Genius

by Patrick Dennis

  “But dat’s kinda costly. Yeah, I dig.”

  Indeed, Starr had made more than one film in perfect sequence, doing scene one in a studio in Hollywood, loading all the cast and crew onto a special train to film a second scene that lasted less than a minute on location in Kansas, putting them back on a train for another brief scene in Hollywood, piling them aboard a chartered ship for a quick shot on the Beach at Waikiki, shipping them back to Hollywood, and so on. These pictures rarely took less than a year to film, transportation costs came to more than the payroll, and if the actors could even remember the names of the characters they were playing after being herded through stations and freightyards and hotels and piers and bus terminals, they were a lot smarter than I think they were.

  “Now I’ll have to ask you to watch out for those telephone wires. Sixteenth century, you know.”

  “Don’t worry about dat, Mr. Starr. I dig.”

  “Splendid. Anyhow, in this scene Miss James is great with child, and she’s praying to . . .”

  “Who’s great with child?” Lady Joyce and Bunty Maitland-Grim had arrived in the Maitland-Grim Rolls-Royce, bearing a thermos of coffee.

  “Monica, my pet. You’re fourteen minutes late.”

  “But about fourteen hours early, knowing the way you work, Leander. Do you want us to change now?”

  “If you would, my dear. Just leave that coffee with me. Dennis, do show them into my apartment. That will be the women’s dressing room. I’ve assigned the men to your apartment. St. Regis!”

  St. Regis poked his head out of an upper window. He was wearing a kimono with an Elizabethan ruff of Kleenex around the collar. Panchromatic make-up had turned his face, hands, neck, and ears the color of a ripe apricot. “Yes, Mr. Starr, I’m just getting into my make-up.”

  “Fa God’s sakes why,” Lopez asked, “ain’t he a bird?”

  “Please show Lady Joyce and Mrs. Maitland-Grim to my bedroom. Dennis, you’ll find their costumes, suitably marked by scene and page number, in my living room. Then you can take the men’s things to your place. Now, Lopez, as I was saying . . .”

  A dozen or so costumes hung from the huge silver chandelier in Starr’s living room. They seemed a bit sleezy to me—felt and flannelette passing for velvet, some of the skirts not even hemmed, and everything hastily basted or pinned together. Interpreting my look correctly, Lady Joyce said, “Don’t worry, my dear. This tatty stuff photographs a lot better than the real thing. With the right lighting it will look lovely. That’s one thing Leander does know. And at least everything is clean.” Bunty giggled. “Oh, Monica, I’m nervous as a witch.” “Right up here, your ladyship,” St. Regis called.

  Then I picked up a great load of capes and doublets and tights and boots and swords—all neatly pressed and labeled—and hung them around our own living room. By the time I got back to the patio, another actor had appeared. He was a middle-aged Mexican who had done so well being sinister in Hollywood South-of-the-Border epics during the thirties that he had returned to Mexico, retired, and now was immensely rich through dabbling in real estate, acting only when he felt like it. He spoke glib, rapid English with all of the actory intonations, but with every statement tinged with the pressures of big business. His speech, off camera, contained almost no punctuation. “Good morning oh yes how do you do I’ve read some of your books in English of course they lose so much in translation awf’ly glad to meet you at last just tell me where to change and what’s to be done about make-up if anything and I’ll be right with you I do hope this flick won’t take too long three days for me and no more Mr. Starr said you see I’m trying to put together this parcel of land on the Reforma and . . . Oh yes of course I don’t want to disturb your wife I know how it is with the ladies must have their beauty sleep the bathroom will do splendidly be with you in a shake thanks ever so.”

  Out in the patio Starr and Lopez were setting up in the corner where Dr. and Miz Priddy lived. In addition to a saint of some sort set into a niche in the wall, there were some very pretty flowering bushes and interesting dappled shadows cast by a pepper tree. They had been joined by Mr. Guber, natty in a play suit and a straw sombrero with “Souvenir de Mexico” woven into the front of it. “Great day in the morninge,” he was saying, “when I left home I never dreamed I’d be makingue a movie with the great Leander Starr. Will this be awright for like a pee-on’s costume, Mr. Starr? Gee, will Shirl ever be thrilled if it plays at the Queen Anne in Teaneck.”

  My wife came hustling out of our apartment, clutching her peignoir to her, to report that there was a naked man in our bathroom.

  Lady Joyce and Bunty emerged from Starr’s apartment, hair scooped back into great Renaissance buns, skirts held high above the dust, glowing English complexions innocent of make-up or else enhanced so subtly that no traces of cosmetics were evident even in the sunlight. It was the first time I’d ever realized how very pretty Bunty actually was. “Will this do, Leander? I copied the hair from a portrait hanging in Bunty’s bar. The period is authentic.” Lady Joyce could be very businesslike when back in the traces. “You look ravishing, my dears. Now be still.” Bunty stifled a giggle, and then they sat down, after spreading sheets over the chairs to protect their costumes, and studiously reviewed their lines.

  “Ever so sorry to give your wife such a start in the biffy couldn’t find my jock anywhere do hope she didn’t mind all in the business you know.” It was the actor who was to play Don Fernando, Doña Ana-Rosa’s spouse. He looked very much the grandee, except that he was smoking a cigarette through a Dunhill holder (“have to you know no good lousing up a whole take with these ghastly coughing fits”). Always the actor as well as the realtor, he surveyed himself critically in a long mirror. “Do hope my hair is long enough wigs give me the itch didn’t do a thing about make-up but you may want to shade my chops a bit as I’m getting a trifle jowly be fifty-five next month you know now if you’ve got an extra script I’ll give the old lines the once over thanks ever so.”

  Upon being introduced to his film wife he said, “Good God Monica James I remember you doing a picture with Romney Brent while Lupe Vélez and I were slugging it out on the next sound stage poor Lupe how have you been my dear?” The three of them sat happily smoking and gossiping, while Starr fretted and fumed and consulted his watch and cursed González for being late.

  At half past seven Catalina Ximinez made a real star’s entrance from her own sumptuous quarters. I gasped at the sight of her. She was made up within an inch of her life, wearing false lashes that looked as though a brace of centipedes had dropped dead on her eyelids. Her hair—if it could be called that—was bleached the color of a brass cuspidor and lacquered and tortured into a towering edifice. In spite of the heat, she was swathed in her dirty white-fox coat. “Good God,” Don Fernando said, “it can’t be old Catalina Ximinez I thought she was dead but it is by God.” In Spanish he said, “Ah, Catalina, querida! Usted es muy, muy, muy, hermosa! Bellisima! What’s she got up as haven’t seen anything like it since Mae West playing with Cary at Paramount must have been thirty-two thirty-three. Bella! Bella!”

  Madame X took the Spanish flattery as her due, not understanding the English, smiled vacantly, and then screamed something in the general direction of her bedroom. In a moment Abelardo and one of the many anonymous servants of Casa Ximinez struggled out with a rose-velvet chaise lounge and a Deauville umbrella to shield Our Star from the ravages of the sun. Mamacita, who had somewhere found an old muskrat cape, followed and bounced happily on one of her tubular chromium chairs. “Mai . . . dotter . . . beeg . . . star,” she announced, and flashed her toothless gums around the patio.

  I said to Starr, “Look at the Ximinez! What are you going to do about that getup?”

  “Don’t worry,” Starr said. “She’s supposed to play a slut and a fool, only she doesn’t know it. I’ll handle her. By the time I finish with her, she may steal the whole picture.”

  Emily appeared looking angry and sullen, but at least she was there
and more or less willing to play the role of Maria. Just what magic words Starr had found to say to her the night before I shall never know. Three or four actors in costumes of the sixteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries drifted out of our apartment and sat, like very well-mannered children, around the tile table playing cards and drinking Pepsi-Cola.

  Even with Starr working at breakneck speed, I soon discovered that making movies, like making war, is mostly a question of “hurry up and wait.” At the moment we all seemed to be waiting for González, the film, the lights, and the crew. Sometime after nine the old hog waddled in, all smiles and abrazos. “Buenos días, mi hermano! Buenos días!”

  “Buenas tardes!” Starr snapped. “Just where the hell have you been?”

  Through Heff, González went into long flowery explanations: he was late because for his dear brother he went through tortures locating the finest film to be procured, the newest lights, the most gifted crew. The lights looked old, weak, and dangerous. As for the crew, they shuffled about as though they’d never worn shoes before, cautiously fingering and examining everything. It seemed to me that they were seeing a film made for the first time in their lives and were quite awed by the experience.

  It was Mr. Lopez, however, who gave González his comeuppance. If González hadn’t been able to foist off his own cameraman on Starr, I don’t think he’d ever counted on Starr’s finding one who was so knowledgeable or quite so fluent and profane in the Spanish language. Lopez grabbed the single can of film that González had brought. “Dat slob calls dis crap film? And one lousy can of it? Ten minutes’ worth and short ends at that. Dey use better stuff dan dis for blue movies. An’ look at dese lights. Where da hell he find ’em? De old Vitagraph studios? An’ looka dat lousy commie crew.” While González stood there bug-eyed, Lopez fired questions at all of the men González had brought and discovered that not one of them had ever worked on a film before, although the chief electrician had repaired appliances in a shop at Coyoacán. Then Lopez turned on González and really let him have it in his native tongue. I don’t know what he said, but it must have been good because all of the Spanish-speaking members of the cast burst into loud applause at the end of the diatribe. I gathered that González wasn’t any too popular with them either. Heff, looking sick with embarrassment, was sent off in the Mercedes to pick up ten cans of film to the Lopez perfectionistic specifications. González, puffing with rage, retired to sit in the shade.

  “Okay, Mr. Starr,” Lopez said calmly, “you may as well rehearse dis scene, den maybe we can get going.”

  “Very well,” Starr said crisply. “Now you all know what the story’s about, you’ve all been introduced, so we’ll start out with Doña Ana-Rosa—Miss Monica James, please—Don Fernando and the maid Conchita. May I have absolute quiet? Thank you. And I shall also want the vulture. The vulture has not been written into Mr. Dennis’ script. He is my own device. Now where the hell is he? St. Regis!”

  “I’ll be right down, Mr. Starr,” he replied from Starr’s apartment. And he was!

  None of the performers, not even Catalina Ximinez, had been able to make such an entrance. St. Regis burst forth from Starr’s apartment painted like a billboard. His marcelled hair shone like a copper pot. In addition to his peach-blush flesh, he was rouged like a harlot, his lips the color of a pomegranate, his lashes crimped and beaded with mascara, the lids an iridescent blue, deeply lined and extended with black, and his rather pale eyes awash with belladonna, dilating his pupils so that he groped his way blindly in the sunlight. He looked as though he’d learned make-up at the feet of Mae Murray. But what he’d done to his face and head was as nothing compared to the rest of him. His basic costume consisted of shiny black tights and a leotard fitting so snugly that every rib could be counted. But only God and St. Regis knew what he’d padded the front of himself with—the week’s laundry perhaps. “Qué hombre!” one of the actors shouted and whistled in disbelief.

  “Do I look all right, Mr. Starr?” St. Regis asked, lashes fluttering.

  “Yes, considering that your face won’t show anyhow. But what in the hell have you got stuffed in there, a kangaroo?”

  St. Regis blushed beneath the layers of panchromatic make-up. “It was jest that my dance belt was so very snug. . . .”

  “Well, whatever it is, take it out. This is a movie, not a freak show.”

  With St. Regis back to normal, so to speak, and his paint job obliterated by the outsized vulture’s head, the rehearsals progressed fairly well. The only distractions were Bunty’s nervous giggling, Perro’s incessant barking, and Loro’s voluble impersonations of Madame X collecting the rents. It slayed the actors, and it certainly lowered the status of Catalina Ximinez, Star of the First Magnitude. Bunty was scolded by Starr, and the animals hastily dispatched to the cellar by Abelardo. By the time they had run through the scene two or three more times, Heff had returned with the new film, the camera was loaded, and we were ready to do the first shooting.

  By ordering González’s bumbling peons off the set, Starr was able to set up the lights himself. After a few questions from Lopez it became evident that the González sound “expert” had been hastily recruited from a record shop on the Insurgentes, so Starr set up the mike boom and took over the console for the magnetic tape. “Very well,” he said, shooting a malign glance at González, “I can handle the sound myself. Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, we seem to be a little shorthanded on the first day, but now I think we can start rolling. Hang on for just a moment.” With a practiced eye he flew from one performer to the next dabbing powder against reflection, pinning a costume here, arranging a loose strand of hair there. “Oh, I feel such a fool,” Bunty said. “You’re sure the old double chin isn’t too obvious Mr. Starr always be able to shade it in a mo,” Don Fernando offered. In addition to the people who were concerned with the picture, quite a lot of others had happened in. Nothing of much moment ever occurs in our barrio without word spreading rapidly, and now upwards of a hundred people—tenants, servants, delivery men, neighbors, and passers-by had crowded into the patio. “Heff,” Starr said, “please tell them all that they’re welcome to watch, but we must have complete silence, and if there is one sound I’ll have to clear the set. Ready, everyone?” he asked the cast as he ducked into his headphones.

  The scene began as rehearsed. Don Fernando, who was a miracle of periods, commas, semicolons, question marks, and subtle shadings of speech while on camera, led his lovely wife, Doña Ana-Rosa, in. “Do you like it, my dearest?” “Oh, Fernando, it’s beautiful.” “Oh, Doña Ana-Rosa,” Bunty said. “It’s not a hacienda, it’s a palace! Finer than a castle in Spain.” For once she didn’t giggle. “And it’s really ours, Fernando?” “Ours and our sons’ and our sons’ sons’ and our sons’ sons’ sons’ to build a mighty nation—the land of New Spain.” “Oh, Fernando!” “Will you come inside, my heart?” “Oh, señora,” Bunty trilled, just barely under control, “the beautiful rooms, the kitchens, the nurseries!” “In a moment, Fernando, but pray leave me here alone for a little.” “Is señora unwell?” Bunty said with a good deal of suppressed passion. “The baby?” Starr’s face was working hard, registering all the emotions he had drilled into his actors. “Just a moment alone, I beg you. I shan’t be long.” “Very well, my dear. Come, silliness, and I will show you the finest nursery a son ever had.” It was Bunty’s cue to giggle, and she did not hold back. She bobbed off camera in paroxysms of girlish squeals. Very effective.

  Alone in front of the camera, Lady Joyce treated the lens to the full radiance of her glorious eyes, then she moved to the statue in the niche and fell to her knees. “Oh, blessed Virgin of Guadalupe,” she said, in her thrilling, throbbing voice, “grant to me a son worthy of this land. . . .”

  “Doctor, you got your school bag? And your bus fare? And your hard-boiled eggs?”

  “Yes, Modesta, my dear, hasta la vista, as the Spanish say.” A door opened right behind the supplicant figure of Lady Joyce, and Dr. and Miz Priddy step
ped out. “Well, well, well, what have we here? Home cinematography, I do believe. Well, as the Bard once said, ‘All the world’s a stage and all . . .’”

  Lady Joyce went into gales of laughter, and the whole silent audience broke up. There stood Dr. Priddy in sunglasses and Bermuda shorts, behind him Miz Priddy in a Hoover apron and amber beads.

  “Jesus!” Starr bellowed. “You bumbling old nincompoop! Couldn’t you stay in there with your big mealy mouths shut for just thirty seconds more?”

  “Well, Ah nevah?” Miz Priddy sniffed.

  “Do it again, God damn it, do it all over again.”

  “It’s not dat bad, Mr. Starr,” Lopez said encouragingly. “We can just cut from when the broad starts her prayers.”

  “Ah intind to speak to Miz Ximinez about this outrage?” Miz Priddy said self-righteously.

  “Oh, go fluff your duff, my dear,” Lady Joyce said. “Now shall we start from where I fall on my knees?”

  One more time, and the scene was considered complete. Starr, who in the past had thought nothing of doing fifty takes of a scene, was being very conscious of time and money, and the intensity of his feeling seemed to transmit itself to the actors. Even the most insensitive of them caught Starr’s feverish desire to work and work hard and fast. Fortunately, most of them had had stage experience that helped enormously. A performer whose work has been limited solely to movies can blow up his lines, belch, give a bad reading, or take a prat fall secure in the knowledge that the scene can be shot again and again and again until he’s fired or—if only by the law of averages—one take turns out to be satisfactory. On the living stage, if you come on with your fly open, trip over the doorsill, or forget your big soliloquy, that’s it. The first time is the last time. After the surprise entrance of Dr. and Miz Priddy, practically nothing went wrong. The actors were real troupers. Not only did they memorize their lines, not only did they fall in with every nuance of Starr’s direction, they even helped to shift furniture around the patio, contrary to all union regulations. It was all a little thrilling, and it made me think of what the pioneering days of motion pictures must have been like, when movies—and even some great ones—were shot in lofts and greenhouses and parks and open fields, before the formalization, standardization, and sterilization brought on by the mammoth studios of Hollywood. Before we broke for lunch three scenes—short ones to be sure—had been completed and were on their way to the lab to be processed.