seberg to death at the stake while filming Saint Joan so he could capture the terror in her eyes. I guess I got off easy.

LA is a cruel town for a kid without a driver’s license. When General Motors and Standard Oil killed the streetcar, they didn’t consider how difficult they made the lives of kids under sixteen. In 1963, the last trolley was sold for scrap, condemning teens my age to a life of aimless walking or begging their mothers to drop them off at the movies. Bus transportation was an option, but the infrequent stops and byzantine routes that dropped you far from your destination were designed by the auto industry to punish the poor for not buying a car.

Being fourteen and horny is a lethal combination. You’re too young to drive a car, and no girl will have anything to do with you until you do. Hitchhiking was fun while it lasted, but it left Charlie and me still reliant on adults to get around and aching to drive.

Murray wore a tuxedo every night, to give the impression he’d just come from someplace incredible. He had a Bentley with a solid-gold grille bought with the profits from Creature from the Black Lagoon, which he produced, or at least said he did. Like the booths we were sitting in, Murray’s Bentley was completely beat to shit, and one night, in a vulnerable moment, he confessed that the grille was only gold-plated and that he didn’t have the money to fix the dents.

Blame it on being denied the human nipple at birth, a desperate reaction to latent homophobia, or simply an out-of-control desire to be desired, but falling for girls was what I did for a living, pro bono. If I was trapped in an elevator with John Lennon, Sandy Koufax, and a girl with body odor and acne, I would strike up a conversation with Lil Ms. Smelly every time.

One insignificant day, only weeks after our Mr. Toad’s wild ride, I looked at Carrie and realized she would be in my life for a very long time. Before I failed Spanish, I remember the teacher describing the eve of fluency as when one night you dream in the language and suddenly can speak it the next morning. That is what it felt like when Carrie and I realized we were best friends.

Carrie’s and my friendship, clearly destined for a long history, meant that my impossibly romantic brother would never have the chance to win his Guinevere, or recite his sonnets, or be knighted for dragons slain to win her love.

Carrie never became my girlfriend. She knew, long before I did, that being lovers would diminish our possibilities. Carrie was a virgin when we met, and she lived for every lurid detail of my own sexual encounters: from my first kiss to postcoital anxieties I shared with no one but her. Her curiosity was so forensic that I felt like a cadaver undergoing an autopsy.

Her detachment from my feelings was an early symptom of MS, one that over the coming years would extend to her friends, making communication so impossible they stopped coming by. But at that moment, she at least still had a sense of humor, and even though I was a little hurt, I laughed at her droll comment and never mentioned my letters again.

She joined an acting class and started a tradition called the Friday Afternoon Club, or FAC. At the end of every Friday, her friends from class, and of course Lisa, Melinda, and Charlie, would gather in the backyard to drink and party well into the night.

Dominique would wheel Mom out to join the fun until the young people grew too rowdy for her taste, and then return her to bed as everyone wished her good night and thanked her for the wine she’d kicked in for. They were a good team, Dominique and Mom, and soon life at the little house took on the easygoing vibe of its predecessor on Walden, where friends came and went, and Charlie, Melinda, and Lisa were still always around. Though Mom was now confined to a wheelchair, her spirits were better than ever.

I came across a quote of Martha Graham to Agnes de Mille that is still tacked on the corkboard in my office. I read it for inspiration and self-assurance, and as penance should I miss another opportunity to learn from someone: There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost.

“Well, the good news is, I’m going to be in London for months on end, so you can fuck all the Rockettes you want in my bed. I’ll even get you another bottle of Kwell soap before I leave,” she said, cruelly reminding me of the weekend she was out of town and I shared her bed with someone who gave us both crabs. “You being away that long is not good news at all,” I said, already starting to miss her. She was gone a week later.

Elizabeth Taylor’s chronic tardiness, so severe it drove the budget to astronomical sums and took our father’s career down with it. Though he took the fall for the overruns, Dad made Paramount’s decision to fire him an easy one. Dominique was Dad’s date on his last night in the movie business. Our father was on a drunken roll, sharing inside gossip with a long table of cast and crew, sending everyone into fits of hysterics. He did an impeccably mean impression of Sue Mengers, then the most powerful agent in Hollywood, whose hefty weight was well-known but never discussed in public.

Mengers was also best friends with Bob Evans, head of Paramount and my father’s boss.