Moving Pictures

  Exactly the kind of challenge my father welcomed! He met with Marcel, both at the studio and at our house for dinner, and was captivated. The young director was one of a long line of European charmers who would troop through our living rooms for years to come, some of them phonies, some of them the genuine article. I see them all in a single composite, those adventurers with febrile minds and finely chiseled faces of the proper artistic intensity, kissing the hand of my mother, engaging me in flatteringly mature conversation, discussing the works of the European masters with B.P. Artists, mediocrities, poseurs—all of them HOLD-FRAME in the portrait of Marcel DeSano. Of medium height, he was delicately made, attractive in a dark, mysterious way, dapper in his dress—dandy is the word—a Balkan adventurer turned Parisian boulevardier. He was Jewish, but of a completely different breed from the East European and the ghetto Jews who had taken over the motion-picture business from the Edisons and the Porters. Cultivated, educated, debonair, sophisticated, he could talk brilliantly about the art of the cinema. He had seen every picture and had made a study of the techniques of the ranking directors, the incomparable Griffith, Flaherty the documentary artist, Fred Niblo, Frank Lloyd, King Vidor, Rex Ingram, James Cruze, William Desmond Taylor… All he needed to join that select group, DeSano insisted, was a chance to make a picture of his own.

  B.P. was intrigued. He loved to take chances on unknowns. It was like putting all his chips on a single number in a game of roulette. But there was Ad: “Ben, I’d be careful…” “Ben, are you sure you know enough about him?…” “Ben, you mustn’t let him flatter you into making a hasty decision you’ll regret later…” And of course the more Ad reminded him of his flair for the impulsive, the more determined he was to take that plunge. Instead of entrusting his next picture, The Girl Who Wouldn’t Work, to one of his dependable three, Gasnier, Forman, or Schertzinger, he defied Ad and his own studio associates and gave the assignment to Marcel DeSano.

  In those days it was already de rigueur to shoot an establishing or master scene from the top to the end, and then move in for the medium close shots, the two shots (shots with two people), the close-ups. That way the film editor could assemble the scene according to what he thought was the proper rhythm—the full shot to establish the scene, the closer shots for reactions, and back to the original longer shot for the performers to make their exits. But Marcel was only half a dozen feet into his long shot when he called “Cut!” The cast and crew were astonished. In that scene the heroine was asked to slap the face of the villain. As she raised her hand, again Marcel called “Cut!” Then he shot a closer shot of the impact of the hand against the face. What DeSano was doing was cutting the picture in his head, shooting only what he had decided was necessary to the finished film. Normally it took a hundred thousand feet of raw stock edited down to get a ten-thousand-foot motion picture. Marcel was leaving himself no protection. A dangerous gamble. Willie Wyler, one of the most distinguished directors of the last forty years, shot his scenes all the way through from every possible angle. Not our Marcel DeSano.

  At first the actors, the chief technicians, and my father as well were concerned with the breakneck speed with which DeSano was rushing through the picture. He had been given a three-week or eighteen-day schedule, for in those hardy years Saturday was still a working day. DeSano brought in the picture six days and $20,000 under schedule. In twelve days he had finished The Girl Who Wouldn’t Work, and it was instantly assembled, with practically no excess footage in the film bin. The cutter couldn’t believe what he was seeing and neither could my father. What was even more extraordinary, when they ran the first cut in the small projection room, it had all come together exactly as DeSano had conceived it in his mind. Everyone agreed it was one of the best pictures Preferred had ever made!

  So did the sneak-preview audience. So did the general public. And so did the critics. A new European genius was welcomed to the inner circle. Hollywood was amazed. B.P.’s discovery was the talk at all the smart places where the movie crowd assembled: Montmartre and Henry’s and the Coconut Grove. Thalberg wanted to borrow DeSano from B.P. for his next production. B.P. was taking bows and reminding Ad that an up-and-coming producer had to take chances and play his hunches. Discovering talent was the keystone of this burgeoning business/art. He was making a star of little Ethel Shannon, he had just signed that gum-chewing beauty contest winner from Brooklyn, Clara Bow, and now he had the overnight wonder boy, Marcel DeSano.

  B.P. told Thalberg that DeSano was too precious to loan out. As soon as he had a well-deserved rest and went to New York for press interviews, he would start the sequel to The Girl Who Wouldn’t Work, already being written by a team of lady writers. Meanwhile, B.P. dined Marcel at Victor Hugo’s, took him with me to the celebrated Friday-night fights, and virtually brought him into the family. Marcel traveled with us on those hectic weekends to Catalina Island, Santa Barbara, and to the wonderfully Victorian Hotel Del Coronado near San Diego. How vividly I remember him, the natty, intense, and now famous Marcel DeSano in his smartly tailored dark suits, with expensive ties tucked into elegant vests. Marcel DeSano talking of his innovative theories of film editing. Talking of the Balzac novel he would like to do next. Talking to me on the balcony about how one day we would work together. Move over, Von Stroheim and Murnau. We have Marcel DeSano!

  ACT II: Marcel went to New York in style, stayed at The Plaza, and was wined and dined by B.P.’s New York backers. He gave learned interviews to movie critics on his economical yet artistic approach to filmmaking by “editing with the camera.” Serious but business-minded filmmakers like Irving Thalberg and my old man were delighted, because it was the perfect answer to the pretensions of a mad genius like Erich von Stroheim, whom Irving had had to remove from Foolish Wives. The headstrong Von had spent not ten days but a full three hundred and sixty-five on the picture, and not sixty thousand but over a million dollars and not twelve thousand feet but trackless miles of film that his editors claimed they were drowning in—with Von protesting that he needed still more time, more money, and more film to realize his grandiose conception.

  Two weeks before the sequel to The Girl Who Wouldn’t Work was to go into production, B.P. received a long-distance call from New York. Marcel was apologetic but he would be unable to return in time to start the picture. Mysterious pains in his chest. His physician had recommended a week in the hospital for a thorough checkup. B.P. was sympathetic. Perhaps Marcel had overworked himself in bringing the first picture in at such breakneck speed. He told his protégé to take his time—he would need all his strength for the picture ahead. They would postpone it another week or so until Marcel had recovered.

  Two weeks later, Marcel called again. The specialists had been unable to discover the cause of his chest pains, and he was having difficulty in breathing. He was unable to give B.P. a starting date. At the end of the month, B.P. begged him to get back on the train and return to California. Los Angeles had its own specialists and B.P. would see to it that he had the best of care before going back to work.

  When DeSano finally reappeared, Ad and Ben gave him a warm welcome. Again we drove south for a weekend together at the Del Coronado. Once again Marcel was his intense, talkative, attractive self. I remember the story conferences between him and my father: the excitement, the anticipation of the next successful picture on which they were about to embark. Week by week, Marcel’s still-undiagnosed chest pains began to disappear. A combination of the California sunshine and my father’s confidence in him seemed to provide the cure. A new date was set for the picture.

  A week before he was to start shooting, Mrs. DeSano called with the bad news. Marcel was suffering from what was apparently a severe case of laryngitis. B.P. sent his own physician to call on him. The studio doctor reported that it was true that DeSano seemed to have lost his voice. But there did not seem to be any throat infection or inflammation that he could locate. Nor was there any problem with his chest. Ben went to see his ailing director. DeSano spoke to him i
n a whisper. In those days the directors talked on the set much more than they do today. Directing silent performers, they could tell them exactly what to do as the scene progressed: “Now you hear the knock on the door and you are afraid—now the door opens—and you are even more frightened by what you see. You take a few steps backward …” What was B.P. to do with a silent-picture genius who had lost his voice?

  Upset, confused, B.P. promised to bring in another chest-and-throat specialist to make a new diagnosis the following day. But that specialist called the studio to say that he had found no one home at the DeSanos’ Hollywood bungalow. For a number of days, Marcel could not be located. Then another long-distance call cleared up the mystery. Secretly, Marcel had boarded the Santa Fe Chief and gone back to New York. His voice sounded a little stronger but he was still suffering those severe chest pains. With his persuasive charm he apologized to B.P. for sneaking out of town, but he knew my father’s own powers of persuasion and had been afraid that B.P. would talk him out of the trip. Back in New York he felt safer with his own specialists. He simply had to get to the bottom of his medical problem. Otherwise it would be impossible for him to concentrate on directing the picture.

  While DeSano was in New York consulting with his own doctors, B. P.’s partner Al Lichtman called Ben to say that he had happened to be in an expensive men’s store that day—and there was their elusive director having two-hundred-dollar suits made to order, discussing the sartorial details with the salesman and the tailor in what sounded like a normal and healthy voice. Growing impatient at last, B.P. phoned Marcel to ask him what was going on. Preferred Pictures had shown its continued faith in him by keeping him on salary and even absorbing the Hollywood medical bills. He was costing the company a great deal of money, while the public was anxiously awaiting the next Marcel DeSano picture. Marcel was convincingly disingenuous. Whenever he felt depressed, he explained, as he did now when he was doing everything he possibly could to get back into shape to start the next picture—still awaiting the specialists’ next report—he went out and bought himself a new suit. That was part of his therapy. As for his voice, that’s what was proving so mystifying about this ailment. One morning he would wake up in full voice. The following day he would be unable to speak above a whisper. The specialists, he said, had become fascinated by his case. He seemed to have caught an absolutely original disease.

  By this time, B.P. found himself pendulating between sympathy for the DeSano syndrome and exasperation at his protracted delay. Typically, they began to call Marcel DeSano “The Man Who Wouldn’t Work.” B.P. threatened to take Marcel off salary, and eventually, under pressure from the fellow-owners of his company, had to carry out the threat.

  Marcel returned to L. A. as fast as the Chief could get him there. Again we weekended at the Del Coronado.

  On this trip a strange thing happened to me. On the lower floor of the sprawling hotel was a bowling alley. I had never bowled before, and since I was still in knee pants, I was given the smaller ball and duckpins. Each time I rolled the ball down the alley, the pins went down. Overhead was a large slate board with the hotel records written in chalk. That day I broke the record. There was my name, Buddy Schulberg, in big white letters on the board! But when I tried to top myself, the balls refused to stay out of the gutters on either side of the alley. I bowled a miserable 58. And never again was I able to break even 75. Truth is, I was clearly a no-talent bowler. But we were constant guests at the Hotel Del Coronado throughout the Twenties and into the Thirties, and whenever I bowled I would be pointed out as the record holder. The more I bowled the lower my scores became. Finally I was too ashamed to face those challenging pins and I retired from the field. But my duckpin record lasted into the late Thirties. The god of bowling must have been guiding my hand on that record flight.

  Marcel DeSano was with me when I set the record, and he seemed fascinated by my inability ever to come anywhere near that first performance. And then it struck me—without benefit of my mother’s Freud, Brill, and Jung: Marcel DeSano’s chest pains and throat disorders were clearly symptoms of panic after his first unexpected success. Writers face it when they approach that Second Novel, after an unanticipated first-novel success. The mysterious DeSano disease was simply Second Picture Panic. An impossible act to follow! How do I top myself? How do I go on? I’ve often see this agony in my creative friends, especially in neurotics who lack the emotional equipment to face the possibilities of failure that threaten every artist.

  Marcel DeSano never did make that sequel to The Girl Who Wouldn’t Work. I’m not sure he ever made another picture. Later, Irving Thalberg, still drawn to him and feeling he might succeed where B.P. had failed, gave him a chance at MGM. But once again the chest pains set in and the voice fell to a whisper.

  In most cases of show-business failure, the friendship dies with it. Over and over again I have known people who thought of themselves as socially inseparable but who no longer speak to one another once their pictures flop or creative dry rot sets in. But Marcel was so ingratiating, so entertaining and stimulating at dinner and cocktail parties that he continued to fascinate both my mother and father. The Man Who Wouldn’t Work went on charming the Schulberg family.

  As his unemployment became chronic, as the forgetful industry no longer remembered his early (and only) success, Marcel DeSano began thinking of suicide. He would conceive a new film project and swear that if he did not manage to see it through to completion he would kill himself. One New Year’s Day my father invited him to the Rose Bowl Game—California vs. Georgia Tech. It was a long drive from Hollywood east to Pasadena, especially with the elaborate morning parade of flowered floats, and Father had ordered an early start. But Marcel failed to show up at the time he had been asked. B.P. called his home. There was no answer. Father called again and again. Still no answer. When it was almost noon, B.P. said we would have to leave without him. At that moment Marcel arrived. Impeccably dressed as always, but with his face the color of ashes.

  When B.P. chided him for being late, Marcel told this story: That morning he had awakened feeling particularly despondent. His wife had left him, he had no idea how he would pay his January rent, and every studio gate in Hollywood had slammed in his face. The moment to take his own life was at hand. He went out to his garage, started the motor of his car, attached a hose to the exhaust pipe, held the hose to his mouth, and lay down to await his sweet deliverance. As he lay there, cold and uncomfortable on the cement floor, he said to himself, “Marcel, if you’re going to die, you might as well go in comfort.” After all, he had always been a gentleman of taste and sophistication, who had developed an appreciation for luxury. So he got up from the cold stone floor and went back into his house to fetch a velvet cushion and a cashmere blanket. Thus comforted, he stretched out in the garage to resume his exhaust-pipe experience. But as he lay there inhaling the deadly vapors, he had further thoughts: “This is New Year’s Day. B.P. is waiting with his car and chauffeur to take me to the Rose Bowl Game. I have a hundred-dollar bet on the Golden Bears. I might as well go to the game, see if I win my bet… I can always come back to the garage and get this over with later tonight.”

  When we heard this story—unbelievable for anyone but a Marcel DeSano—my father said, “Marcel, you’ve been threatening to commit suicide for years—and you’re still with us. People who talk that much about suicide never do it—what you’re committing is vicarious suicide. You milk all the pleasure of the contemplation of the act without the responsibility of actually having to see it through.”

  “Tonight, when we get back from the game, I intend to do it,” Marcel insisted.

  We came home from the game flushed with the excitement of one of the most bizarre games ever played in the Bowl. Roy Riegels, the towering California center, had picked up a fumble and run the wrong way, to be tackled by our little Benny Lom a few feet from his own goal line. The flustered center, fated to go down in football history as “Wrong Way Riegels,” then made a bad pass
from center, Benny was unable to get off his punt from behind the goal line, and Georgia Tech had scored a precious two-point “safety,” winning this Lewis Carroll version of a football game 8 to 7.1 had lost one dollar, Marcel had lost his hundred, and my father, betting conservatively for him, was only out one thousand. We went back to the house to replay the game over highballs, although I was still limited to sarsaparilla. Marcel stayed on to dinner, animatedly telling a film story he would like to do. He seemed to have forgotten all about his nocturnal appointment with the exhaust pipe.

  FADE IN—ten years later. The scene: my mother’s townhouse in London, where she was a successful theatrical agent in the late Thirties. Marcel DeSano came for dinner and stayed on for coffee and brandy—and more brandy. He was still wearing the same dark suit, although it was now shiny with age, and his expensive shirt had been to too many laundries in too many different countries. Across the years and across the continent of Europe he had been roaming in search of his tattered reputation. A cloud of mystery shadowed his survival. Still, he managed to remain dapper, attractive, intense, and creatively talkative. My mother was now a prosperous, self-assured, and beautiful woman in her early forties. As the hours grew smaller, the self-dramatizing Marcel announced to Ad that he had a confession to make: Ever since those early days in Hollywood he had been insanely in love with her. He had never revealed his persistent passion because of his loyalty to his dear old friend B.P. But now, he insisted, the moment had come for him to declare himself. Their fate, their love, their life should be forever bound together!