“So I came to you, Monroe. I never saw a situation where you didn’t know a way out. I said to myself: even if he advises me to kill myself, I’ll ask Monroe.”
The buzzer sounded on Stahr’s desk—he switched on the dictograph and heard Miss Doolan’s voice.
“Five minutes, Mr. Stahr.”
“I’m sorry,” said Stahr. “I’ll need a few minutes more.”
“Five hundred girls marched to my house from the high school,” the actor said gloomily, “and I stood behind the curtains and watched them. I couldn’t go out.”
“You sit down,” said Stahr. “We’ll take plenty of time and talk this over.”
In the outer office, two members of the conference group had already waited ten minutes—Wylie White and Jane Meloney. The latter was a dried-up little blonde of fifty about whom one could hear the fifty assorted opinions of Hollywood—“a sentimental dope,” “the best writer on construction in Hollywood,” “a veteran,” “that old hack,” “the smartest woman on the lot,” “the cleverest plagiarist in the biz”; and, of course, in addition she was variously described as a nymphomaniac, a virgin, a pushover, a Lesbian and a faithful wife. Without being an old maid, she was, like most self-made women, rather old maidish. She had ulcers of the stomach, and her salary was over a hundred thousand a year. A complicated treatise could be written on whether she was “worth it” or more than that or nothing at all. Her value lay in such ordinary assets as the bare fact that she was a woman and adaptable, quick and trustworthy, “knew the game” and was without egotism. She had been a great friend of Minna’s, and over a period of years Stahr had managed to stifle what amounted to a sharp physical revulsion.
She and Wylie waited in silence—occasionally addressing a remark to Miss Doolan. Every few minutes Reinmund, the supervisor, called up from his office, where he and Broaca, the director, were waiting. After ten minutes Stahr’s button went on, and Miss Doolan called Reinmund and Broaca; simultaneously Stahr and the actor came out of Stahr’s office with Stahr holding the man’s arm. He was so wound up now that when Wylie White asked him how he was he opened his mouth and began to tell him then and there.
“Oh, I’ve had an awful time,” he said, but Stahr interrupted sharply.
“No, you haven’t. Now you go along and do the role the way I said.”
“Thank you, Monroe.”
Jane Meloney looked after him without speaking.
“Somebody been catching flies on him?” she asked—a phrase for stealing scenes.
“I’m sorry I kept you waiting,” Stahr said. “Come on in.”
It was noon already and the conferees were entitled to exactly an hour of Stahr’s time. No less, for such a conference could only be interrupted by a director who was held up in his shooting; seldom much more, because every eight days the company must release a production as complex and costly as Reinhardt’s Miracle.
Occasionally, less often than five years ago, Stahr would work all through the night on a single picture. But after such a spree he felt badly for days. If he could go from problem to problem, there was a certain rebirth of vitality with each change. And like those sleepers who can wake whenever they wish, he had set his psychological clock to run one hour.
The cast assembled included, besides the writers, Reinmund, one of the most favored of the supervisors, and John Broaca, the picture’s director.
Broaca, on the surface, was all engineer—large and without nerves, quietly resolute, popular. He was an ignoramus, and Stahr often caught him making the same scenes over and over—one scene about a rich young girl occurred in all his pictures with the same action, the same business. A bunch of large dogs entered the room and jumped around the girl. Later the girl went to a stable and slapped a horse on the rump. The explanation was probably not Freudian; more likely that at a drab moment in youth he had looked through a fence and seen a beautiful girl with dogs and horses. As a trademark for glamor it was stamped on his brain forever.
Reinmund was a handsome young opportunist, with a fairly good education. Originally a man of some character, he was being daily forced by his anomalous position into devious ways of acting and thinking. He was a bad man now, as men go. At thirty he had none of the virtues which either gentile Americans or Jews are taught to think admirable. But he got his pictures out in time, and by manifesting an almost homosexual fixation on Stahr, seemed to have dulled Stahr’s usual acuteness. Stahr liked him—considered him a good all-around man.
Wylie White, of course, in any country would have been recognizable as an intellectual of the second order. He was civilized and voluble, both simple and acute, half dazed and half satur-nine. His jealousy of Stahr showed only in unguarded flashes, and was mingled with admiration and even affection.
“The production date for this picture is two weeks from Saturday,” said Stahr. “I think basically it’s all right—much improved.”
Reinmund and the two writers exchanged a glance of congratulation.
“Except for one thing,” said Stahr, thoughtfully. “I don’t see why it should be produced at all, and I’ve decided to put it away.”
There was a moment of shocked silence—and then murmurs of protest, stricken queries.
“It’s not your fault,” Stahr said. “I thought there was something there that wasn’t there—that was all.” He hesitated, looking regretfully at Reinmund: “It’s too bad—it was a good play. We paid fifty thousand for it.”
“What’s the matter with it, Monroe?” asked Broaca bluntly.
“Well, it hardly seems worth while to go into it,” said Stahr.
Reinmund and Wylie White were both thinking of the professional effect on them. Reinmund had two pictures to his account this year—but Wylie White needed a credit to start his comeback to the scene. Jane Meloney was watching Stahr closely from little skull-like eyes.
“Couldn’t you give us some clue,” Reinmund asked. “This is a good deal of a blow, Monroe.”
“I just wouldn’t put Margaret Sullavan in it,” said Stahr. “Or Colman either. I wouldn’t advise them to play it—–”
“Specifically, Monroe,” begged Wylie White. “What didn’t you like? The scenes? the dialogue? the humor? construction?”
Stahr picked up the script from his desk, let it fall as if it were, physically, too heavy to handle.
“I don’t like the people,” he said. “I wouldn’t like to meet them—if I knew they were going to be somewhere, I’d go somewhere else.”
Reinmund smiled, but there was worry in his eyes.
“Well, that’s a damning criticism,” he said. “I thought the people were rather interesting.”
“So did I,” said Broaca. “I thought Em was very sympathetic.”
“Did you?” asked Stahr sharply. “I could just barely believe she was alive. And when I came to the end, I said to myself, ‘So what?’”
“There must be something to do,” Reinmund said. “Naturally we feel bad about this. This is the structure we agreed on—–”
“But it’s not the story,” said Stahr. “I’ve told you many times that the first thing I decide is the kind of story I want. We change in every other regard, but once that is set we’ve got to work toward it with every line and movement. This is not the kind of a story I want. The story we bought had shine and glow—it was a happy story. This is all full of doubt and hesitation. The hero and heroine stop loving each other over trifles—then they start up again over trifles. After the first sequence, you don’t care if she never sees him again or he her.”
“That’s my fault,” said Wylie suddenly. “You see, Monroe, I don’t think stenographers have the same dumb admiration for their bosses they had in 1929. They’ve been laid off—they’ve seen their bosses jittery. The world has moved on, that’s all.”
Stahr looked at him impatiently, gave a short nod.
“That’s not under discussion,” he said. “The premise of this story is that the girl did have dumb admiration for her boss, if you want
to call it that. And there wasn’t any evidence that he’d ever been jittery. When you make her doubt him in any way, you have a different kind of story. Or rather you haven’t anything at all. These people are extraverts—get that straight—and I want them to extravert all over the lot. When I want to do a Eugene O’Neill play, I’ll buy one.”
Jane Meloney, who had never taken her eyes off Stahr, knew it was going to be all right now. If he had really been going to abandon the picture, he wouldn’t have gone at it like this. She had been in this game longer than any of them except Broaca, with whom she had had a three-day affair twenty years ago.
Stahr turned to Reinmund.
“You ought to have understood from the casting, Reiny, what kind of a picture I wanted. I started marking the lines that Corliss and McKelway couldn’t say and got tired of it. Remember this in the future—if I order a limousine, I want that kind of car. And the fastest midget racer you ever saw wouldn’t do. Now—” He looked around. “—shall we go any farther? Now that I’ve told you I don’t even like the kind of picture this is? Shall we go on? We’ve got two weeks. At the end of that time I’m going to put Corliss and McKelway into this or something else—is it worth while?”
“Well, naturally,” said Reinmund, “I think it is. I feel bad about this. I should have warned Wylie. I thought he had some good ideas.”
“Monroe’s right,” said Broaca bluntly. “I felt this was wrong all the time, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.”
Wylie and Jane looked at him contemptuously and exchanged a glance.
“Do you writers think you can get hot on it again?” asked Stahr, not unkindly. “Or shall I try somebody fresh?”
“I’d like another shot,” said Wylie.
“How about you, Jane?”
She nodded briefly.
“What do you think of the girl?” asked Stahr.
“Well—naturally I’m prejudiced in her favor.”
“You better forget it,” said Stahr warningly. “Ten million Americans would put thumbs down on that girl if she walked on the screen. We’ve got an hour and twenty-five minutes on the screen—you show a woman being unfaithful to a man for one-third of that time and you’ve given the impression that she’s one-third whore.”
“Is that a big proportion?” asked Jane slyly, and they laughed.
“It is for me,” said Stahr thoughtfully, “even if it wasn’t for the Hays office. If you want to paint a scarlet letter on her back, it’s all right, but that’s another story. Not this story. This is a future wife and mother. However—however—–”
He pointed his pencil at Wylie White.
“—this has as much passion as that Oscar on my desk.”
“What the hell!” said Wylie. “She’s full of it. Why she goes to—–”
“She’s loose enough,” said Stahr, “—but that’s all. There’s one scene in the play better than all this you cooked up, and you’ve left it out. When she’s trying to make the time pass by changing her watch.”
“It didn’t seem to fit,” Wylie apologized.
“Now,” said Stahr, “I’ve got about fifty ideas. I’m going to call Miss Doolan.” He pressed a button. “—And if there’s anything you don’t understand, speak up—–”
Miss Doolan slid in almost imperceptibly. Pacing the floor swiftly, Stahr began. In the first place he wanted to tell them what kind of a girl she was—what kind of a girl he approved of here. She was a perfect girl with a few small faults as in the play, but a perfect girl not because the public wanted her that way but because it was the kind of girl that he, Stahr, liked to see in this sort of picture. Was that clear? It was no character role. She stood for health, vitality, ambition and love. What gave the play its importance was entirely a situation in which she found herself. She became possessed of a secret that affected a great many lives. There was a right thing and a wrong thing to do—at first it was not plain which was which, but when it was, she went right away and did it. That was the kind of story this was—thin, clean and shining. No doubts.
“She has never heard the word labor troubles,” he said with a sigh. “She might be living in 1929. Is it plain what kind of girl I want?”
“It’s very plain, Monroe.”
“Now about the things she does,” said Stahr. “At all times, at all moments when she is on the screen in our sight, she wants to sleep with Ken Willard. Is that plain, Wylie?”
“Passionately plain.”
“Whatever she does, it is in place of sleeping with Ken Willard. If she walks down the street she is walking to sleep with Ken Willard, if she eats her food it is to give her strength to sleep with Ken Willard. But at no time do you give the impression that she would ever consider sleeping with Ken Willard unless they were properly sanctified. I’m ashamed of having to tell you these kindergarten facts, but they have somehow leaked out of the story.”
He opened the script and began to go through it page by page. Miss Doolan’s notes would be typed in quintuplicate and given to them, but Jane Meloney made notes of her own. Broaca put his hand up to his half-closed eyes—he could remember “when a director was something out here,” when writers were gag-men or eager and ashamed young reporters full of whiskey—a director was all there was then. No supervisor—no Stahr.
He started wide-awake as he heard his name.
“It would be nice, John, if you could put the boy on a pointed roof and let him walk around and keep the camera on him. You might get a nice feeling—not danger, not suspense, not pointing for anything—a kid on the roof in the morning.”
Broaca brought himself back in the room.
“All right,” he said, “—just an element of danger.”
“Not exactly,” said Stahr. “He doesn’t start to fall off the roof. Break into the next scene with it.”
“Through the window,” suggested Jane Meloney. “He could climb in his sister’s window.”
“That’s a good transition,” said Stahr. “Right into the diary scene.”
Broaca was wide-awake now.
“I’ll shoot up at him,” he said. “Let him go away from the camera. Just a fixed shot from quite a distance—let him go away from the camera. Don’t follow him. Pick him up in a close shot and let him go away again. No attention on him except against the whole roof and the sky.” He liked the shot—it was a director’s shot that didn’t come up on every page any more. He might use a crane—it would be cheaper in the end than building the roof on the ground with a process sky. That was one thing about Stahr—the literal sky was the limit. He had worked with Jews too long to believe legends that they were small with money.
“In the third sequence have him hit the priest,” Stahr said.
“What!” Wylie cried, “—and have the Catholics on our neck.”
“I’ve talked to Joe Breen. Priests have been hit. It doesn’t reflect on them.”
His quiet voice ran on—stopped abruptly as Miss Doolan glanced at the clock.
“Is that too much to do before Monday?” he asked Wylie.
Wylie looked at Jane and she looked back, not even bothering to nod. He saw their week-end melting away, but he was a different man from when he entered the room. When you were paid fifteen hundred a week, emergency work was one thing you did not skimp, nor when your picture was threatened. As a “free lance” writer Wylie had failed from lack of caring, but here was Stahr to care, for all of them. The effect would not wear off when he left the office—not anywhere within the walls of the lot. He felt a great purposefulness. The mixture of common sense, wise sensibility, theatrical ingenuity, and a certain half-naïve conception of the common weal which Stahr had just stated aloud, inspired him to do his part, to get his block of stone in place, even if the effort were foredoomed, the result as dull as a pyramid.
Out of the window Jane Meloney watched the trickle streaming toward the commissary. She would have her lunch in her office and knit a few rows while it came. The man was coming at one-fifteen with the French perfume sm
uggled over the Mexican border. That was no sin—it was like prohibition.
Broaca watched as Reinmund fawned upon Stahr. He sensed that Reinmund was on his way up. He received seven hundred and fifty a week for his partial authority over directors, writers and stars who got much more. He wore a pair of cheap English shoes he had bought near the Beverly Wilshire, and Broaca hoped they hurt his feet, but soon now he would order his shoes from Peel’s and put away his little green Alpine hat with a feather. Broaca was years ahead of him. He had a fine record in the war, but he had never felt quite the same with himself since he had let Ike Franklin strike him in the face with his open hand.
There was smoke in the room, and behind it, behind his great desk, Stahr was withdrawing further and further, in all courtesy, still giving Reinmund an ear and Miss Doolan an ear. The conference was over.
[Stahr was to have received the Danish Prince Agge, who “wanted to learn about pictures from the beginning” and who in the author’s cast of characters is described as an “early Fascist.”]
“Mr. Marcus calling from New York,” said Miss Doolan.
“What do you mean?” demanded Stahr. “Why, I saw him here last night.”
“Well, he’s on the phone—it’s a New York call and Miss Jacobs’ voice. It’s his office.”
Stahr laughed.
“I’m seeing him at lunch,” he said. “There’s no aeroplane fast enough to take him there.”
Miss Doolan returned to the phone. Stahr lingered to hear the outcome.
“It’s all right,” said Miss Doolan presently. “It was a mistake. Mr. Marcus called East this morning to tell them about the quake and the flood on the back lot, and it seems he asked them to ask you about it. It was a new secretary who didn’t understand Mr. Marcus. I think she got mixed up.”
“I think she did,” said Stahr grimly.
Prince Agge did not understand either of them, but, looking for the fabulous, he felt it was something triumphantly American. Mr. Marcus, whose quarters could be seen across the way, had called his New York office to ask Stahr about the flood. The Prince imagined some intricate relationship without realizing that the transaction had taken place entirely within the once brilliant steel-trap mind of Mr. Marcus, which was intermittently slipping.
Love of the Last Tycoon: The Authorized Text (No Series) Page 5
