STARRING FRANCIS X. BUSHMAN
DIRECTED BY EDWIN MARR
Hugo found what he was looking for and handed a sheet of expensive, thick notepaper to Marcus. It was a handwritten list of some of the movies MGM had released over the past ten years. The titles were written in Hugo’s handwriting, each name printed neatly, with no mistakes or ink smudges. Alongside each title was the movie’s box-office gross.
Hugo released a long breath in ragged fits and starts. “What do you notice about those movies?” he asked. “What have they got in common?”
“Come on, Hugo,” Marcus said. “It’s the middle of the night. You’ve dragged me over here to make a point. Just make it.”
Hugo pointed at the paper in Marcus’ hand. “It’s a list of every movie you’ve ever worked on.”
The average Hollywood studio picture went through at least two or three writers, sometimes more. Some guys were plot fixers, some were dialogue sharpeners, some were experts in openings and endings. Marcus scanned the list again and found that to one degree or another, he had worked on the screenplays for every one of these movies. Hugo had even included his B Hive movies.
Hugo let out a grunt. “You’ve got the best box-office average of any writer at MGM. You’ve never had a flop. Do you know how good you are?”
“You know how the system works. We’re just one in a path of steppingstones.” Marcus held up the paper. “Best box-office average? How do you even know that?”
“It’s my job.” The dam of tears behind Hugo’s bloodshot eyes ruptured, and he crumpled onto the sofa.
“But you don’t work in accounting,” Marcus said.
“It’s! My! Job!” The words came out in strangled, forced breaths, each one an effort. “I’ve been working for them the whole time I’ve been at MGM.”
Marcus watched Hugo blubber into his hands and winced at the sight of a fully grown man unraveling. He joined Hugo on the sofa. “You’re not making sense.”
“I’m a spy, God damnit!”
“You’re a what?”
“A spy. For Paramount. At least I think it’s Paramount.”
Marcus looked at the cable-knit sweater Hugo wore; it was exactly like one in his own closet. But the one back at his place wasn’t frayed around the cuffs like Hugo’s. Nor did it have dark stains dripping down the arm toward the elbow. What is that, Marcus asked himself. Blood? He chose his words carefully. “What do you mean you’re a spy?”
Hugo looked up at Marcus, his eyes bleary and tired. “It’s been going on practically the whole time we’ve been at MGM. I spy for a rival studio. Supply them with information on the movies, box office, PR campaigns, which stars aren’t happy.”
“But that’s industrial espionage,” Marcus said.
“My father lost everything in the stock market crash, but he didn’t know how to be poor.” Hugo’s voice lost its shakiness and turned sour. “He started racking up debts. Big ones. Poker. The track. Roulette. Somehow the mob got involved. They insisted on being paid. You know how they are. Dad came to me with an offer. Didn’t say who it was from. ‘To protect my innocence,’ he said. Hardy-ha-ha. My job was to tell them everything, three hundred a week. If I didn’t, the mob was going to do something to Dad. I had to say yes.”
Marcus thought about all those weeks Hugo had spent caring for his father in Palm Springs and wondered if Edwin Marr had ever been sick. “Hugo—”
Hugo waved him silent. “Don’t. I need to get this off my chest. I—I never meant to hurt you.” He erupted in a fresh gush of tears.
Marcus pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to Hugo. “How exactly have you hurt me?” He had to wait a while before Hugo could push out the words.
“When you came up with the William Tell idea, I told my contact. They told me to bury it. I told them I couldn’t. This was your big break. They didn’t give me any choice. It slayed me to do that to you.”
“So it really was you.” What had just been theory and conjecture sledgehammered Marcus in the gut. He got to his feet and walked away from the sofa.
“I know! I know!” Hugo wailed. “I’m a lowdown, dirt-eating bastard. It was like they were telling me to sabotage myself. Such a coward. All I ever wanted was to be just like you. I’ve envied you all this time.” Hugo blubbered a flurry of wet sobs into Marcus’ handkerchief. “The freedom of living at a place like the Garden; your friends—Gwendolyn and Kathryn, not to mention Cukor and Benchley and Dottie Parker. Your box-office track record, your talent. You had a fully fledged movie star want you. I managed to get Ramon into bed, but he never wanted me like he wanted you. You’ve got everything I’ve ever yearned for.”
Marcus watched Hugo whimper into his handkerchief. I never thought I had much of anything, let alone everything.
“And look at me,” Hugo continued. “I’ve been trying so hard to emulate you—”
“Is that what the clothes thing is about?”
Hugo looked down at himself. “It started out with your neckties. You know the purple one you have? I looked everywhere for a tie just like it. I found one almost the same and it sort of went on from there. I’m sure the guys at work noticed. I’m a laughing stock, aren’t I? And a failure. As a writer, as a son, and most of all as a friend.”
Marcus spotted a bottle of cognac and a six crystal snifters on a book shelf. “Maybe we could both do with some of this.”
He poured out a couple of drinks. A large smoked-glass mirror covered the wall to the right of the shelving. As Marcus set the brandy down, he caught sight of the reflection in the mirror. Hugo was holding a gun.
Marcus dived behind the loveseat between him and Hugo. “You don’t need to be afraid,” Hugo told him. “I’m not going to shoot you.”
“What do you plan on doing with it?”
When Hugo said nothing, Marcus peeked over the top of the loveseat. Hugo was staring at the Forty Acres and a Mule poster with a reverence that bordered on religious.
“Did you know I’m back in the big house now?” Marcus tried to keep his voice light and airy. “I pitched an idea for a Judy Garland picture a few months ago. I thought they hated it, but it’s all systems go now. Everything’s great, Hugo. Really!”
While Marcus was trying to volunteer his way into the US Navy, Taggert was running around MGM looking for, as Mayer had put it, “that rat bag writer who came up with some Hawaii story for our Judy.”
“It’s called Pearl Harbor Pearl,” Marcus persisted, to keep the conversation going. “I adapted it from an old idea I had years ago. Remember that screenplay competition we both entered way back when? The one you—”
“I was never going to measure up, no matter what I did.”
Hugo kept his eyes on the poster as he pushed the revolver into his mouth.
Marcus shouted out, “NO! DON’T!” but Hugo pulled the trigger anyway.
CHAPTER 48
Kathryn peered out of her second-story kitchen window. Although it was December now, the days were still warm and the skies clear and blue. People had started to gather around the pool. There was no such thing as fashionably late to a Garden of Allah party. If there was booze involved—and there was always booze involved—everyone arrived early, no matter the occasion.
Her eyes followed the path from the pool, past the zinnias Katsu had worked so hard to maintain, and up toward the main house. If this were a movie, she thought, a Western Union messenger would appear right . . . about . . . NOW.
Nope. Nobody.
When somebody did appear, it was George Cukor. Kathryn watched him join Marcus, Jim Taggert, and Hoppy. What sort of nickname is that to give someone with a wooden leg, she wondered. Men can be so insensitive, even the sensitive queer ones. They must have a lot to talk about.
She kept her eyes on Marcus as she blew on her fresh nail polish. She wouldn’t have blamed him for not showing up tonight, not with that awful Hugo business still fresh in his mind, so she was glad he’d put in an appearance.
“We s
hould get down there,” she called to Gwendolyn. “People are starting to arrive and you’re the guest of honor.”
* * *
Gwendolyn walked out into the living room, giving nonchalance her best shot, but when Kathryn exclaimed, “Wow, wow, WOW!” she doubted that she could pull it off.
The butterscotch-yellow dress Gwendolyn had made for her bon voyage party was a copy of one she’d seen on someone at Kress department store on Hollywood Boulevard. The raw silk had been trickier to work with than she’d anticipated, and she wasn’t sure she liked the way the bodice sat on her hips, but the décolletage had come out just right. It revealed more of her cleavage than she’d ever shown before, but she was a girl with a purpose.
“Too much?” she asked Kathryn.
“Oh, honey,” Kathryn said with a laugh, “if you’d made this dress ten years ago, maybe you wouldn’t be moving to Hawaii. I’ve lived with you all this time and even I never knew your Betty Boops could look like that.”
Gwendolyn sat down at the kitchen table, where Kathryn was drying the last of her nails. “Hard to believe all this is coming to an end.”
Kathryn nodded. “Fourteen years.”
“You’ve been the best roommate a girl could ask for.” Gwendolyn quietly blessed Max Factor and his wondrous new waterproof mascara.
Kathryn hooked a finger under Gwendolyn’s chin. “I’m going to miss you like crazy.”
“But think of all the closet space you’ll have now!”
Kathryn twisted the top back onto her bottle of Elizabeth Arden Christmas Plum polish and looked at Gwendolyn more earnestly than Gwendolyn was prepared for. “I’m only going to ask you this one more time. Are you sure—I mean really sure—about this whole moving to Hawaii caper?”
Kathryn’s question wasn’t anything Gwendolyn hadn’t asked herself a hundred times over the past month. But whenever she doubted she was doing the right thing, the memory of her appearance in The Maltese Falcon mushroomed in her mind.
“I came to Hollywood to become a movie star,” Gwendolyn said. “Turns out, I stink worse than Rin-Tin-Tin.”
“But Hawaii is so far away.”
Gwendolyn laid her hands on Kathryn’s forearm. “That’s the appeal.”
They’d started to head for the door when Kathryn stopped her and fluttered a hand over Gwendolyn’s dress. “You made this for someone, didn’t you?”
Gwendolyn hitched up her bosom. “Errol. I figure it’s my last chance. If he shows.”
“If that dress doesn’t work, you’re going to have to lasso the Aussie bastard and hog-tie him to the bed.”
* * *
“So,” George Cukor asked, “does your movie have a name?”
Marcus watched Kathryn and Gwendolyn negotiate the stairs in tight skirts. “It just got changed,” he told George, “to Pearl from Pearl Harbor.”
“Catchy title.”
Marcus almost hadn’t invited George to the party. He found it an effort to not get needled by the fact that he was back on the A-list, so it was now okay for George to be seen with him. Between that and the ugly scene at Ramon’s house, to say nothing of the Hugo incident, Marcus valued loyalty even more these days. The only people he felt he could really count on were Kathryn and Gwendolyn, and now Gwendolyn was leaving. But he figured it wasn’t George’s decision, and there was a lot to be said for leaving the past behind.
“Here’s to Judy Garland and all her sailors at Pearl Harbor!” Cukor said. The four of them clinked glasses.
The champagne George brought was French, light, and bubbly, and Marcus was scanning the booze table for more when he saw Hoppy nudge Taggert. It was good to see Taggert and Hoppy back together again. They seemed settled and content; without knowing it, they gave Marcus a smidgen of confidence that maybe one day he’d find the same thing. Hoppy bugged his eyes with a Well, go on expression. “What’s up?” Marcus asked Taggert.
“I’ve got some good news.” Taggert pulled his face into its poker mask.
“Good for who?” Marcus ventured.
“I got you your screen credit. Locked in. Guaranteed.”
The chatter and laughter of the party dropped away from Marcus. It was only for a moment or two, but that moment was sweeter and frothier than the champagne he’d just downed. “Pearl from Pearl Harbor has only just been given the go-ahead. How can you guarantee—”
“I’m not talking about Pearl,” Taggert said.
“He’s talking about The Boy Pharaoh,” Hoppy put in.
George uncorked another bottle of champagne and started filling everyone’s glasses. “What’s that?”
“It’s the new title the front office conjured up for Hoppy’s King Tut picture.”
“They decided The Curse of the Pharaoh sounded too much like a Universal cheapie horror flick.” Hoppy snorted. “And for once I agree with them. Any picture starring Basil Rathbone, Myrna Loy, and Freddie Bartholomew deserves better treatment.”
Taggert raised his eyebrows at Marcus. “I promised you an A-list credit.”
“Congratulations, my boy!” George gave Marcus’ chest a poke, but it felt more like a prod from a javelin. “Why aren’t you smiling?”
Marcus did his best to diffuse his frown. “I’m sorry,” he told Taggert, “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I appreciate whatever strings you had to pull.”
“It’s just that—?”
Before Marcus could reply, Hoppy jumped in. “It’s just that you didn’t write it yourself.”
Marcus nodded. “At least with Pearl from Pearl Harbor, I’ll have had some hand in writing it. Even if it’s only the first go-around.” He knew how churlish he sounded. Is it too much to ask that my first screen credit be for something I actually wrote?
“Haven’t you learned anything?” Taggert looked like he wanted to slug Marcus. “This is Hollywood. Anybody can be screwed out of any part of any movie at any time. Bird in the hand, Adler.”
Hoppy laid a hand on Taggert’s arm but kept his gaze on Marcus. “I get it,” he said. “Especially for your first. But you know how it works. Whoever’s name goes up on the screen ain’t hardly ever the guy who did the heavy lifting. Everyone at this party knows Sidney Howard didn’t write Gone with the Wind by himself, but did it stop him from accepting the Oscar? The King Tut picture’s turned out swell and I’d be very happy to take credit, but I’m no longer at MGM. I can’t think of any other name I’d rather see up there.”
“In fact,” Taggert put in, “all this was Hoppy’s idea. And you know what? I don’t care if you like it or not, the credit is yours. I’ve even seen the artwork.”
Title artwork was one of the final steps on a picture. Marcus felt a firework of excitement shoot up his spine.
“So can we celebrate now?” George raised his glass. “Here’s to Marcus Adler’s first screen credit.”
The four of them clinked their glasses. As they downed their champagne, an uneasy silence fell over the group.
“All right,” Hoppy said, “I’m going to bring it up, because I can’t go on ignoring the pink elephant in the swimming pool. How’s Hugo doing? Have you been to see him?”
Marcus shook his head.
“I hear his left ear is gone altogether,” Hoppy said. “And half his cheek.”
“Holy moly, that must have been awful to witness,” George said. “Has he regained consciousness? It’s been two days now.”
Marcus stubbed out his cigarette. “Let’s just say it’s a lot neater when it happens in the movies.” He lit up another.
* * *
Kathryn tried to keep her mind on the prattling conversation bouncing between her and Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker, but it wasn’t easy. One of Mayer’s secretaries had called to tell her to expect a telegram, but it hadn’t arrived yet. Her gaze kept wandering from the big house to Marcus. She was anxious to hear from Roy, but she was worried about Marcus, too. He was looking pale and drinking like a parched camel.
“Where are you tonight?” Dottie as
ked Kathryn. “You’ve been so distracted all evening. You couldn’t possibly be more drunk than me already. I was tanked before I even got here.”
“I’ve been expecting a telegram,” Kathryn explained. “Kind of important.”
“Oh?”
“Someone I know has run off and joined the army.”
“The what?” Benchley exclaimed. “Why would anyone join the military if he wasn’t forced to by law?”
“Isn’t a well-filled-out uniform reason enough?” Dorothy murmured into her bourbon.
Benchley nudged her. “Mrs. Parker! Have a heart, or see if you can borrow one.”
Kathryn looked back at the Garden’s main building. Please come, she begged the Western Union guy. I don’t care what it says, I just need to know where he is. She glanced back at Marcus, still standing with George and some of his friends. She didn’t mind much who they were talking about, as long as it wasn’t Roy. “You’ll have to excuse me,” she told Dottie and Benchley. “Marcus—ah—needs me—”
* * *
George’s mouth hung open wide enough to fit a tennis ball into. “Are you sure?”
Marcus nodded toward Kathryn as she approached the group. “Ask her,” he said. “She was trapped in there with me.”
“Is it really true?” Hoppy asked Kathryn. “Hearst forced Mayer to fire Marcus?”
“Oh.” Kathryn rolled her eyes at Marcus. “I thought we agreed to forget that night.”
Taggert shook his head. “I did wonder,” he said. “You were the only A-lister who got the chop.”
“I’m sure what happened at San Simeon probably didn’t help your cause,” George said, “even if it was five years ago.”
Marcus drained his champagne coupe. “Things have a way of working out just fine.”
Citizen Hollywood (Hollywood's Garden of Allah novels Book 3) Page 33
