Doc scolded me with a glance. “A physic is no laughing matter, young man,” he said.
“Who’s laughing?” I said. “Maybe he needs it because he got married last night and threw a big party for both his friends and all his enemies.”
“In that case,” said Doc solemnly, “I would suggest castor oil.”
Doc’s eyes pled sincerity, but as I looked at him I got the feeling that he wasn’t as dumb as he looked, that all this pomp and circumstance were just a joke, a very funny joke Doc was playing on the world. He was actually humoring you into thinking you were important, and what you were doing was important. All he seemed to want out of life was to make you feel that every second was a crisis in the world.
As Doc wrapped up the castor oil he inquired about Harry Small’s wife as if he were about to say, “Next time you see her, give her my very best.” Doc made you believe that being a drug-store salesman was just a hobby. I am sure that if President Eisenhower had ever ordered a toothbrush from him, he would have delivered it to the White House himself, saying, “I just dropped in a moment to be sure Mamie is taking care of her teeth—and what’s new with the wages and hours bill?”
“What sort of lady is Mrs. Small?” he asked.
“I can’t answer that,” I said, “because I never heard her called that before.”
“I hear she’s stacked,” Doc said.
Like all the great actors in the world, most of them never appearing on stage or screen, Doc could shift his moods like gears. His dignity was just so much grease paint that melted off in the heat of conversation, especially conversation about women. There was a touch of Casanova and plenty of traveling salesman in him.
“Give me that castor oil,” I said. “Mr. Small may need it when he gets through running his new picture.”
“I’ve been thinking about that marriage,” said Doc propping his chin up on the castor-oil box.
“Don’t worry about Harry,” I said. “The only man in Hollywood who ever stood in his way was a traffic cop—and Harry ran him down. … Now give me my change. If I know my Harry, I’ll be among the unemployed if I don’t get back in two minutes flat.”
I finally got my package and started off as if there were a pack of mad supervisors at my heels.
“Let me know how he makes out with it,” Doc called. “You might ring me up at home. I’ll be worried.”
“Listen,” I yelled back, “the way you carry on, you oughta join the Screen Actors Guild.”
“I am a member,” he answered. “I picked up a day at Metro last week, working with Greer.”
That’s how Doc got his big chance in the studio, acting, but not in a picture. Instead, he starred himself in a little life drama called Feeling Sorry for Harry. It so happened that Harry was reaching that stage where the sobs of his commiserators was his favorite sound track. He was beginning to believe the things they wrote about him in the local trade papers, about his being A Martyr to Our Business.
One morning a tragic editorial sobbed its way through a column and a half of the Hollywood Recorder. It was full of genuine concern for the men who almost sacrifice their lives to become heads of great studios. In its unique prose style, it began:
Go into the executive chambers and you will see producers all fagged out, tired almost to complete exhaustion, physically and mentally out, yes, even sick.
Naturally Doc read this, as he followed the trade papers faithfully in order to keep his finger on the pulse of the industry. Naturally, he took this message to heart. He ran straight to the phone and called Mr. Small.
“I’m sorry,” said Harry’s secretary sweetly but firmly, “Mr. Small is in a Board meeting. He can’t talk to anyone.”
“But this is a matter of life and death,” Doc begged, his voice breaking with emotion.
Small got on the phone. “Harry Small speaking,” he said aggressively. “Whose life and death are you talking about?”
“Yours,” said Doc emphatically. “I just read that warning about you, Mr. Small.”
“What warning?” asked Harry, ready to hang up.
“In the Recorder,” said Doc tearfully. “About producers working themselves to death. They meant you. It isn’t safe.”
“Well I’ll be damned,” said Harry. He was softening.
“We can’t afford to lose you,” said Doc. “If I were you I’d keep some adrenalin in your desk all the time, old man.”
“Thanks,” said Harry, “I’ll have my secretary get me some.”
“I’ll rush it right over myself,” Doc said.
Three minutes later he loped into the office like an Eskimo dog rushing serum to stricken Nome.
The next morning Doc was the new studio receptionist. He sat proudly behind the desk at the main door. I found him enthroned there when I was making my mail round.
He told me Mr. Small had given him the job because a good receptionist should anticipate people’s wishes, he should be able to size people up quickly enough to separate the wheat of desirable visitors from the usual sightseeing chaff, he should have tact, patience, insight, humor and intuition.
“I see,” I said. “A receptionist is something like God, only he’s on the payroll.”
“It’s the most fascinating job in the studio,” Doc confided. “It means you have to know something about every department—as the first contact outsiders meet, I am the Face of the Studio, as it were.”
From the moment Doc became the Face of the Studio, the reception room was charged with excitement, importance and intrigue. Every stranger who asked for an interview pass was treated as a potential spy determined to dynamite the sound stages. Any visitor of importance whom Doc recognized would be salaamed and announced like a nobleman entering a royal house. Job seekers no longer under his suspicion would receive lengthy, advice about their future in the studio, or Doc would inquire into their background, decide they were not yet ready and urge them to look for more experience elsewhere first.
One morning a delegation of high-school students from Atlanta, Georgia, bore down on the studio fifty strong.
“We cahm from G’ogia,” said the animated school-teacher who led them, “and we’d sho’ like to see one of these studios.”
Doc called Small’s office and the answer was, “Let them march through Georgia—not here.”
It was a tense moment.
“I’m sho’ sorry,” he said. “The studio is closed fo’ the day. But if you all’ll jes sit yo’self down, I’ll be mighty glahd to tell you all about it.”
I kept going through the reception room for an hour, and Doc never stopped talking. The schoolteacher was so glad to find somebody from Dixie that she hung on every magnolia-scented word.
Word of this triumph got back to Harry Small, and he puffed a thick smoke screen of pride around him with his Havana-Havana.
“That man has push,” he said. “He deserves something. Raise his salary to a hundred-and-seventy-five a month.”
But Harry Small could never understand people except in terms of himself. Doc didn’t have the push of a snail. He wasn’t playing to win. It was just good clean fun, and an irresistible urge to take care of it, to build it up, to treat little acorns as if they were great oaks.
As Doc grew more accustomed to his job, this urge began to get out of hand. Small’s secretary, Judy, noticed it first. Doc called her one day and told her to call a Mr. Carteret as soon as Mr. Small came in.
“But I know Mr. Small doesn’t want to talk to him,” Judy said.
“But you have to tell him,” Doc said, “for my sake.”
“What’s it got to do with you?” she asked.
“I gave Mr. Carteret my word of honor Mr. Small would call him,” Doc answered. “You wouldn’t let me down, would you?”
“Listen,” Judy said, “will you relax?”
I was just the office boy, so I could tell her, but she didn’t have Doc right, either. It was like asking the Statue of Liberty to relax. They both had their part to play, it wa
s their place in the world.
Carteret was an old director, famous in silent days, who had suddenly appeared at the reception desk one day. He had one of those faces that say: I haven’t worked in years. His face was trellised with purple veins from too much drinking and not enough forgetting. He turned out, to his surprise, to be an old friend of Doc’s.
“Hello, Lew,” Doc said, “haven’t seen you since Shirley Temple was a pup. What can I do you for?”
“I thought I might try going back to work for a change,” Carteret said, too desperate to sound very funny. “What’s new over here?”
Doc told him everything he knew, and he hadn’t chatted with secretaries and read notes upside down on executives’ desks for nothing.
“It looks like we’re going to make a big American cavalcade epic,” Doc concluded.
“Yeah?” Carteret said. “I’m the guy who produced the biggest cavalcade before talking pictures—Like Father, Like Son.”
“Of course Harry didn’t exactly tell me,” Doc said, “but one of our readers has been reading in the American historical wing of the public library for the past two weeks and three vets from the old soldiers’ home came through here yesterday.”
“That’s the break I need,” Carteret said.
“I’ll take care of it,” Doc said.
He called Judy and made an appointment for him. Carteret only had to wait an hour and fifteen minutes.
“Thanks, old boy,” he said to Doc gratefully as he was called in. “You certainly have a pull around here.”
Five minutes later Carteret came out. His face was red and perspiration was dripping down onto his only clean shirt.
“What did Harry say?” Doc asked.
“Listen,” said Carteret grimly, “he told me you popped out with the studio secret of the year. He warned me that if his idea ever gets out, he’ll run us both out of the industry. I practically bought myself a one-way ticket to starvation.”
Doc had his salary reduced to forty a week after that. But that didn’t stop him from playing his role. Every afternoon, for instance, he dropped in for a spot of tea at the commissary. If any of us office boys were grabbing a cup of coffee we used to dread seeing him because it would mean the end of our service. Doc was the idol of the waitresses. The moment he crossed the threshold the girls would drop everything they were doing and race each other to the door for the privilege of waiting on him. He had a way of looking a girl up and down without making her feel cheap. He knew how to make them laugh, he knew how to charge the air about them with importance. He was sort of like King Midas, only instead of gold, everything he touched became dramatic.
One girl in particular became one of the most important women in the world. She was a plump girl with large dimples. Her name was Emily. Emily hardly ever said anything. She was constantly singing snatches of popular songs absent-mindedly.
“Oh, the merry go round broke down,” she would sing. “What will you have?”
“Hello, little pigeon,” Doc said to her as he came in one day, “from the back I thought you were Lana Turner.”
“Sure,” she said, “and I know you—Clark Gable.”
“Sit down and take a load off your mind,” he said to her when she brought his tea.
“Thanks,” said Emily, “and do I need it! I got the jitters—don’t tell anybody, but when I brought Mr. Small his lunch today, that little beetle made a pass at me.”
“Well, that’s too bad,” said Doc solicitously, “and Harry just married.”
“Because You’re Mine,” Emily hummed. “He’s had three of the girls fired already for turning him down flatter than a carpet.”
“Listen,” said Doc, “if he tries anything again, let yours truly take care of it—tell him we’re engaged.”
“You listen,” Emily said, “in the first place, when you help a lady in distress, keep your eyes off her legs, and in the second place, you got your own job to worry about.”
“Baby,” said Doc, “I got this job for life.”
“Yeah,” she said as she picked his saucer up, “but this is one pen where they let you out for bad behavior.”
For a big, healthy girl, Emily was pretty psychic. It all began when Doc surpassed every former effort for taking care of it. Everybody on the lot was agog over the search for a brand new female personality to play in Harry’s cavalcade, which was to be one generation longer than any cavalcade every filmed. The writers had concocted a central character that was expected to make Scarlett O’Hara look like Pollyanna. Harry Small said it was a star-making part, and so did everybody else after they heard him.
Doc had read the script and was devoting all his energies to casting the role of this heroine, Starr Maple. He even sent Harry Small a note telling him he thought he had a second cousin in East Orange, New Jersey, who would be perfect for it if she could only have her front teeth straightened.
One day a gorgeous redhead walked in. She was stately and poised, and her features were classic but not stony. She was what every man thinks about for those one-way trips to desert islands.
“I would like to see Mr. Small,” she sighed.
“Have you an appointment?” Doc asked.
“It’s about the role of Starr Maple,” she explained.
“Have you a girl in mind for the part?” Doc asked.
“I’m hoping to play it,” she said. “My name is Rosemary Laine.”
Doc looked her over from head to foot, especially foot.
“Rosie,” he said, “you look like too nice a girl to waste your time here. You don’t seem to know anything about the Starr character. I’ve got the script right here. She’s ten years older than you. She’s a brunette—and very short, she has to be real short for a story point.”
“But—are you sure?”
“Look at the last ten tests,” said Doc authoritatively. “Frances Connell, Jerry Baretti, Mary Alister, all of them brunettes, in their late twenties and not one of them over five-two.”
“If my agent gave me a bum steer, I’ll cut his throat,” Miss Laine said sweetly.
“You’d better go back and see him quick, sister,” Doc advised.
The next day Doc was called into Mr. Small’s office.
“Maybe I’m going up to a hundred a week,” Doc said, as he went in.
Judy opened her mouth and said absolutely nothing.
Harry Small was slumped in his chair as if he were hiding from Doc under his enormous desk. Doc had never been in there before. He suddenly felt dwarfed, the way he had felt on the floor of Yosemite Valley.
“Doc,” said Harry tensely, “do you remember seeing a girl by the name of Rosemary Laine?”
“Laine,” said Doc musingly. “Sounds familiar.”
“I wish she were more familiar,” Harry said. “Her agent promised she’d see me before she signed anywhere and Paramount nabbed her this morning. I just called him up and gave him hell for not sending her to me first and he tries to tell me he did—and she came back discouraged. Six weeks from starting date we let the perfect Starr Maple slip out of our fingers.”
“Starr Maple,” said Doc. “The script says Starr is a little brunette and the Laine kid was a great big redhead.”
Harry jumped to his feet. No prosecutor ever pointed a more accusing finger. “Then you did see her!”
“Now that you mention it, I did,” said Doc, a little less sure of himself. “She was here yesterday. But I could tell she wasn’t the type and I didn’t want to waste your time.”
“That’s damned nice of you,” Harry screamed. “The best bet of the year and you didn’t want to waste my time with her! Maybe we were going to change the part to fit her! Maybe you should stop running my business. Why must this happen to me, Harry Small, who never did nothing to nobody!”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Small,” said Doc, “I won’t do it again.”
“And I know why,” said Harry. “Because you’re fired. You’re getting out of here. Tonight.”
Doc went back
to his desk very quietly. He didn’t even stop for his habitual gallantry to Judy. I noticed there was something wrong with him when I picked up the mail at his desk. He told me what had happened. It was tough. Doc loved that reception desk. I guess it was all the power he ever wanted in the world.
I helped him clean out his desk. In the middle drawer there was a comb, some hair tonic, a hand mirror, a marked script of the disastrous cavalcade epic and a Motion Picture Almanac. He took his things out slowly, one by one, as if he never wanted to finish.
“Maybe I should hang around a couple of days, to break the new man in,” he said.
“Where are you going from here?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “South America, Australia—I’ve got a soldier’s pension waiting for me there.”
A blonde woman with perfect skin and a placid, satisfied face came in.
“Would you call Mr. Small for me,” she said quietly.
Doc fell into his act. “Have you an appointment?” he asked stiffly.
“I’m Mrs. Small,” she said.
Doc jumped up from his desk and bowed.
“Then you have an appointment,” he said emphatically, “an appointment for life.” He opened the door for her with a click of his heels.
She swished through and Doc saw me watching him bow. He straightened up quickly and looked away.
He just couldn’t help going through with it, even when he was all washed up.
Emily came through. She blew Doc a kiss. “See you in the morning, Doc,” she trilled.
“Good night, little pigeon,” Doc said.
“Oh, seven lonely days make one lonely week,” she hummed as she went out.
Doc pulled out the bottom drawer and drew out a huge blue volume, The History of the Movies, and a lot of loose typewritten pages.
“I was starting to write a book about Mr. Small,” he explained, “but now that I’m leaving so soon I guess I’ll have to make it a short story.”
He was ready to go.
“I still think that Rosemary Laine would have ruined Harry’s picture,” he said. “Someday maybe he’ll call me in and thank me and give me back my job.”