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Book excerpt: “The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir” by Griffin Dunne
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In Griffin Dunne’s new memoir, “The Friday Afternoon Club” (to be published June 11 by Penguin Press), the actor-producer-director who grew up in Hollywood in a literary family writes of a life of bold-faced celebrity, tragedy, and well-told stories.
Read an excerpt below, and don’t miss Kelefa Sanneh’s interview with Griffin Dunne on “CBS Sunday Morning” June 9!
“The Friday Afternoon Club” by Griffin Dunne
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The morning I was born, Dad was a wreck. Having gotten Mom safely to Doctors Hospital, he was told that she required an emergency C-section, and to sit in the waiting room until he was called. Five hours later, he’d gone through a pack of Luckies, and after making a nuisance of himself to every nurse who passed, he went to buy more smokes at a deli across the street. Walking back to the lobby, he saw the surgeon who was to perform the C-section about to step into a cab. He ran to him and practically grabbed the doctor by the lapels.
“What happened?”
“What do you mean, what happened?”
“My wife! Is she all right?”
“Which one is your wife?”
“Lenny Dunne, for God’s sake!”
“Oh, Mr. Dunne, my apologies, didn’t anyone tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“We did the C-section hours ago. She’s fine. Baby’s fine. Someone should have told you, but it’s been a crazy day. I’ve done three since.”
More relieved than pissed, Dad let the man get in his taxi. Before it pulled away from the curb, the doctor yelled out the window, “Oh, and don’t worry about the foot!”
On the long walk back to the maternity ward, Dad pictured me growing up in a wheelchair or with a prosthetic leg, but while my right foot did curl inward when I was a newborn, it turned itself out by the time I could walk.
From the moment I was born, my father told me I was always trying to get somewhere else. My first word was taxi. I had a toy suitcase that I’d carry around the living room and raise my hand to hail a cab, yelling, “Taxi, taxi,” as if late for an important meeting. Elizabeth Montgomery, who later played Samantha in Bewitched, was my first babysitter. She was a struggling actress with a small part in Late Love when she met my mother, and though Elizabeth was her employee, my mother and she became close friends. Elizabeth once told her, while changing my diapers, that I had a bigger dick than her husband. That marriage was, needless to say, short-lived.
There is a kinescope from an early episode of the Today show in which Arlene Francis, also from the cast of Late Love, interviews my mother, billed as the “typical New York housewife,” while a camera follows her on a routine day. (The daughter of a rancher who went to Miss Porter’s was hardly a relatable housewife, but somehow Dad got her the gig through his connections at NBC.) There wasn’t much content in the early days of morning talk shows, so this segment is a mundane, fifteen-minute blow-by-blow of the life of a young family. It begins with Dad heading to work like a character out of a John Cheever story, while Mom does household chores, runs errands, and takes me to Central Park to feed the ducks. At one point in the clip, she enters a shoe store on Lexington Avenue and leaves me in my pram on the sidewalk, as if we lived in Grover’s Corners.
When she tries to lay me down in my crib at the end of the day, I nuzzle into her neck, not wanting her to leave. Anyone tuning in that morning would have seen a little boy who loved his mother more than anything in the world. When the camera cuts back to Mom in the studio, having just watched the segment she narrated, she looks lost in the moment, as if still savoring my affection. Arlene Francis ends the interview by saying to her viewers, “We wish Lenny, Nick, and Griffin all the luck in the world as they begin their bright future.”
As it turned out, we were going to need it.
An excerpt from “The Friday Afternoon Club,” published by Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2024 by Thomas Griffin Dunne.
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“The Friday Afternoon Club” by Griffin Dunne
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Biden sends more troops to North Carolina for continued Hurricane Helene response
President Biden approved the mobilization of another 500 active-duty troops to North Carolina to assist in the recovery efforts after the deadly and devastating Hurricane Helene.
“With a total of 1,500 troops now supplementing a robust on-the-ground effort – including more than 6,100 National Guardsmen and more than 7,000 Federal personnel – the Biden-Harris Administration is mobilizing all relevant resources to support families as they begin their road to rebuilding,” the White House said in a statement Sunday.
Mr. Biden previously announced that the federal government would cover “100%” of costs for debris removal and emergency protective measures in North Carolina for six months. The Biden administration has also released more than $137 million in federal funds – including $100 million in transportation funds for North Carolina to begin rebuilding damaged roads and bridges.
More than 800 people unable to return home are staying in lodging provided through FEMA, and 22 shelters are still housing nearly 1,000 people as mobile feeding operations continue to help survivors.
“My Administration is sparing no resource to support families as they begin their road to rebuilding,” Biden said. “We will continue working hand-in-hand with local and state leaders – regardless of political party and no matter how long it takes.”
Earlier Sunday, North Carolina Sen. Thom Tills called for more resources to bolster the relief effort and likened the damage to Hurricane Katrina’s mark on Louisiana in 2005.
“The scope of this storm is more like Katrina,” he told CBS News’ Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan”. “It may look like a flood to the outside observer, but again, this is a landmass roughly the size of the state of Massachusetts, with damage distributed throughout. We have to get maximum resources on the ground immediately to finish rescue operations.”
Mr. Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have all traveled to some of the impacted regions.
Hurricane Helene caused catastrophic damage from Florida into the Appalachian mountains and killed more than 225 people across multiple states. That number includes 114 killed in North Carolina alone.
The White House said Mr. Biden has also been briefed on Hurricane Milton, which is forecast to make landfall in Florida’s Tampa Bay area as a major storm on Wednesday.
U.S. disaster relief chief blasts false claims about Helene response
Deanne Criswell, who leads the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said on Sunday that the recent false claims and conspiracy theories about the federal response to the storm are “demoralizing” aid workers.
“It’s frankly ridiculous, and just plain false. This kind of rhetoric is not helpful to people,” she said. “It’s really a shame that we’re putting politics ahead of helping people, and that’s what we’re here to do. We have had the complete support of the state,” she said, referring to North Carolina.
Republicans, led by Trump, have helped foster a frenzy of misinformation over the past week among the communities most devastated by Helene, promoting a number of false claims, including that Washington is intentionally withholding aid to people in Republican areas.
Trump accused FEMA of spending all its money to help immigrants who are in the United States illegally, while other critics assert that the government spends too much on Israel, Ukraine and other foreign countries.
Tillis, a Republican, on Sunday rejected that claim, telling “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” that resources being used on immigration is “not yet … affecting the flow of resources to western North Carolina.”
Tillis said the stream of misinformation about relief efforts in North Carolina is a “distraction.”
“I believe that we have to stay focused on rescue operations, recovery operations, clearing operations, and we don’t need any of these distractions on the ground,” Tillis said. “It’s at the expense of hard-working first responders and people that are just trying to recover their lives.”
Mr. Biden said in a statement Sunday that his administration “will continue working hand-in-hand with local and state leaders –- regardless of political party and no matter how long it takes.”
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Rep. Mike Turner says all “candidates need to deescalate” after Trump assassination attempts
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UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell says Gaza is a “hellscape for children”
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