Some thoughts

I don’t think much about the theatre, anymore, little sweetheart. But when I do you always come quickly to mind.

I was watching an interview last night that Stephen Colbert did with the great Robert Duvall. He asked him something about Brando and it made me think of you and want to tell you about it, too. Duvall, of course, famously worked with Brando in “The Godfather”. They were a generation apart and I think Colbert’s question was an acknowledgment of that, sensing Brando’s importance to the generation of actors who followed him. Duvall spoke about himself as a young actor, an acting student, really, in New York, along with his friends Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman, who was also his roommate.

Duvall said of Brando, “He was our godfather. Me and Hackman and Dustin used to hang out and if we talked about him once during the day, we talked about him 25 times. Gene met him, by accident, for the first time, on the street and he almost cried.”

I don’t have that kind of feeling about the theatre any more, little sweetheart, but I remember feeling it many years ago, when it was so important to us both. I remember how serious it was to you and I am still so very proud of you.

Your mom used to say that you were the most talented person she ever knew and I know that feeling myself. As I’m writing our story every day, of late, I’ve been telling the tale of your performance in “The Blue Room”, which remains simply the most breathtaking thing I ever saw on a stage anywhere in the world over the entire course of my life.

I knew you’d understand exactly what Duvall meant and I thought of you even as he said it, wishing you we’re sitting here with me, watching it together, as you used to say - “watching a story together with my partner at the end of the day”.

I was, I am still so proud to have been called yours, little sweetheart. And I know you are here. Closer than I can imagine.
 

With all my love forever.