Alden Lawrence is an actor in Los Angeles and a friend of mine. In showbiz, he is “Hap Lawrence.” A few days ago, he shared a memory with me — a little memoir — and I asked whether I could share it with you. With his blessing, I now do it.
It was December 1987. I had performed an afternoon Christmas-caroling gig with three other singers somewhere in Orange County, Calif., and now I had some time free before an evening gig, also in O.C, too far from home in L.A. to drive back and forth in between. So, I went to a mall (O.C. is full of them) for a quick bite, and while there I noticed Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun was playing at the multiplex. What a perfect time-killer, with just enough time left over to get to gig number two. Going to the movies alone has never been my habit, but this would be just great, nonetheless.
The movie features the boy Jamie (Christian Bale), who eventually gets held in a Japanese POW camp, separated from his parents, during the war. It’s a terrific movie, and eventually we get to a scene where young Jamie, now called Jim, is relating to Dr. Rawlins (Nigel Havers) that he’s been incarcerated so long that he has forgotten what his parents look like. I was in tears. But in the next scene I was just destroyed!
Jim, who has won the right to move into the tent with U.S. G.I. Basie (John Malkovich), opens his tattered valise in which he carries all his worldly and important possessions, and pulls out a tear sheet from a magazine and tacks it to the tent wall above his bunk. The picture is of a family, and presumably Jim believes the married couple probably resemble his parents. Even if they don’t, he’ll use them until a miracle one day reunites his family.
So, why was I “destroyed”? Well, you see, many years before, Norman Rockwell was spending a summer in Southern Vermont, where my parents were summering as well; and Mr. Rockwell met my mom, Dorothy Lawrence, in a store and asked if she would pose for a painting he had planned for another of his Saturday Evening Post covers. Mom agreed, as did my uncle Clyde Dunlap, who lived in Sunderland, and they both modeled for Mr. Rockwell’s camera; and then he painted them from those images, as was often his technique.
The anticipated Post cover depicted a mother tucking in her children in their bedroom with their dad standing nearby, holding a folded newspaper on which the visible headline tells how children in Europe were under German bombardment, while American children were safe in the U.S.A. (which had not entered the war).
The Post never used this painting for the cover, because we entered the war — but it was used by the Post to accompany essays of the time; and ultimately it joined three other paintings depicting Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms.
So, by now you’ve guessed that the tear sheet showed my mother and Uncle Clyde. This boy’s stand-in mother was my mother, and he got to experience just a little of the love that I’ve always had for her.
At the time I saw the film alone, Mom was living in Sunderland, Vt., and a few weeks later she came to visit me in Los Angeles. Without telling her why, I took her to the movie, which was still playing in theaters after several weeks — it’s that good a movie. We sat enjoying the film, and I was excitedly anticipating Mom’s reaction to seeing herself in such an important role on the screen. But there was still another surprise in store for me earlier in the film.
To depict the warmth of the family prior to the attack of the Japanese and the loss of Jamie’s parents in the chaos, Steven Spielberg had set up a shot of the family and it was identical to the setup of Norman Rockwell’s painting! That made sense. When I recognized the setup I was so excited I grabbed Mom’s knee and said, “Mom, look!” She about jumped out of her seat from my unexpected grab. In the quiet theater I couldn’t explain to her what I had just seen, but of course I was still very excited about the upcoming tear-sheet scene; and when it finally arrived she was delighted and proud, if modest.
We went home and the next day Mom felt she wanted to write to Mr. Spielberg, to tell him, just for fun, about how she had been drafted by Mr. Rockwell, the photo session, and how the children in the bed had actually been represented by pewter pots in Mr. Rockwell’s studio. The letter was sent to Mr. Spielberg, and so I don’t have it any longer to quote. But I seem to recall that Mom pointed out, as tactfully as possible, that it may have been an anachronism that the picture was in the movie, because to her knowledge the painting had been stored away until President Roosevelt asked Mr. Rockwell for the Four Freedoms paintings. In my own meager research I see that the painting may in fact have been printed by that time, since it is said to have accompanied essays in the Post, but I’m not sure it was the full-page version we see in the movie. As far as I’m concerned, Steven Spielberg can take all the license he likes!
The painting picturing my mom is called “Freedom from Fear.”
Well, we sent the letter to Steven Spielberg’s office in Burbank and then Mom went back to Sunderland. About two weeks later I got a call from Mr. Spielberg’s secretary asking if Mrs. Lawrence might come by the studio and meet Steven. Sadly, it was a bit far for Mom to travel all the way back from Vermont just for the meeting, and so it never happened.
This story of coincidence is of no great importance except to see how the sensitivities of Norman Rockwell, Steven Spielberg, novelist J. G. Ballard, and screenwriter Tom Stoppard all combined in a most wonderful film. If there is one thing they all have in common, I believe it is a sympathetic understanding of the plight of individuals confronted by the overwhelming forces of the political world. Mom was like that, too.