So Little Time

by John P. Marquand

  Mr. Mintz was not troubled that way. Mr. Mintz had a lovely home in Beverly Hills which was pointed out by the sight-seeing busses, and Mr. Mintz stayed there all the time. He did not have to cope with anything else, and Hal Bliss was not troubled that way, either. Hal had a low, white bungalow in Palos Verdes where he stayed all the time, except when he went East in summer. Hal and Mr. Mintz were not always getting into different galères.

  The office was very large and completely air-conditioned. The walls and ceilings and windows were soundproof. The furnishings were very, very restful and the motif was gray. The leather upholstery on the chairs was gray and so was the carpet and so was the telephone and the blotter on Mr. Mintz’s desk, and so were the homespun curtains on the windows and so were the walls. There was a picture by Benton on one wall, because Mr. Mintz was collecting American artists.

  They were all in Mr. Mintz’s office and no one else could come in—but no one, because there were two secretaries in the outer office, a male secretary who did physical exercises with Mr. Mintz each morning and afternoon, and a female secretary who had been told to keep everyone out, but everyone. Hal Bliss was sitting with his coat on because the place was air-conditioned, and there were two writers there who had been working on the script whom Jeffrey had never seen before, both called from the writers’ wing to sit in on the conference, and they, too, were wearing coats because the office was air-conditioned. One of them named Archie Willis had a pointed blond beard, and he wore a badly fitted bottle-blue coat. The other, whose name was Harold Soskin, looked very limp, with deep circles under his eyes because he had been up all night—but all night—trying to reconcile his version with Archie Willis’ version. And there had to be some sort of version right away, for a shooting script, because Hal was already making tests. Mr. Mintz was lying on a gray leather couch with his eyes half-closed, because he was very tired. He could always think better lying down—it cleared his mind and he was very, very tired.

  “Now,” Mr. Mintz said, “that we’re all here, perhaps we had better start at the beginning.”

  It was not fair to look at the whole scene objectively. It was like one of those gossip columns, but Jeffrey knew that in a few days he would consider it all completely natural. All the people in the room were specialists. It was a part of the system that too many people usually worked on a single picture, particularly on an “A” picture. Mr. Mintz was the producer and it had to be the way he wanted it—but it had to—because he would be responsible if it didn’t make money; and it had to be the way Hal wanted it because he was a director with his own reputation to consider. It was not so important for the writers. You could always get more writers on it, but then you couldn’t push writers around too much, either, because they had temperaments.

  Now they were at the beginning, Mr. Mintz said, he would like Hal to talk about it quietly, just quietly, as though they were all coming to this fresh for the first time, and the room was silent while Hal Bliss marshaled his ideas. Mr. Mintz told him not to get excited, because he was very, very tired, and Mr. Mintz wanted everybody to listen but not to butt in with any new ideas, and he did want to say one thing, he was the producer but he knew that Hal was a great artist and that was why he wanted Hal to direct the picture. It was going to be a great picture, because it had everything—but everything.

  Mr. Mintz closed his eyes, and Jeffrey sat listening. It was what he was being paid for.…

  The whole thing, Hal Bliss said, happened this way. The studio wanted a war picture that would have real significance, something like “Escape,” but something with more significance. While they had been searching around, a novel had come in from the Book Department. Hal had not read it, but the Book Department had. It was the title which had first excited Hal, and it was the same with Mr. Mintz. The title was “Good-by to All.” It was true, as the Research Department had pointed out, that another book had appeared, Hal thought by an Englishman, called “Good-bye to All That,” but it did not have the same pull as “Good-by to All.” You could see what it suggested—good-by to the prewar world, good-by to all its social injustices—but when they started to work on it further, the title had no pull to it, and now the working title was “The Sun Shall Rise Again.” The Nazis might try to kill a nation, but they could not kill its soul, and that was the theme of the picture. It was to show that democracy would rise again.

  The story, as they had tried to block it out, Hal said, was a simple little story. It dealt with the adventures of a simple little person, who realized suddenly, through a series of circumstances, what freedom meant, who knew suddenly that freedom was worth dying for, and who in the end, when he realized it, would kiss the girl good-by and would go and fight for freedom. And the girl would understand it, too. They were just two plain kids—that was all the story was—going out to fight for freedom.

  “But it has to be laid in America,” Mr. Mintz said. “Every American kid in the sticks has to be those kids.”

  Hal waited until Mr. Mintz had finished. He said that Mr. Mintz was absolutely right, but it could not all be in America. There were not any Nazis stepping on Americans yet, and we weren’t at war and you didn’t want the isolationists to be against it. That was why the action—some of the action—was to be laid in Norway. Norwegians were blonds, and Marianna Miller was a blonde. You had to have blonds if it was to be a Miller picture.

  “I didn’t know she was making a picture,” Jeffrey said.

  “But that is the whole point of it,” Mr. Mintz told him. “It is to be a Miller vehicle, but it must be laid in America.”

  “Norman,” Hal Bliss said, “all that’s important will be in America.”

  “Then why,” Mr. Mintz asked, “do you mention Norway?”

  “Norman,” Hal said, “I thought we had that all clear.”

  “But it isn’t clear to me,” Mr. Mintz said. “I’ve never heard of Norway coming into it.”

  “Norman,” Hal said, “I told you about Norway at lunch last week. The Nazis come to Norway. I read it to you. It’s in a little fishing village. The Nazis come walking down the street—goose step. She’s in the doorway in the little village. They see her brother, he’s just back from fishing. They kill her brother.”

  “Her father,” Archie Willis said.

  “It doesn’t make any difference, Arch,” Hal said. “They’re all up against the wall. The Mayor and the doctor and the fishermen, all in their boots. She stands there and sees it. We’ve tested it already. Norman, you’ve seen the tests.”

  Mr. Mintz opened his eyes and everyone watched him.

  “I remember,” Mr. Mintz said, “but why should it be Norway?” Mr. Mintz stirred on the couch. “They had fishermen in ‘Captains Courageous’ and that was in America.”

  “But Norman,” Hal said, “after that she comes to America. A letter comes to St. Paul, Minnesota, and the Swedish ship comes into New York. She’s standing on the deck, looking at the harbor.”

  “Who?” Mr. Mintz asked.

  “Miller,” Hal Bliss said, “Marianna Miller. She’s on the boat.”

  “Hal,” said Mr. Mintz, “there’s a white tablet in my right-hand desk drawer. Would you give it to me with a glass of water?”

  “Yes,” Hal said. “Here it is, Norman.” Mr. Mintz stirred on the couch again. “That’s the whole trick to it, Norman, the letter is misdirected. It goes to Tyrone Power. I told you, he’s just a playboy, Norman.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Mintz said, “where is he?”

  “In St. Paul,” Hal said, “St. Paul, Minnesota.”

  Mr. Mintz stirred again.

  “Mr. Wilson,” Mr. Mintz said. “I don’t understand it. Do you understand what they’re talking about, Mr. Wilson?”

  “I’m just beginning to get it,” Jeffrey said. “I think it’s going to be clear in a minute.”

  “But it’s not clear to you now, is it, Mr. Wilson?” Mr. Mintz said.

  “Well,” Jeffrey said, “not entirely.”

  “That’
s all I’m getting at,” Mr. Mintz said. “Did everyone hear what Mr. Wilson said? It isn’t clear to him and it isn’t clear to me. That’s what Mr. Wilson is here for. It’s got to be clear to him before he can make it clear.”

  Jeffrey looked at Hal Bliss. Hal was looking at the Benton landscape on the wall.

  “Let’s go right through with it from the beginning,” Hal said. “We’re only mixed up with the details. Arch, you tell the story.”

  Mr. Willis straightened himself and stroked his beard carefully.

  “All right,” he said, “if Hal will help me. Just interrupt me, Hal. Help me out with anything you want to,” and Mr. Willis grasped his knees firmly and leaned forward.

  “First, it’s a little fishing village on a fiord,” he said. “You pan from the little houses to the wharf. There’s a shot of the sea gulls eating fish. The boats are coming in. The men in boots are pulling up the nets and fish. The camera pans to the main street of the village, and you see Selma Holm in the doorway with her hair down in the sunrise. She’s looking at the wharf, waiting for the menfolk, and then she hears the planes, and then she hears the guns.”

  Mr. Mintz folded his hands across his chest and closed his eyes and Jeffrey felt his own body relax almost somnolently as the writer’s voice went on. Whether he wanted to or not, he was becoming part of it. They all were working with unreality to produce reality. None of them had been to Norway, but the Research Department on the lot would know. If you looked at it objectively it was like a dozen other pictures he had seen, but it had illusion. He could see the story in terms of Marianna Miller, and when he did, he could feel some faint thread of emotion. He knew that she would do it well. If he had tried to write the thing himself, his sense of self-criticism would have made him see its garishness, but he could work on it.

  The man with the beard was telling it rather well. It had all the tricks, and all the polish. It faded out with the rifle shots and Marianna Miller watching, wide-eyed. There was no novelty in it. What Jeffrey objected to was their effort to make it novel. The next sequence was the millionaire’s home in St. Paul, Minnesota—the playboy, comical and whimsical, after a hard night of it, was in his dressing gown, trying to get down his orange juice—a playboy who did not understand democracy. Everything he did showed his obliviousness to suffering and to world events—his snobbish treatment of the servants, his selfish and ludicrous solicitude for his own comfort. Cleverly and resourcefully the artists were filling in the portrait, although none of its creators had seen such a character. It supplied a glimpse of a society about which the audience knew nothing, but it gave them the chance to live vicariously in that society. You could see that the playboy had good stuff in him—if someone would put him on the right track—and someone would. He was opening the morning mail, and there, sure enough, in a foreign, girlish hand was that misdirected letter to Cousin Hanson, from a girl who was coming to America, and would Cousin Hanson meet her and help her? Then you had that pretty little trick, the playboy, for a selfish whim, meeting the boat—the boy who did not understand democracy. Then love. He was ashamed of himself for that masquerade, but what could he do? He had to go on with that pretense which shamed him. He had to pretend to be her relative, whom she had never seen. New York, night clubs, dances, orchids, hotel suites, clothes for the refugee. He was very sorry. He tried to tell her, but she did not understand. He had to go on with it, and he loved her. Then, like a clap of thunder, in the night club, just when they were dancing to the Blue Danube, she saw A Face. There was no way of hiding her revulsion. It was the face of the German Oberleutnant who had attempted to violate her in that little Norwegian Village, and there he was in New York, a German spy. In that flash of recognition, the German Oberleutnant knew that his jig was up, if the girl lived. That was when the playboy ceased to be a playboy and learned about democracy.…

  Jeffrey sat giving it his full attention, because that was what he was there for, but he had heard it all before. It was like doing a trick with cards, always using the same cards. If it were cut down to stark simplicity, with all the scrollwork removed from it, it might become real. A part of his mind was cutting down the scenes already.

  They were coming to the end of it—the scene in the hotel room where the Nazi spy was cornered, but defined his foul ideology, and the girl countered with her bright beliefs. Sure enough, she defined democracy, and the playboy was not a playboy any longer. He knew what democracy meant because he loved her and because he was an American, and he was going over there to settle things. He was taking the first boat over there because it was his fight as much as hers. And she would wait for him—they both knew that there were beliefs that you could try to kill but could never kill. In brief, the sun would rise tomorrow.

  Mr. Mintz had opened his eyes. Everyone was looking at Jeffrey. It was up to him to say something, and he wished that he felt more in the mood for it.

  “Well,” he said, “that’s quite a story.”

  He saw Mr. Mintz open his eyes wider, and then he knew why Mr. Mintz was there. He knew that somehow Mr. Mintz had sensed the same thing he had.

  “Go on,” Mr. Mintz said, “what else?”

  “What do you want me to do with it?” Jeffrey asked.

  Mr. Mintz pulled himself very suddenly up from the couch and sat up straight.

  “Take that thing and do it over,” Mr. Mintz said. “Pull the crap out of it.”

  There was dead silence in the soundproof room. Jeffrey was careful to look at no one except Mr. Mintz, and his heart warmed to the sudden coarse brutality of Mr. Mintz.

  “Get something in it,” Mr. Mintz said. “My God, I don’t know what, but something.” Mr. Mintz rose from the couch. “My God!” His voice was higher. “Is this life, or isn’t it? People are starving and dying and we sit here and write this crap.”

  There was another muffled silence.

  “Mr. Mintz,” Jeffrey said, “how much crap do you want taken out?”

  Mr. Mintz drew a deep breath. The spasm of pain had left his face.

  “All of it,” Mr. Mintz said, “or nearly all of it. Do you hear what Mr. Wilson says? He says what I’ve been saying. Mr. Wilson says it’s lousy.”

  “I didn’t say that, Mr. Mintz,” Jeffrey said. “I said it was quite a story.”

  36

  You’re in the Army Now

  Jeffrey was not tied like other people in the writers’ corridor by six-month contracts. He was not like Hal Bliss, unfitted for any other environment—he could take it or leave it alone. That was why he liked to see the place again. He was paid, but he was not like an employee paid for his time and worried sick about the renewal of a contract. He could think of himself as a workman: not an artist, but an artisan. He was contented with himself and glad he was there because he was doing what he was meant to do. He could see that he had a skill which was not genius but which nevertheless was a gift. If he had used that skill differently—if circumstances had allowed him—he might perhaps have been a playwright, standing on the same ground as Barry or Sherwood or Howard. As it was, he knew that he was better than the other writers who had sat in that office, more of a master of the trade or business, if you wanted to call it that, than they would ever be.

  Jeffrey walked with Hal Bliss through the halls of the Administration Offices. They came out into the hot glare of the West Coast sun, and he blinked helplessly, and wished that he had worn his dark glasses. He could see the framework of the oil derricks, standing up like extended fingers from the brown hills in the distance. To the right, where there had been nothing but fields a year or two back, he could see clusters of white dwelling houses, each on its little lawn, each for sale for about six thousand dollars. Mechanics for the aviation plant and for the shipyards at Wilmington were moving in. Los Angeles and all the towns around it were boom towns now. All at once he wished that Jim were there, for Jim had never seen that side of his life. Jim would have seen it all as he had seen it once, and Jeffrey could have seen it through Jim’s eyes
simply by watching Jim.… It would have given him, in a measure, the same pleasure he had known when he had taken Jim to the circus as a little boy, that slightly melancholy pleasure which every parent must have felt. He would have taken Jim on the stages. There was no way of telling what they might be shooting, but if Hal went with them, they could go in anywhere. They could see them building up and tearing down farms, countrysides, drawing rooms, medieval palaces and South Sea islands. They could talk to the property men and the actors; and he could take Jim out at night to the drugstores and the Brown Derby and to the night clubs and the Mexican and Japanese quarters. Jim could see it all as he had seen it once. He wished that Jim were there.

  “When Norman is tired,” Hal Bliss said, “he can’t ever get anything straight.”

  Jeffrey nodded, but he did not answer. Jim and the story were both running through his mind.

  “Norman has a great respect for you,” Hal Bliss said. “He told me so. He always has for anyone who’s new.”

  Hal Bliss looked worried, but then, everyone was worried there. It was a palace and filled with palace revolutions.

  “I’m working for you,” Jeffrey said, “not Mintz. Don’t worry, Hal.”

  Hal Bliss’s face relaxed.

  “This God-damn’ place!” he said. “You know your way around.”