One of the many things I love about Frank Capra’s “It’s A Wonderful Life” is the big “what if?” at the center of the story. Imagine being able to see what life would have been like for your friends and family had you not been born into it. Jimmy Stewart’s character George Bailey is given this opportunity when his guardian angel Clarence steps in to stop his suicide and ultimately helps him to understand his life’s true value. I’ve often thought about this concept, and I found myself thinking about it again yesterday as I sat in the crowded Writer’s Guild Theatre and listened to famous actors, writers and friends sing the praises of Norman Corwin on the occasion of his 100th birthday.
What would my life be like, I wondered, if I had never met Norman Corwin?
It got me to thinking about how our journey through time takes shape with the help of so much and so many. Parents, siblings, friends and strangers - teachers all - mix their spirit with ours in ways known and unknown. From the moment we open our eyes and draw first breath, we become a player in an existential chain reaction, like a human recipe that calls for a blending of mind and soul, seasoned with a drizzle of chance and a pinch of choice.
When I met Norman Corwin in the spring of 1978 he was 68 years old and I was 22. I was in the Telecommunications and Film school at San Diego State and Norman was there as a "distinguished visiting guest lecturer," as they called him. Few if any of us students knew who he was or what he had accomplished in his life. "He's a radio guy," someone told me when I inquired about him. Not much to go on. So, in those long ago pre-computer days before Google was a verb, I went to the campus library to look him up. One person described him as “one of the greatest living writers in the English language,” another said that he was “America’s poet laureate of radio.” I found a couple of books with collections of his radio plays. The first one I read was “We Hold These Truths.” The second one was “On a Note of Triumph,” considered by many to be his masterpiece. Then I found a copy of his screenplay adaptation for “Lust For Life” about Vincent Van Gogh, in which Kirk Douglas played Van Gogh and Anthony Quinn played Paul Gauguin (and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor). The more I read, the more impressed I became. It turned out that he wasn’t just “a radio guy” after all. More like a renaissance man.
And so a couple of days later, filled with new information about this man in whose class I would study for a semester or more, I found myself in “The Creative Person in The Arts 596” and met Norman Corwin for the first time.
We spent so many memorable days together in that classroom, all of us eager kids listening to and learning from the old pro. He became my teacher and, ultimately, my friend. He taught me how to write and how to see. He taught me that creativity and compassion are inseparable, that thoughts, words and deeds are fluid, that every one of us has something valuable to contribute by virtue of the simple fact that we all share the same potential and the same destiny.
I remember going to his office on campus one day after a class. I had no reason to go. I just wanted to meet him in private and talk. I really didn’t know how I would be received and I was painfully nervous. Norman welcomed me in like an old friend would. I know he sensed my nervousness, but he was kind and patient. After about a half hour or so of talking about writing and writers and movies and such, Norman got up and went over to his typewriter. He grabbed a piece of San Diego State stationery and twirled it around the roller. He began to type something that I couldn’t see from where I was sitting. When he finished, he pulled the paper out and handed it to me and said, “You remind me of this poem.”
From memory he had typed out William Henley’s “Invictus.” I read it for the first time that day. Since then I, too, have committed it to memory. I realized that he could have told me the poem’s name and suggested that I find it and read it. Or he could have recited it to me if he wanted to. But he chose to take a moment to retrieve it from his brain and set it down on paper so that I could touch it, see it, and read it right then and there. I thought that was a really fine thing for him to do. I still have that piece of SDSU stationery and the poem that Norman gave to me. It has graced a dozen walls in four cities in three states, framed and hanging where I can always see it, usually in my office.
Of all the things I’ve learned along the way, this I know for certain: My life has been blessed because Norman Corwin is in it. I can’t imagine it any other way. Happy 100th Birthday, Norman. A wonderful life, indeed.
"Invictus" by William Henley
A couple of photos I took of Norman in 1978:
Norman reading to us from his book, "Overkill and Megalove."
He loved to sit in the class, as a student, as one of us, and listen to our words, our work.
You can see the joy in his expression.
