Death of a Flack

By Gerald Clarke

TRIBUTE by Bernard Slade

Considering the alternative, dying has a lot to recommend it. In recent years screenwriters and playwrights have even found it an unexpected source of dark and cathartic humor. Bernard Slade, the author of the long-running comedy Same Time, Next Year, is the first, however, to write about it as if he were composing humorous jingles for Hallmark cards: "Out but not down."

His hero, Scottie Templeton (Jack Lemmon), is a charming, but irresponsible public relations man with a bad case of leukemia. Scottie's one gift has been his ability to make people happy, and in his last days he tries to reconcile with the one person he has made miserable, his son, Jud (Robert Picardo), whom he abandoned in the divorce settlement. He amuses Jud with jokes and funny costumes, finds him a girl (Catherine Hicks), and smothers him with affection. But Jud, a 20-year-old fogy, refuses to shake the glad hand. "Mom said you once told Sonja Henie she was a great actress," he remarks in one of the play's best lines.

So it goes, and eventually both Scottie and the audience wonder why he keeps trying so hard to gain back this obnoxious kid's affection. But win he does, and midway through the second act Jud is organizing a tribute to the old man in a Broadway theater. Unfortunately, the play falls apart about the same time, and when Scottie's turn comes to take the stage, he can only say: "You see be fore you a man who has absolutely no finish. I'm not kidding. I don't know how to get off." Playwright Slade might better have spoken the lines himself. His play does not end, but slides to a bathetic conclusion in unsightly puddles of tears and sweat.

The other actors supply the tears, but most of the sweat comes from Lemmon, who gives his best performance in years. It is comparatively simple to make a character mean or nasty, lovable or funny. Capturing charm, that most elusive of all qualities, is much harder. Dropping all the irritating mannerisms that have marred his recent movies, Lemmon makes the task seem like ease itself. He is a better actor than he usually allows himself to be, and if it does nothing else, Tribute has restored him to the profession.

-- Gerald Clarke

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