Remembering lyricist Alan Bergman

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli. Today, we're going to remember lyricist Alan Bergman, half of the long-running songwriting duo with his wife Marilyn Bergman. Here's a sampling of some of their songs.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE WAY WE WERE")

BARBRA STREISAND: (Singing) Memories light the corners of my mind. Misty watercolor memories of the way we were.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THAT FACE")

FRED ASTAIRE: (Singing) That face, that face, that wonderful face, it shines. It glows all over the place.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING THE REST OF YOUR LIFE?")

JOHNNY MATHIS: (Singing) What are you doing the rest of your life? North and south and east and west of your life. I have only one request of your life, that you spend it all with me.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NICE 'N' EASY")

FRANK SINATRA: (Singing) Let's take it nice and easy. It's going to be so easy for us to fall in love.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YOU MUST BELIEVE IN SPRING")

TONY BENNETT: (Singing) When lonely feelings chill the meadows of your mind, just think - if winter comes, can spring be far behind? Beneath the deepest snows, the secret of a rose is merely that it knows you must believe in spring.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SUMMER WISHES, WINTER DREAMS")

ABBEY LINCOLN: (Singing) Summer wishes, winter dreams, drifting down forgotten streams.

BIANCULLI: Songs by Alan and Marilyn Bergman. Alan Bergman died last week at the age of 99. His wife Marilyn died in 2022. Their songs won Oscars, Grammys and Golden Globes and were popularized by Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Fred Astaire and Barbra Streisand, just to name a few. The Bergmans also wrote the words to the TV theme songs for the sitcoms "Maude," "Alice" and "Good Times." The couple collaborated on songs for more than 60 years.

We're going to listen back to some of Terry's 2007 interview with Alan and Marilyn Bergman. At the time, Alan Bergman had released a CD of him singing many of their songs. The couple met through composer Lew Spence. The three of them collaborated on a song that was written for Frank Sinatra. It became the title track of an album he released in 1960.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NICE 'N' EASY")

SINATRA: (Singing) Let's take it nice and easy. It's going to be so easy for us to fall in love. Hey, baby. What's your hurry? Relax. Don't you worry. We're going to fall in love. We're on the road to romance. That's safe to say, but let's make all the stops along the way. The problem now, of course, is to simply hold your horses. To rush would be a crime 'cause nice and easy does it every time.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

TERRY GROSS: How did you come up with the phrase nice and easy, which became the title of the song and Sinatra's album?

ALAN BERGMAN: Yeah. Well, when you write for somebody like Frank Sinatra, who has a definite personality, you try to write - it's easy to write a custom-made suit for him, you know. He's very theatrical. He has a definite character. And we felt, because they wanted something that was easy swinging, that nice and easy - the phrase, that nice and easy does it every time would be good for him.

MARILYN BERGMAN: It also had a kind of subtext to be a little sexy, which certainly also was part of Sinatra.

GROSS: This is one of those many songs about sex that isn't literally about sex, but it's absolutely about sex.

(LAUGHTER)

M BERGMAN: Yes, it is.

(LAUGHTER)

M BERGMAN: Yes, it is.

GROSS: Did he ever ask - did Sinatra ever ask you to write for him after having such success with this song?

A BERGMAN: Yes (laughter). Yes, he did, several times. There was one time we received a call from him that said, I want you to write me a 10-minute number. And we said, about what? He said, well, you know, boy meets girl. Boy gets girl. Boy loses girl and so on. And we said to him, well, that's really been written. He said, you'll figure it out. He used to call us the kids, and he said, you kids, you'll figure it out. And he said, get Michel Legrand to be the composer. And Michel's father was very sick at the time, and Michel couldn't do it. So we called him and said, is John Williams OK? It was Johnny Williams. It was - he was not the, you know, well-known conductor-composer then. And we said, John, would you like to do this? And he said, yeah, let's do it.

M BERGMAN: So we wrote a 10-minute piece, which incidentally he wanted for his nightclub act. So we wrote a piece that talked about the fact that the protagonist of the piece - in this case, the singer - fell in love with the same woman over and over and over. I don't mean literally the same woman, but, you know, the same woman. And each love affair ended badly. And I think I remember the phrase, the same hello, the same goodbye. And when we finished it, we called him and told him that we had finished it, and he asked us if we would come down to Palm Springs, where he had a home and play it for him.

M BERGMAN: So the three of us drove down to Palm Springs, and we got to his - I started to say house, but more like a compound, actually. And he opened the door himself when we finally made our way to the house. And Alan sang the song for him. Alan, what was that experience? You tell it.

A BERGMAN: Well, he was sitting on an ottoman in front of me, and I sang for 10 minutes. You know, that's a long time. When I was finished, he was crying. And he said to Marilyn, how do you know so much about me? As if his life was such...

M BERGMAN: Such a closed book.

A BERGMAN: Such a closed book, you know? But it must have hit some nerve. And he said, I have to learn this. This is terrific. I love it. And - but he never learned it.

M BERGMAN: Every time we would see him...

A BERGMAN: Yes.

M BERGMAN: ...He would say, I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that.

A BERGMAN: Kids, I'm going to do that. Don't - you know.

M BERGMAN: But he never did.

A BERGMAN: He never.

M BERGMAN: But it was a very nice experience, I must say.

A BERGMAN: Yeah.

GROSS: Now, you've written a lot of songs for movies. Some of your best-known songs are songs you wrote for movies. You haven't written that much for theater. How did you gravitate to writing songs for movies?

M BERGMAN: I think maybe movies made a deeper impression growing up, and we always knew that we wanted to write in a dramatic context. We were more interested in that than we were in just writing songs in limbo. Writing for - in a narrative or dramatic context, when we were honing craft, you can't write for a picture unless somebody hires you, you know? So it's like an actor not being able to act unless he gets a job or she gets a job. So we would do exercises. We would find either short stories or scenes from plays or articles in the newspaper and pretend that they were assignments. And we wrote many, many, many songs that never saw the light of day, but were exercises that we gave ourselves. So I like to think that when the first job came, we were ready.

GROSS: Well, let's listen to Alan Bergman sing. This is "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?" which was written for the 1969 film "The Happy Ending." The composer was Michel Legrand. Why don't you tell us the story behind the song before we hear it?

M BERGMAN: Richard Brooks, who was a wonderful writer and director, directed and wrote this film called "The Happy Ending," which I think was well ahead of its time and occasionally will appear on very, very late-night television but really didn't find an audience. Anyway, he came to us one day and said, I want you to write me a song that is to appear twice in the film, early in the film. I want it to be - I want it to function as perhaps a proposal of marriage between these two young lovers. But I want to hear the song again at the end of the film, at which time the wife, they since married, 16 years later, the wife has become alcoholic and has left her husband and is in a bar and goes to a jukebox and selects a song and then sits down with a lineup of martinis in front of her. And he shot this beautiful montage of Jean Simmons, who played the wife, during which time she drifts into kind of reverie while listening to the same song. And he said, I don't want you to change a note or a word, but I want this song to mean something very different when you hear it the second time.

So that was a very interesting, challenging assignment. And Michel Legrand wrote perhaps, I don't know, six or eight tunes as his wont for this part. And they were all beautiful, but none really struck the three of us as being right. And we said to him - 'cause while he was writing music, we were sitting trying to solve the dramatic question of what the song should be about. We said to him, what happens if the first line of the song is, what are you doing the rest of your life? And he said, oh, I like that. And he put his hands on the keys. And as long as it takes to play that song, that's what he played from beginning to end. And he said, you mean something like that? And we said, no, we mean exactly like that.

GROSS: (Laughter).

M BERGMAN: And Alan said to him, play it again. And he said, oh, I don't remember quite what I played. Luckily, we had the tape machine going. So we had the music.

GROSS: So...

M BERGMAN: And then we zipped through it.

GROSS: ...The first line of the song inspired the melody.

M BERGMAN: Exactly.

GROSS: Yes.

M BERGMAN: Exactly.

A BERGMAN: But that happens sometimes. With Michel, we can't write lyrics first. We prefer not to write lyrics first. We prefer to have the melody. We feel that, when we have the melody, that there are words on the tips of those notes, and we have to find them.

GROSS: Well, let's hear Alan Bergman singing "What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life?" that he and Marilyn Bergman co-wrote.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING THE REST OF YOUR LIFE?")

A BERGMAN: (Singing) What are you doing the rest of your life? North and south and east and west of your life. I have only one request of your life - that you spend it all with me. All the seasons and the times of your days, all the nickels and the dimes of your days. Let the reasons and the rhymes of your days all begin and end with me. I want to see your face in every kind of light, in fields of dawn and forests of the night.

BIANCULLI: That's Alan Bergman, singing a song he wrote with his wife, Marilyn Bergman. We'll get back to Terry's 2007 interview with the Bergmans after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

This is FRESH AIR. Lyricist Alan Bergman died last week at the age of 99. We're listening back to our interview with him and his wife, co-writer Marilyn Bergman, from 2007.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

GROSS: You were both writing lyrics for the composer Lew Spence, who wrote the melody...

A BERGMAN: Yes.

GROSS: ...For "Nice and Easy," which was one of...

M BERGMAN: Yes.

A BERGMAN: Right.

GROSS: ...Your first hits. And, Marilyn, the way you described it, one of you was his morning lyricist and the other was his afternoon lyricist. How did he end up having two different lyricists?

M BERGMAN: Because I like to sleep late.

A BERGMAN: (Laughter) And it was early in our careers and, you know, we were feeling - trying to find out who we are, what we're saying. And he was writing.

M BERGMAN: I mean, he was talented.

A BERGMAN: Yeah.

GROSS: You were both independently writing lyrics for Lew Spence. You met...

M BERGMAN: With Lew Spence.

GROSS: ...Through him.

A BERGMAN: With, yes.

GROSS: Oh, with Lew Spence?

M BERGMAN: With Lew Spence.

GROSS: OK.

A BERGMAN: Yeah.

M BERGMAN: Yes.

GROSS: OK. You met through him, and then you decided that you should be writing lyrics with each other.

A BERGMAN: Yeah.

GROSS: So...

A BERGMAN: And we wrote a song that day.

GROSS: Yeah?

A BERGMAN: We just - the first day we were introduced to each other, we wrote a song. It was a terrible song, but the - we love the process. We enjoy the process. And we - that - from that day on, we've been writing together.

GROSS: Can you share a few bars of the awful song?

M BERGMAN: Oh, my God. I was afraid...

A BERGMAN: I only know the title.

GROSS: Which was?

A BERGMAN: "I Never Knew What Hit Me."

M BERGMAN: Ouch.

GROSS: (Laughter).

A BERGMAN: Something like that. Ouch is right.

GROSS: So, Alan Bergman, Johnny Mercer was your mentor. How were...

A BERGMAN: Yes.

GROSS: ...You lucky enough to get...

A BERGMAN: Yes.

GROSS: ...To know him?

A BERGMAN: Well, I met him when I was in graduate school at UCLA. And he heard some things I had written, and he took a liking to me. And we - he spent, you know, over a period of two or three years - yeah, he would call me and say, I know all you're doing is working. And this is before I met Marilyn. And he would - we would go down with his family to Newport, where he had a place, where he had a house, and we would spend the weekend. He would sit at the piano and listen to me play and sing. He liked the way I sang, and he was just terrific. I mean, I wouldn't be talking to you without him. He was just marvelous to me.

GROSS: So...

A BERGMAN: Yeah.

GROSS: What was some of the best advice that Johnny Mercer ever gave you about songwriting?

A BERGMAN: Well, you know, he just outlined the craft about singing. Yeah. You're writing for an instrument, and you have to respect that. And about - a lot about imagery. More - it would be more, you can do better than that. It wouldn't be specific, really, which was great because that helped. The more specific he would - I think teachers get, the less you are - you feel free to express yourself. And some of the early songs of mine, you can hear Johnny Mercer in them, trying to emulate him till I found and we found our own voice.

GROSS: Alan Bergman, one of the songs you sing on your new album lyrically is a song that you say was an engagement gift to Marilyn...

A BERGMAN: Yes.

GROSS: ...Bergman.

A BERGMAN: Yes.

GROSS: And the song is "That Face," which was first recorded by Fred Astaire.

A BERGMAN: Yeah.

GROSS: So before we hear you sing it, what's the story behind this song?

A BERGMAN: Well, Lew Spence, who wrote the music - he was going out with a girl, and Marilyn and I were going out together. And I wanted to ask you to marry me and have a - some kind of engagement, but I didn't have any money. So we wrote this song, and we did get a - we got an appointment with Fred Astaire. Fred Astaire was Marilyn's favorite singer. She loved the way he sang. And...

M BERGMAN: Still do.

GROSS: Me too.

A BERGMAN: Oh, yes. Well, you know, the - just to digress for a second, you know, the literature of the popular music in this country would be much poorer without a Fred Astaire because all those great writers - Berlin, the Gershwins, Cole Porter - and so they all wrote for him. Johnny Mercer. So we got - wangled an appointment with Fred Astaire and sang him the song. He said - before I listen, he said, I - he owned a record company. He said, I only record what I sing in movies, but I'll listen. He was very sweet. And so we played and sang him the song, and he said, I'm going to record this next week. And he did. And I handed Marilyn this record, and I said...

M BERGMAN: And I married him.

A BERGMAN: And she married me. Yeah.

GROSS: Let's hear you sing it from the new Alan Bergman CD, "Lyrically."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THAT FACE")

A BERGMAN: (Singing) That face, that face, that wonderful face. It shines. It glows all over the place. And how I love to watch it change expression. Each look becomes the prize of my possession. I love that face, that face. It just isn't fair. You must forgive the way that I stare. But never will these eyes behold a sight that could replace that face, that face, that face.

BIANCULLI: That's Alan Bergman. He and his wife, co-lyricist Marilyn, spoke with Terry Gross in 2007. He died last week at the age of 99. She died in 2022. After a break, we listen back to a 1989 interview with Jessica Mitford, one of the aristocratic, unconventional Mitford sisters. They're the subject of a new BritBox drama series. And I'll review the new Dexter spinoff, "Dexter: Resurrection." I'm David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR.

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, professor of television studies at Rowan University. Jessica Mitford was famous for several reasons. One reason was her investigative books, including her best-known one, "The American Way Of Death," published in 1963. It revealed how the funeral industry was financially taking advantage of grief-stricken Americans. It was a bestseller and led to congressional hearings on the industry. Another reason Mitford was famous was that she was committed to radical causes throughout her life. In the 1950s, as a former member of the Communist Party, she refused to give any information to the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Mitford grew up in the English countryside, the daughter of a lord, which gets to yet another source of her notoriety. She was one of England's most unusual groups of sisters. There were six Mitford girls, including Unity, who briefly was romantically involved with Hitler, Diana, who married Oswald Mosley, the head of Britain's Union of Fascists, and Nancy, who became a popular novelist. The sisters are now the subject of a new BritBox drama series titled "Outrageous." In my recent review of the TV show, I called it and the Mitford sisters fascinating. Jessica Mitford died in 1996. Terry Gross spoke with her seven years earlier in 1989.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

TERRY GROSS: Jessica Mitford, welcome to FRESH AIR.

JESSICA MITFORD: Thanks.

GROSS: There's so much I want to talk with you about your life. Let's start kind of way back (laughter)...

MITFORD: How far?

GROSS: ...In your childhood. When you were a young girl from a prosperous family growing up in the English countryside, reading pacifist and leftist literature and getting very excited about it, what was the initial appeal to you of it?

MITFORD: Well, you know, I've thought this over since. I believe, actually, that one is very much the product of one's own time. I mean, the '60s people were a product of their time, weren't they? Now, I was a '30s person. In other words, I was born in 1917. So by 1930, I was about 13 years old, reading everything I could lay hands on, like most children, and sort of fascinated with the growing politics all around me. It was the Depression in England - tremendous poverty, huge areas called, you know, unemployable areas - and then there was fascism rising abroad. So these things made me think.

GROSS: You're talking about how you think of yourself as being a product of your time. But it's fascinating how, as a product of your time, you became a leftist, yet two of your sisters became fascists. And it's really so hard to imagine sisters in the same family growing up so different. Do you have any explanation for it?

MITFORD: I never have been able to figure it out myself, frankly. I've been asked that a lot, lots of times.

GROSS: I'm sure you have.

MITFORD: Yeah. But, I mean, the thing is, though, that some say it's sibling rivalry, which I don't believe really. I really don't think so. I don't think we were jealous of each other. It was just that I happened to see things differently from the beginning.

GROSS: Did you - because you were so opposed to fascism, did you find yourself hating your sisters when they became fascists?

MITFORD: Not really. That's the odd thing. I was always deeply fond of my sister Unity. I mean, she was one of my very favorite people in the world. And what I did realize was that our divergent views politically were going to inevitably lead to a huge, well, end of friendship, in fact, which in fact they did.

GROSS: You kept a running-away account when you were young...

MITFORD: Yeah.

GROSS: ...Money so that you could run away from home. But what you ended up using your running-away account for was to try to go to Spain...

MITFORD: Right.

GROSS: ...With the man who you later married.

MITFORD: That's it, yeah. And there was just the right amount, 50 pounds.

GROSS: And this was during the Spanish Civil War.

MITFORD: Yeah.

GROSS: And you already knew which side (laughter)...

MITFORD: Oh, yeah.

GROSS: ...You were on. You kind of went from this quiet, rural country life, the daughter of a lord, to suddenly being a political radical, involved in a revolution, a young married woman married to someone who was also from a wealthy background. Your husband was the nephew of Winston Churchill.

MITFORD: Right. Yes.

GROSS: I wonder if you started to see your own families as the opposition.

MITFORD: Whether I ever saw them?

GROSS: If you saw them as the opposition...

MITFORD: Oh, if I saw them as the opposition.

GROSS: ...In the political...

MITFORD: Oh.

GROSS: ...Battles you were waging.

MITFORD: Absolutely. Yeah. See, both my parents went completely on the side of Hitler, which was very surprising. You know, we were brought up in the shadow of the first world war, in a way. And in those days, you see, the Huns, they were the filthy Huns who had killed uncle Clem (ph) and numerous other relations in the first world war - people, of course, that I never knew 'cause I was just born during that time. And then all of a sudden, that - Hitler became a tremendous star. He did away with the labor unions, with the Communist Party. He was doing away with the Jews. And you can't discount the amount of antisemitism that goes on in the English upper class.

GROSS: Jessica Mitford is my guest. You lost your first husband in action in 1941...

MITFORD: Right. Yeah.

GROSS: ...During the war. He was 23 years old. You, just before that, lost your baby who...

MITFORD: Yes.

GROSS: ...Died of measles, I read it was.

MITFORD: The one that - born in Rotherhithe Street. Right.

GROSS: You were young. You were in your 20s. Did you despair at that point that your life was over? I think it must've been so hard to suffer those two losses at such a young age.

MITFORD: Well, also, by then, I had another baby born in 1941, Dinky - Constancia Romilly - who now lives in Atlanta. She's a nurse there, in fact. And, I mean, that was ages ago. She's now 48, absolutely ancient. I can't believe it. But anyhow - so she was my great standby and steadfast friend. And anyhow, you know, when you're young, I suppose life goes on, and especially if you've got a baby to look after and support. And so I got various jobs with the government and other places, you know.

GROSS: Let's move ahead a little bit.

MITFORD: Yeah.

GROSS: You wrote about your membership in the Communist Party in your book, "A Fine Old Conflict." What got you to join when you did?

MITFORD: Well, you see, in the first place, I'd always been a terrific supporter of the Communist Party in England ever since I was about 15 because if you sort of studied the times, in those days, you know, well, the Communists were in the forefront of the fight for the rights of unemployed, I mean, and an end to things like the means test, which was a rotten sort of Tory ploy to prevent the unemployed from collecting unemployed insurance or welfare. And then they were also in the forefront of the fight against fascism, both in Germany and Italy, but in Spain above all. It was the Communists who recruited all the young people who went - who flocked from all over the world into the International Brigade, of which Esmond Romilly was one, and that's how I met him. And then we sort of ran off to Spain together, you know. So that was sort of the progression of that.

And then - but we never actually joined the party, Esmond and I, in those days. After Esmond was killed, I stayed in Washington with my baby, Dinky - Constancia Romilly. So then I remarried, in 1943, Bob Treuhaft, a lawyer who I met in the OPA, where I was working. And that was in San Francisco. We moved out to San Francisco. And there, again, the Communist Party, in those years, seemed to me the absolute sort of loadstar or the kind of backbone really, if you like, of all progressive left-wing movements, the ones - the steadfast supporters of rights of Black people, that kind of thing. And this is what made us determined to join. So we did join in 1943 and remained members, in fact, until '58, which was quite a longish time.

GROSS: What got you to leave in 1958?

MITFORD: Well, by 1958, in the first place, the Khrushchev report about the crimes of Stalin had come out, and as a consequence of that, an awful lot of people flocked out of the CP. Not - I didn't at the time. That was in 1956, in fact. And then came the invasion of Hungary, and then came Czechoslovakia and so on, and more and more people flocked out. It was getting to be a waste of time. I'd be better off working with people in the main - in the movements on campuses, for instance, in the '60s and in the Black community.

GROSS: So many people were harassed during the McCarthy period, and so many lives were ruined. I'm thinking that it must've been hard to harass someone like you, someone who had been outspoken all of her life and who had already, like, a reputation for eccentricity because of her family. I mean, did you feel like, what can you do to hurt me?

MITFORD: Well, I did it a little bit. Yeah. I'll tell you what I really felt, which is that the hell with them sort of thing. I mean, we were subpoenaed. Bob Treuhaft, my husband...

GROSS: Your husband, yeah.

MITFORD: ...And I were both subpoenaed. And I was subpoenaed by not only the main House Committee on Un-American Activities, but also the local version of the same, the California committee and so on. And, well, I mean, what could you do? Actually, I - when I went, when I was subpoenaed by the main House committee, I was among a hundred people. There were sort of huge headlines in the Chronicle and other papers - 100 Bay Reds subpoenaed. Well, of course, if I hadn't been one of those, I'd have been rather miffed.

GROSS: (Laughter).

MITFORD: Do you know the feeling? Sort of rather annoyed. But anyhow, I was one, but they never finally called me. But what I found out was that they were bound to pay per diem - or was it? No. It wasn't per diem. It was travel allowance, so much a mile. And since we lived in Oakland, I put in for $40 for travel allowance for the week that I was forced to be there and then turned over the check to the Communist Party. I hoped to annoy them somehow, you know.

BIANCULLI: Jessica Mitford speaking to Terry Gross in 1989. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 1989 interview with author and activist Jessica Mitford. She and her aristocratic sisters are the subjects of the new BritBox drama series titled "Outrageous."

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

GROSS: In your memoir about your coming-of-age...

MITFORD: Yeah.

GROSS: ...called "Daughters And Rebels," you wrote that you - you confessed that you were guiltily looking forward to being a debutante.

MITFORD: Yeah.

GROSS: Now, I don't know if you ever had that experience or not, but certainly you became a very well-known leftist and left that society world. Your father wrote you out of his will...

MITFORD: Yeah.

GROSS: ...I think because you had named one of your children after Lenin. You called him Nicholas.

MITFORD: (Laughter) Yeah.

GROSS: Do you ever have any regrets about leaving wealth and privilege?

MITFORD: No. In fact, you know, when that happened, which is in '58, I happened to be in Mexico at the time, and to the horror of the landlady where I was staying, 'cause she somehow thought she was going to have to pay for the calls. There were phone calls from everywhere - from the London Evening Standard, from Canada, from all over the United States. What is your reaction to being cut out of your father's will? And I said, I have no reaction. I think people have every right to leave their money as they wish. And I wasn't expecting any, you know? And the sort of - the deflated journalists - you know how they hate that kind of bland answer. Anyhow...

GROSS: This could have been, I guess, a big thing if you...

MITFORD: If I was like, bah, you know, it's all screamed away or something, you know.

GROSS: But you had just assumed that you would...

MITFORD: Oh, of course. So I never expected it.

GROSS: And that when you make the decision to live your life as you do...

MITFORD: Yeah.

GROSS: ...You can't have it both ways.

MITFORD: Right.

GROSS: That was the effective...

MITFORD: Of course. Exactly. You said it.

GROSS: Jessica Mitford, let's talk a little bit about your writing. You're best known for the book "The American Way Of Death," your expose of the funeral industry. What led you to want to expose the horrors of the funeral industry and how they would get people when they were weak and take them for whatever they could.

MITFORD: Well, it is rather weird, I admit. You know, it's an odd subject, indeed. I think the thing is that Bob Treuhaft, my husband - who was a lawyer in Oakland - was representing numerous trade unions. And along about the middle 1950s, he began to notice, to his fury, that every time a union member died - the breadwinner of a family - the hard-fought-for union benefits meant to go to the widow and children would wind up being the price of the funeral. So he started organizing the Bay Area Funeral Society, a nonprofit thing, which I thought was rather boring, frankly. I mean, I said, well, look, we're robbed every day in the supermarkets...

GROSS: (Laughter).

MITFORD: ...And by the landlords and things. So why pick on the wretched undertakers - until I began reading the trade magazines.

GROSS: Oh, what did you see in there?

MITFORD: Oh, God. Well, the titles would lead you on - Mortuary Management, Casket And Sunnyside - one - Casket And Sunnyside - and my favorite title of all, you know, which really makes you think - Concept: The Journal Of Creative Ideas For Cemeteries. Well, I mean, you know, if you saw those, wouldn't you be reading them like mad? I did. And I found therein a whole wonder world of the mortuary that I'd never known existed. You know, I hadn't known, for instance, that you could have a choice of foam rubber or whatchamacallit - inner spring mattress for your eternal sealer casket and that kind of thing. I started sending away for samples, and it was all so delightful. So then I started writing that book.

GROSS: Did you go undercover and pose as someone who had a deceased loved one so that you could shop for funeral arrangements...

MITFORD: Yeah, I did.

GROSS: ...To see what it was like?

MITFORD: I did quite a bit of that. That was one of the best parts of it, especially Forest Lawn in Los Angeles. That was tremendous fun.

GROSS: What was the experience there like?

MITFORD: Well, I mean, I went there. Actually, I went with a young man who is an American fellow who was teaching English history or something in one of the colleges there in Los Angeles. And so we made up that he was my nephew, and I was his English aunt, and my sister was dying or something, you see. And we wanted to make preneed arrangements. So I said we wanted to see everything. But in those days, by the way, Forest Lawn was - there was a price war on. a\And Forest Lawn was advertising on billboards, funerals from $145, you see, which sounded very reasonable. So I said to the grief therapist - they're not salesmen, you know. They're grief therapists. I said to the grief therapist, well, we want to see everything and the nature of all the coffins and I can choose the best - most appropriate.

So the first one we came to was $16,500. Now, you have to realize we're talking in the late 19 - no, the early 1960s. So you can double that or triple it or whatever for the inflation, what it - and I must say, it was rather magnificent, you know. And I looked at it longingly. And then I said, well, could we see the $145 one? And so, you know, he took ages finding it. It was all hidden away somewhere. And, my dear, it was purple. It had a purple...

GROSS: (Laughter).

MITFORD: ...Really hideous. And I said - I looked at it, and I said, my sister wouldn't be caught dead in that sort of thing, you know?

GROSS: (Laughter).

MITFORD: And so, then we kind of went along and saw all the different plots and blah, blah. And it was great fun.

GROSS: After writing "The American Way Of Death," did you find yourself in the position of having to genuinely prepare somebody's funeral and having to shop for real in the funeral industry?

MITFORD: I have, once or twice. But my favorite thing in that line, there was a man called Howard Gossage - extremely well known in San Francisco - but he died many years ago. He was a wonderful - he was an ad man, advertising writer. And when he was - oh, he did all those marvelous things in The New Yorker about the getaway car. I mean, it's all years old. I don't know if people remember it. But he was much more than that. He was a brilliant and funny fellow in all ways. So he was dying of leukemia, and we knew he was dying and not expected to live.

So one morning about 4, 5 a.m., his brother-in-law rang up and - who I hadn't met. And he said, Howard died in the middle of the night. And his last words to me was, when I go - and I think it'll be very soon now - be sure to get hold of Jessica because she knows how to nose out the cheapest coffin in this whole town.

GROSS: (Laughter).

MITFORD: So you know how when somebody dies, and the survivors, you know - you always sort of say - or people say, well, what can I - can I do anything? And the answer is no, obviously. But in this case, yes was the answer. So I went and collected the widow, who was a beautiful young actress. And together, we went - and my God, I got one for $150 all in, you know? And he was a rich man. And he would have been considered a super prize for the undertakers.

GROSS: Now, there was a casket named after you after your book came out, right?

MITFORD: Yeah (laughter).

GROSS: A kind of bargain basement, budget kind of casket.

MITFORD: Well, I know. It was such a marvelous idea, sort of industrialist in the Middle West had plans and specifications for the Jessica Mitford casket, which was going to be sort of made of plastic, I think, or something like that.

GROSS: Did they really make it?

MITFORD: I'm not sure. I never actually saw one. My sister Nancy said, oh, well, we all know that you get 10% royalties on those Mitfords.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: Jessica Mitford, it's been such a pleasure to have you here. I thank you very, very much for joining me.

MITFORD: Well, thank you. I've loved every minute.

BIANCULLI: Jessica Mitford speaking to Terry Gross in 1989. Jessica Mitford and her sisters are the subject of the new BritBox drama series titled "Outrageous." She died in 1996 at age 78. Coming up, I review "Dexter: Resurrection," the newest entry in the "Dexter" TV series, about a serial killer who hunts and kills other serial killers. This is FRESH AIR.

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm TV critic David Bianculli. The new TV series "Dexter: Resurrection" is the latest entry in the "Dexter" canon about a serial killer who targets other serial killers. The new series is available on Paramount+ and Showtime. And this weekend, "Dexter: Resurrection" presents its fourth episode, the one I consider the exciting turning point for this new series.

When "Dexter" premiered on Showtime in 2006, I loved it. Michael C. Hall, fresh off HBO's "Six Feet Under," played the title character Dexter Morgan. Dexter was so traumatized as a child by witnessing the murder of his mother that he grew up with unquenchable homicidal tendencies - tendencies his dad, Harry, a cop, channeled by teaching him to kill only bad people, specifically serial killers. "Dexter" arrived on TV at a time when the antihero was king - Tony Soprano on "The Sopranos," Vic Mackey on "The Shield," Walter White on "Breaking Bad." All of them had pushed the envelope of what audiences would accept from a morally complicated central character. But "Dexter" doubled down and went all in.

The apex of the original "Dexter" series came at the end of Season 4, featuring John Lithgow in a season-long guest appearance as the Trinity Killer. By that time in the series, Dexter had evolved to the point where he had a wife and a baby boy named Harrison and, in most respects, a normal family life, except that as Dexter hunted the Trinity Killer, the Trinity Killer was hunting him and ended up killing Dexter's wife and leaving their son in a pool of his mother's blood, traumatized, just as Dexter had been as a child.

Showrunner Clyde Phillips, who had overseen the series for four seasons, walked away after that season finale, which I always considered the perfect ending for the series, except it didn't end. Without Clyde Phillips, "Dexter" kept going for several more seasons, none of them any good. Eventually, Clyde Phillips returned to the franchise with two more "Dexter" series - a prequel called "Original Sin" and a sequel, "Dexter: New Blood." That show reintroduced Dexter's son, Harrison, now as a homicidal teenager, who, in the finale, shot Dexter dead with a hunting rifle. But as we learned in the opening episode of the new Paramount+ and Showtime series "Dexter: Resurrection," also developed by Clyde Phillips, Dexter was shot all right, but not shot dead. Instead, we found him in a 10-week coma, subject to a series of drug-induced dreams. He's visited in those dreams by several familiar faces from his past, including John Lithgow as the Trinity Killer.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "DEXTER: RESURRECTION")

JOHN LITHGOW: (As The Trinity Killer) You think Harrison's my fault, that I'm the bad guy? If you hadn't thought that you could live the dream, your wife would still be alive and your son wouldn't have been left to sit in a pool of his own mother's blood, just like you were at the same age. Maybe your precious son wouldn't have become a father killer like me.

MICHAEL C HALL: (As Dexter) He is nothing like you.

LITHGOW: (As The Trinity Killer) Let me give you a little advice, serial killer to serial killer. Where you went wrong was thinking you could have it all - a family and your dark passenger.

BIANCULLI: The first few episodes of "Dexter: Resurrection" are good, better than any "Dexter" show has been in years. But it's in Episode 4 where "Dexter: Resurrection" really comes back to life. Masquerading as a serial killer named Red, Dexter infiltrates a creepy dinner party hosted by a wealthy, twisted eccentric named Leon. Leon, played by Peter Dinklage, has an assistant, played by Uma Thurman, whom he dispatches to track down serial killers who are still at large and bribe them with a briefcase full of money to attend a very exclusive dinner party. Leon explains it all when he opens the doors of his mansion to Red, aka Dexter.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "DEXTER: RESURRECTION")

PETER DINKLAGE: (As Leon) I've been hosting this gathering for years. I know how unnerving it can be for someone like you to be found, but your secrets are safe with me. This is a safe space for people like you.

HALL: (As Dexter) Like you?

(As Dexter) Are you not like me?

DINKLAGE: (As Leon) Me? Oh (laughter). Goodness, no. I am just a huge fan.

BIANCULLI: And it's at the dinner party, when the usually antisocial killers meet and swap stories, where "Dexter: Resurrection" regains its formerly strong footing. These murderers are the beneficiary of some killer casting. They include Eric Stonestreet from "Modern Family," Krysten Ritter from "Breaking Bad" and Neil Patrick Harris from "How I Met Your Mother." In this upcoming scene from Episode 4, Dexter is using his phone to quickly research Lady Vengeance, the killer played by Krysten Ritter, when she sneaks up behind him and sees what he's up to. And very quickly another killer, played by Neil Patrick Harris, sneaks up, too, asking Lady Vengeance to fill his wineglass.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "DEXTER: RESURRECTION")

KRYSTEN RITTER: (As Lady Vengeance) Caught you.

HALL: (As Dexter) Sorry. I was just...

RITTER: (As Lady Vengeance) Internet stalking me? It's cool. I tried looking you up as well.

HALL: (As Dexter) You did?

RITTER: (As Lady Vengeance) Didn't find anything. So mysterious.

HALL: (As Dexter) It's annoying, right?

RITTER: (As Lady Vengeance) Very.

NEIL PATRICK HARRIS: (As The Tattoo Collector) Top me off, Miss Sommelier. Perfect.

(SOUNDBITE OF LIQUID POURING)

BIANCULLI: "Dexter: Resurrection" is full of old as well as new characters and has multiple murder investigations going on at once. The narrative is as interwoven and complicated as a DNA strand and relies on the acceptance of quite a few major coincidences. But it all works. Dexter is back, and Michael C. Hall is better than ever. Come for the party. Stay for the murders and the murderers.

(SOUNDBITE OF DANIEL LICHT'S "DEXTER: BLOOD THEME")

BIANCULLI: On Monday's show, Mariska Hargitay, best known as Olivia Benson on "Law & Order: SVU," talks about a different kind of role - being a daughter. In her new HBO documentary, "My Mom Jane," she explores the life of her late mother, Jayne Mansfield, and uncovers long-buried family truths. I hope you can join us.

FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Sam Briger is our managing producer. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorrock. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Herzfeld and Adam Staniszewski. For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm David Bianculli.

(SOUNDBITE OF DANIEL LICHT'S "DEXTER: BLOOD THEME")

Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.