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invention. There was a big painting of Will Rogers, hung conspicuously and
intended, I think, to suggest Father's essential kinship with Hollywood's
St. Francis; there was a signed photograph of Minna Davis, Stahr's dead
wife, and photos of other studio celebrities and big chalk drawings of
Mother and me. Tonight the one-way French windows were open and a big moon,
rosy-gold with a haze around, was wedged helpless in one of them. Father and
Jaques La Borwits and Rosemary Schmiel were down at the end around a big
circular desk.
What did Father look like? I couldn't describe him except for once in
New York when I met him where I didn't expect to; I was aware of a bulky,
middle-aged man who looked a little ashamed of himself and I wished he'd
move on-and then I saw he was Father. Afterward I was shocked at my
impression. Father can be very magnetic-he has a tough jaw and an Irish
smile.
But as for Jaques La Borwits I shall spare you. Let me just say he was
an assistant producer which is something like a commissar, and let it go at
that. Where Stahr picked up such mental cadavers or had them forced upon
him-or especially how he got any use out of them-has always amazed me, as it
amazed everyone fresh from the East who slapped up against them. Jaques La
Borwits had his points, no doubt, but so have the sub-microscopic protozoa,
so has a dog prowling for a bitch and a bone. Jaques La-oh, my!
From their expressions I was sure they had been talking about Stahr.
Stahr had ordered something or forbidden something, or defied Father or
junked one of La Borwits' pictures or something catastrophic and they were
sitting there in protest at night in a community of rebellion and
helplessness. Rosemary Schmiel sat pad in hand as if ready to write down
their dejection.
"I'm to drive you home dead or alive," I told Father. "All those
birthday presents rotting away in their packages!"
"A birthday!" cried Jaques in a flurry of apology. "How old? I didn't
know."
"Forty-three," said Father distinctly.
He was older than that-four years-and Jaques knew it; I saw him note it
down in his account book to use sometime. Out here these account books are
carried open in the hand. One can see the entries being made without
recourse to lip reading and Rosemary Schmiel was compelled in emulation to
make a mark on her pad. As she rubbed it out the earth quaked under us.
We didn't get the full shock like at Long Beach where the upper stories
of shops were spewed into the streets and small hotels drifted out to
sea-but for a full minute our bowels were one with the bowels of the
earth-like some nightmare attempt to attach our navel cords again and jerk
us back to the womb of creation.
Mother's picture fell off the wall revealing a small safe-Rosemary and
I grabbed frantically for each other and did a strange screaming waltz
across the room. Jaques fainted or at least disappeared and Father clung to
his desk and shouted "Are you all right?" Outside the window the singer came
to the climax of "I love you only," held it a moment and then, I swear,
started it all over. Or maybe they were playing it back to her from the
recording machine.
The room stood still, shimmying a little. We made our way to the door,
suddenly including Jaques who had reappeared, and tottered out dizzily
through the ante-room on to the iron balcony. Almost all the lights were out
and from here and there we could hear cries and calls. Momentarily we stood
waiting for a second shock-then as with a common impulse we went into
Stahr's entry and through to his office.
The office was big but not as big as Father's. Stahr sat on the side of
his couch rubbing his eyes. When the quake came he had been asleep and he
wasn't sure yet whether he had dreamed it. When we convinced him he thought
it was all rather funny-until the telephones began to ring. I watched him as
unobtrusively as possible. He was grey with fatigue while he listened to the
phone and Dictograph but as the reports came in, his eyes began to pick up
shine.
"A couple of water mains have burst," he said to Father, "-they're
heading into the back lot."
"Gray's shooting in the French Village," said Father.
"It's flooded around the Station too and in the Jungle and the City
Corner, what the hell-nobody seems to be hurt." In passing he shook my hands
gravely. "Where've you been, Cecelia?"
"You going out there, Monroe?" Father asked.
"When all the news is in. One of the power lines is off too-I've sent
for Robinson."
He made me sit down with him on the couch and tell about the quake
again.
"You look tired," I said, cute and motherly.
"Yes," he agreed, "I've got no place to go in the evenings so I just
work."
"I'll arrange some evenings for you."
"I used to play poker with a gang," he said thoughtfully. "Before I was
married. But they all drank themselves to death."
Miss Doolan, his secretary, came in with fresh bad news.
"Robby'll take care of everything when he comes," Stahr assured Father.
He turned to me. "Now there's a man-that Robinson. He was a
trouble-shooter-fixed the telephone wires in Minnesota blizzards-nothing
stumps him. He'll be here in a minute-you'll like Robby."
He said it as if it had been his life-long intention to bring us
together, and he had arranged, the whole earthquake with just that in mind.
"Yes, you'll like Robby," he repeated. "When do you go back to
college?"
"I've just come home."
"You get the whole summer?"
"I'm sorry," I said. "I'll go back as soon as I can."
I was in a mist. It hadn't failed to cross my mind that he might have
some intention about me but if it was so, it was in an exasperatingly early
stage-I was merely "a good property." And the idea didn't seem so attractive
at that moment-like marrying a doctor. He seldom left the studio before
eleven.
"How long-" he asked my father, "-before she graduates from college?
That's what I was trying to say."
And I think I was about to sing out eagerly that I needn't go back at
all, that I was quite educated already-when the totally admirable Robinson
came in. He was a bowlegged young redhead, all ready to go.
"This is Robby, Cecelia," said Stahr. "Come on, Robby."
So I met Robby. I can't say it seemed like fate-but it was. For it was
Robby who later told me how Stahr found his love that night.
Episode 6
Under the moon the back lot was thirty acres of fairyland-not because
the locations really looked like African jungles and French chateaux and
schooners at anchor and Broadway by night, but because they looked like the
torn picture books of childhood, like fragments of stories dancing in an
open fire. I never lived in a house with an attic but a back lot must be
something like that and at night of course in an enchanted distorted way, it
all comes true.
When Stahr and Robby arrived clusters of lights had already picked out
the danger spots in the flood.
"We'll pump it out into the swamp on Thirty-sixth Street," said Robby
after a moment. "It's city property-but isn't this an act of God? Say-look
there!"
On top of a huge head of the god Siva, two women were floating down the
current of an impromptu river. The idol had come unloosed from a set of
Burma and it meandered earnestly on its way, stopping sometimes to waddle
and bump in the shallows with the other debris of the tide. The two refugees
had found sanctuary along a scroll of curls on its bald forehead and seemed
at first glance to be sightseers on an interesting bus-ride through the
scene of the flood.
"Will you look at that, Monroe!" said Robby. "Look at those dames!"
Dragging their legs through sudden bogs they made their way to the bank
of the stream. Now they could see the women looking a little scared but
brightening at the prospect of rescue.
"We ought to let 'em drift out to the waste pipe," said Robby
gallantly, "but De Mille needs that head next week."
He wouldn't have hurt a fly though and presently he was hip deep in the
water fishing for them with a pole and succeeding only in spinning it in a
dizzy circle. Help arrived and the impression quickly got around that one of
them was very pretty and then that they were people of importance. But they
were just strays and Robby waited disgustedly to give them hell while the
thing was brought finally into control and beached.
"Put that head back!" he called up to them. "You think it's a
souvenir?"
One of the women came sliding smoothly down the cheek of the idol and
Robby caught and set her on solid ground; the other one hesitated and then
followed. Robby turned to Stahr for judgement.
"What'll we do with them, chief?"
Stahr did not answer. Smiling faintly at him from not four feet away
was the face of his dead wife, identical even to the expression. Across the
four feet of moonlight the eyes he knew looked back at him, a curl blew a
little on a familiar forehead, the smile lingered changed a little according
to pattern, the lips parted-the same. An awful fear went over him and he
wanted to cry aloud. Back from the still sour room, the muffled glide of the
limousine hearse, the falling concealing flowers, from out there in the
dark-here now warm and glowing. The river passed him in a rush, the great
spotlights swooped and blinked-and then he heard another voice speak that
was not Minna's voice.
"We're sorry," said the voice. "We followed a truck in through a gate."
A little crowd had gathered-electricians, grips, truckers-and Robby
began to nip at them like a sheep dog.
"... get the big pumps on the tanks on Stage 4... put a cable around
this head... raft it up on a couple of two-by-fours... get the water out of
the Jungle first for Christ's sake... that big A pipe lay it down, all that
stuff is plastic...."
Stahr stood watching the two women as they threaded their way after a
policeman toward an exit gate. Then he took a tentative step to see if the
weakness had gone out of his knees. A loud tractor came bumping through the
slush and men began streaming by him-every second one glancing at him
smiling speaking Hello Monroe... Hello Mr. Stahr... wet night Mr. Stahr...
Monroe... Monroe... Stahr... Stahr... Stahr.
He spoke and waved back as the people streamed by in the darkness,
looking I suppose a little like the Emperor and the Old Guard. There is no
world so but it has its heroes and Stahr was the hero. Most of these men had
been here a long time-through the beginnings and the great upset when sound
came and the three years of Depression he had seen that no harm came to
them. The old loyalties were trembling now-there were clay feet
everywhere-but still he was their man, the last of the princes. And their
greeting was a sort of low cheer as they went by.
Episode 7
Between the night I got back and the quake I'd made many observations.
About Father, for example. I loved Father-in a sort of irregular graph
with many low swoops-but I began to see that his strong will didn't fill him
out as a passable man. Most of what he accomplished boiled down to shrewd.
He had acquired with luck and shrewdness a quarter interest in a booming
circus-together with young Stahr. That was his life's effort-all the rest
was an instinct to hang on. Of course he talked that double talk to Wall
Street about how mysterious it was to make a picture but Father didn't know
the ABC's of dubbing or even cutting. Nor had he learned much about the feel
of America as a bar boy in Ballyhegan nor have any more than a drummer's
sense of a story. On the other hand he didn't have concealed paresis like
----; he came to the studio before noon, and with a suspiciousness developed
like a muscle it was hard to put anything over on him.
Stahr had been his luck-and Stahr was something else again. He was a
marker in industry like Edison and Lumiere and Griffith and Chaplin. He led
pictures way up past the range and power of the theatre, reaching a sort of
golden age before the censorship in 1933. Proof of his leadership was the
spying that went on around him-not just for inside information or patented
process secrets-but spying on his scent for a trend in taste, his guess as
how things were going to be. Too much of his vitality was taken by the mere
parrying of these attempts. It made his work secret in part, often devious,
slow-and hard to describe as the plans of a general-where the psychological
factors become too tenuous and we end by merely adding up the successes and
failures. But I have determined to give you a glimpse of him functioning,
which is my excuse for what follows. It is drawn partly from a paper I wrote
in college on "A Producer's Day" and partly from my imagination. More often
I have blocked in the ordinary events myself, while the stranger ones are
true.
In the early morning after the flood, a man walked up to the outside
balcony of the Administration Building. He lingered there some time
according to an eyewitness, then mounted to the iron railing and dove head
first to the pavement below. Breakage-one arm.
Miss Doolan, Stahr's secretary, told him about it when he buzzed for
her at nine. He had slept in his office without hearing the small commotion.
"Pete Zavras!" Stahr exclaimed, "-the camera man?"
"They took him to a doctor's office. It won't be in the paper."
"Hell of a thing," he said, "I knew he'd gone to pot-but I don't know
why. He was all right when we used him two years ago-why should he come
here? How did he get in?"
"He bluffed it with his old studio pass," said Catherine Doolan. She
was a dry hawk, the wife of an assistant director. "Perhaps the quake had
something to do with it."
"He was the best camera man in town," Stahr said. When he had heard of
the thousands dead at Long Beach he was still haunted by the abortive
suicide at dawn. He told Catherine Doolan to trace the matter down.
The first Dictograph messages blew in through the warm morning. While
he shaved and had coffee he talked and listened. Robby had left a message:
"If Mr. Stahr wants me tell him to hell with it I'm in bed." An actor was
sick or thought so; the Governor of California was bringing a party out; a
supervisor had beaten up his wife for the prints and must be "reduced to a
writer"-these three affairs were Father's job-unless the actor was under
personal contract to Stahr. There was early snow on a location in Canada
with the company already there-Stahr raced over the possibilities of salvage
reviewing the story of the picture. Nothing. Stahr called Catherine Doolan.
"I want to speak to the cop who put two women off the back lot last
night. I think his name's Malone."
"Yes, Mr. Stahr. I've got Joe Wyman-about the trousers."
"Hello Joe," said Stahr. "Listen-two people at the sneak preview
complained that Morgan's fly was open for half the picture... of course
they're exaggerating but even if it's only ten feet... no, we can't find the
people but I want that picture run over and over until you find that
footage. Get a lot of people in the projection room-somebody'll spot it."
Tout passe.-L'art robuste
Seul a l'eternite.
"And there's the Prince from Denmark," said Catherine Doolan. "He's
very handsome." She was impelled to add pointlessly "-for a tall man."
"Thanks," Stahr said. "Thank you, Catherine, I appreciate it that I am
now the handsomest small man on the lot. Send the Prince out on the sets and
tell him we'll lunch at one."
"And Mr. George Boxley-looking very angry in a British way."
"I'll see him for ten minutes."
As she went out he asked:
"Did Robby phone in?"
"No."
"Call Sound and if he's been heard from call him and ask him this. Ask
him this-did he hear that woman's name last night. Either of those women. Or
anything so they could be traced."
"Anything else?"
"No, but tell him it's important while he still remembers. What were
they? I mean what kind of people-ask him that too. I mean were they-"
She waited, scratching his words on her pad without looking.
"-oh, were they-questionable? Were they theatrical? Never mind-skip
that. Just ask if he knows how they can be traced."
The policeman, Malone, had known nothing. Two dames and he had hustled
'em you betcha. One of them was sore. Which one? One of them. They had a
car, a Chewy, he thought of taking the license. Was it-the good looker who
was sore? It was one of them.
Not which one-he had noticed nothing. Even on the lot here Minna was
forgotten. In three years. So much for that then.
Episode 8
Stahr smiled at Mr. George Boxley. It was a kindly fatherly smile Stahr
had developed inversely when he was a young man pushed into high places.
Originally it had been a smile of respect toward his elders, then as his own
decisions grew rapidly to displace theirs, a smile so that they should not
feel it-finally emerging as what it was, a smile of kindness sometimes a
little hurried and tired but always there, toward anyone who had not angered
him within the hour. Or anyone he did not intend to insult aggressive and
outright.
Mr. Boxley did not smile back. He came in with the air of being
violently dragged though no one apparently had a hand on him. He stood in
front of a chair and again it was as if two invisible attendants seized his
arms and set him down forcibly into it. He sat there morosely. Even when he
lit a cigarette on Stahr's invitation one felt that the match was held to it
by exterior forces he disdained to control.
Stahr looked at him courteously.
"Something not going well, Mr. Boxley?"
The novelist looked back at him in thunderous silence.
"I read your letter," said Stahr. The tone of the pleasant young
headmaster was gone. He spoke as to an equal but with a faint two-edged
deference.
"I can't get what I write on paper," broke out Boxley. "You've all been
very decent but it's a sort of conspiracy. Those two hacks you've teamed me
with listen to what I say but they spoil it-they seem to have a vocabulary
of about a hundred words."
"Why don't you write it yourself?" asked Stahr.
"I have. I sent you some."
"But it was just talk, back and forth," said Stahr mildly. "Interesting
talk but nothing more."
Now it was all the two ghostly attendants could do to hold Boxley in
the deep chair. He struggled to get up; he uttered a single quiet bark which
had some relation to laughter but none to amusement, and said:
"I don't think you people read things. The men are dueling when the
conversation takes place. At the end one of them falls into a well and has
to be hauled up in a bucket."
He barked again and subsided.
"Would you write that in a book of your own, Mr. Boxley?"
"What? Naturally not."
"You'd consider it too cheap."
"Movie standards are different," said Boxley hedging.
"Do you ever go to them?"
"No-almost never."
"Isn't it because people are always dueling and falling down wells?"
"Yes-and wearing strained facial expressions and talking incredible and
unnatural dialogue."
"Skip the dialogue for a minute," said Stahr. "Granted your dialogue is
more graceful than what these hacks can write-that's why we brought you out
here. But let's imagine something that isn't either bad dialogue or jumping
down a well. Has your office got a stove in it that lights with a match?"
"I think it has," said Boxley stiffly, "-but I never use it."
"Suppose you're in your office. You've been fighting duels or writing
all day and you're too tired to fight or write any more. You're sitting
there staring-dull, like we all get sometimes. A pretty stenographer that
you've seen before comes into the room and you watch her-idly. She doesn't
see you though you're very close to her. She takes off her gloves, opens her
purse and dumps it out on a table-"
Stahr stood up, tossing his key-ring on his desk.
"She has two dimes and a nickle-and a cardboard match box. She leaves
the nickle on the desk, puts the two dimes back into her purse and takes her
black gloves to the stove, opens it and puts them inside. There is one match
in the match box and she starts to light it kneeling by the stove. You
notice that there's a stiff wind blowing in the window-but just then your
telephone rings. The girl picks it up, says hello-listens-and says
deliberately into the phone 'I've never owned a pair of black gloves in my
life.' She hangs up, kneels by the stove again, and just as she lights the
match you glance around very suddenly and see that there's another man in
the office, watching every move the girl makes-"
Stahr paused. He picked up his keys and put them in his pocket.
"Go on," said Boxley smiling. "What happens?"
"I don't know," said Stahr. "I was just making pictures."
Boxley felt he was being put in the wrong.
"It's just melodrama," he said.
"Not necessarily," said Stahr. "In any case nobody has moved violently
or talked cheap dialogue or had any facial expression at all. There was only
one bad line, and a writer like you could improve it. But you were
interested."
"What was the nickle for?" asked Boxley evasively.
"I don't know," said Stahr. Suddenly he laughed, "Oh yes-the nickle was
for the movies."
The two invisible attendants seemed to release Boxley. He relaxed,
leaned back in his chair and laughed.
"What in hell do you pay me for?" he demanded. "I don't understand the
damn stuff."
"You will," said Stahr grinning. "Or you wouldn't have asked about the
nickle."
A dark saucer-eyed man was waiting in the outer office as they came
out.
"Mr. Boxley, this is Mr. Mike Van Dyke," Stahr said. "What is it,
Mike?"
"Nothing," Mike said. "I just came up to see if you were real."
"Why don't you go to work?" Stahr said. "I haven't had a laugh in the
rushes for days."
"I'm afraid of a nervous breakdown."
"You ought to keep in form," Stahr said. "Let's see you peddle your
stuff." He turned to Boxley. "Mike's a gag man-he was out here when I was in
the cradle. Mike, show Mr. Boxley a double wing, clutch, kick and scram."
"Here?" asked Mike.
"Here."
"There isn't much room. I wanted to ask you about-"
"There's lots of room. "
"Well," he looked around tentatively. "You shoot the gun."
Miss Doolan's assistant, Katie, took a paper bag, blew it open.
"It was a routine," Mike said to Boxley-"back in the Keystone days." He
turned to Stahr. "Does he know what a routine is?"
"It means an act," Stahr explained. "Georgie Jessel talks about
'Lincoln's Gettysburg routine.' "
Katie poised the neck of the blown up bag in her mouth. Mike stood with
his back to her.
"Ready?" Katie asked. She brought her hand down on the side.
Immediately Mike grabbed his bottom with both hands, jumped in the air, slid
his feet out on the floor one after the other, remaining in place and
flapping his arms twice like a bird "Double wing," said Stahr.
-And then ran-out the screen door which the office boy held open for
him and disappeared past the window of the balcony.
"Mr. Stahr," said Miss Doolan, "Mr. Hanson is on the phone from New
York."
Ten minutes later he clicked his Dictograph and Miss Doolan came in.
There was a male star waiting to see him in the outer office Miss Doolan
said.
"Tell him I went out by the balcony," Stahr advised her.
"All right. He's been in four times this week. He seems very anxious."
"Did he give you any hint of what he wanted? Isn't it something he can
see Mr. Brady about?"
"He didn't say. You have a conference coming up. Miss Meloney and Mr.
White are outside. Mr. Broaca is next door in Mr. Rienmund's office."
"Send ----- in," said Stahr. "Tell him I can see him only for a
minute."
When the handsome actor came in Stahr remained standing.
"What is it that can't wait?" he asked pleasantly.
The actor waited carefully till Miss Doolan had gone out.
"Monroe, I'm through," he said. "I had to see you."
"Through!" said Stahr. "Have you seen 'Variety'? Your picture's held
over at Roxy's and did thirty-seven thousand in Chicago last week."
"That's the worst of it. That's the tragedy. I get everything I want
and now it means nothing."
"Well, go on explain."
"There's nothing between Esther and me anymore. There never can be
again."
"A row."
"Oh, no-worse-I can't bear to mention it. My head's in a daze. I wander
around like a madman. I go through my part as if I was asleep."
"I haven't noticed it," said Stahr. "You were great in your rushes
yesterday."
"Was I? That just shows you nobody ever guesses."
"Are you trying to tell me that you and Esther are separating?"
"I suppose it'll come to that. Yes-inevitably-it will."
"What was it?" demanded Stahr impatiently. "Did she come in without
knocking?"
"Oh, there's nobody else. It's just-me. I'm through."
Stahr got it suddenly.
"How do you know?"
"It's been true for six weeks."
"It's your imagination," said Stahr. "Have you been to a doctor?"
The actor nodded.
"I've tried everything. I even-one day in desperation I went down to-to
Claris. But it was hopeless. I'm washed up."
Stahr had an impish temptation to tell him to go to Brady about it.
Brady handled all matters of public relations. Or was this private
relations. He turned away a moment, got his face in control, turned back.
"I've been to Pat Brady," said the star, as if guessing the thought.
"He gave me a lot of phoney advice and I tried it all but nothing doing.
Esther and I sit opposite each other at dinner and I'm ashamed to look at
her. She's been a good sport about it but I'm ashamed. I'm ashamed all day
long. I think 'Rainy Day' grossed 25,000 in Des Moines and broke all records
in St. Louis and did 27,000 in Kansas City. My fan mail's way up and there I
am afraid to go home at night, afraid to go to bed."
Stahr began to be faintly oppressed. When the actor first came in Stahr
had intended to invite him to a cocktail party but now it scarcely seemed
appropriate. What would he want with a cocktail party with this hanging over
him. In his mind's eye he saw him wandering haunted from guest to guest with
a cocktail in his hand and his grosses up 28, 000.
"So I came to you, Monroe. I never saw a situation where you didn't
know a way out. I said to myself even if he advises me to kill myself I'll
ask Monroe."
The buzzer sounded on Stahr's desk-he switched on the Dictograph and
heard Miss Doolan's voice.
"Five minutes, Mr. Stahr."
"I'm sorry," said Stahr, "I'll need a few minutes more."
"Five hundred girls marched to my house from the high school," the
actor said gloomily. "And I stood behind the curtains and watched them. I
couldn't go out."
"You sit down," said Stahr. "We'll take plenty of time and talk this
over."
In the outer office two members of the conference group had already
waited ten minutes-Wylie White and Rose Meloney. The latter was a dried up
little blonde of fifty about whom one could hear the fifty assorted opinions
of Hollywood-"a sentimental dope," "the best writer on construction in
Hollywood," "a veteran," "that old hack," "the smartest woman on the lot,"
"the cleverest plagiarist in the biz," and of course in addition a
nymphomaniac, a virgin, a pushover, a lesbian and a faithful wife. Without
being an old maid she was like most self-made women rather old maidish. She
had ulcers of the stomach and her salary was over a hundred thousand a year.
A complicated treatise could be written on whether she was "worth it" or
more than that or nothing at all. Her value lay in such ordinary assets as
the bare fact that she was a woman and adaptable, quick and trustworthy,
"knew the game" and was without egotism. She had been a great friend of
Minna's and over a period of years he had managed to stifle what amounted to
a sharp physical revulsion.
She and Wylie waited in silence-occasionally addressing a remark to
Miss Doolan. Every few minutes Rienmund the supervisor called up from his
office where he and Broaca the director were waiting. After ten minutes
Stahr's button went on and Miss Doolan called Rienmund and Broaca;
simultaneously Stahr and the actor came out of Stahr's office with Stahr
holding the man's arm. He was so wound up now that when Wylie White asked
him how he was he opened his mouth and began to tell him then and there.
"Oh, I've had an awful time," he said but Stahr interrupted sharply.
"No you haven't. Now you go along and do the role the way I said."
"Thank you, Monroe."
Rose Meloney looked after him without speaking.
"Somebody been catching flies on him?" she asked, a phrase for stealing
scenes.
"I'm sorry I kept you waiting," Stahr said. "Come on in."
Episode 9
It was noon already and the conferees were entitled to exactly an hour
of Stahr's time. No less, for such a conference could only be interrupted by
a director who was held up in his shooting; seldom much more because every
eight days the company must release a production as complex and costly as
Reinhardt's "Miracle."
Occasionally, less often than five years ago, Stahr would work all
through the night on a single picture. But after such a spree he felt bad
for days. If he could go from problem to problem there was a certain rebirth
of vitality with each change. And like those sleepers who can wake whenever
they wish, he had set his psychological clock to run one hour.
The cast assembled included besides the writers Rienmund, one of the
most favored of the supervisors, and John Broaca, the picture's director.
Broaca, on the surface, was an engineer-large and without nerves,
quietly resolute, popular. He was an ignoramus and Stahr often caught him
making the same scenes over and over-one scene about a rich young girl
occurred in all his pictures with the same action, the same business. A
bunch of large dogs. entered the room and jumped around the girl. Later the
girl went to a stable and slapped a horse on the rump. The explanation was
probably not Freudian; more likely that at a drab moment in youth he had
looked through a fence and seen a beautiful girl with dogs and horses. As a
trademark for glamor it was stamped on his brain forever.
Rienmund was a handsome young opportunist, with a fairly good
education. Originally a man of some character he was being daily forced by
his anomalous position into devious ways of acting and thinking. He was a
bad man now, as men go. At thirty he had none of the virtues which either
native Americans or Jews are taught to think admirable. But he got his
pictures out in time and by manifesting an almost homosexual fixation on
Stahr, seemed to have dulled Stahr's usual acuteness. Stahr liked
him-considered him a good all around man.
Wylie White, of course, would have been recognizable in any country as
an intellectual of the second order. He was civilized and voluble, both
simple and acute, half dazed half saturnine. His jealousy of Stahr showed
only in unguarded flashes, and was mingled with admiration and even
affection.
"The production date for this picture is two weeks from Saturday," said
Stahr. "I think basically it's all right-much improved."
Rienmund and the two writers exchanged a glance of congratulation.
"Except for one thing," said Stahr, thoughtfully. "I don't see why it
should be produced at all and I've decided to put it away."
There was a moment of shocked silence-and then murmurs of protest,
stricken queries.
"It's not your fault," Stahr said. "I thought there was something there
that wasn't there-that was all." He hesitated, looking regretfully at
Rienmund. "It's too bad-it was a good play. We paid fifty thousand for it."
"What's the matter with it, Monroe?" asked Broaca bluntly.
"Well, it hardly seems worth while to go into it," said Stahr.
Rienmund and Wylie White were both thinking of the professional effect
on them. Rienmund had two pictures to his account this year-but Wylie White
needed a credit to start his comeback to the scene. Rose Meloney was
watching Stahr closely from little skull-like eyes.
"Couldn't you give us some clue?" Rienmund asked. "This is a good deal
of a blow, Monroe."
"I just wouldn't put Margaret Sullavan in it," said Stahr. "Or Colman
either. I wouldn't advise them to play it-"
"Specifically, Monroe," begged Wylie White. "What didn't you like? The
scenes? the dialogue? the humor? construction?"
Stahr picked up the script from his desk, let it fall as if it were
physically too heavy to handle.
"I don't like the people," he said. "I wouldn't like to meet them-if I
knew they were going to be somewhere I'd go somewhere else. "
Rienmund smiled but there was worry in his eyes.
"Well, that's a damning criticism," he said. "I thought the people were
rather interesting. "
"So did I," said Broaca. "I thought Em was very sympathetic."
"Did you?" asked Stahr sharply. "I could just barely believe she was
alive. And when I came to the end I said to myself 'So what?' "
"There must be something to do," Rienmund said. "Naturally we feel bad
about this. This is the structure we agreed on-"
"But it's not the story," said Stahr. "I've told you many times that
the first thing I decide is the kind of story I want. We change in every
other regard but once that is set we've got to work toward it with every
line and movement. This is not the kind of a story I want. The story we
bought had shine and glow-it was a happy story. This is all full of doubt
and hesitation. The hero and heroine stop loving each other over
trifles-then they start up again over trifles. After the first sequence you
don't care if she never sees him again or he her."
"That's my fault," said Wylie suddenly. "You see, Monroe, I don't think
stenographers have the same dumb admiration for their bosses they had in
1929. They've been laid off-they've seen their bosses jittery. The world has
moved on, that's all."
Stahr looked at him impatiently, gave a short nod.
"That's not under discussion," he said. "The premise of this story is
that the girl did have dumb admiration for her boss if you want to call it
that. And there wasn't any evidence that he'd ever been jittery. When you
make her doubt him in any way you have a different kind of story. Or rather
you haven't anything at all. These people are extraverts-get that
straight-and I want them to extravert all over the lot. When I want to do a
Eugene O'Neill play I'll buy one."
Rose Meloney who had never taken her eyes off Stahr knew it was going
to be all right now. If he had really been going to abandon the picture he
wouldn't have gone at it like this. She had been in this game longer than
any of them except Broaca with whom she had had a three day affair twenty
years ago.
Stahr turned to Rienmund.
"You ought to have understood from the casting, Rieny, what kind of a
picture I wanted. I started marking the lines that Carroll and MacMurray
couldn't say and got tired of it. Remember this in future-if I order a
limousine I want that kind of car. And the fastest midget racer you ever saw
wouldn't do. Now-" He looked around. "Shall we go any farther? Now that I've
told you I don't even like the kind of picture this is? Shall we go on?
We've got two weeks. At the end of that time I'm going to put Carroll and
MacMurray into this or something else-is it worth while?"
"Well naturally," said Rienmund, "I think it is. I feel bad about this.
I should have warned Wylie. I thought he had some good ideas."
"Monroe's right," said Broaca bluntly. "I felt this was wrong all the
time but I couldn't put my finger on it."
Wylie and Rose looked at him contemptuously and exchanged a glance.
"Do you writers think you can get hot on it again?" asked Stahr, not
unkindly. "Or shall I try somebody fresh?"
"I'd like another shot," said Wylie.
"How about you, Rose?"
She nodded briefly.
"What do you think of the girl?" asked Stahr.
"Well-naturally I'm prejudiced in her favor."
"You better forget it," said Stahr warningly. "Ten million Americans
would put thumbs down on that girl if she walked on the screen. We've got an
hour and twenty-five minutes on the screen-you show a woman being unfaithful
to a man for one-third of that time and you've given the impression that
she's one-third whore."
"Is that a big proportion?" asked Rose slyly, and they laughed.
"It is for me," said Stahr thoughtfully, "even if it wasn't for the
Hays office. If you want to paint a scarlet letter on her back it's all
right but that's another story. Not this story. This is a future wife and
mother. However-however-"
He pointed his pencil at Wylie White.
"-this has as much passion as that Oscar on my desk."
"What the hell!" said Wylie. "She's full of it. Why she goes to-"
"She's loose enough," said Stahr, "-but that's all. There's one scene
in the play better than all this you cooked up and you've left it out. When
she's trying to make the time pass by changing her watch."
"It didn't seem to fit," Wylie apologized.
"Now," said Stahr, "I've got about fifty ideas. I'm going to call Miss
Doolan." He pressed a button. "-and if there's anything you don't understand
speak up-"
Miss Doolan slid in almost imperceptibly. Pacing the floor swiftly
Stahr began. In the first place he wanted to tell them what kind of a girl
she was-what kind of a girl he approved of here. She was a perfect girl with
a few small faults as in the play but a perfect girl not because the public
wanted her that way but because it was the kind of girl that he, Stahr,
liked to see in this sort of picture. Was that clear? It was no character
role. She stood for health, vitality, ambition and love. What gave the play
its importance was entirely a situation in which she found herself. She
became possessed of a secret that affected a great many lives. There was a
right thing and a wrong thing to do-at first it was not plain which was
which but when it was she went right away and did it. That was the kind of
story this was-thin, clean and shining. No doubts.
"She has never heard the word labor troubles," he said with a sigh.
"She might be living in 1929. Is it plain what kind of girl I want?"
"It's very plain, Monroe."
"Now about the things she does," said Stahr. "At all times, at all
moments when she is on the screen in our sight she wants to sleep with Ken
Willard. Is that plain, Wylie?"
"Passionately plain."
"Whatever she does it is in place of sleeping with Ken Willard. If she
walks down the street she is walking to sleep with Ken Willard, if she eats
her food it is to give her strength to sleep with Ken Willard. But at no
time do you give the impression that she would ever consider sleeping with
Ken Willard unless they were properly sanctified. I'm ashamed of having to
tell you these kindergarten facts but they have somehow leaked out of the
story."
He opened the script and began to go through it page by page. Miss
Doolan's notes would be typed in quintuplicate and given to them but Rose
Meloney made notes of her own. Broaca put his hand up to his half closed
eyes-he could remember "when a director was something out here," when
writers were gag men or eager and ashamed young reporters full of whiskey-a
director was all there was then. No supervisor-no Stahr.
He started wide awake as he heard his name.
"It would be nice, John, if you could put the boy on a pointed roof and
let him walk around and keep the camera on him. You might get a nice
feeling-not danger, not suspense, not pointing for anything-a kid on the
roof in the morning."
Broaca brought himself back in the room.
"All right," he said. "-just an element of danger."
"Not exactly," said Stahr. "He doesn't start to fall off the roof.
Break into the next scene with it."
"Through the window," suggested Rose Meloney. "He could climb in his
sister's window."
"That's a good transition," said Stahr. "Right into the diary scene. "
Broaca was wide awake now.
"I'll shoot up at him," he said. "Let him go away from the camera. Just
a fixed shot from quite a distance-let him go away from the camera. Don't
follow him. Pick him up in a close shot and let him go away again. No
attention on him except against the whole roof and the sky." He liked the
shot-it was a director's shot that didn't come up on every page any more. He
intended, I think, to suggest Father's essential kinship with Hollywood's
St. Francis; there was a signed photograph of Minna Davis, Stahr's dead
wife, and photos of other studio celebrities and big chalk drawings of
Mother and me. Tonight the one-way French windows were open and a big moon,
rosy-gold with a haze around, was wedged helpless in one of them. Father and
Jaques La Borwits and Rosemary Schmiel were down at the end around a big
circular desk.
What did Father look like? I couldn't describe him except for once in
New York when I met him where I didn't expect to; I was aware of a bulky,
middle-aged man who looked a little ashamed of himself and I wished he'd
move on-and then I saw he was Father. Afterward I was shocked at my
impression. Father can be very magnetic-he has a tough jaw and an Irish
smile.
But as for Jaques La Borwits I shall spare you. Let me just say he was
an assistant producer which is something like a commissar, and let it go at
that. Where Stahr picked up such mental cadavers or had them forced upon
him-or especially how he got any use out of them-has always amazed me, as it
amazed everyone fresh from the East who slapped up against them. Jaques La
Borwits had his points, no doubt, but so have the sub-microscopic protozoa,
so has a dog prowling for a bitch and a bone. Jaques La-oh, my!
From their expressions I was sure they had been talking about Stahr.
Stahr had ordered something or forbidden something, or defied Father or
junked one of La Borwits' pictures or something catastrophic and they were
sitting there in protest at night in a community of rebellion and
helplessness. Rosemary Schmiel sat pad in hand as if ready to write down
their dejection.
"I'm to drive you home dead or alive," I told Father. "All those
birthday presents rotting away in their packages!"
"A birthday!" cried Jaques in a flurry of apology. "How old? I didn't
know."
"Forty-three," said Father distinctly.
He was older than that-four years-and Jaques knew it; I saw him note it
down in his account book to use sometime. Out here these account books are
carried open in the hand. One can see the entries being made without
recourse to lip reading and Rosemary Schmiel was compelled in emulation to
make a mark on her pad. As she rubbed it out the earth quaked under us.
We didn't get the full shock like at Long Beach where the upper stories
of shops were spewed into the streets and small hotels drifted out to
sea-but for a full minute our bowels were one with the bowels of the
earth-like some nightmare attempt to attach our navel cords again and jerk
us back to the womb of creation.
Mother's picture fell off the wall revealing a small safe-Rosemary and
I grabbed frantically for each other and did a strange screaming waltz
across the room. Jaques fainted or at least disappeared and Father clung to
his desk and shouted "Are you all right?" Outside the window the singer came
to the climax of "I love you only," held it a moment and then, I swear,
started it all over. Or maybe they were playing it back to her from the
recording machine.
The room stood still, shimmying a little. We made our way to the door,
suddenly including Jaques who had reappeared, and tottered out dizzily
through the ante-room on to the iron balcony. Almost all the lights were out
and from here and there we could hear cries and calls. Momentarily we stood
waiting for a second shock-then as with a common impulse we went into
Stahr's entry and through to his office.
The office was big but not as big as Father's. Stahr sat on the side of
his couch rubbing his eyes. When the quake came he had been asleep and he
wasn't sure yet whether he had dreamed it. When we convinced him he thought
it was all rather funny-until the telephones began to ring. I watched him as
unobtrusively as possible. He was grey with fatigue while he listened to the
phone and Dictograph but as the reports came in, his eyes began to pick up
shine.
"A couple of water mains have burst," he said to Father, "-they're
heading into the back lot."
"Gray's shooting in the French Village," said Father.
"It's flooded around the Station too and in the Jungle and the City
Corner, what the hell-nobody seems to be hurt." In passing he shook my hands
gravely. "Where've you been, Cecelia?"
"You going out there, Monroe?" Father asked.
"When all the news is in. One of the power lines is off too-I've sent
for Robinson."
He made me sit down with him on the couch and tell about the quake
again.
"You look tired," I said, cute and motherly.
"Yes," he agreed, "I've got no place to go in the evenings so I just
work."
"I'll arrange some evenings for you."
"I used to play poker with a gang," he said thoughtfully. "Before I was
married. But they all drank themselves to death."
Miss Doolan, his secretary, came in with fresh bad news.
"Robby'll take care of everything when he comes," Stahr assured Father.
He turned to me. "Now there's a man-that Robinson. He was a
trouble-shooter-fixed the telephone wires in Minnesota blizzards-nothing
stumps him. He'll be here in a minute-you'll like Robby."
He said it as if it had been his life-long intention to bring us
together, and he had arranged, the whole earthquake with just that in mind.
"Yes, you'll like Robby," he repeated. "When do you go back to
college?"
"I've just come home."
"You get the whole summer?"
"I'm sorry," I said. "I'll go back as soon as I can."
I was in a mist. It hadn't failed to cross my mind that he might have
some intention about me but if it was so, it was in an exasperatingly early
stage-I was merely "a good property." And the idea didn't seem so attractive
at that moment-like marrying a doctor. He seldom left the studio before
eleven.
"How long-" he asked my father, "-before she graduates from college?
That's what I was trying to say."
And I think I was about to sing out eagerly that I needn't go back at
all, that I was quite educated already-when the totally admirable Robinson
came in. He was a bowlegged young redhead, all ready to go.
"This is Robby, Cecelia," said Stahr. "Come on, Robby."
So I met Robby. I can't say it seemed like fate-but it was. For it was
Robby who later told me how Stahr found his love that night.
Episode 6
Under the moon the back lot was thirty acres of fairyland-not because
the locations really looked like African jungles and French chateaux and
schooners at anchor and Broadway by night, but because they looked like the
torn picture books of childhood, like fragments of stories dancing in an
open fire. I never lived in a house with an attic but a back lot must be
something like that and at night of course in an enchanted distorted way, it
all comes true.
When Stahr and Robby arrived clusters of lights had already picked out
the danger spots in the flood.
"We'll pump it out into the swamp on Thirty-sixth Street," said Robby
after a moment. "It's city property-but isn't this an act of God? Say-look
there!"
On top of a huge head of the god Siva, two women were floating down the
current of an impromptu river. The idol had come unloosed from a set of
Burma and it meandered earnestly on its way, stopping sometimes to waddle
and bump in the shallows with the other debris of the tide. The two refugees
had found sanctuary along a scroll of curls on its bald forehead and seemed
at first glance to be sightseers on an interesting bus-ride through the
scene of the flood.
"Will you look at that, Monroe!" said Robby. "Look at those dames!"
Dragging their legs through sudden bogs they made their way to the bank
of the stream. Now they could see the women looking a little scared but
brightening at the prospect of rescue.
"We ought to let 'em drift out to the waste pipe," said Robby
gallantly, "but De Mille needs that head next week."
He wouldn't have hurt a fly though and presently he was hip deep in the
water fishing for them with a pole and succeeding only in spinning it in a
dizzy circle. Help arrived and the impression quickly got around that one of
them was very pretty and then that they were people of importance. But they
were just strays and Robby waited disgustedly to give them hell while the
thing was brought finally into control and beached.
"Put that head back!" he called up to them. "You think it's a
souvenir?"
One of the women came sliding smoothly down the cheek of the idol and
Robby caught and set her on solid ground; the other one hesitated and then
followed. Robby turned to Stahr for judgement.
"What'll we do with them, chief?"
Stahr did not answer. Smiling faintly at him from not four feet away
was the face of his dead wife, identical even to the expression. Across the
four feet of moonlight the eyes he knew looked back at him, a curl blew a
little on a familiar forehead, the smile lingered changed a little according
to pattern, the lips parted-the same. An awful fear went over him and he
wanted to cry aloud. Back from the still sour room, the muffled glide of the
limousine hearse, the falling concealing flowers, from out there in the
dark-here now warm and glowing. The river passed him in a rush, the great
spotlights swooped and blinked-and then he heard another voice speak that
was not Minna's voice.
"We're sorry," said the voice. "We followed a truck in through a gate."
A little crowd had gathered-electricians, grips, truckers-and Robby
began to nip at them like a sheep dog.
"... get the big pumps on the tanks on Stage 4... put a cable around
this head... raft it up on a couple of two-by-fours... get the water out of
the Jungle first for Christ's sake... that big A pipe lay it down, all that
stuff is plastic...."
Stahr stood watching the two women as they threaded their way after a
policeman toward an exit gate. Then he took a tentative step to see if the
weakness had gone out of his knees. A loud tractor came bumping through the
slush and men began streaming by him-every second one glancing at him
smiling speaking Hello Monroe... Hello Mr. Stahr... wet night Mr. Stahr...
Monroe... Monroe... Stahr... Stahr... Stahr.
He spoke and waved back as the people streamed by in the darkness,
looking I suppose a little like the Emperor and the Old Guard. There is no
world so but it has its heroes and Stahr was the hero. Most of these men had
been here a long time-through the beginnings and the great upset when sound
came and the three years of Depression he had seen that no harm came to
them. The old loyalties were trembling now-there were clay feet
everywhere-but still he was their man, the last of the princes. And their
greeting was a sort of low cheer as they went by.
Episode 7
Between the night I got back and the quake I'd made many observations.
About Father, for example. I loved Father-in a sort of irregular graph
with many low swoops-but I began to see that his strong will didn't fill him
out as a passable man. Most of what he accomplished boiled down to shrewd.
He had acquired with luck and shrewdness a quarter interest in a booming
circus-together with young Stahr. That was his life's effort-all the rest
was an instinct to hang on. Of course he talked that double talk to Wall
Street about how mysterious it was to make a picture but Father didn't know
the ABC's of dubbing or even cutting. Nor had he learned much about the feel
of America as a bar boy in Ballyhegan nor have any more than a drummer's
sense of a story. On the other hand he didn't have concealed paresis like
----; he came to the studio before noon, and with a suspiciousness developed
like a muscle it was hard to put anything over on him.
Stahr had been his luck-and Stahr was something else again. He was a
marker in industry like Edison and Lumiere and Griffith and Chaplin. He led
pictures way up past the range and power of the theatre, reaching a sort of
golden age before the censorship in 1933. Proof of his leadership was the
spying that went on around him-not just for inside information or patented
process secrets-but spying on his scent for a trend in taste, his guess as
how things were going to be. Too much of his vitality was taken by the mere
parrying of these attempts. It made his work secret in part, often devious,
slow-and hard to describe as the plans of a general-where the psychological
factors become too tenuous and we end by merely adding up the successes and
failures. But I have determined to give you a glimpse of him functioning,
which is my excuse for what follows. It is drawn partly from a paper I wrote
in college on "A Producer's Day" and partly from my imagination. More often
I have blocked in the ordinary events myself, while the stranger ones are
true.
In the early morning after the flood, a man walked up to the outside
balcony of the Administration Building. He lingered there some time
according to an eyewitness, then mounted to the iron railing and dove head
first to the pavement below. Breakage-one arm.
Miss Doolan, Stahr's secretary, told him about it when he buzzed for
her at nine. He had slept in his office without hearing the small commotion.
"Pete Zavras!" Stahr exclaimed, "-the camera man?"
"They took him to a doctor's office. It won't be in the paper."
"Hell of a thing," he said, "I knew he'd gone to pot-but I don't know
why. He was all right when we used him two years ago-why should he come
here? How did he get in?"
"He bluffed it with his old studio pass," said Catherine Doolan. She
was a dry hawk, the wife of an assistant director. "Perhaps the quake had
something to do with it."
"He was the best camera man in town," Stahr said. When he had heard of
the thousands dead at Long Beach he was still haunted by the abortive
suicide at dawn. He told Catherine Doolan to trace the matter down.
The first Dictograph messages blew in through the warm morning. While
he shaved and had coffee he talked and listened. Robby had left a message:
"If Mr. Stahr wants me tell him to hell with it I'm in bed." An actor was
sick or thought so; the Governor of California was bringing a party out; a
supervisor had beaten up his wife for the prints and must be "reduced to a
writer"-these three affairs were Father's job-unless the actor was under
personal contract to Stahr. There was early snow on a location in Canada
with the company already there-Stahr raced over the possibilities of salvage
reviewing the story of the picture. Nothing. Stahr called Catherine Doolan.
"I want to speak to the cop who put two women off the back lot last
night. I think his name's Malone."
"Yes, Mr. Stahr. I've got Joe Wyman-about the trousers."
"Hello Joe," said Stahr. "Listen-two people at the sneak preview
complained that Morgan's fly was open for half the picture... of course
they're exaggerating but even if it's only ten feet... no, we can't find the
people but I want that picture run over and over until you find that
footage. Get a lot of people in the projection room-somebody'll spot it."
Tout passe.-L'art robuste
Seul a l'eternite.
"And there's the Prince from Denmark," said Catherine Doolan. "He's
very handsome." She was impelled to add pointlessly "-for a tall man."
"Thanks," Stahr said. "Thank you, Catherine, I appreciate it that I am
now the handsomest small man on the lot. Send the Prince out on the sets and
tell him we'll lunch at one."
"And Mr. George Boxley-looking very angry in a British way."
"I'll see him for ten minutes."
As she went out he asked:
"Did Robby phone in?"
"No."
"Call Sound and if he's been heard from call him and ask him this. Ask
him this-did he hear that woman's name last night. Either of those women. Or
anything so they could be traced."
"Anything else?"
"No, but tell him it's important while he still remembers. What were
they? I mean what kind of people-ask him that too. I mean were they-"
She waited, scratching his words on her pad without looking.
"-oh, were they-questionable? Were they theatrical? Never mind-skip
that. Just ask if he knows how they can be traced."
The policeman, Malone, had known nothing. Two dames and he had hustled
'em you betcha. One of them was sore. Which one? One of them. They had a
car, a Chewy, he thought of taking the license. Was it-the good looker who
was sore? It was one of them.
Not which one-he had noticed nothing. Even on the lot here Minna was
forgotten. In three years. So much for that then.
Episode 8
Stahr smiled at Mr. George Boxley. It was a kindly fatherly smile Stahr
had developed inversely when he was a young man pushed into high places.
Originally it had been a smile of respect toward his elders, then as his own
decisions grew rapidly to displace theirs, a smile so that they should not
feel it-finally emerging as what it was, a smile of kindness sometimes a
little hurried and tired but always there, toward anyone who had not angered
him within the hour. Or anyone he did not intend to insult aggressive and
outright.
Mr. Boxley did not smile back. He came in with the air of being
violently dragged though no one apparently had a hand on him. He stood in
front of a chair and again it was as if two invisible attendants seized his
arms and set him down forcibly into it. He sat there morosely. Even when he
lit a cigarette on Stahr's invitation one felt that the match was held to it
by exterior forces he disdained to control.
Stahr looked at him courteously.
"Something not going well, Mr. Boxley?"
The novelist looked back at him in thunderous silence.
"I read your letter," said Stahr. The tone of the pleasant young
headmaster was gone. He spoke as to an equal but with a faint two-edged
deference.
"I can't get what I write on paper," broke out Boxley. "You've all been
very decent but it's a sort of conspiracy. Those two hacks you've teamed me
with listen to what I say but they spoil it-they seem to have a vocabulary
of about a hundred words."
"Why don't you write it yourself?" asked Stahr.
"I have. I sent you some."
"But it was just talk, back and forth," said Stahr mildly. "Interesting
talk but nothing more."
Now it was all the two ghostly attendants could do to hold Boxley in
the deep chair. He struggled to get up; he uttered a single quiet bark which
had some relation to laughter but none to amusement, and said:
"I don't think you people read things. The men are dueling when the
conversation takes place. At the end one of them falls into a well and has
to be hauled up in a bucket."
He barked again and subsided.
"Would you write that in a book of your own, Mr. Boxley?"
"What? Naturally not."
"You'd consider it too cheap."
"Movie standards are different," said Boxley hedging.
"Do you ever go to them?"
"No-almost never."
"Isn't it because people are always dueling and falling down wells?"
"Yes-and wearing strained facial expressions and talking incredible and
unnatural dialogue."
"Skip the dialogue for a minute," said Stahr. "Granted your dialogue is
more graceful than what these hacks can write-that's why we brought you out
here. But let's imagine something that isn't either bad dialogue or jumping
down a well. Has your office got a stove in it that lights with a match?"
"I think it has," said Boxley stiffly, "-but I never use it."
"Suppose you're in your office. You've been fighting duels or writing
all day and you're too tired to fight or write any more. You're sitting
there staring-dull, like we all get sometimes. A pretty stenographer that
you've seen before comes into the room and you watch her-idly. She doesn't
see you though you're very close to her. She takes off her gloves, opens her
purse and dumps it out on a table-"
Stahr stood up, tossing his key-ring on his desk.
"She has two dimes and a nickle-and a cardboard match box. She leaves
the nickle on the desk, puts the two dimes back into her purse and takes her
black gloves to the stove, opens it and puts them inside. There is one match
in the match box and she starts to light it kneeling by the stove. You
notice that there's a stiff wind blowing in the window-but just then your
telephone rings. The girl picks it up, says hello-listens-and says
deliberately into the phone 'I've never owned a pair of black gloves in my
life.' She hangs up, kneels by the stove again, and just as she lights the
match you glance around very suddenly and see that there's another man in
the office, watching every move the girl makes-"
Stahr paused. He picked up his keys and put them in his pocket.
"Go on," said Boxley smiling. "What happens?"
"I don't know," said Stahr. "I was just making pictures."
Boxley felt he was being put in the wrong.
"It's just melodrama," he said.
"Not necessarily," said Stahr. "In any case nobody has moved violently
or talked cheap dialogue or had any facial expression at all. There was only
one bad line, and a writer like you could improve it. But you were
interested."
"What was the nickle for?" asked Boxley evasively.
"I don't know," said Stahr. Suddenly he laughed, "Oh yes-the nickle was
for the movies."
The two invisible attendants seemed to release Boxley. He relaxed,
leaned back in his chair and laughed.
"What in hell do you pay me for?" he demanded. "I don't understand the
damn stuff."
"You will," said Stahr grinning. "Or you wouldn't have asked about the
nickle."
A dark saucer-eyed man was waiting in the outer office as they came
out.
"Mr. Boxley, this is Mr. Mike Van Dyke," Stahr said. "What is it,
Mike?"
"Nothing," Mike said. "I just came up to see if you were real."
"Why don't you go to work?" Stahr said. "I haven't had a laugh in the
rushes for days."
"I'm afraid of a nervous breakdown."
"You ought to keep in form," Stahr said. "Let's see you peddle your
stuff." He turned to Boxley. "Mike's a gag man-he was out here when I was in
the cradle. Mike, show Mr. Boxley a double wing, clutch, kick and scram."
"Here?" asked Mike.
"Here."
"There isn't much room. I wanted to ask you about-"
"There's lots of room. "
"Well," he looked around tentatively. "You shoot the gun."
Miss Doolan's assistant, Katie, took a paper bag, blew it open.
"It was a routine," Mike said to Boxley-"back in the Keystone days." He
turned to Stahr. "Does he know what a routine is?"
"It means an act," Stahr explained. "Georgie Jessel talks about
'Lincoln's Gettysburg routine.' "
Katie poised the neck of the blown up bag in her mouth. Mike stood with
his back to her.
"Ready?" Katie asked. She brought her hand down on the side.
Immediately Mike grabbed his bottom with both hands, jumped in the air, slid
his feet out on the floor one after the other, remaining in place and
flapping his arms twice like a bird "Double wing," said Stahr.
-And then ran-out the screen door which the office boy held open for
him and disappeared past the window of the balcony.
"Mr. Stahr," said Miss Doolan, "Mr. Hanson is on the phone from New
York."
Ten minutes later he clicked his Dictograph and Miss Doolan came in.
There was a male star waiting to see him in the outer office Miss Doolan
said.
"Tell him I went out by the balcony," Stahr advised her.
"All right. He's been in four times this week. He seems very anxious."
"Did he give you any hint of what he wanted? Isn't it something he can
see Mr. Brady about?"
"He didn't say. You have a conference coming up. Miss Meloney and Mr.
White are outside. Mr. Broaca is next door in Mr. Rienmund's office."
"Send ----- in," said Stahr. "Tell him I can see him only for a
minute."
When the handsome actor came in Stahr remained standing.
"What is it that can't wait?" he asked pleasantly.
The actor waited carefully till Miss Doolan had gone out.
"Monroe, I'm through," he said. "I had to see you."
"Through!" said Stahr. "Have you seen 'Variety'? Your picture's held
over at Roxy's and did thirty-seven thousand in Chicago last week."
"That's the worst of it. That's the tragedy. I get everything I want
and now it means nothing."
"Well, go on explain."
"There's nothing between Esther and me anymore. There never can be
again."
"A row."
"Oh, no-worse-I can't bear to mention it. My head's in a daze. I wander
around like a madman. I go through my part as if I was asleep."
"I haven't noticed it," said Stahr. "You were great in your rushes
yesterday."
"Was I? That just shows you nobody ever guesses."
"Are you trying to tell me that you and Esther are separating?"
"I suppose it'll come to that. Yes-inevitably-it will."
"What was it?" demanded Stahr impatiently. "Did she come in without
knocking?"
"Oh, there's nobody else. It's just-me. I'm through."
Stahr got it suddenly.
"How do you know?"
"It's been true for six weeks."
"It's your imagination," said Stahr. "Have you been to a doctor?"
The actor nodded.
"I've tried everything. I even-one day in desperation I went down to-to
Claris. But it was hopeless. I'm washed up."
Stahr had an impish temptation to tell him to go to Brady about it.
Brady handled all matters of public relations. Or was this private
relations. He turned away a moment, got his face in control, turned back.
"I've been to Pat Brady," said the star, as if guessing the thought.
"He gave me a lot of phoney advice and I tried it all but nothing doing.
Esther and I sit opposite each other at dinner and I'm ashamed to look at
her. She's been a good sport about it but I'm ashamed. I'm ashamed all day
long. I think 'Rainy Day' grossed 25,000 in Des Moines and broke all records
in St. Louis and did 27,000 in Kansas City. My fan mail's way up and there I
am afraid to go home at night, afraid to go to bed."
Stahr began to be faintly oppressed. When the actor first came in Stahr
had intended to invite him to a cocktail party but now it scarcely seemed
appropriate. What would he want with a cocktail party with this hanging over
him. In his mind's eye he saw him wandering haunted from guest to guest with
a cocktail in his hand and his grosses up 28, 000.
"So I came to you, Monroe. I never saw a situation where you didn't
know a way out. I said to myself even if he advises me to kill myself I'll
ask Monroe."
The buzzer sounded on Stahr's desk-he switched on the Dictograph and
heard Miss Doolan's voice.
"Five minutes, Mr. Stahr."
"I'm sorry," said Stahr, "I'll need a few minutes more."
"Five hundred girls marched to my house from the high school," the
actor said gloomily. "And I stood behind the curtains and watched them. I
couldn't go out."
"You sit down," said Stahr. "We'll take plenty of time and talk this
over."
In the outer office two members of the conference group had already
waited ten minutes-Wylie White and Rose Meloney. The latter was a dried up
little blonde of fifty about whom one could hear the fifty assorted opinions
of Hollywood-"a sentimental dope," "the best writer on construction in
Hollywood," "a veteran," "that old hack," "the smartest woman on the lot,"
"the cleverest plagiarist in the biz," and of course in addition a
nymphomaniac, a virgin, a pushover, a lesbian and a faithful wife. Without
being an old maid she was like most self-made women rather old maidish. She
had ulcers of the stomach and her salary was over a hundred thousand a year.
A complicated treatise could be written on whether she was "worth it" or
more than that or nothing at all. Her value lay in such ordinary assets as
the bare fact that she was a woman and adaptable, quick and trustworthy,
"knew the game" and was without egotism. She had been a great friend of
Minna's and over a period of years he had managed to stifle what amounted to
a sharp physical revulsion.
She and Wylie waited in silence-occasionally addressing a remark to
Miss Doolan. Every few minutes Rienmund the supervisor called up from his
office where he and Broaca the director were waiting. After ten minutes
Stahr's button went on and Miss Doolan called Rienmund and Broaca;
simultaneously Stahr and the actor came out of Stahr's office with Stahr
holding the man's arm. He was so wound up now that when Wylie White asked
him how he was he opened his mouth and began to tell him then and there.
"Oh, I've had an awful time," he said but Stahr interrupted sharply.
"No you haven't. Now you go along and do the role the way I said."
"Thank you, Monroe."
Rose Meloney looked after him without speaking.
"Somebody been catching flies on him?" she asked, a phrase for stealing
scenes.
"I'm sorry I kept you waiting," Stahr said. "Come on in."
Episode 9
It was noon already and the conferees were entitled to exactly an hour
of Stahr's time. No less, for such a conference could only be interrupted by
a director who was held up in his shooting; seldom much more because every
eight days the company must release a production as complex and costly as
Reinhardt's "Miracle."
Occasionally, less often than five years ago, Stahr would work all
through the night on a single picture. But after such a spree he felt bad
for days. If he could go from problem to problem there was a certain rebirth
of vitality with each change. And like those sleepers who can wake whenever
they wish, he had set his psychological clock to run one hour.
The cast assembled included besides the writers Rienmund, one of the
most favored of the supervisors, and John Broaca, the picture's director.
Broaca, on the surface, was an engineer-large and without nerves,
quietly resolute, popular. He was an ignoramus and Stahr often caught him
making the same scenes over and over-one scene about a rich young girl
occurred in all his pictures with the same action, the same business. A
bunch of large dogs. entered the room and jumped around the girl. Later the
girl went to a stable and slapped a horse on the rump. The explanation was
probably not Freudian; more likely that at a drab moment in youth he had
looked through a fence and seen a beautiful girl with dogs and horses. As a
trademark for glamor it was stamped on his brain forever.
Rienmund was a handsome young opportunist, with a fairly good
education. Originally a man of some character he was being daily forced by
his anomalous position into devious ways of acting and thinking. He was a
bad man now, as men go. At thirty he had none of the virtues which either
native Americans or Jews are taught to think admirable. But he got his
pictures out in time and by manifesting an almost homosexual fixation on
Stahr, seemed to have dulled Stahr's usual acuteness. Stahr liked
him-considered him a good all around man.
Wylie White, of course, would have been recognizable in any country as
an intellectual of the second order. He was civilized and voluble, both
simple and acute, half dazed half saturnine. His jealousy of Stahr showed
only in unguarded flashes, and was mingled with admiration and even
affection.
"The production date for this picture is two weeks from Saturday," said
Stahr. "I think basically it's all right-much improved."
Rienmund and the two writers exchanged a glance of congratulation.
"Except for one thing," said Stahr, thoughtfully. "I don't see why it
should be produced at all and I've decided to put it away."
There was a moment of shocked silence-and then murmurs of protest,
stricken queries.
"It's not your fault," Stahr said. "I thought there was something there
that wasn't there-that was all." He hesitated, looking regretfully at
Rienmund. "It's too bad-it was a good play. We paid fifty thousand for it."
"What's the matter with it, Monroe?" asked Broaca bluntly.
"Well, it hardly seems worth while to go into it," said Stahr.
Rienmund and Wylie White were both thinking of the professional effect
on them. Rienmund had two pictures to his account this year-but Wylie White
needed a credit to start his comeback to the scene. Rose Meloney was
watching Stahr closely from little skull-like eyes.
"Couldn't you give us some clue?" Rienmund asked. "This is a good deal
of a blow, Monroe."
"I just wouldn't put Margaret Sullavan in it," said Stahr. "Or Colman
either. I wouldn't advise them to play it-"
"Specifically, Monroe," begged Wylie White. "What didn't you like? The
scenes? the dialogue? the humor? construction?"
Stahr picked up the script from his desk, let it fall as if it were
physically too heavy to handle.
"I don't like the people," he said. "I wouldn't like to meet them-if I
knew they were going to be somewhere I'd go somewhere else. "
Rienmund smiled but there was worry in his eyes.
"Well, that's a damning criticism," he said. "I thought the people were
rather interesting. "
"So did I," said Broaca. "I thought Em was very sympathetic."
"Did you?" asked Stahr sharply. "I could just barely believe she was
alive. And when I came to the end I said to myself 'So what?' "
"There must be something to do," Rienmund said. "Naturally we feel bad
about this. This is the structure we agreed on-"
"But it's not the story," said Stahr. "I've told you many times that
the first thing I decide is the kind of story I want. We change in every
other regard but once that is set we've got to work toward it with every
line and movement. This is not the kind of a story I want. The story we
bought had shine and glow-it was a happy story. This is all full of doubt
and hesitation. The hero and heroine stop loving each other over
trifles-then they start up again over trifles. After the first sequence you
don't care if she never sees him again or he her."
"That's my fault," said Wylie suddenly. "You see, Monroe, I don't think
stenographers have the same dumb admiration for their bosses they had in
1929. They've been laid off-they've seen their bosses jittery. The world has
moved on, that's all."
Stahr looked at him impatiently, gave a short nod.
"That's not under discussion," he said. "The premise of this story is
that the girl did have dumb admiration for her boss if you want to call it
that. And there wasn't any evidence that he'd ever been jittery. When you
make her doubt him in any way you have a different kind of story. Or rather
you haven't anything at all. These people are extraverts-get that
straight-and I want them to extravert all over the lot. When I want to do a
Eugene O'Neill play I'll buy one."
Rose Meloney who had never taken her eyes off Stahr knew it was going
to be all right now. If he had really been going to abandon the picture he
wouldn't have gone at it like this. She had been in this game longer than
any of them except Broaca with whom she had had a three day affair twenty
years ago.
Stahr turned to Rienmund.
"You ought to have understood from the casting, Rieny, what kind of a
picture I wanted. I started marking the lines that Carroll and MacMurray
couldn't say and got tired of it. Remember this in future-if I order a
limousine I want that kind of car. And the fastest midget racer you ever saw
wouldn't do. Now-" He looked around. "Shall we go any farther? Now that I've
told you I don't even like the kind of picture this is? Shall we go on?
We've got two weeks. At the end of that time I'm going to put Carroll and
MacMurray into this or something else-is it worth while?"
"Well naturally," said Rienmund, "I think it is. I feel bad about this.
I should have warned Wylie. I thought he had some good ideas."
"Monroe's right," said Broaca bluntly. "I felt this was wrong all the
time but I couldn't put my finger on it."
Wylie and Rose looked at him contemptuously and exchanged a glance.
"Do you writers think you can get hot on it again?" asked Stahr, not
unkindly. "Or shall I try somebody fresh?"
"I'd like another shot," said Wylie.
"How about you, Rose?"
She nodded briefly.
"What do you think of the girl?" asked Stahr.
"Well-naturally I'm prejudiced in her favor."
"You better forget it," said Stahr warningly. "Ten million Americans
would put thumbs down on that girl if she walked on the screen. We've got an
hour and twenty-five minutes on the screen-you show a woman being unfaithful
to a man for one-third of that time and you've given the impression that
she's one-third whore."
"Is that a big proportion?" asked Rose slyly, and they laughed.
"It is for me," said Stahr thoughtfully, "even if it wasn't for the
Hays office. If you want to paint a scarlet letter on her back it's all
right but that's another story. Not this story. This is a future wife and
mother. However-however-"
He pointed his pencil at Wylie White.
"-this has as much passion as that Oscar on my desk."
"What the hell!" said Wylie. "She's full of it. Why she goes to-"
"She's loose enough," said Stahr, "-but that's all. There's one scene
in the play better than all this you cooked up and you've left it out. When
she's trying to make the time pass by changing her watch."
"It didn't seem to fit," Wylie apologized.
"Now," said Stahr, "I've got about fifty ideas. I'm going to call Miss
Doolan." He pressed a button. "-and if there's anything you don't understand
speak up-"
Miss Doolan slid in almost imperceptibly. Pacing the floor swiftly
Stahr began. In the first place he wanted to tell them what kind of a girl
she was-what kind of a girl he approved of here. She was a perfect girl with
a few small faults as in the play but a perfect girl not because the public
wanted her that way but because it was the kind of girl that he, Stahr,
liked to see in this sort of picture. Was that clear? It was no character
role. She stood for health, vitality, ambition and love. What gave the play
its importance was entirely a situation in which she found herself. She
became possessed of a secret that affected a great many lives. There was a
right thing and a wrong thing to do-at first it was not plain which was
which but when it was she went right away and did it. That was the kind of
story this was-thin, clean and shining. No doubts.
"She has never heard the word labor troubles," he said with a sigh.
"She might be living in 1929. Is it plain what kind of girl I want?"
"It's very plain, Monroe."
"Now about the things she does," said Stahr. "At all times, at all
moments when she is on the screen in our sight she wants to sleep with Ken
Willard. Is that plain, Wylie?"
"Passionately plain."
"Whatever she does it is in place of sleeping with Ken Willard. If she
walks down the street she is walking to sleep with Ken Willard, if she eats
her food it is to give her strength to sleep with Ken Willard. But at no
time do you give the impression that she would ever consider sleeping with
Ken Willard unless they were properly sanctified. I'm ashamed of having to
tell you these kindergarten facts but they have somehow leaked out of the
story."
He opened the script and began to go through it page by page. Miss
Doolan's notes would be typed in quintuplicate and given to them but Rose
Meloney made notes of her own. Broaca put his hand up to his half closed
eyes-he could remember "when a director was something out here," when
writers were gag men or eager and ashamed young reporters full of whiskey-a
director was all there was then. No supervisor-no Stahr.
He started wide awake as he heard his name.
"It would be nice, John, if you could put the boy on a pointed roof and
let him walk around and keep the camera on him. You might get a nice
feeling-not danger, not suspense, not pointing for anything-a kid on the
roof in the morning."
Broaca brought himself back in the room.
"All right," he said. "-just an element of danger."
"Not exactly," said Stahr. "He doesn't start to fall off the roof.
Break into the next scene with it."
"Through the window," suggested Rose Meloney. "He could climb in his
sister's window."
"That's a good transition," said Stahr. "Right into the diary scene. "
Broaca was wide awake now.
"I'll shoot up at him," he said. "Let him go away from the camera. Just
a fixed shot from quite a distance-let him go away from the camera. Don't
follow him. Pick him up in a close shot and let him go away again. No
attention on him except against the whole roof and the sky." He liked the
shot-it was a director's shot that didn't come up on every page any more. He