So anyway,
I don’t know how long ago, but in New York I have an apartment and
went to the coffee shop at the Waldorf Astoria. When I was alone
and didn’t have a lunch date, I would go to there at 2:30, when all
the secretaries were gone, and read The New York Times
at the counter. I look across at the other side of the counter and
there’s a guy looking at me, and I looked back. It was Hank.
As
close as we were, I hadn’t seen him or contacted him in all these
years. It was almost like...you know what I mean? And we got up
in the Waldorf...we got up to the cash register and we hugged each
other and we both began to cry. I moved my tuna fish over to his
side and we sat there and had coffee for almost three hours, and
I said “I was soooo scared.” I’d never really said it before about
the fear. Not just that night, but the whole goddamned time.
Hank was a very tough guy; on the Choate football team and all that stuff. Actually, he had started at Yale. He’d been at Yale for about two months when he was drafted. And he said, “Nick, I was scared, too.” It was so great to be able to unload.
Anyway, he said, “You know, I’m very successful.” And I said, “Well, you know, I’m not exactly chopped liver.” This was typical of him.
About a year and a half ago on Lexington Avenue, I see this guy walking along. There’s this younger guy walking with him. I said, “Hank.” He turns to his son and says, “Son, this is the man I told you about.” I said to this kid, “Your father and I went through three years…” He said, “I know all about it Mr. Dunne.” Then Hank said, “You know, when I told my wife that I didn’t know you were a writer,” he said, “she was ready to kill me.”
I said, “Hank, what we had as friends, that could never...we’ve had that experience of people who need each other, help each other.” And I said, “I’ve always got that.” He said, “You know, after you left that day I had a massive heart attack.” He still wasn’t in perfect condition because the son was helping him. Isn’t that amazing? You know I think when you release that.… When Private Ryan came out, it turns out there were any number of people in that war who never could talk about it afterwards. And that movie released it for a lot of us.
JH: I could never get my father to talk about it.
DD: Interesting, isn’t it?
JH: It’s post-traumatic stress syndrome. Too many people have focused on Vietnam as being the most horrific of all wars, but I think that’s an unfair assessment, because war is war. War is hell and everybody who’s been in one suffers the same.
DD: Yes. Yes.
JH: But I think it’s even tougher if you’re a very sensitive person to begin with and you’re thrust into that environment where you have to take a life or lose your own. That has to be terrifying. There’s this heightened sense that you live with and when you finally get away from it, psychologically, it’s, “I don’t ever want to remember that again.”
DD: No, you don’t.
JH: Were you just sent over to Germany from boot camp?
DD:
No, I went to England first. I didn’t go over on D-Day. I went over
on D plus 36. And we went over, and the first night we landed at
Liverpool and we had a troop train that night that took us to whichever
camp we stayed in until we crossed the channel.
We were buzz bombed on the train, and Hank and I—that’s when they started with the Gold Dust Twins—we couldn’t stop laughing. We laughed every time a bomb hit. It was all sheer nerves, but we were in hysterics. We were rolling on the floor of that troop train laughing. But we were scared, and nobody admits they’re scared.
 JH: What long-term effect did your fear of your father have on you?
DD: When I was in Hollywood, I always had this fear of studio heads. Any male in charge brought back the father thing to me.
JH: Was it authority or was it...?
DD: A male authority figure. My success was fostered by women. Tina Brown, she was one of the first people...she met me and she saw something in me that I didn’t know I possessed. And my book editor, Betty Prashker, she was the first one to ever say to me, “You should become a writer.” It was women who got me and then ultimately men did, but I mean it was women whom I owe everything to.
Actually, my best friend was a girl who was a
neighbor called Betsy Dallas. She and I were just bosom buddies.
She was never a girlfriend, you know, I mean, not my first crush.
It was actually knowing each other from first grade. And I was very
close to her. She went on to marry somebody called Griffin and had
children.
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