At the sound of a door opening she made an effort to turn her head but she could not see Dr. Mank until he was standing over her.
“Congratulations. A husky young man. Eight and a quarter pounds.”
She began to cry, ecstatic as steeple bells ringing. I always wanted him, she thought, animation suddenly covering fatigue. No matter what Toby said, it’s what I wanted.
“Thank God,” she said. “Thank God. Thank God.”
He smiled through darkly circled eyes. “How about thanking me?”
“I had a dream,” she said slowly. “I dreamed he died … and that an air raid …”
“I wish you had been dreaming.”
“Oh?” Her voice nose-dived. Far, far away she heard the echo of the sirens and the bombing planes, barely remembered, like childhood scars.
“We’re evacuating all patients tonight. Feel up to it?” He reached for her pulse.
All she seemed to remember was that stream of ants, lugging their paintings to waiting trucks when they might have been rushing out into the country to save their lives. Only suddenly those weren’t canvases on their backs, they were patients, handled tenderly as masterpieces, and as she paused to watch them being saved, somehow Toby was there looking on beside her and she was explaining to him: That’s what I mean by living. We have to go on doing that no matter what happens.
“I said we have to move tonight,” he repeated. “I wish I could tell you it was going to be easy—or safe.…”
She wondered when words like safe and easy would be used again. “I’ll be all right, Doctor. I’ll have to be.” Isn’t that what I’m supposed to say? And then, as if the war had never begun, as if bombs had never fallen: “Where is he? Can I see him now?”
LOVE,
ACTION,
LAUGHTER
Larry Moran was a bareback rider in a circus who broke into the movie game in the early days as a double for a Western star who couldn’t ride a horse.
The hero would always learn in a very dramatic scene that the damsel was in distress and he would run for his horse and then Larry would carry it on from there—riding to the rescue from every possible angle—all afternoon.
Every girl in the company used to look up when Larry did his stuff. He was a feverish young man with an almost primitive force. He had a strong sensuous face, a well-trained body and an athletic mind. His agility and eagerness were electrifying. He was violent, he could walk faster than most men run, he was aggressive and nimble-brained; no wonder he climbed the Hollywood ladder two rungs at a time.
Larry spent two months riding to the rescue with the wind in his ears and the dust in his mouth before he caught on to the movie racket. One day he raced over a bump and swallowed too much dust; he coughed and spat and had an inspiration.
“Why must I keep racing through this lousy dust?” Larry asked. “Why don’t you shoot lots of cameras at me at once from different angles, and get the whole chase knocked off at one crack?”
That was one of the most brilliant things that had been said in Hollywood up to that time. The director shook his head in disgust.
“When I want advice from you,” he bellowed, “I’ll ask for it.”
Larry’s suggestion had never been tried before and it was obviously ridiculous. The director told him to keep moving. Those were the days when anybody who knew how to fit a crank into a camera was a cameraman and a director was the guy who could yell the loudest.
Larry was convinced that either he or the picture business would have to go. “This game is nutty,” he said. “For a calm, quiet, sensible life, give me a circus any day, you nippleheaded fuck-up.”
Just then a little man, who called himself a producer, one of the first to suspect that people would actually pay to see pictures moving on a screen, reached out and drew Larry back into the industry.
The producer told him he had heard his idea.
Larry told him he could take the idea and do with it as his imagination directed.
The producer told him his idea would cut a shooting schedule on a Western in half—he must be a genius or something.
Larry told him he thought he could direct pictures a whole lot better than that clown behind the megaphone.
The producer said, “Kid, you’ve got the job. I’ll put you on at seventy-five a week.”
Larry said, “That’s pretty cheap for a genius, but I’ll take a stab at it.”
Larry’s stab cut deep into Hollywood. He became the industry’s first great Western director.
Hollywood was rising like a new world out of the sea, and on its highest peak stood Larry Moran, circus performer.
Larry Moran helped to give America something to do in the evening. He was God’s gift to the moment. He was an artist and a pioneer and a drunkard and a tough guy and he caught the fancy of a nation.
Dames wanted Larry Moran for a thousand reasons. Society women winked at his vulgarity—he was a target for every little girl whose insides squirmed with the itch for a career. When he walked through the studio he left a wake of sighing secretaries.
But there could be no permanence for Larry Moran; life was a grab bag, he could reach into it to his elbows; every month there was a new picture and a new salary and a new fame.
Larry’s mind was always leaping ahead, inventing new camera angles, improving the lighting, speeding up the tempo—and going on the most complex and rambunctious binges known to man. Larry’s hair grew gray, his pictures were longer and more mature—Larry and his industry were growing up. It was 1925 and he was thirty-one—he had lived ten years in Hollywood, a lifetime long enough to span the conception and revelation of a new world that lived and trembled on a thousand silver screens.
The late twenties were a nightmare to Larry Moran. Suddenly the silent screen stood up and screamed, trying its voice like a new baby, and the sound split the earth, and futures and careers and fortunes were swallowed up—and among them, suddenly shaken from his pedestal and devoured by oblivion, was Larry Moran.
For it must be told, it cannot be explained. Hollywood swallows its children. Watch, as it bears them, suckles them and suddenly leaps upon them from the rear and gulps them down.
Time caught up with Larry Moran and gave him the razzberry as it passed him by. People told one another how sorry they were for him. His money ran out—there had always been a leak at the bottom. Then his health ran out—an unkind columnist said his mind was pickled in alcohol. One morning he woke up in a Hollywood hotel with a bad hangover and very little more and he looked at himself in the mirror. His face was lined with purple veins from too much drinking and his eyes were glazed and sunken with not enough forgetting.
“Larry,” he said to himself, “I knew you when. If you don’t get yourself a job today, I’ll see you in hell, and that’s a place inhabited strictly by agents and supervisors.”
He sent his suit out to be pressed. He gave the bellboy the line about it being easier to tip him in a lump sum at the end of the month. He drew his clothes on gingerly, to save the creases, and took the redcar to Classic Pictures, Inc. Classic Pictures was the brainchild of Sammy Glick, Hollywood’s boy producer, an amoral young man with a cold eye and a quick head. Maybe Larry wouldn’t admit it to himself, but he picked Glick because the older producers knew him too well for what he was. His virility made him sense their pity and resist their condescension.
Larry was tense inside and trying to be as casual as possible when he gave his name to Doc, the receptionist.
“Larry Moran!” Doc said. “I thought I remembered you.”
“That’s great,” said Larry—he wished people wouldn’t remember him. “I want to see Sammy Glick.”
“Any special business?” Doc asked.
“Hell, yes,” said Larry. “I was toying with the idea of going back to work.”
Doc called Glick’s secretary, Judy Becker.
“Larry Moran’s out here,” Doc said. “Goes back aways.” Remember him? He wants to see Mr. Glick.”
Larry Moran? Larry!
Judy was almost thirty-five. She had been one of those secretaries on the old lot. She had the same feeling now she used to have when she watched Larry Moran drive into the studio in his Austrian limousine, the only one of its kind in the country. One day she had been sent down to give him a message on the set; she remembered how he strode across the set to her, making a riding whip whistle in the air—she remembered being frightened by his youth and his fierceness.
She was young enough to be shy and excited then, and her message slipped under her tongue. It was a desperate moment and he had put his arm around her in front of the whole company, saying, “Take it easy, sister.” He was a fresh guy and she should have minded; she looked up into his face and told him the whole message and she was all mixed up. She wished it were longer and she was sweating and blushing and glad it was over just the same.
“Can you hear me? I said Larry Moran’s out here,” Doc repeated. “The old-timer.”
“Oh,” Judy said, making a nonstop return flight. “Send him right in.”
She had thought he was dead; it was such a dreadful thing to think. She looked into her mirror; it was such a silly thing to do, he wouldn’t even notice her. She daubed a bit of rouge on her cheeks to hide that studio pallor.
She could hear him coming. Should she recognize him? She didn’t want to hurt him. She felt choked up. She didn’t want to see him again, ever. She stared at the door, waiting for him.
Larry entered as jauntily as possible. This job was now or never and he must be casual—don’t let them get inside you—that’s it, smile, wink at the secretary.
“Hello, honey, is the boss in?”
“It may take a little doing, Mr. Moran. I’ll remind him who you are. Won’t you please have a seat?”
“Thank you,” Larry said quietly.
Judy had expected him to tell a dirty story about waiting rooms. She had found the change she feared. He was like a great volcano that has become quiescent. He seemed to be a much smaller man that she had remembered. And not as handsome. The shock of thick, brown hair that had given him a wild, careless look was gone. His hair was thinned now, and tamed. Everything about him was thinner and tamer.
There was a long silence. She had waited so many years to see him that she couldn’t think of anything to say.
Larry waited an hour and fifteen minutes to see Mr. Glick. She wanted to remind him of the time he put his arm around her absentmindedly on the old lot—she wanted to tell him what it meant for her still. She was copying her shorthand notes and banging the typewriter as loud as she could.
Finally she said, “You can go in now, Mr. Moran.”
Larry went in and found a little fellow, a dark man with an unattractive puss, behind an enormous desk.
Sammy Glick was friendly and smiling—he came forward and shook Larry’s hand softly.
Sammy knew the old-timer wanted a job; he couldn’t insult him, and he hoped to pass the whole thing off as a social call.
Larry could see what Sammy was trying to do. Did this young punk think he was a complete rum-dum?
“Listen, Sammy,” said Larry. “You and me know our business. I’m not the kind of a guy to beat around the bush. You’ve proved that you’ve got the courage of your convictions—you’ve got a fresh slant on this racket, and you’re going up. I was the biggest director in the game and I wouldn’t take up your time if I wasn’t sure I could still deliver.”
“Sure,” said Sammy, “everybody knows what you’ve done, but the business is changing. You were tops in the blood-and-thunder days. I guess you could still give us cards and spades on mellerdrammer, but times have changed. That old hokum is dead and buried; the people want something new, something fresh and light; they want young love, action, music and laughter.”
“Listen,” said Larry desperately. “Everybody in town says I can’t come back. If you give me a break you’ll be the white-haired boy.”
“Why kid ourselves?” Sammy said. “I already am.”
Larry beat a retreat.
“How about your second-unit stuff?” he asked. “God knows I know enough about this business to swing those—”
“But the tempo’s changed,” said Sammy, less politely. He didn’t have time for this. “I said all the people want now is young love, action, music, and laughter. I don’t think you’ve got the pace for that sort of thing anymore.”
Larry stood up. He felt leaden inside.
Sammy put his hands in his pockets. He was uncomfortable; he didn’t want an old-timer like Larry Moran going out hating his guts—it hurt his pride; it wasn’t good for his reputation.
“Listen,” Sammy said, “we all have our ups and downs, that’s the law out here.” He fished into his pocket and said, “Take this C-note. And there’s no hurry about paying it back.”
Larry clenched his fists. This had never happened before. He was wondering if he could squash this cockroach on the big green blotter of his big shiny desk.
And then something strange happened. Something hidden in Larry Moran, some alien thing that Larry did not recognize, reached out to grasp that bill. A broken voice inside him said, “Thanks, Sammy,” and his hand slipped into his pocket, where the bill rested quietly, hiding from the shame.
Sammy Glick’s phone rang. It was Tony Kreuger, the agent, one of his pals.
“Hey, Tony, howya, baby?” he said. “Naw, I’m not busy, lay it on me.” Then he laughed. “That’s right. Always ready for a good lay. You kill me, Tony.”
Larry walked slowly out of the office, his head hanging down as if his neck were broken.
When he came out Judy tried to look at him without pity, and she was able to, because she loved him. To Judy Becker he was still a force and a danger.
For Larry the show was over and he didn’t have to act any more.
“Well, girlie,” he said, “it looks like the curtain on the third act for me. It’s all over but the piano playing as you walk out.”
“What did he say?”
“He says he wants young love, action, music and laughter,” Larry said. “He says he wants four things I ain’t got.”
He looked her over once more. For some crazy reason he hoped Sammy Glick didn’t get to first base with her. Then he gave her an informal salute.
“Take it easy, sister,” he said, and started out.
Judy watched him walking out of her life. She was frantic for a moment and then was sure.
“Larry, wait.”
He whirled around in surprise.
“It isn’t too late,” she said, “believe me, Larry.”
He smiled faintly. “What’s it to you?”
“Everything,” she said. She knew it sounded too dramatic, but she didn’t care. This was no time for caution—you don’t think of subject and predicate when you’ve wanted a man for sixteen years.
“On the level,” she said. “I used to watch you on the old lot. It’s been that long.”
Larry looked at her. He believed her, “This is one screwy day,” he said.
“Larry, let me see you tonight, let me help you.”
“Don’t waste your time,” Larry said. “I’m old hat. I told you what he said. I can’t give you young love, action, music and laughter—that’s what you want—that’s what we all need.”
“I never did like formulas,” she said, “and anyway, I’ll take my chances.”
“No,” he said, “it’s crazy, it’s too late.”
“Not for me,” she insisted. “It’s my turn. The old wheel has finally stopped on my number.”
Judy knew there must be something about this moment that would burn them both. She knew that this was the last time, that if he walked out into the street now, and she went back to her dictation, that was the end for both of them.
“This will sound nutty,” she said. “I’ve been in love with you for sixteen years. I was in love with you when girls buzzed around you like bees. I was in love with you when you went off on yachting p
arties and stayed drunk for weeks, when the scandals came and the papers had to be hushed up. I was in love with you for a million years, and now—”
Larry looked at her hard and wrinkles spread in ripples from his eyes as he smiled.
“You win,” he said.
“Call for me at the Villa Carlotta at eight o’clock.”
“Okay,” he said, “what’s your name?”
“Judy,” she said. “Judy Becker.”
“I’ll be there, Judy,” he said, “in tails—we’re going formal.”
Larry was back at eight. He had downed four highballs. His dress suit was tight around the shoulders and slightly faded. He drove up to the Villa Carlotta in a taxi; the fare was ninety cents. He gave the driver his hundred-dollar bill. The driver laughed and said, “I haven’t seen one of them things since the Depression.”
“Okay,” Larry said. “Then wait here. We can use you—we’re going places.”
Judy came down in a purple evening gown. She must have spent a lot of time on her face—it didn’t look so round and white. She took his hand and squeezed it hard twice. She had been very excited all afternoon thinking of this and now she was subdued and slow moving.
He helped her into the taxi almost too elegantly and said, “To Chasen’s.” He turned on the radio. It played too loud at first, and then too soft, and this was very funny and they laughed at it together.
In the taxi Judy teased him, “It looks like you’ve got a head start on me,” and Larry said, “I have a feeling this is one race we’re going to end up together.” The radio swung with Artie Shaw. Larry looked at her and said, “I wish you had forced this on me fifteen years ago,” and Judy answered, “Don’t be silly. It couldn’t have happened then. You were too busy.”
Love, Action, Laughter and Other Sad Tales Page 31
