Benjamin Jones
Penguin Press
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In Griffin Dunne’s new memoir, “The Friday Afternoon Club” (to be published June 11 by Penguin Press), the actor-producer-director who grew up in Hollywood in a literary family writes about a life of bold celebrity, tragedy, and well-told stories.
Read an excerpt below and Don’t miss Kelefa Sanneh’s interview with Griffin Dunne on “CBS Sunday Morning” June 9th!
“The Friday Afternoon Club” by Griffin Dunne
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The morning I was born, my father was a wreck. Having taken Mum safely to the Doctor’s Hospital, he was told that she needed an emergency caesarean section and that she should sit in the waiting room until he was called. Five hours later, he had consumed a pack of Luckies and, after bothering every passing nurse, went to buy more cigarettes at a deli across the street. Returning to the lobby, he saw the surgeon who would perform the cesarean section about to get into a taxi. He ran up to him and practically grabbed the doctor by the lapels.
“What happened?”
“What do you mean what happened?”
“My wife! Is she okay?”
“Which one is your wife?”
“Lenny Dunne, for God’s sake!”
“Oh, Mr. Dunne, my apologies, didn’t anyone tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“We did the C-section hours ago. She’s fine. The baby is fine. Someone should have told you, but it was a crazy day. I’ve had three since.”
More relieved than upset, Dad let the man into the taxi. Before pulling away from the curb, the doctor called out the window, “Oh, and don’t worry about your foot!”
On the long walk back to the maternity ward, Dad imagined me growing up in a wheelchair or with a prosthetic leg, but although my right foot curled inwards when I was a newborn, it recovered once I was able to walk.
From the moment I was born, my father told me that I was always trying to get somewhere else. My first word was taxi. I had a toy suitcase that I carried around the room and raised my hand to hail a taxi, shouting “Taxi, taxi,” as if I was late for an important meeting. Elizabeth Montgomery, who later played Samantha in Bewitched, was my first nanny. She was a struggling actress with a small role in Late love when she met my mother, and although Elizabeth was her employee, my mother and she became close friends. Elizabeth once told her, while changing my diapers, that I had a bigger dick than her husband’s. This marriage was, needless to say, short-lived.
There is a kinescope of an early episode of Today show in which Arlene Francis, also from the cast of Late love, interviews my mother, considered the “typical New York housewife”, while a camera follows her on a routine day. (A farmer’s daughter who frequented Miss Porter’s house was hardly a relatable housewife, but somehow Dad got her the job through his contacts at NBC.) There wasn’t much content in the early days of talk shows. mornings, so this segment is a mundane fifteen-minute account of the life of a young family. It starts with Dad going to work like a character from a John Cheever story, while Mom does housework, runs errands, and takes me to Central Park to feed the ducks. At one point in the clip, she walks into a shoe store on Lexington Avenue and leaves me in the cart on the sidewalk, as if we live in Grover’s Corners.
When she tries to lay me down in her crib at the end of the day, I snuggle into her neck, not wanting her to leave. Anyone tuning in that morning would have seen a little boy who loved his mother more than anything in the world. When the camera cuts to Mom in the studio, after watching the segment she narrated, she seems lost in the moment, as if she still savors my affection. Arlene Francis ends the interview by telling viewers, “We wish Lenny, Nick and Griffin all the luck in the world as they embark on their bright future.”
Ultimately, we were going to need this.
An excerpt from “The Friday Afternoon Club,” published by Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2024 by Thomas Griffin Dunne.
Get the book here:
“The Friday Afternoon Club” by Griffin Dunne
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