Conrad and Lady Black: Dancing on the Edge. Tom Bower
gorgeous,’ announced Ross McLean, regarded as CBC’s most brilliant producer. Moses Znaimer, another producer, agreed that Amiel, who was then employed as a secretary by Perry Roseman on The Way It Is, a current affairs programme, should be turned into a star. Glamour photographs were distributed to promote the new celebrity interviewer. Her debut was not a success. The autopsies of Amiel’s on-screen abilities were merciless. ‘She comes across as affected but not stylish,’ said one producer. ‘She’s too guarded, not sharing her personality with the audience. She’s not a natural.’ Another senior producer agreed: ‘Her fine-boned chiselled features make her attractive but you can’t take her seriously.’ ‘Too nervous and lacks gravitas,’ concluded a third, who carped that her prominence had been won by manipulating Ross McLean. Unexpectedly, Amiel’s overt sexuality had undermined her professional ambitions. Producers were reluctant to use a woman whose appearance and manner were distracting. The struggle for success increased her insecurity, although initially she ignored her failure. ‘All in all, I learned to be a reasonably smart-ass interviewer,’ she would recall in self-praise.20 Appearing in a 1966 TV satire as a bikini-clad temptress of Eddie Shack, a wild ice-hockey player, did not enhance her image as a serious journalist.21 Her on-screen career was in jeopardy. In her search for blame she would admit that she had been ‘too self-conscious’, and she later conceded that her appearance as ‘a lacquered apparition with bouffant hair, glazed smile and detachment bordering on the unconscious, often reinforced by the mandatory dosage of Elavil’, was not a winner.22 But the real cause of her misfortune, she decided, was a CBC ‘syndrome’ that excluded ‘non-leftists’ from appearing on the channel. Although it was not a full left-wing ‘conspiracy’, she said there was a prejudice against her anti-Communism. She also perceived another bias. ‘I’m unhappy with my nose,’ she told Claire Weisman, an artist who was temporarily answering telephones in the building, ‘and I’m having it fixed.’ Weisman was surprised. ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Haven’t you noticed it?’ said Amiel. ‘Noticed what?’ ‘You’re Jewish, aren’t you?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Haven’t you noticed the anti-Semitism here?’ ‘No,’ replied Weisman. ‘Absolutely not.’
Amiel had long been unhappy about the shape of her nose. Variously described as ‘Roman’ or ‘soft Jewish’, it curved gently down, whereas she wanted the ‘turned-up’ nose prevalent among the gentile, white Anglo-Saxon community. She confided her dissatisfaction to George Bloomfield, a gregarious CBC producer whom she had ‘spotted’ a year earlier. Soon after introducing herself, she rented a flat in Bloomfield’s block in Toronto’s High Park, and a few weeks later she moved into his apartment. ‘I don’t like my nose,’ she had repeated for a year. ‘It’s a perfect nose,’ replied Bloomfield mechanically, but eventually he agreed to pay for the surgery. The doctor produced a nose described by Bloomfield as ‘pug’ and by Larry Zolf, now also employed at CBC, as a ‘button nose’ and ‘an insult to the Jewish people. Amiel was ashamed of the perfectly good Jewish nose she had. Now she looks like a crazed Shirley Temple.’23 Amiel’s depression intensified. ‘It’ll improve,’ the surgeon assured her. Frequently plunging into her handbag to take pills, Amiel set off to California as senior CBC producer Eric Koch’s script assistant to film a documentary, Culture Explosion. ‘She’s a bright, moody Jewish girl cursed by her mental fragility,’ concluded Koch, who became disenchanted with Amiel at a family dinner hosted by his brother. ‘I’m not feeling well,’ she announced, clearly bored. ‘Take me home.’ ‘Out of the question,’ Koch replied, outraged by her selfish behaviour towards his family. ‘Sit down.’ Refusing to obey, Amiel asked a member of the film crew to drive her to her hotel. Clearly she was prepared to live only on her terms. She had, Koch heard, walked out of concerts if a more exciting alternative sprang to mind.
Back in Toronto in 1968, George Bloomfield was preparing to move to New York and make feature films. One night he and Amiel were disturbed by the doorbell. Bloomfield stumbled out of bed. ‘Who is it?’ he asked. ‘Telegram,’ said the voice. Bloomfield opened the door, and was pushed aside by Gary Smith. Finding his way into the bedroom, Smith saw Amiel. He then left. Soon after, Amiel’s mother and stepfather visited the flat for an unemotional but civilised reconciliation. The ghosts of her ‘wild years’ were being interred. To break from her past, she decided to abandon CBC and move with Bloomfield to New York. ‘I’m a camp follower,’ she admitted.24 Soon after their arrival she found a nose surgeon used by Hollywood’s stars. Bloomfield agreed to pay for the second operation. This time she declared the result ‘great’.
Life in New York suited Amiel. Bloomfield was fun, and paid for all her needs. ‘Ten seconds after waking up,’ he recalled, ‘we’d both be laughing.’ She began to read voraciously, stretching her intellect. Unlike in Toronto, she was surrounded by the ‘chic world’ of film celebrities, and came eagerly close to anti-Vietnam war and pro-feminist agitators, notably Jane Fonda and Alan Alda, who were working with Bloomfield. Hovering around Fifth Avenue, she watched the rich buy furs and jewellery, envious of how they recognised each other and could ‘trade fashion names and tips’.25 At length, she justified to Bloomfield her considerable expenditure of his money on exclusive brands: ‘You’ve got to have the right belt, purse, shoes and scarf. The dress doesn’t matter.’ Her easy-going manner, friendliness towards everyone, and willingness to engage in any fantasy Bloomfield suggested in their bedroom, suggested a happy woman. Unseen by others, however, there was another side.
The prescription of the antidepressant Elavil, described by Amiel as ‘my undoing’, had neutralised her sense of responsibility. ‘Nothing was my fault,’ she recalled, because ‘everything is socially or chemically determined’.26 Drugs, Bloomfield complained, had become a routine part of his girlfriend’s life. Screaming in her face, he discovered, grabbed her attention. ‘When you take drugs you look just like your mother,’ he shouted at her. Amiel stood silently, pushing both wrists upwards. Like make-up, the image of the independent and tough woman evaporated, replaced by a vulnerable individual requiring direction to cope with her confused emotions.
Bloomfield would be editing his latest film with Alan Alda in London, where the producers were providing a luxury flat near Buckingham Palace for three months. Amiel was excited. Since her own career as a freelance writer had ground to a near halt, the change would be stimulating. Her relationship with Bloomfield was friendly but no longer passionate. She could use the trip to develop her skills as a hostess. In anticipation of dinner parties, she invested heavily in weighing scales, cooking dishes, recipe books and measuring spoons. To the surprise of Lazlo Kovacs, a guest at one of her London dinner parties, she wore a stopwatch around her neck. Anxiously she watched the seconds tick away. ‘Quick, finish your plate,’ she urged, ‘the next course is coming.’ Everyone, including Bloomfield, would recall the fuss rather than the meal.
Life in London offered a good chance for Amiel to renew her relations with the Buckmans, especially Irene, her father’s older sister, and Peter, her cousin. ‘Do you think it’s too scandalous?’ she asked, modelling a revealing bikini in front of Peter Buckman. Did her choice, she was anxious to know, defy the propriety expected of a Jewish princess? Buckman assured her that she looked beautiful. Meeting the Buckmans was fun, especially Uncle Bernard, the businessman and property developer. ‘You’re very proud of him, aren’t you?’ said Bloomfield. Amiel nodded. Her uncle’s large house in Hampstead, the country home he had bought his son, his own houses on the Côte d’Azur and in St Moritz, his big car and a suspected Swiss bank account excited a woman who wanted wealth but also remained committed to some socialist ideals. In one respect, Bernard Buckman was a mini-idol for both George and Barbara. During his many business trips to China he had met Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai, the Communist leaders, whom they both venerated. Plaintively, Amiel urged Bernard Buckman to negotiate Mao’s approval of a film which would feature Edgar Snow, the author of Red Star