Elaine Steinbeck: Keeper Of The Flame

It would be hard to imagine a more ardent keeper-of-the-flame than Elaine Steinbeck, the spirit behind the global celebrations engendered by her late husband John's literary legacy.

Shuttling between Steinbeck festivals all over the world, the Nobel laureate's widow in the last year alone visited Singapore, Bali, Java, Hong Kong, Paris, London, and Louisville, Ky., to speak at events honoring the great writer of proletarian fiction.

"I represent John, you know," she said in her warm Texas drawl during an interview at her house in Sag Harbor. "I'll travel anyplace that wants me." The annual festival in the writer's hometown of Salinas, Calif., naturally wants her every year.

For The People

Last year she charmed Bruce Springsteen into giving a concert to benefit the Steinbeck Research Center at San Jose State University. His latest album is "The Ghost of Tom Joad," named for "The Grapes of Wrath" hero.

"That was a big load of tax-free money," Ms. Steinbeck said with relish. "Bruce was a great fan who felt that John wrote for the people just as he sings for people. He knows John's work perfectly."

What with all her jetting about, Ms. Steinbeck has learned how to spot her husband's name on the spine of a book in almost any language except, oddly, Japanese. When she asked a Tokyo bookseller if he carried the works of John Steinbeck, "Of course," came the reply. "We have 'The Angry Raisins.' "

Steinbeck Vs. Albee

Such startling cultural exchanges have tickled her for years. After Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize in 1962, President Kennedy asked him to visit Russia as the guest of the Soviet Writers Union.

"John agreed to go if he could take along Edward Albee, whom he'd never met, and kick up a little dust," she said. "We spent three months behind the Iron Curtain, John and Edward, the older and younger writers, disagreeing publicly about almost everything."

"They made the front page of Pravda: 'U.S. Sends Dissenting Artists!' The Russians were embarrassed by their outspokenness. It was great fun, and the two men were wonderful together."

Passion For Theater

Ms. Steinbeck began life with a passion for the theater she still has today. Born and bred in Fort Worth, she was reading her way through Shakespeare by third grade and acting in all the school plays. Supportive parents took her to every show that came to town.

As a senior in high school she attended a famous touring company's production of "Hamlet."

"I went crazy. I went backstage and met all the actors, and I held Yorick's skull in my hands. Then I ran home to Poppa. 'Shakespeare didn't mean for us to read his work,' I told him. 'He meant for us to see it and hear it; it wasn't even published when he was alive.' My father thought that was the smartest thing!"

Backstage Talent

Ms. Steinbeck went on to study acting at the University of Texas School of Drama in Austin, where she met a lot of theater people, including Eli Wallach, and married her first husband, Zachary Scott.

A job offer from New York's Theater Guild, big Broadway producers at the time, brought the couple to the Westport (Conn.) County Playhouse, Mr. Scott as an actor and she as an assistant stage manager.

"I wanted to act, originally, and I told Zach I was as good as he was," she said. "But I was also good at the technical part. In those days there were no TV soaps or commercials, and if you didn't have a job in the theater you had to work at Macy's - the kiss of death."

"I was told the backstage crews - the carpenters, electricians, and prop people - would never listen to a woman. But I found that since I knew what I was doing, they would so listen, and I was never without a job."

Tennessee's Retort

She assistant stage-managed Tennessee Williams's first play, "Battle of Angels," which was so bad it closed out of town. "The language was there, but he didn't know theater yet."

"We all read him our notes after the opening in New Haven - Tennessee loved me to tell this story - and when we were done criticizing his play, he said, 'I put it down thataway, and that's the only way I know how to put it down.' End of show. He'd never heard the word 're-write.' "

Later, the great playwright asked her to add this to the story: "Tennessee finally realized he hadn't paid enough attention to audience reaction, so he started going to the theater and listening to audiences. Then he went home and wrote 'The Glass Menagerie.' "

She laughed heartily. "As if it were that easy!"

World War II brought the Scotts to Hollywood, where Mr. Scott filled in for some of the movie stars who were serving in the armed forces. "All the film people lived in a heap and never saw anyone outside the heap. I couldn't stand that; my passion was still the theater."

Returning to her stage-managing career in New York, Ms. Steinbeck worked her way up until she became the second woman ever to manage a show on Broadway, as stage manager of the original "Oklahoma!"

"I guess if you can say that, you've done all right," she said.

Then she met John Steinbeck, and they fell in love. "He was divorced. I wasn't divorced, but I was sad; I had no business being married in the first place."

Steinbeck Country

He drove her all around Steinbeck country, pointing out where he'd written "Tortilla Flat," "Of Mice and Men," "Cannery Row," and the epic "The Grapes of Wrath," among other stories about life in the dust bowl states during the Depression and among the itinerant farm laborers of California.

In Salinas, they came to his childhood home. "I was born in that room, and wrote in that room," he told her. "I don't remember a time I didn't write."

When they were married in 1950, his children from a former marriage became her children, too. The couple lived on Manhattan's Upper East Side near Elia Kazan and Arthur Miller, "in this wonderful atmosphere where everyone was writing plays and novels."

To Sag Harbor

Mr. Steinbeck sat down to write "East of Eden" the minute they were settled. Averse to reading fiction while he was writing it, he asked her to sample the latest novels. He was already a fan of Norman Mailer, but along came James Jones's "From Here To Eternity," which she recommended.

" 'Find that young man,' he told me. I did, and Jim and his wife, Gloria, became our fast friends. John was also crazy about Irwin Shaw and lots of other writers. Although he could be unforgiving, he was never jealous. He had nothing but admiration for people who wrote good books."

The Steinbecks bought their house in Sag Harbor in 1955 (the Joneses bought in Bridgehampton), eventually building a little house on a point of land for him to write in. She indicated a small, gazebo-like structure overlooking the water, now something of a shrine. A delegation of five Estonians was expected to visit it later in the day.

Joyous Gard

"John named it Joyous Gard, after the castle where Lancelot took Guinevere," Ms. Steinbeck said. "Then he gave me a little swimming pool for my birthday, and had the workmen pour a dollop of cement on the grass beside it, where he wrote my birthday greeting with a nail, Lancelot's salute to his beloved: 'Lady, I take record of God, in thee I have mine earthly joy. '"

He was a difficult man when he was writing, said Ms. Steinbeck. He never breakfasted with the family, but drove up to Main Street with his standard poodle, Charlie, of "Travels With Charlie," to eat and talk with the fishermen. Then he'd hole up in Joyous Gard with his yellow pads and two dozen sharpened pencils, and work.

"He kept strict hours at his desk," she said. "For a totally uncreative but appreciative person like me, it was a thrilling discipline. That's one reason our marriage was so successful: Some wives think they can write, too, but I never thought that."

Nobel Laureate

News of the Nobel Prize came by accident one morning at the height of the Cuban missile crisis.

"I was frying bacon in the kitchen and told John to switch on the TV to make sure the world was still turning. On my sacred word of honor, the first thing we heard was that he had won the prize for literature. We just stood there and screamed."

"Although John had wanted Graham Greene to get it, he enjoyed it thoroughly. So many letters came in we hired three secretaries to help answer them. John wrote the fun ones himself. He was crazy about Grace Kelly, and wrote her: 'Dear Princess Grace honey....'"

The Third Act

Last winter Ms. Steinbeck suffered two strokes, one in Key West, Fla., and one back in New York. "My doctor had warned me to settle down a little now that I was in my 80s," she said. "I guess he meant it. Thank heavens I wasn't crippled."

Now she plans to rest a little more, but keep her life basically the same. "I'll never marry again. I didn't decide to make John my life, but it just happened. It was fun, and it still is."

She'll answer the enormous correspondence that comes in, travel with family and friends, and talk about her husband's work along the way, lending purpose to the journey.

She'll also indulge her enduring passion for the theater. Both a trustee and a patron of Bay Street Theatre, she is also a close friend of its founders, directors, producers, playwrights, actors, and other guiding lights.

"I'm mad about Bay Street," she said. "This is the third act of my life, and thank God I've got a theater to play it in."