by Peter Corris
So there we were, with money coming in, plenty of friends and acquaintances, not in the big time but doing very nicely. The trouble was, we hardly ever saw each other. The television production schedules were murderous — it was usual to be shooting a whole lot of episodes at once and you could be standing around all day just to do a tiny scene, then on again for night work, then riding along a canyon rim as dawn broke. Some of the shows I was in were shot partly in New York and I was spending a fair bit of time on airplanes. Then Louise was taken on as a script consultant for another big medical series. The show never got off the ground but it looked promising for a long time.
'Hi, stranger,' I said one morning when I found her drinking coffee in the kitchen. I'd come in late, crawled into bed and fallen asleep immediately. The birds woke me early and I realised that I had time to sit down and eat breakfast as she was doing herself. I was amazed by this and for a minute couldn't think of anything to say. She looked the picture of wholesomeness with her light tan nicely shown off by her white bathrobe. Everything about her radiated health and vitality. I'd had a few drinks after leaving the set and wasn't feeling quite so chipper.
'Hi yourself.' She buttered a piece of toast and drank some milk. Louise never put on weight and could eat anything. I had to be very careful because I drank about three times as much as she did so I tried to eat one-third as much. Not easy.
'What've you got on today?'
She looked at me as she chewed and swallowed. 'D'you realise, Dick, that all we ever talk about is the business? Mostly griping, too.'
I shrugged. 'That's all anyone talks about in this town. I never heard Douglas Fairbanks talk about anything but two subjects — his movies and himself.'
She poured coffee and added cream and sugar. 'You're just pulling rank on me, showing me how old you are and how long you've been around.'
'I think we're fighting.' I moved the cream and sugar out of reach and poured myself a cup. 'That makes a change.'
She came around the breakfast bar and kissed me. I automatically put my hand inside her robe and felt her full, firm breast. I've got a big right hand, over-developed by tennis, but Louise's breast filled it easily. She leaned against me, hip to hip. For southern California the morning had been cool but suddenly I was warm all over. I leaned down and kissed her as I undid the tie of her robe. A pair of silk pyjamas doesn't constitute much of a barrier and pretty soon we were going at it like steam on top of the table. Probably only an athletic woman like Louise could enjoy the position. She certainly seemed to.
When we'd finished I said, 'We'll have to argue more often.'
'We weren't arguing, we were talking and that's what's unusual.'
I grunted. Like most men, I can never see the point of talking about talking. I was experiencing a warm glow and thinking about a cigarette and a cup of coffee, maybe with a shot of brandy in it to help the glow along. Louise put on another pot of coffee and tossed her cold toast out onto the grass for the squirrels that inhabited our big garden. I lit the cigarette but didn't reach for the brandy. She didn't like to see me drinking in the morning and I was in a mood to oblige her.
'Dick,' she said as she poured me a cup of coffee. 'What do you really want to do with your life?'
They say your whole past flashes before your eyes when you're about to die. That hasn't happened to me and I've been close enough to the finishing line enough times for my evidence to be worth something. In my experience, that phenomenon only occurs when a woman asks a big question of the sort Louise put to me then. I'm not sure why this is and I'm not inclined to shell out thousands of dollars on a shrink to get an opinion. At a guess, it's just a mechanism that helps you to avoid an answer. I was re-living a particularly disgraceful episode that took place in Canada3 when I heard a strange sound. I looked up and saw the coffee cup rattling in the saucer with the force of my shaking hand.
Louise laughed. 'Dick, I can read you like a book. Don't worry, I'm not pregnant and I haven't had a letter from my mum saying she wants to come and visit.'
Somehow I stopped trembling and took refuge behind a smoke screen. 'What's on your mind then?'
'I can see an opportunity. I can smell it and taste it. I'm never wrong in these things. I felt like this when I first heard about the nursing course and then again when the chance came to get out of Australia. I felt it again when I met you.'
'I'm not sure how to take that.'
'Take it as a compliment. When I think how I could be back in Artarmon, married to Dr Talbot. That's when I tremble, brother.'
All very comforting that, but I was still wary. A squirrel jumped out of a bush, picked at a piece of toast, grabbed it and shot out of sight. Not a bad strategy. I was tempted by the thought of the brandy again.
'Christ, look at the time,' Louise said suddenly. 'I'm supposed to be on the set in an hour. I've got to rush.'
'Hey, hey. You can't go now. What's all this leading to? I'm hanging on by my fingertips here.'
She dashed past me. 'Tonight, lover. Tonight. We'll eat out, drink some wine and discuss it.'
'It! What the fuck is it?'
But she was gone and I felt too drained to follow her upstairs and pursue the matter. A woman showering and dressing for a fast exit has a dozen ways of deflecting questions. Throw me a towel. Where's my bag? Start my car, please, darling. Instead, I grabbed the brandy.
I spent the morning in a haze of anxiety and alcohol and only a long session in the swimming pool got me in shape to muddle through the afternoon. I was working in an episode of The Cisco Kid. The scene called for me to jump off a horse, knock a man down and call him a son of a dirty dog, in Spanish. Nothing much to it. The hardest bit was not tripping over in the jingling, flared-bottom trousers the costume people always put Mexican bandits in. The pants had silver coins attached to the outside seams. I'd seen a few Mexican bandits in my time, too close up for comfort, and I could have told them that they wore anything they could steal and that any silver a bandit happened on travelled immediately across the bar in the nearest cantina.
Languages and horses are two things I've always been good at and the scene was giving me no trouble until the director insisted that I was mis-pronouncing the words. He bleated out some musical stuff that might have sounded good in Madrid or in Spanish III at UCLA, but wouldn't have been understood at all south of the border.
'The guy's a Mexican thug, for Christ sake,' I said. 'He wouldn't talk like a faggot florist.'
Bad mistake. The director was a homosexual and no cream puff. He was one of those homosexuals who feel impelled to prove how tough they are and he took a swing at me, connecting lightly. Ordinarily, I'd have let it go, laughed it off, tried to make some mileage out of it. Directors aren't supposed to punch actors. They can fuck them in a variety of ways but not hit them. But I was out of sorts, worried about what Louise was plotting and feeling a morning booze headache coming on. I swung back and landed solidly on the director's jaw. I heard that awful sound a bone makes when it breaks and felt it in my gloved fist as well. The glove helped the punch along — instinctively, you don't hold back when you've got a glove on. He went down as if someone had cut the legs from under him.
I heard later that they'd kept the cameras rolling and that the film was later played at parties, but at the time there was no fun to be had. Everyone went quiet and still and the director lay on the ground and didn't move. Eventually, one of the female production assistants rushed forward and lifted his head and confirmed that he was still breathing. She ran off to call an ambulance — no mobile phones in those days — and everyone looked down at the man lying there with his jaw pointing towards his left shoulder. I did the only thing I could do — swing myself up onto my horse and ride away. I believe they got that on film too.
Nobody spoke to me. I changed out of my costume, took off my makeup and signed myself off the lot. When I got out to my car I realised that I'd put the riding gloves in my pocket. I've still got them somewhere, a memento of the best punch I e
ver threw. I drove home in a kind of daze, aware that I'd just put an end to my career in television. They'd put up with drunks and hopheads and nymphomaniacs and people who couldn't get anywhere on time, but not actors who king-hit directors. I wandered around the house picking up various bottles and putting them down. I sat by the pool and thought about taking a swim but didn't have the energy. When the phone rang I knew exactly who it would be.
'You crazy fuck,' Bobby Silk spluttered. 'The fuck you think you're doing?'
'I didn't think. He hit me, I hit him back.'
'You hit him. Ok, accidents happen. But did you apologise? Help the poor bastard into the ambulance? Ride to hospital with him? Talk to…'
'Kiss his ass? No, I didn't, he had it coming.'
'Is that right. Well, I'll tell you what you got coming in the way of work, Dick — nothing!'
We both hung up. By then the sun was touching the tops of the pines and I had a drink. I'd had quite a few drinks by the time Louise got home but I managed to suit up and take her out to dinner at a new fancy roadhouse off Ventura. Louise ordered a big steak, of course, and I pushed something around on a plate while I tried to get up the courage to tell her I was unemployed. Luckily, she was full of her own idea.
'A school,' she said. 'A school where we teach them to ride and swim and dive and play tennis and golf and shoot and all the other things you and I can do really well but they can't do for nuts.'
Her enthusiasm got to me and I laughed. 'What about act? You left that out.'
'Someone else can do that. How many times have I heard you raving about what clumsy, unathletic clods most of them are? You've taught a few actors some tricks in your time anyhow, haven't you?'
'I taught Gary Cooper to shoot for Sergeant York,' I said. 'At least I taught him how to look as if he could shoot. He never was much good at the real thing.'
'That's what I mean. You'd be a natural. We could charge some whacking great fees. The studios'd pay for some of them. We couldn't miss.'
My last significant business venture had come totally unstuck and left me with sour memories of the whole thing.4 I took a swig of the California red and prepared to bring her back to reality. Did I say that she was looking terrific in a pale blue linen dress with a white silk jacket? 'It's a great idea, love, but you'd need a hell of a lot of capital to set up something like that. You'd need land and facilities and …'
'We can get the capital. One phone call and it's all wrapped up.'
I had to tell her then. I drank some more wine and gave her the whole sorry story, including the sentence of professional death passed on me by N. Robert Silkstein. I expected tears or anger. Instead she leapt from her seat, came around the table and gave me a lingering passionate kiss. 'Darling,' she said, 'that's brilliant! That's wonderful! Rebellion's the coming thing. You'll be notorious. They'll be coming to us in droves!'
3
SHERMAN House was one of the nicest places I've ever lived in. We had fifteen hilly and lightly-wooded acres on the outskirts of the little valley town of Sherman Oaks, complete with stream, stables, tennis court, pool, practice golf hole and gymnasium. The house was a mock Tudor affair, white stucco with stained timber strips on the exterior and lots of exposed beams inside. It had six bedrooms and plenty of space for entertaining, including a sizeable room with a small dance floor. Both Louise and I were expert ballroom dancers and this was another talent we had on offer. There were four cabins in the grounds where long-term students could stay — at a pretty steep price. The one-year lease cost a bomb but somehow Louise and her mysterious backer took care of that.
Before I could turn round I found myself the employer of two assistant sports coaches, Matt Pendle and Sue Larch, as well as a groundsman, horse-handler and a couple of inside staff. As Louise had expected, a few judiciously placed ads in the trades and a flock of phone calls from the pair of us brought a quick influx of students which turned into a steady stream — most of them lusting for fame in movies or television, some subsidised by the studios who had them under contract, some backed up by rich parents indulging them in their fantasies. There were even a few who worked like slaves at part-time jobs to raise the fees while they fitted in lessons between pumping gas and turning up at auditions. Poor fools, the exhaustion was obvious in every move they made and their clothes and bad skins and neglected teeth showed that they were from hunger.
All in all, it was a pleasant life, especially as I was able to concentrate on the better students — the ones who had some hand-eye co-ordination and could control a ball. After a while a few of them were capable of a decent set of tennis and a round of golf where I didn't have to carry a box of balls in my bag. I have to admit that there were some fair swimmers among them and, if there had been any call for more swimming movie stars than Esther Williams, we could've met the demand. But there wasn't. The real duds I assigned to Matt and Sue who didn't like it but were paid to put up with it. Things worked out pretty much as Bobby Silkstein and Louise had anticipated — I got no offers of parts in the established TV shows or the ones that were being planned, but plenty of sulky-looking kids with long hair and dangling cigarettes wanted to learn how to be a horse-riding, rebellious, fuck-you, two-fisted actor.
That led to the first serious argument with Louise. Again, we weren't spending a lot of time together, busy giving lessons and often too tired at night for more than a brief kiss or a quick coupling. For this pitch, I made some time, insisting that Louise join me for a quick picnic in a quiet spot near the stream. I even made the sandwiches.
'They want it,' I told her, taking the top off a bottle of beer. 'They all want it. They're hungry for it.'
I was referring to the crying need for a boxing instructor. Almost every kid who came our way had heard how I'd decked the director and wanted to learn to box. Some thought they could fight already, were anxious to take me on, and I had difficulty in fending them off.
'No,' Louise said. 'I can't stand boxing. It's ugly and brutal.'
'Have a drink and be reasonable. We'd make money. Boxing pictures never go out of fashion and a lot of actors fancy themselves up there in the ring.'
'I don't want a drink. I have to give a show-jump class this afternoon. No boxing. What about fencing? We could do that instead.'
'Fencing's no substitute for boxing. Nothing is.'
'I agree. So let's forget fighting of all kinds. This is a skills academy and …'
'A what?'
'An idea of mine. To put on the new brochure. The Sherman Oaks Skills Academy. Lots of class, don't you think?'
I didn't have a lesson to go to so I drank all the beer. I found it hard to stay mad at Louise. She was so nice and decent and good-natured that antagonism just seemed to melt away when she was around. I suspect she'd got her own way all her life because of this power she exerted. She certainly got her own way in all her dealings with me. Still, I harboured a little background resentment. I'd always liked the fight crowd, found them interesting, and I would have enjoyed some sort of connection with them. I'd even had in mind the right guy to hire as a part-time boxing coach — Rocky Graziano.5 The Rock was a few years past his world middleweight title days and his all-out wars with Tony Zale, and he was hanging around Hollywood picking up bit parts as a heavy. I'd met him a few times in night clubs and knew he was a fun guy. He'd be glad of the work and I'd enjoy putting on the gloves with him myself, as long as he had it clear that you don't damage the boss.
So I was mildly annoyed and slightly disappointed. I thought Louise had mis-judged. My business sense is nil and it's not often I get a winning idea — when I do, I don't like to see it going to waste. I wouldn't say I neglected my work at the skills academy — I rode and swam and whacked balls as before, but my heart wasn't quite in it.
I was out in the horse paddock one day, trying to catch Old Smoky, one of the stallions, that didn't want to be caught. He was a playful horse rather than mean, and he liked to skitter around, ducking away from the lariat and making the roper loo
k foolish. There was a slight edge to the game — he wasn't above rearing up and flashing his hoofs at you if you didn't enter into the spirit of the thing. I was racing around the corral, churning up dust and trying to line him up for a good throw when I heard the roar of a motor cycle engine close by. We didn't allow motor cycles on the property because the noise can spook the horses and we were always likely to have some beginner riders around who might get into trouble.
I looked around for the culprit. Old Smoky misinterpreted my action and lashed at me. Quite by instinct I ducked away, took two steps back and threw. The noose took him cleanly and tightened as smoothly as you could wish. Smoky was a sport. He calmed down and stood quietly, panting a little and glaring but not offering any further trouble. I patted him, secured him to a rail and marched off in the direction of the motor cyclist who had dismounted and was leaning against the barred gate with a cigarette hanging from his mouth. I climbed over the gate, twitched the cigarette out and stamped on it.
'Didn't you see the sign? No motor cycles. Or maybe you can't read.'
'Uh, now don't get all riled up, sir. I'm sorry. I didn't see no sign, but I sure did see you rope that horse. You think you could teach me to do that?'
When I'm faced with naked admiration for something I've done I tend to warm to the admirer. There was something familiar about this shortish, slight but strong-looking young man. He had thick brown hair brushed back and tousled from riding the bike. He looked tough and soft at the same time as he fished his cigarettes out of the pocket of his flannel shirt. He picked one out of the soft pack and held it out to me almost as a peace offering.
I shook my head, not willing to give him the edge. 'We give lessons,' I said. 'You can learn, if you pay the fees.'
