The two men enjoyed their whole five-month-long European sojourn tremendously. Rick loved all the attention the paparazzi gave him, and Cliff loved being a stuntman again. They shared a swank apartment in Rome with a really nice view of the Colosseum out the window. Rick was always going out to Italian eateries, swilling cocktails at nightclubs, and generally living the life of an American movie star in Rome, with Cliff as his trusty co-pilot. During their stay, Cliff scored a shitload of Italian pussy. Far more than Rick, but Rick was always pickier. To Cliff, pussy was pussy, but he did have a real fondness for Italian pussy. And while he preferred a naked Italian girl in his bed sucking his cock to sleeping alone with no girl in his bed, he much preferred those naked Italians be different girls. Cliff was never that hung up on what a girl looked like. As long as they let him bury his teeth in their ass and enjoyed sucking cock, as far as Cliff was concerned, they were beautiful.
However, the flight going home would be a little different than the flight going to Europe.
While working on the secret-agent movie in Greece, Rick had met a big dark-haired Italian starlet named Francesca Capucci. Then, as Cliff told his friends back home, “Out of the fucking blue, he fucking married the bitch.” The minute Cliff realized where this was going, he knew that whatever the deal was that he and Rick shared was kaput. Rick wouldn’t need him around, Francesca wouldn’t want him around, nor would Rick be able any longer to afford to keep him around.
Now, Cliff wasn’t selfish. If he felt Rick and Francesca were good for each other, he’d back out gracefully, no worries. And it wasn’t like he thought Francesca was some evil femme fatale preying on his unsuspecting friend. He thought they were both a couple of idiots who committed to a massive life change without thinking it through. Cliff gave them two years. That was fine enough for her, but in a few years this was going to really cost Rick in alimony. So much so that he’d probably have to sell his house in the Hollywood Hills. And Cliff knew what that house meant to Rick. Rick was broody enough in that house. Rick Dalton living in a condo in Toluca Lake was going to be far worse.
Cliff snatched the small plastic ice bucket provided by the hotel off the little desk it rested on, as well as a hand towel off the bathroom towel rack. Then, opening his hotel room door, he proceeded to squeak and creak his way down the hall toward the ice machine. The filthy carpet under his feet had the consistency of Silly Putty. At the Hotel Splendido—the closest motel to the Wild West–looking rock formations that manage to make Almeria, Spain, pass for Arizona—every room had its door open. Since the establishment had no air-conditioning, every guest in every room had a loud box fan that the Spaniards provided.
As Cliff passed by Room 104, he quickly glanced inside and saw what looked like a very depressed barrel-built old man, a tent-like white linen shirt stuck to his sweat-covered back, sitting on the end of his bed next to the box fan, as he stared down into the filthy carpet beneath his feet.
That was Aldo Ray, Cliff thought as he passed by the doorway. And that’s the ice machine, Cliff thought he saw at the end of the hall. He scooped a bunch of ice cubes into the plastic bucket that looked more like a wastepaper basket. Then, with his hand, he reached into the ice, yanked out four cubes, and put them in the white handtowel he’d brought with him. Placing the cold compress against his ballooning eyebrow, he trotted back toward his room.
As he passed Aldo Ray’s room the second time, he shot a quick glance inside to make sure the big sweaty man was really indeed Aldo Ray. But this time, instead of looking down at the carpet, the Men in War star was looking right at him. Once Cliff was past the doorway, he heard the star’s unmistakable raspy soft sandpaper-like voice call out to him, “Hey?”
The stuntman moved back into the actor’s doorframe.
“You American?” that famous rasp croaked out.
“Yes,” Cliff said as he held the towel with the ice against the right side of his face.
Aldo asked, “Are you workin’ on this western?”
“Yes, I am, Mr. Ray,” Cliff said.
That made Mr. Ray smile, and he stuck out five sausage fingers and said, “Call me Aldo. I’m in this picture too.”
Cliff stepped inside the actor’s room, crossed the difference between the doorway and the bed, and shook hands with the fifties’ Warner Bros. leading man.
“Cliff Booth,” said Cliff Booth. “I’m Rick Dalton’s stunt double.”
“Is Dalton in this picture? I knew Telly was and Carroll Baker was, but I didn’t know about Dalton. Who’s he play?” Aldo asked.
“He plays Telly’s brother,” said the stuntman.
Aldo guffawed, “Yeah, there’s a real family resemblance. Me an’ Mantan Moreland might as well play fuckin’ brothers.”
That made both men laugh.
Both men had served in the Second World War (Aldo as a frogman for the Navy). Ray was about the same age as Booth. But looking at them together that night, you’d never know it. Cliff still had the body of a middleweight boxer, while Aldo Ray’s barrel chest had turned into a barrel belly. That strong athletic frame he sported opposite Rita Hayworth in Miss Sadie Thompson had gone soft and his broad shoulders had rounded, giving him an ape-like posture. Cliff looked a good ten years younger than he really was, while Aldo looked a good twenty years older. The simian-like Aldo stared up at Cliff’s face, finally noticing the huge eyebrow.
“Jesus, kid,” Aldo blasphemed. “What the fuck happened to your face?”
“I got hit in the eye with a rifle butt earlier today,” said Booth.
“What happened?”
“Well,” Booth explained, “we were shooting out on those rocky cliffs, and the shot is, one of those banditos hits me in the face with a Winchester.”
Booth continued, “But the Italian guy playin’ the Mexican ain’t never done no action like that before, so he kept hesitating and missing me by a mile. Five different takes, all no damn good. But each time I’m falling flat on my back on goddamn rock. So finally I go to the 1st AD—who’s the only one of the Spanish crew to have halfway-decent English—‘Tell this guy to just fuckin’ hit me in the face, ’cause I can’t take too many more of these rocky fuckin’ falls,’” Cliff finished.
“Rang your bell, huh,” Aldo stated more than asked.
Cliff shrugged. “It’s the job. I’m Rick’s crash and smash.”
“You worked with him a long time?” Ray inquired.
“Rick?”
“Yeah, Dalton.”
“Goin’ on ten years now.”
“Oh, you two must be pals?”
“Yeah, we’re pals.” Cliff smiled.
Aldo smiled back. “That’s nice. It’s good to have a buddy on set.” Aldo asked Rick’s double, “Didja know ’em when he did that George Cukor picture?”
“Yeah,” Cliff said, “but I didn’t work on it. That’s the one film he did that didn’t have any stunts.”
“Yeah, it was some picture based on a big book at the time. Warner’s dumped all their contract players in it. Some not so bad, Jane Fonda was in it—ever meet Hank Fonda?” Aldo asked.
Cliff said, “No.”
“Anywho,” Aldo continued, “Dalton was one of the ensemble cast members. Now, it was George Cukor who gave me my big break in pictures, with The Marrying Kind with Judy Holliday. Then he cast me in Pat and Mike with Hepburn and Tracy.”
Suddenly switching gears: “You know who was in bit parts in both pictures?”
Cliff shook his head no.
“Charlie fuckin’ Bronson,” said Ray. “And he was even uglier then than he is now, if such a thing is possible.”
Aldo went into his own head for a moment, like he was remembering what it was like working alongside Bronson, back when Aldo was the star and Bronson was just a bit player.
After a moment’s pause, Ray rasped, “I hear Charlie’s doin’ pretty good these days. Good for Charlie.”
Then Ray jerked up his head toward Booth. “What was I sayin’?”
“Rick and George Cukor,” Cliff reminded him.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course—ever meet George Cukor?” Ray asked the stuntman. “Great fella,” Ray declared. “Everything I have I owe to him.”
“I hear he was the biggest queer in Hollywood,” said Cliff.
“Well, George was homosexual,” said Ray. “But I don’t think he did much about it. He was kinda fat.”
Then, as Aldo looked up at Cliff, he turned deep and philosophical. According to David Carradine’s autobiography, that was a tendency for the big man.
“You know, people useta ask me all the time, since Cukor started me off, did he ever try anything? And the sad answer to that question is no. But I wish he did.”
Aldo mused, “There was an emotional sadness to George that if I coulda cured, I woulda.
“But,” Aldo sighed, “I’m afraid by the time I met ’em he was incurable. As far as I know, he was celibate his entire time in Hollywood. I think I got more cock in the Navy than he did his whole forty years in Hollywood.”
Aldo paused, then said, “Fuckin’ waste if ya ask me.”
The big man paused again and asked again, “What was I sayin’?”
“Rick and George Cukor,” Cliff reminded again.
“Oh yeah. So, Rick Dalton’s workin’ for Cukor on this dog of a picture. So Dalton’s doin’ a scene, right? Then all of a sudden Dalton cuts the scene, cut cut cut cut cut cut. Trust me, the whole damn set gulps. Nobody on a Cukor set calls cut but George. Kate fuckin’ Hepburn wouldn’t call fuckin’ cut. But Rick Dalton calls fuckin’ cut.
“So Cukor looks up from his director’s chair and says, ‘Is there a problem, Mr. Dalton?’ And Dalton says, ‘You know, George, I was thinking that right here would be a good place to take a dramatic pause. Whaddaya think?’ And Cukor, who’s as bitchy as a turtle is crunchy, says”—Aldo, with his raspy voice, tries to imitate Cukor’s fey, erudite delivery—“‘Mr. Dalton . . . it is my fervent belief that, up to now, your entire career has been one long dramatic pause.’”
The two sweaty he-men laughed it up in the stuffy Spanish hotel room. Rick was Cliff’s best friend, but Cliff knew better than most that Rick was proficient in making an ass out of himself—especially back then.
Before Cliff’s laughter died down, Aldo looked up at him, suddenly serious and sincere: “Hey, pal, I’m in a bad way. Can you get me a bottle?”
“Oh wow,” Cliff said. “I’m sorry, Aldo, you know you’re not supposed to drink. They sent out a memo to everybody on the production not to ever give you a bottle. No matter what you say, we’re not supposed to give you alcohol.”
Aldo sighed and shook his head in despair and said, “They don’t let me carry any money. They told the hotel not to serve me. They got a guy watching the door. I’m under house arrest here.”
Aldo looked up at Cliff, and his eyeballs grabbed Cliff’s eyeballs and pleaded. “Please . . . please, kid, I’m in a bad way. C’mon, be a pal. Please . . . please . . . don’t make me beg . . . but I will.”
Cliff walked back to his room, grabbed his bottle of gin, made his way back down the hall on the Silly Putty filthy carpet, and handed it to the man in Room 104. Aldo Ray took the bottle of gin from his benefactor and, holding it in his big catcher’s mitt of a hand, stared at it intensely.
He’s got a bottle.
He’s going to be okay tonight.
He’s going to drink the whole thing.
And all that is going to start in a moment.
Aldo looked up from the bottle to Cliff. Then he looked back down at the bottle of gin. Then back up to Cliff. His eyes narrowed and he asked, “Are you wearin’ a wig?”
Just then Cliff remembered he still had his Rick wig on from earlier today. “Oh yeah, I forgot I still had this on.” He took the wig off his head, revealing to Aldo his own blond hair for the first time. Cliff Booth gave the big man a wave and said before splitting, “Have a good night, Aldo.”
Aldo Ray looked back at the bottle in his hand and said to the Beefeater fella on the label: “I will.”
After killing Cliff’s bottle of gin, Aldo was unfit for work the next day, and was put on the first plane home. The Spanish producers tried like hell to find out who supplied Ray with the booze, but thankfully for Cliff they never did. Cliff was so nervous he never even told Rick about it. At least, not until two years later.
“You did what?
“Cliff,” Rick hipped him, “when they give you your SAG card at the fuckin’ union office, they give you three rules: One, they gotta give you turnaround. Two, don’t do any nonunion shoots. And three, if you ever do a film with Aldo Ray, under no circumstances give him a bottle.”
If Cliff had to do it again . . . he’d do the same damn thing.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Drinker’s Hall of Fame
Staring at himself in his makeup mirror, in his trailer on the Lancer set, Rick rubs a small cotton ball doused in spirit-gum remover across his phony mustache and upper lip. He’s already removed his long-haired wig, and his natural chocolate-brown hair sits on top of his noggin in a sweaty mess. After thoroughly drenching his upper lip and filling his nostrils with the smell of alcohol fumes, he takes his two fingers and slowly, somewhat painfully, peels the fake horsetail from off his face and lays it down carefully on his makeup table.
On the small TV in his trailer, football star Rosey Grier, on his syndicated variety show The Rosey Grier Show, sings Paul McCartney’s song Yesterday. Half-listening to the song, Rick grabs a jar of Noxzema Medicated Cold Cream, scoops out a big hunk with his fingers, and begins slathering it all over his face. Hearing a tiny knock-knock rap, he leans over in his chair, twists the handle on the trailer door, and pushes it open, revealing pint-sized Trudi Frazer standing on the pavement, looking up him. This is the first time Rick’s seen what she looks like in her street clothes. Which, in this case, consists of a white button-down shirt with a crisp white collar under beige corduroy overalls. Rather than the twelve-year-old she pretends to be, the outfit makes her more resemble the eight-year-old little girl she actually is.
“Well, I’m leaving right now,” she informs him, “and I just wanted you to know I thought you were excellent in our scene today.”
“Aw gee, thanks, honey,” he says modestly.
“No, I’m not just being polite,” she assures him. “It was some of the finest acting I’ve ever seen in my whole life.”
Wow, Rick thinks, that hits him harder than he would have imagined. This time the modesty isn’t a put-on. “Well . . . thank you, Mirabella.”
“It’s after work,” she reminds him. “You can call me Trudi.”
“Well, thanks a bunch, Trudi,” says the cold cream–faced Rick. “And you are one of the most excellent actresses—”
“Actor,” she insists.
“Excuse me, actor, of any age, I’ve ever worked with,” he sincerely tells her.
“Why, thank you, Rick,” she says without cuteness.
“In fact,” Rick builds on the compliment, “I have no doubt that the day will come that I brag to people that I got a chance to work with you.”
“After I win my first Oscar, you will be bragging that you worked with me when I was only eight,” Trudi says confidently. “And you’ll tell everyone I was just as professional then as I am now.” Then adding under her breath, just to make it clear, “‘Now’ meaning in the future, when I win an Oscar.”
Rick can’t help but smile at the moxie of this midget. “I’m sure I will, and I’m sure you will. Just hurry up and do it while I’m still alive to see it.”
She smiles back. “I’ll do my best.”
“Like always,” he says.
She nods her head yes. Then her mother’s voice yells at her from the waiting car: “Trudi, come on now, stop bothering Mr. Dalton. You’ll see him again tomorrow!”
Trudi, annoyed, spins in the direction of her mother and shouts back, “I’m not bothering him, Mom!” Gesturing theatrically at him with he
r arm, “I’m congratulating him on his performance!”
“Well, hurry it up!” her mother orders.
Trudi rolls her eyes and turns her attention back to Rick. “Sorry about that. Where was I? Oh, I remember . . . Bravo to you, sir. You did exactly what I asked. You scared me in that scene.”
“Oh man, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to,” Rick blurts out.
“No, don’t apologize, that was what was so exciting about your acting,” she stresses, “and consequently that’s what made my acting so good. You didn’t make me act scared. You made me react scared. Which is exactly what I asked you to do,” she reminds him. “You didn’t treat me like some little eight-year-old actress. You treated me like an actor colleague. And you didn’t baby me. You tried to win the scene,” she says with admiration.
“Well, thank you, Trudi,” now falsely modest again, “but I don’t think I won the scene.”
“Well, of course you did,” dismissing his protest. “You had all the dialogue. But,” she warns him, “in our big scene tomorrow, that’s another story. So watch out!”
“You watch out,” he warns her right back.
She sports a huge grin and says, “That’s the spirit! Bye-bye, Rick, see you tomorrow.” She waves at him.
He gives her a little salute and says, “Bye-bye, honey.”
As Rick turns back around to face the makeup mirror, she starts to close the door for him, but before she completely closes it, she says in an undertone, “Know your lines tomorrow.”
That turns Rick back around in his chair, not quite believing what he heard. “What was that?”
Trudi’s little face looks at him through the small crack in the almost-closed trailer door. “I said, know your lines tomorrow. You know, I’m very surprised how many adults don’t know their lines, when that’s what they are paid to do,” and adds, a little snot on the end of her observation, “I always know my lines.”
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Page 29