Brendan Behan is one of our most celebrated playwrights and one of our most notorious hell-raisers. In this extract from a new book about his exploits in America, Dave Hannigan tells the story of the day Behan tried to turn vinegar into wine…
Having slipped into a coma during the night, Brendan Behan woke the next morning in the intensive care ward of New York’s University Hospital but his mind was miles away. Three thousand miles away in Dublin in fact. The 40 year old was convinced his wife had him committed to a place he described in his manic shouting at the nurses and doctors as “The Gorman,” shorthand for Grangegorman mental hospital, an institution he lived in fear of ever spending time in. As soon as he was strong enough to walk, he made his first escape bid while wearing just a pair of hospital pyjamas.
That was the angry sight which greeted his wife Beatrice, his editor Rae Jeffs and his friend George Kleinsinger when they came walking along the corridor to check on him. As he made a go for Beatrice, Jeffs intervened and brought him into a ward to try to convince him he wasn’t actually in Dublin. She even had another patient explain to this manic bare-footed figure spewing all sorts of bile that this was a regular hospital in New York where the poor bystander was being treated for a duodenal ulcer. A logical approach to take except Behan wasn’t easily convinced.
There was another bid for freedom later that morning. This time, the Dubliner was only wearing the top half of his pyjamas. Quite the sight as he made a run for it, telling anybody who’d listen he was leaving because they wouldn’t give him a drink. Kleinsinger tried his best to persuade the half-naked Behan to return to bed and to find his pants and Beatrice reassured him again and again this was most certainly not Grangegorman. All to no avail. Behan reached the elevator still claiming the hospital was not a hospital but “a puzzle factory.” Eventually, Dr. Max Tasler brought him up in the elevator to one of the higher floors and stood him by a window that offered a spectacular view of the Manhattan skyline.
If that finally convinced him he wasn’t in a mental asylum in Ireland, he was still bent on leaving the place. Tasler reasoned with him and they did a deal. He’d stay if the good doctor would bring him a bottle of beer. Hardly recommended medical practice, Tasler thought it was worth bending the rules to keep him where they could treat him. In any case, the contract was soon broken. Behan decided he needed to get out, beer or not, and fast. Now totally frustrated at this man whose life he’d saved the previous day, Tasler gave up and sent somebody to bring the soon-to-be ex-patient the clothes he came in.
“He just got dressed and left, we hadn’t even finished the tests,” said a hospital spokesman.
Even his departure was freighted with drama. On the way down in the elevator, Behan had a panic attack when he saw a patient on a stretcher. Frantic, he demanded to be let off at the next floor which just happened to be where the cafeteria was located. He approached the counter and asked for a beer. Trying to keep the peace, Kleinsinger whispered to the canteen lady to give him anything that was available. Before she could pour him an apple juice, he was on the move again. He had spotted another woman decanting vinegar from a pitcher into a jar. What happened next would become part of folklore.
He grabbed the pitcher and slurped down the vinegar in almost one go. The poor woman looked shocked. Kleinsinger was horrified. Behan was typically stoic. “It’s kind of bitter, George,” he said. The type of incident that might be regarded as an urban legend except there were multiple witnesses and he had previous in this regard – John Ryan, one of his closest Dublin pals, used to tell a story of him quaffing a bottle of aftershave on a flight one time. At any rate, his hasty departure from the hospital was news.
New York’s newspapers delighted in misreporting that Behan had fled the hospital without the knowledge of the authorities. In one version of the tale, he had called O Henry’s restaurant in Greenwich Village and ordered a meal to be sent over. When the delivery boy reached the ward, carrying two sirloins, two baked potatoes and a large salad, Behan’s bed was empty and the alarm was raised. The type of story that could easily have happened. That it never did didn’t stop it becoming part of the myth.
“Of course, the people at the hospital weren’t too keen on his leaving,” said Beatrice when a reporter called for an update, “but they couldn’t persuade him to stay.”
Behan and his entourage caught a cab back to the Chelsea Hotel where he was brought up to his room and put to bed, at which point his miraculous powers of recovery went to work. He awoke the next morning talking perfect sense. The immediate danger having passed, he had, of course, only one thing on his mind.
Beatrice begged him, yet again, not to hit the bottle. Yet again, he ignored her entreaties and set off for the Oasis, a bar on 23rd Street where the beer cost 15 cents and the owner Willie Garfinkel was the type of old school New York barkeep that Behan loved dealing with. Barely 24 hours after being close to death in intensive care, his life had returned to the old routine, drinking and when there was drinking, there was, inevitably, going to be more trouble…..
Dave Hannigan’s Behan in the USA: The Rise and Fall of the Most Famous Irishman in New York is published by Ballpoint Press and available from booksellers everywhere
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