A Winters tale #1

Recalling a man for most seasons

Our valued contributor ANTONIO PINEDA has a veritable feast of stories to serve us from the various alternative American worlds that took shape from the 1950s to the Millennium, from Coast to Coast and beyond.

For Rock and the Beat Generation, this frontline eavesdropper, this keen-eyed commentator, has reported on a pantheon of scene makers from Michael McClure and Jim Morrison to Kenneth Anger, A.D. Winans, Ken Kesey and Jerry Garcia, and more besides.

His latest epic three-parter takes a different route and utilises a different lens as he focuses on the remarkable life and career of the multi-talented David Winters, a figure who inhabited the tangled creative labyrinth of Broadway and Hollywood, uptown and downtown, and took rooms on several floors.

Over six decades, Winters was performer and dancer, choreographer and producer, operating in that high-octane milieu where hip actors and hot hoofers, inspired filmmakers, groundbreaking musicians and radical writers, regularly rubbed shoulders.

Our subject, born into a Jewish family in England and a young emigré escapee from the terrifying reverberations of a European war, matured amid the urban buzz of a mid-century US bubbling with fresh creative energies.

The Actors’ Studio was re-making performance on stage and screen, the existential visions of the Beat poets were re-calibrating campus mindsets, the buds of a folk revival were siring a political re-think, bebop was deconstructing jazz expectations and racial assumptions and rock’n’roll was rallying teenagers across the nation to a jukebox jive-off.

As usual, actor, poet and writer Pineda interweaves people and places, headline names and backstage players, revelation and reflection, excitement and exposé , the grit and the pearl of the cultural life, as he undertakes a a picaresque tour of the elevated highways and shadier alleys of New York City and Los Angeles – not to mention the Far East – and vividly relates the story of a talent and a friend who illuminated his own days in so many ways…

A Winters tale in three acts

By Antonio Pineda

OVERTURE 

As this manuscript was approaching final proof some while ago, I was informed that David Winters had passed away in Fort Lauderdale at the age of 80 by his son, the actor Alexander Winters. Some are born to sweet delights, some are born to the endless night. David was an inspiration and and major influence to so many. 

Alexander inferred that open heart surgery had left his beloved father weak and in great pain. David fought through it all to publish a biography, entitled Tough Guys Do Dance. It immediately became an Amazon best seller. The bio chronicled the influences, stars of stage and screen, and accomplishments accrued during a lifetime of service in cinema, theater and the world of dance. His son concluded: ‘At least my father is no longer in pain, from the multiple surgeries and the debilitating onset of old age.’

PART ONE: Shoeshine shuffler to West Side glory

THE MOVIE The King Maker, eventually released in 2005, provided my initial meeting with David Winters. I was residing at the Omni Apartments on Soi 4 In Bangkok. The neighborhood was much revered by the Bangkok Noir Literati. I was invited to cast for a new movie he was producing.

David had trodden the bohemian streets of New York City associating in the charmed circles of Beat poets, Actors’ Studio stalwarts and Broadway stars, and risen to be an accomplished film director. He lodged in that seething leftfield milieu where individuals of many abilities and backgrounds sowed their thrilling and often dangerous futures.

He saw the rise and fall of the underground arts clan at the White Horse Tavern where Dylan Thomas performed and drank the night he consumed so much alcohol he was in hospital and died a few days later. He was familiar with venues like the Bitter End, so instrumental in the developing folk and rock scene, and Cafe Wha?, where Bob Dylan made his New York debut,All and Kerouac and Ginsberg both performed.

He knew Marlton House, where poets Delmore Schwartz and Gregory Corso, memoirist Carolyn Cassady and her human firework husband Neal Cassady, all stayed. The hotel was based in Greenwich Village, was economically viable, and afforded them the means to dig the scene and create.

Kerouac penned The Subterraneans and Tristessa while residing at the Marlton. The latter novella is set in Mexico City. Written in 1960, the book is based on Jack Kerouac’s relationship with a Mexican prostitute Esperanza. A tale of love, frenzy and madness in Mexico. Kerouac contacts saintly beauty and innocence wit her life of morphine addiction and prostitution.

I flashback and enquire of Winters, shine ‘Were you aware of underground Beat cinema?’ He clasped his hands behind his head as he often did before pontificating. ‘I remember Robert Frank’s film Pull my Daisy. It was remarkable in that it featured Kerouac. Robert also shot the the Rolling Stones tour film, Cocksucker Blues, a film so notorious the Stones only allow it to be screened once a year.’

On the road again in Thailand I told him, ‘We used to screen these films in San Francisco at Straight Ashbury Viewing Society, a cine club that was an adjunct of the Straight Theater in the tradition of the Cahiers de Cinema nouvelle vague.’ 

Pictured above: David Winters

Winters replied: ‘Tony the Flower Thief, directed by Ron Rice in which Taylor Mead performed a Beat romp through underground San Francisco, was a memorable event. I enjoyed underground cinema but my roots are in classic and mainstream film.’

The camera cuts to an overhead shot of the Noir streets of Bangkok as the neighborhood exuded its uniquely charged atmosphere. The Soi culminated at the confluence of Sukhumvit. The Nana Hotel, a collection of rowdy and pleasure loving residents, was famous for its parking lot which swelled at night with demi-mondaines and punters looking for love in all the wrong places.

Across the road was the entertainment center Nana Plaza. This complex of bars, go-go palaces and restaurants has been immortalized by authors examining the flora and fauna of Bangkok’s exotic night life. The perfumed night was populated by tourists, local expatriates, the curious and curiouser, and the denizens of decadence who serviced the erotic dreams of ten million people in the Naked City.

The Thermae, on Sukhumvit, provided a venue where vice was available from dusk until dawn. It was filled with scammers, expats and swells slumming, chatting up the rouged and ready ladies who freelanced there. A constant reminder, dear, of the old city, the Bangkok of yesteryear, before the spread and development of so many sex bars that sprang up like pre fabricated 7-11s all over the city that never sleeps.

Local poets and novelists of the Bangkok Noir genre hung out at  the venue for inspiration, drawing on the characters who frequented and caroused there for inspiration.

Soi Cowboy was a short walk from Thermae. The first time I was in Bangkok in 1982, I was instructed by expat old Asian hands that my first experience should be to go there. My mission was to buy a T-shirt from Lucy’s Tiger Den.

The Den was founded by an old veteran of the Vietnam War. Soi Cowboy had not yet become the institutionalized sexpat drinking and socializing center. I hopped the Sky Train from the neighborhood and wended my way over the streets and canals of old Bangkok to liaise with David Winters at the casting.

At The King Maker audition we exchanged pleasantries. I initially read for the character of the priest. David studied me intensely, and steered  the conversation to the history of classical and contemporary dance. I told him I had, as a young actor, studied modern dance with Caitlin Huggins Williams at the Straight Theater in San Francisco.

I was a student of classical ballet with Carlos Carvajal and, in Madrid, trained with the great flamenco artist Juan Antonio de Los Reyes, and the brilliant gypsy dancer Rosa Montoya. Ever so gracious, he listened politely and cast me as Don Vincente. ‘You’re sharing scenes with John Rhys Davies, a great Welsh actor. You’re also be in scenes with Gary Stretch, the former British boxing champion. Gary was just in Alexander, Oliver Stone cast him as Cleitus the Black.’

David rang me after the film was in the can, and in theatrical release. He asked if I would be interested in helping with his memoirs. He basically invited me to hang at his offices in Bangkok with him and pen several hundred words a day as he spun remembrances of his career. He would file them for use at a later date.

The offices were a museum attesting to a life of cinema and dance. A portrait of Luigi, the New York City jazz ballet maestro, was prominent on the walls. David, Liza Minnelli and BarBara Luna trained with Luigi. A portrait of David and Paul Newman, posters and photography from West Side Story, and cinema posters of films produced and directed by Winters graced the walls. David pointed at Luigi. ‘We all took Luigi’s dance classes. Luigi told me he loved me like the son he never had.’ 

New York City in his day, the very heart of the 1950s, was deeply influenced by a legendary place and a crucial philosophy – the Actors’ Studio and the Method – and the rising presence of the Beat poets who hung out in Times Square and Greenwich Village. David came to reflect on these influences. ‘In my day we heard about San Francisco and Greenwich Village. People went to the Village to be seen and heard. Dylan started at CafeWha? and worked his way up and soon headlined at important venues.’

Pictured above: A poster for the jukebox movie Rock, Rock, Rock!, which featured Winters as Melville

David Weizer was born on April 5th, 1939, in London to Sadie and Samuel Weizer. He recalled: ‘It was during the London Blitz, when I was nearly five, I was moved out of town to a Catholic school. I was a Jew hiding among Catholics as the Luftwaffe bombed the countryside. It was my first experience of anti-Semitism.”

The family relocated to the USA in 1953, and David was naturalized three years later. He reflected, a twinkle in his eye, ‘My first entry level to show business gig, was as a shoeshine boy. Man I dug that. I would pop the rag, and sing and dance. By chance an agent saw me in a Manhattan restaurant and I got my first break.’

Winters loved dance and studied tap dancing as a kid. ‘Elliot Gould and Christopher Walken were in my tap classes. It was New York City during the wild and wonderful post-war boom. We were innocent, ambitious, and pure of heart.’ By the age of fourteen David was working with Jackie Gleason, Martha Raye, Wally Cox, George Jessel, Ella Raines and Perry Como.

In 1956, David portrayed Melville in the film  Rock, Rock, Rock! This rock’n’roll extravaganza featured Chuck Berry, LaVerne Baker, the Moonglows, the Flamingos and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, spawning a genre became known as ‘jukebox cinema’. Tuesday Weld, Connie Francis and Teddy Randazzo were the lead actors.

This experience would stand him in good stead in future, when David was to choreograph the great stars of the day. Jukebox cinema was soon to provide the musical soundtrack for the emergence of Method actots and the Beat culture artists of his generation.

David remarked: ‘New York City was the art capital of the world. The Method developed by the Actors’ Studio, the cultural revolution, the Beat Generation and the evolution of a style dubbed jazz ballet were all uniquely indigenous to the Big Apple.’

George Balanchine cast the young hoofer in a production titled On Your Toes. In 1957, David appeared in Shinbone Alley on stage. It starred Eartha Kitt and important ballet artists Allegra Kent and Jacques d’Amboise. Concurrently, in the literary world, Kerouac’s On the Road was being released by Viking Press and would be of huge importance to the arts intelligentsia of Manhattan.

As a teenager, Winters was best friends with Sal Mineo. Sal was already a rising star. Mineo had the good fortune to appear in a stage production of The King and I. Mineo portrayed the young regent, Yul Brynner was the King. Brynner mentored Mineo, and Sal would star with James Dean in the film classic by Nicholas Ray, Rebel Without a Cause. The radical director was adored by the French nouvelle vague. The Cahiers de Cinema crowd saw Ray as a cinematic rebel. Jean Luc Godard stated: ‘Cinema is Nicholas Ray.’

David recalls time spent at Cafe Reggio in Greenwich Village. ‘Al Pacino and Robert De Niro used to hang out at there. It was reputed to be the oldest coffee espresso venue in the city, frequented by Method actors and the Beat Generation crowd. De Niro’s nickname in the hood was ‘Bobby Milk’ because he was so pale.’

Blessed with exotic good looks, Sal Mineo’s talent would create a screen image of the troubled adolescent. It would make him a teen sensation as a film actor. Winters exuded fond remembrances of Sal. ‘We would goof and play cards. New York City was our oyster. Sal had irresistible charms. He became a fantastic film actor. It all seemed to happen so quickly. Sal got to Hollywood well before me.’

In 1959, David starred in the David Merrick musical Gypsy. The mercurial Jerome Robbins choreographed what critics regarded as a dazzling example of American musical theater. It garnered eight Tony award nominations.

Winters was then to come under the influence of the amazing Jerome Robbins once more. David was cast for the Broadway production of West Side Story. Robbins had studied classical ballet with Ella Daganova who had trained in Spanish dance with Helen Veda.

His background included study of dance composition with Bessie Schoenberg, before Robbins came under the influence of immortals George Balanchine, Michael Fokine, Antony Tudor and his muse Tanaquil LaClerq.

Pictured above: Winters (left foreground) as A-Rab in West Side Story

In 1947, Robbins was accepted to train at the increasingly prestigious Actors’ Studio. These were the embryonic days of the cultivation of the Method. Stanislavsky and Michael Chekhov were the spiritual and cultural antecedents that would create a golden age of cinema and theater in New York City. Marlon Brando, Maureen Stapleton, Montgomery Clift, Hubert Berghof and Sidney Lumet were among the protean talents who were classmates of Robbins.

David remembered. ‘We used to frequent the Cedar Tavern in Greenwich Village. Kerouac and Langston Hughes, star of the Harlem Renaissance, would hang around there. The Village represented a pilgrimage for the young Dylan and a catalyst for the new folk rock and a favorite haunt of Ginsberg, Corso and Burroughs, too.’

‘West Side Story was to inspire a whole generation of artists, and lead to the development of a truly American form of performance art, jazz dance, although I prefer the sobriquet, jazz ballet,’ he explained. ‘Bob Fosse, Gus Giordano, Gwen Verdon and many more would rise from the flames fanned by Robbins.’ 

Inspired by Shakespeare’s greatest romance Romeo and Juliet but transferred to the gritty urban setting of a diversely ethnic Manhattan, the show would spawn performers like Tony Mordente, Rita Moreno, George Chakiris, Chita Rivera, gymnast-acrobat- dancer Russ Tamblyn and David Winters himself, as Baby John, as rising stars in the mid-century firmament.

Four years on from the stage smash, Winters would be cast as A-Rab in the 1961 film version, a universally acclaimed production would garner Oscars for Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise. Rita  Moreno made history as the only Puerto Rican American to be awarded an Oscar, beside the brilliant Jose Ferrer. Soon David would be heading out to new and exhilarating adventures on the West Coast and Hollywood.

NEXT TIME in ‘A Winters tale #2’: Hollywood days, Ann Margret and Raquel Welch and choreographing Elvis, Nancy Sinatra and directing the Monkees