The Camera Always Lies

by Hugh Hood

  They got back to the table in time to pick up their receivers and hear Vogelsang make a liar out of Larry. “Four hundred fifty. Suppose we close on that?”

  Lenehan raised an eyebrow at his partner, who nodded just perceptibly. “All right,” said Lenehan, “with the option. Put an agreement in the mail at once, and we’ll send you the contracts. We want Rose on the coast early in July. I’ll see you’re kept abreast of script developments. I think that’s everything, Lambert. Anybody else want to say anything?” Nobody did, and they hung up.

  “Why the extra fifty?” asked Solomon, slightly annoyed.

  “You said it yourself. Rose isn’t a troublemaker, so we’ll try to keep her happy.”

  “Why should she want to make trouble?”

  “She won’t now. I’ve got some videotapes to show you boys.” Solomon understood, and shut up. They all stood, smiled at one another, shook hands all around, and prepared to leave. “Say,” said Paul Callegarini, “who was Goody Two-Shoes, anyway?”

  The partners stared at each other. “Jeez,” said Lenehan, “I got no idea. Have you, Bud?”

  Horler said to Solomon, “Make a note we got to research that,” and off they went. Callegarini watched them go. In a few moments the telephone man came out on the patio and started to pack up his equipment. He and the banker looked at each other and grinned. “Where was it?” asked Callegaiini.

  “Here.” He put his hand on one of the table legs at the top, where it flared out and was attached to the glass surface. He gave a slight pull, and showed the banker the tiny microphone. “It’s extremely sensitive,” he said.

  Callegarini’s grin widened. He said, “In matters like these it’s important to have some record. Just to help keep things straight.”

  2

  “Just a few more, Miss Ryan?”

  Charity put her thumb in her mouth and dimpled. “As many as you like, Jack.”

  Outside the circle of photographer’s lighting, a minor flack laughed to his friend, “She hardly waits to be asked.” The friend, who was hanging around the studio feeling thirsty and not specially interested in the production, wishing it was time to go, said, “She’s certainly well put together. Are you nearly finished?”

  “A few words to say to the press.” The publicity man left his thirsty friend and went over to where a clutch of touring entertainment editors were watching Jack shoot Charity. “Isn’t she nice?” he exclaimed to them, feeling that his words were somewhat inadequate. He didn’t think she was nice in any usual sense of the term. Rose was the nice one, but everybody knew all about Rose, and he had instructions to push Charity as hard as he could. He remembered asking her for a dinner date and blushed.

  One of the press party asked, “She’s been in what, two features?”

  “That’s right,” said the publicity man, whose name was Eddie Blanda, “but this will be her first really big production. This picture may be the most expensive comedy with music ever made; no expense has been spared, and Horler and Lenehan are betting it will be one of the all-time top-ten grossers.” It better be, he thought, or we’re all in trouble. “Her first pictures did O.K., but they weren’t in this league.”

  “How is she billed?”

  “First below the title.”

  “That’s a break for her, isn’t it?” said a lady correspondent for a small string of dailies in Michigan, who didn’t seem too pleased at the idea.

  “Would you like to talk to her personally, Miss Adams?’’ asked Blanda. The other members of the group started to complain. “No, wait a minute,” he said, “I could arrange a group interview, but it never has the warmth. Would you all like private, individual interviews with Miss Ryan?” All the men in the group quickly said yes. “We could schedule them for tomorrow,” said Blanda, “because Charity isn’t in the shooting this week. We could give you each . . . let’s see . . .’’ He counted noses; there were seventeen of them. “It’ll take two days, morning and afternoon, and we can give you each forty-five minutes, and we’ll have a group luncheon on Thursday, with Miss Ryan there to answer any final questions. Prints of these shots will be available then, and I know she’ll want to sign some for you, all you want. How does that sound?”

  Only Miss Adams from Michigan rebelled. “I’d sooner talk to Miss Leclair and Mr. Dewar.’’

  “We’re visiting the set on Friday.”

  “Can we have private interviews with them?”

  Blanda eyed the group. It was a familiar situation. As the stars were almost always completely absorbed in shooting, especially where complicated musical numbers were involved, it was standard practice to have some kind of substitute available as a stalking horse, a practice which sometimes had the effect of raising the stalking horse’s status to that of stardom in the course of a single production. Judging by the male reaction this afternoon, Miss Adams’ attitude would not be typical. He made a quick decision, guessing that the men here wouldn’t mind too much. “If you’re still around next week, Miss Adams, I’ll try to arrange something just for you.” He smiled at her engagingly. “Is it Rose you want to meet or Tommy?”

  “I’ve met them both.”

  “Meet again.”

  “Rose if possible, she’s such a sweetie. Does Mr. Lincoln . . . Seth . . . ever visit the set?” Blanda began to see where he was.

  “He’s been in a couple of times. The Lincolns don’t have a house here this season; they just borrowed something in Pacific Palisades. They live in New York most of the time, I don’t know why. I have to go to New York sometimes, but I figure Universal City and environs is God’s country. Do you know, one thousand people settle in California every day? Historians say it’s one of the greatest mass migrations in history.”

  “Do they say how many leave every day?” asked Miss Adams.

  “I think the net inflow is a thousand.”

  “And yet Rose and Seth stay in New York. I wonder why.”

  “I don’t know, Miss Adams. I don’t feel it’s any of my business.”

  “That’s not like you, Blanda. Somebody’s been putting words in your mouth.”

  He almost blushed. He’d been given express instructions not to discuss any aspect of the relations between Seth and Rose, to play down their happy union; he didn’t know why. As far as anybody knew, their marriage was exactly what it had been for fifteen years, almost ideal. The instructions had come from very high up. The wisdom of Solomon was what Blanda considered them, and he asked no questions.

  He said, “Pure decency, Miss Adams,” and smiled. No minor flack around Universal City had ever been in any sense decent. Everyone knew it, but nobody dissented aloud. He led Miss Adams aside, while the others pressed closer to the scene of the action, where the still photographers were arranging new settings. “I’ll work you into Rose’s schedule the beginning of the week.” He was as tactful as he could be. “What’s your reaction to Charity?”

  “My personal reaction?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Saturday night in a Turkish whorehouse.”

  “Oh, now, she went to Redlands.”

  “Did she graduate?”

  “She was in the music school, voice and organ. I don’t think she has a degree.”

  “Not if she’s barely eighteen.”

  “She’s precocious, Miss Adams.”

  “I can see that. She’s anything you like, a bomb, a great new star. I just don’t like the look of her.”

  “Well, if you can’t say something good, say something.”

  “You’ve got that wrong.”

  “No I haven’t,” he said, laughing.

  “I’ll say something,” she promised. They turned and saw that Charity had gone to change. In seconds she was back, in a filmy black bra and bikini bottom, connected by fishnet; the effect was startling.

  “Like casabas falling out of a crate,” quoted a
reporter reverently. Those who heard him laughed, or shuffled nervously. There was a sandbox under the lights with a trident in it. Charity knelt, grasped the trident, and arched her back magnificently; her audience sighed, all but Miss Adams.

  “Look up, dear,” said the photographer. Lights flashed and Charity’s smile widened. The photographer’s assistant stepped into the sandbox and rearranged her hair so that it fell across her face.

  “Wind-blown,” he mumbled, stepping out of the frame. “Pout,” he said, and she pouted.

  “Oh good, good,” said the photographer. “Now stand up, angel, and turn around. Uh-huh. I want you to give us your cute little derrière, sweetie, push it at us, uh-huh, little more, fine. Now look over your shoulder.” He spoke to his helper. “Mel, stick that spear in the sand for her, good and hard like she’s just rammed it in. That’s it.” He said to Charity, “Look back and down, dear. Swing your hair back. A little bit savage with the grin, no, don’t look at me, look back and down, like somebody was adoring you from behind and below. Atta girl.” He made several quick exposures.

  The crowd felt the heat; here and there a reporter shed his coat. In the peripheral shadows, Blanda’s buddy wished the session was over so they could get a drink. But the photographer decided to work his equipment into some of the shots.

  “Like on TV. We’ll shoot the crew and the equipment, documentary style, very in. Charity, you stand beside the light standard while Mel adjusts it.”

  “What’ll I do to it?” said Mel.

  “How should I know? Anything you like; just look busy. You’re only a prop. Now, Charity, look tired a bit, slump, not too much, try to look like you’re working. Hmmmmn?”

  “He should shoot her lying down,” said a voice, and Blanda jumped. They wanted to avoid the whorey image. Charity exuded sex, but the hope on the production team was to suggest fairly clean sex, toothbrush sex as they called it, girl-next-door sex, not the big bomb. He noted that the speaker was a syndicate man called Harper Chandler who was notoriously proud of his adolescent cynicism. Wondering how to make him change his reaction, Blanda went over and put his hand softly on Chandler’s shoulder. This time he jumped.

  “Don’t feel ashamed,” said Blanda, “we all share the impulse.”

  “You’re too smart for this job, Eddie. Isn’t she something? Wouldn’t she just melt in your mouth?”

  “She’s a clean young girl.”

  “Come on.”

  “Well, cleanish.”

  “Now you’re closer. How do you intend to market this girl?”

  “Fresh, unspoiled, naïve.”

  “I think you’re very wrong.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re simply duplicating Rosie. Sell her as a dirty girl.”

  “Do you think she has it? It’s very rare. Monroe and Bardot both kidded sex. Who takes it straight?”

  “Jeanne Moreau.”

  “Yeah, but she’s the only one, and at that she tells everybody that she’s really a man. I don’t think this girl has that.”

  “She has something. You don’t like her much, but you want her.”

  “You might have something. Old Windy Adams hated her on sight.”

  “Sure, this one is a woman.”

  “Harperoo, you’ve given me cause for thought. I’m theenk­ing.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m hoping you’ll be very kind to her.”

  “Do I write her like a bitch or like a blushing, budding Rose?”

  “For the moment, fresh, unspoiled, naïve. I have my orders.”

  “Haw. Wait till you see these stills.” The photographer had tired suddenly and dismissed the crowd. Blanda escorted Charity safely out of the throng and on her way home. Then he came back to pick up his pal and they went for a drink. He was thinking hard.

  When the stills arrived he arranged them on his desk, whistled, looked again, slavered a little. Then he picked up the phone and made a formal request for an appointment with the publicity chief of the unit, a very polished pro from New York, originally an Englishman, named Graham Faiers, hard and smooth as they come.

  “Mr. Faiers could see you at eleven-fifteen,” said his secretary, “for fifteen minutes. Is that satisfactory?”

  “It is for me, Miss Glenesk, but I should say that it may not be for Mr. Faiers. I really think I have something for him this time.”

  “Can you give us some idea what it is?”

  “Certainly. It’s the proofs on the wire service photo release on Miss Ryan.”

  “What about them?”

  “Mr. Faiers may want to make a change in policy when he sees them.”

  “Are you suggesting that?”

  “No, Miss Glenesk, I am not. I’m paid to take orders and execute them. I just think Mr. Faiers should see the pictures and hear what I have to say before I see our guests at lunch tomorrow.” He got the appointment, telling himself that taking crap from secretaries was part of his job, which was very well paid. He was still well inside the limits of his servility. When he came into Faiers’ office he even smiled at Miss Glenesk.

  “Right to the minute,” she said grudgingly.

  “I don’t want to waste your time or his. I know how busy you must be.

  “Very considerate. Go ahead in.”

  He went through the door, acknowledged the boss’s curt nod, and said quickly, “I thought you’d want to see the pictures.” He displayed them on the desk and kept his mouth shut. As the silence lengthened and the boss lost himself in contemplation, Blanda crossed to an armchair in a dim recess and sat quietly down to wait. After Faiers had taken a careful look at each shot, he buzzed and Miss Glenesk came humbly in; it pleased Blanda to see how humbly.

  Faiers said, “Make a note for an immediate memo to production. At the next publicity conference, consideration of alteration in status of Miss Ryan. When is that conference, please?”

  “Nine-thirty tomorrow.”

  “Get that out at once, please. Suggest unusual press reaction. Suggest we evolve additional angles on her.” He asked Eddie, “Who’s seen her?”

  “This week’s press tour, seventeen altogether, syndicates, wire services, and six metropolitan dailies.”

  “What are you doing for them?”

  “They all had the press book before they arrived.”

  “I should bloody well hope,” said Faiers, “considering the trouble we went to to get it out.” It was a very elaborate press book and they had worked it up in six weeks, starting the afternoon the producers got their money. They had had to do a lot of research on Charity—there was no standard line on her, as there was for Tommy and Rose. You talked about Tommy’s clothes and his delivery of light-comedy dialogue, and you usually talked about Rose’s happy marriage.

  But Charity’s case was like a novel proposition in formal theology. Condemnation of the first proponents, eventual withdrawal of the condemnation, the slow winning of acceptance, finally the triumphant definition of the proposition as dogma. In the same way, Charity would be a glimmer on the horizon, then a meteoric presence, then a glowing fireball, and at last a bright new star, coming into existence like the beginning of a universe. Faiers meditated this novel problem, oblivious to Blanda and Miss Glenesk until their coughing roused him.

  He said, “We’ll buck it up to the higher echelons. Would you get that memo off, Miss Glenesk?” She went on her way.

  “What else?” he said to Blanda.

  “She’s seeing sixteen of these people, four in the morning and four in the afternoon, today and tomorrow.”

  “Who is the seventeenth?”

  “Windy Adams.” Miss Adams’ name was Winifred.

  Faiers smiled. “I should have known. Whom does she want to see? Not Tommy, surely.”

  “She likes Rose, and she apparently adores Seth.”


  “Who does?” asked Faiers, his mind leaping a few connections.

  “The Adams lady.”

  “He’s an attentive spouse. He’ll be coming around. I wish we had a new angle on Miss Ryan.”

  They sat silently looking at each other.

  Horler idled happily in the cockpit of his big cruising motor-sailer, peacefully moored at the north end of the chain of Santa Monica beaches. Spread across his lap were a number of crucial documents, cost estimates and projections of earnings. He was never happier than when studying such matters. He was more a money man than a production man, and had long since stopped regretting it. He bought and sold production men in accordance with his calculations, but the pleasure was in the pure calculation. His chief artistic and moral principle was his rooted objection to losses.

  As he felt his boat rise and fall gently beneath him, quiet in the white August afternoon, in full flood of finance, he compared extrapolations of costs and earnings, and judged himself if not in imminent danger of a loss at least threatened by one; they were spending a lot of money. He thought uncertainly of the musical numbers, especially the Automat dream sequence, now in rehearsal ten miles across town; he thought about Rose Leclair and Jasper Saint John.

  “Now Jasper, now Jasper.”

  “You can withdraw my credit from the titles.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I am not a hireling. I have worked with Balanchine. In the world of dance I am an important figure.”

  “We wouldn’t have hired you otherwise.”

  “Then give me dancers to work with, not amateurs.”