Only the Dead Know Burbank

by Bradford Tatum

  “Will you have anything?” he asked as the waitress replenished his cup.

  “Nothing, thank you.”

  “It’s not a last meal, Miss Ulm,” he said, smiling.

  “I’m not hungry, thank you.”

  “I’ll have a Denver omelet and french fried potatoes, please,” he said, and then turned to me. “I’ve thought of this meeting for most of my life. Can you believe that? Even as a boy away at boarding school, I used to set a pillow at the end of my bed and pretend it was you. My father always said you were special, said it with uncomfortable regularity, if you want to know the truth. He told me of your glandular condition, how it kept you looking like an innocent. But I must admit, seeing you again, in the light, you really do look like a child. Which makes this all the more difficult.”

  “Mr. Chaney, perhaps this isn’t—”

  “Please, Miss Ulm. It’s been fifteen years with a splinter in my brain. If I don’t do it now, say the things I need to say, I never will.”

  “Of course,” I said quietly.

  He looked down at his cup and tears began to seep from beneath the rims of his lenses.

  “Jesus,” he said under his breath. “Just a little kid.”

  I did not know if he referred to himself or me. Then he laughed and shook his head as if to clear his mind of sentiment.

  “All my life I have hated you,” he said evenly. His eyes glanced up to mine to gauge my reaction. “Does that surprise you?”

  “Not at all. I never liked your father’s attitude about you. I always thought it harsh. I remember the last time I saw you was in a small chair.”

  “And you were at his bedside.”

  “I was mortified that he made you watch while he whispered to me.”

  The large man shook with a sob worthy of his size. He snatched the paper napkin from under his flatware and vented his nose.

  “Do you remember what he said to you?”

  Of course I did. But what could I say? The large man was wide open. He needed something, some cork of closure to staunch the last ten years.

  I looked him in his great sagging eyes and said, “He asked me for a cigarette.”

  The great face went pale and then a shudder began from deep in his belly. Then a laugh broke that shook the whole table.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said with breathless relief. “That’s just like him. All these years I thought . . . Hell, I don’t know. A cigarette. Son of a bitch.”

  His food arrived at that moment and he lathered it with ketchup and several shakes of salt before he began devouring it.

  “I know Pop didn’t want me taggin’ along in his footprints. I’m sure he’d be good and sore that I changed my name. But the studio made me. That’s the truth. The name. They thought it would be a draw. I know they only want me for these pictures because I’m big. Monsters are supposed to be big. But I really like it, you know. The dialogue, the scenes. Working out little bits of business with the other actors. I had a scene the other day with Claude Rains and he’s, you know, a real pro and it felt just like folks. Just like two professional joes doing their jobs.”

  I watched the food enter his lips, the broadness of his brow that would wrinkle to accommodate a bite. I could see him at his mother’s kitchen table, an overgrown boy, so grateful for a plate of buttery love.

  “The only reason your father would not be proud of you, Mr. Chaney,” I said, “is that you have proved him wrong. And your father hated being wrong. Having to bear his name might be unfortunate. But you do not have to bear him.”

  “You really feel all that?” His swollen eyes crested with an almost sickening hope.

  “Absolutely.”

  He dropped his fork and reached out for me, a sad but bursting smile on his face. I felt his hands on the thin tubes of my arms, the fingers tensing as he lifted me over the end of the table. He hugged me hard, until I thought my sternum might fracture.

  “Gee, you’re a swell . . . ,” he said, halting suddenly. He didn’t know what to call me. His heart, which I guess he never learned to trust, was telling him I was something far older and more urbane that what he saw. But he was in the habit of trusting his eyes. He could remain simple and safe if he trusted his eyes. “You like ice cream? Let me buy you an ice cream.”

  On the drive home I was rattled. What had I gained from this confrontation? An unsolicited bowl of mint chocolate chip made nearly inedible under the scrutiny of his oafish gaze. A stifling hug I did not want. A two-hundred-pound man prone to alcoholism and flights of mood had said he hated me. Even with my pronounced physical resilience, I couldn’t mollify my fear. And this was why I’d made the effort? To referee his childish bouts with inadequacy? Feed him lies about his supposed talent? Build him up so I could make my escape unscathed?

  I had pity for the child. Much less for the man.

  CHAPTER 55

  At the beginning of the postwar boom years my mother had the idea of selling the house. It was a bad time to be German, especially in a predominately Jewish enclave like ours. I wasn’t working, and the house was simply bursting with over a decade’s worth of equity. Her plan was to buy a ten-unit courtyard building on Hollywood Way in Burbank, close to the studios. This last bit was a concession to my own delusions, but she was always skilled at nurturing fantasy. The rented units could pay for themselves and would take the pressure off her hustling so hard. It was easy to forget how old she really was. Looking at her one could easily assume she would find a fascination with a new cologne, a new car, a new cock. I pretended I didn’t care, that I would do whatever was easier for her. But deep down I was crushed. My house on Beachwood Drive was the culmination of all my efforts on the lot. But I signed the papers when the time came, watched the moving van loaded, handed over the front door key.

  It was a pretty little apartment complex. Several of the units were rumored to have been actual backlot fronts from some studio’s old European street. I was surprised my mother didn’t want something more modern, but who could argue with the price? The only problem with it was the view.

  A vista of heartbreak.

  For all I had to do was stand in the winter-yellowed stubble that passed for the grass of our front lawn and turn my head to the right and there, like a potbellied chalice in some knight’s tale, was the cylindrical taunt of my last ambition, the Warner Brothers–First National water tower. It didn’t matter that Warner made its bones with cookie-cutter gangster pictures and cheap musicals, that the closest they got to horror were the rows of morning makeup chairs stuffed to capacity by bottle blondes still belching the dregs of the previous evening’s boilermakers. It was a studio. It had stages. And it had people working in those stages. People laughing, screaming, tirading, and dreaming. People living the only way I knew how. In service to the tinsel. Genuflecting before the glitz. I suppose I could have bullshitted my way onto the payroll as a script runner or fourth assistant director. God knows I knew my way around the ballyhoo. I could even imagine the face of the sharp first assistant after I laid down my spiel, the keenness of his gaze as he looked down from the lofty height of all nineteen of his years and lied unknowingly to me when he winked and said I had a future in this business. What could I do? I had nothing to offer this new fascination with singing sailors and high-diving leading ladies. Volker’s sapling had grown into a tree, an outdated bit of spook-show set dressing made up of chicken wire and plaster repelled by the grating Broadway playback and garish tints used to feed this new insipid genie called Technicolor. Surely there were eyes now raw from beholding Esther Williams’s perennially chlorinated pelvis. Ears that might bleed if they had to suffer another bombardment from Garland’s barbiturate-addled vibrato. So where were they? So what if times were good, if Hitler had gone from Time’s Man of the Year to unglamorous stiffening on a bunker floor? So what if musicals boosted annual receipts in the midbillions, if preparing peas no longer chipped a two-dollar manicure but sprang, creature-like, from frozen sleeps in nifty bags? What had become o
f all those richly textured and complicated shadows? Had they really only become fodder for braying ex-vaudevillians like Abbot and fucking Costello? My mother became worried about me. I stopped pretending to eat. I didn’t bother to sleep. All I wanted to do was ceaselessly pore over the trades and rave about the industry’s inexorable slide into abject mediocrity. It never dawned on me that the majority of future film historians would ignore my best efforts for similar reasons. The world was becoming tawdry, blissfully superficial, and ignorantly optimistic. And worst of all it was doing it in nauseating color.

  “Maddy, let’s get out of the house,” my mother might say. “I know the barman at the Beverly Hills Hotel. We could have daiquiris. Sit in the sun by the pool for the afternoon.”

  “What on earth would possibly make you think I’d waste an unnecessary second in the sun?”

  “You need to get out.”

  “And do you really think I’d want to spend an entire afternoon seeing your tight-trunked ex-conquests parade by like peccant sheep making goo-goo eyes at their lost Bo Peep?”

  “Did you mean to do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Make it rhyme like that. That was wonderful. You really should start writing more. You have such a marvelous ear.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? I’m trying to dissuade you, not fish for cheap compliments.”

  “Then go across the fucking street and ask for a break. There’s not a job on that lot you couldn’t do.”

  “Oh Jesus! We’ve been over this. What the hell am I going to do with a lot of tap-dancing morons? I couldn’t stomach it.”

  “They’re making more than musicals, Maddy.”

  “See, you did it too. You put four m’s together. Should you start writing your memoirs?” She ignored my comment.

  “I heard they employed that author you like last year,” she said steadily. “What’s his name? The alcoholic with the drawl.”

  “That describes more than half of this town’s staff writers.”

  “The famous one. With the books. Howard says he was hired to write replacement dialogue for his Bogart picture.”

  “Faulkner? Jesus. You want me to be as miserable as fucking Faulkner?”

  “Then call your friend Billy. I know he’s still working.”

  “He wouldn’t take my call.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t want to find out.”

  She looked at me with a severe but still bemused expression on her face.

  “One of these days, Miss Maddy Ulm, you’re going to have to do something just slightly out of that narrow comfort zone of yours. Either that or I’ll start saving up for a nice new pine bedroom set for you. In Forest Lawn.” I was miserable. But not quite ready for that.

  “You’d have to start screwing studio heads again, if you’re serious. Plots like that are expensive.”

  “Only the best for my baby.”

  There was something pleasant in our domestic bickering, an almost perfect simulacrum of family. I liked that we argued under the guise of the ages we appeared, not our actual ones. Looking back, that would have put us uncomfortably in “Baby Jane” territory. We were an odd pair. But I hoped not quite ripe for such parody.

  SOMEHOW THE YEARS PASSED. MY MOTHER SEEMED TO ENJOY THEM. WE made up birthdays for ourselves and celebrated the random dates with box-made cakes and stupid trinkets. We sat snickering in the dark with the doors locked on Halloween night. We decorated our yearly tree with magazine clippings of her old conquests and strips of her gaudier costume jewelry. But deep down my embers were still glowing. I still combed the trades. Still kept more than a symbolic eye on the distant studio gates.

  I remember something called rock and roll was on the radio. How the loopy three-chord guitar breaks made me lonesome for Ellington and the real soul-quenching riffs of Bubber Miley. I had taught myself to cook. Nothing fancy, stripped-down versions of sauerbraten, bratwurst with spaetzle and canned cream spinach. I’d wanted the meal to be special, so I’d sprung for a forty-cent can of fancy brined mushrooms to garnish my packet of pork gravy. My mother had taken a new beau, a young man in a gray suit who worked as a junior VP of programming in this new field called television. He was a fairly lucrative mark but chapel bells were ringing in the distance, so I knew his tenure would be short. That’s why I had to act fast. And this guy just happened to work for the alphabet network. And if the Variety blurb I couldn’t stop thinking about was true, this bright young Turk was the only one in town who might make my life interesting again.

  The table was set. Her highball was ready. I watched as she sipped, then tucked into her pork cutlet and sauce.

  “It’s not overdone, is it?” I asked as casually as I could.

  “The pig or this whole evening?” she asked, still chewing. She had seen right through me, but I played innocent.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maddy, there’s a reason you were never comfortable in front of the camera. Just ask me.”

  “You mean I didn’t have to go to all this trouble?”

  “That depends. Is this about Bob and that Variety article?” The article had not been specific. It had merely stated the network had acquired the rights to several classic Universal horror pictures they were looking to repackage with a host.

  “Just tell me if they found a host yet.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “See. I did have to go to all the trouble.”

  She pushed her plate away and curled her fingers around her drink. “Maddy. Why do you want to do that to yourself?”

  “Do what? For years you’ve been telling me to look outside of my comfort zone.”

  “Yes, but this Shock Theater thing or whatever they’re calling it. You don’t know his angle.”

  “What angle? What has he said?”

  “We don’t do a lot of talking. I just know his type.”

  “They need a host, and no one knows these pictures like I do.”

  “I just think your instincts about yourself have been pretty accurate.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “You’re not an actress.”

  “I can always count on you for support.”

  “That’s exactly what I am doing.”

  “Pissing yet again on my one chance? We go from total neglect to pissing?”

  “That’s not fair. We’ve had a lot of good years.”

  “You’ve had a lot of good years. I’ve made do. I’ve idled.”

  “That’s your fault, honey. And this isn’t your one chance. If you knew anything about it you’d know it’s not much of a chance at all.”

  “Why can’t we let your friend decide?”

  “Oh, he’ll jump at you. He’s heard the stories. He knows what he’d get.”

  “And you still won’t call him?”

  “When have I ever pissed on your chance?”

  “When? When haven’t you?”

  “Are you really so stupid you haven’t realized you’ve led one of the more interesting lives this world has ever offered? Make being bleak your style, Maddy. But don’t make it your life. Do something with it.”

  “I’m trying to.”

  “No. You’re desperate. And you’re selling yourself short.”

  “Oh, please. Don’t tell me to start writing again.”

  “Why not? What else are you going to do? You really want to cap it all off by being a television hostess? That’s your grand exit?”

  “Who said anything about an exit?”

  “It’s television. That’s all this can be.”

  “Obviously you have no respect or understanding of my life’s passion.”

  “Jesus. This has nothing to do with your fucking movies.”

  “Are you going to call him? Or should I?” I said flatly. I could be just as stubborn as she when I knew what I wanted. “It might be weird if I did it.”

  I HAD TO LEAN ON THE SINK BEFORE I DID THE DISHES. I COULD HEAR HER runni
ng her bath, could hear her snatch up the phone receiver in her bedroom, the rotary grinding angrily as she dialed. I didn’t realize by virtue of her calling him that night, not waiting at least until morning, that she had more than a small if conflicted concern for my wishes. I was too deep in the muck of my last chance. Maybe I’d never get another opportunity to make, maybe my tiny white coat really was tucked away for eternity. But at least I could curate. I could guide, I could enlighten those poor blue-glowing faces chewing on their reheated chicken and gray peas before the box. I could matter.

  THEY SENT A CAR.

  Not the movable drugstore of Browning’s overture but a limo nonetheless.

  I was ushered into the waiting room like a to-go order of Chasen’s steak tartar, told I wouldn’t have long to wait, and given a glass of water and a copy of Time. The only other occupant of that featureless room was a darkly beautiful girl with high cheekbones and pale eyes, wearing what looked like a sadomasochist’s version of a nightgown. She said nothing when our eyes met, just bent her red lips down to her hand and continued to gnaw on the long plastic tips glued to her fingers. Within mere minutes the doors to corporate Vallhalla opened and I was gently summoned inside.

  “Miss Ulm,” the young man behind the desk said, rising to shake my hand. “You don’t know what an incredible pleasure it is to finally meet you. You feel a little cold. Can I get you a hot cup of something? Tea? Chocolate?” I tried to imagine his hands on my mother, his mouth lingering upon places I’d rather not fixate. His charm, such as it was, was carefully corralled inside his eagerness, a well-bred boyishness so different from Whale’s flippant genius or Chaney’s working-class glamour. It was curious to me none of her conquests were handsome. Not like Volker had been. Perhaps that was deliberate on her part, a conscious selection that would not foul the exchange and leave her vulnerable again. “I just . . . gosh!” He continued grinning. “I’ve heard so much about you and to finally meet you. The stories? My, goodness. Please. Have a seat.”