Only the Dead Know Burbank

by Bradford Tatum

  I refused his offer of refreshment and sat.

  “You know, my father worked on the original Frankenstein. Assistant gaffer. He swore that picture would have fallen apart without you.”

  “It seemed to manage,” I said trying to gauge his acumen. Was he just another, sleeker version of Junior? Or something entirely new?

  “I just want you to know how thrilled we are to have you with us, Miss Ulm. It’s really going to make . . . I’m sorry—” He stopped himself, his eyes glinting puckishly, like a boy with a toad in his pocket. “I hope you don’t mind, but I just have to ask. I mean, now that I’ve got you in the hot seat. Is it true you knew the guy Jack Pierce based the creature’s makeup on?” I hadn’t trod on Mutter’s memory for years. He rose in my mind then, a silent crash of images: his hands upon me still damp from the Danube, his eyes sparked by love and shifting firelight, chocolate on his teeth, his howl, his eyes again like startled birds, the curve of his throat on the shower room floor.

  “Yes,” I croaked. “I suppose there was a guy as you call him. More of an inspiration, really. Pierce is a very great artist, you understand . . .” The images began to slow. It was only then I realized a thick and somewhat greasy tear running down my cheek.

  “Gee, I’m sorry,” he said, snapping his pocket handkerchief to life and offering it to me. “I didn’t mean to . . .” I waved his square of clean white linen away and flicked the tear from my face with a finger.

  “It’s nothing. Many, many years ago, that’s all.” I cleared my throat of its dust, trying to ignore the questions burning in his eyes. “I understand you had the good sense to purchase a few of the pictures with which I was associated.” He grinned, mining my comment for what he must have hoped was even a hint of irony, relieved the conversation had found its corners again.

  “We did, yes.”

  “And which ones are these?” The question seemed to throw him. As if he couldn’t quite reconcile my tone with the fact that my head didn’t crown the top of the chair.

  “Well, the whole trifecta, actually. Frankenstein, Drac—”

  “Trifecta?”

  “Sorry. That’s a horse-racing term. I mean—”

  “I am aware of the word’s lineage. I just don’t quite see how such a term applies to the topic of our discussion.” He looked at me and suddenly sat up noticeably straighter.

  “Sorry. Bad word choice. Universal was willing to sell us the rights to several of your . . . pictures. We thought we’d start out with the first three. Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Phantom.”

  “I assume you are referring to Chaney’s original. Not that candy-colored flotsam with Claude Rains.”

  “Actually, the silent element was problematic. So unfortunately we—”

  “Problematic? “

  “Well, television is a sound medium after all,” he said trying to be delicate. “We just thought . . .”

  “I suppose that can’t be helped. But it’s not the aural issues that concern me. It’s the progression. The accrual of sophisticated cinematic techniques that ultimately defined the genre.”

  “We’re not really concerned with showing the movies in chronological order.”

  “May I ask why not? You should at least begin with Browning’s Dracula, if only to—”

  “See, that’s what I thought. But that one’s my favorite.”

  “Is it really?”

  “You know, when you’re young with girls and everything . . . Hey, what was Browning really like?”

  I admit to being a little thrown by the question. A public summation of Browning’s character would not be easy.

  “Mr. Browning? How shall I put this delicately? Browning was . . . an asshole.”

  He couldn’t help a sudden whoop of laughter. “No!”

  I smiled at his slip of decorum.

  “I’m sorry, but that’s the inescapable truth,” I said, unable to stop a chuckle myself. “A sort of besotted carnival barker, at least in my association. Loved these horrible tight tennis sweaters for some godless reason.”

  Bob had a very sincere laugh, loud and easy and not self-conscious. He was becoming quite charming.

  “You see, Dracula, despite its faults, was really the first of its kind in many ways. The first supernatural horror film, and this concept was quite outside of Mr. Browning’s wheelhouse, shall we say.”

  “Wow,” he said almost dreamily. “I always wondered what it would have been like to have been on the set. Lugosi creeping down that stone stairway, with those X-ray eyes of his . . .”

  “Actually it was quite like being on a chicken farm during a blackout.”

  “What?”

  “The soundproofing in those days was primarily chicken feathers and they have a rather distinctive musk.”

  “I’ll be damned,” he said, coming from behind his desk and sitting on its lip, facing me. “So why the armadillos?”

  “Pardon?”

  “In Dracula’s crypt you have this shot of these crazy armadillos rooting around. I never got that.”

  “Oh, the Hays Office, I suspect. They had a hell of a time with the censors. And showing vermin, rats, was one of their many prohibitions. So Browning got around that by depicting the frolicking habits of a bit of Texan wildlife. I’ve never understood it myself.”

  “Great stuff.” He chuckled. “You sure I can’t get you something to drink? A Nehi? Water?” A beverage offer in the middle of a meeting is never a good sign. But this was different. This was going well.

  “Perhaps you better tell me what you had in mind,” I said, leaning back in my chair, stopping short of calling him “young man.”

  “We’re basically a network affiliate, Miss Ulm. The best we’ve got is local access, Sacramento on a windy day, if you know what I mean.”

  “Universal must have given you the rights for a song.”

  He looked around the room. Anywhere but at me. I hadn’t made my comment with any tooth, but the implications were clear.

  “Pretty much,” he almost whispered. “The idea was to breathe some new life into these movies, these pictures—”

  “I wasn’t aware they were in need of life support.”

  “I personally don’t think they are, Miss Ulm. I’m quite fond of them. They bring back some very pleasant afternoons. But we are dealing with advertising dollars here. Unlimited reruns with no overages. We’re looking down the barrel of a ten o’clock slot, which isn’t choice, but I think this will be so unique we’ll get the share.”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Sorry.” He rubbed his face. His hands were small. A woman’s hands. “Bottom line, these pictures have a very unique demographic. At least today.”

  “Which is?”

  “Boys. Children. Like yourself,” he corrected quickly. “That’s why we thought a young host would be such a cinch. We’ve come up with a name for you, for the host character. Penny Dreadful and her pet bat, Rollo . . .” His voice began to fade in my skull. It’s a strange sensation drowning in your own expectations. When ambition, as familiar as the hard ground beneath your feet begins to thin to a viscosity that could actually clog a lung. “I think we’ve got Mel Blanc locked to do the voice of the bat . . .” The sea change that darkens by degrees. This horizon was new in the subtleness of its finality, lit as it was by lightning as bright as his teeth and flashing eyes. I saw his jaw continue to labor under the excitement it seemed desperate to generate. “A couple of Jack Benny’s best gag men have come on board to help with your banter . . .”

  I didn’t need to listen to hear what he was saying. He was simply nursing a lucrative trend that had begun with those two damn comedians back in 1948. It’s a simple and immutable trajectory in Hollywood. First you are the vanguard, the oft imitated but rarely duplicated paragon of the genre. Then a few breadlines later, another world war, and they gut you and stick you with brass poles and wooden ponies and make you go round and round for the kiddies.

&
nbsp; “I see,” I said, trying to smile, to pretend to swallow. “So your plan is to heighten the aspects that haven’t aged quite so well. To focus on the kitsch, as it were. The camp.” I was unconvincing with the forced casualness of my assessment. I could tell he knew my heart had broken some.

  “I wouldn’t quite put it that way but, yes,” he said gently. “We just want to have fun with them.” It was almost an apology.

  “Nothing wrong with fun.”

  “No.”

  Fun. Why does fun hold the world’s premium? Shadows are much more flattering. Dread resounds so much deeper than giggles. Everyone looks better in black. The glaze upon my eyes, the stiffness in my body had little to do with my condition then. I was suddenly on that same isolated curb as Junior, watching another parade drift past. The only thing left were the good-byes.

  “To your credit you’ve been very kind, Mr. . . . ?

  “Please call me Bob.”

  “Well, Bob, I feel that under closer scrutiny of my prior commitments, such an undertaking would prove quite impossible at this time. I hope I haven’t inconvenienced you.” I stood up, fighting a bit for balance.

  “I understand, Miss Ulm,” he said, standing to meet me. “You sure you won’t reconsider?” I said nothing. What could I say? “The pictures really are terrific.”

  “Oh, I don’t worry about the pictures. They’ll outlive all of us. At least most of us.”

  I shook his outstretched hand, willing my palm warm in the process.

  “On the upside you got a sure-fire second choice out there.”

  “You mean the cheesecake corpse with the press-ons?” He almost snickered, with an embarrassed nod toward the door.

  “You mentioned the show’s demographic yourself,” I said, creaking toward the exit. “You really think you’ll go wrong with a dose of big-titted necrophilia? Give her a chance. Trust me. She’s ahead of her time.”

  CHAPTER 56

  There was no creamy white limo waiting for me at the gates this time. No desperate phone call or telegram from a well-mannered friend to rouse my ambition back into action. James Whale drowned himself in his swimming pool in the spring of 1957 and I couldn’t help a pang of professional jealousy when I read of his final production. I would allow nature to finally win. I would give in to her call of soil and silence and dark. But only on my terms. Just like Jimmy. I decided to take one of our apartments for myself. I didn’t tell my mother the room’s real purpose. I let her believe the years had simply shown us to be very different people and I was much more comfortable with less clutter. When carpeting came into vogue, we splurged to have all the units done and then realized the new floors highlighted the wear to the cabinetry. So we had the cabinets and walls painted. That’s where my efforts at domestic insurgency ended. My mother never understood the reasons behind my forced austerity. How could I tell her the best tombs never come with foldout sofas and dinettes? My mother coped by keeping abreast of trends, by raising her hemlines, frosting her once-opaque lipstick, cutting her hair. And I was all prepared for my suburban internment when one last bit of business demanded attention.

  The event took place in a junior ballroom of an airport hotel. We had been allotted four hours for our celebration, having to make way for the wedding reception of the daughter of a prominent pool supply salesman. There were card tables set up with stacks of glossy black-and-white eight-by-tens, monster masks, and horror-themed glassware sets, a rusty piece of tubing said to be part of a scissor arc used in the original Frankenstein. It was a semipopular if respectfully enthusiastic gathering. It seemed the custodians of my life’s work had fallen into the hands of three hundred adolescent boys in ties and horn-rimmed glasses, young men who seemed better suited to taking minutes at chess club meetings.

  I avoided meeting my host. He would have expected a bent old thing well into her dotage and I never had a taste for prosthetics, so I lingered by the refreshment table, sipping flat Coke and waiting for the king.

  He came a half hour before the end, walking briskly into the room to tumultuous applause. A white-haired, white-mustached gentleman waving graciously, holding court as if he were still a mere commoner.

  I can’t describe the feelings I had when I saw him. The combination of so many conflicting emotions didn’t allow for the linear or the lyric. Longing, regret, humor, disappointment, love, these were the base notes. Did he still hate me? Was I ever thought of at all? I’d made mistakes in my long and frustrating career, but he was the most lasting regret. I tried to imagine him as a young man, half-starved, beautifully cadaverous in his padding and mortician’s wax, waiting humbly for his cue behind a face as recognizable as Christ’s. But that young man was gone, thinned to repeating wisps of shadow and locked boxes of memory. Age makes strangers of us, and I was content to have just seen him one last time. He was thronged by his fans and I lost sight of him. I was planning on making a graceful exit. Then I heard my name whispered with the sweet sibilance that could only be his.

  “Maddy,” Billy whispered. “Dear little Maddy Ulm? Is that you?”

  I looked up at him with tears in my eyes and said nothing. He pushed his glasses more firmly to his face as he continued to stare at me.

  “But you are the living image of her, my dear.”

  His face was fuller, deeply tanned. He wore horn-rimmed glasses that gave him a professorial look. The warm brown of his irises was tinged with the invading blue of cataracts. He would live only another four years. But the look in his eyes, the love, the wonderment, made him young again.

  “I’m her granddaughter,” I said finally.

  “Of course,” he smiled. “Is she here?”

  “She was indisposed,” I said. “But she wanted to come. She so did want to come.”

  “How is she? Is she well?”

  “Oh quite well. Just . . . age.”

  “Yes. I know.” He smiled ruefully and then took my hand. “You will give her my regards, won’t you? Tell her I often think of her. She was the one friend I had, at the beginning.”

  “I’ll tell her.”

  “My dear, why are you crying?”

  I wiped my eyes with a hard brush of my fingers.

  “I just know she had certain . . . regrets.”

  “All that’s in the past now. Age has a way of clearing old misunderstandings. Please tell her I have nothing but the utmost fondness for her. And I always shall.”

  “I’ll tell her. Thank you, Billy.”

  “Billy? I haven’t been called that in thirty years.”

  EPILOGUE

  I play the moments back in my mind, threading the events carefully through the sprockets of my memory, priming the bulb, feeding the gate. My first fall, my white coat, the train west, and Mutter’s chocolate bars. The creases in Chaney’s cheeks, Browning’s ridiculous mustache, Whale’s indulgent smirk, Billy’s smile. They fumble into montage, degrade into jump cuts, and fade with skip-bleaches from too many viewings. But still the images persist. The world reminds me periodically of how I have tampered with history. Seventy-five-year-anniversary DVDs, late shows, revival houses, all reveal how the world remembers. But I prefer my own cut. My own version of the classics.

  I had just finished a mental viewing of The Bride of Frankenstein when the representatives from Child Protective Services finally gave up their search. I lingered in the dark of my closet until I heard their car doors slam, ignite, and drive away. These jokes of my mother’s are getting increasingly tedious. But so little humor passes between us anymore that I’m reluctant to deny her these small connections.

  She invites me to lunch. She makes old-people food. Cold chicken salad and iced tea. She’s forgotten she doesn’t need the nourishment. She’s proud of the pace she’s kept with the world. We watch her television. She shows me how her computer works. The latest results of her Google search. My name replicates down the virtual page like bad Gertrude Stein:

  HORROR CONFIDENTIAL: LON CHANEY SR.’S LOVE CHILD!

  Oct. 4, 1
973— . . . though Lon (née Creighton) Chaney adamantly denied before his death any such . . . has emerged that another child, Maddy Ulm, discussed in Boris Karloff’s final interview, may be his illegitimate . . .

  CINÉASTE D’HORREUR—CHEF D’OEUVRE D’HORREUR SILENT DÉCOUVERT!

  Mar. 29, 2013—(translated from the French) . . . attic of Ben “Bongo” Simms, onetime Cincinnati projectionist who discovered the footage while . . . attributed to the early expressionist work of William Dieterle, the Alliance Française calls the footage “the Prussian prelude to Frankenstein” . . . possibly Maddy Ulm (UFA 1920–24) in dual role . . .

  But my personal favorite was this little item from a few years back:

  HOLLYWOOD’S 100 MOST HAUNTED: A GALLIMAUFRY OF SPECTRAL DELIGHTS FROM THE BALCONY OF GRAUMAN’S MILLION-DOLLAR THEATER TO THE KITCHENS OF THE AMBASSADOR HOTEL.

  Oct. 31, 2010— . . . year-old Saul Ruelberg, then a dress extra at Universal, reports seeing a “a pretty scraggly little spook,” (could this be Maddy Ulm?) who Karloff called “his creature’s real mother lightning” in a . . .

  And there I am, old ninety-seven out of one hundred, sandwiched between poor Peg Entwistle, whose favorite perfume supposedly still lingers among the scrub sage after jumping to her death from the H on Mount Lee in the late summer of 1932 and a fifth-generation Trigger who, after choking to death on a spent condom expediently discarded into his oats, was reported to have snickered mournfully, albeit spectrally, during a commercial break in Pasadena’s 1972 Tournament of Roses Parade.

  My arguments against the reliability of these little gusts of cyber flatulence don’t seem to sway my mother at all. She tells me people know my name. Care about what I’ve done. I could set the record straight, claim a few shreds of my legacy, if I’d only start writing again. But I have my work, the thing I realize I am finally really fit for. You see, one day the machines will fail, theaters will close and become obsolete, and all the shiny-mirrored surfaces of recording disks the planet over will crack and lose their luster. The world will begin to forget. Forget about our first collective foray into nightmare. Forget that the sharp and primitive monochrome of black and white once held more mystery, more beauty, and more nuance than all the gradients of the rainbow. They’ll clamor for the darkness, for what came before. That’s when I will appear. And I will tell the stories.