Serendipitous Encounters

I despise Celebrity "Culture”, but I dig interesting people. So when I covered for NPR the opening of "Selma!”, that quirky activist musical on the famous March at LA’s Huntington Hartford Theatre in 1976, I suddenly found myself standing next to Groucho Marx and his nurse/girlfriend. He literally had gotten up from what would soon be his death bed to honor his old friend, Martin Luther King, Jr. Alas he was being harassed by a loathsome teenage autograph hound. I cornered the brute and explained in whispers how ill Marx was, until the jerk finally slunk away shamefacedly. His nurse had explained quietly how weak he was. I bodyguarded him for some minutes, until we moved to our front row seats. Later at the afterparty, Redd Foxx, who was financing the fiscal flop, told me what an effort Groucho had made to make the opening. Having a long silent look at Groucho’s eyes was communication enough for me. Autograph searching is the mental disease of morons infantilized by too much television. So I don’t look for interesting encounters, but Dumb Irish Luck has given me more than my fair share of serendipitous! Such as. . .

In 1958, as the gofer for the newly founded Annenberg School of Communication in Philadelphia, I was invading the teleprecincts of LA. An NBC flack allowed as how Polly Adler’s brother was opening a new restaurant today, “Wouldja like lunch there?” Freeloader that I was from my proletarian roots, I complied. And soon found myself seated next to Polly Adler, the most famous Madam of Hollywood. She had upgraded her recent retirement by earning an Associate Arts degree from Los Angeles Community College. She must have majored in Professor Evaluation because she plied me with queries (Queeries?) that allowed her to decide whether I was an asshole professor or Good Guy. After dessert she announced her decision that was a GG. And gave me a Hollywood embracero such that my Contaflex whomped her ample boobs. She withdrew in horror, chiding me snidely,”Patrick, you are acting like a goddam Tourist.” “Polly,” I replied with some conviction, "I am a goddam Tourist:” I believe to this day that Groucho would have chuckled at my witticism.

And then there was my encounter with Duke Ellington in a Holiday Inn elevator in Trenton, 1971.I had just dropped off my daughter Cathy at the Amtrak station to return to the Rhode Island School of Design. I was killing time before Trenton’s great museum opened—by going to the top of the hotel to see if the Big T was as ugly from on top as at the bottom. Alas, it was! Down I went until the 7th floor when who popped in. None other the Duke. “Mr. Ellington,” I began,”what are you doing on noon of a Sunday in Trenton?” “Honorary doctorate,” he replied. “Princeton, this time.” Meaning I deducted, you can stuff the old doctorates from Fisk and Tuskeegee!” Fifth floor: “I want to thank you belatedly for your band’s breaking into “Take the “A” Train!” on Easter Sunday at Liberty Stadium for the opening of the first Negro Arts Festival in Dakar, Senegal in 1964.” This coolest of cats broke into a tiny smile. My twelve year old son Michael standing next to me in Dakar levitated! Third floor.”I could hardly hold my camera steady!” Ground floor, doors open. "And I have the only color footage of that concert.”

Duke:”What’s your name --and address?” So we went over to the registration desk and I signed my first and only anti-autograph: Dr.Patrick D. Hazard, Beaver College, Glenside PA 19038.”Thank you, Dr. Hazard. I look forward to seeing your footage!” “You’re welcome, Duke!” Andy Warhol once bragged that everyone deserved fifteen minutes of fame.” Heh, how about fifteen thrilling seconds in an elevator with the Duke?”

Which reminds me of my brief encounter with Mahalia Jackson at the Newport Jazz festival of 1958. I had arrived at the HQ Viking Hotel late in the evening, so late that I had ordered the last chicken on the menu. Soon after, the great singer arrived, hungry after a long day of travel. I did a Boy Scout good turn and gave her the last bird and listened enchanted as she gabbled about her career! It was like a dinner dessert you never ate all of!

I was there for the first Jazz Critic Symposium at the suggestion of Marshall Stearns, the great jazz historian who also taught Medieval English Lit at Hunter College. I had run into him and Nat Hentoff in Greenwich Village in 1956 when I was a Ford Fellow figuring out how English teachers could master the new medium of television. Stearns’ example proved to my satisfaction that I could teach American Lit and be a good TV critic simultaneously. As the symposium entered its closing minutes, I noticed Mahalia Jackson at the back of the Auditorium. “What do you think of the conference,” I asked the singer. She replied tartly: “I don’t knows what youse been talkin’ about.” Pause. “But I sure do loves jazz!” Much more satisfying that chasing autographs is looking for serendipitous encounter you’ll never forget.