The Thief of Time

by John Boyne

  I had not lost the art of discovering the right circles within which to move and before long I became friends with Rusty Wilson, a vice-president at NBC. We met on the golf course and began to play regularly as we were neither one of us any better than the other and the outcome of our matches was always in question, right down to the eighteenth hole. I told him of my desire to find gainful employment once again and at first he was a little nervous about discussing the matter with me, no doubt concerned that I had only befriended him in order to find a job.

  ‘The thing is, Rusty,’ I explained, eager to disavow him of this notion, ‘it’s not that I need the money. In truth, I’m extremely wealthy and wouldn’t have to work another day in my life if I chose not to. It’s just that I’m bored, that’s all. I need to be doing something. I’ve taken the last -’ I was about to say ‘twenty or thirty’ but changed it necessarily – ‘two or three years off and I’m itching to get involved again.’

  ‘What experience do you have?’ he asked, relieved now that I wasn’t simply looking for a meal ticket. ‘Have you worked in the entertainment industry before?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I replied, laughing. ‘I’ve been in the arts, you might say, all my life. I’ve run various different projects, usually from an administrative viewpoint. Mostly in Europe though. In Rome I was entrusted with the building of an opera house to rival those in Vienna and Florence.’

  ‘I hate opera,’ said Rusty with disdain. ‘Gimme a little Tommy Dorsey any day.’

  ‘I worked on an exhibition in London which attracted six million visitors.’

  ‘I hate London,’ he said, spitting on the ground. ‘It’s cold and it’s damp. What else?’

  ‘The Olympic Games, the opening of several major museums, I had some involvement with the Met -’

  ‘OK, OK,’ he said, holding up a hand to get me to stop. ‘I get the picture. You’ve been around. And now you want to try TV, is that it?’

  ‘It’s something I’ve never done before,’ I explained. ‘And I like to try different things. Look, I know what it is to have to put on entertainments of any sort and be constricted by budgets while doing so. I’m good at that sort of thing. And I learn quickly. I’m telling you, Rusty, you don’t know anyone who has been in this industry as long as I have.’

  It didn’t take too much persuading; we enjoyed each other’s company and fortunately he took my list of previous employments on word, not asking for references or phone numbers to contact those who had worked with me before. Just as well, as they were all dead and buried anyway. He brought me out to NBC and gave me a tour of the lot, and I was amazed by what I saw. There were several programmes in production while I was there and soundproof stage led into soundproof stage with audiences of every type gathered before them, watching the cue-card boy for directions on when they should laugh, clap or stamp their feet in appreciation. We saw the editing suites and I met a couple of directors who barely acknowledged me; they were mostly sweaty, balding middle-aged men with cigarettes sticking out of their mouths and horn-rimmed glasses above their noses. I noticed that the walls were filled mostly with pictures of movie stars – Joan Crawford, Jimmy Stewart, Ronald Colman – rather than their televisual equivalents, and inquired why that was.

  ‘It feels more like Hollywood this way,’ explained Rusty. ‘Gives the actors something to dream about. There’s two types of TV star: those who are looking to break into movies, or those who can’t get a job in movies any more. You’re either on the way up or on the way down. It’s not really a career for anyone.’

  We ended our tour in his suite of offices, which were palatial in their design and overlooked the NBC lot where actors, technicians, secretaries and would-be stars were running around at a tremendous pace. We sat on a couple of heavily filled sofas around a glass-topped table by the fireplace, a good twenty feet away from his mahogany desk, and I could tell that he was enjoying displaying his wealth and position to me with such pride.

  ‘Two days ago I was sitting right where I’m sitting now,’ he told me. ‘And you know who was sitting where you are, begging for a TV show of her own?’

  I shook my head. ‘Who?’ I asked.

  ‘Gladys George,’ he said triumphantly.

  ‘Who?’ I asked again, for the name meant nothing to me.

  ‘Gladys George!’ he repeated. ‘Gladys George!’ he shouted now, as if this would lift the veil for me.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know who she is,’ I said. ‘I’ve never -’

  ‘Gladys George was a movie star a few years back,’ he told me. ‘She got nominated for the Academy Award in the mid-thirties for Valiant Is The Word For Carrie.’

  Again, I shook my head. ‘Sorry,’ I explained. ‘I haven’t seen it. I don’t get to the movies as much as I should.’

  ‘The Three Stooges did a pastiche of it a couple of years later. You must have seen it. Violent Is The Word For Curly7 Boy, was that a howl!’

  I laughed gently. ‘Oh, yes,’ I said quietly, although it actually meant nothing to me whatsoever; still, I considered it was a bad idea to display such ignorance of the industry if I was looking for a position within it. ‘That was a screamer. Violent is the ... eh

  ‘Gladys George was going to be a big star,’ he continued, ignoring my attempts to recover the name of the movie. ‘But she got on the wrong side of Louis B. Mayer. She went around telling everyone who would listen – and, believe me, that was lots - that he was having an affair with Luise Rainer behind her husband’s back. Everyone knew that there was no love lost between Mayer and Clifford Odets – he’d called him a miserable commie a few years earlier – but there was no truth in the rumour. Gladys was just sore because Mayer kept giving all the best parts to Luise or Norma Shearer or Carole Lombard or some floozie he was screwing around with. Anyway, it all got back to Mayer who gave her no more work after that but he kept her on contract just to get his own back. She’s only just got released from it but no other studio will touch her. That’s when she came to me.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, trying my best to keep up with the train of events in all of that. It occurred to me how much I had to learn about Hollywood, how the town thrived on insider gossip such as the above and how it could make or break careers. ‘So did you give her a job?’

  ‘Jesus, no,’ he said, shaking his head furiously. ‘Are you kidding me? Girl like that means only one thing to a man like me. T. R. Ubble.’

  I thought about it. ‘Right,’ I repeated, smiling now. His point, I supposed, was that people came to him looking for jobs all the time. That the seat where I was sitting had been used by a hundred people already that week and I was merely keeping it warm for its next occupant. All of this, the tour, the enormity of the soundstages, the regal nature of his offices, the name-dropping, the decision-making about who can or cannot work in Hollywood, it was all for my benefit. I stood up and reached across to shake his hand, assuming that what he was really saying was that it would take a lot more than a couple of games of golf to get a job in his studio. ‘Thanks for the tour,’ I said.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asked, as I turned around to walk towards the door. ‘Where do you think you’re going? I haven’t got to the good bit yet.’

  ‘Look,’ I said, not a man to be toyed with. ‘If you don’t have a position for me, that’s fine. I simply wanted to -’

  ‘Don’t have a position for you? Matthieu, Matthieu!’ he said, laughing and patting the seat opposite him once again. ‘Sit down, my friend. I think I’ve found the very job for you. Assuming you are everything you claim to be. I’m going to give you a chance, Matthieu, and I don’t expect to be let down.’

  I smiled and went back to the couch where he filled me in on his idea.

  The Buddy Rickles Show was big business. It was a prime-time, thirty-minute comedy on NBC every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Although it had been on the air for only just over one season, it was one of the most popular shows on television and, no matter what the other networks put up against it
in the same time-slot, it won hands down.

  It was a family comedy. Buddy Rickles himself, although now virtually forgotten by all but the most astute of entertainment historians, had been a bit-part actor from the mid-twenties to the mid-forties. He’d never headlined his own feature, but he’d played the best friend to James Cagney, Mickey Rooney and Henry Fonda and had once duelled on screen with Clark Gable for the hand of Olivia de Havilland (he lost). His work had dried up though and he had been offered this show by NBC and, not only had he accepted it, he had almost single-handedly turned it into a success.

  It was a straightforward concept: Buddy Rickles (his character shared his own name, save for one small change – he was known as Buddy Riggles) was a regular family man living in suburban California. His wife Marjorie was a homemaker and they had three children, Elaine (seventeen) who was just getting interested in boys, much to Buddy’s consternation, Timmy (fifteen) who was always trying to find ways to play truant, and Jack (eight) who mixed up the meanings of words in ever more hilarious ways. Each week, one of the children would get involved in something which could potentially lead them down the road of self-ruination, but Buddy and Marjorie would set them right, making them see the error of their ways just in time for supper. There was nothing particularly groundbreaking about it, but people enjoyed it, and that fact was mostly down to the writers.

  The Buddy Rickles Show was written by Lee and Dorothy Jackson, a husband and wife team in their mid-forties who had been writing hit shows for the best part of a decade. They were popular and threw extravagant parties in their home to which everyone who was anyone tried to score an invitation. Dorothy was known for her sharp tongue and Lee was known for his drinking, but together they were considered to be one of the happiest couples in showbusiness.

  ‘I’m looking for a new producer for The Buddy Rickles Show,’ said Rusty to me that afternoon in his office. ‘There’s already two there but I need a third; they each have different responsibilities, and the last guy wasn’t up to the job. What do you say?’

  I exhaled loudly and thought about it. ‘I have to be honest with you,’ I said. ‘I’ve never seen the show.’

  ‘We’ve got all the reels here at the studio. We’ll set you up for an afternoon and you can watch it from start to finish. What I need is someone to deal with the public image of the show. Someone who will handle all publicity and enquiries from the news organisations. Someone who will generate publicity for us so that the show grows even more successful. I’m going to launch a new show immediately after it in six months’ time so I need it to still be on top of the ratings then. The Buddy Rickles Show has to be what people do on a Thursday night, you got it?’

  ‘All right,’ I said, warming to the idea. ‘I can do that.’

  ‘Yes, but can you start yesterday?’

  It was a far more difficult job than I ever would have imagined. Although the show was already a success – the writing was witty and sharp, the acting was simple and appealed to the American public -there was never an attitude of complacency around the crew who produced the show. Rusty Wilson was a hands-on vice-president and he had regular meetings with the three producers of The Buddy Rickles Show to discuss our plans and vision for the future.

  There was a mild flurry of trouble at the beginning of the third season, when ABC put a brand new quiz show up against us which offered regular folks the opportunity to win up to $50,000 over a period of time. However, it didn’t catch on as the networks were deluged with quiz shows then and we regained supremacy of our time-slot.

  Buddy Rickles himself was an odd fellow. Although immensely popular with the American public, he didn’t like to do too much publicity and avoided both the talk-show circuit and anything but the most important of print interviews. When we did consent to these, he always spoke to me about them in advance and required me to sit in on them with him, which surprised me as he was a capable man and in no more need of help from me than I was in need of a life insurance policy.

  ‘I don’t want them knowing too much about my life,’ he explained. ‘A man’s got a right to a private life, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘But you know what these magazines are like. If you’ve got anything to hide then it won’t be long before it all comes out.’

  ‘That’s why I like to keep my profile low. Just let people watch the show. If they like it, that’s fine, that’s all they need. They don’t need to know much more about me than that, now, do they?’

  I wasn’t so sure but I couldn’t see what he had to hide anyway. He was happily married to a thirty-five-year-old woman called Kate and they had two small children who were regular visitors to our set. As he had been in the business a long time there didn’t seem to be anything about the last twenty years or so that wasn’t in the public domain in one way or the other. I guessed he was just a private person and decided to allow him his privacy. And although the fanzines wanted more access to him, I limited it and simply granted them more interviews with the rest of the show’s stars to compensate.

  Stina’s mood picked up after a few months of grieving for her brothers. She began to grow more interested in my work and even attempted to watch the show on a number of occasions but she could never sit through the whole thing as she found the action beyond foolish. Television was not a popular medium on Hawaii and instead she began to grow more interested in local politics, much as she had been when we had first met at the anti-war meeting.

  ‘I have a job,’ she announced one evening over dinner and I put down my knife and fork in surprise. I didn’t even know that she been looking for one.

  ‘Really?’ I asked. ‘Doing what?’

  She laughed. ‘It’s not much,’ she said. ‘Just as a secretary. At the Los Angeles Times. I was interviewed this morning and they offered me the job.’

  ‘But that’s wonderful,’ I exclaimed, pleased that she was developing a new interest at last and leaving her mourning behind. ‘When do you start?’

  ‘Tomorrow. You don’t mind?’

  ‘Why should I mind? You could go places from there. You’ve always been interested in politics. You should train as a reporter. There have to be opportunities for young people in a place like that.’

  She shrugged and let the idea pass although I suspected she had already considered this. Stina was not the kind of woman who was happy to settle for a desk job when she could be doing something active; her mind was alert and fertile and she would find a busy atmosphere such as the Los Angeles Times exciting.

  ‘I know some people there,’ I said, recalling a few entertainment reporters with whom I had regular dealings. ‘I’m sure it’s a good place to work. Perhaps I’ll call them. Let them know who you are. Tell them to keep an eye out for you.’

  ‘No, Matthieu,’ she said, placing a hand above my own. ‘Let me make my own way there. I’ll be all right.’

  ‘But they might be able to introduce you around,’ I protested. ‘You’ll get to know people easier. Make some friends.’

  ‘And then they will think because I am married to the producer of The Buddy Rickles Show that they will get easier access to it and to everything at the network. No, it’s better if I just make my own way. For now, I am only a secretary anyway. We’ll see what happens further down the line.’

  We attended a party at the home of Lee and Dorothy Jackson, which was populated by many of the most important names in the television industry. Robert Keldorf was there with his new wife Bobbi – with an ‘I’, as she said every time you mentioned her name – and he made a great show of telling everyone how he had recently lured anchorman Damon Bradley away from the Eye to the Alphabet. Lorelei Andrews spent most of the party propping up the bar, a cigarette drooping limply out of her mouth, complaining to anyone who would listen about the way she was being treated by Rusty Wilson; needless to say I steered clear of that one.

  Stina was looking devastating in a strapless pale blue creation modelled on a dress that Edith Head had designed for Anne Baxte
r for All About Eve. It was the first time she met many of the people with whom I worked on a day to day basis and she was excited by the glamour, her eyes opening wide whenever she saw a more devastating gown pass her by. Unfortunately, the people meant nothing to her; she so rarely watched television that I could have introduced her to Stan Perry himself and she would have smiled and asked him whether she could have another Manhattan.

  ‘Matthieu,’ said Dorothy, sweeping towards us from across the room, her arms outstretched to smother me with affection. ‘How wonderful to see you. Still gorgeous, I note.’ I laughed. Dorothy liked to play the part of the extravagant, asphyxiating those whom she liked with sparkling compliments while poisoning those whom she could not stand with her acid tongue. ‘And you must be Stina,’ she added playfully, sizing up my willowy wife carefully, taking in her gentle form, bronze skin and wide, hazelnut eyes. I held my breath, hoping that she would say something nice as I was very fond of Dorothy and didn’t want a barb to come between us. ‘You’re wearing quite the most devastating gown in the room,’ she said with a smile and I relaxed. ‘Honestly, I feel like just walking around naked in order to recapture some of the attention which you have stolen away from me, you heartless tramp.’