Tom Ashley

Gloria Swanson Made Me a Sandwich

by

by Tom Ashley

John Palmer was a producer from Chicago who had moved to New York a year before I did in the late 1970s. We liked to feed off of each other’s ideas, our lives, and other nonsense in general. One afternoon, John asked me to come over to his office for a meeting. Most of the time not much gets accomplished, but they’re usually a lot of fun, and there’s always an interesting character or two in attendance. Business is an afterthought, but you always leave with a couple of good stories.

So I show up in John’s iconic, art deco office in the Chrysler Building, and he’s seated with a couple of other guys who are working out some details of distribution for a couple of films directed by John Cassavetes. One of the gentlemen at the meeting was Sam Shaw, a bona fide, big-time, Hollywood photographer, producer, writer, etc., who I knew as the man who captured that classic shot of Marilyn Monroe standing atop a subway grate while catching her skirt as it was flying towards the heavens for the film The Seven Year Itch. Sam also produced A Woman Under the Influence and Gloria, two films I greatly admired.

The meeting was running late, and I had to leave for a dinner party. Sam insisted on driving me home and then further insisted on introducing me to a friend of his who lived a couple of blocks from my apartment. Sam would not disclose his/her name. The doorman at the Fifth Avenue building greeted us, “Good evening, Mister Shaw. She’s expecting you.” She? Hmm.… We walk into the apartment and there “she” is. And, as it turns out, “she” is, Gloria Swanson, live and in living color. My head’s still spinning four-plus decades later.

As I sit in a total state of shock in her beautiful apartment, we’re all engaged in a conversation about current events and the state of the media when Gloria suddenly says to Sam, “I thought you had another engagement, Sam. Anyway I want to ask Tom a few questions.” I’m now paralyzed and panicked as we bid Sam a fond farewell. A phone call to my wife explaining the situation was greeted with “Bullshit!” and a hang up.

 

Gloria, then around eighty, and me thirty-six, are talking about her next project, a one-woman Broadway show about her life done with film clips and gigantic holograms. She was fascinating, very interesting, and extremely intelligent. That wasn’t all we talked about. She told me that her current marriage (turned out to be her sixth!) to the writer William Duffy was over. “I think he’s a little younger than you,” she says. Than me, I’m wondering? She was born in 1897, I in 1942, and it turns out Duffy in 1916, a year before my mother!

Now let’s just stop and consider me for the moment. She’s definitely an idol of mine. Sunset Boulevard is certainly one of my top five favorite films (and still is) of all time. I had no idea she was living in New York, let alone only a couple of blocks away. I’m in some sort of time warp. I’m beginning to feel a lot like William Holden. I’m thinking, good god, this woman was in silent films. She had an affair with Joe Kennedy along with an extensive laundry list of other notables. She’s stunning but in a way my grandmother was stunning. The conversation goes on: organic foods, fashions, the cable industry, her plans for the future, the unhappy marriage. Planning my escape is problematic. We end with my promise to return for lunch on the following Saturday. Did this just happen, I’m wondering?

I get to the dinner party and now I know what PTSD is all about. I’m lost and must have reverted to a vocabulary of three-letter words.

Saturday? I went to Gloria’s. She made me an avocado and sprout sandwich on sourdough bread. It was delicious. I tried to keep the conversation on business and what my vacation plans were with my wife and three children. She got the point. She promised to call me as the project unfolded. She didn’t. That was okay too.

Now that I’m eighty-four, I wish I could have preserved her in aspic so we’d have been the same age. She would have been great fun…amongst other things.

 

I’ve been blessed to have been supported by such a generous group of writers.

The Carousel

by

by Tom Ashley

At the age of seventy-five it all became shocking and soberingly clear. Classmates, relatives, colleagues, neighbors, and a wide variety of friends began passing away. Even if I hadn’t seen nor spoken to them and weren’t particularly close in recent times, it was a halting moment, a reminder of the temporal nature of the human condition.

One day a friend and I took a walk through the Hayden Planetarium after an overdue lunch. One exhibit extended thirty or forty yards outlining various momentous events and achievements of life extending back as far as the Big Bang. Stonehenge, cave paintings, saber tooth tigers, the Roman Empire – they were all there. Then it showed current life spans approximating where we fit into this scenario. We were more or less represented by a pin head. We looked at each other and began laughing. We were 100% involved in our lives and this world as we know it, but Mother Nature and Father Time could care less.

Having lived in ten different cities for a year or more, I’ve built up a substantial aggregate of people I‘ve know well through a variety of circumstances . As time has passed I’ve been out of touch with so many of them but have strong feelings and emotional attachment to allies who have had impact. If a friend dies I never remove their name from my phone book or the cell. I look at their names and happy recollections return. My framed photographs and pictures on my refrigerator door are beginning to remind me of Forrest Lawn. When the phone rings now I nervously look at the number fearing the worst. If I see area code 312 I panic thinking my childhood friend who has been extremely ill, has passed. If it’s area code 520, I wonder if anything has happened to my semi-reclusive son living in Tucson. But it’s not only phone calls. Emails, texts and obituaries in the New York Times have shaken my world on a consistent basis.

Covid devastated so many of us. The unending news, the ambulances, and fear engulfed all but particularly those of us of a certain age. Many no longer roamed the halls of our school nor other spaces we frequent. We all lived in tremendous fear. Could we be next?

Recently I’ve been shaken by the loss of individuals with whom I have not had contact but were certainly a part of the events that shaped my career and my friendships. Within a ten-day period I shockingly opened the Times to read the final chapter of three men who had impacted my life and the lives of many others.

First was the loss of a well-loved man who had a superb career in baseball but had fallen into the wrong crowd and ended up on the wrong side of the law years later. He was a lovely man who brought laughter, fun and joy to all within his orbit. I had been given an assignment from one of the networks to profile him over a two-day period during the off season. It was only for two days, but I felt a kinship with this exceedingly fun-loving boy/man who brought me into his world. We had never met before nor seen each other after those two days spent with him in his hometown of Ponce, Puerto Rico. I felt heartbroken when he was sentenced to two years in prison but joy when he redeemed himself by becoming a guidance counselor post-prison and had been inducted into the Hall of Fame several years thereafter. In less than two days he deeply touched me with his generous personality and his passing, while sad, brought back warm memories.

Two days later a colleague who had joined ABC Television the same day as I, passed on. We were more than co-workers. We lived near each other, our wives and children were close and we shared our hopes and dreams. He methodically made all the right moves and went on to carefully nurture talented executives at both ABC and CBS. He remained humble and always willing to explore ideas and help others, myself included. I know we appreciated our time together. This gentle giant, physically imposing and passionately loyal, left me in tears.

On the other hand, three days later another colleague was afforded a lengthy obituary in the Times. He had accomplished a great deal in his spectacular career. I’d go into this further, but the third-century Greek philosopher, Chiron of Sparta, said it best: “Don’t speak ill of the dead.”

And so life begins and ends. We’re all on this carousel with all its ups and downs. Grab that brass ring and hold on tight. It’s a short ride.

Tom Ashley:  After decades in broadcast marketing and production I fortunately and luckily enrolled at the IRP/LP2, meeting and learning with a great new community of fun friends.

Great Explorations

by

by Tom Ashley  

My great-grandfather, Sir James Benston, was born in Mansfield, Ohio, on May 12, 1865, the penultimate day of the American Civil War. He was an engineering graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was the inventor of many navigational aircraft and automotive instruments. His electrical navigation devices would save many sailors’ lives. His invention of shatterproof glass was universally accepted by airplane and automotive manufacturers. He owned substantial stakes in Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors. By the age of forty he was a wealthy man.

Those were days of great adventure and exploration in both the United States and Europe.  His prowess made him so well known that he came to the attention of Sir Ernest Shackleton, resulting in an invitation to join the team of the legendary Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914-1917). He was the only American in the fifty-four-man crew. He was also the eldest by four years.

The story of his ship, The Endurance, has been a well-told tale for over a century, but my grandfather gave me further insight into his father’s psyche and how, for over eight hundred days, he feared each would be his last. However, my great grandfather survived and was knighted by George V and returned to Detroit, his wife, two sons and his business. He was shattered by his experiences and began to sell off all of his companies. He realized he had a larger calling. He convinced Henry Ford and the powers behind General Motors, Albert Sloan and Charles Kettering, to donate millions toward the cure of the devastating diseases of cancer and cardiac arrest. These automotive giants’ names now appear on two of the world’s greatest innovative research organizations. My grandfather and his brother lived comfortably but not extravagantly. They served on the boards of both charities until their deaths. My great- grandfather donated his entire estate to the study of disease. He died peacefully at age ninety-four on my seventh birthday, April 1, 1957.

As a boy I dreamed about walking in my great-grandfather’s footsteps. I’d see polar bears, I’d live in an igloo with Eskimos, I’d spear fish for dinner. Cold weather wouldn’t faze me. After all, I’d survived the forceful, dank Detroit winters in my seven or eight years. Shackleton’s Antarctic venture was voraciously covered in the then age of great exploration – essentially a failure on one hand – that had left three dozen men stranded on the ice for over two years. But for a young boy to be directly related to one of these men was awesomely important, and I too would head off into this world of adventure.

I dreamed of returning home and telling my friends stories of sailing the great oceans, meeting indigenous peoples, mushing my team of huskies through ice floes and of all my difficult but satisfying exploits. I’d be given a key to the city and be on the front pages of the Detroit Free Press, the Detroit Times, and the Detroit News. I would even be called to Washington to meet Ike at The White House. Maybe later I’d take my team to the North Pole and be the first person to do both expeditions and return to even further acclaim.

But I’ve abandoned those visions and now dream of having a vodka martini on the patio at the Ritz Carlton in Malibu, overlooking scantily clad sun bathers gracefully draping themselves by the Pacific Ocean.

I came to love writing fifteen years ago when I joined the writing workshop at the IRP. It became a learning and bonding experience.  Thoughtful critiquing led me to expand on memoir and fantasy, and the talents of others has proved a great source of inspiration.

 

A Slight Misunderstanding

by

by Tom Ashley

(Based on an Overheard Conversation While Waiting for my Appointment at Sy Sperling’s Hair Club for Men)

“In defense of myself, I did NOT say you look fat! All I said was you look like you put on a LITTLE weight. I mean big deal, who cares!”

xx“indecipherable response”

“If you would let me complete my thoughts –  you NEEDED to put on a few pounds.”

xx“indecipherable response”

“Don’t you remember when we went to The Met a few years ago? And we were looking at the Rubens? Well THOSE were larger women and I told you then how they looked sexy … and beautiful, too! Remember?”

xx“indecipherable response “

“Well, I DO! CALM DOWN, CALM DOWN, FOR CHRIST’S SAKE! Look, we’ve ALL gained a couple of pounds over the years. Well, even I HAVE, though not that many. I think there’s just a bit more of you to love.”

xx“indecipherable response”

“You don’t feel that way? A couple of extra pounds can help to smooth some wrinkles on a person’s face. It can make you seem even prettier. I hardly notice anymore.”

xx“louder indecipherable response”

“Are you getting angry with me? I meant this as a compliment. You BARELY had any wrinkles and as far as I’m concerned, you have NONE now!”

xx“even louder indecipherable response”

“HOLD ON! HOLD ON! As a matter of fact, just the other day I told someone your face, as far as I was concerned, showed NO SIGNS of aging. And you don’t even use Botox.”

xx“further indecipherable response “

“I think you’re taking this entirely the wrong way. Look, thirty per cent of the country is obese. And I certainly don’t consider YOU, of all people, OBESE!”

Pause.

“Hello, hello? Are you there? Hello?”

I came to love writing fifteen years ago when I joined the writing workshop at the IRP. It became a learning and bonding experience.  Thoughtful critiquing led me to expand on memoir and fantasy, and the talent of others has proved a great source of inspiration.

 

 

 

Southern Fried College Football

by

by Tom Ashley

Alabama’s highest paid employee headed to
billionaire status who happens to be making
considerably, by a factor of 24, more
damn dough, is the football coach not the governor,
expected to win a national championship ‘cuz
failure is not an option in Tuscaloosa where
gridiron greatness is demanded and to
hell with any talk of classroom participation
injurious to the mighty ‘Crimson Tide’ boys
kicking the stuffing and giving a good ‘ole
lickin’ to some other knuckleheaded young
men all soon to be dispatched to a completely
nothing job with a concussion or four plus
operations on both knees and a shoulder not
properly thinking about a future or
questioning what they accomplished while a
resident for four years of sweat blood and
simply a handful of credits and injuries
taking them from job to job no relief in sight
unless they hit the Alabama state lottery and
very few people have had such good fortune
winning these but go right ahead putting
xs down on those lotto cards all the while
you’re going through want ads from a to
z and coming up with nothing.

Taking many study groups over the years at the IRP has been a growing and stimulating process. In college, I dreaded my writing courses. I LOVE them now.

Learning My A, B, Cs

by

by Tom Ashley

As I was saying to the nasty
Bad girl in the third row on the left
Curling her long golden locks and
Disturbing all the excitable young men
Enough is enough don’t you think you tart
For christ’s sake I’m trying, god knows, to teach
Goddamn poetry to you hopeless and shallow
Hedonistic moronic ‘students’ of
Idiotic, impossibly dull imagination combing a
Jaded outlook debating which flavor
Krispy Kreme donut you’ll avail yourself then
Lovingly slam down your throat while swallowing
Mouthing to the server that absolutely RIEN
Nothing NIENTE is going to prevent yet another
Order of those crullers accompanied by a
Pumpkin latte with whipped cream and in
Quest of the perfect meal please add the
Rib sandwich and additional
Sweet thick maple sauce and those super
Toffee coated twice baked potatoes
Unless maybe you should get two in case you’re
Very hungry and not able to get close or
Within another Krispy Kreme like one near
Xerox’s headquarters on the corner of
Yerba Linda and Ashley, next to House of
Zen

Taking many study groups over the years at the IRP has been a growing and stimulating process. In college, I dreaded my writing courses. I LOVE them now.

Where Is It Now?

by

by Tom Ashley

A recent New York Times article more than caught my eye. A Chicago landmark restaurant, the Cape Cod Room, had closed its doors. Opened in 1933 in the equally famed Drake Hotel, the eatery had served up cocktails and dinner to generations of Chicago titans along with notables such as Queen Elizabeth II, Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio, Michael Jordan, the Beatles and seven U.S. Presidents. It was also a second home to my one-time boss, ad genius Leo Burnett.

Post college I toiled for Leo for a decade. Intense meetings often rolled down the street after 6pm and continued at the ‘Codder’ and usually ended as the doors closed at midnight.

In 1974 I accepted a position as Director of Marketing for Ralston Purina, a Burnett client, with blessings from Leo.

I moved to St. Louis but found myself back for two days every other week. I always stayed at the Drake and was considered family in the Cape Cod Room.

While in Chicago on June 24, 1984 my life changed forever.

I had an early dinner alone and remember going to the bar for a nightcap before retiring to my room. My recollections are vague from that point on. I often have to catch myself from adding details to my storyline that I can’t quite separate from a dream. The one certainty is that I was found in my darkened hotel room barely clinging to life. I was in excruciating pain and had been bound with duct tape. I desperately didn’t want to die. I had been perspiring profusely and in a pool of blood. Somehow I managed to slip one sweaty hand free to slide my blinking telephone to the ground, dislodging its receiver. Did I plead for help or pass out? I don’t know.

Five days later I awoke in the intensive care unit of Northwestern University Hospital (ironically my alma mater) and was greeted by frightened stares from my wife, my twelve year old son, doctors, nurses and a pair of uniformed police officers. Claustrophobia enveloped me. In addition to people there were noises, wires, monitors and tubes extending from a half-dozen bags of fluid and into my body.

I said nothing. My wife and and son, in tears, drew close telling me they loved me and that I was going to pull through. All I recall was thinking — this is what it’s like to be shot. I was wrong.

“Mr. Carlisle, try not to move and keep as silent as possible,” a doctor said to me. “You were kidnapped by a ruthless gang who drugged you with chloroform and harvested your left kidney.”

I didn’t want to lift a finger. I wanted pain medication. I wanted to sleep. I remained at Northwestern for another two months with my emotional state shifting between unstoppable tears and an overjoyed reality that I was still alive. Every day I would look into a mirror and see my bloated face slowly begin to return to normal bit by bit. My physical therapy provided a constant source of progress and pride. I took four hours of a pounding workout seven days a week. Even with daily sessions of work with brilliant psychologists, my mental state has never returned to anything close to normal. I’m terrified of hotels and now, paranoid, carry a fully loaded 38 Special with me at all times, even by my bedside.

In 1984 there were few cameras in hotel lobbies, restaurants, elevators or hallways. Protecting my remaining kidney forced me to give up alcohol and live on a boring macrobiotic diet. Long ago I settled my lawsuit with the owners of The Drake with a nondisclosure agreement so money will never be an issue. It still doesn’t make me close to whole.

Funny thing…the Chicago Police Department, which was getting nowhere with the case, had a breakthrough. In 2007 DNA evidence led them to the the leader of the gang. His name was Leslie Schorr and he had died in Chico State Prison, killed by inmates. There were no tears from me.

Funny thing – my gallows humor has me wondering who has my kidney. I’d like to meet that man or woman and get his or her side of the story.

After a lifetime in broadcasting sales and production, I found a love of writing at the IRP thanks to the support of my coordinators and classmates.

 

 

8.28.63

by

by Tom Ashley

“What are you doing?” inquired Edward “Ted” Lewis, the crusty and revered columnist and chief of the Washington Bureau of the New York Daily News. “I’m researching stories for McGowan and Van Den Heuvel,” I said as I plowed through a pile of AP and UPI clippings stacked on my desk. It was one of my duties as the go-fer for the then two million daily readers of New York’s ‘Hometown Newspaper.’

Lewis looked at me and barked, “You’re coming with me to hear Dr. King speak.” We made our way on foot to the Lincoln Memorial from the National Press Building. My eyes widened. Standing in the sweltering 90 degree heat, I saw massive poverty on a level I’d never witnessed before. Eschewing our press passes, we stood among the throng. As speaker after speaker cried out for justice. I saw an old man in patched overalls and a beat up straw hat, barefoot – standing but a foot away. It shocked me as I witnessed hundreds more in tattered clothing standing and cheering.

In my hometown of Detroit in 1963 there was zero unemployment, and I thought that my hometown represented a happy lifestyle for all. I’d worked alongside many apparently satisfied blacks in my father’s commercial laundry business. Blacks were always welcomed in our home at Christmas and 4th of July parties. I’d failed to recognize the absence of blacks in my neighborhood, my school – my whole environ.

As Dr. King referenced the hundredth anniversary of The Emancipation Proclamation in his “I Have a Dream” speech, I glanced over at Ted Lewis, the embodiment of the tough-as-nails, hard- nosed-right –down-to-the Lucky-Strike- dangling-from-his-lips reporter, weeping.

Shaken, we walked back to our office in silence. We’ve all heard King’s indelible words repeated many times since that day, but all I see in my mind’s eye is that poor, poor man, having made his way to our nation’s Capitol, standing in his bare feet, seeking justice.


After a lifetime in broadcasting sales and production, I found a love of writing at the IRP thanks to the support of my coordinators and classmates.

 

Southern Fried College Football

by

by Tom Ashley

Alabama’s highest paid employee headed to
billionaire status who happens to be making
considerably, by a factor of 24, more
damn dough, is the football coach not the governor,
expected to win a national championship ‘cuz
failure is not an option in Tuscaloosa where
gridiron greatness is demanded and to
hell with any talk of classroom participation
injurious to the mighty ‘Crimson Tide’ boys
kicking the stuffing and giving a good ‘ole
lickin’ to some other knuckleheaded young
men all soon to be dispatched to a completely
nothing job with a concussion or four plus
operations on both knees and a shoulder not
properly thinking about a future or
questioning what they accomplished while a
resident for four years of sweat blood and
simply a handful of credits and injuries
taking them from job to job no relief in sight
unless they hit the Alabama state lottery and
very few people have had such good fortune
winning these but go right ahead putting
xs down on those lotto cards all the while
you’re going through want ads from a to
z and coming up with nothing.

 

Taking many study groups over the years at the IRP has been a growing and stimulating process.  In college, I dreaded my writing courses.  I LOVE them now.

Learning My A, B, Cs

by

by Tom Ashley

As I was saying to the nasty
Bad girl in the third row on the left
Curling her long golden locks and
Disturbing all the excitable young men
Enough is enough don’t you think you tart
For christ’s sake I’m trying, god knows, to teach
Goddamn poetry to you hopeless and shallow
Hedonistic moronic ‘students’ of
Idiotic, impossibly dull imagination combing a
Jaded outlook debating which flavor
Krispy Kreme donut you’ll avail yourself then
Lovingly slam down your throat while swallowing
Mouthing to the server that absolutely RIEN
Nothing NIENTE is going to prevent yet another
Order of those crullers accompanied by a
Pumpkin latte with whipped cream and in
Quest of the perfect meal please add the
Rib sandwich and additional
Sweet thick maple sauce and those super
Toffee coated twice baked potatoes
Unless maybe you should get two in case you’re
Very hungry and not able to get close or
Within another Krispy Kreme like one near
Xerox’s headquarters on the corner of
Yerba Linda and Ashley, next to House of
Zen

 

 

Taking many study groups over the years at the IRP has been a growing and stimulating process.  In college, I dreaded my writing courses.  I LOVE them now.