by Sam Toperoff
“But it’s such gloomy stuff. You kill your father. A black man strangles his wife. This guy is cursed by witches and kills everyone in sight. Who needs it! I want people leaving happy so they know where to come to be happy again.”
I snuffled a laugh as I was supposed to. “Of course he knew most people didn’t want gloom and doom all the time. That’s why he wrote comedies too.”
“Yeah, but would they be funny today?”
“With the right actors, the right director. Absolutely.”
“You could work on something like this, you could find the time?”
“I’d give my eyeteeth and my molars.”
“What would be a good one to start with?”
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Ideal for us …”
“That’s what David thinks too. This is all his idea. Not mine. I’ll have him call you today. I’m still not sold. He didn’t like Jews. Doesn’t he have this Jewish guy who has pickpockets all over the place and lends out money for a pound of flesh?”
Dickens’s Fagin and Shakespeare’s Shylock had become a despicable Semite in Mayer’s mind. “There are no Jews in Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
“Still. Shakespeare, who needs him?”
Louis B. Mayer stood. The meeting was over.
AFTER THE MEETING Hammett needed some time to sit with a drink and evaluate what had just happened to him. He’d have preferred to do it alone, but lunch with Lilly would have been almost as good since she asked such sharp questions. Neither was about to happen because as he left Mayer’s office, Nick Charles, the Thin Man—William Powell himself—was coming out of Selznick’s office. “This is impossible,” Powell said. “We were just talking about you. I uttered your name not ten seconds ago. My, my, my.” The style was inimitable on screen or off. “Unless …” He grabbed Hammett’s arm. “… unless this is a setup and they’ve got you tailing me.”
“Not unless you’re planning to jump over to Warners with all our secrets. Even then I’d never jeopardize my only meal ticket.”
Powell was now patting Hammett’s shoulder: “Your meal ticket! Hardly that. Where’d I ever find another character this perfect? No, no, au contraire, wouldn’t want you killing him off for some ungodly reason.”
Hammett spoke and didn’t quite hear himself say anything.
“Say, old man, can I buy you a bite? Important. Give me a minute, though. Got some photos to autograph. One’s public must be served. Say twenty minutes?” He stepped away.
“I have to say yes first.” Powell stopped. “Yes.”
“Twenty minutes then.” Stardom, Hammett reminded himself, was impossible to comprehend rationally. Look at this guy. A kid from Pittsburgh takes some elocution lessons to correct a lisp, becomes an actor, grows a mustache, and in middle age gets transformed into something akin to a British aristocrat, adored by millions of American housewives who really think he’s the cat’s pajamas. It’s all illusion of course, a simple magic trick in the dark. A movie star appears on the screen and no one can know who is real—Lord William Powell, Nick Charles, or the kid from Pittsburgh who used to lisp.
Tactically this Powell maneuver, this “chance” meeting, was worthy of the Jewish junkman at his best. Powell’s implication that he was being tailed. His alleged concern about his future as Nick Charles. The setup for lunch. Brilliant stuff.
Powell’s table wasn’t the most prominent at the Beverly Hills Hotel, but it certainly could receive significant attention from other diners. When the waiter approached, Powell said to Hammett, “Drink? Bit early for me.”
“I always tell myself I’m in Bangkok and it’s tomorrow night. Just gin, no ice, an olive.”
The waiter said, “Dry martini then, sir?”
“No. Don’t even disturb the vermouth bottle. Gin, no ice, an olive.”
Powell said, “Same here.” He waved to people in the room while appearing to come to the point: “Word is pretty strong that there’s at least one more Thin Man coming to your neighborhood theater. True or false?”
“Something in between.”
Still waving: “I heard it was pretty much a done deal.”
“Bill, there are no done deals until the deal is done. Rule number one with L.B.”
The drinks arrived. Powell touched Hammett’s glass: “To crime.”
Hammett said, “To criminals.”
Powell pointed to his stomach when he ordered his salad. Hammett ordered a steak rare. After a bit more Thin Man nonsense, Powell said it was time “for me to come clean.” He needed Hammett’s professional expertise … no, not as a writer, as a private detective. Hammett joked that he’d let his license expire but that his fee was still fifty bucks a day plus expenses.
The matter had to do with a very messy divorce action Powell’s wife was pursuing against him. The actor squeezed his cheeks across his nose: “Apparently Carole’s got a detective willing to testify I haven’t been the most faithful scout in the troop.” Carole was Carole Lombard, at Paramount, an even bigger star than Powell. “L.B.’s concerned. So what am I to do with her detectives?”
“You said detective, singular, now it’s detectives.”
“There are a few.” He signaled the waiter for two more drinks. “You realize, Dash, that I’m not admitting to anything here. I’m simply asking you what’s the best way to deal with this detective situation, you having been one for so long.” Powell couldn’t help delivering his lines in the blithe singsong of his screen persona, so it was hard to take the guy and the situation too seriously, especially when everyone in Hollywood knew he’d had an affair—what Lilly called “a shtupping bee”—with Jean Harlow for quite a while. Hammett had only seen Harlow twice and had to catch his breath each time.
“So basically you want my professional advice on the cheap, a steak and a couple of drinks.” Powell mimed indignation. Hammett laughed: “Bad joke, forgive me. Well, really there’s only one way to go with this, as I see it. Discredit the detectives. What do you know about them? Independent guys for the most part?”
“That’s what I’ve gathered.”
“Good. Means they probably hustle for cases. That helps you. Find some of their previous victims, go out and get depositions, tons of them. Pile them on. Guys like this have made a lot of enemies. Find them. And see if they’d be willing to testify, or could be made willing. At the very least you should be able to neutralize their testimony with the judge.”
“I guess I’ll have to find my own investigator, won’t I?”
“Should have already.”
Hammett judged this professional advice personally important to Powell but still peripheral to Powell’s studio business with him this afternoon; namely, giving L.B. a report on Hammett’s trustworthiness and ability to deliver on future Thin Man scripts. Powell brought the matter up more directly just as Hammett was about to taste a superb steak prepared perfectly. Because improvising a scenario was what the Hollywood Hammett did best, he said, “I’ve already started writing the next one.”
“What can you tell me about it?”
“For now I’m calling it The Thin Man Goes Hollywood.”
Powell said, “Hmm.” And then again, “Hmm.”
“An important producer is murdered in his office. Scripts have been stolen.”
Powell was hooked. Hammett made him wait while he chewed his steak. “I want the entire film shot against a real studio backdrop. People love seeing all the behind-the-scenes stuff that goes on at a studio. We feature M-G-M itself, we show some of their biggest stars, we show the way movies are made.”
“Interesting. Where does Nick Charles fit in?”
“Nick’s a beard.” Confusion masked Powell’s face. “A beard, someone whose real identity and function are disguised. He and Nora are brought in as a sophisticated new writing team from New York by the head of the studio …”
“Someone like L.B.?”
“Someone exactly like L.B.… to discover the murderer.”
“Who is …?”
“No idea, could be anyone, even the boss himself, but that’s the easy part.”
Powell held up two fingers to the waiter.
. 7 .
Days to Come
OCCASIONALLY, and without knowing exactly why, Hammett stopped working on a Thin Man idea and typed a page or two, a memory, a backwoods Maryland reflection, about his mother Anne and his sister Reba. In his most recent memory they are sitting at the rustic kitchen table his father had made years earlier. Slanting light brightens the dark kitchen only a little. It is quiet except for the woodland sounds outside. At the table they are peeling the potatoes they had just dug from the garden. Each had dug the black potatoes with a short hoe and afterward washed them off in the pails outside until the precious water was black with earth. Then they poured the water carefully into the irrigation furrows of the cabbage patch. Reba, just twelve, was a woman already. Dashiell saw the scene perfectly in his mind’s eye.
The two women sit facing one another in the kitchen. The sun illuminates their strong hands as they peel carefully yet quickly the small potatoes, not speaking but communicating pleasantly with soft sounds. They save their parings in a blue enamel pot. At the bottom of the page he typed, “These women, who could have been Russian or Balkan or Irish peasants, shared moments that, I realize now, I’d be jealous of my entire life. They lived in a place I could never even visit, only see from an unbearable distance. Since I could never have their moments, which I knew didn’t rightfully belong to me, I did not venture back to places where I knew I would not be welcome.”
Hammett already had a nice collection of such memories. Showing his little brother Richard how to hook a worm for bait. Seeing Reba kiss the Burnett boy in the woods. His father shooting their mule after it broke down. Learning to drive in a neighbor’s Model T. The precious chess set he won in a guess-how-many-beans-in-the-jar contest. His mother butchering the Christmas pig in his father’s absence.
Lillian had read most of these pages without letting Hammett know.
He put a new page in the machine and typed:
Darling Lillush,
I’m down.
I’m at war with myself again, sweet Muse, as if you didn’t know. There is no chance of Victory, unconditional surrender is impossible, and certainly no peace treaty in the offing, just this war of attrition to the death between myself and myself—my best self and my worst self, but I’ll be damned if I can tell which is which anymore. (I hear you saying aloud, Fuck you, Hammett, yes you can! Everyone can!) I swear to you I can’t.
You’re a terrible example to me. You’re making a fortune and still you’re a real writer. You have to know how jealous I am of that. When you tell me I’m better than you and could easily do the same thing you do even better, it kills me, because, dear Lilly, I know it just ain’t so. Wouldn’t things be easier for me if you accepted that plain, demonstrable fact and we still somehow managed to be to each other as we are, maybe even more so!
Anyway, the new Thin Man deal is almost fine. I’m making a ton swatting ideas over the net like a shuttlecock. But I’ve got to tell you, I’ve come to despise Nick and Nora Charles, their careless banter, their smug superficialities in a world where suffering is and always will be the dominant chord. They are beyond hateful. For me they’ve become insufferable—make that intolerable—upper-class villains. Of course, brilliant and psychologically attuned as you are, you’ve already figured out that what I hate in them is myself. Still, it pays well and doesn’t really damage anyone. This is what I tell myself as I lay my old gray head on the pillow each night and reach across to where you are not.
About your enticing offer to come to New York, settle down with you and do litter-a-toor, I must regretfully decline. Yes, I have heard about all the new electronic doodads that make it possible to be in two places at the same time, but there are many reasons I’ll stay west young man for the time being. I could never win back there. You’re the home team and you are just too good.
I have another meeting with the Junkman today. I plan to ask him for the moon but am prepared to accept Ur-anus. You’ll know the result before you receive this missive, grace the aforementioned electronic miracle.
For what it’s worth, Days to Come is a shimmering piece of work and deserves all the effort you’re taking to make it flawless.
Love you, Dash-Dash-Dash
When he finished typing, he was unsure of whether to pull the page and place it in the envelope he had already addressed. He left the letter in the typewriter.
THAT’LL BE HIM. Preternatural, that man. I’m not here. Oh, God help me. I need a drink.
“Hello?”
“So what have you heard?”
“Officially, nothing.”
“Unofficially?”
“Nothing. It’s a gut thing. I think I know.”
“Lilly. Trust me, you don’t know. You’ll know when you know, not a moment before. When?”
“About three more hours, but I already know.”
“Stranger things have happened.”
“I walked out middle of the third act.”
“So you didn’t see if they bought the story or not. I’d be surprised if they didn’t.”
“You don’t understand, I walked out. I couldn’t stand it. Your fault—you always liked this play way too much.”
“Because it’s very, very good.”
“A play about a labor strike in fucking Ohio? What the hell was I thinking? The play stinks, Dash.”
“Doesn’t stink.”
“Does so.”
“Does not. It’s wonderful. You’re wonderful.”
“I find I must demur. You’re—”
“At least you’ll have your vast and growing wealth to fall back on. I’ll miss you tonight.”
“I doubt that very much. You could fly out.”
“No, no, New York is a Hellman home game.”
That line called for There are no home games without you. I said, “Behaving?”
“Drinking or womanizing?”
“Each. Both.”
“You’d be proud of me on both counts. How about you? Behaving?”
“Drinking or womanizing?”
“Come home soon.”
I said, “I think I am home.” Then I graveled my voice like Durante: “I’ll give ’em dis, I’ll give ’em dat, show dem bastards where I’m at …”
LILLIAN HELLMAN HANGS UP THE PHONE SLOWLY, as though to re-create a movie fade. She drinks a second glass of Scotch, throws a mink over her shoulders, and pulls closed the door to room 1212. In the cab she tells the driver, “The Apocalypse, please.” He says, “Where?” She says, “Sardi’s.”
At Sardi’s Arthur Kober gave Lillian a soft hug and a kiss on each cheek, French style. Arthur was working as a press agent for Herman Shumlin, the producer of Days to Come, and had done a first-rate job. He got the play a tremendous amount of attention in the weeks leading up to the opening. The angle was, Genius young lady playwright has not one but two hits on Broadway at the same time—unheard-of phenomenon. The timing didn’t quite work out that way. After a run of two years at the Maxine Elliot Theatre, The Children’s Hour was due to close just before Days was scheduled to open. Still, it was almost unheard of.
She rarely discussed Arthur with Hammett, but he always remembered her most telling criticism. It was while smoking and drinking in bed right after they had met. Hammett asked Lilly about her sexual preferences with Arthur and immediately wished he hadn’t.
“Preferences, hah. Arthur is a man afraid. Arthur will always be a man afraid. Afraid to take, even afraid to ask. He apologized even for wanting. He apologized before, during, and after we made love. Even when he wasn’t apologizing, he apologized. So how could he be any good to anyone?” Hammett lit a cigarette. Lilly continued: “Of course he was great for my career. He knew everyone. Everyone. So he wasn’t a great lover, big deal. Who couldn’t live with that?”
“Apparently you couldn’t.”
Lilli
an could have been glib and dismissive on the subject of Arthur just then. But even though they had just met, this Hammett was a man she was actually going to try to love, so she chose to explain: “There’s a certain kind of Jewish man—you wouldn’t know about this—who is so fucking fearful of everything in a world that is not Jewish he doesn’t even believe he has a right to breathe its air. He apologizes for his very existence on the planet. For any shadow he casts.”
“A for instance.”
“For instance, let’s say you’re invited to lunch by rich old Episcopalians. Your hostess offers you some lemonade. It’s hot as hell and you’re dying for lemonade. If you’re Arthur, you say, ‘No thank you, I’m not thirsty,’ because you don’t even have the right to be thirsty in front of Episcopalians. Don’t make waves, don’t cause trouble, be very nice and make people like you and maybe they’ll think, ‘You know, those Kikes might not be such a bad lot after all.’ ”
Hammett brought his fingers to her nipple. “These Kikes are already extremely likable.” He pinched.
She smacked his fingers away. “Who can stand someone who can’t be a man because he’s a Jew? It’s crazy.”
“Come on, Lilly, there’s a history there. It’s the way people cope and survive. My old man learned how to be not nice, it comes to the same thing.”
“No it doesn’t. I’m talking about a timidity that threatens the future of an entire race of people.”
“I look at Max and I don’t see any Arthur in him.”
“Thank God for Jews like Max Hellman.” She put his hand back on her breast.
Producer and director Shumlin had reserved a large room downstairs at Sardi’s. A combo—piano, bass, drums—was playing Gershwin to a large crowd of cast, friends, backers, well-wishers, and disguised ill-wishers. The mood was brave and gay. Not a confident gaiety, not a We showed those bastards, so let’s tear the place up celebration. Rather an exhausted We all rowed like hell for the other shore … and we made it. Imagine, we actually made it.
