Phyllis Thaxter 4037 Portage

 

Phyllis Thaxter Radio Play 

By Michael McKenna 

 

Narrator: If Phyllis Thaxter weren't on METV every other night, you'd never hear the tale I'm about to tell. Ironically, she insisted on calling herself the plainest heroine in Hollywood. 

 

I was watching Perry Mason from my couch and fell asleep. No wonder, those scripts can be dull. It went off the air at 11:30pm. When I awoke, my eyesight was blurry and the tv screen was more or less a glare. Through these conditions Phyllis Thaxter appeared on my tv set, in an Alfred Hitchcock episode, I took notice thorough rather blurry eyes. 

 

In the morning I went online to learn about her. Born in Portland, Maine to what might be the aristocracy of the town were it in the upper Midwest. 

 

This fact lent itself to her speech. She couldn’t betray it on TV. To a Midwestern ear, her diction was perfectly annunciated, unlike those old lobster fishermen she must have understood perfectly. Her voice was made, not adapted for Broadway and Hollywood, She did not need to raise her voice to be heard.

 

My tale tonight may seem outrageous, sound outlandish and all around strange, but such is modern life. Do fish that ply the chilly waters off the coast of Portland think the water is strange? 

 

My name is Brian, I’m 61 in 2026, a retired clerk from the City Colleges. Unlike many City College employees, I worked for a Public TV Station licensed there.

 

It was a good job, I fell under the radar of avoided alot of otherwise prying middle management who would have liked nothing better then to observe me and discuss me in their weekly meetings. 

 

I found the Phyllis Thaxter Museum online rather easily when I woke up. The museum is Headquartered in the cottage on Cushing Island where Phyllis spent many a summer from 1962 to the late 1990’s.

 

I dialed the 1-800 number I found and a recorded voice answered. 

 

"Hello this is Phyllis, thank you so much for calling," she said. 

 

The Cushing Island “cabin” is actually closer to a two story mansion. The physical cottage on Cushing was the one property between Beverly Hills, Cumberland and Vero Beach that Sky Aubrey (her daughter) could not merely sell and dissolve upon her mom's passing in 2012.

 

It held too many memories, between the structure itself, the beach and the well-maintained forested trails, Cushing was too close to the real loves Phyllis knew on earth. 

 

Cushing Island was where she retreated to when she needed a break from all the kindness and politeness she offered an indifferent mean world. 

 

"This is Phyllis, may I help you?" The voice repeated when I didn’t say anything.

 

That voice sounded just like Phyllis Thaxter would have sounded in the late 1940's, a mixture of poise, proper Broadway and all the charm of a Hollywood star on the rise. 

 

"Hello?" the voice repeated upon not hearing an answer. I got over my surprise and disbelief at modern technology. 

 

"Oh hello," I blurted out. Phyllis instinctively sought to reassure this caller as the real Phyllis Thaxter would have. Her nature was to return fear with kindness and show true Christian empathy.

 

"Well, so nice of you to call, you've reached the Phyllis Thaxter Museum on Cushing Island. This cottage was built in 1884. It's been an absolute favorite haunt of mine since then when I can remember!

 

The beach is closeby but in case you're here to learn more about my life, there is a museum on the first floor and tours are conducted on the hour every hour. The entrance fee is $9.00 for adults and free for children under 7. There is a restaurant, Granny's, next door as there has been since 1935. They still serve the best chowder I ever had!"

 

I slouched back in my seat in Chicago, a thousand miles from Cushing Island but the impossible to dismiss “invitation” had been made. I called a travel agent at once.

 

                           

 

  II

 

 

 

Things changed dramatically for me after the first phone call with Phyllis’ automated voice. 

 

This is not a play about AI. At first it was not what Phyllis said but how she spoke, addressing me by name after I told “her” who I was.

 

Her instructions, what she said, only directed me to buy cheap ferry rides and cheap tickets to get into her museum, the amazing phenomenon was HOW her voice sounded, so real so true to her New England accent and rich from years learning the full inventory of theater skills in nearby Montreal.  

 

This is a play about THAT VOICE that sounded almost exactly as I heard on the Alfred Hitchcock hour the night before, then Wagon Train where Phyllis nearly brought me to tears as Vivian Carter.  

 

Then the Fugitive where her role seemed so effortless to play.  

 

I should update the reader about the months before I first called the Thaxter museum.

 

I had a separate bank account and for weeks and months I’d been putting $100 here $200 there “into a jar” to buy a Crown for a sore tooth 

 

(my insurance wouldn’t cover it) and that’s when I saw a signed photo of Phyllis available online at the online museum shop for just $499.00. 

 

I had to have it

 

3 weeks later the package arrived. 

 

I had a special frame for it by then. The day it arrived my tooth ache went away .

 

I knew what it was at once, shipped from Tijuana Mexico with a Hollywood photographer’s return address. 

 

I called the Museum at once. 

 

“Brian,” Phyllis’ said, “I’m so glad you called! this is Phyllis” 

 

I began to ask less standard questions now.

 

Not just when were the bookstore hours but for example, 

 

“Why did you turn your back on Hollywood and return to humble Maine?” 

 

“It was a mysterious move Brian wasn’t it …but then we’re all rather mysterious aren’t we?” Phyllis’ voice replied.

 

I guess I had a dozen or so more questions for Phyllis. She took her time answering each one. It frightened me when I realized I forgot I was talking to AI, for so patient was she answering me and she answered them all like a real person, like the real Phyllis Thaxter.

 

When I asked if she’d have been as big a star as Ingrid Bergman if Polio did not strike in 1952 she laughed the same laugh I heard in Wagon Train and said, “Brian, you know as much about me as my second husband whom I loved so…”

 

 

 

My second husband Gil was much more comfortable on the East Coast and by 1962 I was rarely in Hollywood. We fell in love at first…oh but Brian you don’t want to know all this do you?” Phyllis said mirthfully, as if to shield my feelings. She had to know I had fallen in love with her by this point.

 

“As for Ingrid Bergman, she…” and Phyllis realized she would be guilty of gossip and stopped herself, I only had two men in my life….well maybe 3…”

 

“Three?” I said with a lump in my throat dispensing all my disbelief.

 

“More than most”, I said “I’m familiar with the agony of not being loved back by one I love.” 

 

“Today,” Phyllis said into my ear …” all that is changed Brian” Phyllis said.

 

 

 

“You take such an interest in me, and I’m much older than you,” Phyllis said.

 

“Not that much older, just 45 years…”

 

Phyllis burst into a laugh. “Well its getting late Brian, I need my beauty sleep still…I better be…”

 

“Ok,” I said with sheer joy, “I’ll call you again.”

 

“I hope you do…” Phyllis said.

 

 

 

We hung up.

 

 

                      

 The travel agent in Chicago confirmed me at $4,999 for airfare, rental and lodging in Portland from June __ to June __ and all tickets to the Phyllis St Felix Thaxter museum in Cumberland and Cushing Island plus tickets to the Phyllis Schuyler Thaxter theater in South Portland.

 

With the earpiece still warm in my ear, I gave the agent the details of my credit card. 

 

In just two days I’d be in Portland Maine. 

 

Meanwhile, tonight I’m confined by the charms of a woman named Phyllis Thaxter or by AI?

 

A woman otherwise long passed on to a better world these last 14 years? Or modern technology?

 

 

 

 In three days I owed the “minimum” on my credit card, 3,019 dollars, but for 40 dollars the illusion continues. 

 

 

 

I refused to think about that…

 

 

 

                  III

 

 

 

 After an uneventful flight from O’Hare to LaGuardia, and then a turbo pop up to Portland I arrived at the Portland airport “international” because there were some flights to Quebec a few hours away.

 

After settling into my hotel room, I realized I had a few hours of daylight left and I thought I’d explore the town that produced Phyllis Saint Felix Thaxter

 

 

 

 As a journalist by trade, I thought I would conduct an informal survey and see if I could find Portlanders who heard of Phyllis or potentially even knew her.

 

 

 

 So I went to the environment where she grew up, 319 Danforth in the still fashionable West End of Portland all these 100 years later.

 

There are no parks in the modern for its time street grid by Danforth street but it’s not far from the beach and on this hot sunny day that’s where many people were. 

 

 

 

In fact there was a wheelchair access so people of all ages could gather there and amidst the sound (FX here) of seagulls and the waves I met some native Portlanders and canvassed the crowd with my questions about their most famous resident. 

 

 Many had never heard of her because she passed away in 2012 in Florida and had not been to Portland since the late 1990s but a group of older people on an excursion from the nursing home had.

 

To a person they all vouched for Phyllis’s character and how practical, realistic, unpretentious, and easy to relate to she was in real life. 

 

“Not just for a Hollywood starlet” they were quick to posit. “She herself always said in Hollywood she may as well never worn makeup- that’s how plain she felt there…” 

 

 

 

One woman who was in her 90s and knew Phyllis in person told me if Phyllis knew I was out here conducting the survey she would turn red. She was that unaware of her charm. 

 

“Oh here in Portland she could even be glamorous among us pale lobster eaters, but she always said she should have only done one picture in Hollywood and returned to her beloved Maine.”

 

 

 

I went back to my hotel room that night and had dinner and left my windows wide open to hear the ocean and let my room fill with fresh Atlantic air right off the beach.

 

I fell into a deep sleep, the first good sleep I had since I woke up to see Phyllis on my television screen back in Chicago in the Alfred Hitchcock hour. Tomorrow I would stand at the doorway of the home. She grew up in a colonial revival mansion at 319 Danforth and for just nine dollars be allowed to go inside to see for myself the first world she knew.. for a $14 ferry ride and another nine dollars … I’d try and also visit the Cushing Island home where I would see the very structure where she spent every summer from 1962 to 1999. 

 

 

 

 

                           IV

 

 

 

 

My second full day in Sunny Portland, Maine, I decided to walk by Phyllis’s childhood home on Danforth Street and then it got me to wondering where did she go to grammar school? Of course AI knew the answer and before I knew it I was striding up Danforth and made a right on Emery street on my way to Butler school 7 minutes away.

 

 It’s an apartment complex today. Opened as a school in 1879 It closed in 1973.. The walk was beautiful passing by elegant and modest old homes on very leafy tree lined streets. It was easy to imagine Phyllis making the same walk to fourth fifth or sixth grade in the 1920s. The school itself was old 19th century structure which is currently used for apartments that rent at 2300 a month. 

 

 

 

As I walked up Emery Street, towards Pine 

 

I saw an uneven sidewalk, I imagined 10 year old Phyllis falling down here and skinning her knee under her long skirt . without a frown, picking herself up and her books and continuing on her way. 

 

 

 

She could’ve said “my mom‘s a big shot on stage in Montreal my dad‘s the judge for the whole state of Maine”  and demanded a limo take  her to school from that point on but that’s not who Phyllis Thaxter would ever be! She was someone who overcomes who rises above, who is stoic, and without complaint, and that was the tone for the rest of her life.

 

 

 

Now I knew what I had to do, even though it was June and Casco bay would be icy cold I knew I had to swim out in the direction of Cushing Island. I once swam in Lake Superior, I’d be ok. 

 

 

 

Find a lake they said find an inland stream do not plunge into the ocean. It’s the same temperature as it was in March and I said “sorry I have to do this. And sarcastically I thought 

 

“I hope I don’t end up in Maine general Hospital in the West End like Phyllis did (but really I wanted to experience anything she went through)….and they said “no no no don’t do it.”

 

                           

 V

 

 

 

I went back to my hotel and I got my swim trunks and I headed for the beach

 

 

 

Casco Bay was colder than they even warned me of.

 

 

 

All my blood rushed to the core of my body to keep me warm. If I stayed in another few minutes, hypothermia would set in.

 

 

 

I heard Phyllis’s voice as I took one last plunge. She said “Brian, I want you to get out of that water. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you” I realized then and there, it was dangerous to be by myself, and I clambered out of the water and back onto the beach. Phyllis saved my life. 

 

                               

 

An hour later, I was handing my credit card to the clerk at the Phyllis Thaxter museum. I had t-shirts, coffee mugs, yearbooks, photo albums, Broadway playbills, Hollywood posters, Rawhide beer mugs, a twilight zone board game, you name it …the total on my card was so worth it but I’d never pay it off. I was like a man possessed, I never gave that any thought. 

 

 

 

Just before dinner, I was standing in Miss Gilbert Lea’s parlor the way it was furnished in 1963. The start of the second phase of her life. 

 

 

 

The first phase of her life was over… high-pressure wining and dining media moguls with her demanding husband. 

 

 

 

Now it was time for the second phase of her life, -a coastal rural retreat to beautiful Maine. Visiting the sick in the hospital in the morning and playing a round of golf at the Portland country club in the afternoon. 

 

 

 

My trip became a whirlwind.  

 

 

 

I snuck onto the Portland country club 10th Tee and played the back nine.  

 

I talked my way onto the private Cushing Island ferry. I didn’t let up but the chilly Portland night air didn’t either.

 

 

 

And that’s when I got a terrible cold. Must have been from that plunge in Casco Bay plus all my rushing on my endeavors to see the area. 

 

 

 

The doctor told me I could not travel back to Chicago. He authorized another few nights for me in the hospital. He said if I leave the hospital, I will get pneumonia.

 

 

 

That night was long.  

 

I began to have visions. 

 

I saw angels appear in the room. 

 

I was unable to cough but I needed to… 

 

When the nurse left me at midnight I realized I’d been given an injection. 

 

On my wrist were three letters that said in red ….DNR 

 

Do not resuscitate

 

 

Finally at Dawn, Phyllis Thaxter herself appeared in the room. She looked circa 1957, just as she did on Brian’s TV screen in a Alfred Hitchcock episode. (Phyllis appeared in 9 Alfred Hitchcock episodes. All were well after her bout with polio which Hollywood said would alter her appearance, it did not.)

 

She said: “Fear not Brian” 

 

And I worriedly thought…”how much is this room gonna cost me?”

 

and Phyllis smiled and calmed me , just as she’d done countless times to countless strangers in her life. 

 

she said “this visit is complementary. I’m here to welcome you home!” 

 

 

“To Chicago ?” I asked 

 

 

Phyllis only smiled reassuringly.  

 

 

“I can’t pay for all this”  I blurted  restlessly … “I’m hooked up to 12 different machines…”

 

 

And that’s when Phyllis said “don’t worry, Brian it’s time for you to cross over take my hand…”

 

 

And with that I was no longer gazing at the ceiling tiles, I was looking down now, I could see myself below lying on the bed… “seeing” myself laying there as if from a vantage point above…as if from the top of the room as if my soul was floating and looking  down. 

 

 

Phyllis sat bedside and I could see she was holding my hand. 

 

She knew all about me since the night I saw her in my living room on my flat screen color television a month earlier. She knew and she wanted to help me get to her on the other side.

 

 

                                                 VI

 

 

I awoke, not on the other side, but in a hospital room nonetheless.

I looked around for Phyllis or signs of her. I refused to call her visit anything but real. It was not the same hospital room, not even similar except I was hooked up to several machines. I was famished.

A nurse finally entered the room and looked shocked to see my eyes open. She almost dropped a tray she held, placed it on the table by me and ran to check my vital signs. She made sure I was breathing normally by checking my airway. She placed a small clip on my finger to check the oxygen levels in my blood.

 

It read 98.

 

“Well,” she said “your doing much better Brian…” It was the same way I thought I heard Phyllis sound the last time I was conscious.

 

“Where am I?” I asked.

 

“You’re at Stroger Hospital of Cook County in Illinois,” she replied.

“We’re known for our Level 1 trauma services. You are in intensive care. You had quite the night.”

 

“Excuse me, I last recall being in Maine, the Maine Medical Center in Portland, where Phyllis Thaxter was treated for polio, where she volunteered…”

“You were flown back here two weeks ago, we almost thought you weren’t going to make it…”

 

“Oh dear…” Brian said.

 

“Don’t you worry about a thing,” the nurse jumped in. “You just try and sit up and I’ll bring you some hot soup…”

 

“It’s when you are On the edge of death, like I was in the jungle Iraq…that’s when you are treated so humanely,” Brian thought. He wanted to turn on his side but his body was stiff from laying on his back for so long.

 

As he waited for the nurse to bring what he was sure would be delicious hot soup (any soup would be so welcome) his mind went back to seeing Phyllis Thaxter in Portland. She came to him as the 1956 or 57 version of Phyllis. Her visage as it appeared that night, came to him crystal clearly in Chicago. She looked just as she did in the late 1950 after strenuous physical rehab for her attack of polio allowed her to make a near glorious return to the small screen.

 

“She didn’t ignore me in Portland, if that was her and it was,” Brian thought. “I may as well have grown up at 316 Danfourth as her next door neighbor, same age. She’d have left tom boying in the street about 1935 to go to school in theatrical school in Montreal and I would have said, “good luck Philly, you belong in a place like that, where they will make you a stage star…” and she’d have laughed and smiled and said she’ll write.

 

But I wasn’t born in 1920, I was born 45 years later and I served my country and I know Phyllis supports all veterans. Maybe…”

 

 

Just then my nurse brought me hot cream of mushroom soup. I gulped it down and fell into a light sleep.

 

When I woke, I lay still and thought. My life flashed before my eyes but not in a throes of death kind of way.

I reassessed my life. Yes I could say I wasn’t much different than Phyllis Thaxter’s two Princeton University alums. I played basketball for Marquette University. I worked in Public Television for as long as her first husband worked for CBS and ABC. I  published a book about the Great Plains that second husband might have published. I showed some of the trappings of accomplishment. Accomplishment mattered to Phyllis! She must have found it an attractive quality in her men. Her husbands were known for athleticism and accomplishment!

 

 

But What would Phylllis see in me?

 

The soup must not have gone into my stomach but my lungs. I didn’t know it but I was slipping into a pneumatic coma.

 

That’s when the Cook County hospital room began to turn and spin. Again Phyllis appeared! This time as she looked in 1962 or 64, when she appeared in the TV show, the Fugitive. When her roles demanded she play a more matronly figure. 

 

She smiled reassuringly at me from above.

 

“Brian,” she said softly with her royal Portland aristocratic accent.

“You don’t need to impress me.” She giggled somewhat. “I know you played basketball in college and you served in the armed forces like my first husband, and I know you would want to have followed in their footsteps and married me.” She laughed again.

 

“I was last available in human form in 1943 when I was in my early 20’s. A long long time ago. I dated many men, from billionaires to Monty Clift to shopkeepers. And I would have dated you if you were my next door neighbor and we somehow reconnected.

 Your service in the army might have landed you in California. I might have seen you helping at the USO. Who knows? We would have had more in common than being playmates as young kids on Danfourth Street in Portland. You did have a career in Public TV and I love that medium. I was in a PBS production called 3 Sovereigns for Sarah.”

 

 

Brian was unable to speak or alert the nurse who was called away.

 

He didn’t even notice his pneumonia symptoms. Phyllis Thaxter was next to his bedside telling him she would have married him if he met her in Beverly Hills in 1942 instead of James Aubrey Jr.

 

 

No, Brian thought…this is a dream… I was never going to be like them, like her husbands. My accomplishment would always be and always was, at the expense of shame, dishonor and humiliation.

 

“Brian,” Phyllis whispered. “I know all about you. I’m not earth bound Phyllis, I’m eternal…The things you call shame were based on one second decisions anyone might make. The chance to make someone laugh at an off color joke, you were too young to decide what to do. Having a drink to forget Iraq and driving…nothing bad came of it except that you were so hard on yourself. Brian…” Phyllis said looking EXACTLY like Enid Langer in the Fugitive…  “I forgive you…now it is your time to cross over and I will help you.”

 

“I’m not afraid Brian said, “I’m not afraid.”

 

Looking forward and smiling, Phyllis took Brian’s hand and he felt his soul leave his body. It was not a hard thing to experience at all. It was nothing Phyllis hadn’t experienced in 2012.

 

“I’m not afraid…”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The End