MASH 14 MASH goes to Moscow

by Richard Hooker+William Butterworth

  “Dear Ms. Strydent!” he declaimed (more accurately, piped). “Welcome to gay and glamorous Hollywood! I am, of course, Wesley St. James! I am to daytime drama what Bill Shakespeare is to Stratford-upon-Avon.”

  “You’re a dear little man, I’m sure,” Ms. Strydent said, extending her hand to be kissed. “But if you’re important, how come you’re driving an old Packard?”

  Wesley St. James was slightly, but only slightly, taken aback by Ms. Strydent’s lack of recognition of his Rolls Corniche as the ne plus ultra of status symbols. He was, after all, quite accustomed to dealing with performers of one kind or another and fully aware that many of them are not very bright.

  “Let us go, my dear Ms. Strydent,” Wesley St. James said. “First to the room I have engaged for you at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and then to the Wesley St. James Studios, where we begin to consider what contribution you can make to the world of daytime drama.”

  “I am, of course, delighted to be here in Hollywood,” Ms. Strydent replied. “But before our relationship goes one inch further, little man, there are a couple of things we should have perfectly understood between us.”

  “Which are?”

  “You said ‘a room’ at the Beverly Hills Hotel, I believe?”

  “Yes, indeed,” Wesley St. James replied. “With a lovely view out the window directly upon Beverly Glen.”

  “I am a superstar,” Ms. Strydent said. “Superstars don’t have rooms, little man. Superstars have suites.” Possibly because he was not at all used to being talked back to at all, and possibly because in his judgment Shur-lee Strydent was even more of an overwhelming beauty up close than she had been over the boob tube, Wesley St. James caved in.

  “Of course,” he said. “Forgive me.”

  “And for another,” Shur-lee Strydent said, “superstars of my class don’t do soap opera. Specials, perhaps, if the price is right, but soap operas, never!”

  “We’ll talk about it,” Wesley St. James said, as he led Ms. Strydent to his Rolls. “I’m sure that something can be worked out.”

  An hour later, they were in Mr. St. James’s office at the Welsey St. James Studios. Seated on Chilian llama-upholstered armchairs, with a bottle of Moet & Chandon ’66 before them on a 12- by 18-foot plate-glass coffee table, the conversation began.

  “I flatter myself,” Wesley St. James said, “to think of myself simply as the medium through which the great talent of people like yourself, dear Ms. Strydent, is funneled to the folks over there in TV land. My modus operandi is simplicity itself. I see to it that you have anything your little heart desires, and in turn I ask only that you bring joy and happiness, plus a tear or two, into the drab and empty life of the American housewife.”

  “How sweet of you! Anything my heart desires?”

  “Anything at all,” Wesley St. James purred.

  “Sean O’Casey O’Mulligan,” Ms. Strydent purred right back.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You deaf or what? I said, ‘Sean O’Casey, O’Mulligan.’ You said I could have anything my heart desires, and I desire Sean O’Casey O’Mulligan.”

  “I don’t quite understand,” Wesley St. James confessed.

  “This morning, when I woke up,” Ms. Strydent said, “I realized that I had everything a girl could want. I had overnight become a superstar. ABS said I was a superstar, so I knew it must be true. I mean, if you can’t trust ABS, who can you trust, right?”

  “Right!”

  “And beside me, his tender body close to mine, so to speak, was Sean O’Casey O’Mulligan.”

  “Oh?”

  “At least until I reached over and kissed him tenderly on the forehead,” Ms. Strydent said, and a tear formed in her eye.

  “What happened then?”

  “Darling Sean opened one eye, sat up abruptly, and ran screaming out of the room.”

  “Why did he do that?” Wesley St. James asked.

  “I have no idea. I don’t care. All I know is that I want him back.”

  “I’ll get right on it,” Wesley St. James said. He reached for the telephone and gave the number which connected him with the gold telephone on the chairman of the board’s desk.

  “I’m afraid,” he said, ninety seconds later, “that we have a little problem.”

  “Which is?”

  “Mr. O’Mulligan seems to have left the country,” Wesley St. James said. “Together with Mr. Birdwell Richards.”

  “Get him back,” Ms. Strydent said, reasonably.

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible,” Wesley St. James said. “He has sought, and been granted, asylum in the Royal Abzugian Embassy in Paris.”

  “Asylum from what?”

  “That’s not quite clear at the moment,” Wesley St. James smoothly lied. “All we know is that he’s under the personal protection of his old friend, Sheikh El Noil Snoil the Magnificent, Royal Abzugian Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the World.”

  While it is quite true that Mr. O’Mulligan had previously awakened in some rather strange places, after having shared his resting place with some rather strange females, never before had the sight of a vaguely remembered face staring down at him with lust and adoration quite so terrified and revolted him.

  With his heart beating furiously, and fighting a near irresistible urge to end it all by jumping out of the window, he fled into the corridor and down it until he came to Mr. Birdwell Richards’s suite. Entering without knocking, he rushed into Mr. Richards’s sleeping chamber and roused his friend from a sound sleep.

  “Fine buddy you are, you lousy Welshman!” he screamed. “How dare you do something like that to me!”

  “Something like what to you, old top?” Mr. Birdwell Richards inquired. “Are you by chance referring to the lady, so to speak, with whom you got through the night?”

  “You admit it, then? Sneaking that ... that ... creature into my bed in what must be the worst practical joke of all time?”

  “The cold truth, old boy, is that you took her there ...” Birdwell Richards said.

  “Nobody, not even me, could get that drunk!”

  “... After you announced that she was the woman you had been looking for all your life.”

  “I did no such thing!” O’Mulligan said, horror in every syllable.

  “Oh, but you did,” Birdwell Richards replied, leering delightedly. “You even called a press conference to make the announcement.”

  “The last thing I remember was some idiot swinging on the chandelier in the Oak Room,” O’Mulligan said. “Crying ‘Me Tarzan, you Jane!’ ”

  “You don’t remember kissing her on the telly, then?”

  “On the where?”

  “On the television,” Birdwell Richards said.

  “Oh, my God!” O’Mulligan said. “Birdwell, you’ve got to help me!”

  “There’s only one person in the world who can get you out of this, Sean,” Birdwell Richards said.

  “Who?”

  “Boris!”

  “Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov, the world’s greatest opera singer? That Boris? How can he help me?”

  “He can surround you with his Arabian bodyguard, that’s how,” Birdwell said. “That bloodthirsty platoon of six-foot-six Arabs, armed with scimitars and the very latest submachine guns. That’s what it’s going to take, in my professional judgment, to keep you safe from that female. She said that you were the man she’s been looking for all her life, too. And she was sober.”

  A shrill, piercing voice penetrated the thick walls of the Plaza Hotel.

  “Sean, darling! Where is Shur-lee’s precious Sean-ikins?”

  “Oh, my God!” Sean cried. “It got out of its cage! It’s looking for me!” His eyes darted desperately around the room. They came to rest on the dumbwaiter door. In less time than it takes to tell, he was crowded into the dumbwaiter and frantically lowering himself into the kitchen. He concealed himself there, up to his nose in a cauldron of beef consomme, until Mr. Birdwell Richards cou
ld secure the services of a Department of Sanitation garbage truck, in which Mr. O’Mulligan was carried to Kennedy International and spirited aboard the very next flight to Paris, France.

  At first, Mr. Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov turned a deaf ear to Mr. Sean O’Casey O’Mulligan’s plight. He had, he said, enough trouble of his own avoiding lust-crazed women. But after Mr. Birdwell Richards pointed out that professional courtesy dictated that the world’s greatest opera singer offer what succor he could to the world’s greatest actor in his hour of need, and after he was shown the front-page photo of Mr. O’Mulligan kissing Ms. Strydent, he gave in.

  “Anyone who can get drunk enough to kiss a face like that deserves what help I can give,” Boris announced. “I declare that you, from this moment, are under the diplomatic protection of myself—that is to say, of Sheikh El Noil Snoil the Magnificent!”

  Sean O’Casey O’Mulligan, carried away by the emotion of the moment, kissed his hand.

  “For Christ’s sake, stop that!” Boris said. “The only person allowed to kiss my hand is my dog, Prince!”

  Shur-lee Strydent thought Wesley St. James’s announcement over for a moment, and then a smile creased her face.

  “Oh, of course!” she said. “I should have known ...”

  “Should have known what?”

  “He knew instinctively, like in that movie, that although he had discovered me, it was quite clear that soon I would be an even superer superstar than he is. Poor, darling Sean! Shur-lee’s Little Seanikins took himself out of the picture, so to speak. I’ll make it up to him later, teach him that I am big enough to love him even though I am the world’s greatest superstar and he’s nothing but a miserable has-been. But in the meantime, what other handsome men have you on tap for me, St. John?”

  “That’s St. James,” Wesley St. James said, rather snappishly.

  “Whatever,” Shur-lee Strydent said. “We superstars can’t be bothered with unimportant details. Have you got a scrapbook or something?”

  What followed, of course, is cinematographic (or movie) history.

  Adamantly refusing to appear on television, and cleverly appealing to Wesley St. James’s vanity, she induced him to produce his first Strydent Opus, a Wesley St. James Production, written, produced, and directed by Wesley St. James and released through Wesley St. James International, Unlimited.

  It was originally budgeted at $7.5 million, but when the books were finally closed, it had cost almost exactly twice that figure. Ms. Strydent was cast a wealthy, socially prominent Wellesley student who improbably fell in love with an impoverished, and somewhat rough around the edges, motorcyclist she first met in a Cambridge, Massachusetts, supermarket. The motorcyclist was played by Jamison James, the six-foot-two, 210-pound blond-haired star with dimples whom demographic studies had indicated was the second most popular handsome male star in the industry, right after Sean O’Casey O’Mulligan.

  The story was simplicity itself. Girl finds boy. Girl loves boy. Boy dies of an unspecified disease. Girl walks bravely off into the sunset, tears streaming down her cheeks, as a 120-piece orchestra plays “Jesus Loves Me” softly in the background.

  There were certain production problems. Jamison James was very unprofessional about the whole thing. He simply refused to get on the motorcycle, which was an integral part of the story. He had given his word, he said, to his personal secretary and “companion,” Dickie Darling, that he would take no greater risk with his famous profile than allowing Ms. Strydent to kiss him, once, on the forehead during the death-bed scene. He had no intention of riding around at great risk to life and limb on a stupid old motorcycle, and there wasn’t enough money in the world to get him to, as he put it, “let that person embrace me.” Doubles were provided, and skillful camerawork made it appear that Jamison James and Shur-lee Strydent had indeed been locked in passionate embrace, both on and off the motorcycle.

  When the sneak preview of the film was held, in Akron, Ohio, a good 25 percent of the audience somehow came to the conclusion that it was a comedy and laughed out loud when they should have been sniffling into their hankies. A lesser man would possibly have been discouraged by this, but not Wesley St. James. He simply decided to match the production costs of $7.5 million with an equal amount for advertising. The money was spent entirely on television advertising, most of it shown during the breaks between Mr. St. James’s parade of daytime dramas. What was advertised bore little (some said no) resemblance to what the ticket buyers would get in the movies, but this little problem was solved by the simple technique of having the film open simultaneously in the nation’s 14,206 drive-in motion picture emporiums. Within a week, production and advertising costs had been earned back and there was only a faint murmur of outrage from the drive-in patrons.*

  (*Mr. St. James had known all along that the primary reason couples go to drive-ins is because they are somewhat cheaper if not, generally, quite as comfortable as the facilities offered for the same purpose by Holiday Inn and Howard Johnson’s. Neither is it necessary to register, at most drive-ins, as Mr. and Mrs. John Smith. What actually appears on the screen, in other words, is of little consequence. What was important is that the couples could honestly tell their parents they had seen Superstar Shur-lee Strydent at the drive-in.)

  The film was then withdrawn from circulation for two months, after which it was brought back, for a one-night stand only, at regular (that is, indoor, sit-up) motion picture palaces. There were few complaints even then. People who have paid $3.50 a ticket are not generally willing to admit publicly that they have been swindled or hoodwinked. It was far easier to go along with the now rather widely held notion that Shur-lee Strydent was indeed the superstar of all time.

  Meanwhile, production of the second Shur-lee Strydent film, a comedy in which a playful rhinocerous named Sam chases Ms. Strydent, who plays the role of a playful bank robber, through the hills and dales of Los Angeles’s Mac-Arthur Park, was frantically under way.

  This (largely because, some cynics said, of the advertising budget) was even more successful than the first film, and it was quickly followed by The Mermaid Who Fell into the Sea. In this role, Ms. Strydent played the first mate of the S.S. Mobile Bay, who is blown overboard in a storm and becomes the White Goddess of a tribe of loin-clad South Pacific island dwellers, whose chief was played by another newcomer to the silver screen, a hard-rock musician who went by the name of Porky Pig, and whom studies showed was the third most popular male performer in show biz.

  While she found success, of course, thrilling, Ms. Strydent found herself thinking more and more of her Darling Seanikins. As best as she was able, she had kept track of him. She had learned that he had grown a beard and was still living in the Royal Abzugian Embassy in Paris under the personal protection of Sheikh El Noil Snoil the Magnificent. She dreamed of the moment when she could fly to him and take him again into her arms. What more could a girl ask of life, she reflected, than to be not only the superstar’s superstar, but to have Sean O’Casey O’Mulligan waiting for her at poolside, wearing those darling shorty-shorts, when she came home from a hard day at the studio.

  She was at poolside, in fact, dreaming of just this and having her hair lovingly straightened by Larry Lovely, her personal hairdresser, when Wesley St. James came rushing in.

  “Darling Shur-lee,” he piped, “you’ll never guess who I was just talking to and who wants to talk to you, with your permission of course.”

  “I give up,” Shur-lee said, somewhat snappish after having been rudely brought back to reality in the midst of a delightful fantasy in which she had been fondly patting Darling Seanikins’ head, while he knelt at her feet, painting her toenails.

  “Who lives in a big white house on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington?” Wesley St. James asked.

  Shur-lee Strydent thought it over for a minute and then shrugged. “Who cares?”

  “Who would you say is the most important man in America?” Wesley asked.

  “You’ve heard fro
m Sean!” she said, excitedly.

  “Not quite,” Wesley said. “Besides, he’s not an American.”

  “Get to the point, Wesley!”

  “How would you like to go to Moscow?” Wesley asked.

  “Not very much,” Shur-lee replied. “Have you been at the sauce again, Wesley, darling?”

  “No, I have not,” he said, somewhat peevishly. “Listen, darling, how do you feel about patriotism?”

  “It’s all right, I suppose, but whatever can it have to do with me?”

  “What would you say if I told you that Jim-Boy himself just telephoned to me, personally ... I wonder who gave him my number? ... and said that it’s your patriotic duty to go and entertain the Russians in Moscow.”

  “What are they offering?” Shur-lee said. “I won’t go for less than a million up front and twenty percent of the gross.”

  “What Our Beloved Leader has in mind, darling, is sort of a benefit,” Wesley said.

  “Then let him go to Moscow,” Shur-lee Strydent said.

  “Our Beloved Leader tells me that this is important to national security,” Wesley said.

  “That’s his business,” Shur-lee replied reasonably. “Mine is being a superstar.”

  “Now, listen, darling. It’ll be fun, really. Lots of publicity. And all you have to do is fly to Paris and pick up your co-star ...”

  “Co-star? Co-star? Now, that is asking too much! I don’t have co-stars. I have also stars, and special guest stars, but no co-stars ...”

  “We can work something out about the billing, I’m sure,” Wesley St. James said.

  “Did you say Paris, Wesley? Did I hear you say Paris?"

  “That’s right. He’s sending his personal plane. It will make one stop in Maine, and then another in Paris, to pick up this featured player who’s going with you, and then right to Moscow.”

  “You did say Paris?” Shur-lee Strydent said. “When do we leave?”

  “Just as soon as the plane gets here,” Wesley said. “It’s bringing the senator out from Washington.”