"Feb 25,1980 (Ted was living in L.A.. A year after the heart attack.)
     Sinatra singing Cole Porter. Me waiting breathless for Claire. I fall in love quickly, damn me. She clearly doesn't feel about me as I do about her. Wasn't I this way with Melanie? with B?… But I was also this way with Lucille, with Genevieve. Julie says I was this way with that red-haired nurse whose name escapes me… Leonore? When there's contact of any kind, I go mad. But surely, surely this is normal, or am I suffering, as Julie says, from some deep insecurity despite my "being so handsome"?
     I was just having a fantasy conversation with Claire J. "You clearly don't feel about me as I do about you," I said. Yet I dreamed she told me she loved me. She didn't look like she looks in the dream. She's more beautiful. Incredible eyelashes. Now there's a reason for loving someone. Just a few moments ago I found myself telling myself that she wasn't coming, because she was ten minutes late. That she'd gone home. That she didn't call. But she did, she called.. and I was calm and pleasant. She'd been held up.
     God, I was feeling this way just a few short weeks ago about B. and stopped when there was no more response. My intensity frightened her. But falling in love is intense.
     Now M. comes onto the scene again. She's arriving March 25th... That was arranged before I'd met Claire J… If it doesn't turn out with Claire, what will happen with M.? Is that a possibility? I'll never put my eggs into one basket ever again ever ever ever ever ever!
     I am like a fourteen years old, an incredibly naive immature adolescent and at this incredibly old age? Was there ever a man so old and so foolish?"

Ted's life continued to the end to be filled with infatuations. Melanie (in the writings above) was Julie's best friend at that time. Then there was the Chinese student that he met in the park. They corresponded and talked on the phone. He sent her money. Hundreds of dollars. She thought that was sweet. (Julie thought that was crazy.) But Ted frightened off the Chinese student with talk of marriage. From her notes to him, which I found amongst his papers, it seems that the whole affair was quite platonic. Ted, however, was, as ever, lost in romance. He mentioned the thoughts of marriage to me. "There is this sweet Chinese student I've met. What would you think about having a mother who is younger then you?"
     On the tapes there is a recording of a trip into town with four young Beverly Hills High School girls - friends of the grand daughters - who are running errands for him… with him - his little secretarylets. The conversation is inconsequential. His tone betrays the flirtation that this quasi-sexual dalliance inspired. (Well, if Ghandi could fill his bed with maiden warmth and energy, why not Ted his car?)

In the nineteen-seventies Ted had moved back to California. He had been shuttling back and forth across the Atlantic from London to New York, Montreal, L.A., and in the late seventies he shifted his centre to L.A.. L.A. provided two major attractions (and many minor ones). The first was Julie who moved out to the coast at this time. The second was John Casavettes. Ted met Johnny through Sam Shaw, and Ted and John spent a lot of time working together. This culminated in John staging two of Ted's plays in L.A. in 1984, and in John's filming "Love Streams". Love Streams won first prize at the Berlin Film Festival. (1)
     "Johnny treated me like a brother," said Ted. "I think I was his closest friend… He treated Sam like a brother too, but like a younger brother."

Johnny leased a small ninety nine seat theatre for three months. A theatre needs to have less than a hundred seats if the actors are going to work for less than Union rates or, here, simply for the opportunity of working with John Casavettes, so there was large casts of extremely talented actors for the project. John Voight and Gena Rowlands starred in Love Streams. Casavettes spent a quarter of a million dollars, of his own money, renovating the theatre. The seats were set out two rows deep, so the two rows were long and the stage was correspondingly wide. It could accommodate three stage sets (or sub-sets). With the several sets and their large casts, the pieces, Love Streams and The Third Day Comes of Ted's and Knives by Casavettes, were staged in a Shakespearean fashion with many scenes. The plays were staged rather filmicly and the project served Johnny as a vehicle to explore the film he would shoot.

Ted had a close friendship with Gena Rowlands, Mrs. Cassavettes, that continued after John's death. There were several possible projects Ted and Gena tried to put together, none of which jelled. The Ted and Gena story that comes to my mind, though, is about the shot-gun. After the police had hasseled Ted in his Hollywood Hills house, after that trauma (and the scare of the raccoon on the roof!), Ted bought a shot-gun. Later it came north to Toronto with him. He was moving it when Gena was staying with him. "It's not loaded," he said, and slipped and shot a 12 gauge hole into the study wall. He covered the hole with a picture frame holding "Secret of the World" reviews.

Back in the late 70s, Ted bought a house in the canyons between Hollywood and L.A. on Stanley Hills Drive. A wonderful little house closely hemmed in by the canyon, the eucalytus trees and cacti. He lovingly improved the bungalow with fitted carpentry, built-in desks, cupboards…
     "My God," said Stanley. "The carpenter is earning more than you!"

In large part, our life is our friends, Ted's friends: Johnny, Julie, Stanley Mann, Georgia Brown… During his heart attack the Cedars Sinai hospital threatened to withhold treatment till payment was guaranteed. Lorne Greene and Gareth Wigan (2) came down to the hospital to sign on as guarantors. The Writer's Guild's health insurance hinged on the amount of work Ted had done the previous year. Reviewing his accounts for the year, a minor contract, a radio show he'd forgotten, turned up and the Guild paid the hospital bill.

In large part, Ted's life was his work.
     After his success with the film, "Lies My Father Told Me", Ted had some stature as a Jewish scriptwriter and he wrote a draft of Yental for Barbara Striesand
     There were the years of trying to put together a film deal on Bethune… countless rewrites (almost as many as for "Secret of the World"). He traveled with Ted Kotcheff to China. (3) For years it seemed he didn't have a handle on the script. Then, at the Bethune museum in Wutai Provence, they - the Teds - looked into a glass case at bamboo spears. "What are these?" they asked the interpreter/guide. "These our soldiers used in battle against the Japanese. There were not rifles for every soldier."
     When Bethune arrived in China in 1938 and joined up with the communist guerrilla forces, only three out of every ten of the wounded survived, while seven died. Eighteen months later seven out of ten survived. Beth, through his work, significantly changed morale. The soldiers of the 8th Route Army would shout Bethune's name going into battle, "Bethune is here to look after the wounded." Mao's army tied down a million Japanese soldiers throughout the second World War. One could certainly, therefore, argue that Bethune did as much as anyone to defeat fascism.
     "That's it!" said the Teds. "That's our story. Bethune won the war. Thank God we heard it from the Chinese. If we hadn't, we would have had to invent it."

Ted's heart attack in 1979, while it happened during a "mercy fuck", none the less, Ted believed that Genevieve leaving him triggered the infarct. The trauma of abandonment. A tape recorded "January the twenty-first, 1980" arrives at this conclusion, in a round about way, as it deals with the last chapter of the Gerda Taro saga….

"I'm going to put down as much as I can about the experience that in Spain in nineteen... I think it was nineteen seventy-six. I'll have to check with John Berry.
     We had left London, John Berry and I. John said I was very nervous and high-strung, tense. Apparently I was nervous about going back to Spain. We were going to do research for a film based on the book, The Robespierre File, which had to do with a CIA agent in Spain and the death of a girl.
     Now Claire Russell had warned me to abandon the project, to kill the story; not to do it - and I couldn't understand her. She had had a premonition or insight into the difficulties I would encounter. I didn't.
     We got into Madrid. We got a room at the Hilton. We had a good dinner, as I remember. We rented a car next morning and we began to drive to Huelva, which is a town in the Southwest tip of Spain. Now, nothing of what I'm reporting was conscious at the time. I didn't think of the fact that when I was in Madrid in nineteen thirty-seven I'd never been anywhere near Huelva or Malaga, because that area had been occupied by Franco's troops. I had arrived after the fall of Malaga and, I think, Almaria, although I'm not sure if Almaria had also fallen by then. I arrived the first week in February, as I recall, about February thirteenth, or sixth: I don't remember. That's 1937, I'm referring to now. Anyway, back to 1976, John Berry and I were driving towards Huelva, and I was getting more and more tired. And, says John, more and more irritable. I shouted at… I'm remembering shouting at a Spanish porter who charged me what I thought was an exorbitant amount, a few pesetas. I was angry at the taxi driver for over-charging us and he wanted a bigger tip and I was infuriated and I shouted at him.
     I can't remember now whether we had stayed in Madrid at the Hilton now, or at the Palace Hotel (again, John will remember this) because the Palace Hotel was where I had stayed when it had been a hospital, after I'd been hit by the tank. And I'd never gone back there again despite the fact that I'd been in Madrid a few times before this trip with Berry.
     Genevieve was in London. Things were not going well with us. There was a lot of tension. She was unhappy, I was unhappy. Anyway, we got to Huelva after a long, long, drive. I was very tired. We got to the hotel. And then we went to a little restaurant where we had some Spanish pastries. These things, they're like donuts, dipped in oil. I had four or five or six cups of coffee. I kept gulping down the coffee. I was again very tired and we went to sleep.
     Now, the next thing I remember is that John was standing in my room, next to my bed. There were two other people in the room. One turned out to be a doctor. And it was about five o'clock in the afternoon of the next day and I said, "What's the matter?" Then he stared at me and asked, "Are you all right?" I said, "Yes. Why? Who are these people?"
     "This is a doctor and somebody from the hotel." He was very white.
     I said, "What's the matter? What's happened?"
     He said, "You're sure you're all right?"
     I said, "I'm fine. What time is it?"
     "Five o'clock. Do you remember anything of last night?"
     I said, "No. Why? What happened last night?" And he began to describe what had happened. (Some of what I'm relating now is a bit confusing in the sense that I can't quite remember it. I will try to remember what John told me and what I myself remember, and piece it together.)
     I remembered getting out of my room. Going downstairs and asking the clerk where John Berry was staying. "I have to see him," I said. And they brought me to John's room which happened to be right next door to my room, but I didn't remember that. Now, it, I may be spoiling the story by saying, I was walking in my sleep. Although John was convinced I was wide-awake. But, I was not. I was walking in my sleep and this is what happened. I came to John and I said, "John, could you…" and he said, "What is it?" I said, "John would you mind coming into my room with me? I don't want to be alone." He said, "Fine." And we dismissed the young hotel clerk who had come up with me and I looked at him and I said, "John. Something terrible has happened and I can't figure out what it is. Somebody has died. Has somebody we know died?" He said, "No." I said, "Now John, look. Don't keep this from me. I know that something terrible has happened." He said, "No." And then I looked up and I saw my briefcase, which was one of those hard briefcases that had the files, the leather files that open like an accordion. I asked, "Whose is that?" He said, "It's yours." I said, "I don't remember that." And then I looked at the typewriter and asked, "Whose typewriter is that?" He said, "It's yours." I said, "Mine? I don't have such a typewriter."
     And then I went to the table where the typewriter was and I saw an airplane ticket, which I had never seen before. The date was, whatever the date was, January, February, 1976. And I said, "What, what is this?" He said, "That's the airplane ticket from New York to Paris to Madrid."
     I said, "Air planes from New York? What the hell kind of a joke is this? (Ted laughs as he says this on the tapes) What's going on here, John? What is this? Where are we?"
     "We're in Spain."
     "I know we're in Spain," I said. "I know we're in Spain but where in Spain?"
     He said, "Huelva."
     I said, "Huelva? What are we doing in Huelva"
     "We're here to write a movie.
     I said, "Write a movie?
     "Yes," he said, "I'm going to direct it. We're both writing it. It's a movie about…"
     I said, "What? I don't know what the hell you're talking about. John, is your daughter Jan dead? Has she been killed? Did she commit suicide?"
     He said, "No."
     "Is my daughter, Julie, dead? Is anybody in our family dead? Did anybody die that you're keeping from me."
     "No."
     "Is Genevieve all right? Is Genevieve dead?"
     "No. She's fine:"
     "You're sure?" I said. Then I said to him, I said, "Is Gerda.. is Gerda dead?"
     He said, "Yes."
     I said, "Why did you say that?"
     He said, "Well, she's dead."
     I said, "But I just saw her yesterday!"
     "No, Ted. You didn't see her yesterday. What year do you think this is?"
     I said, "Well, I know what year it is. It's 1937."
     He said, "No. It's 1976."
     I said, "What the hell are you talking about? Why are you telling me that Gerda's dead. That's a terrible thing to say to me that Gerda's dead."
     "Gerda is dead, Ted. Gerda got killed. She was hit by a tank...."
     I said, "What the hell are you talking about! I was with Gerda yesterday. I'm going to see her again today. John, am I dreaming? Is this a dream?" And I sort of looked at him and he said, "No. You're awake."
     Now, perhaps had he said, "you're sleepwalking," it might have helped. I don't know. Claire later thought that it might have helped but, who knows? How the hell could he know that I was sleepwalking?
     And I kept saying, kept repeating, "Where ... Just tell me again, John, where are we?"
     "We're in Spain."
     Then I'd be very irritated and I'd look at John, "I know we're in Spain. I mean, where in Spain!" And he'd say, "Huelva! And I'd say, "My God, what are we doing in Huelva?!"
     Now, I didn't realise that, even during the sleepwalking sequence, that what was bothering me was that Huelva was behind enemy lines in 1937. So I couldn't be visiting Huelva. Here I was sleepwalking, having come to Spain, getting up, knowing someone was dead, and unable to face the fact of the death, that it was Gerda. And then I was looking at my typewriter and my briefcase and the airplane tickets, and he was telling me it was 1976 and me wondering what was the matter with him, why he was carrying on that way. And yet, I saw no contradiction in the fact that he was there with me and I had only met John Berry several years after Spain. Yet that in the dream, in the waking dream or whatever dream I was having, it didn't strike me as incongruous or a contradiction. I knew him and I kept saying, "You know me. I'm Ted Allan. And you're John Berry. But why do you keep saying that Gerda is dead?"
     And he said, "Because she's dead, Ted. She's been dead for something like, almost forty years."
     I said, "That's a terrible, terrible thing to tell me. What a terrible thing say." And I kept on asking and repeating, "Where are we?" And he kept on telling me and I kept on saying, "What are we doing here?" And finally, right through the night this went on. There are other details that John will recall that I have to see him about so that I can get it down.
     I finally fell asleep and he called the doctor. Later John had me call Claire and I told her what had happened, I felt very shaky and, at this moment I'm getting slight pressure in the chest (Ted laughs), which is the first pressure of its kind I've gotten in days because I've been taking it very, very easy but obviously the emotion of recalling Gerda's death, I almost said, Genevieve's death, so there we have that association I've made between Genevieve and Gerda. Oh, it corroborates, confirms, Claire's hunch that I made a transference from Gerda to Genevieve and that the split-up with Genevieve has resulted in this incredible trauma and accelerated the processes which brought on the first (Ted gives a deep sigh) heart-attacks, last year, and now is bringing on a slight pressure in my mid-chest, which is the first of its kind, as I've said before, that I've had in days. Obviously the memory of Gerda is going to be very difficult to handle and I may have to go back to London so I can work with Claire while I'm writing the autobiography. I wanted to get this down so I'll have notes. I know I've written about this somewhere in my analytic notes but I don't feel like going through them now. I don't know where the hell they are.
     We'll file these notes under "Gerda", along with the first pages I wrote over ten years ago that I keep evading and evading.
     And that's how I think I should do the movie. Have me and my friend come to Madrid, to Huelva. Have me start to sleepwalk. I didn't know I was a writer. I mean, I knew I was a reporter, because I'd been a reporter in Spain, in Madrid, after I'd been transferred from the Brigade. But I didn't know that I was a screenwriter or a dramatist, I, I, I was really back in 1937. But with the strange, at the moment unexplainable, phenomenon of accepting my friendship with John Berry, my having children; Julie and Norman. I think I even discussed Genevieve, asking where she was and he told me she was in London that she was all right I think I did this before I asked about Gerda. I wanted to make sure that Genevieve was all right.
     Now this leads me to another experience which may or may not be part of this story, I don't know, and that has to do with Lucille, who is red-haired and who I lived with in Paris in 1958, who I was madly in love with. Whom I sniffed, at our first meeting, like I was some dog. Because I couldn't understand what was drawing me to that scent. I knew that I found her very attractive. It was only much, much later that I realised that this perfume was the same perfume that Gerda used.
     And I had this wild, mad, love-affair with Lucille where I believed that for the first time in my life I really loved, and was loved in a way that I had dreamed. Which is also part of this terrible story because Gerda and I never consummated our love. And now when I reread that, those notes I made of her asking me to lie beside her and touch her. And me lying there like some lump, petrified, not knowing what to do, not daring to think she was inviting me to make love to her. And that we never made love. We never even kissed. I mean, I kissed her, I think on the cheek once, and she kissed me on the eye. Oh God, I, I don't know if I can bear it."

Ted goes on to recount the story of the cross channel flight with Lucille in 1958 when he felt like he was in a tank and "flashed-back" to nineteen thirty-seven, and then found himself in Sandy House beating the kitchen floor, raging, "You're not dead!" and finally remembering Gerda's death.

"… I had been repressing since 1937 to 1958, twenty-one years, repressing… as I had never felt from the time I'd held that belt of hers in my hand and said, "Well, this will make a good story." And me thinking, "You're a fraud. You're a total fraud. You don't feel anything." And I felt nothing, from the time of her death, when I had seen her dead face. And 1958 when I had started this thing with Lucille and then I remembered that Lucille had red hair and Gerda had red hair. Lucille's perfume was the same as Gerda's , and that I had, really in a way, fallen in love with a ghost of Gerda. Or that, maybe everybody I fell in love with after that was the ghost of Gerda because I had never, never mourned for Gerda or buried Gerda. And it all came out. I had been madly, madly, wildly, innocently and unconsciously, in love with her. How that can be, I don't know, but that's how it was. And I began to remember how we held hands and how we saw each other every day and how she had loved me. And I had not known it, and knew it, for I had said, "When we go to New York I want you to meet my mother. You will love my mother and she'll love you." And we spoke like we were going to get married. (And she said she didn't want to live in Montreal, and they agreed that they would live in New York.)
     And all this I had repressed. And in the story I wrote I hinted at none of this because I didn't want Capa to know. And the whole story of Gerda and me which I have never really written, is something I would like to write before I die. Goddamn it! Because I think it is one of the saddest bloody love stories I know."

chapter nineteen

chapter twenty