Mud Was Simply in Love With L.A.

I will never speak to my pal Allan Malamud again. It pains me more, each minute I sit here thinking about him. I won’t hear that flat, deep monotone of Mud’s on my answering machine, “Give me a buzz at the paper,” nor see that big, beautiful, pumpkin face of his, in a booth at Musso’s or Monty’s or Dan Tana’s, or a hundred feet wide on a Hollywood screen.

He loved high-stakes blackjack and laying a bundle on a couple of fast horses. He loved noisy boxing rings and a Cadillac Eldorado that he exchanged for a newer model, every few years, and without fail drove to work, even though he lived walking distance away.

Those were his only expensive tastes, because Allan Malamud was a simple man, uncomplicated and straightforward, who loved everything about his lifelong home base of Los Angeles, from its teams to its tinsel. Even that for which he was known best, his newspaper column, “Notes on a Scorecard,” was the essence of simplicity, easy to read and absent of malice.

I probably spent more time socially with Mud than any of his colleagues at “the paper,” which was all he ever called it, but even I had never once been to his downtown apartment, where my friend was found Monday morning, dead of apparent natural causes. We had wondered aloud Sunday why he wasn’t at the Dodger game, because even on vacation, watching a ballgame was as likely as not where Mud would be.

He had lunched last Friday in the company of Tommy Lasorda, who had himself learned the hard way about the heart’s unpredictability. Lasorda’s difficult decision to end his chosen life’s work with the Dodgers had recently presented Allan Malamud with drama’s classic masks of comedy and tragedy, for although he was sad to hear Lasorda’s decision to quit, it provided him with a journalism exclusive no one else had, the ultimate scoop of Mud.

Saturday morning, speaking with someone who had come to mean so much to him, Ron Shelton, the film writer and director, Mud complained of indigestion. Ron and I will either crack or choke up at that when we toast our great chum some night soon, because Lord knows digestion was never a strong suit of Allan’s, a guy who enjoyed thick steaks and chocolate cakes, bless his clogging heart.

While many mutual acquaintances know of Mud’s cameo roles in Shelton’s films, most recently in “Tin Cup,” few appreciate the brotherhood that developed between them. Shelton was such a good friend, he made Mud the only man in movies I’ve known who got off the cutting-room floor, filming an additional scene after Allan’s original line had to be edited out of the film.

“I’m just in shock,” Shelton said at getting the news. “I did so many things with that guy. I’m just sitting here bawling. Our friendship went way outside of films. He really was the sweetest guy I ever knew. What’s more cynical than the press, and L.A., and Hollywood, and yet the man was totally without guile. I didn’t have a better friend.”

Nothing in this world gave Allan greater pleasure than to dine and talk shop with athletic or artistic people, who seemed to sense intrinsically that he had no hidden agenda, no reason to be there beyond the sheer enjoyment of their work and company. The better he got to know some of them, like actresses Nancy Travis and Lolita Davidovich in particular, the more he thought of them as sisters, and regaled the rest of us with anecdotes and glowing reviews of their work.

The reporter at poolside, interviewing an overweight Jake LaMotta in a scene from Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull?” That was Mud. (Although I think Robert De Niro dubbed his voice.) The caterer, running from Mike the dog in Paul Mazursky’s “Down and Out in Beverly Hills?” That was Mud. The rocket scientist, defending his “Jeopardy” championship in Shelton’s “White Men Can’t Jump?” That was Mud. Rocket scientist. We about died, laughing.

Oh, the stories we told. When his friend Steve Kloves was filming a scene for “The Fabulous Baker Boys,” the first time Michelle Pfeiffer meets up with the Bridges brothers is in a warehouse, where they are holding auditions. The original scene had Pfeiffer screaming, at being caught by surprise by a warehouse security guard. That was Mud. But the scene got cut, and with it that immortal, Bogie-Bacall moment between Mud and Michelle.

The real world, naturally, for Allan was the sports world, but if he could combine the two by, say, going over to Jack Nicholson’s to talk basketball, he was in his glory. He could talk horse racing with trainer Wayne Lukas for hours, or boxing with Bob Arum, and rare was the day a Scorecard contained no notes about a nag or a pug. Mud loved them, and they him.

We also worried about him. It began in South Korea, when a dizzy spell forced Mud to fly home from the 1988 Summer Olympics after a few days. He had batteries of tests, and while nothing life-threatening was found, it became increasingly clear that his movement was stiff-legged and unsteady, and that exercise was something horses and boxers did. I once saw Allan drop an airplane ticket, and it took excruciating effort to bend and retrieve it from the floor.

He worried about himself as well, curious in particular of late why his unruly hair was falling out in clumps. Being overweight was a constant source of aggravation, as it is for many of us, but Mud also would beg the doctor during a physical exam to spare him from walking the treadmill. He was out of breath quite often, and I dreaded seeing him climb steps.

But I would give anything for Mud to come trudging stiffly into the room right now, full of chatter about the game the Dodgers pulled out, or the exacta that hit. If I could see that face right now, I wouldn’t scream with anything but joy. Here’s looking at you, Mud.

* MEMORIES: What people in the sports world and colleagues remember about Allan Malamud. C2, C8