“ We left immediately, to go to a certain bar in Manhattan
which Harry Grey had mentioned. I don’t remember the name of it. lt was near
the New Calvary Cemetery, just off Greenpoint Avenue . . . The bar, it was dark
and sordid - of course, just as yould expect. Furtive creatutes were sitting at
little tables in the shadows, whispering strange secrets to one another. A
couple of prostitutes, with long stiletto boots of red plastic and aquamarine
wigs. l couldn't tell if they were white or black. The barman was fat, but
seemed benign and of uncertain sexual orientation. He was silently moving back
and forth, behind the marble shelf, like a wind-up gnome. He was exactly in the
mould of Fat Moe in Once Upon a Time in America. And this place - relaxing and
secretive at the same time - was maybe the model for the 1968 version of Fat
Moe's bar. The sequence where Noodles, after forty years' absence, comes back
to New York and calls Fat Moe from a telephone kiosk in front of his bar - that
was exactly like how we met Harry Grey. We sat next to a window, under a big
neon advertisement for Coca- Cola . He arrived after a few minutes, as dead on
time as a quartz watch. He waited a few moments, at the entrance, nodded
“hello” to the barman and made a beeline in our direction. He was short and
thick-set, with a bull neck, a very smooth face and the rosy cornplexiun of a
child, and he wore a hat which was already out of fashion when Claudette
Colbert was young. Grey looked something like Edward G. Robinson, yet he was
over seventy by some distance. We shook hands. He sat down and ordered a
Whisky, which he never actually drank. He studied it, coolly, for some time.
Maybe he had cholesterol problems and ordered the drink only for appearances'
sake - as is sometimes the custom in America. Where appeararices play such a
big part. He was a man of very few words. Yes, no, maybe. He had the vocabulary
of a Dashiell Harnmett gangster, speaking only about essentials. And acting for
an invisible public “.
Sergio Leone in Something to do with Death by Christopher Frayling
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