Tinseltown Confidential: A Novel of Golden-Era Hollywood (Hollywood's Garden of Allah novels Book 7)

by Martin Turnbull

  “Sure.”

  “We’ve got a real big picture in production.”

  “Titanic?”

  “That’s the one. The production photographer has done a god-awful job. I’ll leave your name with security at the main gate.”

  He walked out, leaving Marcus to stare at the attendant. What just happened?

  * * *

  The next morning, Marcus drove to the gates of Twentieth Century-Fox and gave his name.

  The security guard handed him a brown paper bag containing twenty rolls of film. There was also a letter from Zanuck’s office informing Marcus that he’d been granted full access to all seven Titanic soundstages. If there were any problems, he was to contact Zanuck’s office directly.

  He parked next to the soundstage alongside a dozen golf carts. Inside, the Titanic’s majestic dining room filled most of the stage. The cast, in full costume, dotted it like fragile dolls, blocking a complicated scene where the boat starts to tilt and the characters realize they’re in deep doo-doo.

  Marcus loaded up his camera and started clicking.

  The set was on top of a hydraulic mechanism robust enough to raise it at one end, sending movie stars, dress extras, furniture, and china sprawling into a cinematic heap.

  Three rolls later, Marcus felt a tap on his shoulder. Half-expecting a stern reprimand, he found instead Regina’s friend, Linda Sunshine, fitted out in the most glorious pink coat of patterned brocade with a white fur collar and a tea-length hem.

  “Howdy, kid!”

  “Look at you!” Marcus raised his camera to his eye. “Let me get a shot.”

  Linda leaned against the ship’s railing and struck a series of early-Pickford poses, her hands pressed in horror against her over-rouged cheeks.

  “You’ve seen the iceberg!” Marcus said. “It’s huge! We’re heading straight for it! We’re gonna—we’re gonna—oh my God, no, we’re gonna crash!” He snapped off a bunch of frames. “I bet they don’t give you costumes like that on Kit Carson.”

  “You better believe it. This coat’s got ‘Lillian Gish’ stitched into the collar. I get to be a snooty duchess and quaff pretend champagne. What a step up, huh? But tell me, what are you doing here?”

  Marcus lifted his camera. “This is what I do now.”

  It was the first time he’d said those words out loud. They didn’t feel as foreign in his mouth as he expected. It’s like what Zanuck had said: he still told stories, just with pictures instead.

  A loud bell rang out. “There’s my cue to haul my carcass onto that monstrosity. When we all fall through the set, be sure to get my good side!”

  The director strode into the center. Jean Negulesco was a dapper Eastern European in his fifties with a string of high-profile pictures to his name. He had the aura of someone who was the calm eye of a frenzied storm—an especially handy skill when re-sinking the Titanic.

  Marcus took a few photos of Negulesco pointing to a lighting guy up in the rafters. The director frowned at him and beckoned him over.

  “I hope you’re better than the last guy.” Negulesco swept his hand across the Titanic’s dining room. “We’ve gone to a great deal of trouble and expense. I want you to capture that. Also: drama, humor, detail, opulence, scale, and contrast.”

  “I’ll do my very best.”

  Negulesco turned so his mouth was closer to Marcus’ ear. “Zanuck and I believe Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Wagner are screwing. Or are about to. Try to catch them looking at each other the way that people do when they’re hot for each other.”

  No pressure. “Okay.”

  “And don’t waste film on the extras.”

  Oops. “Yes, sir.”

  The crew started bombarding Negulesco with questions just as Stanwyck and Wagner appeared from their trailers, and Marcus melted into the shadowy periphery. It was obvious they were trying not to look at each other. This meant one of three things: they were either fighting, or fucking, or both.

  As they rehearsed their lines, Marcus took two rolls of film hoping to catch the flirty knowing smiles they exchanged with nearly every line.

  It was four o’clock when he finished the twentieth roll and figured maybe if he showed up at Zanuck’s office, an opportunity might arise.

  The executive floor was lavishly appointed with thick, dark carpeting and walls paneled in mahogany and modern art: Matisse, Kandinsky, Klimt.

  Zanuck’s outer office was like a small hotel lobby. On the left stood a pair of desks awash with paperwork. On the right was a woman at a typewriter. She stopped bashing the keys long enough to look up at him.

  “My name is Marcus Adler, and I’ve been shooting production stills on Titanic. I was hoping to see Mr. Zanuck. I just need a couple of minutes.”

  She pointed to the closed doors behind her. “Yes, Mr. Adler. You can go right on in.”

  “I don’t have an appointment or anything—”

  “If he’s not there, he won’t be long, so just take a seat.”

  This was altogether too easy.

  The office beyond the redwood doors was twice as large. A Jackson Pollock hung behind a remarkably neat desk, and to the right, picture windows overlooked the studio water tower beyond a conference table for twelve. Zanuck was nowhere in sight.

  Marcus took the middle chair in front of the desk and waited. Two or three minutes ticked by, then four, five, six . . .

  A hidden door in the mahogany paneling squeaked open to reveal a moderately attractive blonde with a 36-inch chest stuffed into a 34-inch sweater.

  She let out a high-pitched “Oh!” and tried to retreat, but Zanuck shoved her ahead of him into his office. “What the hell—?”

  Marcus hopped to his feet. “Your secretary told me it was okay—”

  “Oh, she did, did she?” Zanuck nudged the blonde toward the fire escape on the other side of the picture window. “She thinks she can shame me. You’re just her patsy.”

  He patted the girl on her behind. “Thanks, doll.” The girl tried to preserve as much decorum as her tight skirt would allow as she climbed onto the fire escape and down the metal staircase. By the time she was out of sight, Zanuck was in his chair, piercing Marcus with a suffocating stare.

  “Did Negulesco tell you what we wanted?”

  “Vis-à-vis Stanwyk and Wagner?”

  “I hope you got some shots I can use.”

  “I believe so.”

  “That’s what I want to hear. Can you come back tomorrow?”

  “I can.”

  “We’re also shooting Call Me Madam.”

  “Please don’t tell me Ethel Merman is laying Donald O’Connor.”

  Zanuck let fly a whoop of a laugh that sounded like Francis the Talking Mule with bronchitis. “That’s funny!” The braying subsided as the glare returned. “Last night. In the men’s room. You said there’s something I ought to know. I can give you ten minutes, but five would be better.”

  “The Red Scare that had us running around like Chicken Little? You might want to know there’s a new one looming.” Marcus paused a moment to let the implication sift through Zanuck’s brain. “Senator McCarthy’s got an agenda.”

  “You’re going to have to do better than that.”

  “He’s going to put the spotlight on the homos in government first, because they’re open to blackmail. But he’s also seen the attention HUAC got by storming Hollywood, so he’s on his way here. The difference is, there were only ever a few Commies in Hollywood.”

  The mogul kept up his piercing glare. Kathryn warned him that Zanuck was no fan of fairies, but was realistic enough to know that he couldn’t produce great movies without them. “How do you know this?”

  “McCarthy’s in bed with Hoover—so to speak—who is close chums with Winchell. And Winchell is all pally with Robert Harrison, the cretin behind Confidential. Have you read it?”

  “Flipped through it once or twice.”

  “Harrison is circumventing the usual paths between magazines and publicity depa
rtments. He’s engaged Fred Otash.”

  The mention of Otash sparked Zanuck’s eyes. “I didn’t know that.”

  Marcus pressed harder. “Harrison went to college with Joseph Breen, who would love to see every last homo and dyke fitted with concrete loafers and dropped into the Pacific. We’re talking hair, makeup, costume, set design, scripts. Not to mention one or two of your marquee names.” That hit the bull’s-eye. “Haven’t you already lost enough people to the blacklist and the Red Scare?”

  The two men stared at each other for what felt like several ages of man until Zanuck said, “You’re real smart.” Marcus wasn’t sure it was a compliment, so he kept his trap shut until the studio boss asked, “Got any other arrows in that quiver of yours?”

  Marcus had walked in with every intention of telling Zanuck to embrace television like Harry Cohn had. But now that he was sitting here like a supplicant before a maharaja, he could see that Zanuck was a movie man through and through.

  “I do.”

  “Give me a for instance.”

  “The Robe.”

  “What of it?”

  “You should get the screen rights.”

  “Why?”

  “The Greatest Show on Earth has made nearly twelve million, and it wasn’t even all that good.”

  “You got that right.”

  “According to Kathryn Massey, DeMille wants to remake The Ten Commandments.” Marcus waited until he got a guarded nod. “If you grab the rights for The Robe and immediately put it into production, you could out-do DeMille.”

  “You think so, huh?”

  “Turn it into a widescreen production. You saw This is Cinerama; didn’t your mind pop with possibilities? If you do it right, you could present the Roman Empire like never before. Not just an empty travelogue, but a spectacular movie event about the crucifixion of Christ, using one of the biggest books of the past ten years. And you’d be the first to pull it off.”

  “I don’t even know who’s got the rights to The Robe.”

  “RKO.”

  A few weeks ago, Marcus and Quentin went out for a night on the town that took in four bars, two nightclubs, and some circus-themed dive down the grubby end of Santa Monica Boulevard where Mexican pimps hung out. Somewhere between the third bar and the first club, Quentin spilled how Howard Hughes was ramming RKO into the ground and might end up selling to Paramount—and if they did, Quentin would love to get his hands on The Robe.

  “Someone’s done his homework.” Zanuck was snide but impressed. He leaned on the desk. “Any other big ideas?”

  “I do, but I want quid pro quo.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “I want your help getting off the graylist.”

  “Why would a photographer be on the graylist?”

  “Because once upon a time I was the head screenwriter at MGM and fell afoul of HUAC.”

  “You’re that guy? The one who told the committee to shove their inquisition up their ass?” Marcus nodded. Zanuck chuckled. “No wonder you’ve got an eye for drama.”

  “Mayer got me off the blacklist, but I can’t get back to work until I’m off the gray one.”

  Zanuck started threading his cigar through his fingers like he had the previous night. “Personally, I think you’re better off sticking with photography, but if you really want to go back to screenwriting, I’ll see what I can do.”

  “That’d be swell.”

  “It might take a while, though. Got anything else?”

  “You hold the rights to a play called The Greeks Had a Word for It.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” Zanuck hurled his cigar at the window, which the stacked blonde had left open. “A homo play? What the hell—”

  “You’ve already filmed it twice. Once in the late thirties as Three Blind Mice, and later as Moon Over Miami. You could put your waning blonde, Betty Grable, together with your rising one, Marilyn Monroe. If you relocate the movie to New York, imagine all the panoramas of the city you’ll be able to get shooting it in widescreen.”

  Zanuck’s face took on a distant look as his fingers groped for the gold cigarette lighter that was just out of reach.

  CHAPTER 30

  Kathryn set a pineapple upside-down cake on the coffee table and announced to the gang collected in front of her television, “In case you’re wondering, I didn’t bake this. It’s store-bought. So if it’s inedible, blame Greenblatt’s.”

  It wasn’t like anybody expected a homemade cake from Kathryn, even though her name was becoming synonymous with Betty Crocker. But her conscience was eating at her like rust.

  The night of Monday, January 19, 1953, was noteworthy. Not because Eisenhower, the first Republican president in twenty years, would be inaugurated tomorrow. Tonight, America belonged to a zany, squawking redhead whose nine-month condition everybody knew but couldn’t be specified on the air.

  Lucy Ricardo was finally—and no doubt hilariously—going to give birth. The other three networks, ABC, NBC, and DuMont, might as well have sent everybody home. Nobody was going to be watching them after nine o’clock.

  Everybody in Kathryn’s living room froze. Marcus shot her a frown. “Duly noted,” he said gingerly.

  “I would have baked a cake,” Kathryn said, “but I ran out of time. I worked late at the office and—never mind. Coffee will be ready soon.” She withdrew to the kitchen. There was nothing to do but wait for the coffee to boil, so she wiped down her already-clean counter.

  “You want to talk about it?” Marcus stood in the doorway. Behind him in the living room, Gwennie, Doris, and Bertie were pretending not to listen.

  “No,” she lied. This was a big night for him, and she didn’t want to spoil it.

  His production photographs were in high demand. Every week brought new requests from all the popular magazines: Women’s Wear Daily, Colliers, Reader’s Digest. Even one that hadn’t started yet—TV Guide—had come calling. Lucille Ball had generously split the royalties with him, so at last he had some decent money coming in. But the photos he took during the rehearsal and filming of “Lucy Goes to the Hospital” really commanded big bucks, especially now that Lucille had delivered a healthy baby boy. Kathryn couldn’t remember the last time art paralleled life quite so perfectly.

  “Bullshit,” he said.

  “It’s just that—not tonight. Maybe—”

  “Lucy’s water won’t break for another twenty minutes. You going to tell me why you’ve been so antsy lately? Quite frankly, I’d rather not endure another night of you and Leo snapping at each other.”

  Marcus was referring to the cocktail party in Chasen’s back room following the premiere of Bette Davis’ movie, The Star. Kathryn and Leo had a tiff on the drive to Grauman’s over the silliest thing: his new hair tonic. By the time the cocktail party was in full swing, they were at it worse than The Bickersons. Even Bette, no stranger to discord, kept her distance.

  Truth be told, it wasn’t just that fight. Since The Star’s premiere on Christmas Day, they’d had several squabbles.

  “Has it anything to do with why Leo isn’t here tonight?” Marcus ventured. Kathryn nodded. “Come on. Out with it.”

  “It’s this deal that Sunbeam negotiated with Voss.”

  “You hate it, don’t you?”

  “Of course I hate it.”

  “Do you hate Leo because of it?”

  “I’m trying not to.”

  “Do you need to try harder?”

  She pitched the dishrag into the sink. “I got my lawyer to comb through my contracts with NBC and Sunbeam to see if he could spot a loophole, but he couldn’t find anything to use as leverage.”

  “Even though you’re likely to get your own television show out of it?”

  She felt like the worst kind of money-grubbing gold-digger. The prospect of the money she could get with her own TV show hypnotized her into ignoring how she’d first have to swallow her conscience like a cup of cod liver oil. Now that she’d had time to think it over (and over and over
), she didn’t know if she could go through with it.

  “I keep telling myself the ends justify the means, but now I have to promote a charlatan who fancies himself the second coming of Moses swooping in to purge Sodom and Gomorrah of all its debauchery.”

  “And who knew you’d turn out to be Moses’ niece?”

  “Don’t you just love irony?” Kathryn cast around for her cigarettes but she’d left them in the living room. The coffee finished percolating. She started pulling cups and saucers from her cupboard. “So instead, like the mature woman I am, I’ve started to take all this out on Leo.”

  “Why keep provoking the poor guy?”

  She shot Marcus a naughty eye. “The harder we fight, the better the sex.”

  “I think they call that ‘make-up sex.’”

  “I call it ‘almost worth it.’”

  “But you know it’s not sustainable, right?” Marcus said. “And it’s not what normal couples do.”

  “Do you know any normal couples in Hollywood?”

  “You planning on breaking things off with him?”

  “No.” The response shot out of her so fast, it caught her off guard. “I’m such a dummy.”

  “No, you’re not.” Marcus picked up a pair of coffee cups. “Well, maybe just a little.” He put them down again. “What if you got someone to step in for you?”

  “Step in for what?”

  “Be the voice of Window on Hollywood that reports on the Sea to Shining Sea March so that you don’t have to.”

  “You mean like a special correspondent?”

  “I guess I do, yes.” He picked up the cups again. “Now, for God’s sake, buck up. Nobody wants to sit next to Little Miss Down-In-The-Mouth while watching television history in the making.”

  * * *

  Hollywood was still talking about “Lucy Goes to the Hospital” at Marilyn’s premiere a few nights later.

  When CBS announced that the episode captured an unheard-of seventy-one percent of American television sets, columnists whipped themselves into a frenzy of predictions about the beginning of the end of the motion-picture experience.