Lillian and Dash

by Sam Toperoff

  Hammett said to the bartender, “Hey, pal, how about a towel?” And then to Lillian: “You are really something, you are.” And then to the bartender again: “She’s got a legitimate gripe. We’re not married.”

  Lillian said, “No, we were only lovers.”

  . 5 .

  Movie Business

  IT WAS RELATIVELY EARLY for them to be driving home, not yet 1:30 a.m. Hammett claimed he was tired and produced convincing yawns to prove it, which was fine since they were with old friends, Myra Ewbank and Phil Edmunds. The yawning began, Lillian observed, after his first cigar and snifter of cognac. It may even have been partly real; he had after all been up early and locked away writing a Thin Man sequel the entire day. After his second cigar and cognac, his weariness became more phony and more honest.

  Phil and Myra had a place, a modern, Frank Lloyd Wright-ish home in the hills above and beyond Hollywood. They were married but Myra’s credits were always in her own name. They were both writers under contract to M-G-M. Everyone knew Myra as the stronger writer. The couple were known in the business as “fixers,” actually as “fixers of last resort.” When a once-promising script had gotten mangled beyond recognition by half a dozen failed approaches, Myra or Phil was called in to save the project before it was written off. Of all the staff writers, they were the only ones Louis B. Mayer could always identify correctly by name.

  Myra, whom Lillian liked a great deal, once explained the simple secret of her success: go back and find the original script and then the first rewrite and discover exactly where the second version lost its way. Then simply bring it back to what Mayer or the production supervisor, David O. Selznick, liked about it to begin with. Pick up and follow that old trail. Of course, leave some small spaces for the big shots’ input as well. Just to make them feel as though they too were important fixers.

  Once over lunch at the studio commissary, Myra told Lilly the story of what she had done with Red-Headed Woman. The popular novel had been far too racy for Mayer and certainly would have been bounced by the Hays Office. It had gone through seven rewrites and the studio’s last option was about to expire, so quite a bit of money had already been invested. The redhead in question was a beautiful but penniless young woman, Lil Andrews, who was willing to do anything—anything? Yes, anything—to improve herself in the world. Seduction of rich old men was her method of choice, and it was used exhaustively in the novel. She was killing old men off with bedsprings. Attached to the original screenplay was a memo recommending Garbo for the lead. A second memo said Garbo was not available, so the script was rewritten twice for Joan Crawford. Crawford still didn’t want to touch it. A new director came into the picture and thought Lil Andrews ought to become the innocent victim of these powerful old lechers. So yet another version was written. And on it went for seven rewrites.

  Myra found the original script and retyped it—not rewrote it—making one simple script change throughout: Lil Andrews actually loved and truly admired each and every old man she seduced on her way up the social and financial ladder. Myra attached a memo recommending Jean Harlow for the part. And Harlow, with her comic flair, vamped her way through the role. Red-Headed Woman was a great success. For her “typing” job, Myra Ewbank received fifteen thousand dollars, her regular fee and a bonus. “Took me all of two weeks. When I got the check,” she told Lilly, “I put it into my account that very morning. And when I endorsed it, I also wrote, ‘Hooray for Follywood.’ Of course I tried to make the F look a little like an H.”

  “You’ve got your own account?”

  “Sure. Don’t you?”

  “Yes, but I’m not married to the guy.”

  “What has that got to do with the price of babies?”

  Lillian raised her glass. “May I ask you something even more personal …”

  Myra nodded.

  “The house, is it in both your names?”

  “Actually, it’s mine. I bought it myself. Why? Thinking of getting your own place?”

  “We’re talking. Maybe something in New York.”

  “Oh no. I’ll really miss you two.”

  “Don’t let on to Dash.”

  That conversation confirmed what Hammett always averred, that Myra was the brains and the talent, Phil the charm and the studio connections. Together they had everything covered that was important professionally with Mayer at M-G-M. Hammett also knew that Phil Edmunds and Lillian had had a bit of a fling back when Arthur Kober got his wife her first job. Lilly knew that Hammett knew about Phil and hoped to see some indication of jealousy reveal itself, but she never did, other than a small disparagement of Phil’s talent. She thought he was a decent screenwriter. There were certainly worse. On the other hand, Hammett valued Edmunds as one of the most discreet drinkers at M-G-M and as the source of very reliable studio information.

  Although Hammett was yawning, Lillian was the one who should have been exhausted. She had gotten back from New York and the opening of The Children’s Hour just two days earlier. She had been on the phone continually dealing with new production problems as they arose and requests for interviews and, even worse, well-wishers who wanted tickets and whose conversations with Lilly should have ended after her thankyous but did not. There were some very lavish Hollywood parties planned in her honor, but Hammett thought a quiet evening with Myra and Phil, old friends, would be a more pleasant way of reentering this artificial world. It didn’t hurt that Hammett considered Myra the best cook on the West Coast and that she promised to make Stroganoff.

  Both Phil and Myra were genuinely happy with Lillian’s success. They could not reasonably be jealous because much earlier, when they had read the final drafts of The Children’s Hour, they knew neither of them could ever have written it. They had chosen for themselves the relative anonymity and excessive pay of screenwriting over the more dangerous literary pursuit Lilly attempted. But word of the play’s enormous success had come west instantly, that is to say electronically, and Hellman had become a literary star out here as well.

  During the evening Phil kept wanting to know more about the opening, more about the audience reactions, about the performances, more about the reviews, and who said what exactly. Lilly kept insisting she didn’t know or couldn’t remember. Anyone pan it? Myra asked.

  “Of course,” Hammett said, “the Hearst flacks went after it like it was Das Kapital for lesbians.”

  “Still,” Phil said, “it’s an unqualified Broadway success.”

  Hammett said, “In New York there is no ‘unqualified’ anything.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Lilly, tell us more about it, everything,” Phil said. “You haven’t even basked.”

  Myra, who happened to be in the kitchen, called out, “Don’t humor the girl. She’s basking in silence. That’s the worst kind of basking to have to listen to.”

  They didn’t speak very much as they ate the best Stroganoff in Southern California and drank a good Napa Valley burgundy. The bread and cheese were French, the dessert a baked Alaska. “Jee-sus,” Hammett said to the ceiling, “this woman could possibly cuisine her way into heaven … Brava, Myra Ewbank.”

  At dinner there were toasts to Lillian’s success, and to future successes, to Myra’s wonderful meal, to friendship, and to more good work by all and bigger paychecks. Mostly the after-dinner talk was of the movie business. The transition came when Myra wondered aloud about something Lillian had been thinking for a while: Could there be a way to adapt her play about a possible lesbian affair into a film? “Not while Louie B. draws breath” was Myra’s opinion.

  “Imagine,” said Lilly, “this from the genius who made that little redheaded tramp into a charmer? Turned Emma Bovary into Old Faithful.”

  Myra said, “Your two ladies truly love one another. And that’s a Mayer taboo writ large. Only thing I can think of worse is maybe cannibalism.”

  Hammett said, “Bite your tongue, Lill.”

  Phil steered the conversation to the various projects in the works at the studio, n
ot only what he and Myra were working on—he on some Grand Hotel dialogue; she on a first draft of The Barretts of Wimpole Street—but also about what future projects looked intriguing. “That’s how they get us hooked,” he said. “You go round and round always thinking there’s a bigger, more wonderful brass ring coming on the next turn.”

  “Sure, the ring shines, but it’s never gold. In fact, by the time you grab it, it’s usually not even brass. The real attraction is the check that comes when the carousel stops.” Hammett wished he hadn’t said it. “That’s the only gold there is.”

  “Did you see the numbers on The Thin Man?” Phil asked. “In the stratosphere.”

  “You didn’t tell me,” Lilly said.

  “Didn’t know.” Dash downed his burgundy.

  “Word is,” said Myra, “they’re going to make at least three more. The Thin Man Picks His Nose … The Thin Man’s Fly Is Open … The Thin Man Wipes His Arse …”

  “When it rains on you two, it really rains on you two.”

  Dash said, “In the words of the ole Negro spiritual, ‘So when we gonna get dat Rolls-Royce car?’ ”

  Lilly could tell that Dash had been told nothing about possible Thin Man sequels and that wasn’t a good thing. Could they be squeezing him out? By way of changing the subject, she said, “I see the studio optioned Hemingway’s short stories. Who’s going to get first crack at that?”

  Phil: “How about Hemingway his own self?”

  “Get out of here. The great man deigning to corrupt his art with a movie? For two bits a pop in crummy theaters? That’s not the Papa I’ve been drinking with.” Lilly turned to Dash. “Tell them about the spoon.”

  “No.”

  And Dash meant no, so Lillian told how one night at Ratoff’s Hemingway was particularly obnoxious and challenged Dash to bend a spoon inside his elbow by flexing his upper and lower arm muscles. “Dash said he didn’t do party tricks, nor did he ever fight—present company included—just for the hell of it. But if Hemingway wanted trouble all he’d have to do was lay a hand on him. Then the two of them stared at one another for the longest time. I thought, there’s a puffed-up African silverback and a lean, hungry tiger, and it’s a stalemate. At the end of it all, Hemingway called out to the crowd to step up and watch how he could bend the spoon.”

  Hammett raised his empty glass. “Still, you have to tip your hat to the guy. He may not be Dostoyevsky but he has this powerful trick of making cardboard characters speak true. He does it better than any of us. By far.”

  Edmunds said, “Alas.”

  Myra said, “Don’t be so fucking willing to acknowledge his talent. He’s an overblown arrogant shit, fatuous, second-rate, and incredibly derivative. I despise him profoundly and resent his success absolutely.”

  Myra’s outburst drew laughter, even though she had been dead serious. Phil said, “Please, dear, tell us how you really feel about the guy.”

  Lillian realized anew why she liked Myra Ewbank so much and disliked most other Hollywood women she knew. Not only could Myra outwrite and outthink her husband and most everyone else, she could outcook, outtype, outwit, and in a fairer world, outearn him as well. Lilly could count on two fingers of one hand the other women she knew like that.

  Lillian asked Myra if Hemingway were a woman would she still dislike the work as much. “That’s my point, Lilly. A woman couldn’t get away with half the bullshit Hemingway gets away with, on and off the page. And a woman wouldn’t write that crap to begin with.”

  “But look at our spouses,” Lilly said. “They’re both writers, both as virile as Turks—I believe I’m correct in surmising—and they don’t write that garbage.” Of course she was really talking about Hammett, since Phil would write anything Selznick asked him to, a wet-hankie for Bette Davis or a Jack Oakie college romp with fart jokes. And probably there was more he-man, stoical Hemingway in Hammett than she was comfortable with.

  Hammett rose and blunted his cigar in a tray. “There you have it—the importance of being Ernest.” He knew this was about the time when Lilly usually went up to and then over the line. “C’mon, Miss Broadway, no one here is bending spoons, no one here is beating their chests. Can’t you see, they just want to go to sleep.”

  Lillian didn’t stand up. “I want to stay. I want to tell the whole world that was the best damned meal since I had a rhino roast at the foot of Kilimanjaro.”

  Hammett finished his drink while standing and lifted Lillian’s hand.

  “Jesus,” said Phil, “it’s not even one. This isn’t like you people.”

  “Lillian’s brain is still on Eastern time.”

  “It’s not.”

  “One more drink then.”

  Myra moved everyone to the living room. Phil set cognac snifters on small tables. The couples sat across from one another on matching sofas. Myra turned down the lights and said, “There.”

  Silence matched the change of mood until Edmunds said, “I didn’t want to bring this up earlier.” His altered tone matched the new subject. “It would have been unseemly to bring up business before … We really did invite you to celebrate Lilly.”

  Lilly muttered, “Unseemly. Some word.”

  “It’s not business,” Myra corrected her husband. “It’s politics.”

  Phil glared at his wife: “Then you do it.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  “We’re thinking of trying to organize the writers.” He let the words sit there while he looked at each of them. Hammett smiled. Lillian frowned. “It’s all preliminary, very preliminary. We’re just feeling people out, good idea, bad idea, what? The technical people—electricians, sound and camera guys—seem to be way ahead of us on this. In fact, they want us to be a part of what they’re doing …”

  Myra interrupted: “Word is the studios are getting together to fund a fake writers’ union. Screen Writers Association, they want to call it. They want to control all the talent at bargain basement prices. If we want a real union, we’ve got to act, we really can’t be screwing around.”

  “As you can see, my wife gets passionate. But she also happens to be right. We have to figure out what sort of association we want and when we want it.”

  “Union,” Hammett said, stopping Edmunds short, “not association, not organization—union. It’s important to call a thing what it is.”

  “Fine,” Phil said. “So you think we need a union. What sort of union should it be? And when should we get it started?”

  Hellman said, “Some of us do, some of us don’t. The question isn’t really about who needs what, it should be about whether all of us would benefit from a union now.”

  Hammett said quickly, “I find I must disagree somewhat with my esteemed friend from New York. Unions are always about need. The four of us here are fine, aren’t we? But you never know what the future holds. No, let me amend that … You can be sure as hell that somewhere down the line one of us is going to need some protection. That’s a given. So count me in. Ditto for my skeptical young friend here.”

  Lillian turned and glared at Hammett: “First of all, I’d like to know more. I’d like to know who’s doing the organizing. Secondly, I’d like to know who else is in and who’s out and why. I’d like to know what to expect from Mayer and the other studios. And finally”—here she stuck a finger into Hammett’s stomach—“I’d like to answer for myself.”

  Myra Ewbank began to outline some of the reasons why a writers’ Writers Union was a good idea.

  Lilly broke in: “Myra, Myra, I know why we have to protect ourselves, but isn’t that what we each do before we sign our contracts?”

  Hammett whistled: “Spoken like a woman with a Broadway hit in the oven …”

  “Don’t turn me into the villain here, Comrade.”

  “I think you’ve done that pretty well for yourself already.”

  Everyone felt the tension building. Myra said, “Lilly’s right in asking for some more time, more information. At this point we’re just asking p
eople how they feel in general.”

  “And?” Hammett asked.

  “There’s a great deal of interest … and there’s a great deal of uncertainty.”

  “There usually is at this stage. It changes.” Hammett rose. “Count me in no matter what.” He yawned. He reached down for Lillian, who pulled her arm away.

  OUTSIDE, A SOFT, SWEET-SMELLING RAIN had begun to fall. Lillian, who had driven to Myra’s house because she knew the way, had the keys and insisted on driving back to Santa Monica.

  The wet road wound down toward Burbank over hilly, lightly forested land, twisting ever so slightly, almost no road lighting to guide a driver in the dark. He could sense her anger in the blue silence. The hum of the great Packard engine, accelerating and slowing by turns, was almost musical. The beat of the windshield wipers supplied the tempo. The scratch and flare of the match surprised her when Hammett lit a cigarette.

  “Want one?”

  “Why not.”

  He lit hers too. “I should not have answered for you. I have no idea why I did that.” She noticed as she always did that he would not say the word sorry.

  “Yes, you do.”

  “I do?”

  “Sure you do. Because you have no idea where you end and where I begin, that’s why.”

  He was silent, thinking over what she had just said.

  There was a traffic light ahead. Hammett knew Lillian had no intention of stopping if the light turned red. It did. She didn’t. He glanced to either side of the tree-lined intersection where a motorcycle cop or a police car might have been hiding. He saw none. The wet road glistened in their headlights and the humming silence began to comfort them again.

  Hammett may have seen it first, a squirrel darting across the road, stopping suddenly, looking up at them stupefied. Lillian pulled to the left and hit the brakes. The squirrel ran forward into her path. Lillian turned the steering wheel abruptly to the right and set in motion a long, unnerving skid that ended with the Packard off the road, front forward in a ditch. Amid the high pitch of brakes on wet road, Hammett’s sustained grunt, Hellman’s nasal squeal, another sound, a barely perceptible klup that nevertheless stood out on its own. They knew. The squirrel.