Modern Screen (Jan-Dec 1960)

And for a month now I've been wearing my patch and waiting for hours to pass in my dark room at our new home in Mamaroneck. I keep thinking how strange destiny is. Here I am, with a new home, and unable to enjoy it. I wonder if perhaps God isn't punishing me, sentencing me to this confinement to prove to me how precious life is, that it mustn't be taken for granted. And as I sit in this dark room, day after day, unable to read, listening to music on my hi-fi set, I realize how much I've been my own enemy. Seven years ago, when I was fourteen and understudying the Crown Prince in the Broadway musical, The King and I, I was constantly on the go, trying to get TV roles, studying acting, going to school. I'd get up at the crack of dawn, study my lines for television, go to school, rush home for supper, take the subway to the theater, finish the performance by eleven-thirty and get home by one in the morning. Call it ambition, call it drive, call it what you like. One week end I remember there was an elevator strike, and on Saturday morning I decided I'd still make the rounds of the producers' offices and casting cubicles, in spite of the elevators not working. So I climbed up and down flights and flights of stairs to ask producers, casting directors, secretaries to place my photo in their files. That was around the time the first pain began. It started that spring, and I tried to ignore it, to pretend it wasn't there, but by midsummer it was too sharp to neglect. Whenever I walked out into the steaming hot sun, it was as if my eye was on fire, and I felt feverish and dizzy. Finally I told my mom and dad. We were living at Wenner Place in the Bronx then, near the Whitestone Bridge. Mom was fit to be tied. She couldn't understand why I hadn't said something about my eye before. Mom and Dad made an appointment for me with Dr. Miller, who's died since, and it was Dr. Miller who performed the first operation on my eye. "Never, in all my years of practice," Dr. Miller said, "have I known a young boy to be afflicted with this dendritic condition. Usually it occurs in the early forties or fifties. It's a ... a warning. . . !" He paused. "Had you let this go another week, young man, you might have lost your vision altogether!" He rushed me over to the Manhattan Eye and Ear hospital, and that following morning he performed the operation. He explained he couldn't give me an anesthetic because he had to see the eye react. The operation lasted forever, and the pain was devastating, but the pressure was relieved. "Don't kill yourself" For three weeks I lay in that bed with a bandage over my eyes. You'd think that I would have had time to think, to reevaluate, but I was young and flip and probably in love with the drama of it all. But living in darkness for three weeks seemed like an eternity. Voices took on new colors, sounds became so personal and important. At the end of the three weeks, the doctor came into my room one morning to remove the bandages and I could sense his nervousness as he unwrapped the bandage from my eyes. His hands were steady, but there was an unevenness to his breath. When he lifted the bandage, I blinked and for a minute closed my eyes. "Sal," Dr. Miller announced, "the operation's a success. You've blinked against the light." I opened my eyes. He was right. I had blinked my eyes against the sudden harsh whiteness of the hospital room. "Sal," Dr. Miller continued, a firmness in his deep voice, "I know you have a lot of ambition and that you have a long way to go in this business. But remember Rome wasn't built in a day. If you ask me, you're trying to build it in an hour. Relax. Take things easy. Don't kill yourself. You're young — enjoy the world!" For the next three years everything was all right. I heeded Dr. Miller's good advice I tried to take things easy. Then I came home one summer after making my movie, Dino, a film I loved and believed in. I decided to tour for six weeks to promote it. On tour I didn't sleep and eat regularly. When I returned to New York, my head was throbbing from the pressure, throbbing so hard it nearly burst. The pain was worse than ever. I told my folks. Mom tried to set up an appointment with Dr. Miller but he had died. So I went to Dr. Hubert who didn't spare any words. "Your eye is damaged," he told me, staring at me from behind his rimless spectacles. "I can't operate for months. It's too dangerous. It's like a deep wound that needs healing before I can possibly attempt to touch it. "Mineo," he called me, before he got to know me, "I'm afraid of complications so I want you to have a complete checkup." I went to a physician who examined everything from my heart to my reflexes. And do you know what he said? "You're so calm on the outside, but you're churning inside at a wild pace. You don't have to function at a 100-mile-an-hour speed in order to get the most out of life. Why are you killing yourself?" For two months Dr. Hubert and the physician confined me to our house. I couldn't watch television, read, use my eye in any way that would strain it. I listened to music for hours on end, and my love for it grew and grew. Then, I had my second operation. For weeks afterward I spent hours and hours in my dark room, listening to my records — jazz, swing. Dixieland. I wished I could have punched a punching bag to get rid of the tension, but Dr. Hubert insisted on total rest so I learned to release the tension inside me by listening to the music, letting its powerful drive carry me away. "Man enough to face it" For four months my eye was bandaged, and I wore dark glasses all through that time. At one point, I got so depressed I found myself actually wishing God would strike me dead and that my life would be over because I hated being a burden to everyone. But that was sinful. My mom and dad had Masses said for me at church as did thousands of my fans. I received get-well cards from all parts of the world, also holy crosses and mezuzahs from people everywhere who cared. Gradually my eye improved, and the pain relaxed, and Dr. Hubert told me everything was all right for the time being. But he warned me strongly against overworking. His final words to me then, as I left his office, were, "Sal, don't let this happen again. The next time may be. . . ." He never finished the sentence. But, fool that I am, I flirted with fire again. I got caught up in the momentum of my work on The Gene Krupa Story, and now, for the third — and Dr. Hubert tells me, the last — time my eye is in danger. Dr. Hubert says the eye won't be able to take it the next time; it's given me a final warning, the last chance to know better. God has given me my last warning. I must be man enough to face it. Or lose the vision in my right eye for the rest of my life. 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