Dan’s Papers February 3, 2012 danshamptons.com Page 14
Pollock
(continued from page 11)
But he did get a three year old Oldsmobile convertible to drive around in, which was a really bad idea when he had too much to drink. On that day, Lee Krasner was in Paris, touring Europe by herself. At the house in Springs, Pollock was entertaining two young women from New York City in their 20s named Edith Metzger and Ruth Kligman. Enamored of the famous Jackson Pollock, they were happy to accept his invitation to come out for the weekend. He met them at the East Hampton railroad station and took them home. Late that afternoon, with Pollock rip roaring drunk, the girls urged him to sober up so they could all go to the party being thrown by Pollock’s fellow artist friend Alfonso Ossorio. Pollock had told them about it. Ossorio had just come back from the Philippines, so this was a homecoming party. His mansion was surrounded by 55 acres of gardens on the shores of Georgica Pond. (This is currently the home of Ron Perelman.) Pollock drank some more, said he had no intention of going, but the girls persisted and finally he said “okay, dammit, we’ll go,” and they cheered. Halfway down Springs Fireplace Road heading for town however, Pollock listened as the girls chattered back and forth and it just made him angrier. So he turned around and headed back home. “What are you doing?” one of the girls asked him. “We’re going to a party!” So Pollock turned around and headed back toward Ossorio’s. But once again he turned the car around and headed home, this time shouting at the girls as they shouted at him and with that, he deliberately
picked up speed, and as they screamed in fear he crashed about a mile from the house on Springs Fireplace Road. The convertible slid off the road and into the trees on the side of the road there in a deadly crash. Edith Metzger in the back seat died. Ruth Kligman in the front seat was seriously injured and recovered in the hospital. As for Jackson Pollock, he was thrown from the car and landed unconscious face down in some weeds. The early reports were that he had died in the car crash, but the fact was that he survived though in a coma at Southampton Hospital for nine days. When he awoke, it was found that there were slight tremors in his right hand for which no medicines had any effect. The tremors, which were only slightly noticeable when I visited him, nevertheless had an effect on his painting career. “My hand won’t do what I tell it to do,” he said. “I couldn’t do any more work. That was it.” Lee Krasner, to her credit, hearing about the accident, headed straight for home. Nothing remained of their relationship however, and she found him in the arms of a private nurse he had hired. She then stormed out of the house and said he had a week to get out. She stayed with her friend, the sculptor Rupert Goldstein until he did. He moved into the little four room wood shingled cottage where I found him on his birthday. “That was a terrible year, 1956,” he told me. “My wife leaves me. I’m the driver in a terrible car accident. The national media abandons me as their darling bad boy painter. And I wind
up unable to paint—the only thing I had ever known to do since the age of 15.” “So what did you do?” I asked. “Well you know about the trial,” he said. “The whole world knows about it. Do you want to talk about it?” “No.” Paul Jackson Pollock was accused of manslaughter in the death of Edith Metzger. The other occupant of the car, who had by this time written a memoir about how much she loved Pollock and how he had promised to leave his wife for her, now testified against him. He was drunk as a skunk, she said. He drove 80 miles an hour. And he damn near got me and himself killed. And poor Edith Metzger. Edith Metzger’s parents were in the courtroom weeping. Pollock’s defense was, early on, that the accelerator had gotten stuck. Later in the trial, he said he had been driven to drink by the cruel spotlight of the news media. They were the cause of this. He got ten to twenty years in prison. He served six, and was released from Leavenworth in Leavenworth, Kansas in 1962 because of good behavior. “Nobody met me when I came out,” he said sadly, pouring himself a second round (and spilling a little on the table.) “So I just went back to Springs. The hell with fame. The hell with painting. It’s all a crock of crap anyway.” Of course, the local bonackers were delighted he was back. They held a party for him at his house. They had another party for him at Ashawagh Hall. They had still a third party for him at Jungle Pete’s on Fort Pond Boulevard. (continued on page 20)