Assisted Death.

 

                              José Ferrer

This is a bit grim but when I first moved to Los Angeles I shared a house, with two others, and a Canadian playwright. He had won many prizes with one of his plays and it was due to open on Broadway, with the star, José Ferrer (above). He was a movie star at the time with a wonderful voice and was born in Puerto Rico. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for playing the title character in Cyrano de Bergerac (1950).

Before the play opened José, unfortunately, died.

My pal, the playwright, was Jewish which came as a bit of a shock to one of the housemates as he asked him if he was, in fact, Jewish and, whilst he didn't express any signs of ante-Semitism, he did cook pork a lot and offer it to my pal. No names, no pack drill so I will call him Alfredo, just for this.

In fact I used him as the basis for a character in my book and I called him Alfredo too.

He wasn't on the same wave length as the other two house mates: one was a well known actress, who was a regular in a soap opera and the other one was a retired estate agent from Florida who had worked as an extra in various TV roles; his girl friend told him he was good looking so he came to Hollywood, at the age of 70 odd to make a killing.

In fact we were all there to make some kind of killing.

The play Alfredo had written had played in Canada and San Francisco and now he wanted it to play in Los Angeles.

He saw various producers and theatre companies and after a while he found one and he wanted me to play the leading role.

He loved my voice. Now this wasn't a thing I was known for in the UK but it seemed very popular in LA. Other directors also liked my voice, which they seemed to stress whenever I was cast in a movie and, in fact, I did loads of dubbing in leading feature films. It's called looping – it's matching a line to an actor where they either couldn't understand what was said or was a bad recording. I did everybody from David Bowie to Alistair Sim – in A Christmas Carol – it was for The Sopranos where a TV, I suppose, was playing in the background but I don't think it was shown.

So Alfredo wanted me to play the leading role in his play. The character was a lot older than me and my agent said it might not be a good idea as I needed to show myself at my then age. 'But it's only a rehearsed reading' I said 'believe me' she said 'anybody could be there.'

So I didn't play it. George Segal said he would do it, then some guy from a TV show called, I think, The Love Boat; he dropped out and another famous (ish) movie star played it – John Saxon.

So it didn't happen for me, but we were good buddies, even though the artistic vacuum of an ex estate agent would make fun of Alfredo.

We wrote a screenplay together and developed it up to a first draft but it didn't happen. He moved out to somewhere near the Hal Roach studios and I moved into Hollywood as my wife was coming over to join me from London.

After a while, Alfredo drove his old car to Canada, British Columbia, in fact. He wrote once and I didn't hear from him again till a couple of years ago. He told me he had prostate cancer and Giant Cell Arteritis. Of course he had his play and wanted me to play in it again 'You must be old enough, now' he said.

I said I would try and film some of it which I did with a friend of mine but it didn't kind of work out.

Since then he would send me his later work and I would send little suggestions – maybe moving a word to be the first word in a sentence instead of the last – Why?? because the next line to be answered without a pause and if the last word is what you are reacting to the other character doesn't really have enough time to react.

He told me if ever I didn't hear from him in a while to get in touch with his daughter.

I sent him my novel, by the way, or maybe as a talking book and he liked it, but didn't recognise himself – so that was good.

In June I noticed I hadn't heard from him for a while so wrote to his daughter and she wrote back and said he was in hospital. She said that she knew me as her dad 'speaks of me so very fondly.' Which I found moving.

It was obvious he was on his way out. She gave me a phone number for him and we spoke a few times; it was good to hear his deep Canadian voice and we broke each other's balls a bit.

Then some time in July his daughter told me he was being moved to a hospice – I think I spoke to him once there and he sent an email or two, then his daughter wrote and said she was away but had had a message that her dad was finding it hard to breath so she was returning.

The next day she wrote and said that her dad had chosen to end his life on July 29^th at 11.30 am their time.

Now that to me was a bit of a shocker. When you reach sixty a lot of friends die, it's something you feel sad about, it comes as a shock, but you get over it. But this!

I hadn't seen him since 1996 but I'll miss him – it's strange as you do miss them when they go but . . .

I have no strong opinions about assisted death – even now.