“The Censor, bless his heart,” said Abe facetiously.
“Not this time. It’s Lou van Allen!”
Abe emitted some rather profane ejaculations, expressive of the highest delight and excitement, and dashed towards the door.
Then he remembered himself.
“Bring Lou onto the set,” he commanded. “Tell him I’m a darned sight too busy to stop work, but I’ll be glad to see him here, and I’ll let him buy me a drink directly I’m through.”
Everybody laughed loudly at the director’s wit, except Mervyn, who was watching a small stout Jew creeping quietly up the studio floor, until he was standing close behind Abe Blomberg.
He then suddenly emitted a piercing catcall, and at the same time hit Abe a powerful blow between the shoulders.
From the scene of delighted recognition that ensued, Mervyn’s attention was only diverted by the entrance of Charlotte Roberts, with her sable cloak flung over her Watteau-shepherdess costume.
With her famous eyes half-shut, her famous mouth drawn into a sulky line of orange, and her famous blonde head held at h disdainful angle, she advanced.
The Assistant-Producer, the Art Director, the Sound Recorder, the Musical Director, the Photographic Technician, and several of the artists sprang respectfully forward.
Charlotte, as usual, ignored them all.
“What the heck — ?” she enquired hoarsely.
They were almost the only words Mervyn had ever heard her speak, apart from her screen dialogue.
Abe Blomberg turned round, so did Lou van Allen.
“Hallo, Charlotte!” said the man who was worth a hundred and twenty thousand a year, in uncertain tones.
“Holy smoke!” muttered somebody into the nearest ear, which happened to be Mervyn’s, “Lou and Charlotte had a fight in Hollywood — worst thing you ever knew — they tore Hollywood right in two, between them — look at her now!”
Mervyn looked, and so did everybody else, and they not only looked, but listened. No red light was required this time in order to plunge the whole studio into a breathless silence, across which struck the husky voice of Miss Charlotte Roberts informing her director that either Mr. Lou van Allen or herself must walk off the floor, right away.
“Why, Charlotte — why, girlie — what’s eating you?” protested Mr van Allen. “What happened between you and I that night in Beverly — that was all ‘way, ‘way back — why baby, it was all over more’n a year ago — I’ve disremembered it altogether.”
“But I haven’t,” hissed Charlotte. “You four-flusher, you! I couldn’t tell you what I thought of you that night in Beverly Hills owing to Gloria’s drinks being so lousy that I passed out before I could say what I wanted, but I’ve been waiting for the chanst ever since.”
It seemed that the chance, or chanst, had indeed come.
Everybody gathered round, awestruck, excited, and intensely pleased, while Charlotte Roberts reminded Mr van Allen of a number of most discreditable episodes in his Hollywood career, culminating in his once having offered her a present of diamonds that had turned out to be something called Old Paste.
At this accusation a gasp — a collective gasp — broke from the whole crowd.
Everybody knew that it was Charlotte’s boast that she’d been given so many diamonds that she was sick of them, and wouldn’t look at anything except platinum or black pearls.
To offer her real diamonds would have implied an almost criminal degree of ignorance, but to offer her something that looked like diamonds, and had then turned out to be old paste, was something that must place the perpetrator beyond the pale. Or at least it must have placed him there if he’d been anybody excepting a man worth a hundred and twenty thousand a year.
When the hoarse voice of Charlotte ceased, there was an instant of perfect silence in the studio, and then several people began to speak at once.
Nearly all the executives devoted themselves to flattering and commiserating Charlotte. Mr van Allen, in low, angry, guttural tones, poured forth explanations to Abe Blomberg, and Abe said Yeah, Yeah, and Sure, Sure, to Charlotte and to van Allen, alternately.
But it was all of no avail.
Charlotte, looking neither to the right nor to the left, and ignoring all the people walking and talking excitedly at her side, went, with sable wrap swinging, out of the studio.
“She’s walked out on us!” said an experienced actor. “She’s done it before and she’ll do it again. That’s Charlotte all over.”
“Do you mean she’s not coming back?” asked Mervyn, dazed and incredulous.
“That’s right. Charlotte’s like that. She walked out on Rodolph de la Rica in the middle of a picture once, because the studio cat mewed at her or something. That’s Charlotte all over.”
“What on earth will Abe do?”
The experienced actor shrugged his shoulders.
“Poor devil, what can he do? He can’t afford to lose Charlotte, or the whole picture’s a washout, and he can’t afford to offend Lou van Allen, because Lou’s money is backing the show. It’s a case of a what-d’you-call-’em — I mean the chap who had to steer between Damon and Pythias.”
Mervyn was too much agitated to recognize this reference to the classics.
2
If Loud Rings Nowell had required gingering up before the defection of its star, it naturally required it a great deal more afterwards.
Abe summoned a conference for three o’clock on the day after Charlotte’s departure, and at nine that evening it actually took place in the music-room of his gigantic house at Richmond.
Quite a number of people attended, including Mervyn Spenser, the Art Director, the Assistant-
Director, the Business Manager, and Lou van Allen.
Ivan Scarlett was not present. He had telephoned a suggestion to the effect that somebody should write in some hot numbers, to which he would tap-dance on the floor of the saloon — which was what he called the raftered bar-parlour of Ye Olde Englysshe Tavern in Shot 374.
“I don’t believe that Ivan, as a dancer, has any motion-picture value whatever,” said Abe to this. “Naturally, he thinks he has — you couldn’t expect anything else — but from a box-office point of view, Ivan doesn’t register a thing except sex-appeal.”
“That’s so,” agreed his staff.
“We’ll just have to get another star in Charlotte’s place, I guess. That is, if Lou’ll stand for it.”
But Lou shook his head.
“Nix. There’s enough of my money gone down the drain as it is. We’re going to sue Charlotte for breach of contract, and she’ll fight it tooth and nail, and it may go our way or it may not. There’s no justice in this world, not one mite of it. Besides, we ought to be able to get along without that. Can’t any of you guys think up an idea?”
“Perhaps I could write in some fresh dialogue and give a twist to the story,” suggested Mervyn eagerly — but nobody paid any attention to him.
“Sammy Isaacson scored a winner with that burning aeroplane stunt in his last picture,” suggested somebody.
“No. That’s old-fashioned stuff,” said Abe. “He only got away with that because a whole lot of the crowd got killed when they were shooting, and the press made a feature of it.”
He was supported by Lorenzo del Monte.
“Stunts are out of date; the public’s a lot more high-brow than what it was. It wants a big heart-throb, with kind of a touch of comedy and a strong human appeal.”
“Lorenzo’s right,” said Lou van Allen. “He’s dead right.”
“But how are we to get heart-throbs into a picture that hasn’t a skirt in it, except for a comic landlady and a bunch of small-town janes that aren’t one of them what people like you and I would even call ejucated?” enquired Abe.
How indeed?
Mervyn hazarded a suggestion that Shakespeare had done very well without much feminine element in his plays — but nobody took any notice. Perhaps, thought Mervyn madly, they didn’t know who Shakes
peare was.
He listened dejectedly while the discussion went on. Suggestions ranged from that of del Monte —— that the whole venue of Loud Rings Nowell should be moved to Calcutta during the Mutiny, with the big scene in the Black Hole as high light —— to the Business Manager’s idea of introducing two hundred more reindeer, a sedan-chair race, and a bathing-beach at Antibes into the existing scenario.
At each new inspiration Abe Blomberg looked wistfully at Lou van Allen, and Lou van Allen in turn shook his head, drank whisky-and-soda from the glass in front of him, and said briefly:
“No. Lousy.”
At last Abe turned sulky.
“Well if you don’t care for sedan chairs, or reindeer, or even a mutiny, I guess it’s no use our calling it a Christmas fantasy at all. We’d better get the dialogue rewritten so that there isn’t any love interest at all, and just call it an ejucational film. Put in a bit about the way stockings are made, and all like that. I guess you could do that for us, Mervyn, old boy?” Everybody looked at Mervyn. Such a thing had never happened to him in the studio before, and he felt greatly excited.
“Mr. Blomberg—” he began.
“Abe to you, dear old boy.”
“Abe — and Mr van Allen—”
“Say Lou, for Pete’s sake—”
“I should like to fix up something with the shots you’ve already taken — the ones that don’t include Miss Roberts, I mean — and I can do it, if you’ll let me have a free hand with the story.”
“We couldn’t do that, old boy.”
“You see, you want to be kind of film-minded to write a thing like that. If you’ll spill the big idea, though, Abe and I’ll give you our reactions to it right away, and if we O.K. it, you can go right ahead.”
Mervyn who had had no idea at all, beyond a firm conviction that he could evolve a good plot and good dialogue if he were given time, was for an instant dismayed.
But he rallied.
This was his chance, and take it he must and would.
He thought hard for a moment.
“This is only a rough idea, you understand, but if you think there’s anything in it, I could work it out in detail and let you have a full synopsis by to-morrow afternoon.”
From the corners of his eyes Mervyn saw Lou van Allen’s approving nod. The touch about getting the synopsis done “by to-morrow afternoon,” with its note of urgency, had registered favourably.
Encouraged, Mervyn went on.
“Now, as the story stands at present, Ivan Scarlett is spending a solitary Christmas at Ye Olde Englysshe Tavern, because he’s in love with Charlotte, whom he’s seen once at a ball, but he hasn’t any money and she’s rich, and so on. By a strange coincidence, he finds a portrait of her on the wall of the Tavern parlour, and so on and so on. You know all the rest, and the dream about Santa Claus and the reindeer, and the buried treasure in the wainscoting, and Charlotte turning up out of the snowstorm in a coach and four.
“Well, my idea is a — a variation on that theme with Charlotte left out.
“Ivan Scarlett is flying from his creditors. There are writs out against him, and one especially issued by a black-hearted old J—”
Mervyn checked himself on the brink of disaster, coughed, and continued.
“ — black-hearted old josser of a Scotch money lender on account of a bill that Ivan has backed for a friend of his. Instead of a picture, Ivan dreams that he finds a very old book, in the Tavern parlour, and in this book—”
“Book?” said Lou van Allen doubtfully. “I don’t care for that. Books have no motion-picture appeal whatever.”
“That’s so,” Abe supported him. “An old picture is O.K., but an old book don’t mean a thing.”
“An old parchment, then. A roll of parchment hidden under the floor.”
The executives brightened.
“Swell! Go ahead.”
“Ivan finds this old parchment, and by a strange coincidence, it — but I ought to have explained that the moneylender, by this bill, has the right to claim a pound of flesh from Ivan if he can’t find the money by Christmas Day. It’s just one of those medieval arrangements.”
Not without nervousness, Mervyn paused for a second. Lou van Allen cleared his throat. Then he nodded.
“Sure. Keep it historical,” he said.
Mervyn resumed.
“In the old parchment, which is really a legal document, it’s explained that no moneylender may actually take the life of one of his clients without incurring a certain penalty.”
“The electric chair?” said Abe doubtfully. “I don’t know whether a picture featuring the electric chair would pass the censor.”
“Not the electric chair,” said Mervyn gently.
“I’ll tell you in a minute.... We’ll keep in the Santa Claus dream, and the reindeer and so on—”
“What about the picture? It’s a pity to lose that bit where Ivan drinks out of his hunting-horn and sings.”
Mervyn almost involuntarily quoted:
“I’m blue, you’re blue, the world is blue all through, But though I’m blue, my Christmas Rose, I’m true To you.”
He had not been responsible for that lyrical apostrophe. It had been specially commissioned from a song-writer, well known as having originated the great phrase, “Love has Come.”
“We should have to alter the words of the song,” he said firmly. “But that can easily be done. I could let you have a complete new version by five o’clock to-morrow afternoon. Ivan’s toast can be drunk just the same, to the Spirit of Christmas, or something of that sort. You see, he thinks it’s going to be his last Christmas because if he can’t find the money to pay his debt, the moneylender takes his pound of flesh, and—”
“Yeah, but even if he does, Ivan doesn’t have to peg right out, does he?” Lorenzo del Monte enquired anxiously. “I mean, all this skin-grafting and surgery and stuff—”
“Old boy, you haven’t got your historical values right,” Lou van Allen said reproachfully. “How much skin-grafting do you suppose they did in them olden times?”
“Exactly,” said Mervyn. “Besides, the moneylender has it down in his bond that the pound of flesh has to come from Ivan’s side, near his heart, so that doesn’t give him much of a chance.”
“Well, we could work right up to a big Court scene, couldn’t we?” Abe cried excitedly. “The County Sheriff and everybody getting all het up, and Ivan standing in the dock, and a couple of close-ups of this tight-wad — this Public Enemy No i — of a moneylender, and perhaps the Christmas bells fading out into a knell tolling outside the Court Room....”
“Abe, you got vision. I always said for you that you got vision,” declared Lou van Allen. “I’ll hand you that every time. That touch about the bells is just great.”
The atmosphere of the meeting, now warm with glowing approval, was rapidly going to Mervyn’s head.
Everybody was looking eager and excited.
“So what?” the Art Director enquired earnestly. “We’ve got this guy in the box, and a first-class situation — but how are you going to get him out of it? The whole thing turns on that.”
“That’s right,” came in a chorus from the rest.
“In Ivan’s dream at the Tavern — you remember about that — he found an old legal document, and by an extraordinary coincidence, it contained an account of a case rather like his own. Well, he undertakes his own defence but it falls, and the verdict goes to the moneylender. So Ivan asks for a reprieve, while somebody is sent to the Tavern to look for the parchment.”
“He’d be in prison, of course,” Abe said. “We could get a swell close-up of Ivan’s face behind the bars.”
“The messenger gallops off after the parchment, right through the snow and so on — and after looking all over the place he finds it, just where Ivan said he saw it in the dream, behind the panelling near the fireplace. So then he dashes back to the Court House with it.”
“Fine!”
“Ivan is in the do
ck again, and the J — the Scottish moneylender is waiting, with his knife all ready, and a pair of scales on the table in front of him to weigh the flesh. Then comes the sound of hoofs, and the messenger reins up outside the window, and rushes in, all over snow, and hands Ivan the paper that’s going to save him.”
“But how?” cried Abe excitedly.
“How?” echoed the others.
“Ivan addresses the jury, and tells them that he’s ready to die, there’s no hope for it, and the old money lender gets out his knife — and then Ivan explains that, by this old law that’s quoted in the document, the penalty for shedding a client’s blood, for a moneylender, is to be fined the whole of his fortune. So he says: Take the pound of flesh if you like, but if you shed my blood while you’re doing it, the Court will claim this fine, and ruin you. And they all get frightfully excited, and Ivan shows the judge this old paper, which establishes a precedent, and—”
“And the Sheriff okays it!” shouted Lou van Allen irrepressibly. “Old boy, that’s the goods! You’ve said it! We keep in practically all the shots we’ve taken, except the Charlotte ones, and then work up to the big Court scene with the bells outside like what Abe said, and the whole thing ends up with bells again, and the snow and the holly and all like that, and the whole crowd wishing one another a Happy Christmas and a Bright New Year.”
“And we’ll feature it as a real English story of the olden days,” said the Assistant Director. “I’d like to suggest that as a sub-title: ‘Loud Rings Nowell, a Story of Merrie England,’ something like that.”
“You and Mervyn can get together on that,” said the Director. “Well, I think our reactions are pretty much alike, aren’t they? We’ve struck a winner.”’
He looked at Lou van Allen, and the great man, finishing his third whisky and soda at a gulp, nodded emphatically.
“That is so. We’ll get right on with it.”
He turned to the Business Manager.
“Oscar, get hold of a legal expert for me, and put him under contract right away to stand by while the picture’s being made, as Special Legal Adviser. And I guess we’d better have him here by nine o’clock to-morrow morning. Send one of the cars for him, if he can’t make it by train.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 568
