As soon as she hung up, I dialed Julian’s apartment to break the news.
“Hello, Julian?” I said.
“Hello, sweetheart—come on over and drink to the future of a writing team that’s going to make Hecht and MacArthur look like a couple of office boys.”
“What the hell are you doing there?”
“I just came over to tell Julie I’ve decided to give him a break,” Sammy said. “From now on he’s going to be my collaborator. You ought to see him, he’s tickled to death.”
“You better get a grip on yourself,” I said. “One of these days that generosity is just going to run away with you.”
After I told them I was too busy to join their party (Sammy was blowing them to a spread at La Maze), I walked over to Barney’s Beanery, listened to a once-famous vaudeville team who were singing once-famous songs for tips and tried to drown my reaction to Sammy’s most recent philanthropy in Barney’s onion soup.
CHAPTER 7
Sammy had little chance of disturbing my dreams those next few months, for the studio was having one of its periodic drives to cut overhead—which seemed to mean shaving stenographers’ wages first and gradually working their way up to firing small-fry writers like me—so I had been working like a bastard trying to hang on. The Megaphone had labeled my first effort Fair Meller, and even though I had refused to take an ad, that seemed to be giving it the benefit of the doubt. The situation was so tense that I got the jitters every time an inter-office memo arrived, for fear of being informed that I was no longer employed.
Kit would call me two or three times a month, but that was nothing to gloat over, since all it was ever about was her goddam Guild. I was still carrying the membership card around in my pocket unsigned. I got a rise out of her when I told her that I liked a lot of people, but I liked them one at a time, not all bunched together.
I finally went, of course. For almost five hours I sat with three or four hundred others in a badly ventilated gymnasium listening to speeches without even the consolation of sitting with Kit because she had to be up on the platform. I felt that if the Guild had a place in Hollywood it had yet to discover what it was. The low-paid writers wanted the Guild to be a real bread-and-butter union, and the congenial five-hundred-dollar-a-week guys thought what writers needed most was a communal hangout like the old Writers’ Club where they could sit around and get to know each other. The twenty-five-hundred-dollar-a-week writers with famous names seemed to be most interested in increasing their influence in picture productions and spoke fine, brave abstract words about the scope of the medium and dignifying the position of the screen writer. The meeting seemed a little too much like a caterpillar separated into several parts groping blindly for each other.
When Kit called again about six weeks later I said, “Don’t tell me, let me guess; another meeting?”
She said, “The Guild situation is getting hot. Some of the boys are beginning to criticize it because it’s too much like a union—and some because it’s not enough.”
I told her I didn’t feel like a meeting tonight and she said to meet her at Musso’s on the Boulevard at seven, so we could get there around eight-thirty. Kit had left word for Sammy to meet us for dinner, but as we were sitting down the headwaiter gave us the message that he was tied up with Franklin Collier in a Monsoon conference.
“How’s he getting along?” I said.
“There hasn’t been anything like it since the rise of Irving Thalberg,” she said. “But he’s been very unhappy.”
“You’re breaking my heart,” I said.
“He and Julian could go on being a successful team for a long time,” she said. “I suppose if he saved his dough he could retire before he was thirty. But that isn’t enough for him. He can’t stop there. Being bracketed with Julian is driving him crazy.”
“Where’s it going to end, Kit?”
“That’s his cross,” she said. “Always thinking satisfaction is just around the bend. Not so different from the whippet with his mechanical rabbit.”
“That’s good,” I said. “I want to remember that.”
“A whippet,” she said. “That’s what he’s always reminded me of, from that first moment he came in to put the bee on me for Merriam.”
“That’s funny,” I said, “I always thought of him as an animal too—only a ferret.”
“I wonder if that’s the difference between the male and the female reaction?” she said lightly.
“You think more like a man than any woman I’ve ever known—and most men.”
“If you think that’s a compliment, you’re crazy,” she said. “Every time a man discovers that a woman thinks, the only way he can explain it is that she happens to have a male mind. You just don’t know me, Al. I’m feminine as all hell.”
“It looks as if the only way I’ll ever know you,” I said, “is for the Guild to hold meetings every night.”
“That reminds me,” she said. “We ought to be on our way.”
I tried to grab the check but she was too fast for me. I told her I didn’t like the idea of having a woman take me to dinner, but my defense of the old-fashioned ways only seemed to amuse her.
“Why should you pay it?” she said. “I asked you, didn’t I?”
The meeting had a tenseness, which could be felt in the hall like air pressure, as the president began to speak of the Guild’s need for allies in its fight for recognition and the logical step of joining the Authors’ League of America.
Until that moment the Guilders had kidded themselves into thinking that they were one big happy family. But the president had hardly finished when angry gentlemen were screaming to be heard. Their anger seemed almost inexplicable to me. You would have thought that the president had recommended joining the Communist International, instead of the conservative Authors’ League. We must remain a purely Hollywood organization, they yelled. We must not fall under the domination of outside forces. We don’t want to slip into the clutches of Eastern racketeers and Reds.
One of the loudest attacks on the Authors’ League plan was made by a man with a paunchy body and a paunchy face. I recognized Harold Godfrey Wilson, whom Sammy had pointed out to me that first day at the Vendome. As far as I could remember, all that the president had suggested was that the Guild look into the question of what kind of assistance it could obtain from the Authors’ League. But for some reason, that made Mr.
Wilson apoplectic. He began by telling the story of his life, now he had come to Hollywood in the early twenties, working as an extra, then as a gag man, gradually fighting his way up to become one of the most important writers in the industry, and now, by God, no bunch of Broadway snobs, who thought they were too good for Hollywood, was going to sit around the Algonquin and tell him what to do.
I didn’t have a chance to hear much of Kit’s rebuttal because that was just about the time Sammy came in. He was wearing a wrap-around camel’s-hair coat with a yellow scarf. He stood there in the doorway a moment and then he picked me out on the aisle and took the seat I had been saving for him.
The chair in front of him was empty and he turned it around and stuck his feet up on it. I couldn’t help noticing the shoes. They were new again. A style I had never seen before, without any laces at all.
“You oughta get yourself some of these, Al,” he said. “Cromwells. You can’t buy them out here, but if you give them your measurements they’ll send them to you from New York. I’ve got a standing order for a couple of pair a year.”
I just pointed toward Kit on the platform. “As long as the Guild is a democratic organization,” she was saying, “there aren’t any differences we can’t take in our stride. And we can go on being a democratic organization just as long as we all stick together; don’t let anybody scare us and hammer out our program right here on the floor.”
She seemed to have caught the mood of the membership because her plea for unity got the best hand of the night.
“Looks like Kit is our Joan of Arc,” I
said.
Sammy looked around at his fellow members with very little love. “Sure,” he said, “she knows how to get to them, all right. But they’re nothing but a bunch of sheep. Throw one good scare into them and they’ll run out of this place so fast you’ll think it’s on fire.”
“With a pair of Cromwell shoes in the lead,” I said.
Up till that moment, though I had to admire what Kit was trying to do, and though I thought unions were a good thing in general, I didn’t see much need or much chance for a screen writers’ organization. But now I was defending it. I suppose if Sammy had expressed a preference for Heaven, I would have launched into a defense of Hell.
The day I was laid off at the studio I felt so low I decided I had to see Kit. Whoever answered her phone told me I could reach her at Mr. Glick’s, and when Sammy’s Jap informed me that the master had gone to Palm Springs for the weekend I felt still lower. I called Billie.
I had never seen the old part of Los Angeles so we went down to Olivera Street, the narrow market with its tourist stalls which is all that remains of the early Spanish town, where marimba bands play their gay and melancholy tunes in front of sidewalk cafes, tamales are sold like hot dogs and you get the impression that every Mexican in the world is trying to sell you a souvenir.
It was a little too much like a set on the back lot to make me very happy at first, but a couple of slugs of tequila made a difference. Billie, who seemed to be in love with all men nicely, began to teach me the rhumba, and she used her few words of Spanish on the waiter and after burning my stomach with enchilada and my brain with more tequila I was holding her large plump hand and saying, “Billie, hey Billie, listen Billie, d’ya love me?”
“Sure, honey,” she giggled. “You’re cute when you’re drunk.”
“I’m not drunk, Billie,” I said. “I know every word I’m saying. If you don’t believe me I can tell you everything we’ve said since we sat down. Okay. So I’m not drunk. I’m just serious, that’s all. I’m in love with you, Billie, seriously, and if you don’t believe me I’ll call you tomorrow and say the same thing when I’m sober.”
“Don’t be serious, honey,” she said. “Love is much nicer when it isn’t serious.”
“But goddam it, I love you,” I said loudly. “I want to marry you.”
As I reached my hand out to hold hers and make it more convincing, I turned over my half-filled glass.
“Look at that,” I laughed as the thick liquid rolled slowly across the table. “Looks just like lava. No wonder I feel hot. I’m drinking lava.”
“You’re in love, Al,” she said. “You’re in love with somebody, all right.”
“Whatta you mean?” I said. “What are you talking about I’m in love with somebody?”
“It’s a funny thing,” she said, “but whenever a fella gets feeling good and wants to marry me, I know he’s in love with somebody.”
What the hell makes her know so much about love, I wondered. She may never write a book about it, but speaking strictly physically, spiritually, romantically and psychologically she must know more about love than Havelock Ellis and Bertrand Russell put together.
“I’m not in love with anybody,” I said. “But if I were in love with anybody it would be with you, sweetheart. Because, well, hell, you’re old-fashioned. You may not know it, baby, but you’re the nineteen-thirty-six version of the old-fashioned girl—the nineteen-thirty-sex version,” I added and broke myself up.
“Mmmm a tango,” she said with her whole body behind it.
“I think I’ll just sit this one out,” I said. “Go ahead, Billie, I’d only be in your way. Just let me sit here and watch.”
Later, a voice that seemed to come from behind me said, “Al, you’d better pay the check. They’re closing up.”
“My God,” I said, “Billie, you scared me. Jesus, I’ve been sleeping. I must have been sleeping for hours!”
“We only finished dancing a second ago,” she said. “You were just starting to close your eyes.”
“But I’ve been dreaming,” I said. “Know who it was about? Sammy Glick. He was climbing up a rope and I was chasing him, only the rope didn’t seem to be tied to anything—just going straight up in the air. And every time he got near the end, it just kept getting longer. And then I fell off …”
“Señor, your check,” the waiter said in a tolerant but wanting-to-get-home voice.
While I was waiting for the change I said, “Billie, I don’t think I ever asked you before. Do you know what makes Sammy run?”
She looked at me puzzled, not knowing whether to take it seriously or humor me.
“That’s all right,” I said, “take your time. I’ve been at it for years.”
“Do you know?” she said.
“Of course I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m working on it, little by little. You know what I need, Billie? A subsidy from the Carnegie Foundation. Then I could have a whole staff helping me. Because it’s a big job, Billie. Once we know what makes Sammy run it will be a great thing for the world. Like discovering the cause of cancer.”
“We better go home,” Billie said.
“Billie,” I said, “can you keep a secret? I think Kit is the only person in the world who knows what makes Sammy run. And she’s such a coldhearted bitch she won’t tell.”
When Kit called me for the next meeting I was either not myself or too much myself. I said, “I should think you could get a girl at the Guild office to take over some of this secretarial work for you, Kit.”
“What is it, Al?” she said. “You sound sore at me.”
I’m not sore, I thought. I think I’m falling in love with you. There is a very subtle difference.
“I guess I’m just in sort of a mood today,” I said. “I think maybe I’ll pass this one up, Kit, if it’s all the same with you.”
As usual I browsed around Stanley Rose’s until I had an appetite and then as usual I went next door to Musso’s.
“Evening, Mr. Manheim,” the waiter greeted me. “Going to the Guild meeting tonight?”
Amelio was a good union man himself who would find no inner peace until Hollywood was an organized town. I said I was, in order to avoid indigestion over my chicken wings, for Amelio was the restaurant’s indisputable forensic star.
On my way out I got it again. I stopped to say hello to three writers who always ate at the same table by the door. “Want to have a drink with us?” they asked. “And then we’ll all go over to the meeting together.”
I told them I would probably see them over there.
I started walking down the Boulevard and turned in at the narrow alleyway leading to Henkel’s Art Gallery. The gallery was in a funny little bungalow with an easygoing, out-of-this-world atmosphere, which featured surrealist and abstractionist stuff and Mr. Henkel, blond, middle-aged, dumpy and vague, who spoke about art with a cigarette in his mouth so rapidly and indistinctly that I was rarely able to understand him, though occasional phrases always sounded significant.
I had only been in Hollywood a short time, but I was already beginning to meet people everywhere I went. This time it was my erstwhile collaborator, Pancake.
“Well,” he said, “it seems there are some writers left who are still more interested in the better things than in forming a union like a bunch of plumbers.”
I looked at my watch. I could still make it if I hurried. “As a matter of fact,” I said, “I just came in here to kill a couple of minutes before going over with the rest of the plumbers.”
I must have arrived only half an hour late because the meeting hadn’t begun yet. People were still standing around in little groups, talking. I picked Sammy out right away. He must have swallowed a magnet when he was a little boy. I started over. He was with Harold Godfrey Wilson and a tall, lean fellow who would have had the face of a typical Yale man if it hadn’t been for the pale, sick skin and the tired patches under the eyes.
Sammy proudly introduced me to Lawrence Paine, whose name had be
en on some of the finest pictures Hollywood had turned out. I remembered that he had won the Academy Award for the best screenplay a year or so ago.
They went on talking about the Guild. “I’m all for the Guild,” Paine said. “But I’ll be damned if I like how it’s being run. They’re letting too many people in. What the hell, every lucky bastard who happens to sell one story isn’t a screen writer. The producers won’t take us seriously until we limit the membership to writers who’ve been employed at least a year, or get a thousand dollars a week.”
“If this bunch of Reds have their way we’ll be marching down Hollywood Boulevard in their May Day Parade,” Wilson said.
“What do you mean, Reds?” I said.
“Well, maybe not Reds,” Paine said. “Harold here always gets a little excited. But they’re goddam parlor-pinks and that’s just as bad. It’s up to the responsible element to save the Guild.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Paine,” I said. “I just joined the Guild on my way in tonight and I admit I don’t know too much about it. But it seems to me you want to save the Guild by kicking out the little guys like me. And they’re just the ones the Guild ought to be helping the most.”
“Apparently not all the lower-bracket writers feel the way you do about it. Young Sammy here is with us, aren’t you, Sammy?”
Young Sammy was with them, all right. Young Sammy was applying for the job of bugle boy in the proud little army that marched under the banner of $2500 a week.
After they wandered off Sammy shook his head and said, “Al, you’ll never get anywhere that way. Those guys have an in with some of the biggest producers in town. They know what they’re talking about. They don’t get twenty-five hundred a week for nothing.”
“You will,” I said.
“Twenty-five hundred a week,” he said.
I could feel him going crazy inside when he said it.
“What are you making now, Sammy?” I asked.