Genius

by Patrick Dennis

  Tuesday, like Monday, involved only the principals working in Casa Ximinez. My wife, who by then had given up speaking to me, went grimly around the apartment tripping over actors in various states of undress, picking up other people’s clothes, and thinking they were mine, hanging them up in closets or sending them to be laundered. One particularly ugly mustard-yellow sport jacket was given outright to Guadalupe, and the young actor who owned it had the devil’s own time getting it back.

  González turned up almost on time, bringing with him a very few extra pieces of electrical equipment, a man who seemed to know at least the rudiments of lighting and, to handle the sound, a sinister fellow who looked as though he’d made his livelihood tapping telephones. They were something of an improvement, but they still didn’t know as much about their trades as Starr or Lopez.

  Lopez said grimly, “We’re gonna see some rushes tonight,” and managed to get rid of González for long periods at a time by sending him off to the processing laboratories in his Mercedes every time a can of film was completed. Heff was kept around as interpreter and general handy man. The only actual trouble González caused was when he reached out and pinched Catalina Ximinez and she indignantly broke her parasol over his head. I’d always suspected that that wasn’t really a bustle.

  During the morning we finished up the rest of the patio shots. After lunch we did Doña Ana-Rosa’s agonizing labor in Starr’s big carved walnut bed. Actress and director got into rather a heated argument as to just how a woman felt when she was giving birth, and Lady Joyce won it hands down. Mr. Guber suggested that someone say “Tear up some clean linen sheets and get all the boilingue water you can,” a cliché I’d only heard about five hundred times in the movies, but with an authentic sixteenth-century tiled kitchen at our disposal, we squandered a few feet of film on it with Bunty, a steaming caldron, Guadalupe, and Mamacita all racing around in a frenzy. Guadalupe was enchanted to earn fifty pesos as an extra, and it proved to be a turning point in Mamacita’s life as she soon learned from Heff to say “Ai . . . beeg . . . star.”

  Maidless, owing to the prior demands of art, my wife got our living room tidied up and then furiously stood by and watched while we used a corner of it to show depraved Don Pedro trying to seduce a simple Indian maiden.

  Mr. Guber generously volunteered his own quarters. With the removal of a serape, a plastic guitar, two sombreros, framed photographs of Shirley, the children, and the Teaneck J.W.V.’s annual post dinner-dance, it did nicely as Don Fernando’s estate office, although Mr. Guber was a trifle offended when we refused to use his portable computing machine as one of the sixteenth-century props.

  Emily, still angry and silent, had nothing to do that day but traipse moodily out to the dried-up well, crank up an empty water bucket, and then shake her fist tellingly at the flock of vultures wheeling above. Rehearsals and shooting took her all of ten minutes, and then she was off with Bruce.

  As on the preceding day, the most time and trouble were squandered on Madame X. She had a number of costume changes—riding habit, ball gown, negligee, two lavish daytime dresses, and a cloak—which kept her out of everyone’s way most of the time, and to the designer’s fury, Starr allowed her to junk them all up with gewgaws of her own. As before, he did all of her scenes two ways—once with the eyelashes, the subdued lighting, and the camera keeping its distance; and then a second time with her own eyes, the make-up toned down, realistic lighting, and plenty of weird angles and close-ups. I couldn’t imagine how any of the footage could be used for anything except frightening children, but Starr was lavish in his praises.

  By sundown we’d used up all of the film, done all of the scenes Starr and Lopez had planned, and were still an hour ahead of schedule. “We’ll see the rushes in my living room tonight at nine o’clock sharp,” Starr said. “Don’t be late.” To Catalina Ximinez he said, “Querida, you come to my place, ten o’clock,” and gave her plump arm a squeeze.

  There was quite a crowd of interested spectators gathered in Starr’s living room to view the rough rushes that night. Lady Joyce and Bunty had been invited, and even Henry Maitland-Grim seemed quite compos mentis. Angry as she was, Emily was too curious to stay away, and Bruce was being all smiles and protectiveness next to her on the sofa. Invited or not, González, with Heff as his mentor, sat furious on a straight chair, his thighs and buttocks overhanging the seat by a good foot on each side. Mrs. Pomeroy, as chief backer and director’s inspiration, was very much there. Lopez, looking like a vice president of the Chase Manhattan Bank, was fussing around with a projector and the tape machine. The lights went out. A few false starts at co-ordinating the sound with the action, a couple of unprintable words from Mr. Lopez, and we were off.

  I don’t truly remember now exactly what I had expected—not much, my wife claims. At any rate, I was surprised and most agreeably so. The shabby old patio photographed as though it had been built yesterday, and a coat of Casa oil on the battered Priddy front door made it gleam like freshly polished walnut. Through Bunty’s glissando of giggles we watched the scene involving Doña Ana-Rosa, Don Fernando, and Conchita the maid. Lady Joyce looked about twenty the way Starr had lighted her, and Lopez had caught her best angles. The shoddy costumes photographed like something straight from the court of Spain, and even the hoked-up lines I had provided took on a certain importance and dignity under Starr’s direction. The unexpected emergence of Dr. and Miz Priddy during Doña Ana-Rosa’s fervent prayer, Starr’s outburst, and Lady Joyce’s complete breaking up provided such enormous comic relief that Lopez had to halt the showing until everybody finished laughing. After that everything was down-to-earth and businesslike. Even though everything was out of sequence, leaping senselessly from the sixteenth century to the eighteen-eighties to the present, even though everything needed cutting and editing, you could still tell that it was a good picture. St. Regis, on the silver screen at last, was suitably sinister and even passably balletic in the role of the vulture. He cooed with pleasure from the rear of the room. Emily’s scene with poor old Miss Herrera came as one of those thunderbolts of realism that the artier film critics would be talking about for years. Her pains were rewarded by a spattering of applause led by my wife, who, up until now, couldn’t have been more anti-Valley of the Vultures.

  But the greatest scenes of all—and here there had been some quick cutting and splicing—were those involving Catalina Ximinez as the vicious, empty-headed Doña Isabel. Just for one more laugh, we were treated to her initial dive off her own doorstep, which sent everyone—even Emily—into such gales of laughter that Lopez had to run it again. Then we all settled out and watched the Starr version, as against the Ximinez version, of Doña Isabel. She was terrifying. In Starr’s harsh lighting, with the ridiculous eyelashes off, the garish make-up toned down to just that point where she looked like a woman of the eighties who had dipped too deep into the rouge pot, I could see immediately that Starr had been right to let her overdress. She looked old and mean and stupid and cruel—but these natural qualities were intensified by the camera, the lighting, and the direction. Her performance was electrifying, the close-ups were especially eerie. Spellbound, we watched the scene with her husband and the overseer, with which she had made her cinematic comeback the day before, as well as three of the scenes she had made earlier in the day. When it was finished, there was a moment of total silence and then a loud round of applause.

  “Jeest,” Lopez said, “if dat broad don’t watch it she’ll cop an Oscar.”

  “Ooooooo,” Bunty said with a convulsive little shudder.

  “It’s unbelievable,” Lady Joyce said. “Simply uncanny. She seemed so commonplace, so sort of stupid and bovine. And yet when she’s in front of the camera . . .” Even the sullen González sat up and took notice.

  “Now remember, everyone,” Starr said. “This is not exactly Catalina’s conception of the role. She’ll be here very shortly, and the rushes that she will see are entirely different from these.”

  As an
encore, Lopez ran off some old film clips that he’d found. One of them depicted a lot of gentry racing through the verdant countryside in Victorias. The actual locale was Sussex or Surry, but it was filmed from such a distance that no one would know the difference. He’d also picked up some old footage of cattle grazing, a Spanish colonial village (Santa Fé, if the truth were known, which it wouldn’t be), lush fields of waving grain, and some other odds and ends that would add a great deal of grandeur, scope, and authenticity to the picture without costing anything. Just as we were viewing a lot of aristocrats waltzing beneath a mammoth crystal chandelier—ideal for the General’s ball on the eve of the uprising—there came a discreet scratching at Starr’s door. “This will be Miss Ximinez,” Starr said. “Just don’t get your cans of film mixed up, Lopez.”

  Madame X swept in as though she might have been one of the old Hollywood’s several Marquises de la Falaise de Coudray. Under what used to be called a silver-fox “chubby,” she wore a yellowing white-satin evening dress of the early Carole Lombard period. Her gilded hair, finally released from its moorings, was severely parted, exposing the salt and pepper roots, completely covering one eye in the manner of Veronica Lake, and hanging in uneven scallops to her shoulders. Mamacita followed, prouder than Mrs. Temple, Mrs. Coogan, Mrs. Lyon ever could have been of their get. The ladies shed their pelts, acknowledged the enthusiastic applause, and sat down to watch the rushes. In the dim light reflected from the screen I watched Madame X’s face—the expression of weary patience, the polite boredom, the slight sneer at Lady Joyce’s performance, the screeching laughter at the unscheduled appearance of Dr. and Miz Priddy. They were the same old rushes, all right, until we got to the Ximinez scenes. Then Lopez snapped on the lights, quickly switched film cans, and reloaded the projector. What came on next was too horrendous to be believed. In the hazy, soft-focus light the men looked fragile and effeminate, like Meissen figurines. Owing to something Starr had done with the sound, even their voices had become slurring and syrupy. But the laugh riot of all time was Madame X, photographed always from a distance, and always at whatever angle could be considered her best; she made me think of nothing so much as the late Julian Eltinge playing in The College Widow or perhaps St. Regis doing Charley’s Aunt (one of his great triumphs at Alhambra High). I could barely control myself. Bunty couldn’t. She choked into her handkerchief, struggled to her feet, and fled up the stairs, knocking over a drink en route. Even the poised Bruce van Damm had a hard time keeping a straight face. But Señorita Ximinez and Mamacita were in raptures. Madame X leaned forward in ecstasy, enthralled by every flutter of the antennae of her eyelashes, whispering “Bella! Hermosa! Guapa! Dulce!” at every fatuous gesture, every toned-down squawk of her cockatoo voice. It seemed incredible that anyone could be quite so self-delusive when the ghastly truth was projected on a screen not ten feet away, but Madame X managed. I had managed to keep a hold on myself fairly well until the last of Doña Isabel’s scenes, when she did a trick with the eyelashes over and through the plumes of a dusty feather fan that left me helpless. I joined Bunty upstairs. When we were able to return, Madame X, lanquidly dragging her furs on the floor behind her, was doing her big exit. “Tonk you, Señor Starrr. Ai mus go ’ome an’ slip for tomorrow.” Mamacita proudly jerked a thumb toward Catalina. “Mai . . . dotter!” The door closed behind them.

  “Ecktualleh, I liked her better the second time,” Henry Maitland-Grim said.

  WEDNESDAY. Ball scene. Chignon. Children’s tourist cards. Eye make-up? Starr—rushes.

  Wednesday marked the last day of shooting at Casa Ximinez, the first day with enough extras to constitute a mob scene, and my debut as a movie actor. The problem of extras, which Starr had confidently placed in the pudgy hands of Aristido González, was a very simple one. Only three kinds were needed: happy, well-fed farmhands for the big feast of thanksgiving that Doña Ana-Rosa was graciously throwing at the close of the first episode; starving, rebellious ones to burn down the tottering empire of Doña Isabel; and rich, haughty haciendado types to cavort decadently at the General’s ball. I can only believe that González chose them from a local home for the feeble-minded. A more unprepossessing lot I have never seen. Starr fired half of them on first sight; the remaining ones, given to scratching themselves in unmentionable places while supposedly drinking toasts to the mistress of the manor or storming the hacienda or sipping champagne in marble halls, were just as expendable. Lopez really blew up this time and literally chased González out of the patio. I was again amazed at how fast the man could move, for all his excess weight, when he really had to.

  “So we waste da whole day callin’ up S.T.P.C.?” Lopez asked darkly.

  “Certainly not,” Starr said furiously. “We’ve got enough people right here—plus the cretins González brought. Dennis! Guber! take off your clothes!” Within half an hour, he had rounded up enough people within the four walls of Casa Ximinez to make a pretty fair showing. Not only were all of the servants and their children and relatives rounded up, but so were the tenants. Mr. Guber was in seventh heaven. Given an opportunity not only to appear on the screen but to wear some of her more recherché souvenirs, Miz Priddy soon got over her indignation and fell right in with Starr’s plans. The Doctor played hookey that day and, scrawny as he was, looked quite convincing under a layer of body paint. A honeymooning couple from Midland, Texas, of whom nothing had been seen or even heard, except for a steady succession of slaps and squeals, postponed whatever it was they were planning for that day and entered into the spirit of things with the sort of terrifying enthusiasm that, I suppose, made Texas what it is today. Bunty placed an emergency call to her house, and before long Henry Maitland-Grim came stumping in on his wooden leg, a splendid Savile Row tailcoat over one arm, followed by his household staff. Heff volunteered to serve, but explained that he couldn’t see a foot in front of his nose without his spectacles. Starr said that that was perfectly all right and if Heff fell down a lot that would only add to the realism. Miz Priddy whistled up her singing and dancing urchins. Clarice summoned all the servants from Casa Ortiz-Robledo and even consented to walk all the way home, put on her major jewels, and appear as a dress extra in the ball scene, although she didn’t feel that she’d be right as a peasant. St. Regis was eagerness itself to play any role, but Starr firmly clapped the stifling vulture mask over his head and told him that he was too valuable as a bird. By nine o’clock that morning Starr had Emiliano Zapata’s guerrilla army on his hands. He jumped up to the top of a table, whistled for silence, and, through Heff, announced that he was very grateful to them all and that the producer, Señor González, would pay every man jack of us fifty pesos for the day’s work. Loud cheers. The wardrobe man passed out our prosperous, sixteenth-century clean rags and tatters—just shirts and kerchiefs; trousers didn’t matter as most of us had our legs under the thanksgiving table. As a matter of fact, I played the whole harvest festival scene in bathing trunks, sitting next to Mr. Guber who was still in his pajama bottoms. For authenticity—and a Starr touch that recalled his devil-may-care days of the thirties—Starr sent around to the local grog shop for several gallons of tequila, as well as Coca-Cola for the kids, who philosophically spiked it with the grownups’ tequila. It was quite a bacchanal for ten in the morning, but as far as authenticity went, it was the most festive festival ever filmed. Starr urged us to make a lot of noise, as though that were necessary, and spent a lot of time on close-ups of men swigging tequila, people licking their fingers, interesting facial planes, the vigilante relieving himself against the jacaranda tree, which, I feel sure, will never bloom again, and of Guadalupe’s cousin, the lottery-ticket salesman, passing out into a bowl of beans. Then we were all told to shut up in no uncertain terms while Lady Joyce, looking beatific in the widow’s weeds of Doña Ana-Rosa, made her final speech about the glories of the land, and St. Regis, as the vulture, slunk up and symbolically enveloped the whole table.

  Starr was besieged with requests for information as to exactly
when Valley of the Vultures would be playing at the Variedades theater. Tonight? Tomorrow? The day after? What famous stars would be in it? Silvia Suarez? Maricruz Olivier? Francisco Rabal? Cristina Rojas? Manolo Fabregas?

  Over the noise of the revelry, the squabbling, the impromptu singings, and the half dozen or so transistor radios, Starr culled out the kids, the ones who were too well fed or too drunk, and explained to the rest of the extras that the time was now only eighty years ago, that they were all poor and starving, that they all hated Catalina Ximinez who was rich and mean—here a great cheer went up—and that they were out to get her and to burn her house down. If he wanted realism he couldn’t have chosen his words better. In impoverished, nineteenth-century dirty rags and tatters, which looked exactly like the sixteenth-century ones, the mob played the scene so convincingly that I was almost afraid that Madame X’s head would end up on a pike. They stormed her elaborate front doors with such gusto that the hinges gave and the doors fell flat inside the Ximinez hallway, carrying with them a load of two dozen men kicking and thrashing. “Magnificent!” Starr shouted.

  I thought that Madame X would feel differently, but I was wrong. After her triumph of the night before, she would have let them sack the whole house. “Don’t motter. Very old. Ai get beeg place nax year.”

  True to his word, Heff had fallen down and been slightly trampled. Mr. Guber had suffered a mild black eye, and there were a few minor cuts, abrasions, and contusions to be treated by the Farmacia Corazón de Jesús, which had doubled its volume of business in the last three days.

  After lunch we all got into musty old rented costumes that must have been salvaged from a stranded road company of Dame aux Camellias during the exact period of Doña Isabel’s reign of terror. I looked and felt like a damned fool in a ruffled evening shirt and a moth-eaten old tailcoat that was green with age. My wife did somewhat better in rotting plum silk. Not much could be done with Miz Priddy, but she was passable in black satin with a mantilla—her very own “and authintic?”—covering most of her face. The Doctor drew an evening suit that was big enough for two of him, but sitting down with a lot of pins up the back it didn’t matter much. The Texas honeymooners looked handsome, and Henry Maitland-Grim was very splendid in his own duds, once his British decorations had been forcibly removed. Lady Joyce and Bunty were permitted to be in the scene as long as they kept their backs to the camera so as not to be recognized. So was Emily. Bruce, oddly enough, flatly refused to appear, which struck me as strange in such a poised, co-operative young man who was trying to court favor with Starr. The old vigilante, Guadalupe’s alcoholic son, the lottery-ticket salesman, and a couple of the Maitland-Grim servants were judged sober enough and distinguished-looking enough to appear—well in the background—as frivolous gentry at play. Mr. Guber was not. Clarice shouldn’t have been, but as she was wearing half a million dollars’ worth of diamonds, one could hardly rule her out. Knowing what Starr had done to Madame X in her scenes, I shuddered to think how Clarice would come out or, for that matter, how I would.