The Great Pretenders

by Laura Kalpakian

  I sent it to MGM, to Jonathan’s odious father, where The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea was in preproduction, but MGM was not the least bit interested in Adios Diablo. Mr. Moore returned it to me within twenty-four hours with a terse note that read, You must be out of your mind. Peons rising up against the railroad? Communist propaganda.

  One afternoon a few weeks later the phone rang, and instead of putting the call through, Thelma came to my door. Whoever it was would not give their name. She gave me a look of foreboding. I took the call in my office while she lounged in the doorway.

  An ironic masculine voice said, “I understand you’re having an affair.”

  Had Al Gilbert or some other slimeball sniffed out Terrence and me? “Is that so? Who with?”

  “With me. I heard it from my wife. I am in deep shit, matrimonially speaking.”

  I laughed with relief and waved okay to Thelma. “Sorry, Carleton. Would it help if I denied it in Variety?”

  He was calling about another script by one of my clients, a modest whodunit Paragon wanted to produce. Looking for paper to take notes, I picked up one of the many rejections for Adios Diablo. I described it to Carleton in glowing terms.

  “No thanks, Roxanne. It’s too Mexican, and anything with insurrection is like catnip to the American Legion and the Motion Picture Alliance. Believe me, I don’t want John Wayne and Ward Bond sniffing around Paragon. Besides, you say it has a train wreck? Too expensive. Paragon is not MGM.”

  “MGM has turned it down.”

  He gave a rueful laugh. “And you want me to produce it?”

  “Read it. Just read it. It’s the most exciting script I’ve ever offered. Really. Stupendous. And we are lovers, don’t forget.”

  “You are very persuasive. Send it over to Paragon this afternoon with your courier, and I’ll read it.”

  Ha ha, I thought to myself, as I picked up my purse and keys, Carleton Grimes thinks I have a courier—or, more likely, he was trying to flatter me.

  Ten days later Carleton Grimes called and asked me to meet him for lunch at Pierino’s. Popeye was parked on Clara Bow Drive, so I left fifteen minutes early to give myself time to lose him in traffic. He drove a lumbering Chevy. I drove the Silver Bullet and drove it well, like Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief, complete with broad-brimmed hat. I knew the shortcuts. I lost him, and I thought myself quite clever. Nonetheless, as I gave the keys to my car to the kid doing valet parking, I said, “If a frumpy guy in a gray sedan comes up and asks to see inside my car, and you let him, I will sue you from here to the rest of your life.”

  I sashayed in, and the waiter led me to Carleton’s table, where the script of Adios Diablo sat on the table.

  After the ordinary falsehoods of greeting, he said, “Tell me about Art Luke. Why have I never heard of him?”

  “He’s written a couple of detective pictures, and a monster flicker for Poverty Row, nothing especially memorable. But Adios Diablo, he’s been working on this for years. He’s passionate about it. He grew up in Mexico. His father met Pancho Villa.”

  “It’s a fine story, Roxanne. Really. I have just the young director for it too, Sam Pepper. Heard of him?” I hadn’t. “Mostly he’s done TV Westerns, writing, directing, but the weekly episode—beginning, middle, end in thirty minutes—it’s too narrow and finite for him. Sam needs a bigger palette. But this . . .” He thrummed his fingers on the script. “Train wrecks have been expensive since the days of Buster Keaton.” Then he went off on a long aside about Buster Keaton and how much he admired him, and did I know him, and of course I did . . . As I kept up my end of this long, oblique conversation, I told myself, if the answer were simply no, I would not be here. Carleton was like a dragonfly, skirting over the reflective surface of the Hollywood pond, veering off into amusing anecdotes, returning to ask something more probing about Art, about Adios Diablo, talking about Paragon, still the Hollywood underdog, though not so underdog as to be down there with the Poverty Row boys. Why hadn’t I taken Adios Diablo to Poverty Row? Well, because it wasn’t B-movie material.

  “I can see why you didn’t take it to Empire,” he said. “At least, I’m assuming you didn’t take it there.”

  “Leon wouldn’t touch this with rubber gloves and a surgical mask. The story is too bold. He’s still operating under the ‘Screen Guide for Americans’ that Ayn Rand wrote in forty-seven.”

  Carleton looked thoughtful. “Hollywood has lost a lot of talent in the past few years, but Paramount, Warner, MGM, they can replace whoever they throw away. They can afford to groom younger writers and actors and directors. They can develop CinemaScope and Todd-AO, and VistaVision. They can part the Red Sea and rebuild the pyramids. Paragon doesn’t have those resources. We have to choose everything carefully, make each picture count to remain competitive. But since Noah Glassman died last year, and I’m in charge now, I’ve got more leeway, but I also have more responsibility. Still, I’d like to do at least one big picture per year. Risky, yes?”

  “Reckless,” I replied, “but if it’s a hit, one big picture can fund a dozen small ones.”

  “And make a new reputation. I want Paragon to be just that—a paragon.”

  I merely nodded. Carleton had his own rhythms.

  “I so envy the people who were working in the silent era. They could make brilliant films with a couple of cameras, a few bathing beauties, and a pickup truck.” He launched into yet another digression, and the lunch crowd at Pierino’s had considerably thinned when he finally signaled for the check and said, “Adios Diablo is an extraordinary picture, full of color and character and great lines, and conflicted men and hard women. And an expensive train wreck. If we filmed in Mexico, Chihuahua or Sonora, we could do it.”

  So at last we get to it, I thought.

  “I would want the writer on-set, on location for changes, rewrites. Art Luke would have to go to Mexico. That would have to be part of the deal. He’d have to stay there throughout the filming, or it’s no go.”

  In Mexico, I thought to myself with a twinge of foreboding, there will be no agency services for the rewrites like we did with Charlie and Max. If Art got stuck, he’d be stuck. Except . . . Simon Strassman was in Mexico. Conceivably Simon might show up. That could go badly. Simon had an outsized ego to go with his outsized body, and he could wreak real havoc, even disaster. The disaster could wreck the picture. Could that wreck Paragon? It could certainly wreck Art Luke’s career. Could wreck my career. “Sure,” I said. “That sounds great.”

  “Let’s talk particulars later in the week.”

  “Fine,” I said as we both rose to leave, “but I’d like to add—I don’t know who you’re thinking about casting for the black guy.”

  “I’m always thinking about casting.”

  “There’s a really great actor named Clayton Strong. You should look at him.”

  “What’s he done?”

  “Oh, the usual sword-and-sandal crap, but the question is: What can he do, given the opportunity?”

  “That’s the question we all ask of ourselves. If we’re any good at all.”

  He picked up the check, glanced at it, and threw down a fifty-dollar bill with a show of panache, with what Julia would have recognized as a shimmering wake. Glamour.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  I sat at my desk one overcast November afternoon, listening to Thelma’s typewriter clack away, feeling glum and leafing through the newspaper. Unable to face the front page headlines screaming about Reds in government, Reds in the military, I turned to the society pages. There I found pictures of Leon, Denise, Jonathan, and Barbara Marsh all out together at the Cocoanut Grove, looking glittery and golden. Fly Me to the Moon wouldn’t even premiere until February, or maybe even March, and already the publicity machine had started its inexorable grind. On the entertainment pages there were pictures of Jonathan and Denise at Griffith Observatory having a serious conversation w
ith “real astronomers.” They looked so intent they could have been Bogart and Bacall in Key Largo.

  Thunder rumbled somewhere and rain pelted the windows. I dashed outside to the backyard and hurriedly took all the clothes off the line. Coming in through the back porch and the kitchen, I stopped and listened carefully. Someone was talking to Thelma. A voice I knew. I walked slowly into the living room and saw Irene wearing a chic red suit that warmed her pale complexion.

  “I’ve missed you, little sister.”

  I dumped the laundry on the couch and ran to her, choked up with tears. “Oh, Irene! I can’t tell you how I’ve missed you!” I hugged her again and again while Thelma handed out Kleenex.

  “I’ll never approve of you and Terrence, and I still find it shocking, but as long as you don’t ask me to embrace him as a brother—”

  “I never did ask that, Irene,” I said, wiping my eyes.

  “Fine. I don’t want to know anything more about him. Just like I don’t want to know anything more about the writers you have fronting for your old Communist pals.”

  I quickly ushered her into my office, feeling the birthmark flush with guilt. I’d never told Thelma that Irene had guessed about Max. “You’re wearing red,” I observed.

  “Yes. Gordon doesn’t get to tell me what to do, who to see, or what to wear. He can’t expect that from me anymore.”

  “I bet he loved hearing that.”

  “I’m the least of his problems, sad to say. I want to whisk you away.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Empire needs your help. Gordon wants to know what you think.”

  “He’s never cared what I think.”

  “We’re going to see a rough cut of Fly Me to the Moon. I told him if anyone might have some insight, it would be you.”

  “Ah,” was all I could muster.

  As we pulled away from Clara Bow Drive in Irene’s Cadillac, I noticed Popeye across the street. I glanced over my shoulder, and yes, there he was, following us, a fact I did not bring to Irene’s attention. Popeye now had her license plate number, and the make of her distinctive teal blue car, and there was nothing I could do about it. On the other hand, if I thought it out rationally, he’d certainly learn the car belonged to Irene Conrad, who was related to the Leon Greene, founding member and major nabob in the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. She’d be safe. And then it occurred to me that I too was related to Leon Greene, and perhaps the FBI wouldn’t look too closely at the Granville Agency since my grandfather was pals with J. Edgar and Dick Nixon. That is, unless they believed Thelma Bigelow was a Communist spy trying to infiltrate the entertainment business, and spread Red propaganda using the Granville Agency as a cover. The burdens of secrecy, the murk and merde, the endless grate of fear of what I didn’t know—and anxiety for what I did—made my innards knot.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Irene asked. “You look suddenly sick.”

  “I’m fine.” But I rolled down the window a bit just the same, rain and all; I needed the fresh air.

  Irene’s Cadillac passed through Empire’s elephant gates with a mere nod from the guard, and without waiting in line. (Popeye of course could not follow.) She parked in front of the ostentatious Executive Mansion and we ran through the falling rain (Californians never carry umbrellas). With only a breezy nod to the gorgon at the reception desk, we went to the screening room on the first floor. Gordon was making a few calls when we walked in, and he motioned to us to have a seat. I hadn’t been in this room since I was in high school, what felt like a thousand years ago. As I sat down, the plush chair gave off a gentle whoosh of stale cigarettes and long-suppressed farts.

  Gordon signed some documents, handed them to his secretary, and waved her away. He signaled the guy up in the projection booth. He said to me, “This isn’t properly cut yet, and the gloss isn’t on it, no music, except for that scene where we licensed the song, but I want to know what you think.”

  “Well, sure, Gordon, but why?”

  “Aren’t you the one who sat at the feet of the masters?” he snapped in his usual snotty fashion while Irene rolled her eyes.

  Fly Me to the Moon and its witty premise relied on the audience finding Professor Bleeker endearing and exasperating, brilliant and myopic. Jonathan was perfect. The terrific delivery that I had witnessed on-set that day carried perfectly onto film. He might never play Hamlet, but he had a flair for this kind of comedic timing, like the younger Cary Grant. Maisie started out plain, but as the film continued she became beautiful by virtue of being smart, and being in love. But Denise was never plain, always a stunning beauty, and when Maisie spouted phrases like oscilloscopic lenses and gamma refractions, when complex equations configuring light years passed through her lush, pouting lips, Denise looked like an angel, but she sounded like a chimp. The comic effect was unintended. Would the audience believe that Maisie was smart enough to hoodwink her astrophysicist boss? Or that, given her extraordinary beauty, she would need to hoodwink him? The rest of the cast, including Barbara Marsh, was fine, but the story, as with any picture like this, fell squarely on the shoulders of the two leads, just like Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night. I winced to watch the scene where the shoeshine boy did his jive dance for Professor Bleeker.

  During the picture Gordon smoked continually. Midway through, the director, Phil Tobin, came in and took a seat at the back, as did someone else I didn’t recognize, the editor perhaps. When it was over and the lights came up, the editor (if that’s who it was) left. Phil and Gordon and Irene looked at me expectantly.

  “Jonathan was brilliant,” I offered.

  “Yeah, I was surprised,” Phil conceded. “And he and Denise have good on-screen chemistry.”

  They have more than that, I thought to myself, though clearly I said nothing of the sort.

  “The pacing is fine,” I went on, “the sets are imaginative, and the dialogue is lively. Whatever else is wrong with the picture, it’s not Charlie’s script. Why am I here?” No one replied. “Leon’s the boss. He’s seen this footage ten thousand times. What does he think?”

  Phil and Gordon exchanged uneasy glances. Gordon cleared his throat and called up to the booth. “You can go home now, Steve. Thanks.” The projectionist’s light went out, and Gordon turned to me. “Leon says there are little weaknesses that only need to be adjusted. That’s his word. ‘Adjusted.’ Leon says it is up to me and Phil and the editor to adjust. Leon says he did his part. Denise did her part. It’s on us.”

  “The music might make a difference,” I said.

  “Who’s our latest composer?” asked Phil.

  “We don’t have one. I liked Elmer Bernstein, but Leon nixed him as a Red. Personally, I don’t give a good goddamn what people’s politics are. Let the Reds sit in their little cells and plot world revolution or an Easter egg hunt for all I care, but for Leon, you’re Red, you’re dead.” Gordon turned to me. “Give me some hope here, Roxanne. You’re the one who learned at the feet of the masters.”

  This time he said it without irony or underlying sarcasm, and I was taken aback. “It’s not a question of story. It’s a question of image. If only Denise didn’t look so vampy when she’s supposed to be a scientific mind who devised this scientific plan to get her scientific man. How can you fix that?”

  “If I could answer that question, I wouldn’t be drinking heavily.” He opened his bottle of Pepto-Bismol. “The premiere is already set—a gala premiere at the Griffith Observatory in February.”

  “How did you get the Observatory to agree to that?” I asked, impressed.

  “The Leon and Denise Greene Endowment, a cool million dollars.”

  “A million dollars!” My jaw dropped to think of anyone just giving away that much money.

  “Yeah, well, it wasn’t my idea. I can tell you that. It’s part of the publicity budget.”r />
  I let that sink in for a few minutes.

  “Yes, ladies,” he added, “the cool million came from the studio, not from Leon personally.”

  “Jean Arthur would have slain them in this role,” I offered by way of nothing.

  “You’re living in the past. No one in Hollywood can afford to live in the past.”

  “Well, it’s late, and I’m going home,” said Phil. “I’ll deal with this tomorrow.”

  “In Banner Headline,” said Gordon, when he and I and Irene were left alone, “Denise’s character was supposed to be a little harebrained—sweet, but not a great mind. This character . . . this film . . .” He coughed, a nasty, wracking cough, and stubbed out the cigarette.

  “You shouldn’t smoke, honey,” said Irene. “It’s bad for your ulcer.”

  “Denise Dell is killing me.”

  “Could you re-record her voice, maybe? Get someone else to speak her lines?” asked Irene.

  “So we could call it Singin’ in the Lab and have Gene Kelly dance?”

  “The problem’s not with the lines,” I said, “it’s with the mouth they come out of. Could you do some reshoots?”

  “We can’t reshoot, Denise is pregnant,” said Irene as Gordon and I gasped in unison.

  “Jesus Christ all Friday H!” he cried.

  My heart knotted in my throat, and my mind whirled. The child of my grandfather . . . My aunt? My uncle? A squalling infant aunt or uncle? My grandfather fathered a baby? “I can’t make myself believe this. Denise and Leon can’t be having a baby!”

  “You’re not the only one with secrets,” Irene added, though I couldn’t tell if she meant that comment for me or Gordon. “Leon told me a week ago. Swore me to secrecy. Leon is delirious with joy. He’s sure it’ll be a boy, that he’ll have the son he lost.” She cast a tender, even a pitying look to her husband, knowing that Gordon would lose his treasured place as the son Leon lost. “Denise is in a rage. Leon is certain that once the morning sickness passes, she’ll be happy, but he’s delusional. Denise only ever wanted one baby, and his name is Oscar.”