The Camera Always Lies

by Hugh Hood

  Tommy was notoriously slow with lines, and he looked worried. “Are we shooting before lunch?”

  “Yes, the patio shots, numbered 106 to 114 on your script. We won’t get them all in this morning, naturally, but we might get three. It’s all on this week’s schedule, Tommy.”

  “I know, Max, I know. I don’t have too much to say anyway.” He looked more hopeful.

  Charity said, “Mr. Mars doesn’t believe in improvisation.”

  One of her credits, the first, was a famous subterranean film made on 16 mm just before she left Redlands, a comic study of sado-masochism in the adolescent female—she had wanted to be spanked by a series of dominant types—which had not of course had commercial distribution and which had been improvised as they went along by a group of friends. It had a certain impact on any audience and prints had drifted East by this or that illicit route, to provide Charity with a reputation before she made a commercial film. It hadn’t exactly been a dirty movie, though it was undeniably provocative. It was just a piece of experimental art with the unquenchable innocence that much of that kind of art has. There were some fresh angles in the film and some beautifully composed frames.

  Max spoke a little dryly. “I’ve had my European training, Charity. I knew Murnau and Lang in the twenties. Do you know what I call improvisation? I call it UFA 1930. Everything recurs.” He noticed, while he was talking, a tallish, thinnish, wry-looking, dark-haired man, standing at some distance from them, a little diffidently, as though unsure whether he ought to be on the set or not. He shouldn’t, Max thought, but there he was.

  Charity said, “Just because it’s been used before doesn’t mean you can’t use it again.”

  Tommy Dewar said, “It’s harder than learning dialogue, if you ask me. I couldn’t ad-lib a fart.”

  Charity turned on him fiercely, very young and strong. “Have you ever tried?”

  “Certainly. When I was in my twenties, forty years ago, I toured with a concert party as compère and feed, and we used to invent blackout sketches on standard situations; we made them up as we went along and audiences loved them. But you can’t do that on a sound stage.”

  “Oh, you always say that; somebody always starts to talk cost.”

  “It’s simply a question of what effect you want,” said Max. “If you want informality, poor picture quality, and constantly changing sound levels, to give you the ‘just-shot’ effect, then by all means use a hand-held camera on a street corner. You may get a wonderfully actual feel. But if you want to do an elaborate musical number, or tricky special effects, you need a stage and a lab and a movieola with five screens.”

  “Five screens? Is there such a thing?”

  “Charity, Charity, you’re the experimentalist, not me,” Max said. “Anyway this sound stage is costing Bud and Danny thousands per day, so let’s apply ourselves to our duties, if you’ll kindly step this way.” They wandered over to the set, and as Max passed Rose, he took her gently by the arm. He said, “Seth is over there. Would you do me a favour? Tell him we’re all set to go. If I can get a couple of good takes on three shots we can break early for lunch, and we can all talk then. I’d be glad if he didn’t interrupt us right now.”

  “He knows the name of the game, dear. I’ll be right back.” She trotted over to her husband, put her arms around him, not demonstratively, and kissed him. Max watched them talk, and in a few seconds Rose turned away from Seth, let go of his hand unwillingly, and came smiling towards the director.

  “All he said was, ‘The lower the costs the bigger the net.’ Seth is a real pro.”

  “I like Seth,” said Max, quite truthfully, leading her onto the patio. “You’ve wandered out here,” he said, “while Goody is looking over the rest of the apartment. Now you’re alone, and this is where we begin to establish your quality.”

  “What is my quality?” asked Rose, smiling at him affectionately.

  “That sounds like the New Testament. Who is my neighbour?”

  “Well, who is? I mean, what is?”

  “You are warm, womanly, whimsical.”

  “I’m the letter ‘W’ in fact. Witty, wise, wonderful, womblike.”

  “Let me come to it slowly,” he said. “You are not, repeat not, to hide your light under Goody. You come across slower, but in the end you eclipse her, you have a fineness. Anyway we get you stepping out onto the patio; we hear you humming to yourself; your voice is warm and womblike and all that, an Alice Faye quality. Twilight is coming. We change the shot, and we see the legs going by; we’re over your shoulder. Goody says, ‘Oh, Barb, it’s simply heaven,’ off, and you say, ‘Heaven,’ pause for two beats, ‘Heaven eight steps down.’ Shot of the poodle through the grating. Two-shot, you and the poodle, set up from two angles I have in mind, very sweet, very beguiling. Then the shot of you, the poodle, and dog-walking Dino’s legs and feet, and into the dialogue. O.K.?”

  “Got it.”

  Max gave Charity a few exercises in the living-room set to get her used to its proportions. She had never been in New York. “Is this set authentic?” she asked.

  “A little romanticized, but yes, you might find such a place on West Tenth.”

  “It doesn’t feel right to me.”

  “No, but then you’re not the designer, and it’s not your worry.”

  “Right, chief,” said Charity, saluting. She began to work hard.

  Max went back to the patio, squared off his actors, and made a few takes. Things went very briskly so that they had three short shots in printable form just before noon. Patience, Max thought, patientia, the waiting game, slow work. Out of all that, they might have a minute of screen time, if they were lucky. Some days went better, some not so well, and their shooting schedule was getting tight; they were supposed to be out of the sound stage by the first week of November but they weren’t going to make it. It wouldn’t be his fault, and wouldn’t cost him any dough. His percentage came off the gross, though his cash fee was smaller than, say, Rose’s, and it wasn’t directly in his interest to keep costs down. He was therefore easier to work with than in the old days when his own money had been at stake and when he had been a one-take demon. Nowadays he would shoot twenty takes if necessary, to get exactly what he had in mind. His pictures reflected his imaginings more accurately than formerly, and they had lost a certain spontaneity. Max thought this a positive gain in his work; it was more formal, more finished.

  But some of his critics, mainly in France, mourned the old slapdash Max Mars of the days of his collaboration with Brecht. Max didn’t. He often said with his charming smile, “I like to eat well and live comfortably.”

  “We’ll break for lunch,” he told the crew, and strode off the set.

  Seth Lincoln was sitting in a corner out of everyone’s way, and he was puffing meditatively on a cigarette and turning the pages of a paperback book when Max approached him.

  “Do you want to eat with us?”

  “All together?” Seth had known Max for twenty years. He displayed the cover of his book, Around the Mountain.

  “You should read these.”

  “Nobody reads short stories,” said Max. “The food here isn’t bad.”

  “We were going to anyway. Rose likes a slow lunch.”

  “Then we can use my table. Let me see, there’s you, me, Rose, Tommy, that’s four.”

  Seth looked aside delicately. “Aren’t you forgetting . . . ?”

  . . . he’s staring, wouldn’t you think she’d say something, she knows I’m in the picture after all, even though we haven’t done much together. “Oh, Barb, it’s heaven,” off camera, and she gets all those close-ups. You’d think Max was in love with her, the way he gives her the play. What I need is a song. If I just had a song or a dance number of my own. I know what I’d wear, one of those sort of beach-pajama outfits, only in satin, and I’d have them drooling. That’s awful, I shouldn’
t think like that, but they keep telling me to show it off.

  Lines, look at him sweat, the old bag. I can learn twenty pages in under an hour, and Tommy wets his pants over five lines, what a pro. But his delivery, mamma mia, what a style he’s got, and it doesn’t much matter how you learn lines if you can read them like that. He’s got that over me, and she has too; she speaks up nice and plain. I’m your big sister Barbara, Good-dy, and I’ll look after you, Good-dy. So clear and sharp. I never knew there was a California accent, but that’s what I’ve got. A sexpot with a California accent. Shit.

  Look at the way Tommy moves, so smooth, you can hardly take your eyes off him, and the way he wears his clothes, the only one who’s any better is Rex Harrison; he has beautiful sweaters, Tommy has. They both have. But Tommy really has wonderful sweaters. I wonder why men don’t sweat in those sweaters, even with the sleeves rolled up. They look so bulky . . . satin beach pajamas. I’ll show them.

  I wish Mama would stay away from the set, she’s going to get us in trouble if she isn’t careful. She doesn’t know as much as she thinks, and anyway from now on I can arrange my own contracts, and nuts to her. She’s the one got me started as a California sexpot and I’ve got to get away from that sometime or I’ll never really make it big. You can go just so far and then they start to laugh at you, like poor Jayne Mansfield. I don’t want anybody laughing at me.

  . . . looking at me . . .

  I want to get away to New York maybe or to Europe, get some good clothes, get away from the surfers. I’ve got to make people forget I was ever in that beach-party stinker. Lines, boy, can he read.

  “Forgetting what?”

  “You’re putting me on, Max.”

  “Charity eats with her mother.”

  “Ask her to join us.”

  “I’ll have to ask her mother too.”

  “Is that so bad?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh,” he looked foolishly disappointed. “In that case, do as you like, Max, it’s your table.” He turned away to Rose, who was gabbing happily with Tommy as they came up. He watched his wife closely; he had always rather liked her work, and she was going to be very appealing in the straight scenes, though maybe not in the dance routines. Max can get her through, he thought, if Jasper will co-operate. He took her arm. “Lunch with Maximilian?”

  “Oooooooo, with the boss,” said Tommy. “Goody.”

  “Speaking of Goody,” said Rose, and then she was interrupted. A stout woman with beads and red hair bore down upon them, announcing herself with enthusiasm. Rose squeezed Seth’s arm secretly.

  “Dear good people,” said Mrs. Ryan.

  “You should see her with Lenehan,” whispered Rose.

  “ . . . to ask my daughter and me. We’ll make it a party, Mr. Dewar.”

  “Oh, that’ll be delicious. Not too much of a one though, because we all have to work this afternoon.”

  “Naughty,” she said, “naughty. I haven’t met this gentleman.”

  Rose choked down frantic laughter. “Ah,” she said, “sure now, and ye’ve often seen him on the silver screen.”

  “I have that, but we’ve never been properly introduced.”

  “Mrs. Ryan, may I present my husband, Mr. Lincoln?”

  “You may.”

  “Seth, this is Mrs. Ryan, Charity’s mother.”

  He considered her and the bachelor’s myth that the daughter will grow into the mother. Would lissome Charity ever become slab-sided Mrs. Ryan, thickening and becoming intimidatingly loud? Christ, what a mother-in-law, thought Seth. He said pleasantly, “How do you do, Mrs. Ryan.”

  “May I call you Seth?”

  “Oh sure, sure.”

  “I feel as though I’d known you all my life. I believe I’ve seen all of your pictures, especially those you and your wife made together. She’s such an essentially sweet person, isn’t she?”

  “Essentially, yes.”

  “So fine.”

  . . . Rose is good too when she reads lines. I don’t know where she comes from but she really sounds like somebody. You can tell she’s had people waiting on her for a long time. She has that smoothness and you can’t buy it. I think I could develop it after a while, but then I’d be as old as she is. Men make me laugh. When she moves or reads, she comes over sharp and fast, and yet they think that I’m the sexy one because I bounce around the way I do. All right, Mister Mars, I’ll bounce and let’s see if you can spot it. Jasper would catch me right away, but he isn’t here. Now Jasper I can work with, my God, what a dancer.

  Lunch already? We haven’t done anything. Oh-oh, here comes Mama, and she’s got him. I haven’t seen a thing. I’ll just go along ahead. I know what he’s thinking about, standing there in the dark watching me jiggle. Little Good-dy knows, baby, yes she does. What’s everybody having? Lettuce leaves and tea, no cream, that figures. That’s no meal to work on, I’m hungry, I want to eat, I’ll have five dollars’ worth of studio food, ham, strawberry pie.

  I could have him in two minutes.

  What’s she want?

  “Seth, this is Charity Ryan.”

  Rose had gone ahead with Tommy, and he was glad she wasn’t present. He thought the situation grotesque, but his cardinal principle supervened, never offend a fan—a reflex, wholly subliminal. He let himself be borne along on Mrs. Ryan’s flood of rhetoric as they came to the commissary. Looking across the room with relief, and with the sense of having endured much, he saw that Charity was sitting at their table between Rose and Tommy. He crossed the bright room quickly, with Mrs. Ryan trotting behind, and came to the table in time to give his order with the rest.

  As usual Rose had asked for lettuce, low-calorie dressing, carrot slices, and tea with lemon. He saw with a curious sensual pleasure that Charity wanted ham and potatoes, and pie for dessert, and yet her skin was unmarred. She must dance it off, he thought, and he lowered Mrs. Ryan into a chair beside him, turning to her and smiling.

  Rose said, “Seth, this is Charity Ryan.”

  “I’d already guessed,” said Seth, looking from one to the other, making comparisons.

  5

  Though of Russian extraction and temperament, Jasper Saint John was wholly Americanized and an ardent baseball fan. He drew many analogies between baseball and the dance, considering them equally rhythmic and stylized, and equally dependent on exact timing.

  “Those neat flannel clothes,” he would exclaim, “so turn-of-the-century. You people don’t appreciate your game.” He would mime the pitcher’s motion to first. “Delicious white or gray on green shadows, and the exact proportions of the diamond.” He loved boxing too, but baseball was second only to the dance in his heart. When he complained about Rose, it was by comparison with the decline of the great DiMaggio.

  He sat in the darkened screening room and they all heard his voice go on. “I tell you how it is. In 1951 the book on Joe D., the World Series scouting report for the Giants, had the whole story: ‘Reflexes gone. Arm gone. No longer gets around on the ball.’” They all felt that there was justice to Jasper’s complaint. They had just watched rushes of the apartment-party number, originally designed as a showstopper, with four dozen dancers and the principals executing a very complex routine in a television-sized set, an almost impossible problem for Jasper which he had almost brought off. Watching the results, he was heartbroken.

  “Do you see what I mean? She’s swinging late. Look, look, there, do you see? The dancer is there, ready to make the lift, but she’s two steps away from the base. There is no way for me to correct that. It is not my fault.” He kept up a running commentary, and Danny, Bud, Max, the projectionist, and Paul Callegarini, visiting the set in the role of amateur—or so he said—listened to the gifted little man and believed him.

  “I love her,” said Jasper, “but she can’t dance. Now watch, here’s the little Ryan.”

 
His audience was enchanted as Charity whizzed through the air to land precisely at the appointed spot in the arms of a dancer in the working clothes of the New York Fire Department who carried a prop nozzle. Charity made a funny face as she saw the nozzle, patted it affectionately, smiled incandescently at the dancer, flipped his enormous helmet down over his eyes, whirled away and executed the rest of her routine.

  “That’s not classic dancing,” said Jasper. “She has not had the classic training and her ankles and thighs are not up to really heavy work, but she can do what you give her. You can even give her quite a lot to do, and the dance talent is there, which is rare amongst cinema people. She could work her way into a ballet company if she wanted. I don’t believe that she could ever dance leading parts, but she might. Anyway that’s not her business. She’s an extremely talented musical-comedy star.”

  She had everything but humour. She had enormous sex; she could sing right in the middle of the note, and awfully loud. She could dance, and could read lines better than adequately. Best of all, she had the irreplaceable thing. She bounced out of the screen at you, and no matter what she wore, you sensed instantly the flow and the smooth firm texture of the flesh underneath. It was a killing vitality, an almost smothering health. They babbled about it among themselves.

  “Let Mr. Saint John go on with his story,” said Horler.

  “How I worked on this routine! Every dancer knows just what he has to do. Nobody has done this before, in a film musical, handled so many people in such a small space. Similar things have been done on television, but out of necessity, not as free design. It is a highly ingenious conception—and my star is letting me down.”

  “Where is Tommy?” asked Callegarini.

  “Oh, he’s a joke. The whole world knows that Tommy can’t dance, so we simply have him fall over his feet and retire to the patio.”

  “He doesn’t dance at all?”

  “He did forty years ago,” said Lenehan, “but he doesn’t attempt it now. Have you ever heard him sing? He’s not at all bad, a pleasant light tenor, but he doesn’t do it in pictures. Not his business. Tommy is very shrewd.”