Only the Dead Know Burbank

by Bradford Tatum

  “I never noticed that before,” he said finally.

  “What?”

  “Your fingers. The tips of your fingers are black.” I could not hide them before he picked one up in his warmth and winced at the coolness. What could I say? An effect of the blood pooled there from my stilled heart?

  “The nitrate stains,” was all I offered. “From when I worked in editing.” He was unconvinced, but it was clear he did not care to believe anything else.

  “It’s an excellent effect,” he said. “We should tell Jack.”

  “I will.”

  “You are very dear, Maddy,” he said to my reflection. “I would be quite happy if you could find your way to be near me during the shoot. I feel you’d be a great comfort to me.”

  I was well past the false front of my years. And the way he looked at me then, the warmth of the room and his eyes stirred feelings I hadn’t felt since Lucky. But that is the real fruit of Volker’s legacy.

  To be near.

  And nothing more.

  CHAPTER 37

  Billy, signing his name Karloff, was bound by a standard minimum contract for artists guaranteeing him no less than one week of employment. There was a rider attached ensuring the studio additional provisions regarding retakes, added scenes, and trailers, but nothing that spoke of infinite fame. Not that first sweltering August day of shooting. Especially not to Billy in his gasoline-smelling face and six-inch asphalt-layer boots. Whale dragged him through sixteen hours of grueling takes, with no breaks, no respites. No wonder Mr. Karloff would later be instrumental in the formulation of the Screen Actors Guild.

  It wasn’t all forced humility. One pleasant but difficult surprise was seeing the picture’s shooter on the first day. It was none other than Karl, the fried-potato-loving cameraman who had tutored my wrist all those years ago at UFA. He was loading his bulk onto the location bus when he stopped. He pushed violently past several dress extras on his way to hug me.

  “My God! Maddy, dear!” he said in German, lifting me off the ground. “What in heaven are you doing here?”

  “Karl! Jesus, Karl!” What the hell is he going to say about my changeless state, I mused as he put me down.

  “I thought you’d be up to here by now!” he said placing a pudgy hand to his shoulder.

  “Yes, well. Still not eating enough, I suppose. I miss those omelets.” He looked at me. Endeared. Confused. A meeting completely out of time and context.

  “You should be directing this pap.”

  “Don’t remind me.” I hoped my smile seemed genuine and wasn’t poisoned with the panic I was feeling under his searching gaze. Whale arrived, thankfully, calling out to me, and the company roused into ranks. “My master’s voice,” I said, rising up on tiptoes to kiss Karl’s loose cheek. His smile was still stiff, his mind churning with questions I didn’t dare answer. It was sad that I was forced to avoid him. He might have been a real friend.

  I cooled in the shadows as much as I could after that chance meeting. Could I have imparted more of my sensibility to the picture had I not been forced to haunt it? I’ll never know. My biggest regret was not running more interference with the actors. Whale was relentless. When Colin showed up an hour late his third day, unsteady, either from nerves or spirits, Whale made an enormous show of stopping work to welcome him.

  “Well, well, look who decided to drop by. Restful evening, Clivey?”

  I remember Colin near tears.

  “What’s that? Oranges and lemons?”

  “Say the bells of Saint Clements,” Clive answered, willing himself to smile.

  “Get a bucket,” Whale said calmly. When no one moved, he pointed directly at me and hollered, “Get a fucking bucket!”

  After I brought it, setting it quietly before Clive in the neat silence of the stage, Whale grabbed Colin’s hand and, choosing a digit, shoved the actor’s finger down his own throat until he vomited. The poor actor heaved and whimpered through several waves of nausea. When he had finished, Whale said, “All better? Care to join us in the business at hand?”

  Clive wiped his mouth and nodded.

  “And if you ever appear on my stage in such a condition again I will have you castrated, old boy. Yes? Positions!”

  That was how he ruled. I had to choose my battles carefully. But I did what I could. Billy got the worst of it, I’m afraid. Whale was always pretending not to remember his name, and when he did it was always some humiliating bastardization—Morris Stroganoff and the like, truly childish—geared I suppose to keep Billy always on the fringe of satisfaction, never having pleased his master, which, as Whale well knew, was precisely the core of the creature.

  We had one company move, our first day, to Lake Malibu. A fleet of limousines lined up in front of the studio at five in the morning to take us there. It was rumored that I was originally cast to play Maria, the little girl who gets chucked in the lake. Of course this was never true. Whale mentioned the possibility once, to which I immediately turned colder than usual. He saved some kind of face by mumbling, “Of course you’re right, the part requires innocence, appeal. Not some sour little know-it-all with a German accent.” Had he forgotten the undisclosed country of our tale was supposed to be Switzerland? The part went to little Marilyn Harris, who was better known around the lot by the scrotum-shrinking demeanor of her overbearing mother. I had few words with Harris. When she saw that I rode with the director she asked sweetly, “Gee, how do you get on that side of the camera?” To which I answered, “By refusing to be on your side, I suppose.” The drive was tolerable, peppered with Whale’s preening stories about his days in Blackpool’s vaudeville. When we arrived, Billy was agitated.

  “Have you eaten?” I asked.

  He was leaning on his slant board, smoking a cigarette, his eyes more blistered than the character called for.

  “I had some tea.”

  “You need something more.”

  “It’s not that, Maddy,” he said. “If I ate anything, I’m sure I’d spew.” He lit another cigarette.

  “What then?”

  “The scene. This blasted scene with the little girl.”

  “What of it?”

  “Whale wants me to throw the poor thing in after the daisies, and I think that’s rather out of character.”

  “You terrorize Elizabeth. You kill Waldman.”

  “This is different. It’s a child. The monster would never hurt a child. It would be like hurting himself.”

  “Have you told Whale?”

  “Incessantly.” He spat and threw his still-smoking butt to the dirt.

  “I see. Tell him to shove it. Tell him if anyone knows this creature from soup to nuts it’s you, and if he knows what’s good for the picture he’ll leave you alone.”

  “Maddy!”

  “You don’t have to say it like that. You can cross the pond and give it some good British starch.”

  “I can’t risk a row. I’m dead on my feet as it is. I just feel all the effort we’ve put into lending this poor oaf some humanity will all be undone.” He said it. He used that wonderful, warm, all-inclusive pronoun. We. He had understood me. “All for the sake of a man who enjoys pulling the wings off flies.”

  “True. But only the lesser flies.”

  Near the lake, little Marilyn Harris was polishing off the last of her lemon meringue pie. It was six thirty in the morning. Her mother always indulged her like this on the days she worked. The first assistant director called for places, and Billy pushed himself to his feet. I took his hand.

  “Just remember,” I said, “it’s your ass up there.”

  “I don’t like it when you speak so coarsely.”

  “Your bum then up there. Your glorious stumbling bum they’ll remember.”

  We shot the scene in parts. All the segments leading up to the toss of the little girl were easily Billy’s best work in the picture. But when it came time to shoot the actual throwing, Billy froze. At first he complained about his back. Then he stumbled, nearly dr
opping the girl. Finally it came to a point where he wouldn’t reach for the girl at all. He would stand there, his head hanging, little Marilyn licking stray tufts of meringue from her fingers, then looking to Billy, and saying, “It’s okay, Boris. I’ll float.”

  Whale called, “Cut.”

  Striding up to Billy, smiling, he said, “What’s this, dear boy? Are we at a linguistic impasse? Having trouble with the word toss perhaps? I could say throw, chuck, heave, maybe jettison. Jaculate?”

  “I simply can’t do it, Mr. Whale. Every instinct in my body is in riot against it.”

  “Every instinct in your body is under contract. I thought that was clear from that officious little piece of paper you signed.”

  “I understand, Mr. Whale, but it’s . . . wrong. For the creature.” In his boots and false cranium, Billy was nearly seven feet tall. And Whale, in his spotless cream vest and cravat, was just under six feet. It was a parable in reverse. A slim Goliath emasculating a hulking David.

  “I see. Well. What say we try this? You don’t chuck the brat into the drink. And I send you back to under-five gangsters and day-playing red Indians. And I’ll jolly well sod back to England. And we can forget this whole ridiculous mess. Yes?”

  “I wouldn’t care for that.”

  “Wouldn’t you? What’s the alternative, then?”

  “You could do it on the cut,” I spat out.

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “Maddy, please,” Billy whispered.

  “He could hold the girl, feint toward the lake, and then you could cut back to, I don’t know, the daisies or something. Floating.”

  “Floating daisies? And all this time I was toiling under the misapprehension we were shooting a thriller.”

  “It will work, Mr. Whale,” I said. Billy looked like a snail fresh from the roof of its shell.

  “I’ve no doubt it would, Miss Ulm. But that is not what I want. Or has my director’s prerogative fallen chummily into the breach of consensus?” Director’s prerogative. Christ. I had forgotten what it was like to even feel like a director. My ambition had taken on a distinctly maternal cast. And one look at Billy’s face told me I was failing even at that. “What do you think, Mr. Karloff? Shall we try it my way? Just for a lark?”

  “I could give it a go.” Billy said to the ground.

  “Really? I’d hate to impugn those Kean-like instincts of yours.”

  “No. You’re quite correct, Mr. Whale.”

  “Oh, I’m so pleased,” Whale quipped, heading back to his seat. “When you’re ready, Boris.”

  For several decades the fates accommodated Billy, as the child-drowning scene was the first to get the ax by the censors. Of course, when it premiered in Los Angeles, the scene was in. But all over the country, when it was rereleased in theaters, and later shown on television, the scene always cut just as Billy reached for the kid. Now it’s been “restored,” returned to Whale’s original vision, but I can’t watch it. Not without feeling Billy die a little each time and seeing in my mind Whale’s supercilious blond head chucked into the frigid waters and held under until the end credits.

  FRANKENSTEIN WAS A CHRISTMASTIME RELEASE, AND IN THE THEATER where I saw it, there was a wreath framing Billy’s face and plastic garland and holly swagged about the box office. I was not allowed into the editing room. In fact, Whale fired me on the last day of shooting.

  It was the burning of the windmill and the throwing of Henry’s body onto the flaming sails. A dummy was employed whose loose joints kept bending unnaturally with every take. The company was frustrated, but I, having taken and observed all the abuse I could swallow, was working on being amused.

  “Find this funny, do you, Miss Ulm?” Whale said indignantly.

  It was three in the morning. He was tucked into his director’s chair, bound in a greatcoat and muffler against the mild morning chill. I was in my flimsy blouse.

  “I find it a damn riot.”

  “Do you? And I suppose you could do better?”

  “I think throwing a pot roast stuck with broom handle arms would look better than this shit.” Whale was silent. Then he looked to the first assistant director.

  “Get Clive padded up,” he said, lighting a cigar. Clive had gone home, nursing a hangover after he he’d been told he would no longer be needed for the night. “Oh, yes. I’d quite forgotten that,” Whale said spritely. “Then let Boris have a go. He was a truck driver in a previous incarnation, I believe. This should be child’s play.” That was the last straw. Billy was a wreck. Weeks of a grueling schedule, not to mention a slipped disk in his lumbar after hauling Clive up the windmill steps take after take, had left him noticeably impaired. Film might be forever but so would the damage to Billy’s spine that would already never properly heal. I watched in cold fury as the costumers peeled Billy of his two thick layers of wool pants and strapped him in football pads. I wanted to go comfort him but slinked away when I felt Karl’s eyes on me. Billy looked so disoriented and alone, absolutely ill as they fitted him with Clive’s hairpiece and cutaway. Whale twittered with the script girl as I watched Billy mount the windmill steps as if they were the gallows. I didn’t know what to do. The first cried, “Flames,” and the gas jets blared, forcing Billy to flinch as he wobbled near the railing. Whale screamed, “Action.” I leaped to my feet before I knew what I was doing. Whale simply grinned as he tossed his hand up near Karl, forcing him to keep rolling. I scrambled up the side of the windmill and landed softly near Billy. I couldn’t feel the heat of the gas flames, or even the hot wind of the sails as they twisted slowly beneath me. I could see the faces looking up at me and I saw myself back home before that first frightful fall that had begun it all. It seemed I was forever taking dives off high buildings to make my point.

  “Maddy,” Billy said to me, sweating so hard his wax eyelids had slipped to the tops of his cheeks, “what on earth are you doing?”

  In that moment he was Mutter. I was back in Germany. I was just beginning.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, climbing into his arms. “I’ll be fine. Just throw me like you did the dummy.”

  “This is monstrous. No!”

  “Please. You have to trust me.”

  “But I’m not in proper wardrobe. Please, before you get hurt.”

  “You’ve quite made your point, Miss Ulm.” Whale’s voiced boomed through his megaphone, a contraption I noticed he used primarily as a pedestal for his ashtray. “Please do come down so I can fire you properly.”

  “Oh, Maddy,” Billy said. “He can’t be serious.”

  “No?” I said climbing up on the railing. “Fuck him.” I gave Billy a swift, cool kiss, peeling his panicked fingers from my arm. And dropped into the ether. I felt nothing when I landed, of course. A jostling. A jab. What terrified me was Billy’s cry. His scream. There were more screams as I hit the ground. I felt Whale’s hand on my shoulder as he turned me over.

  “Maddy! Maddy!” Whale cried, trying to rouse me with the tips of his fingers. “For the love of Christ, what have you done?”

  “How was that, you blond bastard?” I said sitting up. “Real enough for you?”

  I didn’t wait for his reaction. I was on my feet in an instant. I will always regret not turning to see his face. But some things cannot be topped. Some exits must be clean. My contract was suspended the next day and I was told to leave the lot until further notice. I had no personal effects, nothing to box and carry, so I headed over to the Indian village to make my good-bye.

  Billy was there, I remember. I guess Pierce must have told him about Mutter. He had Mutter’s boy in his arms and was telling him that he was part Indian too, but a different kind of Indian. East Indian. He didn’t ask me how I had survived the fall, but there was a caution in his eyes, a cooling between us.

  “I’ll have your contract reinstated, Maddy,” he said soberly. “He can’t let you go like that. You’re just a child. You have to eat.”

  “Do I?” I asked, smiling.

  He let t
he comment pass.

  “I’ve seen your friend,” he said, glancing over to Mutter. “If this picture’s a hit, Whale will never let him stay on the lot.”

  “Mutter will be fine. I barely recognize him in the pictures he plays.”

  “There’s already been talk. Why do you think Laemmle insisted I wear a cloth over my head to the set? To spare the stenographer’s nerves?”

  It was true. Carl Senior had insisted Billy not show his face from the makeup room to the stage. Modern Screen had even run a shot with Pierce escorting a pillow-headed Billy by the hand.

  “If Whale can barely share credit for the look of the monster with the man who created it, how do you think he’ll fare against the real thing?”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to Mutter. It’s me they’re angry with. I needed a break anyway.”

  A bell rang then, some kind of clarion that signaled the beginning of a meal, and Mutter collected his son and smiled at me, casually, as if he saw me every day. I watched him turn, blending with the other Indians heading to dinner, and realized no good-bye would ever be necessary. But it would be a very long time until we saw each other again.

  CHAPTER 38

  I had money. Lots of it. Having worked and lived on the lot for so many years, my weekly checks had simply accrued. Hollywood bought cars, but I couldn’t part with my flatbed. Polo ponies? A share of Chasen’s? Perhaps my own eatery where customers don’t eat at all, just sit in boxes full of moist earth and have edifying conversations with the worms and rot?

  Maybe a home. Hollywood bought homes. Big homes. Sprawling homes. Estates. Mansions. Compounds. Now that might interest me. I needed a place to hide.

  There was a burgeoning development in the hills at the end of Beachwood Canyon, a bucolic emission in milky Moorish stucco from the breathless drafting table of S. H. Woodruff. Busby Berkeley had a home near the stone gates. The development had begun in the twenties, then fallen out of favor with the Depression. I had heard a huge push to revitalize the district was under way. It was the reason for that great white sign on Mount Lee.