The Great Pretenders
Page 7
“You may not.”
“Leon!” said Irv when he came on the line at last. “What’s this about?”
But I heard it. That little quaver of fear in his voice. He thinks I might have told Leon. Oh yes, cue the thunder. He was afraid of Leon. So that’s what this was all about: power. Who had power, and who didn’t. At this moment I did—fleetingly, yes, I wasn’t so stupid as to think I could maintain it—but I let the silence linger for a moment to let him break a sweat. “I quit, Irv. You’ll never humiliate me again. I know that you hired me so that you could tell your clients you had Roxanne Granville fetching and carrying for you, bowing and scraping, ‘Of course, sir. Sugar? Cream?’ And you must have thought that little escapade this morning would shame me so much that I’d be in your power—well, you can go to hell, and the next girl you press your dick against, I hope she turns around and knees you in the balls.” I hung up and looked over at Eudonna, who was shaking her head and chopping her onions. I turned up the volume on her radio, and left.
I got in the MG and drove straight to the LA River, possibly the ugliest spot in all of Los Angeles, possibly the ugliest spot in the whole world, and parked near a stunted palm. I picked up the scripts from the passenger seat and, holding them in my arms, I made my way to the chain-link fence separating the city from the gray moonscape that lay before me. The LA River is not a river at all; it’s nothing more than a gray-brown rivulet trickling between gray concrete banks. The sky overhead was a blue-bronze bowl, and the parched earth beneath my feet cracked, so dry no dust raised up. A razor-sharp wind cut through my short hair and along my stained cheek. I pulled the scripts from their envelopes and, one by one, I grabbed handfuls of pages, ripped them from their little pronged paper holders, lifted them high, and flung them over the chain-link fence, snagging my wrist now and then, the sharp points tearing at my flesh, my skin bleeding. The pages blew and danced in the wind, falling down the concrete slopes to the bottom of the channel, where they rolled beside the brown seam of dirty water. I felt a fresh crack of energy with each handful I tossed aloft, delighting in the destruction as the wind snatched them. Hundreds of them blew along the concrete alley, where they twitched and desiccated. I felt a small thrill of vindication or vengeance, or some emotion I did not quite recognize, to think of all these words that no one would ever read. All these lines no one would ever speak. All these scenes that would never see film. All that gone with the wind. As they say.
Chapter Seven
I drove home, took off the champagne-stained skirt, threw it in the trash, got in the shower, and washed off the rage and shame from the morning. Afternoon sun still burned across the beach as I stood on the high porch overlooking what I’d come to think of as my own domain, drying my hair with a towel. Bruno, the Wilburs’ dog, jumped over the enclosure where they kept him and bounded up the steps. “What do you think, boy?” I asked, kneeling down and rubbing his ears. “What’s next for me?”
Bruno only barked in reply, and the two of us took a long run up the beach, splashing in the surf. I had quit my job. Okay. Now what? The thought of trying other agencies made me wary. I’d never before experienced the sort of thing that happened this morning, even though I had lived in the heart of the Hollywood maelstrom all my life. As Julia and Leon’s granddaughter I was protected as a child, a young girl. But now I had stepped into the adult world, the working world, and not even Leon could protect me there. If I got hired at another agency, wouldn’t there always be some man, some boss who would assume I’d be willing prey? (Is there such a thing as willing prey?) What if I went independent? Could I beat Irv and men like him at their own game? In the six months I’d worked at Rakoff/Holtz, I certainly hadn’t seen anyone do astrophysics or brain surgery. Agents brought together people with complementary needs, like Julia used to do in her salons in Paris. How hard could it be? As the surf washed over my ankles and Bruno barked happily beside me, I thought wistfully back to those Thursday evenings at the Parc Monceau apartment, smiled to think of the films and books and musical collaborations all given their first embryonic momentum there. Julia went out of her way to cultivate artistic people, not just Americans like Jerrold, but anyone who might mutually benefit one another. And they did. If the name Roxanne Granville had such panache, why shouldn’t I use it myself?
And hadn’t I learned from those story conferences in the library? Max, Simon, Nelson, Jerrold, taught me, early on, that the dramatic core of any film is characters who are being tested. Whether high drama or slapstick, High Noon or Duck Soup, the characters don’t have to be saints, they just have to be interesting, have interesting motives, and respond to unlooked-for challenges. I knew a hundred hungry writers who could write stuff like that, writers who camped out at the lunch counter of Schwab’s Pharmacy and were party regulars at Casa Fiesta.
I went to Casa Fiesta that night, where, as usual, there was a fluid cast of people who all resembled one another—young, eager, restless, ambitious, beautiful, looped on drinks or drugs, oversexed, or some combination of all of that. Ice jingled in glasses, and neat little marijuana joints passed from hand to hand. Casa Fiesta is the only place, other than Central Avenue, where you’ll see race-mixing: Negro musicians and flamenco guitarists, artists and actors and writers, dancers and hangers-on. A bespectacled bongo player named, in fact, Bongo, seemed to live at Casa Fiesta. By day there was always some leftover guest lounging on the back patio or someone sleeping (or screwing) on the couch. I’m not sure Jonathan ever noticed.
Tonight, though, something special was afoot. Every actor Jonathan knew who had ever wielded a spear in a sword-and-sandal picture was there, all of them wearing robes or togas, costumes from these roles. In the back patio they had stoked a bonfire in the firepit, and by the time I arrived, the flames were snapping high and the smoke was rising above the eucalyptus trees.
Someone put a drink in my hand and introduced me to a handsome Negro actor named Clayton Strong and his girlfriend, Rita, a PE teacher at Jefferson High. She wore a tattered bedsheet to suggest a Nubian slave, and he wore the costume of a Nubian king. Clayton towered over everyone here; he had played football for the UCLA Bruins, and even played pro football for a while.
“But I quit football. It’s easier to be an actor and deal with bigots instead of dealing with bigots and getting the shit kicked out of me,” he said.
“Yes,” said Rita, bristling, “but it’s a damned shame you can’t be anything but a slave or a savage king. As an actor you have no . . . no . . .”
“No scope,” he filled in for her. “It’s true. I’m too old to be a shoeshine boy and too young to be someone’s pappy.”
“I can’t imagine you as either one,” I said.
Girls moved through the crowd, handing out finger cymbals and gongs to everyone. They turned out all the lights so our faces and bodies were lit only by the flames, and suddenly there burst among us Jonathan in a loincloth, shirtless, and barefoot, doing a wild dance. Amid the din and clang of instruments, the cheers and shouts, he finally snapped the loincloth off and fed it to the flames. Applause roared up with smoke. The sword-and-sandal actors each brought something symbolic to feed to the flames while they recited lines that had everyone clutching their guts with laughter. Clayton Strong shouted, “No more slaves!” and flung in some feathers. Some of the women who had appeared as snake-dancers or slave girls stripped down to their underwear. Diana Jordan, who had played a Roman prostitute who converted to Christianity, tore off her toga—and everything else. That was when we heard the sirens.
I got out of Casa Fiesta without being noticed because I didn’t have to put my clothes back on. But my hair smelled of smoke all night long, and I had a hangover.
The next morning, hair washed, hangover defeated, I got on PCH about eleven. I had the top down and the ocean waves breaking on the beach to my right, dry-stubbled hills rising up on my left. I turned up Sunset, drove to the Garden of Allah, parked the MG there (with
such a smart car, no one would ever know it didn’t belong there), pushed the seats forward to protect the leather from the heat, and walked to Schwab’s. I was a woman on a mission.
Just in front of Schwab’s, Al Gilbert, who covered scurrilous stuff for a rag called Secrets of the Stars, was walking out. He was a big, wheezy man; I always thought of Al as sweat-stained even if you couldn’t see the sweat stains. He held the door for me like he was Charles Laughton playing Captain Bligh. “Hey, Roxanne, care to comment on last night’s orgy?”
“It was a church social and we all had strawberry ice cream.”
“Come on. It was a race-mixing debauch where people were naked.”
“I have a real story for you, Al. I heard it from a friend of mine.”
His bloodshot eyes actually brightened, and he reached in his coat pocket and took out a pencil and scrap of paper. “Speak.”
“A certain powerful man—”
“Who? I need names, Roxanne.”
“I’m not saying. I heard it from a friend. He called her into his office and when she got there, he wasn’t wearing any pants, and he comes up to her, and—”
Al gave a great guffaw. “That’s not a real story! That happens all the time!”
“Well, if you published her story, maybe it wouldn’t happen all the time.”
“Who would believe her? Boo hoo, little me and the big, bad producer.” He started to put his pencil away, then stopped. “I hear Leon Greene fired Max Leslie within twenty-four hours of his taking the Fifth. Care to comment?”
“Would you like to quote me, Al?”
“Sure!”
“Then take this down. You and your kind are the enemas of the picture business.”
“And we always get our shit.”
I brushed past him and into Schwab’s. The place was smoke-laden as usual, never mind the overhead fans. When I’d first started at Rakoff/Holtz last winter, I used to come to Schwab’s for lunch just to hang out among the young writers. I always had a Coke and a ham sandwich and nursed the fantasy that someone would recognize me as a person with exquisite taste and terrific commercial instincts (knowing full well that those two things could cancel each other out). I daydreamed that a brilliant but unsung writer would come up to me and press into my hands a script that would turn out to be the next Casablanca. I liked to imagine that the story of how the script had come to me would itself become legend. Kind of like Swifty Lazar getting his name from Humphrey Bogart for having made him three deals in one day. That didn’t happen, of course, at least not yet. Anyway, now I was an independent, and the daydream shone all the brighter.
As I went up to the counter, people were popping in and out of the phone booths, jumping up, jostling one another, eager, noisy. Schwab’s, though an actual pharmacy and a soda fountain, is a de facto club, a regular rendezvous, a fish tank of sorts for enterprising, unemployed writers. There’s camaraderie here, but there’s competition too. You can all but taste it. Writers of all stripes and varieties are always on the lookout for someone to read their stuff, but mostly they come here to exchange gossip and ideas, to sniff out opportunities. The place percolates with ambition and energy. The mood at Schwab’s is always upbeat. If you’re down in the dumps, go someplace else and drink in the dark.
I ordered a Coke from the girl behind the counter, a beautiful girl with curled, cascading light brown hair, a red, voluptuous mouth, perfect teeth, and expectant blue eyes. Everywhere you look you see these perfect specimens of femininity, oozing Ava Gardner smolder or percolating Debbie Reynolds wholesomeness. It can be damned discouraging, having a face irredeemably marred in the world’s capital of beautiful women.
I took my Coke and wandered over to a booth where many writers had parked themselves. I had a nodding acquaintance with most of these guys—and they were all guys. “There’s a new agency in town,” I announced. An expectant hush fell over the crowd; if I am not mistaken, the very fans overhead stopped in their revolutions. “Yes, boys, I have hung out my shingle. The Granville Agency is new and independent, and I’m taking on writers.”
“On your back?” asked Art Luke with a moody laugh. Art doesn’t usually make jokes. He was older than the rest; he had grown up in a Mormon enclave in Mexico and fought in the Pacific. He wrote hard-boiled films: lots of jaded detectives and gorgeous dames.
“Granville’s Folly,” scoffed Maurice Allen, an acerbic, displaced New Yorker who hated Southern California. “You’ll never make it work.”
“Don’t be so sure. I know everyone in this town.”
“A girl agent?” scoffed Jimmy Ashford, a pale young man who came from a family of walnut growers in the Valley and feared having to go back. “That’ll be the day.”
“A woman. My name is Roxanne Granville, and I have more panache in my little finger than you have sperm count in your left testicle.” I waited for the laughter to die down. “I’m open for business. I’ll be back here tomorrow at noon and every day this week just to collect your scripts. I’ll read them all.”
Charlie Frye wandered in, tanned, blond, a little disheveled as usual, handsome in his surfer way. I had met him at the lunch counter my first week with Rakoff/Holtz. He was writing dialogue on a napkin.
“Roxanne’s just telling us she’s opening her own agency,” said Jimmy.
“I quit Rakoff/Holtz.”
“You sure they didn’t fire you?”
“Here’s what happened.” I lowered my voice in the manner taught by L’Oiseau d’Or, so that my words seemed musky and important even before I spoke them. “I went to a fortune teller the other night. She looked like Ava Gardner’s going to look in thirty years. She held her hands over a crystal ball.” I formed a tent with my fingers and closed my eyes. “‘Ma chère,’ she said, ‘you are not meant to labor in the service of others. You are a true original. You are an independent. You are destined to represent the writer of the next Casablanca, and to do that you must be free.’ Honest, guys, that’s what she said, in French. I offer you my rough translation.”
“I got a script right here in my front pocket, Roxanne,” said Jimmy.
“Keep it there, along with your hands and your dick,” said Charlie. “Roxanne, read my Coast of Fortune. It’s the best!”
“I’ll read it all,” I said. “If it’s any good, I’ll represent you. I’ll find you work. I can’t promise Paramount or MGM, or even Empire or Paragon, but I can promise I will work for you, and I’ll take ten percent of everything you make from here to eternity.” Everyone guffawed at that. “We’re all in the same boat, aren’t we? All starting out. We need each other. Bring me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses of words. Tell your friends,” I added, glancing around Schwab’s. “I’m open for business.”
My announcement had its intended effect. Pleased, I walked out of Schwab’s, turned down Sunset, and went to church.
That is, I went to the first movie theater I came to. From Here to Eternity was playing, and the girl in the ticket booth (another simmering beauty) said it had already started. I didn’t care. I had already seen it. Besides, I don’t go to the movies for the film. I go for the religious experience. The Church of Rick and Ilsa, as Julia used to call it.
I bought some popcorn, stepped into the dark, and took an aisle seat, delighted that I hadn’t missed the rolling-on-the-beach scene where for a few brief, ecstatic seconds Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr clasp each other in the surf. Oh, I long to meet the man who could do that for a woman! I sighed, nibbled the popcorn, and sank happily into the film.
For Leon, watching movies was work. Every night after dinner he went to the screening room at Summit Drive. Julia also sat through all those daily sessions, but pictures were never simply her profession; they were her passion. She shared that passion with me. A darkened theater was our favorite place on earth. She used to take me to matinees when I didn’t weigh enough to hold down the seat. Som
etimes we’d go to the glamorous palaces like Grauman’s Chinese, but often we’d take in a double feature at a little music box of a theater in Westwood. We believed that theaters were a place of worship where magic washed over us, a world heightened, made brilliant with music, with action and romance, where all the sounds are crisp, and all the words are meaningful, and all the endings are happy or poignant, and you walk out bathed in emotions you didn’t have to suffer for, or struggle for, or take any risks to feel so wonderfully enhanced. A gift. The false opulence, plush carpets, stale air, and palliative darkness combine to create a sacred space. A place of solace, hushed and holy. I recognized this same consecrated ambience the first time I walked into Notre-Dame in Paris, except that Notre-Dame did not have stale air, and the stories glowing in the stained glass windows were not nearly as exciting as the coming attractions in a darkened theater.
PART II
The Challenger
1955
Chapter Eight
I’m sitting on an orange couch in Larry Sanford’s office on Poverty Row, those little low-rent studios hunkered near Gower that make B Westerns, gangster flicks, monster movies, and Saturday-morning serials. Larry’s office, like all the rest of them, is smelly, smoke-filled, with filthy windows; the Venetian blinds are missing slats, and lurid posters dot the walls (men looking resolute, women wailing in terror, slimy creatures). Larry and I are chatting away about Charlie Frye’s Return of the Cat People and a couple of second-rate Westerns that Jimmy Ashford wrote. Larry isn’t exactly committing to them, but he’s enthusiastic about both my clients, and last year he bought one of Jimmy’s Westerns, and a gangster script by Art Luke. The pay was mere merde, but he actually produced them. Now he’s talking about Charlie’s Return of the Cat People like it is Citizen Kane.