Hopper by Tom Folsom Page A

LSD. Dropping tabs to save America, they’d also pumped money into an animated Wizard of Oz with Oz as the Buddha in the center of a mandala.
    â€œThere’s tons of bucks!” said Fonda.
    First on the list were Peggy and Billy Hitchcock, the Mellon bank heirs. Hopper and Fonda drove upstate to Millbrook, New York, to visit the siblings in a far-out gothic mansion where Leary was now headquartered. Perhaps the Hitchcocks were too deep into their exploration of consciousness, as well as playing with Fang, Leary’s psychedelic dog, but the meet dead-ended pretty quickly, a total bust.
    Also connected to the scene was the mysterious Van Wolf. This entrepreneur invited potential Yin(g) and the Yang backers to his Manhattan pad painted in psychedelic colors. Among his eccentric guests was Salvador Dalí, as well as Dalí’s mistress and girlfriend. The two women pretended to be witches, but unfortunately weren’t “angels,” as Hopper called the yet-to-be-seen beings who might bankroll a movie. Dalí did however invite Fonda to take part in a happening, where they’d all fling paint onto an inflated balloon projected with L’Age d’Or .
    Perhaps the boys would have better luck with the exorbitantly rich A&P supermarket heir who had commissioned Dalí to do a surrealist painting about Columbus’s discovery of America.
    â€œIf you can levitate,” said George Huntington Hartford II, “I’ll give you the money to make the film.”
    â€œThat’s pretty swift, Hunt,” said Fonda.
    Hopper was sick of this rich-kid shit. “What man? Man, are you kidding , man!”
    Their last hope was the Mérode Altarpiece by the Master of Flémalle. This 1425 triptych featuring the Annunciation starred a teenage Mary, the angel Gabriel, and in the right panel, Joseph making rattraps to catch the devil. Pictured in the left panel, along with the patrons who’d commissioned the work, was a strange bearded man in red tights. This was the artist, defiantly putting himself in the painting.
    â€œHe saved art, man,” said Hopper. Just like he and Fonda were going to save the American movie. They later considered making a movie about the whole experience of looking for funding.
    Cut To: An apartment on New York’s ritzy Upper East Side. Inside are HOPPER, FONDA, gallerist WALTER HOPPS, and Fonda’s GOOD FRIEND. Before them is a triptych the Good Friend pulled from her closet. In the center panel, under the gaze of the ANGEL GABRIEL, is MARY. Hopps recognizes the scene from the Mérode Altarpiece hanging in The Cloisters. Or does it?
    â€œThat’s a great copy of the Mérode Altarpiece ,” Hopps said of this fake. Hopper’s friend, the director of the Pasadena art museum, was a shadowy agent in thick glasses who addressed the mysteries of art in the tone of government secrets.
    â€œIt’s not a copy,” said Fonda’s good friend. “My father bought it as an original in 1935.”
    After an intimate investigation, Hopps was verging on tears, shaking he was so excited. “The wood looks right! But we have to have it investigated.”
    If the triptych turned out to be the original, Fonda’s friend promised to sell it and use the money to fund the movie. Ordering up an unmarked black Lincoln limo, Fonda swaddled three potentially precious pieces of medieval wood in pillowcases, stashed them in the Lincoln, and blended in with the traffic heading to a Fifth Avenue mansion housing the Columbia University School of the Arts.
    After the triptych was unwrapped and put on the easel, the art experts copped an attitude.
    â€œWell, that’s not the original.”
    â€œThe original is at the Cloisters.”
    Blah, blah, blah—just putting these movie guys down, like they were dealing with a bunch of cavemen. But in comes this creaky old Frenchman on loan from the Louvre. The main dude. The triptych stops him in his