by Paul Sussman
‘Don’t worry,’ he replied, patting me on the back. ‘Mr Dextrus knows what he’s doing. You just watch. People’ll love it.’
And, to my amazement, they did. Before it was ten episodes old The White Knight of Bosworth had surpassed even The Fastest Gun in the West in popularity. I can provide no explanation for its success, nor any excuse for it, but from the moment it arrived on the nation’s – and later the world’s – cinema screens, it was a monumental hit.
‘Told you,’ said the show’s director jovially. ‘Mr Dextrus knows exactly what he’s doing. He has the Midas touch.’
As I result of the show’s success I became, literally overnight, a very big star indeed, and was soon receiving more weekly fan letters than Gloria Swanson and Richard Barthelmess put together. I attended screenings and galas and star-studded charity events, was mobbed wherever I went, and even got to meet President Hoover, who told me, rather prosaically, that in a depressed world I was a great force for good.
My picture appeared on hoardings throughout the country, I fronted a National Healthy Teeth Campaign – ‘The White Knight Says: Brush Before You Sleep!’ – and contracted writer’s elbow from signing so many autographs. In the words of Variety magazine, I was ‘the most stirring character to have appeared on our screens since the heyday of Charlie’s Little Tramp’.
There was but one slight drawback to all of this, and that was that, in accordance with a subclause in my contract, all public appearances had to be made in costume. The White Knight, as Luther never tired of telling me, was a man of mystery, and for mystery to be effective, ‘it’s got to damn well stay mysterious’.
Thus it was that my own name never appeared on the credits at the end of the show, I was only ever photographed wearing my helmet, and I was not permitted to reveal any details about my own personality to the press, who wouldn’t have been remotely interested anyway. It was the White Knight they wanted; not a homicidal ex-lavatory-chain salesman.
‘People don’t give a shit about Raphael Phoenix,’ explained Luther Dextrus, puffing acrid cigar fumes into my face. ‘As a person, you’re nobody. Nothing. Zilch. Zero. But as a knight, you’re a fucking national icon. So let’s keep it that way.’
The need to preserve my anonymity made for some very bizarre situations over the course of those four years. When I went to meet President Hoover, for instance, I did so on a (mange-free) battle-horse, accompanied by two squires and wielding an axe. The Dextruscreen publicity department went to great lengths to build me up as the long-lost son of Richard the Lionheart, and in interviews I found myself explaining, in all seriousness, that I had been born in Sherwood Forest and spent the early part of my life on crusades against the Saracens. I became so convincing at playing out this little charade that I almost came to believe the whole thing myself.
‘I’m losing track of who I am,’ I once moaned to Norman, the series make-up man. ‘I don’t have any personality of my own any more.’
‘Of course you do, darling,’ he chided, applying a dab of metal polish to the visor of my helmet. ‘You just need to draw a clear line between your public and your private life.’
‘But how can I do that,’ I groaned, ‘when most of my private life’s made up? I mean, last week I spent the night with a woman who insisted I make love to her with my helmet on. It’s ridiculous. People don’t seem to realize the whole thing’s fiction.’
‘That’s films for you, darling,’ sighed Norman. ‘They allow people to believe. Now sit back while I buff up your breastplate.’
If the truth be told, once the initial excitement had died down and I’d settled into my life as a film star, I found the whole thing rather irksome. It might have been different had I been working with a good script, or on a project that enthused me, but since with The White Knight of Bosworth neither situation held, disillusion set in almost immediately.
Every morning I would have to get up at four to be in the studio by five. I would then spend the next 12 to 14 hours performing extravagant deeds of derring-do encased in my converted bucket – absolute hell under the fierce glare of the studio lights – before grabbing a quick shower and then heading off in the evening, fully costumed again, for some glitzy premiere or swanky charity gala. I would rarely be home before midnight, usually much later, whereupon I would grab a couple of hours’ sleep before getting up and starting the whole thing all over again. This I did six days a week, 52 weeks a year, for four years. I have no hesitation whatsoever in proclaiming film stardom to be the most exhausting job I’ve ever had.
That’s not to say it didn’t have its benefits. Although by the standards of the other major studios Dextruscreen paid peanuts, it was a fortune compared to what most people were getting in those days, and I was able to purchase my first car – a rather becoming 1926 Ford Model T in, appropriately enough, phoenix brown – and put a down payment on a house on Tropical Avenue. I also splashed out on a crassly ostentatious gold ring, the face of which could be unscrewed to reveal a secret compartment, wherein I stored The Pill. For the next few years, death was, quite literally, right at my fingertips.
I got to attend all the best parties – although I always had to do it in costume – and became close friends with, amongst others, Gary Cooper, Ronald Coleman and Mabel Normand. I had my own table at the Brown Derby Restaurant, played tennis with Charlie Chaplin and became a regular visitor to W. R. Hearst’s sprawling neo-classical estate up at San Simeon. I even went skinny-dipping with Greta Garbo, who apologized for having stood me up the time I came round to demonstrate my musical lavatory chains.
Best of all, my sex life went into overdrive. I like to think that, even without a costume, I am a reasonably attractive man. Attired in a crusader cloak and fake chain-mail gauntlets, however, I became irresistible. Some of the most beautiful women of the day passed through the bedroom, and most other rooms, of my Tropical Avenue abode, and I only had to wave my broadsword to have girls falling at my feet. I shan’t dwell on the matter for fear of seeming boastful, but I will say that Theda Bara had the most fantastic bosoms and Joan Crawford the most voluptuous mouth of any women I’ve ever known.
Yes, stardom had its fun side, its little perks and frivolities. In the main, however, I found it a hard, boring and burdensome affair; a relentless round of bad scripts, bad plots, bad publicity stunts and, for me at least, increasingly bad moods. I began drinking heavily – treble whiskeys at six in the morning – and became more and more reliant upon the dissolvable cocaine powder prescribed to me by the studio doctor. From being mildly irritated by the whole White Knight phenomenon I came to resent it, and then to hate it, and finally to detest it with every cell in my body, so that each morning I would get up and go into the studio with all the enthusiasm of a man about to face a firing squad. I detested my costume, I detested the ridiculous lines I had to say and I detested myself for carrying on with the whole charade. Most of all, however, I detested Luther Dextrus for making me play the part. Not a week went by without me going into his office and begging him to release me from my contract, and not a week went by without him refusing.
‘You’re making me big bucks, son,’ he would say cheerfully, puffing on his Visible Inmensos. ‘And big bucks is all I give a fuck about.’
‘But Luther,’ I would plead, ‘I can’t stand it any more. I hate the sodding White Knight of Bosworth. You can get someone else, for Christ’s sake.’
‘I don’t want anyone else,’ he would reply, patting me on the back. ‘You are the White Knight. No one could be as good as you. You’ve made the part your own.’
‘And what if I refuse to work?’
‘I’ll sue you.’
‘I’ll leave the country.’
‘I’ll send people after you. You’ve signed a contract, for Chrissakes. Jeez, most people would be happy to be in your situation. Most people would be kissing my ass. Fucking ungrateful limeys! Now get back on set and do what I’m paying you for.’
By August 1931 I had reached the very en
d of my tether, and was, albeit in my drunker moments, seriously contemplating unscrewing the face of my gold ring and popping The Pill there and then, when I received an unexpected summons to Luther’s office.
‘Come in, come in!’ he cried with unaccustomed joviality. ‘Sit down. Have a cigar. Put your feet up. Relax.’
‘What is it, Luther?’ I said warily. ‘What do you want now? If it’s about doing another toothpaste campaign, I’m not interested.’
‘It’s nothing like that,’ he laughed. ‘I’ve got some good news!’
‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘What’s that then? I’m getting a new helmet? We’re getting an extra horse on the show?’
He chortled.
‘English humour. Very funny. No, what I want to tell you is that I’m pulling The White Knight of Bosworth. I’m ending the series.’
‘You’re what?’
‘It’s over. Finito. The White Knight is no more. Quit while you’re ahead, that’s what I say.’
‘Oh Luther!’ I cried, literally falling at his feet. ‘That’s the best news I’ve ever heard! Thank you! Thank you!’
‘It gets better,’ he squeaked. ‘I’m putting together a new show and you’re gonna be the star!’
I stopped fawning and looked up at him – or rather across at him, for kneeling down I came to about the same height.
‘Oh yes.’
‘It’s set in ancient Rome,’ he enthused. ‘With chariots and slaves and vestal virgins and all that shit. It’s gonna be huge.’
My heart sank.
‘What’s it called, Luther?’ I groaned.
‘You’re gonna love this,’ he chuckled. ‘It’s called The Masked Gladiator. And guess who gets to play the gladiator?’
Two weeks later a press conference was held to launch the new serial.
Luther’s press conferences were legendary. Had he expended a fraction of the effort, thought, time and money on his productions as he did on publicizing them, he would doubtless have been hailed as the most extravagantly imaginative producer Hollywood had ever known.
‘It’s not the product,’ he explained, ‘but the way you sell it. People’ll eat turd if you dress it up enough.’
A truism proved over and over again by the success of his productions. Each episode of The White Knight, for instance, cost somewhere in the region of $2,500 to make. Ten times that amount, however, would regularly be spent on advertisements and publicity stunts to help promote the programme and attract viewers. He once paid Los Angeles Municipal Council $60,000 to close off Sunset Strip for a day so he could hold a promotional jousting tournament thereon. The ruse worked. Viewing figures went up by almost 17 per cent and he recouped his money in a matter of days.
For Luther Dextrus, publicity was all, and he never stinted in his efforts to obtain it. No string remained unpulled, no cliché unexploited in the struggle to promote his studio’s output. The launch of The Little Detectives was celebrated by the sending of a chocolate bar to every single orphan in America, irrespective of whether they wanted one or not, whilst those attending the premiere of his 1922 epic America each received a miniature, gold-plated Statue of Liberty, with bubble-bath inside. The White Knight opened with a medieval pageant that made the average Cecil B. de Mille production look positively pedestrian.
For his Masked Gladiator press conference, however, Luther had excelled himself even by his standards. A large area of the Dextruscreen back lot had been cordoned off and upon it built nothing less than a life-sized segment of Rome’s Coliseum. From the rear this just looked like a lot of wooden panels supported by scaffolding. Walk round the other side, however, and the effect was startlingly realistic, with banks of seats, a satin-draped imperial box and, to either side of the latter, two dark tunnels through which the gladiators could emerge. The whole thing would, of course, later be used in the filming of the series itself, but the wealth of detail that had been lavished upon it and the sturdiness of its construction were entirely down to the fact that Luther wanted to hold his conference in it.
He himself was to speak from the imperial box. This sat bang in the middle of the structure, some ten feet above the arena floor, with a purple canopy over it and a battery of microphones arranged along its railed front edge. To left and right were seated over 500 costumed extras – specially employed at a dollar a day to roar and shout and conjure up the ambience of ancient Rome – whilst on either side of the podium, at ground level, issued the tunnels from which, at the climax to the conference, myself and another gladiator would emerge to enact a carefully choreographed swordfight for the benefit of the press. The latter were seated on the arena floor, looking up at Luther and some 50 feet back from him.
The most striking feature of the whole affair, however, came in the form of a large enclosure that had been installed at the foot of the imperial box, between the entrances to the two tunnels. This somewhat anomalous addition to the proceedings had a small pond at its centre and was surrounded by a 5-foot-high chain-link fence, a necessary precaution, since the enclosure was full of live alligators. The idea was that, as we fought, my fellow gladiator and I would crash against the fence, hence agitating the reptiles and heightening the drama of our conflict.
‘I wanted to have lions as well,’ declared Luther with a frustrated chomp on his cigar, ‘but apparently the ’gators would have eaten them. Lions would really have made it.’
‘I think the alligators are fine on their own,’ I assured him.
‘They fucking well better be,’ he snapped, ‘after the money I paid to bring ’em over from Florida. You know how much a train ticket costs for a ’gator?’
Precisely why Luther had chosen alligators for his press conference was uncertain. Their effectiveness, however, could not be denied. They swished around and snapped their jaws and peered menacingly at anyone who cared to look at them, and when the assembled journalists threw them the steaks with which they’d been issued on arrival at the studio, the reptiles went obligingly berserk.
Such was the outlandish scene in which I found myself that stiflingly hot morning in the summer of 1931. With my fellow gladiator I was stationed in a sort of makeshift room beneath the imperial box, each of us ready to charge out of our respective tunnels and do battle for the benefit of the press. Directly above our heads stood Luther Dextrus, his check-suited form easily visible through gaps in the planked floor. The extras were roaring, and nearby could be heard the plop and slither of the alligators, the latter clearly upset by all the noise and attention.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ squeaked Luther from above, ‘or should I say ladies, gentlemen and citizens of Rome!’
A huge, well-rehearsed roar from the extras.
‘How long before we’re on?’ asked my companion.
‘About ten minutes,’ I replied.
‘OK,’ he said, laying aside the net and trident with which he was armed. ‘I’m gonna take a leak.’ Whereupon he exited through a door at the back of our lair, leaving me alone.
I was not, to put it mildly, in the best of moods. Quite aside from the fact that I wanted nothing whatsoever to do with The Masked Gladiator, I was, as the show’s eponymous hero, required to sport singularly the most uncomfortable item of headgear ever devised. A cross between a fencing mask and a giant clam, this encased my cranium like a large tin mouth and was done up with so many straps and fittings that it took upwards of 15 minutes to get it either on or off. Not only was it shoulder-bendingly heavy, it was also extremely hot, particularly in the 100 degree heat of summer. Rivers of sweat snaked across my naked torso before losing themselves in the folds of my skimpy loincloth.
‘Bugger you, Luther Dextrus!’ I muttered to myself, pacing back and forth beneath him. ‘Bugger, bugger, bugger!’
‘With films such as America,’ came his voice from above, ‘incidentally the highest grossing movie of all time, and series like The Fastest Gun in the West, The Little Detectives and The White Knight of Bosworth, Dextruscreen has become one of, if not the, most s
uccessful film studios ever.’ Another roar of approval from the crowd. A popping of flashbulbs. A swish and snap from the ’gator enclosure.
‘Today I am pleased to announce our newest and most ambitious project to date.’
Roar, pop, swish, snap.
I looked up. Luther was almost directly above me, the soles of his patent-leather shoes some four feet from the top of my head. An occasional fine rain of cigar ash descended through gaps between the planks on which he was standing. One of these gaps, I noticed, was rather wider than the others. Luther was positioned right over it, affording me a perfect view of the crotch of his check trousers.
‘The Masked Gladiator will be an epic adventure serial,’ he was saying, ‘set in ancient Rome. There’ll be excitement and thrills and spills like you’ve never seen before . . .’
For no other reason than to pass the time, I picked up my companion’s discarded trident – a seven-foot-long wooden pole surmounted by three rubber-tipped metal prongs – and raised it towards the gap. The latter was just wide enough for the trident to fit through. I prodded Luther’s left foot.
‘We’re gonna have chariot races, and hand-to-hand combat with wild animals, and stunts like you wouldn’t believe . . .’ he enthused to the assembled ranks of the press.
I poked his foot again. He lifted it a little, shook it, and then put it down. Again I poked, and again he shook it, this time replacing it slightly to the left of where it had been before, affording me an even clearer view of the area between his legs.
‘The Masked Gladiator will be the story of one man’s fight against the forces of evil!’
I pushed the trident right up through the gap towards his crotch. No one could have seen it because the flimsy wooden rail behind which Luther was standing was draped with a silk hanging, making everything from his waist down invisible. I touched one of the trident prongs lightly against his buttock.
‘The greatest fighter Rome has ever known, the masked gladiator’ – he stopped mid-sentence and swished his hand at the trident – ‘Sorry, folks. Damned flies. As I was saying, the masked gladiator is the greatest fighter . . .’
