The Star Stalker

  I left the taxi and stared up at them, blinking. Lights in the windows. A light in the window for your wandering boy—

  Then I remembered what Lozoff had told me and I understood. Harker planned a party after the premiere. It must have just ended, for I heard no sound from within.

  The steps seemed to slant in the moonlight, to curl like pale lips. You’re full of gin, I told myself. That’s not the effect of moonlight, just moonshine. Go ahead, you bastard, knock on the door. It’s time for a reunion.

  I swayed there for a moment, and I couldn’t help myself. The whole family reunion script swam into my head; written, produced, directed by and starring Thomas Post. Thomas Post, the well-known, unknown bastard.

  Cutting and editing automatically, I unreeled the finished film, reeling. Post, making his dramatic entrance. Harker stepping forward in front of the assembled guests, the curdled cream of the motion-picture colony.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Is that any kind of welcome for your beloved son?”

  No, that wasn’t the way. That would be melodrama. I’d have to revise the script, start over again.

  “What are you doing here?”

  I clung to the door. I must be drunker than I thought, because now I was actually hearing a voice. Harker’s voice.

  Then I turned, and I could see him. He stood beside me in the moonlight. He was real. This wasn’t a script any more, and I didn’t have any cues.

  “I—I thought you were giving a party.”

  “It’s all over with. Taki and Rogers and cleaning up. I stepped out for some fresh air.” He inhaled deliberately. “You’ve been drinking, haven’t you?”

  I nodded. Nodded and stared up into the proud, pallid face, wondering what to say next, where to begin.

  “Did you hear about Dawn?” I murmured.

  “Oh, so that’s it.” He took my arm and led me down the stairs, across the lawn towards the first of the two swimming pools. “Yes, I read something in the paper. She’s getting married.”

  “She is married,” I said.

  Theodore Harker said nothing. He gazed down at the moonlit mirror of the pool and his reflection smiled. “You’re young,” said the reflection. “You’ll get over it.”

  “Great!” said my reflection. “That’s why I came out here—for a helping of two-bit philosophy.”

  Now I could speak, speak freely, as long as I kept watching our reflections. For our reflections removed reality; it was like gazing into a vast silver screen and seeing a movie.

  “Why did you come out here?”

  My reflection faced his, mouth opening. But Harker’s image was still speaking.

  “Surely you can’t blame me for her marriage? What happened between the three of us is all in the past. I’d forgotten about it long ago, and hoped you were wise enough to do the same. One can’t afford to look backward, you know.”

  “I didn’t know.” I wasn’t looking backward, I was looking down at our reflections. “And that’s why I came. Because I saw something tonight for the first time. Something that concerns both of us.”

  “I told you, Dawn isn’t important to me any more.”

  “I’m not talking about Dawn. This is something I learned from Kate LaBuddie.”

  I waited for a reaction, but his reflection was immobile. And I thought, what if he doesn’t know, doesn’t realize? But my voice went on, the voice of my image in the pool. Narcissus spoke.

  “She told me how she went to that astrologer and supplied her with information about your past—got the woman to gain your confidence so that you’d believe her predictions of the future, about Dawn. She told me how you were taken in.”

  He didn’t answer; the reflection never wavered. And I shouted, “What’s the matter, don’t you believe me? It’s true, you know—the great Theodore Harker, duped by a couple of stupid, conniving women!”

  Harker’s image rippled the water with a shrug. “Why get so excited? Some of this I already know, the rest I suspected. And it doesn’t matter. It’s all past.”

  “The past is dead, eh?”

  “Of course. I tried to convey that lesson to you years ago, at the funeral. One lives for the present, plans for the future. The past is unimportant. One travels forward, alone.”

  “I remember now,” I said, and I did. “The funeral. The one you paid for. You said the Studio would foot the bill, but that was a lie, wasn’t it? You paid for the funeral out of your own pocket.”

  “What if I did?”

  “Nothing. Except that it proves you don’t live up to your own philosophy. You can’t shut out your conscience—”

  “Please, Post! I’m trying to be patient, but—”

  “Get your hands off me!” My reflection retreated a step, treading water. “You’ll listen just the way I had to listen tonight, when I found out.”

  He turned away, and his back made a black stain across the water. I spoke to the shadow, to the reflection of a shadow.

  “Yes, I found out. Now I know how it must have been, in that past you don’t like to remember. When you were in the carnival, with the little redhead.

  The shadow stiffened.

  “You ran away, didn’t you? And when I was born, I went into the orphanage. You were beginning to make progress, traveling forward alone, as you say. Alone! I wonder how many bodies you trampled on in your climb from the carny to Hollywood? You were never alone—there was always a woman, always women when you wanted them. Don’t tell me about loneliness. I was the one who knew what is was to be really alone. For fourteen years in that vacuous vacuum.

  “I’m not sure what happened next. I’d like to believe that once you came out here, even your calloused conscience gave you a few qualms; enough so that you asked your old friend Minnie and her husband to take me out and adopt me. Actually, I suppose it was just the other way around—Minnie must have come to you and hinted that she knew the facts. So you let her take me to shut her up, and you gave Uncle Andy a studio job. You even let me have one. And that, to your way of thinking, closed the matter. But it isn’t closed, after all.”

  I could see his face again, in the water. Turning and moving its lips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You know, all right. And how it must have hurt you to see me take Dawn away from you—losing a woman to your own son!”

  Harker’s mouth opened and his features shivered in the pool as though someone had hit the surface of the water with a stone.

  Now I could look at him, look at his actual face in the moonlight. And now that I’d said it, I wanted to look at him. There was no hatred left in me any more.

  “I’m—sorry,” I said. “You don’t know how it was for me, but I think I’m beginning to understand how it must have been for you. All these years, hiding the secret. Trying to pretend, even when you saw me every day. Trying to live up to your own code, shutting out the past. I used to think nothing could be worse than this ache of mine, this need to find a father. But there’s something far more terrible to bear—fear. That’s what you had, every day.”

  I moved closer, watching the wavering lines of his mouth.

  “Don’t worry,” I murmured. “I won’t tell. And I didn’t come here because I wanted anything from you. I don’t need your money or your fame or even your name. It’s just that I must know there’s truth between us. Because you’re my father—”

  Suddenly the wavering lines dissolved on Theodore Harker’s face. They exploded, exploded in a peal of laughter.

  “You’re crazy!” Harker said. “Father? I’m not your father. I have no son.” He chuckled again. “Go back to that idiotic woman and tell her it’s no good. No more blackmail. Just a pack of lies.”

  Theodore Harker stood there, proud in the moonlight, his head thrown back. He laughed and he laughed, and I made a noise in my throat and then I turned and I was running, running back into the darkness and the silence, running until the sound of his laughter was only an empty echo inside the h
ollow of my skull.

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWO WEEKS passed before I went into Sol Morris’s office, to confer about Crime and Punishment.

  Not a long time, two weeks, but a lot can happen in such a period. You can go on a honeymoon, for example. Or a blind, tearing drunk. Or you can reason things out for yourself, and then sit down and decide to write a script.

  Somewhere along the line I got excited. I’d suddenly learned that it was possible for me to do a job for its own sake. That doesn’t sound like such a startling discovery, but it was, for me. To find myself writing fluently—not for Dawn’s sake, or the approval of a father, real or imaginary—was something new. And I enjoyed it.

  Lozoff looked at what I’d done and approved. He’d never asked me what had happened the night I rushed off and left him, and I never told him. But he read my treatment and he said, “This is what I was hoping for. You are writing the way I wanted you to write—as if what we are going to do is something fine, something important.”

  So we went to the Executive Offices.

  “I don’t know,” Sol Morris said. “I had Salem get the dope on it for me. Arrow-Pathé made it back in 1917, and nobody got excited. Somebody did it in Germany in ’23.”

  “I saw it.” Lozoff nodded. “Wiene made it, under the title of Raskolnikov.”

  “All those foreign names.” Morris frowned through the cigar smoke. “And Russian, on top of it. We ain’t so friendly with Russia. What about that?”

  “This won’t be a Russian picture. The theme is universal. That’s why Dostoevski’s novel is a classic. I want to put it on the screen as a classic, too. With all respect to Mr. Salem, this Studio hasn’t been producing enough prestige pictures lately. We need a contender for the Academy Awards.”

  “That nonsense! Those arty guys with their newfangled Academy—it don’t mean a thing. And what about this fella Dostoevski? Is he working out here?”

  “He’s dead,” Lozoff said. “Look, Mr. Morris. You saw my budget estimate. It isn’t out of line.”

  “That’s right.”

  “We’ve got our principals right here under contract. Hilton and Druse. I was thinking of the actor Harker used in Mankind—young Conway. He’d be excellent for the student role and he isn’t expensive. Post is working with me on the treatment. You can have it in a few days.”

  “Well, let’s wait and see. We can talk about it then.”

  So we sent him the treatment and came back the following week. And Morris said:

  “It’s a good story. Gloomy, sort of, but you can feel it. That business where the girl Sonia decides she’s gonna go with him to Siberia at the end—I see what you mean, all right.”

  “Then we can go ahead?”

  “I don’t know.” He paused. “I been talking to Nicky. He sort of wants to use Lucille Hilton in that new thing of his—the dirigible picture. Salem has a lot of stuff on a zeppelin crash, and he tells me it’s a natural. Besides, Hilton can’t act.”

  “Yes she can,” Lozoff said. “I want her.”

  Morris shrugged. “All right. But Druse is out.”

  “Out?”

  “We’re not renewing his contract. Ever since Spider Man there’s been trouble. Salem tells me he shows up drunk half the time—”

  “Mr. Salem doesn’t want me to make this picture. That’s the truth, isn’t it?”

  “You put it that way, the answer’s yes. He says there isn’t enough action, enough punch.”

  I broke in. “Action? It starts with a double murder. The whole plot is built on suspense—the inspector versus the student. Didn’t you say you liked the treatment?”

  “I do, my boy.” Morris faced me. “But sometimes you got to think of other things. Like keeping peace in the family, here. Salem’s doing a good job for us—don’t worry, I know Nicky has nothing to do with it—and he’s entitled to his opinion.”

  “His opinion, yes,” Lozoff said. “But you are still the head of this Studio.”

  Morris was silent. Lozoff stood up. “I have been with you a good many years. I have acted, I have directed. My pictures made money. I think you can rely on the soundness of my judgment. Now I am asking you to let me make this picture. What do you say?”

  “All right. Go ahead. I’ll tell Salem.” Morris hesitated. “But on one condition. Druse is out. Fair enough?”

  Lozoff bit his lip.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Morris said. “It won’t be your fault. I told you we’re letting him go anyway. So if you compromise, Salem will. Right?”

  “I suppose so. Only that means we need another name to strengthen the cast—”

  “I’ve got a name for you,” I said. “A strong one. Just the man to play the inspector. It’s going to be a change of pace for him, but I know he can do it.”

  “Who do you have in mind?”

  “Kurt Lozoff.”

  Lozoff raised his eyebrows. Then he smiled. “Why not? Von Stroheim acts and directs in his films.”

  “Please, no Stroheim,” Morris sighed. “Just a nice, simple masterpiece, without too many retakes.”

  “You’ll get it,” I told him. “This is going to be one picture we can all be proud of.”

  And I meant it.

  During the next six weeks, while Lozoff signed Conway and handled the problem of tests, casting, wardrobe, art, sets and advance publicity, I worked on the scenario.

  By the time we were ready to turn the crank, it was mid-November, and our delivery date was February 1.

  But we had our story, and it was a good one. I knew it without being told, although I was told.

  “This is what I talked about a long time ago,” Lozoff exulted. “An honest picture. Realism and imagination. Now we get to work.”

  So we set up our shooting schedule, checked the sets and arranged their sequence of construction, arranged rehearsals, then chopped the scenes up into a new order for actual filming.

  About this time Lucille Hilton came down with a case of grippe, which meant we’d have to shoot around her if we wanted to start without delay. So we rearranged the shooting schedule accordingly. This meant Lozoff had to get up on his part at once. His costumes weren’t ready. The wardrobe people went into overtime.

  Research now came up with a few problems concerning our police-station set. Changes were made. Lucille Hilton came sniffling back to the Studio. And when she returned, Arch Taylor, who was working on titles, sprained his ankle playing golf. I took over for him.

  Total so far: five thousand man-hours, six thousand cups of black coffee, seven thousand cigarettes.

  And then the shooting started.

  Lozoff worked from the middle to the end. Then he jumped to the beginning, skipped a few scenes (we wanted to kill off the old pawnbroker and her sister first, in order to take them off salary) and then we went to the end again.

  We looked at rushes, and Lozoff insisted on editing as he went along—he wanted fades, dissolves and inserts to work with.

  Arch Taylor came back to help me with the titles.

  George Conway got a rash that covered his entire left cheek and jaw. We shot around him and did the street scenes, with a double in the long shots.

  It was the end of December, now, and the parties began. We shut down for a week over Christmas holidays. Lucille Hilton went to Agua Caliente with Emerson Craig. Lozoff and I spent the time rewriting the sequences between the student and Sonia.

  Somebody from the front office suddenly discovered that Sonia was a prostitute. Glazer came back and wanted to know what the hell? We showed him the scenes. He was afraid of the Hays people. We told him he had the soul of an accountant and rewrote the sequences again.

  Then it was January, and we rolled once more, Lozoff began to look funny in the rushes. He weighed himself and discovered why—he’d lost twelve pounds so far.

  A heavy rainstorm leaked in on the tenement set and the roof cracked. We held up shooting for two days while the damage was repaired. Lucille Hilton fainted on the s
et after the twenty-fourth retake of her big scene.

  So much for the glamorous side of the motion picture business.

  But Lozoff was merciless. If Harker had been a tyrant, and I had been a pseudo-Harker, Lozoff was autocracy incarnate. He got something out of Hilton I’d never suspected she had—but it was something I’d tried to put into the script.

  He did the same for Conway and for the character actress who played the role of Sonia’s mother. And then he went to work on himself. He knew what he wanted to do with the inspector, and he did it. No more evening dress, no more bowing from the waist, no more urbanity. He was Porfiry—but not until retake after retake.

  They brought in the machines that made fog, and shot the scenes at the river, where Sonia and the student decide to go to the police. Thirty-three times, and the scene was short.

  But Jackie Keeley happened to wander onto the set during the final take, and when he saw it, he cried.

  There were times, during the cat-and-mouse sequences between Porfiry and Raskolnikov, when I found myself clenching my hands until the nails pierced the flesh. And when I saw the opening reel—the entire footage leading up to the murder, where Raskolnikov’s face is never shown; only his back or hands, or shadow—it made something tighten all along my spine.

  Then I knew it was worth it. We were making a great picture, the one I’d always dreamed about.

  And finally, one day in the third week of January, I saw it all.

  The air in the projection room was blue with smoke. I could smell Morris’s cigar, the distinctive odor of Lozoff’s cigarette, Arch Taylor’s pipe. Over the dull whirring of the projector I caught the rhythmic snick and smack of Nicky’s mastication as he chomped his way through the twelve rough-cut reels of Crime and Punishment. From time to time I heard a scraping sound as Salem or Lucille Hilton shifted in their seats. Once George Conway cracked his knuckles, and Treedom, the cameraman, had a coughing spell. But I kept my eyes on the screen.

  Then, abruptly, the screen went blank and somebody snapped on the lights. Lozoff put away his pen and closed his notebook. Morris found a fresh cigar. There was silence.