“But you do love me,” I murmured. “And you’re going to marry me. Remember?”
“I’ve made up my mind about that, too. You really don’t love me. You’re in love with a whore named Hollywood.”
I went to her then, grabbed her, shook her until she clung to me as I knew she would. Tears, then, wetting my shoulder. And my hands moving over her back (damn it, she was right, I kept thinking of it in terms of a scene, wondering which angle they’d shoot it from to catch both our faces) and my voice saying, “You’re just tired, it isn’t that bad really, it won’t be like that when we’re married—you’ll see. Being a wife is good casting.”
“Casting!”
“Sorry,” I said.
“So am I.” She stepped back. “But that’s just what I mean when I say I have to go. You’re not quitting pictures, not even for me—are you? Don’t give me a fast answer. You wouldn’t quit if I asked you. You know it.”
“I guess you’re right. What else is there for me to do?”
“Nothing. And you should stay, I want you to stay. I’m proud of you. But I can’t live the kind of life you want, even as a housewife. With you gone nights, off for weeks at a time on location; always worrying about the next day’s shooting, the next story, the next picture, the next contract. None of it means anything to me.”
“But I love you.”
“I know, I know! I wish just loving was enough. But living is important, too.”
“What are you going to do?”
“There’s Mother. And I’ll find something. Something in the real world you don’t know about, or want to know about. They say there’s a hundred and twenty million people living in this country. And believe it or not, they don’t spend all their time at the movies.”
“Dawn, I don’t know. I don’t know what to say.”
“Then be quiet.” She smiled up at me. “I’m going to walk out of that door without hearing another word about the movies.”
Her mouth made an O and all I could say was, “Mitzi!”
Then the smile came back. Not the smile I’d gotten used to all these months, but the real smile. “Of course, if you can keep your mouth shut meanwhile, I could wait until tomorrow morning.”
I didn’t say a word. Not “darling” or “sweetheart” or anything you’d see in a caption.
Neither of us talked until a long time later. Until I whispered, “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe this is really the end.”
“It’s the beginning. You’ll see.”
“But I don’t want to go on alone.”
“You must. Darling, some day you’ll realize that being alone is part of you. Until then you’ll compromise. Try to imitate other people, try to impress other people, use your work to fool them instead of telling the truth. The way you did with Carmen, writing everything so as to make them think I was an actress. I—I’m not saying this very well, Tommy. But I know you. And if you could only understand how important it is to accept being alone—”
“You’re what’s important.”
“I’m a dream, Tommy. Tomorrow you’ll wake up and I’ll be gone.”
“Is this a dream?”
“Don’t talk.”
So I didn’t. And in the never-ending darkness, all she said was, “I’ll always love you, never forget that.”
I never have, either.
And she was right; right about everything. This wasn’t the end. It was only the beginning.
REEL THREE:
The Plot Thickens
NINETEEN
IT TOOK six weeks for the Studio to recover from the sudden shock of Dawn’s departure. Morris pleaded, Riley reshuffled his publicity releases, Lozoff cast about for a new vehicle. Then Carmen came out, made a fair success, and Dawn was gradually forgotten by everyone except myself.
My own personal recovery took six months. I tried to call her at her mother’s, tried to see her again, tried to get through the days and nights following what I somewhat mawkishly told myself was a cardiac amputation. And even when my convalescent period was over, I still got occasional unexpected twinges—like the amputee who feels pain in his nonexistent limb.
But there comes a day when the amputee is up and about once more, ready to face the world again.
I did another assignment for Weichmann on a Karl Druse film. I jumped in at the last minute—the regular scripters had fumbled it, and he was practically shooting off the cuff. If I remember rightly, it was Black Bargain.
We managed to bring it in under the budget and ahead of schedule, so on the last night Weichmann closed the set and Druse held a little party for the production unit. Nothing out of the ordinary; just a buffet supper and drinks for the crew and cast.
After we ate, somebody got out the dice. Arch Taylor, Weichmann and a couple of cameramen were the players. The rest of us gathered around the table and watched, or congregated near the improvised bar where Druse held forth with Lucille Hilton, his leading lady.
Weichmann had the dice in his hand when somebody stepped up quietly and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Hey,” he said. “What’s the big idea?”
Then he looked up and saw Lester Salem standing there.
We all saw him at once, apparently. I doubt if anyone noticed his arrival, but there he was—Mr. Nobody from Nowhere.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to break up this affair,” he said.
“Affair?” Weichmann was genuinely puzzled. “What affair?”
Salem surveyed the set with an expression of controlled distaste. “This—gambling. And those people over there, with the liquor. You know how the Hays Office frowns on such things. The Eighteenth Amendment—”
“Oh, a ribber, eh? Prohibition agent in the crowd!” The elderly director began to laugh; he could always take a joke.
“Please,” said Lester Salem, quietly. “I see no reason to permit the use of studio facilities for a private party.”
Weichmann stopped laughing. “Now hold it—”
All at once Karl Druse stood between the two men.
“What’s the trouble?” he asked.
“No trouble at all. I was merely suggesting to Mr. Weichmann that his studio is no place for a private party. Particularly when it involves violation of the law. If a story ever leaked out—”
“Why should it leak out?”
“Those things happen.”
“You mean, like Dude Williams?”
Salem shrugged. “Perhaps.”
“I’ve always wondered what kind of a skunk pulled that one,” Druse continued, slowly. “I’m sure, whoever he is, he wasn’t invited here.”
He stared at Lester Salem, who licked his lips nervously. “Nevertheless,” he said, “in my capacity as Vice-President in—”
Druse shook his head. “Never mind your capacity. This happens to be my picture. This is my party. You’re welcome to stay, now that you’re here. Help yourself to a drink if you want. But don’t try and tell me what to do.”
He turned his back on Salem and said, “Come on, boys. Drink up.”
Salem left without a word.
“Better look out for that bastard,” Weichmann said. “He’ll be sharpening his knife for you.”
Druse scowled. “He’d better do a fast job, then. Because I’m going in to see Papa Morris tomorrow morning. It’s time for a showdown.”
“No, you’re not.” Arch Taylor was emphatic. “I know you, Karl. You’d go storming in there, yelling at the top of your voice, and Morris would yell back. That isn’t the way.”
“What do you suggest then?”
“Leave it to me.” Taylor smiled. “Post, you remember a promise that was made last year in your presence? Something about paying off a loan and then showing somebody the gate?”
I nodded.
“Good. Then let’s you and I breeze in on Morris tomorrow. I think it’s about time we reminded him of a few things.”
And that’s just what we did.
But when we got int
o the private office, Morris didn’t wait to hear our story. He beckoned us over to the big table and pointed to an imposing sheaf of blueprints.
“Just in time!” he said. “Boys, this is it.”
“This is what?” Taylor asked.
“The plans. Lohmiller, biggest architect in New York, he figured them out. Six to start with, all alike—we buy everything in quantity and save. Gonna cost a fortune even that way, but we’ll get it back, Wait and see.”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Morris thumped the blueprints. “Theaters. That’s what. I just got back from New York. We took another big step for the Industry. Coronet’s building a chain.”
“Our own theaters?”
“It’s the smart thing to do,” Morris said. “It’s in the air. Now we’re really gonna go places.”
I looked at Taylor and he looked at me. There was no comment.
For this was, definitely, the thing to do. All over the nation the palaces were rising—Roxy’s fabulous showplace in New York, the Balaban & Katz cathedrals in Chicago (where Paul Ash ruled the Oriental with an iron baton) and the myriad Avalons, Uptowns, Granadas and Tivolis where honest owners of Model T’s could spend an evening admiring the fish-filled fountains, the maroon carpeting in the lounge, the gold leaf on the ceiling. Even the sticks could now boast of a brand new photo-playground, complete with ushers wearing military uniforms which had apparently been designed by Roy D’Arcy.
“You said this would cost a fortune,” I ventured. “Have our profits really been that heavy this year?”
Morris shook his head. “No, not exactly. Tell the truth, I went for another loan. A pretty big one. Of course, the bank could see the point right away; with our own showhouses we’ll always have outlets for our productions. We can’t lose. So we really didn’t have to do much arguing.”
“We?” Taylor murmured.
“Me and Salem.” Morris beamed. “I got to hand it to that fella. Maybe he is sort of a cold fish, but he’s not so bad when you really get to know him. Look at the way he’s getting along with my Nicky—the two of them are regular pals, and just between us, he’s straightened the boy out. Besides, he’s got some real ideas. All those months hanging around with his notebook, they’re gonna pay off.”
“Salem got you this loan?”
Sol Morris hesitated. “More or less. Sure, what the hell, I can trust you boys. He got me the loan. On account of figuring a sure-fire way of paying off.”
“Which is?”
“We’re gonna enlarge production. Salem and Nicky, together, they’re gonna open a whole new series of units. Produce ’em together.”
“But I thought you didn’t want producers?” I said.
“Not on our high-class stuff, no. Only this is different. Low-budget, that’s what they’ll be making. Fast shooting, fast profits. Everybody does it now.”
“Quickies,” Taylor muttered.
“All right, so it’s quickies. Plenty people out here make quickies. Nobody’s got to be ashamed for the kind of money they gross.”
Taylor didn’t say anything more. He just looked at Sol Morris until the old man’s eyes fell.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “But you’re wrong. There won’t be no trouble. This is something special, it doesn’t interfere. We’ve got a big loan to pay off now, and it’s the only way to do it. And let me tell you, if it wasn’t for Salem, I don’t know where we’d be at.”
“Then he stays,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing.”
Morris turned and looked up at Arch Taylor. “You said you had something on your mind. Do you want to talk about it before you look at the plans?”
“No, that’s all right.” Taylor put his pipe away. “Come on, Post. Let’s look at the plans.”
So we looked at the plans and we didn’t say anything. Not then, or ever.
“Better keep your eyes open,” Taylor advised me, when we got outside again. “Looks like a lot of things have been going on behind our backs.”
I nodded. “Guess you’re right. It’s time I woke up.”
“Sure. It was a tough deal for you, Post, but I think you’re over it now.” That was the first time he’d ever referred to Dawn Powers since she’d left. “Time to wake up and join the party. This is 1927.”
It was 1927, and the party was on.
I took Taylor’s advice and began to look around. First of all, I looked at the movies.
There were new faces on the screen. Gary Cooper, Evelyn Brent and W.C. Fields at Paramount. William Haines, MGM’s flaming youth. Ray Griffiths and his bright, satirical comedies. I caught up on The Big Parade and several of the oldies I’d missed—here it was, the summer of 1927 already; had Valentino really been dead a year?
For a long time I went to the movies every night, and that’s how I saw The King of Kings and Lozoff’s new vehicle, The Lady Accepts.
That’s how I saw the newsreel shot of Theodore Harker returning from abroad in a black Bond Street suit, ready to begin production of his independent film, Mankind.
I looked at all the new teams, too. Gilbert and Garbo, Gaynor and Farrell in the romance department. Plus Wallace Beery and Raymond Hatton, Karl Dane and George K. Arthur in comedies.
And that finally focused my attention on the brand new team operating right on our own lot. They weren’t romantic and they weren’t intentionally funny—but they were functioning.
Nicky Morris was a figurehead, of course. You didn’t have to be around him for more than half an hour to realize he was incapable of making a move, let alone a movie. Salem pulled the strings, and he had found the formula.
It worked like this. Instead of buying an original scenario, Salem went to some place like the Stone Film Library, specializing in “stock shots.” He bought newsreel-type footage of fires, accidents, train wrecks, blizzards, disasters at sea. And the stories were constructed around the stock scenes.
A thousand feet of forest fire? Good. Then let some hack bat out a treatment involving a heroic Mountie, a French-Canadian girl and her villainous step-father (as long as we’re hyphenating, let’s make the villain a half-breed) who flees the Mountie and sets fire to the Great North Woods in order to trap the lovers.
And by all means, let’s keep the treatment simple, so that anybody can understand it.
Here’s where Nicky demonstrated his worth—if he could follow the story line, anyone could. I remember one day when Arch Taylor was unhappily involved in presenting a story idea to the Morris heir. Gertrude Ederle was still in the headlines, so this had something to do with a Channel swimmer. There were also spies and a submarine, so help me—and so help Taylor, who sweated it out.
He finally managed to boil his treatment down to a single typewritten page, double-spaced.
“So I take it in,” Taylor told me. “And I lay it on the desk. And Little Jesus looks at it and says, ‘What’s this?’ So I say, ‘It’s the treatment you asked for. I’d like to know what you think of it.’ And he says, ‘I can tell you right now what’s wrong. It’s too long.’ And he tosses it back to me.”
“What did you do about it?” I asked.
“Guess.” Taylor winked. “I waited three days. Then I typed the same thing over again, word for word. Only this time I did it single-spaced, so that it only took half a page. I walked in, threw it on his desk, and he said, ‘Well—this is more like it.’ End of story.”
Only it wasn’t the end, by a long shot. By fall, Nicky and Salem were in the quickie business up to their ears, turning out cheap six-reelers by the gross.
They were doing documentaries, too; Patriotic Movies with a Message. They supplied the latter while our armed forces supplied backgrounds and footage at no cost. Our units began turning up at Annapolis, West Point, and all points west.
To the inspired duo belongs full credit for removing those shots of bobbing battleships from the newsreels and placing them in full-length features.
Nicky could probably tell you all about it. I recall him telling me, one noon, in the commissary.
“Here’s the pitch, see? These two guys are in the Navy, on this battleship. One of ’em is an oldtimer—sort of a Victor McLaglen type, like What Price Glory, only the switch is, he’s in the Navy and not the Army. And the other guy, he’s a young fella, more of a smart aleck, you might say. Edmund Lowe, always wisecracking, you know.
“Anyways, we got an old Commodore or Admiral running the ship—George Barbier or Claude Gillingwater, that kind. Tough as nails, but he loves his daughter. Even brings her along on this cruise for manoovers, get it?
“Maybe she’s got a pet dog or a monkey or something for comic relief. Say, don’t the Navy have a billy goat for a mascot? I’ll check on it this aft. Anyway, the pet gets washed overboard and the hero, this young guy, is suppose to rescue it. Only he won’t. He’s yellow. Turns out he’s afraid of water!”
A pause, for emphasis.
“Of course the girl sees him and she won’t have nothing more to do with him. Somebody else rescues the pet. And he catches hell from the Sarge or the Coxswain, or whatever this old buddy of his is called. Then they get ready to test this newfangled submarine and of course the old Admiral and his daughter, they want to go down in it the first thing. And the Coxswain is supposed to run the test.
“Only they take this pet along—maybe we better keep it a monkey, a monk would be more believable—it gets loose and fiddles with a valve or something, and there they are. Trapped under the sea!”
Another pause.
“Well, I guess you can figure the rest. The only guy who knows what to do—turns out he really designed the new gadget or something—is the hero. And he’s a weakling, remember? So we have a scene here with the chaplin—that’s what they call a preacher in the Navy, a chaplin—and he shows the hero a picture of the girl. This guy, Alec B. Francis or O.P. Heggie, he gives the hero a big pep talk about Navy spirit and all that crap, and down he goes. In a diving helmet, with sharks and this here octopuss. Big fight scene—I got a whole reel from someplace, we can fake the close-ups in a tank with a rubber one. Like the whale in Moby Dick, only cheaper.