They came to a western town. There was the dusty main street, the sheriff's office, the saloon, the general store, the wood sidewalks. Allison expected at any moment to see Gary Cooper, tall and lean, cautiously move out of the sheriff ’s office.
Arthur pushed open the swinging doors of the saloon and they went inside. Sunlight filtered through cracks in the roof; the long mirror behind the bar returned their images. Seeing herself, Allison had the feeling she was out of place and out of time, an interloper in the American past.
She sat down at one of the tables. Arthur leaned against the bar.
“You've seen this saloon in a hundred movies. Each time it looked a little different. A few minor changes, a change of lighting, a change of faces, and it becomes a new place. All you need are creative film makers with a new way of looking at things, and the most familiar object or place can be made to look strange to you.”
He crossed the room and sat down next to her.
“I want to tell you, Allison, that I know how you feel about the script. You think we've ruined your book and you say to yourself, I don't care that they've ruined my book but they haven't even made a good script out of the ruins. It's all dull, flat and unimaginative.”
Allison opened her mouth to speak, but Arthur went on.
“A lot of skills go into the making of a film, Allison. But after twenty years in this place I've come to the conclusion that the most valuable skill of all is the ability to read a script. To read it, see it and hear it. All at once. And then to be able to judge; will this script make a good movie, or just another mediocre movie.”
He stood up and began to pace restlessly around the tables, then stopped with his back to the swinging doors.
“It's difficult to explain all this, Allison. You read our script like a novelist. You can't. You've got to read it like a sound camera. A sound camera with an imaginative human brain. Listen, Allison. You've heard the expression, ‘the magic of the theater’?”
Allison nodded.
“When idiots use that expression, they mean the ‘glamour’ of the theater, its aura, its spectacular appeal. But when theater workers talk about ‘magic,’ they mean something altogether different. To them, ‘magic’ is the odd, mysterious, inexplicable thing that happens between a director and his actors. The magical thing is that those lines you consider to be dull and innocuous suddenly become meaningful, and reveal qualities you never suspected were there. You make a great mistake to expect that a film script must be literary. In a sense, it must never be literary. It has got to have extra-literary qualities.”
He came and sat down across the table from her.
“What you are looking for is a script that reads like a novel. What I am looking for, always, is a script that reads like a movie. Allison, I'm an old pro. I know what I'm talking about. If I didn't, I'd have been thrown off this lot years ago. Are you going to take my word for it?”
Allison did not answer. All she could think of was her mutilated novel. She walked to the window and looked out. She saw, walking down the dusty street, a group of white-robed, barefooted men. One of them was leading a white donkey. They were on their way to the lot where a Biblical movie was being made.
It was one of the strangest sights she had ever seen, these early Christians walking through a town of the American West. It was all wrong, yet out here it made sense. She realized suddenly that these people could do anything, that on the outskirts of Los Angeles they could, if they wanted to, create New York or a planetary city of the future. They had worked their magic on her since she was a little girl. Why did she suddenly begin to doubt them now?
She turned and smiled at Arthur. “I think I've been suffering from Novelist's Disease. It's what other people call arrogance. We work alone so much that we begin to think we are the only creative people in the world. And, what's worse, that we don't need anyone else.”
“Only hacks don't take pride in their work,” Arthur said.
He took her arm and they began to walk back toward the administration buildings. At the open door of the sound stage, two ladies in waiting at the court of the Empress Eugénie, wearing ball gowns and powdered wigs, were talking about their favorite rock-and-roll singer. For the first time, Allison began to feel the excitement of Hollywood's creativity and, listening to Arthur, began to have some understanding of the technical aspect of film work.
“We expect to wind up with a great film, Allison,” Arthur told her as he helped her into the car. “Not just a good film, but a great one. Tomorrow we'll have an office ready for you. I want to hear all the ideas you've got.”
The driver picked up Brad outside Jenks's office. Brad got into the car and handed Allison a large manila envelope. “Your photos,” he said, smiling.
She opened the envelope and took them out. She hardly recognized herself. It was her own face, but somehow it had been invested with mystery, with glamour and with a kind of beauty she had never seen in any mirror. She smiled to herself and thought, The magic is even working on me.
She said to Brad, “That lens looked at me with lover's eyes.”
She quickly stuffed the photographs back into the envelope. For some reason, it embarrassed her to look at them; it was as if she had been caught in a fraudulent act.
By her second week in Hollywood, Allison had had to throw out the window every preconception she had brought along with her. It was true that there were more swimming pools in Beverly Hills than in any other town in the world, the houses and grounds were the most fanciful copies of Spanish castles and English manor houses, and without doubt Hollywood attracted to itself the most beautiful women—and even beautiful men—from every part of the world.
But the overriding fact about Hollywood, what made the trappings unimportant, was the work of making movies. She never anywhere saw people work with such energy, with such furious drive. It carried over into their private lives; there was the same kind of driving energy in their love affairs and their marriages and in the way they relaxed.
Making movies was for Hollywood what making automobiles was to Detroit. From the window of her office she could see a large area of the studio lot, the trucks and motorized freight wagons that plied endlessly up and down the studio streets, carrying scenery and costumes. Hundreds of men moved about, each performing an assigned task, hundreds of extras and a handful of highly paid actors and directors committed themselves and their reputations to film.
Allison sat at her desk and spent the first week reading the script. She read it now with new eyes, eyes that had been opened and made more knowledgeable because Tishman had shared with her some of the knowledge that only years of working in films can give.
Parts of the script that, on first reading, had seemed to her arbitrary and capricious, she now saw as reasonable changes.
They had changed the time scheme of her novel. She had thought them stupid for doing so. But now, she understood the reason for making a scene she had set in summer take place in winter. The coldness, the bleak landscape, the white and black of snow and bare trees, all this would heighten the mood and give the sequence precisely the emotional overtones it needed.
She met with the set designer and the costume department and gave her opinions on their work. She found only minor errors, the kind of thing no one would notice except the experts who looked for such mistakes.
She left the studio at five every day and returned to her hotel. It was not the studio but the hotel that was the Hollywood of every small-town girl's imagining. In the lobby and around the pool sat the beautiful girls who were not waiting to be discovered but working very hard at it. And there were the rich widows, elderly women who spent hours each day in beauty salons, and who were always accompanied by handsome young men.
Allison was soon able to spot an agent by the way he walked, and could tell at a glance whether a man was an unemployed writer or a director waiting for an assignment. In a very short time she had learned all the gossip and knew, as the waitresses in the dining room knew
, why the famous star was really getting her divorce, and who the other man really was.
Lewis called Allison every evening. They spoke for five or ten minutes and hurried to say all they wanted to say to each other, spoke of their love and their plans and what each had done that day. Until the day finally came when Allison was able to say, “Oh, Lewis, tomorrow is the last day, and I can come back to you!” She had her reservation for six o'clock the next evening, she would be in New York, with Lewis, in the morning.
The night before she left, Arthur Tishman gave a party for her. He wanted her to meet Rita Moore, especially, knowing she was a favorite of Allison's.
Brad had returned to New York at the end of the first week. Allison rode alone in the back seat of the studio limousine, her elbow on the arm rest, smoking a cigarette. She smiled. I'm acting as calmly, she thought, as if I've done this sort of thing all my life.
She wore a simple, sheathlike black gown; her hair was drawn back; a small diamond clip was her only ornament. It was the only jewelry she had bought herself, thus far, with her new money. She always referred to it, to herself, as new money. She had seen the clip one day in the window of a Beverly Hills jeweler and walked in and bought it. She knew that whatever might come in the future, this clip would always be her favorite, because it was the first and because it had been bought with money made from her first success. As the car drove up the graveled drive to Arthur Tishman's house, she touched the clip; it gave her assurance.
Tishman's house was one of the great old houses. It was not California modern; it looked like one of the houses in an old Long Island suburb. It was an extravagant relic, a dinosaur from the ice age of Doug and Mary; it was a proud reminder of Hollywood's regal past.
Architecturally, it was part Spanish, part Tudor; yet this did not, somehow, result in a hodgepodge. As is so often the case with early twentieth-century American houses, the architect's vulgarity had, over the years, become charming. It was a place, Allison decided, that she would enjoy living in. It had not the look of post-war houses; she thought them mean and inhospitable with their functional little rooms and uncomfortably low ceilings.
The car came to a stop at a graceful flight of stone steps with low risers and a carved balustrade. Arthur came down the steps and helped her out of the car.
In five minutes she had had two drinks, was holding her third and had been introduced to twenty people. She remembered the names of none except those actors she recognized. There was one she had had a crush on when she was fourteen. He had sallow skin, thinning hair and an obscene little belly. On the screen he still looked as handsome as ever.
She had quickly gulped down her first two drinks in an attempt to get over the nervousness she felt at being with these people. But all she succeeded in doing was to make herself a little lightheaded. She looked around for Rita Moore but did not see her.
Conversation swirled around her. She put down her drink and stepped out the open doors to the terrace. She took a deep breath of air. I must clear my head, she thought. She walked to the end of the terrace, her heels making a satisfying noise on the terra-cotta tiles. The brightly lighted living room gave way to a dark wing of the house.
In one room an amber light glowed and Allison, peering through the french doors, saw it was the library. She tried the door. It opened, and she entered. It was a high-ceilinged room, vaulted, with a deep stone fireplace. The walls were lined with books, beautifully bound.
They even look as if they've been read, Allison thought.
She took a step toward the books when a head popped up, peered for an instant over the top of the leather sofa and disappeared. But that moment was enough for Allison to recognize Rita Moore's famous face.
“Are you real or are you the ghost of Norma Talmadge?” Rita Moore asked from behind the sofa.
“I'm real enough,” Allison said. She walked around the sofa and looked down at Rita Moore. She smiled at Rita and said, “I'm glad to see you have a body and aren't just a voice.”
“I used to have a body,” Rita said, looking down at it. “Christ, did I have a body! When I see myself in old movies on the telly, it breaks my ever-beating heart.”
“You're still the greatest, Miss Moore.”
Rita's mouth curved in a mirthless smile. “Thanks a whole lot. You could have it for one small farthing if I could have your youth.”
She reached for the cut-glass brandy decanter on the small table, but could not quite reach it. Allison picked it up and tilted some of the liquid into Rita's glass.
She drank it down like medicine, like something she had to take because it was good for her. She grimaced and said, “Christ, I'm tired! I'm just plain body tired, and I'm most of all tired of parties like this. When I come to a place like this, the first thing I do is look for the exits. After twenty years in this town I've learned the library is the best place to be alone in. Most of us out here are afraid of books. Reading a book is a sign that we've been alone for a few hours. And out here, to be alone is a phrase that strikes a fear unknown since the black plague swept across Europe.”
She filled her brandy glass again. Her soft, silver-blond hair caught the light and shimmered like a jewel. She had high cheekbones that made a diagonal of shadow in her cheeks, like smudges made by her thumbs. Her eyes were sea green and her dress was a deep green embroidered in gold. It clung to her body like a second skin, and where her breasts swelled out of the top her flesh was like heavy cream.
“You must be Allison MacKenzie,” she said. “You must be, because I've never seen you before and because you are the only one here who looks bright enough to have written a novel. Especially a novel as good as Samuel's Castle.”
“Thank you,” Allison said.
“Please don't say thank you, dear. It reminds me of my second husband. My second husband was the kind of man who was always saying thank you. He was humble—in an arrogant sort of way.”
Allison smiled, but not because she felt like smiling; she smiled because she had the feeling she was expected to.
“My second husband seduced me with Brahms and Scotch,” said Rita at last. “The poor bastard.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Allison.
“Because that was all he knew how to do,” replied Rita. “Seduce women to a sad violin and the tinkle of ice cubes. He was good at it though, I'll say that for him.”
“How many husbands have you had?” asked Allison.
Rita laughed. “Don't you ever read the fan magazines?” she asked.
Allison smiled and shook her head. “Not any more,” she said. “But I used to. When we were in high school, Selena Cross and I used to buy every issue of Photoplay and Silver Screen. Then we'd cut out the pictures and make scrapbooks. I wonder if kids still do that.”
“In Hollywood, we hope so,” said Rita. “Anyway, it's four.”
“Four what?”
“Husbands,” said Rita. “Isn't that what you asked me?”
“Four!” said Allison. “Good Lord!”
“Well, at least I married the men I fell in love with,” said Rita with a little pout. “I know plenty of women who will jump into bed with just anybody. At least I always kept it legal.”
“I don't think I'll ever get married,” said Allison.
Rita poured more liquor into her glass. “Why not?” she asked. “What have you got against marriage?”
“I want everything to stay just the way it is right now,” said Allison, an unaccustomed toughness in her voice.
Rita glanced at her sharply, then said, “Well, aren't you a smug little punk kid.”
Allison's head snapped up in surprise. “What do you mean by that?” she asked.
“Just what I said,” replied Rita belligerently. “You think you know it all, don't you?”
“For Heaven's sake,” objected Allison. “What in the world did I say?”
“You love having things the way they are now,” said Rita. “You love being a success, being way up on top where very few peopl
e ever get. You love all that lovely money that rolls in day after day, and you love the idea that it's yours, all yours.”
“And what's wrong with that?” demanded Allison. “You're in the same position yourself. Don't tell me that you hate being successful.”
Rita looked down into her glass and thought for a moment.
“I don't know,” she said. “I don't know whether I hate it or love it or just don't care any more.”
Allison laughed. “I know a fellow in New York. His name is Paul Morris and he's quite well known in his field so you've probably heard of him.”
“I've heard of him,” said Rita.
“Well, Paul told me once that successful people who complain about being successful are nothing more than lousy poseurs. If they didn't glory in it, they'd run and bury themselves where no one had ever heard of them.”
Rita gave a short, humorless laugh as she poured herself another drink.
“I'll tell you about success,” she said. “And believe me, I can tell you a helluva lot more about it than your friend Paul Morris. He never made it except as somebody else's shadow.” She leaned back and sipped at her drink. “I think that you have to decide when you're very young that you want success more than anything else in the world,” she said.
“Well, I certainly didn't,” said Allison angrily.
Rita looked at her. “Don't kid me, love,” she said. “I know about you, Allison. I've heard enough. I can figure you out like you were my twin sister. When you were a kid you didn't think you were good looking. You were the odd one who couldn't fit into the group, and you resented everyone who did belong. Without even knowing it you began to think in terms of ‘I'll show them all,’ and you did.”
“All you need is a framed diploma and a couch and you could go into business,” said Allison, and she poured a glass of brandy for herself.
“Don't get wise with me, sweetie,” said Rita. “I've been there, and I know. Where the hell do you think I sprang from? Well, I'll tell you. From a lousy shack in the backwoods of Georgia. My old man was a sharecropper and my mother was worn out and tired before she even married him. Her father had been a sharecropper, too, and all she ever knew was work, work and more work. And kids and filth and no money and a constant hole in your belly from being hungry. I never had a pair of shoes on my feet until I was fourteen, and even then they were discards, but my mother sent me to school anyway.”
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