Iconic Voices by W A Harbinson
This Play is the copyright of the Author and must not be Performed without the Author's prior consent
Although we only see them in dim light as the play opens, there are
five men seated in a row of chairs on the stage: ELVIS PRESLEY, MARLON
BRANDO, NORMAN MAILER, JOHN LENNON, and ANDY WARHOL. Elvis is in his
white jumpsuit with big jewelled belt. Marlon is in his
'Streetcar' T-shirt and jeans. A fat-bellied Norman is wearing a
respectable pinstripe suit with shirt and tie. John has his 'working
class hero' overalls and National Health 'John Lennon'
spectacles. Andy is wearing a black-leather jacket, denims and dark
glasses, his hair sprayed silvery-white, talcum powder on his face to
make it look deathly. On a raised dais behind and slightly to the side
of them stands MARILYN MONROE. She, too, is in dim light, but a
spotlight gradually illuminates her. She is wearing the white dress
made famous in The Seven Year Itch and a slight breeze is blowing it
about.
The real Marilyn Monroe is singing in the background 'I Want to be
Loved By You' from the film, 'Some Like It Hot'. Fade out on her
singing the refrain, 'Boo-boop be-do!'
Marilyn looks out at the audience, then gradually turns her head to
look down to where the five men are seated.
(Note: Sometimes the actors speak to each other; other times they
directly address the audience.)
MARILYN: Look at them! My five little sinners. My five sweet, wicked
men. My little ba-bas. All legends, as I am, and now as dead as I am,
though some of them not too sure of where they are. Certainly not
Elvis. (A spotlight gradually illuminates Elvis.) Deep down, he knows
he's dead. He just can't accept it. He's still a little
confused. Still innocent, the little darling. I mean, of all of them,
he was the most innocent and always remained so, despite becoming one
of the world's great sex symbols Yes, a sex symbol. Like me. I
always hated being a sex symbol. As a sex symbol you're no more than
a thing and I hated being a thing. Elvis did, too, in the end. The
poor dear became so tired of it all. Tired of being a thing.
ELVIS: I was tired of being me. Elvis. The King. I was tired of being
me back in 1977, before that concert in Rapid City, South Dakota, the
one that son of a bitch Colonel Parker insisted on filming for a TV
special, despite the damned awful condition I was in.
MARILYN: How do I look? he asked nervously of the yes-man standing
beside him, waiting to go onstage, not really giving a damn, just
filling the silence. You look good, the yes-man replied, lying through
his teeth.
ELVIS: Yeah, right, I said, without thinking. I'll look good in my
coffin.
MARILYN: And not long after, there he was in his coffin, being driven
along Elvis Presley Boulevard in Memphis, Tennessee.
ELVIS: Some funeral, I'm telling you! Biggest thing of its kind
since the burial of Valentino, but in my case, even bigger than that.
Over 150,000 fans lining the four-mile route from Graceland to Forest
Hills Cemetery. Hundreds fainting or crushed in the crowd. One woman
giving birth in the back of an ambulance. A drunken 18-year-old
driving into a crowd of mourners, killing two teenage girls and
critically injuring another. The lawns of the cemetery covered in 3000
floral tributes in the shape of guitars, hound dogs, crosses and
broken hearts. My casket
MARILYN: With him in it, naturally.
ELVIS: was placed in the family mausoleum, right next to my
mama's. But a couple of weeks later, three guys were arrested for
trying to steal my body from the crypt, hoping to ransom it.
MARILYN: And that incident, combined with the predatory activities of
a lot of Elvis's more fanatical fans and, Lord knows, don't I
know about fanatical fans? led to both coffins being moved out of
Forest Hills and into the Meditation Garden at Graceland. So at least
he was back home pretty quickly.
ELVIS: Was I? I mean, where, exactly, am I now? I mean, I can see my
own death and funeral, re-live it over and over again, but right now I
feel perfectly alive, even if a little confused and disorientated,
wondering where I am and what lies ahead of me. Not much here,
that's for sure. At least, not at the moment. I kinda feel I'm
alive, but I also feel I could be sleeping, or maybe sleepwalking,
like I did regular during childhood and adolescence.
MARILYN: Poor dear. He would sleepwalk a lot. I did the very same
thing in all the orphanages and charity homes I was dumped in. Some
would even say I sleep-walked through my whole life.
ELVIS: So did my mama and daddy. All three of us were inclined to
sleepwalk. Zombies. The Land of the Dead.
(Spotlight illuminates Marlon Brando.)
MARLON: Which is where you are right now, you poor bastard. You just
don't know it yet.
ELVIS: I still recall being aware that I wasn't really awake, that
I was sleeping on my feet, even though I was vaguely aware of what I
was doing, of where I was walking. That's kind of how I feel now,
alive but half asleep, with my past and present, from my birth to my
death, like a ribbon of dreams unfolding in my head.
MARLON: A ribbon of dreams. That's how Orson Welles described film.
ELVIS: I mean, I'm here and there also. I have the feeling I'm in
the past and the present simultaneously. Maybe sleepwalking through
Eternity. Maybe that's what this is.
MARLON: Eternity. Yeah. Fame and fortune and eternity. The last being
the price you're paying for your sins, having brazenly imitated me
in your early movies, just like that little creep, Jimmy Dean. You had
my walk and my talk down to a T and I didn't like you for it.
But
MARILYN: Yes, Marlon? You're one of the many who had me over the
years, so that surely gives you certain privileges. You can say what
you think.
MARLON: Well, despite our differences, I should never have said what I
said about Elvis. I was just being flippant with that Playboy
interviewer, Lawrence Grobel. We were talking about celebrity in
general and I described Elvis as a bloated, over-the-hill, adolescent
entertainer who had nothing to do with excellence, just myth. It was a
really cruel thing to say, particularly knowing, as I did, that Elvis
revered me as an actor and had based a lot of his image on me. Of
course in the end Elvis was bloated and over-the-hill, but then so was
I, so maybe I was just criticizing myself. Or, more likely, being
hypocritical. I was always good at that.
MARILYN: Yes, indeedy, Marlon. You surely were good at that. Raging
about all the greedy pigs in Hollywood, then becoming as greedy as
they were, especially during your fat years.
MARLON: Yeah, right. I mean, I also railed at Grobel about celebrities
who lent their presence to expensive charity dinners and then I ended
up befriending Michael Jackson, of all people, and spending a lot of
time living for free in his disgusting Neverland ranch. I even
appeared as a Don Corleone styled gangster in one of his ridiculous
music videos. Even worse, I agreed to appear at a Michael Jackson
tribute at Madison Square Garden and was booed by the audience.
MARILYN: Boo, boo, boo. Boo-boop be-do. As an entertainer, great or
small, you should always expect to be booed now and then.
MARLON: Yeah, right. But that audience clearly had more sense than I
gave them credit for. They knew what I was doing up there. I was there
for the money. Michael paid me a million bucks. So I sat on a leather
recliner on the stage, wearing my big sunglasses, looking like a
goddamned elephant, and deliberately mumbled on and on about the
horrors of the Third World, until the audience were going mad with
frustration. Michael, who was seated with Liz Taylor, then almost as
fat as me, just sat there, looking increasingly embarrassed, but I
thought he deserved a little winding up. Though that hasn't made me
forget the way Elvis, whose throne Michael so desperately wanted,
tried to be another me. Me! Marlon Brando! The one and only!
ELVIS: It was a sign of respect. In those early days of my fame, back
in the 1950s. I was described by one journalist as the Marlon Brando
of the mountain-music set. The mountain-music phrase was deeply
offensive to me, but any kind of comparison to Brando really gave me a
kick. So I was practically in heaven when my performance in my first
movie, Love Me Tender, had some critics describing me as the natural
successor to Brando. It didn't matter that the comparisons were
unfavourable. Just being mentioned in the same sentence as Brando was
enough to have me walking on air. But the nearest I ever got to him
was shaking his hand one day.
MARLON: That was in 1958. In the commissary of the Paramount lot. He
was sitting at the next table, looking at me with eyes like spoons, so
when he got up to leave, I introduced myself and shook his hand and he
nearly wet himself.
(A spotlight illuminates Norman Mailer.)
NORMAN: Cruel, Marlon. Cruel as always. You are one cruel son of a
bitch.
MARLON: He was making a movie at Paramount. The king of rock and roll
was making a movie called King Creole.
MARILYN: I saw it. I loved it. It was better than a lot of your
movies, Marlon.
MAILER: They called Elvis 'the King' but I'm the king. Norman
Mailer the unchallenged King of American literature.
MARLON: Oh, oh, here we go.
NORMAN: Gimme a break, Marlon. I was actually born a king. My mother
Fanny adored me. She worshipped the ground I walked on. She adored me
so much, she gave me the Hebrew name, Nachum Malech, or Norman King.
The 'King' was important. It was the way she viewed me right from
the start. But it seemed a bit odd to address me as 'King', so
Fanny's niece suggested Kingsley, the name of one of her favourite
authors. So Norman Kingsley Mailer I became.
MARLON BRANDO: Norman Kingsley goddamned Mailer. His mother adored him
so much that even when he stabbed his wife, she said his wife must
have driven him to it. No wonder Norman spent most of his life
believing he could do anything he wanted, no matter how outrageous. We
were friends, but he was a spoilt brat. Compared to him, I was decency
personified.
MARILYN: You weren't even decent in bed with me, Marlon. You were
positively indecent.
MARLON: Oh, those were the days, baby. The days when we had those
coloured lights flashing, just like in Streetcar. And the days when
poor Elvis would wet his pants just because I shook his hand.
MARILYN: In the commissary of the Paramount lot. When he was making
King Creole.
ELVIS: That wasn't my first movie. It came after Loving You. Of
course, Loving You was hugely successful, even more so than my first,
Love Me Tender.
MARLON: In which he was described by one critic as looking smooth and
damp like a sausage.
ELVIS: Yeah, like a sausage. A dog's dinner. But my next movie,
Loving You, was loosely based on my own rise to fame and gave me the
chance to perform my songs like I did on the stage. Boy, I was hot!
Also, it was in colour and I looked terrific in colour and, even
better, was given the chance to act sullen and tormented. That really
pleased me, 'cause I was convinced that my movie heroes of the time,
Brando and Dean and Montgomery Clift, were so successful at what they
did 'cause they were rarely seen to smile on screen. I had to smile
a lot 'cause my crooked grin was a kind of trademark, beloved
worldwide, but in Loving You I also got to act serious and that really
thrilled me.
MARLON: I can't believe what I'm hearing. Elvis Presley as a
serious actor.
NORMAN: Sarcasm, Marlon. Not nice. I acted in movies myself, you may
remember. Only in my own movies, I'll admit, the ones I wrote and
directed, but I gave it a go.
MARLON: And was described by famed critic Pauline Kael as a growling,
grunting, waddling little star, a miniaturized big-brawler.
NORMAN: Brando was always a man with a mouth. Note the genius
author's use of alliteration.
ELVIS: At least I was allowed to act serious in Loving You. And I was
allowed to be even more serious in my next two movies, Jailhouse Rock
and King Creole. My personal favourite, King Creole, also shot in
black and white, was directed by a real director, Michael Curtiz,
who'd also directed Casablanca, and it had a terrific supporting
cast, including my dear friend Jan Shepard.
MARLON: Who went on from King Creole to act in Attack of the Giant
Leeches. Then, a few years later, worked again with Elvis in Paradise
Hawaiian Style, which was possibly even worse than the Giant Leeches.
NORMAN: Now, now, Marlon.
ELVIS: I was also pleased to be in King Creole because one of my
co-stars was the French actress and dancer, Liliane Montevecchi,
who'd recently worked with Marlon in one of my favourite movies, The
Young Lions. In that movie she had some great scenes with him.
MARLON: Yeah, great scenes because she was acting with me. But in King
Creole all she got to do was perform a sexy dance while wearing a
skimpy banana costume and singing a song about bananas. She was one
sexy lady, though.
MARILYN: You'd know, Marlon. You know all about sexy ladies. You had
quite a few in your time. Even me, God forgive me.
ELVIS: Okay, I'll admit it. Most of my movies after King Creole were
terrible. Once Colonel Parker and those Hollywood producers realized
that they could makes fortunes off my back with cheap productions,
crap scripts and lousy songs, they ignored my proven potential as a
serious actor and dug my artistic grave with their trash. I blame them
and my fans. Yeah, my fans always put the blame squarely on the
Colonel, but it was the fans who ignored my more serious films. So I
was forced to spend the next eight or nine years making increasingly
dumb movies. Driving racing cars, flying airplanes, diving off
cliffs, swinging on trapezes, engaging in a lot of fist fights, and
singing songs written by the cheapest talents available to goofy kids,
slobbering hound dogs and vacant-eyed bimbos in bikinis. My movies,
you might say, were the death of me.
NORMAN: And here you are, dead. All of us, dead. Though some of us,
when alive, lived more than others.
(Spotlight illuminates John Lennon.)
JOHN: OK, I'm dead. I'm willing to accept it. But that lunatic
Chapman really did me a big favour.
MARLON: Really?
JOHN: Yes, really. I'd released my first album in five years only a
week or so before, but it wasn't doing well until Chapman gunned
me down outside the Dakota Building. (Sound of five gunshots.) I died
on my way to the hospital, but the album, within twenty-four hours of
my passing, was selling like hot cakes. Let's face it: the biggest
mistake Paul ever made was not being assassinated and having his
post-Beatles reputation soar overnight like mine did. I mean, if Paul
had been assassinated instead of me, they'd now be raving about him
as the true genius, the greatest creative force, behind the Beatles,
as they've been raving about me ever since I was knocked off. They
certainly weren't doing it when I was alive and being jointly
creative with the dreaded Jap. Now, a writer like Norman Mailer would
describe those comments as existential truth, and being a writer
myself, I'm bound to agree with the pot-bellied Jew-boy scribbler.
NORMAN: Ho, ho. The Jap? Jew-boy scribbler?
JOHN: Do these comments make me a racist and anti-Semite? Not really.
At least I don't think so. I mean, I was always a bit of a wind-up
merchant, you know, and I specialised in outrageous comments. I really
liked our manager, Brian Epstein, who had a crush on me, but I took
the piss out of him all the time, generally for being Jewish and
homosexual, often deliberately talking about queers and arse bandits
in his presence. I remember, for instance, that when Brian hired Tony
Barrow as PR for the Beatles and personally introduced him to us, I
said loudly to Barrow, within earshot of Brian: If you're not queer
and you're not Jewish, what are you doing working for Brian? Of
course Brian turned bright red but said nothing, which gave me a kick.
On another occasion, when Brian had completed the writing of his life
in the music business and asked me what I should call it, I suggested
Queer Jew. And thereafter, when Brian even mentioned the eventual
title of the published work, A Cellarful of Noise, I always referred
to it as A Cellarful of Boys. So I wasn't really racist or
homophobic. I just enjoyed winding people up.
MARLON: So what's wrong with that?
MARILYN: You did enough of it when you were young, Marlon. A real
little hell-raiser at school. Not much better when supposedly
grown-up.
MARLON grins.
JOHN: Well, I know for sure I'm dead. I mean, I have to be dead.
That fat lunatic shot me. I remember the sound of the shots. (Sound of
five gunshots.) I remember staggering toward the entrance of the
Dakota Building, up the stairs and into the security guard's
vestibule. I remember everything starting to blur. I remember having a
rush of recollections of the many times I'd been convinced that I
was going to die by being shot. I remember falling to the floor and
Yoko screaming
MARILYN: (Screaming.) John's been shot!
JOHN: I remember being engulfed in a wave of terror and then I blacked
out and regained consciousness here, in this kind of nowhere void. So
I know for sure that I'm dead.
(A spotlight illuminates Andy Warhol.)
ANDY: It's nice to be dead. I always wanted to be dead. I always,
secretly, felt dead inside and now that I'm actually dead, I feel at
peace at last. Death does not have dominion. It's simply another
state of being. I often said about death that I didn't believe in it
because you're not around to know that it's happened. Well, it's
happened and now I know about it and I don't mind at all.