Cocksure

  Mortimer, his heart thumping, watched as two black-suited men carried out a thin seven-foot-long black box and set it down on the floor with immense care. They were followed by two more men, wheeling an incredible-looking machine with a menacing pumplike device attached. The men rolled the rubber-wheeled machine to a stop beside the long black box and immediately began to adjust a number of dials. Then a studio door cracked open and shut, admitting two of the Star Maker’s doctors and a very pretty, giggly nurse.

  “Ready! Steady! Go!”

  The doctors and the nurse, wearing white, raced for the long table and began to gorge themselves on champagne and caviar. They were indifferent to the black-suited riders who now began to close in on the Star.

  “No,” the Star howled, picking up an empty bottle, “not this time, you don’t.”

  “Double negative,” one of the doctors said to the nurse, making her fall about with laughter.

  The circle of black-suited men tightened. Klieg lights were flicked on, searching out the Star.

  “Now come on,” the leader of the black-suited riders pleaded. “Be a good boy.”

  “No!”

  “Why make trouble for us? In the end …”

  “I’m not going to let you do it. Not this time.”

  “But you’re going to start on another film in a month’s time. Thirty-one days from today.”

  “That’s what you promised last time. I want a life of my own. I want to get married. I –”

  “Don’t make me laugh.”

  “If you let me go,” the Star begged, retreating, “I’ll be good. I’ll do anything you say. So help me God.”

  “Don’t be childish. You know the rules.”

  Without warning, two black-suited riders lunged for the Star. He avoided them, disappearing among the flats.

  “Now remember, guys, he’s not to be damaged. It’s as much as your life is worth if you so much as bruise him.”

  One of the doctors bounced the nurse on his lap. The other doctor, having had his fill of smoked salmon, began to wrap what he couldn’t eat. Suddenly there came the clatter of a man pulling desperately against a locked door. A whistle blew. “There he is,” one of the black-suited riders called out.

  As the riders regrouped, closing in on the Star, the doctor opened his legs, letting the nurse crash to the floor. He picked up a syringe and started wearily toward the Star.

  “Easy does it. Now remember, guys. You mustn’t puncture him.”

  Once more the adroit survivor of a hundred and one cinema chases eluded his pursuers, knocking over and shattering a klieg light.

  “Where is he now?”

  “That’s not our problem. It’s the broken glass we’ve got to worry about.”

  “Christ!”

  “You two. Sweep it up immediately. All we need is for him to trip over that.”

  Now the nurse sat on the other doctor’s lap, shoveling caviar into his mouth until the cheeks were inflated.

  “Over there!”

  The Star was trapped in a spotlight, high over the studio floor, swinging from a cable, reminding Mortimer, more than anything else, of his Academy Award-winning Captain Kidd’s Revenge.

  “If you come a step closer,” the Star shrieked girlishly, “I’ll throw myself down.”

  “Oh, no, you wouldn’t. You’ll break.”

  “I don’t care.”

  A black-suited rider whistled as he opened the long black box, velvet-lined and mothproofed. The doctor with the syringe approached again, suppressing a yawn.

  “Lower him down gently,” the leader of the black-suited riders called out when suddenly Mortimer was seized from behind. He jumped.

  “What are you doing here?” a rider demanded.

  Another rider twisted Mortimer’s arm high behind his back.

  “I’ve come to see the Star Maker. I have some confidential papers with me.”

  “You’d better, baby. You’d better.”

  As Mortimer was hustled off, the Star’s shrieks continued unabated, silence coming only when the heavy studio door slid shut behind him.

  “You’d be Griffin, Mortimer Griffin,” the Star Maker said cordially.

  Wincing with pain, Mortimer nodded.

  “Let him go. Griffin’s got an absolutely marvy lymphatic system. Isn’t that right?”

  Mortimer nodded dumbly.

  “Did you bring the papers and books?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good boy! You can leave us alone now, fellas, it’s perfectly all right. Pour yourself a drink, Griffin. Over there,” the Star Maker said, indicating the bar.

  Gratefully Mortimer helped himself to a large brandy.

  The Star Maker’s handsomely appointed suite was overheated, silk curtains drawn against the sunlight. The desk, the surface covered in tooled green leather, was the work of a seventeenth-century Florentine craftsman. A carved piece of Chinese jade served as a paperweight. The desk-lamp base was carved out of ivory, the work of an Ashanti tribesman. All the other furnishings, at first glance, were also rare and ruggedly masculine, except for a far corner set off by frilly blue curtains. This corner was bare except for a rug made of chinchilla skins, and a frail-looking bassinet hewn of hand-carved oak.

  “It was Henry the Third’s of France,” the Star Maker said, and went on to explain that in deference to Henry III, who wished to be a woman, French sovereigns were referred to by the feminine gender: “Sa majesté.”

  Mortimer had, until now, avoided looking directly at the Star Maker, who was not seated in the customary wheelchair. Instead, the old thing was lolling on a bed, under an enormous oil painting of Tiresias, on Mount Cyllene, watching two snakes coupling. Crocheted pillows were propped under the Star Maker’s massive head, and a lead taped to an artery in his arm ran to a renal dialyzer, wherein the Star Maker’s blood flowed over one side of a semipermeable membrane of Cuprophane, and was cleansed of undesirable molecules and toxic materials before it ran into the body through another vein. A most efficient-looking nurse attended the dialyzer. “Kidney rinse,” the Star Maker said, nose crinkling. “I’ll only be another minute. Won’t I, dear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mortimer waited, trying not to stare, while the nurse unstrapped it. The Star Maker smiled back reassuringly and Mortimer noticed, for the first time, that now the right eye was swimming with cataracts. Then, mercifully, the nurse drew a curtain round the Star Maker and Mortimer hastened to pour himself another drink.

  Soon the Star Maker emerged in a wheelchair, cheeks pink, legs tucked under a rug, the right leg dangling at least six inches lower than the left, the shoe on the right foot easily two sizes larger than the shoe on the left. “Now then,” the Star Maker asked, “are you comfy?”

  “Yes,” Mortimer said.

  “Thank you, nurse,” the Star Maker said, waving the right, absolutely unwrinkled hand. The other hand was wizened. Something else Mortimer found unnerving; the Star Maker’s voice tended to crack in mid-sentence, wavering between soprano and baritone.

  “Only a half hour to your next injection,” the nurse said, departing.

  The Star Maker nodded, leaning forward for Mortimer to light a cigar. On the Star Maker’s lap there were knitting needles, a ball of blue wool, and the beginnings of a baby’s blue sweater. “You weren’t supposed to enter the studio. It was naughty of you, Griffin. Very. How much did you see?”

  Mortimer told him.

  “Soon I won’t have any secrets left. And do you enjoy publishing?”

  “Yes. That is to say, I did until –”

  “You peeked at the Our Living History file?”

  “Well, now that you mention it, there is something I’d like to ask you.”

  “Good. Very good. You see, Dino Tomasso won’t be with us much longer. He’ll be going into the hospital again soon, poor devil. The other eye. Unsavable.”

  “Oh, my God, how awful!”

  “You mustn’t worry. I will always take care of Dino. He shall
never want for anything.” The Star Maker leaned forward in the wheelchair. “Remember this, Griffin. The revolution eats its own. Capitalism recreates itself.”

  Mortimer didn’t comment.

  “I want you to take over Oriole. The whole shebang.”

  “What?”

  “Another drink?”

  “If you don’t mind?”

  There was a knock at the door. A nurse entered accompanied by a black-suited rider. While the nurse injected an estrogenic preparation – actually I cc. of estradiol undecylate – into the Star Maker’s arm, the Star Maker studied the typewritten sheet the rider had left behind. Once the nurse and rider had departed, the Star Maker, still reading, crossed arms over chest, cupping the breasts, probing gently for renewed gynecomastia. “Oh, well,” the Star Maker muttered consolingly, “can’t rush such a delicate thing as titties, can we?” Then the Star Maker fixed Mortimer with an icy stare. “We can trust you, can’t we, Mortimer? May I call you Mortimer?”

  “Yes. Now, there’s the question of the Our Living History series. The file –”

  “Of course we can trust you. You’ve got a honey of a lymph system to live up to.”

  “You are avoiding my –”

  “Hardly. I will keep no secrets from the man who runs Oriole for me. Mortimer, do you realize that in all my years, my considerable years, you are the first man to smoke out why I am really called the Star Maker?”

  “Am I?”

  “What was it you said to Tomasso?” the Star Maker asked, chuckling. “ ‘He has the emptiest face I’ve ever seen on the screen.’ Harsh words, Mortimer.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Never apologize for brilliance. You could be invaluable to me, Mortimer.”

  “Could I?”

  “Having guessed so much, Mortimer, I feel I owe it to you to tell you the story from the beginning … Now where to begin, where to begin. Let me put it to you this way.” The Star Maker paused and took a deep breath, finally whispering the name of one of the most celebrated film stars of the 1940s who had, Mortimer recalled, died of a heart attack in 1954. “He isn’t dead.”

  “What?”

  “He isn’t dead. He was never born. He didn’t exist.”

  “You’re making fun of me.”

  “No. Not at all. But you’re going to have to be patient. I must begin at the true beginning,” the Star Maker said, taking up the knitting again. “Let me first assure you that there are no Elders of Zion. There never was such a group.”

  “But it never occurred to me for a moment,” Mortimer protested.

  “I have never favored the conspiracy theory of history. Why, even in the Middle Ages there never were any Jewish ritual murders. It’s a load of crap, Mortimer.”

  “I never thought otherwise.”

  “Good. Jews, on the other hand –”

  “Are you, um, Jewish?”

  “Not to begin with. That is to say, I’m Greek-born.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  The Star Maker chuckled. “Well, what I’m getting at is me -these days, I’m a little bit of everything, you know. Pieces and patches.” The Star Maker’s smile ebbed. “Now, as I was saying, Jews, on the other hand, do tend to be influential beyond their numbers in certain selected spheres. Say, philosophy, medical science, banking, the arts … and, well, obviously Hollywood, the cinema arts … Now, going back to the thirties, the nineteen thirties I mean, those were the days of the colossals, the big studios, and I’m revealing nothing if I say most of these studios were owned and run by non-Americans. The foreign-born. Jews, Greeks, Italians. Now the giants are dead. I, of course, still own and run Star Maker Studios, among other ventures …”

  Mortimer, remembering a conversation with Polly Morgan, who knew absolutely everything about the cinema, said, “In those early days, you made the Gasoline Alley films. Rather like the Andy Hardy series.”

  “Exactly. It was on our conscience.”

  “What was?”

  “The WASPs. There we were, you see, a handful of kikes, dagos, and greaseballs, controlling the images Protestant America worshiped. We taught you that to be inarticulate, rather stupid in fact, like Gary Cooper, was manly. It was even manlier to avoid women. Our power was tremendous, you know. Prodigious. When Clark Gable turned up without a vest in It Happened One Night he practically killed the undershirt industry. We set the style in big tits. Etc., etc. But what I’m getting at is power, you know, has its responsibilities. Once a year we met to decide what we could do for the goyim. One year we gave them Andy Hardy and another Alice Faye or John Wayne. Anything to prop up the myths of the American heartland.… Well now, at the same time, to be honest, the stars we had under contract were beginning to give us trouble. This one was a queer, that one a nympho, and the next a shithead. Suddenly names we had made big – former waitresses and ditchdiggers – wanted script approval, if only to show they could read. Things were getting messy, Mortimer.

  “I retreated to Las Vegas to ruminate. There was, I decided, nothing more vacuous, no shell emptier, than a movie actor. They speak the words writers put in their mouths. Any writer. If it’s a woman and her legs are bad you shoot somebody else’s legs for her. If she’s got no tits you build her some, borrowing fat from her thighs. If she can’t sing, you hire somebody to dub for her. If it’s a man, somebody does his stunts for him. If he can’t remember his lines you hold up an idiot card out of shot for him and do one line at a time, over and over again, maybe twenty-five times, until he gets it right. If he has no hair you stitch some on to him. If he’s too short, you stretch him. You handle his women and money for him. You rewrite his past life for him.… Was I, the Star Maker, going to be dependent on the whims of such fleas? In a word, no.

  “I returned to Hollywood and shared my thoughts with other studio heads and at long last they began to take a positive interest in my nonprofit science foundation. Mortimer, you should have seen my lab in those days! What a bunch of scientists I had! They came to me from the Vienna Radium Institute and Göttingen; from Rutherford’s lab at Cambridge; from the University of Munich and Tokyo; from M.I.T. and Princeton and Breslau. The cream of the cream. I read them Edward Gordon Craig’s piece on the übermarionette. I brought in von Sternberg to tell them what he thought about actors. I told them about the contract troubles we were having with the stars and how we had to suppress the squalid details of their personal lives. Gentlemen, I said, each one of you here is a genius. You can have anything you want. Now get into that lab and don’t come out again until you’ve made me a Star.”

  “What?” Mortimer asked.

  “Easier said than done, as you can guess. Previously only God … But then with the other studios behind me at last, with a limitless budget, we set to work in earnest. The idea was to kill two birds with one stone. By manufacturing our own stars, no more than one model to a mold, we would be liberated from our contract troubles and so forth. By making our first star the prototype goy, we would be doing something uplifting for America.

  “So Operation Goy-Boy began. We were under way. But who, we first had to know, was Goy-Boy, that is to say, the ideal American male? The Motivational Research boys, the pollsters, covered America for us, and came back with twenty thousand completed forms. We fed these forms into the most advanced of computers and finally settled on three body and face possibilities. Goy-Boy I, our first man-made star, was only a partial success. He moved rather well, but had only one expression. He got his lines mixed up. All the same, we put him into a picture. First day on the set the damn thing melts under the hot lights. Before our eyes, Mortimer, eight million dollars leaked through the studio floorboards. Goodbye, Goy-Boy I.

  “Goy-Boy II cost us twelve million dollars, but was an enormous improvement. Two complete expressions and memory perfect. Van Thaelman, the comic on our research team (there’s one in every lab, you know), went without sleep a whole weekend just to make Goy-Boy II a cock. Why, it was the cutest little thing you ever saw. If you pulled
Goy-Boy II’s earlobe, it stood up just like a real one. What a bunch we had in the lab, what fun we had in those days! Anyway, the big unanswered question about Goy-Boy II was would the public warm to him? Well, Mortimer, let me assure you, without naming names, that the first picture Goy-Boy II made is still on Variety’s list of all-time great grossers. Another generation is learning to love him as his first picture turns up again and again on TV. We still get fan mail for him –”

  “What happened?” Mortimer asked.

  “What happened?” The Star Maker’s head shook sadly. “For the second picture we pulled the stops out. It was going to be bigger than Gone with the Wind. We went on location in the desert,” the Star Maker said, tears welling in the eyes, “and the second night out, my drunk of a director takes Goy-Boy II out on a binge, showing him off from bar to bar, pulling his earlobe and making his cock stand up for complete strangers. The director bought Goy-Boy II a girl, a call girl with hellishly long nails. A scratcher and a biter.” The Star Maker sighed. “Goy-Boy II didn’t survive his night of love. He never had a chance, poor kid. And of course we couldn’t make another, because we had broken the mold.

  “Which brings me to our triumph, Goy-Boy III. The Mini-Goy. What a piece of work! Three expressions, Mortimer. Three. Walked very, very nice. Talked in sentences as long as twelve words each. He couldn’t read actual books or scripts, making him almost human, hah? But he could understand and remember synopses. Mortimer, among actors Mini-Goy passed for an intellectual. Why, women were crazy for him,” the Star Maker said, slapping his knee in fond remembrance. “Anyway, we couldn’t have been more thrilled. We broke open the champagne and we called him, well, you know,” the Star Maker said, whispering the celebrated Star’s name once more.

  “You’re mad, Star Maker.”

  The Star Maker, lost in a reverie, ignored Mortimer. “Armed with three complete expressions and sentences that ran to twelve words, no single word containing more than three syllables, he went from success to success. How were we to know there would be wear and tear, just like we mortals suffer? Here a rip. There a rub gone too deep. Somewhere else a slow leak. The Star, bless him, never said a word. Never a complaint, Mortimer. Between pictures we let the air out and locked him in a mothproof box. Maybe all that inflating and deflating? Anyway one day, I’ll never forget it if I live another hundred years, one day, I was on the set.… In the middle of a picture, his fiftieth maybe, bang! zam! kazoom! He blew up. Disintegrated. Grips were wiping wet pieces of the Star off their faces. Grown men cried like babies. It was terrible, ghastly.”