The Great Pretenders

by Laura Kalpakian

  Despite her cheery name, the secretary, Bonnie, looked more like a mother superior. She never wore anything but navy blue or black. “He’s expecting you.”

  “Who’s the client?” I asked.

  “Richard Neville.”

  Richard Neville was an aging actor best known for swashbuckling other men’s wives. “And the third glass?”

  “Who knows, maybe for you, Roxanne.” She rose, opened the door to Irv’s office, and closed it behind me.

  Irv Rakoff didn’t get to be a legend in this business because of his looks. Middle-aged, with a graying crew cut and pasty skin, he had heavy, dark jowls that spread across the collar of his shirt and drooped over his tie. Coatless in this heat, he sat at his desk. “Good morning, Roxanne. Why don’t you open that now and pour some for yourself?”

  I turned to the table and popped the cork expertly while inwardly crowing, Promotion, promotion! I’ve worked here six months and I’m getting a promotion! But as I poured the third glass, I felt Mr. Rakoff behind me, pressing, pushing himself into my behind, in fact. Unmistakably he had an erection. His arms encircled my waist, his hands stroked my hips and moved up to fondle my breasts. He breathed heavily. His lips, at the back of my neck, nuzzling, damp. Accelerating revulsion and disgust ripped across my brain like a car chase in a silent movie. I could feel my birthmark flood with color, but I just stood still, frozen, uncertain, bottle in hand, thinking: If I turn around, he’ll kiss me. If I stand here, he’ll . . . So I turned around and poured champagne all over his boxer shorts. He wasn’t wearing any pants.

  “Sonofabitch!” he cried, jumping backward. “Goddammit, Roxanne!”

  “Oh, Mr. Rakoff! I’m sorry. Did I just—”

  “Goddammit!” He fluttered his boxer shorts over his erection. “You’re not so very special, Roxanne.”

  “Maybe not,” I retorted with more bravado than I felt, “but I’m not just off the bus from Arkansas either. Imagine if I told my grandfather about this.”

  “You won’t.”

  He was absolutely right. I would not tell Leon. Suddenly the humiliation of the situation crashed upon me. I dropped the bottle onto the carpet, moved to the door, and flung it open.

  There was Bonnie at her desk, and sitting in a chair across from her was Richard Neville, all bronzy-tan and shock of cinnamon-colored dyed hair, with his mouth dropped open to have a view of me with champagne all over my skirt, Rakoff standing there in his underwear, and the bottle lolling on the floor.

  Bonnie leapt from her desk, pulled me roughly into her office, closed the door with a thud, and told Neville without so much as a blink, “Mr. Rakoff will be just a moment. Roxanne, I have a bunch of scripts that need delivering.”

  Richard Neville started to laugh, a deep, throaty, theatrical laugh, and Bonnie gave a smirk. They were not laughing at Irv Rakoff in his underwear. They were laughing at me, knowing exactly what happened in there. A comic scene. Just another Hollywood day. I wanted to protest, to yell or cry out, but, as if I was suddenly struck dumb, no sound came from my lips.

  Suddenly Tom Willis popped into the room. Grinning, handsome in a crisp new wide-lapel suit, he offered Richard Neville a hearty, masculine handshake while ladling fulsome praise all over his latest unremarkable picture. Bonnie rose and opened Irv’s door. He was back behind his desk (and I assume he had his pants on). He called out in a jovial fashion, totally in control of himself and the situation, “Richard, come and meet Tom Willis. He’ll be your new liaison while we work on this deal. He’ll see to it you’re very well treated. He’s a Dartmouth man.”

  The mirth died from Neville’s lips, and color drained from his face. He knew this meant Irv Rakoff, the name partner, would no longer personally represent him; he was passé, maybe even finished, handed off to . . . “What did you say your name was?”

  “Tom! Tom Willis, your new agent.”

  “Plenty of time to get acquainted,” Irv said. “Come into my office.”

  Bonnie closed the door after them. She took from her desk a stack of scripts and placed them unceremoniously in my arms. “Deliver these, then come back to the office and take up the rest of your duties.”

  “You think letting Mr. Rakoff feel me up is part of my duty?” I rasped. I know my mouth was gaping, but I couldn’t help it. “You think I’m supposed to—”

  “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll shut up right now.” As if on cue, her phone rang, and she picked it up. “Mr. Rakoff’s office.”

  I went downstairs feeling rickety, uneven, tottering in my heels, knowing I had to go back to the Farm to get my purse and keys before I could leave. I went first to the women’s bathroom and washed my hands and saw Julia’s diamond ring flash in the harsh light. I started to cry, bringing my wet hands to my face until I all but heard her voice. Not here. Not now. Never forget you are named for the romantic heroine of a great play . . .

  After I collected myself (which took some doing), I strolled into the Farm, where the guys were all underemployed—reading the newspaper, chatting on the phone, doing a crossword—but when they looked up and saw me, their collective expression was sympathetic. Did they know? Did they guess? “I spilled champagne on my skirt,” I stammered.

  Dave handed me the newspaper. “I know Max Leslie is a friend of yours,” he said.

  My heart sank as my eyes devoured Hedda Hopper’s shrill column excoriating Max as another Red serving the ambitions of the Soviet Union, another cowardly Red who had taken the Fifth before the House Committee and refused to name his Communist comrades.

  “His ass was cooked when his name showed up in the pages of Red Channels. Anyone, everyone whose name is there, well . . .” Joe sliced across his throat.

  “He’ll probably have to leave the country like so many others,” said Dave.

  “Or shoot himself like Nelson Hilyard,” said Joe.

  “Hilyard was a homo,” Dave clarified. “At least Max Leslie isn’t an actor, or a director. They’re really screwed. A writer can always find someone to front for him—put a new name on the script and who knows the difference? Sometimes the studios themselves slip a different name on the credits, and keep their own men working.”

  “Leon Greene would never do that,” said Joe. “Is it true that he makes everyone at Empire recite the Pledge of Allegiance every morning, Roxanne?”

  I collapsed at my desk.

  “To name names, or not to name names! That is the question!” cried Dave, shattering the dour mood by leaping to his feet and striking a Shakespearean pose. “A story in three classical acts: First, you abase yourself before the Committee, then you swear it was a rotten mistake in your rotten youth, which you deeply, truly, tremendously regret—pause here for sackcloth and ashes.” He crossed himself and looked skyward. “Then you blather the name of every face you can remember, and some you can’t. The more names, the better. The more they love you. Mea culpa, the gang’s all here! Or there. Or about to get subpoenaed. The Committee then thanks you for your courageous and forthright testimony, and you thank them for the opportunity to serve your country and for their fine work serving our country, and everyone is just so delighted to serve their country that ‘Stars and Stripes Forever’ blares over the loudspeakers.” Dave hummed a few bars and saluted. “Be a friendly witness, and you go on working. Do it not, and your life is over!”

  Joe picked up a pencil, brought it down on the desk like a gavel, and barked at me, “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party? Speak up! Don’t think you can claim the First Amendment! Men have gone to prison for that!”

  Tom Willis ambled into the Farm, beaming, happy to inform them all of his promotion in glowing terms. “Lunch and drinks are on me, boys! Success will make me invincible!”

  I collected my purse and keys, thinking, How goddamned stupid can you be, Tom? But maybe they don’t teach you at Dartmouth that Hollywood is l
ike a huge hothouse, steamy and enclosed. Everyone’s lives and loves, their fortunes, their so-called sacred honor, their sins, their failings, their bad judgments, their bad breath, their bad debts are like the steam that rises on the hothouse walls, dripping with what everyone—actors, writers, agents, producers, directors, the press, the critics, the musicians and the carpenter, the sound man—knows. In Hollywood fame, money, reputation, friendship, even love and marriage are conditional, flimsy, and often for effect. No one is invincible, Tom. The film business is like the house of straw where everything can be blown away with one foul gust. Just ask Max Leslie. Which is what I intended to do.

  Chapter Five

  By the time I arrived at Max and Marian’s, the hot August air had dried the champagne from my skirt, leaving the barest outline of a stain. As I pulled into the driveway of their big two-story faux Tudor house on Carolwood Drive, my own ordeal paled in comparison to the scene before me. Someone had splashed buckets of red paint across the front porch, the door, the lower windows. It looked to have dried, but I certainly wasn’t going to step on the porch. I went round to the back, through a rustic gate and arbor draped with red climbing roses. “Max,” I called out. “Marian? It’s me, Roxanne!”

  Max, sitting on the edge of the pool, his pants soaked to the knee, looked up. His bare feet were in the water, which was an odd color; a sickly mauve ribbon rose up from the deep end and floated like a banner toward the shallow end, where he sat. He had a glass on one side, a bottle on the other. He smiled, though his eyes were deep-ringed with misery behind his glasses, his gray hair hung lank across his brow.

  “Max, what’s happened? Who did this to your house? Who could have done this?”

  He rose unsteadily and dripped over to me, took me in a great, warm hug redolent of Scotch and sweat. “Roxanne, dear little Roxanne.”

  “Max, have you called the police?”

  “The police won’t lift a hand. I’m an avowed Communist, remember? A marked man.”

  I glanced over at the pool and saw underwater in the deep end the patio furniture, table, a few chairs, and great sodden cushions that had sunk to the bottom. And a couple of gallon cans of red paint.

  “Those zany Marx brothers came by,” he said. “But instead of Groucho, Harpo, and Chico, it was Karl Marx and his brothers, Nikita and Stalinski. They just went wild,” he added with a small, scruffy smile, though the joke fell flat. “It’s good of you to come, Roxanne, but you shouldn’t have. I’m assuming Leon doesn’t know you’re here.”

  “Leon doesn’t get to tell me what to do. I have my own place now at Malibu. I won’t go to Summit Drive as long as Denise and Elsie live there. So I don’t care what Leon thinks.”

  “Then you’re the only person in Hollywood immune to what Leon Greene thinks.”

  “Where is Marian?” I asked, now seriously worried.

  “Visiting Norman.” Max wobbled back to the shallow end, sat on the steps, his feet in the water.

  I had never met their son. Only heard about him. I kicked off my high heels and put my feet in too, stockings and all. “How is Norman?”

  “Norman’s the same as he ever was, or ever will be,” he said with a shrug. “Marian always wanted to keep him living with us, no matter what. She thought that she could love him into being like other kids. But once he got to be sixteen, well, we had to put him in a home. That’s what they call it, and it is a home, I suppose. Beautiful, serene, secure. Expensive.” He sipped from his glass. “Marian and I just about broke up over Norman. More than once,” he added. “Now Norman is well cared for, and Marian goes to see him five days a week. She feeds him. Like a baby.”

  “That is a sad story, especially for a comedy writer.”

  “The screenwriter’s Buster Keaton.”

  “Max, what happened yesterday with the Committee?”

  “I got my dick put in the wringer—begging your pardon, dear girl.” He sipped more Scotch and looked at the nearly empty glass as though it might be about to speak. “I should never have let Melvin Grant handle my case. I wanted one of those left-wing lawyers like Wilkie, but Melvin Grant insisted he should represent me, swore he could make it all right. He set it all up. An executive meeting of the Committee convened just for me in a discreet hotel room, no press. He said it was all just a formality anyway, and if the Committee asked me to name names, I wouldn’t be telling them anything new. They already knew who these people were. They just needed to hear it from me. Marian wanted me to do it. So I could go on working. She begged me. Even though I would have had to give up her name, she insisted. So I told Grant I’d cooperate.”

  “Why didn’t you? I mean, if they already had the names . . .”

  “That’s what they told Vic Hale, I’m sure.”

  “They didn’t know about you till Vic gave them your name?” Vic Hale had come to Empire in the years I’d been gone. I didn’t even know him, but I despised him now, and I always would.

  “Vic Hale named names because his agent told him it would be a good idea. His agent and his attorney, Melvin Grant. How could he resist the two of them?”

  “I know why Melvin Grant would think that—he works for Leon—but why would the agent care?”

  “Because if Vic isn’t making money, the agent isn’t making money either. That simple.”

  Had Irv Rakoff stooped to telling his clients they should name names if the Committee asked? Did all agents? The thought made me sort of sick.

  “It’s like the La Brea Tar Pits,” Max went on, “a great pool of sludge that sucks people into it, and when they climb out, no matter what they did or said, they’re covered in sludge, and they leave tracks wherever they go. That’s what’s happened to me. To Vic. To any of us.” A dry, hot breeze swept over us, ruffling the weirdly colored waters. “You want a drink, Roxanne? I should have asked.”

  “No. No, I’m fine.” I patted his shoulder.

  “Melvin Grant and I got to the hotel room, one of those big downtown hotels, so old even the walls have nicotine stains, and the elevators creak, and the radiators leak rusty water, room number—whatever it was—and the Committee men, they’re already there. It’s set up like it’s all supposed to be dignified. We engage in a lot of greasy formality before I swear on the Bible, and we finally get to it. Am I now or have I ever been a Communist, and I say, yes, sir—I really did call that little rodent “sir”—I was once a Communist, but I left the Party in thirty-nine when Stalin made his pact with Hitler, and I never went back. I am a dedicated American. So far so good. We exchange a few lines about how great our country is. All the time I’m sitting there, the cigarette smoke is getting thicker by the minute, and I’m thinking, what the hell right do they have to ask me any of this? Then they wanted names, and I realized that Melvin had sugarcoated the turd. If I named names, lots of my friends and comrades would also get their tits and dicks put through the wringer. I’ve been writing dialogue my whole adult life and I just couldn’t seem to make the lines they wanted come out of my mouth. I’m sitting there, wondering what I should do. I can’t invoke the First Amendment, free speech. I know that for damn sure. Look what happened to Dalton Trumbo, Adrian Scott, Ring Lardner, and the rest of the Hollywood Ten. They insisted the First Amendment protected them. That defense and the appeals went through the courts for a couple of years, and when the Supreme Court declined to hear their case, well, guess what? They all went to federal prison. So if the First Amendment is no good, what’s left but the Fifth? I kept looking around that hotel room, the rusty radiator underneath the window, the pigeons crowded on the sill. The mirror had a little crack in it. And then I looked at the bed, and I knew that no one but prostitutes had ever made love in that bed, no one but whores had ever made love in this room. So I took the Fifth.”

  I listened to the pool water slurp along the sides for a few minutes. “What will you do now?”

  He sipped in silence. “Well now I’ll
lose my job with Empire, and no one else will ever hire me. They’re the only studio I’ve ever worked for.”

  “But you have a contract with Empire! You’ve been there . . . longer than I’ve been alive.”

  “The studios have dumped better writers than me, and all those writers had contracts too. The studio heads are a law unto themselves. When Leon Greene wants you gone, you’re gone.”

  “It’s tragic.”

  “It’s actually comic. There was never any serious Red threat in the movies, no matter what Ayn Rand and the rest of them think, and the party never advocated overthrowing the government. The only people who made those kinds of outlandish statements at meetings were FBI spies, stooges who would show up to foment insurrection and collect names. That’s the comic part.”

  “But it’s tragic what’s happened to you and Simon and Jerrold and Nelson.”

  Max draped his arm over my shoulders. “How can I explain it to you, what it was like twenty years ago in the thirties? Oh, sure, there was a lot of ideological struggling, Trotsky versus Stalin, all that sort of thing, but really, here in Hollywood, the Communist Party was a big social network. That’s where I met Marian. She was a script reader and I was a writer, and we were all very serious, hardworking people who believed we had the right to unionize. Simon and Nelson were always more committed to the party and its principles than I was—Simon was actively raising money for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade fighting in the Spanish Civil War. People forget now that in the thirties, the Communists were the only ones standing up to the fascists in Europe. Here in Hollywood, the Communist Party gatherings were where you went if you had a social conscience, if you wanted to act on behalf of the poor, the disenfranchised, the despairing, if you wanted to fight racism and fascism.” He gave a rueful, halfhearted chuckle. “It’s also where you went if you wanted to get laid. People who went to Communist Party meetings believed that all of us, writers, actors, the men who moved the sets, that we should speak with one voice through a union. I’m not ashamed of that.” He drank the last of his Scotch. “Now all that youthful fervor for social injustice, on behalf of labor’s right to organize, including the right to strike if need be—oh yeah, there were heads and hearts broken over that twenty years ago too—that has condemned me. Condemned us.”