The Star Stalker

  The next few weeks were busy ones. It turned out that Uncle Andy did have an insurance policy, and two thousand dollars was enough to buy a Ford and furnish the little apartment I found for myself over on Beechwood Drive. I had to start from scratch because nothing had been salvaged from the flames, not even the scrapbook. But the insurance money covered the essentials, and my starting salary with Frisby’s unit was an incredible forty dollars a week.

  I saw the New Year in with Kurt Lozoff.

  Kurt Lozoff. That’s the name he put on his contract, right after finishing his part in The Burning of Rome. And that’s the name he used on the screen all during 1923, the year of Greed, The Covered Wagon, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Ten Commandments. Lozoff made six pictures in those twelve months and by the time another New Year’s Eve rolled around, he and Madame occupied a hilltop house in the Los Feliz area; a home befitting a star.

  Arch Taylor was writing his films now, with Harker directing as Lozoff strutted across the screen in his usual costume—full evening dress. There was a bit of Erich von Stroheim in his bearing, a touch of Adolphe Menjou, and a lot of Lozoff himself; the charming, cynical man of the world. Sometimes, for variety’s sake, it was man of the underworld. But always he was the roué with the heart of gold, ready to surrender the heroine to a younger man in the last reel.

  1924 was an even bigger year for Lozoff. He moved into a larger dressing room and Arch Taylor got a private office to write in, with a modest little sign on the door which read Stratford-on-Avon. It was a big year for Coronet and the industry in general; the year of The Thief of Baghdad, The Sea Hawk, The Iron Horse. And it was the year when Miss Glint got fired.

  I was present when she made her last appearance at the studio, over on Lozoff’s set. Lozoff and Taylor were discussing some changes in a scene. Lozoff stood quietly as one of the Penny brothers adjusted the decorations on his coat; the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, the insignia which proclaimed him a Knight of the Garter.

  “Did you read the new pages?” Taylor asked.

  Lozoff shook his head. “I don’t have a copy. Miss Glint must have forgotten me this morning.”

  A sniff signaled her arrival. “No such thing. You’ll find it right on the table in your dressing-room.”

  “Thank you,” Lozoff said, as the Penny brother fussed with his lapel. “Would you be kind enough to bring it to me?”

  Miss Glint frowned. “I’ve got to distribute the rest of these copies.”

  “Please, Maggie,” said Arch Taylor. “That can wait.”

  Maybe the poor girl had difficult periods or something. But as she stalked away she was mumbling to herself, and her voice carried. “Fancy evening clothes—Knight of the Garter, is he? Whoever heard of a kike knight?”

  Now it so happens that Kurt Lozoff was a devout member of the Greek Orthodox Church, and it so happens that Arch Taylor was an equally devout agnostic. But someone on the set must have mentioned the incident to the front office, because the next day Miss Glint was gone.

  Glint was gone, Maybelle Manners had disappeared, but I was still around and doing very well, thank you. In this fall of 1924 I’d traded in my Ford for a used Stutz and I was earning seventy-five dollars a week writing titles with the So method.

  It was very simple, particularly when I used it to introduce characters in our comedies. For example:

  A scene with Lucien Littlefield as the father:

  “Papa. So tight he takes a loaf of bread down to the corner and waits for the traffic jam.”

  And our heroine:

  “The Girl. So dumb she thinks Mah Jong is Pa Jong’s wife.”

  Bull Montana as the villain:

  “Jake the Snake. So tough he blows his nose with dynamite.”

  And when I exhausted the So method, I came up with a fresh variation—the They Call opening.

  Jackie Keeley’s first scene:

  “Meet Our Hero. They call him opium, because he’s such a dope.”

  Keeley liked it, John Frisby liked it, and the audiences ate it up. But I wanted to vomit.

  Instead, I went to work. Everybody should have a hobby. Arch Taylor’s was gambling at the Embassy or the Clover Club. Emerson Craig had varied tastes—he patronized Bobby Barrett’s callhouse on the Strip when he couldn’t pick up a boy outside Kress’s drugstore in Hollywood. John Frisby went to parties at the Hotel Christie or the Alexandria. Jackie Keeley spent his nights everywhere from the Ambassador to the Sunset Inn. But I stayed in my apartment and wrote.

  And one morning, shortly after we’d wrapped up another Keeley epic, I paid a call on Taylor in his office, carrying a little sheaf of paper which I put down on the table before him.

  “Got something I’d like you to read,” I said.

  He started to reach for it but I covered the stack with my hand. “Later on, at your leisure. There are carbons for Lozoff and Harker.”

  “What’s this all about?”

  “Call it a plan. I want to work on the Lozoff pictures.”

  “Titles?”

  I shook my head. “Scenarios.”

  “Gunning for my job, huh?” Taylor stood up. “Maybe I made a mistake when I gave you that pep talk.”

  “You know better than that, Arch. I’m not working against you—I want to work with you.”

  “It’s not that simple. Harker rewrites everything himself.”

  “Yes. And it’s getting stale.”

  Taylor shrugged. “You know what our last two pictures grossed?”

  “Sure. I read the trades. But I also read the critics. And they’re beginning to say that Harker’s losing his touch.”

  “To hell with the critics.”

  “It’s the public I’m thinking about. Another six months and the audience will start complaining too. I’ve been trying to analyze what’s wrong and I think I know the answer. But I want you to read this and make up your own mind. If you agree, show a copy to Lozoff. Then maybe you can both go to Harker and tell him—”

  “What’s the matter? Afraid to tell him yourself?”

  Taylor said it for me. I was afraid. But I couldn’t say so. Instead I shook my head. “I don’t know him well enough. We haven’t spoken to each other half a dozen times in the last two years. He’d never listen to me.”

  “But I am listening, Mr. Post.”

  I glanced up.

  Theodore Harker stood in the doorway behind me, leaning on his cane. He scowled, head inclined like a black vulture poised to pounce.

  “Please continue,” he said. “You say there is something wrong with my work. You have, I assume, a solution. Might I be permitted to hear it?”

  It’s like a nightmare, I told myself. A bad dream. But dreams can’t harm you. Or can they? There was only one way to find out.

  I found myself talking. “It’s this way, Mr. Harker. You’re only making one kind of picture now, with Lozoff. Society stuff. Anybody can direct these things. It doesn’t take a Harker. You’re being wasted and you know it. That’s why you rewrite, put in little touches like costume party scenes with Lozoff wearing a suit of armor. But you’re running out of novelties and the old plot is showing through. Armor won’t hide it.”

  “So.” Theodore Harker brought his cane tip down sharply on the floor. “I still haven’t heard your solution.”

  “Use more armor,” I said.

  Taylor shrugged. “You want Mr. Harker to give up society drama and go back to costume pictures?”

  “No. I want him to combine the two.”

  They both stared at me but I kept talking. “Keep Lozoff in evening dress for a few reels, get your plot established. Then do a flashback or a dream sequence, something to point up a parallel in history. You can show the court of Louis XIV, the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah, the defeat of the Spanish Armada—don’t you see the angles? Mr. Harker did just that when he came to the studio and saved that war-picture turkey. That was the vehicle that made him. Why not use it now?”

  Harker thumped his cane on the flo
or again. “You have such a story in mind, I presume?”

  “Yes, I did a sample treatment. But that’s not important. You can pick anything you like, modern stories from modern writers. Then turn me loose. I’ll find a historical parallel for you. Just give me a chance.”

  “Why should I?” Harker murmured. “Let’s assume your criticism makes sense. Let’s assume that your suggested remedy also makes sense. Let’s even assume that I’ve been doing some thinking about the same problem and coming up with some of the same answers—I’m not altogether a fool, you know.”

  “I never meant—” I began, but he cut in.

  “You haven’t answered my question, Mr. Post. Suppose I did adopt your idea. Why should I select you to work on scenarios for my productions?”

  I stared at him, took a deep breath. And something inside my head said, Remember the dream.

  “The dream,” my voice echoed. I was talking again, only this time the prompter inside was giving me the lines. “It’s the dream, Mr. Harker. I know what you’re thinking, I’m just a gag writer for cheap comedies, a nobody from nowhere. But I know about dreams. And that’s your secret, too, isn’t it?

  “That’s why you’ve made great pictures in the past, that’s why you’re a great director. Because you must have come from nowhere, too, and you understand what it’s like to be a nobody. You remember the dreams from those days—the dreams ordinary people have about love and honor and the triumph of right over injustice. Sure, the highbrow critics sneer at the movies, they’ve always sneered. But the nobodies don’t sneer. They need their dreams, and when they can’t make their own any more they turn to people like you—people who can create dreams for them.” I paused. “That’s what I want to do. I have to. It’s like I—like I was born to do it.”

  There was a moment of silence, broken only when Harker’s cane struck the floor for the third time. Then he glanced at Arch Taylor.

  “Call Sol Morris,” he said. “Tell him I’d like to see him as soon as possible. With you, and Mr. Post. Tell him it’s about my next picture.”

  And the voice inside my head whispered, This is how dreams come true.

  SEVEN

  SHORTLY after our meeting with Sol Morris I bought a new car. I drove it to all the conferences with Lozoff and Harker. I drove it to Arch Taylor’s place where we sweated out weekend rewrites on our scenario. I drove it to the premiere of our first picture, Scarlet Lady. And afterwards John Barrymore stood with one foot up on its running-board as he congratulated me on the film’s success.

  The day before the Fourth of July weekend in 1925, the car was parked on the lot and I was parked in my own office, waiting for my own secretary, if you please.

  Arch Taylor strolled in.

  “Do me a favor, Post?” (It was “Post” now—“Tommy” was dead and buried, like poor Tom Ince. Things moved fast in Hollywood.)

  “What kind of favor, Arch?”

  “Just want to use your office for a minute. Some people here for an audition. Forgot about the appointment and I can’t take ’em out on the lot. Morris is getting ready for the party this afternoon.”

  “So I heard. What’s he celebrating?”

  “Who knows? Maybe he got an inside tip that Will Hays got caught in a vice raid with Nita Naldi. We’ll find out in an hour or so.”

  I stood up. “Okay, go ahead and see your people. I’ll take a walk.”

  “No, stick around, it won’t take long. Some mama and her precious little darling. Another Jackie Coogan, God forbid.”

  “So why bother?”

  “Because Sam did a test and he thinks the kid’s got something. My guess would be small pox. But he insisted I take a look. Maybe if you stick we can cut it short.”

  I nodded, then sat down again and waited as he went out and returned with the three LaBuddies.

  There were introductions.

  Kate LaBuddie was fair, fatuous and forty. “Oh, and you’re the Mr. Post who wrote Scarlet Lady?” I was ready to pick up the cue, but she stepped on my lines. “I can’t begin to tell you how much I enjoyed it. Of course it was just a wee bit riscue for the kiddies, but I insisted on taking Buddie and Mitzi with me because I knew they would get so much out of it. Buddie is definitely quite mature when it comes to histrionics and I’m sure he appreciated it, didn’t you, Buddie?”

  “It was thrilling,” Buddie told me. “The suspense was gripping. I laughed through my tears.”

  That made me do a double take. Buddie LaBuddie didn’t talk like an eight-year-old. But then he didn’t look like an eight-year-old, either. He wore a Buster Brown outfit with long golden curls to match, but the face peering out between them was that of a middle-aged midget. Picture a child wearing eye shadow like Larry Semon and you’ll get some idea of the way he looked.

  “Thank you,” I said. “That’s quite a speech for a young man to make.”

  “It comes from the heart,” said the child.

  “Don’t mind him,” Kate LaBuddie trilled gaily. “He picks that up from the movies. We’ve gone ever since he was just a babe in arms. It’s the best possible training for a career, I always say. That’s where he learned to develop his talent, didn’t you, darling?”

  “Yes, Mummy dear.”

  “Won’t you all sit down, please?” Arch Taylor took over. I stood up and offered my chair to the third member of the LaBuddie troupe.

  “Thank you,” she said softly.

  It was the first time Mitzi LaBuddie had spoken. I gave her a second glance. She was slender, with wavy lightbrown hair and dark eyes—about seventeen or so, I guessed. Rather pretty in a quiet sort of way, in spite of the too-tight, too-short skirt and the cloche hat. But of course much too young to interest me.

  Besides, my interest was claimed elsewhere. Mrs. LaBuddie was in full voice, her bangles and bracelets jangling as she gestured in accompaniment to her solo.

  “—suppose you heard about the test. He just couldn’t get over Buddie’s performance. Of course it’s only natural—my late husband was on the boards for many years, you’ve probably heard of him, he played Sis Hopkins for ages. I know Buddie has inherited his genius. Mitzi has it too, some time I’d like you to see what she can do, Mr. Taylor—”

  “Yes, that would be fine. But right now I’ve been trying to decide whether or not we can use Buddie.”

  “Why of course you can! Buddie can do anything, simply anything! Five years in dramatic school, plus dancing lessons, plus elocution—just look at that poise and presence! Why, Kurt Lozoff himself couldn’t do better.”

  “My impression of Kurt Lozoff.” Buddie LaBuddie jumped to his feet as though someone had just wound him up. He strutted across the room to his sister, bowed from the waist, lifted her hand, kissed it—then ran his lips up her arm to the elbow with a knowing leer.

  “You see?” Mrs. LaBuddie beamed at Taylor. “Now do Dude Williams, darling.”

  Buddie “did” Dude Williams, then Jackie Keeley. Next he crossed his eyes like Ben Turpin, and before anyone could stop him he went into the inevitable Charlie Chaplin routine. He was good, too.

  “Now, Jackie Coogan,” his mother purred. “Show Mr. Taylor how you would handle a Coogan part.”

  Buddie imitated Coogan.

  To use a technical expression, he stunk.

  Apparently there was a limit to this child’s ability, after all. He couldn’t portray a child.

  Buddie must have seen the look on Arch Taylor’s face because he quickly grabbed a ruler from my desk and flourished it. “And now,” he panted, “I give you my interpation of the immoral Douglas Fairbanks in Don Q, Son of Zorro!”

  He did a very “immoral” Fairbanks and was just preparing to carve a Z on Taylor’s nose when the door opened and my secretary looked in.

  “Sorry to disturb you,” she said. “But Mr. Morris wants everybody over on Four.”

  We stood up. “You’ll have to excuse us, Mrs. LaBuddie,” Arch Taylor said. “There’s a studio party this afternoon. Walpurgis Night,
or Bastille Day—some such thing.”

  “That’s quite all right. I’m sure we can arrange to have Buddie come in again for you next week. And as I was saying, about Mitzi, the dear girl is so modest and unassuming, like a bump on a log, but she’s really an adorable ongenoo. The Mary Philbin type, but with more flair for—”

  “Yes, of course.” Taylor moved them towards the door. “I’ll be in touch with you. We’ve got your number here.”

  “I could call you first thing on—”

  “We’ll set it up,” Taylor said. “Good to see you and thanks for coming in.”

  I nodded at them as they left, saving my sigh until they were safely out the door. “That was gruesome,” I said. “Next time you want any favors, include me out. Mama and the kid—”

  “They’re all alike.” Taylor filled his pipe. “But that girl now, she might have something. If Mama didn’t teach her how to imitate Corinne Griffith.”

  “Too young,” I shrugged. “No personality.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” Taylor puffed on his pipe, exhaled aromatically. “Come on, let’s see who they’re beheading over at the Palace.”

  We cut across the quadrangle and entered Stage Four. It was our biggest and it was filled to capacity this afternoon. Everybody was there—props, grips, carpenters, greenery men, messengers, stenos, script girls, camera crews, the people from makeup and wardrobe, the studio cops, even Carla Sloane. Plus, of course, every contract player from Dude Williams’ double up to Kurt Lozoff, and every director, writer and cutter on the lot. The entire front office was out in force, clustered together in a cloud of cigar smoke.

  The two sides running the length of the building were lined with tables, some heaped with food and others piled high with glasses, bottles and bowls of cracked ice. The ice was already melting in the heat, and I knew just how it felt.

  Taylor and I elbowed into the milling mob and I peered ahead at the little platform set up on the far end of the stage. The front office bookkeeper, Glazer, was up there now under a Cooper-Hewitt light, sweating his way through a speech. Over the crowd murmurs I heard him introducing “the man who has been like a father to us all, the guiding genius who made Coronet Pictures the crown of the Industry. Fellow workers, I give you Mr. Sol J. Morris!”