like Robert Wilson’s Phoenix Bookstore on Cornelia Street, which specialised in literary first editions. Wilson, a friend of W.H. Auden and the bibliographer of Gertrude Stein, was a congenial conversationalist, and De Niro Sr relaxed in his company, even drawing a cover for one of Wilson’s catalogues.
‘I saw him often,’ recalls Wilson. ‘He was shy more than antisocial. He came into the shop often, at least once with the teenage son. He was gay, and came in quite often, mainly, I think, because he had an obvious crush on my then-assistant Marshall Clements. He was not a collector of rare books, but was a reader of Gertrude Stein’s works, and often bought one of her books for reading purposes.’
Marshall Clements too remembers De Niro Sr well. ‘I first met Bob Sr and Virginia Admiral in 1960 or ‘61, along with others of their circle, through the painter, Nell Blaine, who often gave parties for her old friends, mostly fellow painters. So by the time I started working at the Phoenix Book Shop with Bob Wilson in 1968, Bob De Niro and I were old acquaintances. He lived nearby in the Village, and when he found out I was working at the shop, he frequently stopped by to visit.
‘Bob Wilson always thought this was because of some sexual interest in me, but I doubt this. What he was interested in, other than simply friendly chat, was using me as a model. I had been a dancer in the years 1950–1960 and was still in pretty good physical shape. I admired his work and found him a very pleasant, gentle and intelligent man, one completely focused on his painting. If he had any problems with his sexuality, they were never evident to me, and though we were both gay and obviously knew this about one another, the subject never came up in our conversations. He also had a wonderfully subtle wit and was childishly pleased when one “got” it and laughed. There was an air of sadness about him, and as far as I know, he was a lonely man, which I believe was also a reason for his frequent visits to the bookshop.’
Through the early fifties, Robert came to feel he’d reached an impasse in his work. Though the Charles Egan Gallery in New York City gave him one-man shows in 1952, 1953 and 1954, after which he switched to the Poindexter Gallery, which showed him in 1954, 1955 and 1956, he became convinced his career was marking time. He needed fresh inspiration, and friends like Tennessee Williams urged him to look for it in Europe.
Paris exercised a special attraction for De Niro. During his friendship with Anaïs Nin, he’d pumped her for information about the French capital and her meetings with artists like Picasso. In the spring of 1959, he arrived at the apartment of his friend Barbara Guest with a box of books, mostly French poetry. He was going to Paris, he explained, and wanted her to take care of them until he returned. Something final in his tone convinced her, however, that he believed the move to be permanent. Before his departure, friends threw a party on the boat that took him to France in April 1959, and Bobby attended – with what feelings one can imagine.
Bobby’s grades at Elizabeth Irwin weren’t good enough to keep him there, but since he showed some artistic talent, and had spent some months in the Piscator Workshop, the faculty suggested he apply for a scholarship to New York’s High School of Music and Art. Students were required to submit some example of their creativity, and De Niro got in on his acting ability, but stayed only one sparsely-attended semester in 1959. He claimed that the phoniness of his fellow students, ‘wearing sandals and playing guitars in Washington Square Park’, repelled him. But such people can hardly have been strange to a kid born and raised in Greenwich Village. Probably he disliked having to travel uptown to school when all his life he’d been able to walk. He would also have found it demanding to take classes both in academic subjects and one’s chosen creative area. After that, De Niro spent one semester at the Rhodes School on West 54th Street, but passed only three subjects then dropped out, his only explanation that ‘it was a bad scene’.
After the High School of Music and Art, Virginia resignedly put him into IS.71, where he had been intended to go in the first place. But he did no better there, responding to the discipline and rigour of public education with truancy, inattention and a threat to strike a teacher. ‘His idea of school,’ his mother later complained, ‘was just not to show up.’
She switched him to the fee-paying McBurney School on 23rd Street, attached, improbably, to the YMCA. Run like a British prep school, McBurney had an excellent reputation, but its curriculum and discipline didn’t suit everyone. (Among those who’d found it uncongenial was J.D. Salinger, who flunked out of McBurney just before World War II. His experience there would find its way into The Catcher in the Rye.)
Having lagged behind, De Niro found himself in a class of younger kids, which made him feel even more of an outsider. When summer arrived, and he was told to attend a catch-up school if he wanted to come back in 1960, he rebelled. Instead, he told his mother, he wanted to spend summer in Europe, visiting his father. On his return, he promised, he would tell her what he’d decided to do with his life. She would not, he assured her, be disappointed.
Before he left, Bobby set the pattern of his future life when he made a brief appearance in television drama, his first experience of the media that were to fill his adult life. The soap opera Search for Tomorrow was broadcast live from New York, and the sixteen-year-old De Niro became one of many kids who had bit parts and walk-ons that season.
De Niro spent four months hitching around Europe, starting in Paris. His father painted him a sign in English and Italian: ‘Student Wants Ride’. The sign, and his charm, took him to Venice, Rome and Capri, where he met French actress Michele Morgan. Bobby told her his father was a famous artist in Paris who was eager to paint her portrait, but De Niro Sr gruffly turned down the job: ‘I wasn’t interested in doing her portrait, or anyone else’s.’
Back in New York in March 1960, Bobby saw the Cole Porter/Frank Sinatra musical Can Can with a friend. As they left the cinema, De Niro surprised his companion by telling him, ‘I’m going to do that.’
‘What?’ his friend asked.
‘Act in the movies.’
The friend laughed, and thought nothing of it. But, months earlier, when Bobby returned from Europe, he’d surprised Virginia with the news that, rather than going to college or even graduating from high school, he had decided to train as an actor instead.
I’ve never been one of those actors who has touted myself as a fascinating human being. I had to decide early on whether I was to be an actor or a personality.
Robert De Niro
Why did De Niro decide at the age of seventeen to become an actor?
Withdrawn, ill-educated, physically unremarkable, he was nobody’s idea of a stage or screen star. And it’s perhaps there that the answer lies. How does a timid person express himself except by taking on another personality? Lon Chaney’s parents were deaf-mutes, with whom he could communicate only via sign language – a situation analogous to De Niro’s upbringing by two people preoccupied with their own agendas.
Theatre was undergoing drastic redefinition when De Niro entered it. Acting and writing, regarded as professions before World War II, with formal structures, standards and requirements, were being invaded by people stronger on feeling than technique. The new writers, in the words of Jack Kerouac to Truman Capote, ‘didn’t want to get it right; just get it written’. Capote’s scornful response, ‘That’s not writing, Jack. That’s type writing,’ summed up the horror of classical stylists at such ad hoc creativity; but they were in the minority. By the early fifties, anyone who felt they’d like to try acting, singing or writing could usually find a platform.
Performance
