"Tango Anyone" by Constantine Gochis

I am having a terriblly lethargic, probably depressive day. My inclination is to go back to bed. Well, actually, I did try to do that already. My cat even joined me. But after about an hour of occasional drop offs into near sleep interrupted by mind filling discursive thoughts, I got up again. I have plenty to do, and I don't want to do any of it. But I also feel a press not to make this day a total waste. There must be something, something that will be a contribution, an advance, small perhaps, but definite, that I can do. "Ah," I have concluded,  "I have plenty of Dad stories in hard copy still in a drawer. Let me pull one out and put it on the blog." 

The blog has had an interesting phase, no thanks to any significant effort on my part. It is getting a lot of hits lately, over 4000 just this month. For a long time, one of my entries, on a late former co-worker (long gone since 1987) has gotten a lot of interest, because the subject of my memory has a certain fame in the form of conspiracy theories surrounding his death. I should tell you they aren't my theories nor the central theme of my entry at the time. But this doesn't account for the sudden upsurge by itself. I digress, as is my wont. I inherited this trait from my father, one of many I have come to see, although when he was alive I would have denied it. Point is, at least this entry to follow, a story of my father's which I think is mostly true, as I know he once told me about taking dance lessons at Arthur Murray, will not make the day a total waste. Maybe if you are having a lost day, maybe the read will give you a little smile. Remember that period like in the 90s, when Scent of a Woman was a big flash? It was a big flash way earlier than that. 

Tango Anyone?

One of the passions of my youth is the Argentine Tango.  I become an affectionado of the music, particularly of the strict, precise rhythmic stylings of Edmundo Ros and his "compadres" from that mythical "Cafetin de Buenos Ayres" where Tango is a religion rather than a dance.

I never do get to learn the dance itself. Life has a way of interposing so much of inconsequence in the way of truly valuable things in our brief journey.  Now, in the autumnal days of my life, there is a resurgence of the rhythm and the dance. Night clubs are flourishing that provide Tango nights. Several movies have the Tango as the theme and more are in process. For me, the interest is still there, but only in old memories.

I hear there is a senior center near me offering classes of instruction. There seems to me an anomaly about ancient bodies of creaking joints attempting what was once thought a viable alternative to sex--metaphorically, of course.

Tango is a required dance in the annual competitions, the Latin phase of such events. Sadly, the dancers have none of the flavor of the Argentine originals. The couples have adopted jerky head movements which to me seem like robotic gyrations, overstylized and inanimate as opposed to pulsing humanity.

In my teen years I frequent a night club in the New York area that is heavily Germanic in poppulation.  It is called the "Corso". It has a continental ambience, with two orchestras, one given entirely to the Latin dances, the Rhumba, Conga, and most important, the Tango, with one exception--the Viennese Waltz, which could not be trusted to an American orchestra, which might have rhythm, but not a precise one.

In those pre-war days, both sides of the street, Eighty-Sixth, between Second and First Avenues are occupied by Teutonic bistros similar to the "Corso".  One, in particular, hosts the weekly meetings of uniformed member of the Nazi Bundists. We are not angry at the time at Hitler, and war is still very far away from New York City.  The clubs are simply where boy meets girl.  They are universally successful.  The ladies come in pairs or groups and occupy the tables.  The guys cluster at the bar hovering over their beer steins until the music starts at which point they amble in full masculine plumage toward a target of opportunity to solicit a dance.  The boys and girls become very friendly indeed through this very popular rite of Spring.

But I digress.  I started this discourse on the subject of the Tango.  

I do not learn the dance well enough to meet the epicurean standards of the elites who frequent the "Corso", so I decide to get some instruction on the subject. I am usually slow to follow my resolutions so before I do, the war finally interposes itself, I marry, making the acquisition of this skill of less urgency.  It is some ten years later that I catch a television interview with Arthur Murray and his wife, Catherine, in which they extol the virtues of their national dance studios.  I decide to take a few lessons. My wife looks at me quizzically, but I assure her that I will share my newly acquired expertise with her alone.  

I find an Arthur Murray studio on 43rd Street on the East Side of Manhattan. The hostess interviews me in a large mirrored room at a small desk. "Do you dance?" she queries.  I answer with modesty, "Some."

She rises, places a record on the phonograph and invites me to the dance.  The record is of special construct, taking us through a variety of rhythms--waltz, rhumba, fox trot, even a paso doble, then a popular Latin dance.  

We return to our interview locale.  She withdraws a form from the desk.  In size, it is 8 1/2 by 11, but unfolds downward until it is almost as tall as I.  I only see such a form when I am still in the military.

She begins to check boxes, mouthing, as if to herself.  "Needs instruction in leadership, balance, has sense of rhythm. . ."

I wait patiently as she makes other check marks with other comments. Finally she addresses me.  

"We have just the course for you," she says. "It is a lifetime course, which allows you twelve social events in our ballroom.  It's on sale now, just eight thousand. . . ." I interrupt.  "I would like five lessons in the Tango."

 

She ignores me.

"Well, perhaps that's a little steep." She then makes a precipitous descent from eight to four to three, all in the thousands. 

I stop the free falls.  "I would like just five lesons in the Argentine Tango."

She manages a few more offrs, the last in the area of eight hundred, and then retreats to a more defensible position.  

"Ok," she says, "if you change your mind you can apply the payments for your lessons to a new contract."

I am led to a private room, also mirrored.  I am introduced to a very short sturdy looking girl.  I was sure that if one took her waist as a point of demarcation, she was divided into two equidistant parts.  We were introduced and the hostess leaves us to our destiny.

The first lesson is a disaster.  My intructress is an addict of the Mambo.  I end up holding her hand as she gyrates around the room to the drums of the ubiquitous Mambo Number Five by Perez Prado.  

I receive five lessons some of which deal with the Tango.  I learn several patterns.  During each session the hostess appears and they hold whispering conferences.  The hostess is checking on her progress in selling me a more advanced course. The last remark, though whispered, reaches my ears.

"Ya wanna try and sell him? You try." She stomps one of her sturdy, short legs for emphasis. 

I use the three patterns I learn to good advantage.  No one really knows what a real tango looks like, so I fake it on occasions when the need arises.

About Arthur Murray and his studios?  A New York Post reporter enrolls in a "Lifetime" course, and discovers that you can use a lifetime up very quickly.  She talks to many elderly ladies, some of whom are on their second and third crack at a lifetime. You see, the charming young dance instructors also lend their skills at the social get togethers and become as necessary to the dancers as a psychotherapist is to modern clients.  Extras diminish the longevity of the "Lifetime Course".  The reporter, I remember her first name, Gail, writes of the higher education of the "Dance".

I wonder if Arthur returns the money laid out for her "Lifetime Course", after she goes undercover.

It's my guess she does not get her money back.  The newspaper gets its expose, but I know of a charming senior lady who reads all the articles and signs up for her third "Lifetime Course" with a smile. 

That Time I Met Loretta Swit

It was summer 1979. I had always told myself and others (for reasons that even in dotage I really can't adequately explain since I had little desire for its inherent contentiousness) from the age of 14 that I was going to be a lawyer.  I had just then finished law school--although my heart was being tugged in a very different direction, concurrently to the idea of working in radio because of my introduction to the Fordham College Radio Station WFUV, and writing speculation scripts for the then many great comedy series on TV because I had been a cast member on the WFUV show Diploma City, written by my college friend, Lenspeaks. I had even compulsively written a few scripts which were produced on the show. I had already fallen in love with Los Angeles on my first visit in 1977. The year 1979 was my third visit and I planned, if somehow I could develop the chutzpah that was not a quality natural to me,  to move there. I would have to pass the Bar in New York, and then in California and get a job to do it, but in a rarity for me, I was optimistic I was capable of it. I had long since fallen out of love with New York in the Koch years, and needed a dramatic change. Los Angeles was in the late 70s and 80s a very different place from New York, even more then than it is now--having now become a crowded, often dirty city, like the New York of 1981 I ultimately ran from. 

Lenspeaks was my travel buddy. We were then writing partners hoping that one of the scripts we had to show our abilities (including for MASH, then long popular in the culture) would launch us out of the regular working world into a little writing cottage on one of the studio lots. He had already made the acquaintance of another Fordham alum, Thad Mumford, (see an earlier blog entry on him after his too early death in 2018), who, having read our stuff, was very encouraging. Thad offered to show us one of the studios we would have killed to work out of (well, I would have; well, ok, not literally; it was a fantasy that had some promise of reality), this one where MASH was made, Twentieth Century Fox on Pico Boulevard. Thad was a writer, and later a producer, along with his late writing partner, Dan Wilcox, on the show. It's been 46 years so I know the details of my memory are less vivid; but not the feeling of that day, one of two aspiring Hollywood writers getting a personal look at how the script sausage got made. As we were walking in not far from the front gate where the Hello Dolly! elevated train station still sat completely (Len says that a portion is still there but I can't see it as I pass by in my car these days) intact. Thad, Len and I approached a man eating a yogurt cup. I can't swear to it, but I have had the name stuck in my head from that day and time, and had not previously been that aware of him, and I have confirmed by Google that he was indeed on that lot at about that time, but it was Marshall Brickman, the writing partner of Woody Allen. Thad said some really nice things, the swell your head kind of things, about our bright futures in television. I can't give you exact sequence right now but I think one of the first things we did was to get a quick view of the writer's room, where Thad and his partner worked. The thing about studios I have always liked and the reason I know I would have felt at home on one of them (aside from having a great creative career for which I got paid), is that they feel like a college campus. Effectively, they are. And the little cottage in which Thad and Dan worked made me feel so comfortable. I imagined myself trilling away (this was pre-computers) on my typewriter in that great space, taking a break to enjoy the Commissary, which was our next (I think)  stop, for lunch. I swear I remember Walter Matthau at a nearby table, but since Len doesn't remember that (he saw other folks on another visit of his own) maybe it's my imagination, along with the fact that I think I had a Cobb salad, because at some point, there, or elsewhere, I quipped about a Lee J. Cobb salad. (I know, buud a bum). 

I am not sure how it happened but as we were walking to the set of the SWAMP, there she was, Loretta Swit, Hot Lips Houlihan herself, with a bit of an entourage that included a handsome man of about her age, that I somehow decided she was attached to in some way socially. I mention in passing that it has occurred to me it might have been her only husband, Dennis Holohan, whom himself was a lawyer trying his hand at acting, with whom I had acquaintance over the years in another arena entirely. However, I don't think she had met Mr. Holohan at that point in her life or career. He would later be on an episode of MASH himself, playing Margaret Houlihan's love interest. So, I can only say there was someone with her. We were briefly introduced. I remember her as prettier than she sometimes seemed on the screen, and breezier. She was in a good mood, and was ever too briefly introduced to us. I would have loved to chatter but everyone was moving toward the set. Along the way, we got a wave and hello from Harry Morgan, and somebody introduced us to David Ogden Stiers, but mispronounced his last name, which he corrected in the patrician manner one would expect of Major Winchester. 

We spent the next I can't say how long watching the cast film part of an episode called, "Mr. and Mrs. Who", with guest actor, James Keane (from the Paper Chase TV show). I was entranced by the complete design, the detailed design of the SWAMP and the medical bay. I am always amazed by the talent of the artists who create the scene for the actors to do their part, the part that is always most noticed, but not always the most spectacular, although I was a fan of the talent of all these actors. 

At a break, Len and I were able to say hello to fellow Fordham alum Alan Alda, Hawkeye himself. He looked exactly as he does on screen, then with a wash of black hair that fell onto his forehead and in the surgeon costume. When we told him we were also from Fordham, he asked what year we graduated, and upon our 1976! he said that we were babies compared to him a late 1950s grad. 

I can't remember how we disengaged from our visit there, but it has always been a happy memory. Alas a television writing career was not mine to be had, and Len went on to another partner. Still, it is not small source of pride and delight that I had two connections with a groundbreaking show, one, a friendship with the late Thad Mumford, (we watched the last episode with him and his late love Roz Doyle in 1982 at his lovely little house) and a passing visit to a pretty big bit of television history.

RIP Loretta Swit and those who went before you from that time and place.