Stuff That I’ve Noticed 5 – Talkin’ Ben Bryant Blues

Another Story Left Out

I found yet another tale missing from book one of my Hollywood Memoir, Three Stages.

Digging through a box of papers from my office I stumbled across this forgotten gem.

Talkin Ben Bryant Blues by Cliff Lipson

As you see in the lower right corner, just above the torn place, the date is 13 July 1968, two days after my thirty-third birthday.

To explain one of the references in the lyric: I kept my stash of “Medicinal Herb” in a baggie inside a Yuban coffee can.

That summer Elizabeth and I were blessed to join the National Lyric Arts Theatre company season at the famous Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut. The idol of my youth, Alfred Drake was the producer and the director was my old colleague, the irrepressible Howard DaSilva.

A brief excerpt from Three Stages chapter 10:

“For the summer the company had taken over a small collection of houses called the Moodus Cabins. In the town of the same name they were three or four miles from the theatre, had a swimming pool and the most dilapidated outdoor ping-pong table in the world. This is where we residents were housed. Sort of like summer camp with ten hour work days. In the front yard was a sign that read:

Moodus Cabins
A Drake, Prop.

“So Alfred was known to the actors as ‘A. Drake, Prop’. Howard got his nickname from the penny ante poker games that became the evening wind-downs. One of the cabins had a large screened porch and almost every night after the show several of us would gather with beers and play for an hour or so and Howard was usually a participant. Incapable of the small gesture, he would announce in stentorian tones, ‘I, Howard Da Silva, raise three cents!’ Thus he became known as ‘I Howard’.

“The ping-pong table was under a large maple tree which had a few low branches enabling you to hit your head or bounce the ball in unexpected ways. Made of plywood it had a plank for a net and was not quite level. … the Moodus Cabins cat often sunned herself next to the plank/net and was undisturbed by the games unless a ball boinked her head. Therefore it was not possible to play a reasonable game. So we invented ‘Moodus Ping-Pong’. The rule was simple. If the ball was moving it was in play. If it hit the plank or the cat and bounced back you could hit it again. If it went off the table and you could get to it before it rolled into the pool and it was still moving you had to return it. And so on. It was great exercise because a point could take up to five minutes. One of the best games ever invented!”

Cliff Lipson was one of the actors in the company at Goodspeed Opera that summer. As I recall he’d had a bad reaction to some pot and late one night I walked in circles for a couple of hours around the Moodus Cabins’ huge lawn talking to Cliff while he calmed down. It didn’t seem that big a deal to me but a few days later, accompanying himself on guitar, he sang that lovely and adulatory song and handed me the above document.

We saw Cliff once in New York after that summer then lost track of him. When I found this yellowed and worn piece of paper I googled him and discovered that he had become a noted photographer.

Way to go, old buddy. If you chance to come across this piece give me a holler.

If you haven’t read the book, you can click here to get Three Stages.