Used to? The past tense?
I’ve modified my views somewhat, mainly because I’m not a well man and precautions of this sort are no longer of great significance. But there was a time, not long ago, when I was very careful about the people who came to visit me at any of my houses in California and Nevada. The places themselves were fully purified, the air cleaned and rendered antiseptic.
But that wasn’t enough. I had to open the door for these people. Now please don’t think I’m a maniac. I’ve been called a maniac enough times. I don’t like to think that’s your opinion. I don’t believe it is, but I don’t even want to see the suspicion on your face. A great many of the precautions I took were on doctor’s orders. And if not doctor’s orders, then doctor’s suggestions, because of the damage to my lungs, and my skin condition, and my anemia, and various other ailments.
You went a bit overboard on it, didn’t you?
I’m a man who always goes the whole hog. These places of mine in Vegas and L.A. were very well protected against germs. Nevertheless, people did come to see me, by invitation, and when I opened the door for them, I admitted untold billions of harmful bacteria.
To minimize this risk I had a little square chalked just in front of the door in exactly the right place. When someone came to visit me, I would make sure that the guard had him placed in the center of that square before I opened the door to admit him. In other words, that square was placed so that I could open the door the absolute minimum to allow him to come in. Once this happened with Charles Laughton came to see me. Laughton was a fat man, so I opened the door and it hit him in the belly. Knocked the wind right out of him. He went down to all fours. I had to help him up and apologize.
Why didn’t you use something similar to a decompression chamber?
Are you making fun of me, Clifford? As a matter of fact, I did that once. But people wouldn’t stand for it. That was in my bungalow in Las Vegas, years before I moved into the Desert Inn. I had a bungalow off the Strip, set well back into the desert. I also had a battery of ultra-violet ray machines set up in the entrance halls but people said it would give them cancer, and I finally had to drop it.
And you object to the word phobia?
There’s nothing phobic about a man taking care of his health. I’ve gotten through to the age of sixty-five, and for a man who’s suffered as much physical injury as I have, that’s a triumph. A man with my ailments who hadn’t cared for his body the way I have, and who let people push him around, would have been dead at the age of fifty.
I mentioned to you that the typists on Romaine Street end elsewhere wore white gloves, and so did the people who came on plane trips with me. But one pair of white gloves wasn’t enough, I realized, especially for these people on the trips. They used two pair.
At the same time?
Yes. One pair, the one on top, was discarded when they got into the plane, at the top of the gangway, and the second pair which they wore during the trip, discarded when they left. And this way I got some measure of precaution against the hordes of germs that surround us.
You mean everyone who flew with you had to go through this?
Not everyone. Only the ones I didn’t know well, and people who were obviously dirty. I had ratings for people, Class A, B, C and D. A file card had to be consulted by my people who would arrange the meetings.
I’m well aware that this attitude and my precautions leave me open to the charge of being insane. That accusation has been leveled at me for many years, and I’ll take this opportunity to refute it. I’m not insane, but I am eccentric. Eccentricity is often a sign of a superior intelligence. I’m not trying to say that I have a superior intelligence, because the truth is I don’t believe I do. My creative talents are limited to technical spheres. I’m a synthesizer, an enlightened opportunist. I’m a hard worker and I’m stubborn, and above all I’m a man of action. Any such man is eccentric by common standards.
Ridiculing eccentricity is the sign of an inferior intelligence. You told me about your wife’s father, how he ordered food in restaurants – two French fried potatoes and six string beans. Now that was really eccentric, and the waiters probably thought he was crazy. That’s why they were waiters and he was a rich industrialist. Does your wife think he was crazy?
She thinks he was a great man.
Exactly. My point – and I think it’s of the deepest importance that I spell this out for you – is that my eccentricities are intelligent safeguards against the uncommon dangers of life. Every man would behave in a so-called peculiar manner – not necessarily my manner, but his own peculiar manner – if he had the courage.
And the money.
Correct. The money to indulge his wishes and to tell other people to go to hell if they don’t like it. That explains in a nutshell why I’m odd. My oddness is the essence of my individuality, which I can afford to express whereas others can’t or are too frightened to do so. And so the ones who can’t express themselves look at someone like me – what they know of me – and they say, ‘He’s nuts.’
If you’re rich you can structure your life to suit your deepest personal tastes, without fear of the consequences. And any man’s personal tastes are – if he expresses them honestly – goddamn peculiar.
Artists are the closest, in this sense, to a man like myself. They have a highly developed sense of their own individuality and they don’t mind telling the world to go take a flying fuck at a rolling donut, and I don’t, either.
You were saying that you rated people from A to D in terms of cleanliness. What did the ratings mean?
Filthy, Dirty, Moderately Dirty, and Moderately Clean. Moderately Clean was Class A – that was the highest rating I would give.
How many people got Class A ratings in your system?
Very few. And there were other people, of course, who simply wouldn’t stand for it, wouldn’t wear the two sets of gloves. Too strong-minded.
Where do you rate me?
Look at your fingernails and make a guess.
When I started out in business, there were thousands of men far richer than I in this country. This proves, I believe, that it’s not true that the man with the most money always has the advantage. Not if he’s a poor business gambler. Then he’ll lose his shirt. You have to figure the odds, and when they’re in your favor you have to bet and bet hard. If you turn chicken, you’re going to lose. I’m sure these are not the high-sounding tales you read in the Madison Avenue magazines about how the mighty men in American industry make their deals. But take it from the horse’s mouth, that’s the way it happens.
The coming thing in modern American business is the computer. Supposedly no decisions are made until all the data has been fed into the IBM 3600 or the Control Data monster or whatever is being used. But I know how these CEOs operate, and that computer is there like a court jester in the olden days – it’s there to amuse the executives and to back up their gut-level decisions. Any businessman worth his salt makes his decision first, based on his gambler’s instinct, and then assembles the necessary data to support his decision. And now, sometimes, just to satisfy his stockholders, he gets the bright boys who run the computers to feed all the data in and… well, you know the phrase: ‘Garbage in, garbage out.’ I heard someone say that ten million monkeys, working nonstop on a problem for a thousand years, could not make the same major mistake that a computer could make in one tenth of a second. In many respects the purpose of the computer is public relations.