155
Roy Randolph, the Dancing Master, backlit by the morning sun, performs a routine before the living room window. No music plays. Roy Randolph moves to his own melody, the only sound the tap-tap-tapping of his shoes upon the floor.
Roy Randolph is the court jester.
Roy Randolph is the dog sleeping at the foot of the bed.
Roy Randolph is only one false step away from the street.
But Ben Shipman has been feeding him half-recalled tales of Roy Randolph.
Roy Randolph, tried and acquitted on a morals charge.
Roy Randolph, in all his rapacious glory.
Roy Randolph completes his frolic. Vera and Countess Sonia clap, an action that causes Countess Sonia to spill vodka on her breasts. Countess Sonia rubs her right hand over her skin, mixing scent and liquor, before licking the resulting cocktail from her fingertips. Countess Sonia’s tongue is fat and pale; pink-tipped, like a flaccid prick protruding from her mouth.
All this he watches from a chair in a corner of the room.
Come, says Vera, join us.
He shakes his head. He is drinking, and Vera is drinking, and Countess Sonia is drinking, and Roy Randolph is drinking, and it is not yet noon.
He’s no fun, says Roy Randolph. You know he’s only funny when he flickers.
Vera and Countess Sonia laugh, so Roy Randolph turns his jest into an Eddie Cantor pastiche. Roy Randolph rhymes funny with money, and flickers with pictures. Roy Randolph spins and kicks. Roy Randolph capers so hard that sweat beads blister from his brow, milky with alcohol. They sparkle in the sunlight, and Roy Randolph’s eyes are panicked and bright as Ray Randolph dances to save himself from exile.
He does not react.
He empties his glass, and wishes for the sea.
156
He is broke.
Again.
So he is in court.
Again.
He tells the judge that he pays alimony and child support when he can. He pays income taxes for his ex-wives. He keeps Vera and Countess Sonia—and Roy Randolph, the Dancing Master—in liquor and linen. He has $200 left from an endowment at the end of each month, and a little over ten times that amount in his bank account.
He looks out at the courtroom and sees the newspapermen writing down every word. He sees his first wife, Lois, and his second wife, Ruth. He does not see Vera because Vera is in hospital, having crashed her rental car into a tree following a police chase. A UP reporter, in a memorable phrase, describes his wife and ex-wives as “triple-threat husband hazards.”
It will be many years before he can smile at this.
He is humiliated. The only consolation is that Judge Lester E. Still, blessed be his name, finds in his favor against Lois, and he does not have to pay her $1,000 a month in child support. But Judge Lester E. Still—blessed, etc.—is not about to let him crawl away without first administering a kick in the pants.
The judge reads the newspapers. The judge hears tales of fights in restaurants, of ambulances called, of sirens in the night. The judge may even know of the Dancing Master who plagues his home, the pale puppet who makes merry for Vera and Countess Sonia and, when all are abed, drifts from room to room, marking the value of the master’s every possession.
The judge tells him that he is a fool.
And he cannot disagree.
157
At the Oceana Apartments, he parses the year with Vera.
He remembers that Vera was a drunk.
He remembers that Vera couldn’t sing.
He remembers that Vera had a son, Bobby, although not by her first husband.
He remembers the peculiar color of Roy Randolph’s hair, which matched the peculiar color of Roy Randolph’s eyebrows, both of a blackness found only in bottles and the souls of certain men.
He remembers that Countess Sonia’s perfume smelled like cat piss.
He remembers that Vera wasn’t very good in bed, although she was soft, like fucking a marshmallow.
He remembers that Vera crashed his car. He remembers that Vera was not insured. He remembers that Vera was not insured for the very good reason that Vera could not drive.
He remembers fleeing the house wearing only his socks and underwear.
He remembers driving the wrong way down Reseda Boulevard, intoxicated and crying, and only Ben Shipman’s bamboozling of the jury keeping him out of jail.
He remembers Ruth having fire engines and ambulances maliciously dispatched to his home, the crews seeking to quell imaginary conflagrations and save non-existent victims, all to harrow him.
He remembers making Block-Heads, and how happy he was with the finished picture.
Except.
When he watches Block-Heads now he can see the effects of the alcohol on his eyes and skin, and how he is aging, and how Babe is aging. He sees Babe lift him in his arms to carry him, and winces at a metaphor made real.
He remembers Babe taking him aside on set and remarking, as of the weather:
She’s crazy, you know.
—Who is?
—Illeana. Vera.
Such candor is out of character for Babe, and is indicative of the seriousness of the problem.
—I thought you meant Ruth.
—She’s also crazy, but in a good way.
—You haven’t been woken by sirens at two in the morning.
Listen, says Babe, Hal has had enough. Hal is going to fire you.
—Says who?
—Blystone.
John Blystone is directing Block-Heads. Hal Roach likes John Blystone, who will die of a heart attack before the picture is released.
—Hal is always going to fire me.
—No, this time Hal means it.
And this time, Hal does.
He remembers Ben Shipman’s call.
He remembers that Hal Roach, in the absence of Henry Ginsberg, doesn’t even have the decency to fire him to his face.
He remembers the increasing oppressiveness of Countess Sonia’s perfume.
He remembers Roy Randolph grinning from a couch, his eyes devoid of all emotions but fear and avarice.
He remembers Vera pouring a drink for Countess Sonia, and a drink for Roy Randolph, and a drink for herself, but no drink for him.
He remembers the weight of the telephone in one hand, and the absence of a glass in the other.
He remembers apprehending that he has allowed vultures and thieves into his life.
He remembers thinking that he could bury Vera, with Roy Randolph and Countess Sonia to weigh her down, just in case she tries to crawl out of the hole.
Who was that? Vera asks.
—That was Ben Shipman. I’ve been fired.
It is Roy Randolph who speaks first.
—But what will we do now?
Countess Sonia proceeds to cry.
158
Hal Roach is to pair Babe and Harry Langdon as a new team.
He is the one who gave Harry Langdon a break after years in the wilderness by encouraging Hal Roach to hire Harry Langdon as a writer on Block-Heads. He should feel aggrieved, but he does not. He likes Harry Langdon. He wishes him well.
But not with Babe.
He cannot bring himself to say it aloud. He will only whisper it.
Not with Babe.
Vera is ruining him, or making him complicit in his own ruination: she, and Countess Sonia, and Roy Randolph, the Dancing Master, the damned Dancing Master.
All he wants to do is make pictures.
All he ever wanted to be is like Chaplin.
In her room, Vera is performing arias. He can no longer bring himself to fuck her. He sees her sitting next to Countess Sonia, and one woman morphs into the other so that, in his cups, he can barely tell the difference between them.
Sober, he cannot bear to be around either.
Roy Randolph appears. The Dancing Master stinks of fragrance, but as with the interchangeable aspects of Vera and Countess Sonia, so too has the Dancing Master’s scent bec
ome one with theirs. His home now smells only of whorehouse cologne and spilled liquor.
Roy Randolph has staged the dances for a Gus Meins picture entitled Nobody’s Baby, and figures that Gus Meins may be good for more work in the future. In his mind, Roy Randolph is already buying villas in Italy, and having his perfume made by monks.
Gus Meins works for a time on the Our Gang comedies for Hal Roach, and directs Babes in Toyland, but Gus Meins leaves the studio under a cloud.
There are rumors about Gus Meins.
Gus Meins is married, with a son named Douglas. By 1940, Gus Meins will be dead. In the summer of that year the police will arrest Gus Meins at his family dinner table and charge him with molesting little boys in his basement. After his arraignment, Gus Meins will drive up to Montrose Hills, attach a hosepipe to the exhaust of his car, and asphyxiate himself, and Roy Randolph will never stage the dances for another picture.
But for now Roy Randolph steps through the kitchen, humming show tunes and performing small, soft-shoe shuffles. Roy Randolph picks at a bunch of grapes and pours a glass of orange juice. Roy Randolph opens a newspaper and reads it while standing over the table.
The Dancing Master, he thinks, is more at home in his house than he is.
Vera proceeds from arias to “Beyond the Blue Horizon.”
Countess Sonia calls for the driver to take her to Buffums in Long Beach.
Roy Randolph unseals a jar of imported marmalade and begins eating from it with a teaspoon.
He needs to get back to work.
He needs another divorce.
He picks up the telephone, and calls Ben Shipman.
159
He sits in Ben Shipman’s office. The sunlight streams through the blinds. He admires the order of it, the perfect separation of shadow and light. He reaches out a hand and diffuses the arrangement, trying to capture motes with his fingertips.
Ben Shipman waits for him to speak. If Ben Shipman loves Babe, and Ben Shipman does, then Ben Shipman loves this other twice over. Ben Shipman might claim that this man is incapable of dissembling, but his fornicating would give it the lie. Yet in his misbehavior may be glimpsed the actions of a lost child. On one level he is almost guileless, despite the hurt he causes to those who love him, because he so rarely sets out to cause any hurt at all. It is damage without deliberation, pain without intent. Yet he is selfish, even if his selfishness is a function of his insecurity, and the wreckage he leaves in his wake is no less injurious for the absence of malice.
Ben Shipman is growing weary of watching a man chase dust.
If you tell me that you’re getting married again, says Ben Shipman, I’ll have to shoot you. But what nuptials do you have left to try: a Hindu ceremony, or some tribal thing with bones? You gonna convert, maybe, you and her, ger and giyoret, picking your Hebrew names? Go on, do the impossible: shock me.
He has the words in his head, sitting here before Ben Shipman, but he cannot bring himself to initiate this roundelay again. Perhaps he should call the Dancing Master to instruct him. There may be new steps with which he is, as yet, unfamiliar.
Ben Shipman considers pouring them both a drink, but Ben Shipman does not wish to compound part of the problem.
This is what I have to say to you, says Ben Shipman. You are probably my best friend in the world. I swear, sometimes I even feel bad taking money from you, but I recover and move on. So I believe I can say this to you, in all friendship: you are making an ass of yourself. Your house smells like cleaning-out time at the King Eddy, and sounds like a rooming house for chorus girls. You are ruining your health, and jeopardizing your career, and all because of this woman who gives her entire sex a bad name. If you choose to spend the rest of your life with her, it will be a short one, and poor. If you want to know what she’s going to look like in twenty years’ time, you have only to glance at the Countess, or whatever she is, and that should satisfy any lingering curiosity you might have on the subject. To tell you nothing more or less than the truth, you are acting like a goddamned fool. That’s all I have to say. Now, talk to me.
Ben Shipman sits back in his chair. Ben Shipman hopes that the bluntness of his words does not represent a catastrophic error of judgment.
I can’t afford to get another divorce, he says.
—You can’t afford not to get another divorce. This woman will kill you. She may kill herself first, but we don’t have time to play those odds.
—So what should I do?
First, says Ben Shipman, we start separation proceedings.
—And second?
—Second, we sue Hal Roach.
160
It is not pretty, what ensues.
Vera, Countess Sonia, and Roy Randolph, the Dancing Master, all announce their intention to stand fast. Vera tries to take him to bed. When he refuses, she attempts to get him drunk first and then take him to bed. When this fails, she gets herself drunk and commences singing Russian folk songs of the most maudlin kind, while Countess Sonia and Roy Randolph lament in harmony with her.
But in November 1938, he and Vera separate. He is, it seems, to return to court, with his latest failings made public.
Babe calls. Babe is working on the picture with Harry Langdon. The newspapers are reporting that Hal Roach has offered Harry Langdon a seven-year contract, and Babe and Harry Langdon are to be signed for a series. The pictures will be based, Hal Roach announces, on important novels, whatever this may mean. The age of slapstick is over and Hal Roach, like Mussolini, desires to be taken seriously.
How’s the picture going? he asks Babe.
—They’ve changed the title. It’s now called It’s Spring Again.
—What was it called before?
—This Time It’s Love.
—They’re not very good titles.
—Well, it’s not a very good picture.
—That’s all right, then. As long as you’re not engaged in false advertising.
—I’m not sure that truth in advertising is one of Hal’s priorities.
—Don’t worry. You’ll be great in it.
There is a silence on the line, but it communicates pain and regret.
I know, he says, in response to words unspoken. I miss it all.
This business with Harry—Babe begins.
—Look, I understand. You have to make a living. I don’t hold it against either of you.
—No, listen: I don’t think it’s going to work out.
—What?
—Hal has seen the rushes. Hal’s not happy. United Artists isn’t happy either. It didn’t sign on for Langdon and Hardy.
This is the first piece of good news he’s received in months. He has not wished for Babe’s picture to fail because he does not want Babe’s career to suffer, but if the picture is a success then he may never again see the Hal Roach lot, and he may never again work with Babe. Hal Roach Studios may not be perfect, just as Hal Roach may not be perfect, but it is his home. On the other hand, he is about to sue Hal Roach for breach of contract. But if Langdon and Hardy appear unlikely to last, then Hal Roach may be more inclined to settle the suit.
Thanks for letting me know, he says.
—Be seeing you.
—I hope so. I really do.
161
At the Oceana Apartments, he recreates this call in his mind.
Babe, who revealed great kindness in small gestures.
Babe, who became more Southern at such moments, his natural courtliness finding a complement in his voice.
Babe, who could simply have telephoned Ben Shipman to tell him of the problems with Harry Langdon, and the unlikelihood of the partnership succeeding.
Babe, who almost certainly would have been forced to contact Ben Shipman sooner or later, if only in order to avoid further contractual difficulties down the line.
Babe, who called him instead.
Babe, who was subtle and graceful in Zenobia, as the picture with Langdon was eventually titled, having first gone through more names than a con
artist.
Babe, who was better than Zenobia deserved, liberated in his performance because for the first time in years he was not constrained by the limitations of his partner.
Babe: what might you have become had we two not met?
Because here is the fear, glimpsed by him as an adumbration in the mirror of the past:
Did Babe made him greater than he was, and in doing so make less of himself than Babe might have been?
If I did this thing, he tells the presence in the dusk, then I am sorry for it. Not for meeting you. Not for all those years together.
But I am sorry for what they might have cost you.
162
Ridding himself of Vera is like extricating himself from a thorn bush. Every action brings misery, and every maneuver snags him on another spine.
Vera seeks to remove him from his home.
Vera seeks $1,500 a month in maintenance.
Vera seeks $25,000 in attorney’s fees.
Vera seeks title to all community property.
Vera accuses him of beating her.
Vera accuses him of slashing her with a razor.
Vera accuses him of waving a loaded revolver at her.
Vera accuses him of hitting her with a shovel and attempting to bury her alive in the garden.
And always, in the background, prowl Countess Sonia and the Dancing Master.
He tries to keep all this from Lois, his daughter, but he cannot tell how much she knows, how much she has been told or has overheard. His reputation is being publicly denigrated through newspaper reports and leaked documents.
Did you really hit her with a shovel and try to bury her alive? Ben Shipman asks.
—I might have dug the hole, but I never actually intended to put her in it.
Ben Shipman considers this answer.
—If you’re questioned about it in court, say you were gardening. Just don’t tell anyone what you were going to plant.
It is November.
Ben Shipman files suit on his behalf against Hal Roach Studios, seeking $700,000 in damages for breach of contract.