John Clark Pro Se Blog

Lynn opens officially next week in an Off-Broadway play called Grace, which is in previews at the Lucille Lortel Theatre on Christopher Street.  Here the production company gives a brief You-tubed preview.   Wish I could see it.  But an adventuresome female New York theatre-going blogger (age 41) has already given her advance opinion, before the pros get their hands on it.  Bless the Bloggers.  She liked it, and certainly, for me, it sounds most interesting.  Here it is, and I hope this is helpful:

Melz' Adventures in Living

I thanked the blogger for her description of the play "GRACE".  I commented on her review and she published it on her site.

Unfortunately, my comments caused a fan of Lynn (or a handler, or one of the family) to barrage me with libellous statements, and the thread was deleted. Hence this entry.

I said that I couldn't afford to get out of Hollywood to have a look-see, but I read it carefully, and could easily imagine it. I thanked her for giving me this unique opportunity to reveal why I think Lynn took the part instead of seeking a lucrative movie or television deal. I said that I thought that personal catharsis was probably the reason.   "Doctor Theatre" as she liked to say when together we did Shakespeare For My Father on Broadway, a performance that helped her put closure on her relationship with her father (and got her a Tony nomination at the same time). Linking my comments to the wording in her review, I said 

"Remember, I speak from 32 years of marriage whilst also raising our family.

- She was always the strong but subtle matriarch and focus of my family, and she's internationally recognized.

- As her husband, I was always "ever so patient and lovingly supportive without being a complete doormat."

- The part of Ruth is actually Niva, our son Benjy's wife (not girlfriend) who happens to be a lawyer too, and is smart and independent.

- Benjy is just one of our 3 children, all of them conflated into the wall she worships at. In his case however, he convinced her to secretly move, from Hollywood to Connecticut. He's now a Captain for Delta, flying domestic on the East Coast. For Christian theology, substitute flying, a similar obsession. Her struggle towards him is compared and contrasted with her anger and love towards Tony (me).

Or, perhaps Tom is an admixture of son Benjy with daughter Kelly, who now lives in England next to a village in Suffolk called Redgrave. Kelly became religiously bent on becoming a Buddhist nun, to the extent of changing her name to Pema. Perhaps Lynn wars with Pema, I don't know. Lynn hasn't contacted me for 7 years, except through her lawyer. I do know she has found her God through entering the United Church of Christ in Kent, where she now lives. I do hear from Pema.

Yes indeed, Lynn's life was about "strong, intelligent and stubborn characters, multi family members thrown into an intellectual sparring match over god, theology, love, life, resentment, faith, and forgiveness."

I'm sure Lynn will be giving a great performance, and I hope the director understands how she works. I wish her nothing but well."

Mike Wallace played with (ambushed?) Vanessa and Lynn in a remarkable politically flavored interview on CBS Sixty Minutes, this date. He wouldn't have got it, except for the fact that they were both plugging their one-person shows, Vanessa on Broadway, Lynn near her home, in Hartford, Connecticut.

Vanessa certainly stood her ground, an ability in her I have always admired, and Lynn, well, she displayed the younger sister puppy-dog. For her, backwards to the future.

Sixty Minutes text and video

Forty years ago it was a different story:

1967 Time Cover

Text

Lynn married me two weeks later.

June 30, 2007
I see you have joined this church in your hometown of Kent, Connecticut, and I am glad to read that it brings you great comfort.

On Tuesday June 26 you made a keynote morning address at their 2007 General Synod meeting in Hartford during the run of your play Nightingale at Hartford Stage, and it is interesting to read about your speech here, and to see the video here.

I have questions for you.

I saw "Nightingale" last night.

I was waiting with Miyuki under a tree for some mutual friends who'd been visiting you, and you walked alone with your dog to your car, looked straight at me, and passed on. Well, I guess that means you don't want to be friends, and it's your choice, and it means I have to give you two notes this way.

Oh, you know that I also saw it at the "tryout" last February, and it is certainly much improved, and your acting was excellent, the scenery and your outfit work very well.

NOTES, JUST 2:

You noticed that people did not stand at the end, and I believe you've had some walkouts. I don't think they were bored, but that they weren't "with you". And I think that this is because they felt a little bit "alienated" from you and your play's character. Here's what I think you can do about it. And remember, I'm fresh eyes for you and your director. Try to incorporate these before you close on Sunday, it might be your last chance.

1. The audience feels a little uncomfortable throughout, because they don't know who they are supposed to be. I mean, when somebody is talking at you, essentially unasked, it's a bit off-putting. But they do want to know. Especially if they're not an English audience who may not need this encouragement.

At the top when you first go into your grandmother's character, sit upstage in the restaurant, and imagine your close friend is sitting opposite you (in the same eyeline as the audience) while you have tea together. Aim your first lines at her, and when you have established it is her you are talking to, ever so gradually, bit by bit, shift your attention to the audience. In other words, the audience will become that friend, and will then settle back for the rest of the show. Remember, as I've always said, the very start of a show is perhaps the most important part, because if you don't get 'em then, you may not get another chance.

So you see, a small note, but a very important one.

2. My other note is a writing adjustment. I think it is foolish to say that you are making the entire story up, about your grandmother. We don't really want to hear that, because then we think "well, she existed, didn't she, you met her when you were a child, can't you tell us anything that you know is a fact?"

This is a fact-based society today if you're dealing in facts not fiction. You are detailing a real person whom you knew. There are facts in there, and while it's true that you are speculating about her marriage and her character, you shouldn't say you just made it up. You don't need to say it really happened either. Just don't refer to it, and the question won't even get asked. Just launch into your piece, believing every word, and we will too.

Do these things, and I think the audience will stand at the end.

Say hi to your director Joe for me, and can he get me another job on his ABC daytime soap? I really need it this time.

June 1, 2007
I see you have opened at Hartford, Connecticut in an improved version of your play, and I read an interesting review by Frank Rizzo in Variety. Critics should not compromise objectivity about their subject actors as Rizzo has by interviewing you in a cozy pre-production paid chat for the Hartford Courant. They should, by definition, remain alienated from actors if they are to retain any credible integrity, but maybe it paid off for you. Anyway, in the absence of seeing the new version for myself, here's what I read: Variety review

Seems you have re-written and personalized it more and are still working on it. Meanwhile, what is next? I think you may be circling around waiting to pounce on me for your next play, and you know what? I hope so. I want to find out why you did what you did to me.

Meanwhile, say hello to my old employees, Rui Rita, your lighting person who took over from dear departed Tom Skelton on our SFMF play, and also to Carol (no relation) Clark, our stage manager. And as you should know, I wish only the best for you in your professional career, even though I no longer have a piece of it.

June 10, 2007 The NY Times came out with their NY Times review this morning.

I see you open tonight at the Mark Taper here in my home town in your new play "Nightingale".

I haven't read a word of publicity in the newspapers.

Anyway, you never did reverse your decision to cut me out of your life, and that's o.k. I won't be visiting you without an invitation, and hence this means of communication.

I want to send you the best of good luck for tonight, because in the end, it's the work that matters.

Your ex, John

Tucked away on page 4 of today's L.A. Times entertainment section, Mike Boehm reports that Lynn's sister Vanessa will be taking over in Lynn's one woman show, "Nightingale" at the Mark Taper Forum next month.

I was hoping that Lynn's appearance locally would mean that she would be able to appear in LA Family court, so that we could wrap up some outstanding matters in her lawsuit against me, filed in 1999. After the trial she fled California with our children and took up residence in Connecticut, where she and they have stayed hidden ever since.

Oh well, at least the audience will be treated to a fresh interpretation of the play, which deals with their maternal grandmother Beatrice. And maybe it will sell more tickets. But this news rated a mention on page 1, surely.

Sept. 9 update

Today's L.A. Times printed a correction. It said, in full,

""Nightingale": An article in Tuesday's Calendar section about an effort to entice new theatergoers with free tickets to more than 50 shows on Oct. 19 said Vanessa Redgrave was the star of "Nightingale" at the Mark Taper Forum. The play features Lynn...

So now I was really confused. To me that says not only will the play be STARRING Vanessa, but it will also be FEATURING Lynn (yeah, in the hierarchy of showbiz billing, there's a difference...)

I called the box office, and was assured that Vanessa Redgrave will NOT be in it, so I'm passing it on.

Wonder if the LA Times has ever printed a correction of a correction.

April 23, 2006
The mystery of what happened to my family has just been cleared up.

Mr. Maggart, not happy with being Lynn Redgrave's secret lover for the past 25 years, apparently thinks nothing of helping her get me evicted while hiding behind a video camera, but wishes also to hijack my family, and is now outing himself.

Trust actor's ego to have him open a webpage detailing his exploits surrounded by his adoring family, and now my adoring family.

My patience paid off. But then, I know actors.

On the left is his goon son Spencer who knocked me down when I tried to retrieve my car (see MY EVICTION PICTURES), and on the couch is my pilot son Benjy, his lawyer wife Niva, and my photographer daughter Annabel.

View image

The difference this makes to me is that I no longer respect my kids or their privacy any more, and further details will be given under My Family to the left.

Inspect his website The Maggot and run the video clip from the failed ABC 1989 series "Chicken Soup", filming at CBS Studio City, where they could spend lots of time together.

I just looked up the definition of the word maggot in Webster's, where it is defined as a wormlike insect lava, the legless larva of the housefly, often found in decaying matter.

In my youthful navy days, we knew how to deal with marriage poachers like him. Suffice to say that none of his kids would be existing today.

March 19, 2006
This rather remarkable interview with my old sister-in-law was by and with journalist Lynn Barber, and appeared in the London Observer last week.

I still follow the lives of my former family, because I was a part of them all for so long, and I can't stop myself from doing that. Please understand, it keeps me somehow in touch, although truth to tell, I have not heard from any of them (except my children, and then only barely) since they decided to walk away from me in February 1999.

My feelings about all of them then were decidedly ambivalent as were Lynn's (read Vanessa Redgrave's bio), but we coped, and I tried to be helpful, and that part I don't miss.

Download file

June 3, 2007
Mike Wallace played with Vanessa (and Lynn) in a remarkable interview on CBS Sixty Minutes, this date. He wouldn't have got it, except for the fact they were both plugging their one person shows. Vanessa certainly stood her ground, an ability in her I have always admired, and Lynn, well, she displayed the younger sister puppy-dog; for her, backwards to the future, I'd say.

Sixty Minutes

1967 Time Cover 1 week before marriage to Lynn

Story

One on one. Live. Advertised as "OPEN MEETING - A CONVERSATION WITH LYNN REDGRAVE", to be held under the auspices of New York's Women in Film and Television at The Princeton Club, 15 West 43rd, NYC. on Sept. 22.

The interviewer, Robert Osborne, now the famed columnist for the Hollywood Reporter and host of cable's Turner Classic Movie channel, I first met on the street as I was returning home to our apartment on West 57th. I guess it was around late 1979.

We lived then, and half of us still do, at New York's second oldest co-op (after the Dakota), The Osborne, copied and named after Queen Victoria's summer residence Osborne House on the Isle of Wight.

I was then v/p of the building, a closely held residence of so-called artistic types, across from Carnegie Hall and the Russian Tearoom.

Robert grabbed me and begged that I should help him find a place there to purchase and live, and help get him by the Board's high standards as to who was fit to live there.

I laughed and asked him why the hurry to join the enclave.

He told me with a blush that he would just die to live in a building named after him.

As good a reason as any other, I figured, and so I did indeed help him get in, and he's still alive there I do believe.

And now he's going to interview my ex at the Princeton Club's open forum.

Robert, do me a favor now. Just ask her, as part of the interview, why she feels it necessary to keep my kids from me? It's been 6 years since I heard from Kelly Clark, and 3 years since Annabel Clark, and over 1 year since Ben Clark. Ask her too why she feels it necessary to keep restraining orders in place to prevent me from even having a conversation with her (hence this website).

This will deepen the interview, and help to illuminate to your audience the anxieties and enormous power wielded in the private lives of celebrities towards mere mortals like me. Just like you reveal the private lives of the actors in the movies you introduce.

Thanks Robert. See you.

I am sorry to see that Lynn's brother, Corin Redgrave, suffered a heart attack today, even while making yet another political action speech. I've always admired the fact that he puts his heart into what comes out of his mouth.

I have no quarrel with Lynn's family, even though I have heard nothing from any of them since she kicked me out of our Topanga home two days after 9/11, recounted elsewhere. This is the home where Vanessa would visit us, where we entertained Liam Neeson and his wife Natasha Richardson, her daughter, and where their mother Rachel Kempson, who died last year, came to live with us.

Regardless, I send my heartfelt sympathy to Kika Markham, Corin's long-suffering wife, who still stands by him in this hour of need, and their children. They ask for privacy, and the press will give that to them, one hopes.

A tight family. Which is as it should be.

"Be Careful What You Wish For."

So goes the old aphorism. It can also lead to stress, Lynn, and I hope you are over it by now.

I heard about your breast cancer. I am sorry I could not be there for you, but I see that Annabel was with you, you got a book out of it, and it is a relief that you have recovered. Onward and upward.

[Picture, copyright of our daughter Annabel Clark]

Meanwhile, Merry Christmas

3/8/2005
Happy 62nd. birthday today.

With best wishes from your ex.

September 5, 2006
Tucked away on page 4 of today's L.A. Times entertainment section, Mike Boehm reports that Vanessa Redgrave will be starring in "Nightingale" at the Mark Taper Forum next month!

How come nobody's minding the store for you? This sort of confusion should not be happening. And I see that the City of Los Angeles is putting out on its What's Happening Around Town magazine that "Lynne" is appearing at the Mark Taper next month.

Later
After a few days, I contacted the Times for you, to get a correction put in. Nobody else did!

I sure wish you were still supporting me, because then I would want you to earn as much money as possible, but since I remarried, that stopped. So what motivated me? I still think about you a lot, and dream of the old days in our family home in Topanga. I guess that's why I still care. You see, 32 years together creates hardened synapses in the brain, but nobody around here would understand that.

The work is what really matters, so I wish you good luck with Nightingale while it's here in L.A.

- Your "ex".