Some Faces in the Crowd

by Budd Schulberg

Lew Carteret looked up, his face flushed. “All right! I haven’t had wine like this …” He paused to think. “In a long time,” he said.

  There was a silence, and Nathan felt embarrassed for him. He was glad when Mimi broke in with the anecdote about the time during Prohibition when they were leaving for Europe with their Western star, Tex Bradley, and Tex insisted on bringing his own Scotch along because he was afraid to trust those foreign bootleggers.

  Nathan was only half-listening, though he joined in the laughter. When is Carteret going to put the bite on me for that job he wants?, he was thinking. And what will I have to give the little marmalade kitten? And though he could not divine André’s plans, or guess how he figured in the dreams of the telephone operator who looked like Ava Gardner, he could not help feeling that Ciro’s was a solar system in which he was the sun and around which all these satellites revolved.

  “André,” he beckoned, “will you please tell the operator I’m expecting a very important long-distance call?” An empty feeling of excitement rose inside him, but he fought it down. The dancers were swaying to a tango. Nathan saw Spencer and Lita, whirling like professionals, conscious of how well they looked together. He looked at Jenny, and he thought, with a twinge of weariness, of all the Jennys he had looked at this way. “Would you like to dance, my dear?”

  He was an old man to Jenny, an old man she hardly knew, and it seemed to her that everybody in the room must be saying, “There goes A. D. with another one.” But she tried to smile, tried to be having a terribly good time, thinking, If I want to be an actress, this is part of the job. And if I can’t look as if I’m getting the thrill of my life out of dancing with this old fossil, what kind of an actress am I anyway?

  Nathan could have told her what kind of an actress she was. He had expressed himself rather vividly on that subject after seeing her test that afternoon.

  “Robbins stinks,” he had told his assistants as the lights came on in the projection room. “She has a cute figure and a pretty face, but not unusual enough, and her acting is from Hollywood High School.”

  That’s what he should have told her. But he needed to be surrounded by Jenny Robbinses. Even though the analyst had told him what that was, he went on tossing them just enough crumbs of encouragement to keep their hopes alive.

  “Enjoying yourself, Jenny?” he said as he led her back to the table.

  “Oh, I’m having an elegant time, Mr. Nathan,” she said. She tried to say it with personality, her eyes bright and her smile fixed. She felt as if she were back on the set going through the ordeal of making that test again.

  “After dancing a tango together, the least we could do is call each other by our first names,” he said.

  He tried to remember the first time he had used that line; on Betty Bronson he thought it was. But Jenny laughed as if he had said something terribly witty. She laughed with all her ambition if not with all her heart.

  Her heart—or so she thought—had been left behind at 1441 ½ Orange Grove Avenue. That’s where Bill Mason lived. Bill worked as a grip on Nathan’s lot. The grip is the guy who does the dirty work on a movie set. Or, as Bill liked to explain it, “I’m the guy who carries the set on his back. I may not be the power behind the throne but I’m sure the power under it.”

  Jenny thought of the way she and Bill had planned to spend this evening, down at the Venice Amusement Pier. They usually had a pretty good time down there together Saturday nights. It was their night. Until A. D. Nathan had telephoned, in person.

  “Oh, Mr. Nathan, how lovely of you to call! I do have an appointment, but …”

  “I wish you could cancel it, dear,” Nathan had said. “There’s … there’s something I’d like to talk to you about. I thought, over a drink at Ciro’s …”

  Jenny had never been to Ciro’s, but she could describe every corner of it. It was her idea of what heaven must be like, with producers for gods and agents as their angels.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting, Mac,” Bill had called from the door a little later. “But that Old Bag” (referring to one of the screen’s most glamorous personalities) “blew her lines in the big love scene fifteen straight times. I thought one of the juicers was going to drop a lamp on her.” He looked at Jenny in the sequin dress, the pin-up model. “Hmmm, not bad. But a little fancy for roller-coasting, isn’t it, honey?”

  “Bill, I know I’m a monster,” she had said, watching his face carefully, “but I’ve got to see Mr. Nathan tonight. I’d’ve given anything to get out of it, but, well, I don’t want to sound dramatic but … my whole career may depend on it.”

  “Listen, Mac,” Bill had said. “You may be kidding yourself, but you can’t kid me. I was on the set when you made that test. If I’m ever going to be your husband I might as well begin right by telling you the truth. You were NG.”

  “I suppose you know more about acting than Mr. Nathan,” she said, hating Bill, hating the Venice Pier, hating being nobody. “Mr. Nathan told me himself he wanted to keep my test to look at again.”

  “Are you sure it’s the test he wants to keep?” Bill said.

  Here in Ciro’s the waiter was filling her glass again, and she was laughing at something funny and off-color that Bruce Spencer had just said. But she couldn’t forget what she had done to Bill, how she had slapped him and handed back the ring, and how, like a scene from a bad B picture, they had parted forever.

  For almost fifteen minutes Jenny had cried because Bill was a wonderful fellow and she was going to miss him. And then she had stopped crying and started making up her face for A. D. Nathan because she had read too many movie magazines. This is what makes a great actress, she thought, sorrow and sacrifice of your personal happiness, and she saw herself years later as a great star, running into Bill in Ciro’s after he had become a famous cameraman. “Bill,” she would say, “perhaps it is not too late. Each of us had to follow our own path until they crossed again.”

  “Oh, by the way, Lita,” A. D. had told his wife when she came into his dressing room to find out if he had any plans for the evening, “there’s a little actress I’d like to take along to Ciro’s tonight. Trying to build her up. So we’ll need an extra man.”

  “We might still be able to get hold of Bruce,” Lita said. “He said something about being free when we left the club this afternoon.”

  Nathan knew they could get hold of Bruce. Lita and Bruce were giving the Hollywood wives something to talk about over their canasta these afternoons. Sometimes he dreamt of putting an end to it. But that meant killing two birds with bad publicity. And they were both his birds, his wife and his leading man.

  “All right,” he said, “I’ll give Spence a ring. Might not be a bad idea for the Robbins girl to be seen with him.”

  Lita pecked him on the cheek. Bruce was dying to get that star-making part in Wagons Westward. This might be the evening to talk A. D. into it.

  And then, since the four of them might look too obvious, Nathan had wanted an extra couple. He tried several, but it was too late to get anybody in demand, and that’s how, at the last minute, he had happened to think of the Carterets.

  When you talked about old-time directors you had to mention Lew Carteret in the same breath with D. W. Griffith and Mickey Neilan. Carteret and Nathan had been a famous combination until sound pictures and the jug had knocked Carteret out of the running. The last job he had had was a quickie Western more than a year ago. And a year in Hollywood is at least a decade anywhere else. A. D. had forgotten all about Carteret until he received a letter from him a few months ago, just a friendly letter, suggesting dinner some evening to cut up touches about old times. But A. D. knew those friendly dinners, knew he owed Carteret a debt he was reluctant to repay, and so, somehow, the letter had gone unanswered. But in spite of himself, his conscience had filed it away for further reference.

  “I know who we’ll get. The Lew Carterets. Been meaning to take them to dinner for months.”

  “Oh, God,” Lita said, as she drew on a
pair of long white gloves that set off her firm tanned arms, “why don’t we get John Bunny and Flora Finch?”

  “It might not be so bad,” Nathan said, giving way to the sentimentality that thrives in his profession. “Mimi Carteret used to be a lot of fun.”

  “I can just imagine,” said Lita. “I’ll bet she does a mean Turkey Trot.”

  “Lew, do you think this means he’s going to give you a chance again?” Mimi Carteret whispered as they walked off the dance floor together, “Easy on the wine, darling. We just can’t let anything go wrong tonight.”

  “Don’t worry, sweetheart,” he answered. “I’m watching. I’m waiting for the right moment to talk to him.”

  Lita and Bruce were dancing again and Jenny was alone with A. D. at the table when the Carterets returned. It was the moment Jenny had been working toward. She could hardly wait to know what he thought of the test.

  “I don’t think it does you justice,” Nathan was saying. “The cameraman didn’t know how to light you at all. I think you have great possibilities.”

  Jenny smiled happily, the wine and encouragement going to her head, and Nathan reached over and patted her hand in what was meant to seem a fatherly gesture, though he lingered a moment too long. But Jenny hardly noticed, swept along in the dream.

  Lew Carteret looked at his watch nervously. It was almost time for the floor show. There wouldn’t be much chance to talk during the acts, and after that, the party would be over. He looked across at Mimi, trying to find the courage to put it up to A. D. If only A. D. would give him an opening. Lita and Bruce were watching too, wondering when to bring up Wagons Westward. And André, behind the head waiter’s mask was thinking, Only ten more minutes and I will he speaking to A. D. about my scenario.

  “André,” Nathan called, and the head waiter snapped to attention. “Are you sure there hasn’t been a call for me?”

  “No, m’sieur. I would call you right away, m’sieur.”

  Nathan frowned. “Well, make sure. It should have been here by now.” He felt angry with himself for losing his patience. There was no reason to be so upset. This was just another long-distance call. He had talked to New York a thousand times before—about matters just as serious.

  But when André came running with the message that New York was on the wire, he could not keep the old fear from knotting his stomach and he jostled the table in his anxiety to rise.

  “You may take it in the second booth on the left, Mr. Nathan,” said Ava Gardner, as she looked up from her switchboard with a prefabricated smile. But he merely brushed by her and slammed the door of the booth behind him. The telephone girl looked after him with the dream in her eyes. When he comes out I’ll hafta think of something arresting to sayta him, she decided. God, wouldn’t it be funny if he did notice me!

  Five minutes later she heard the door of the booth sliding open and she looked up and smiled. “Was the connection clear, Mr. Nathan?”

  That might do for a starter, she thought. But he didn’t even look up. “Yes. I heard very well. Thank you,” he said. He put half a dollar down and walked on. He felt heavy, heavy all over, his body too heavy for his legs to support and his eyes too heavy for the sockets to hold. He walked back to the table without seeing the people who tried to catch his glance.

  “Everything all right?” his wife asked.

  “Yes. Yes,” he said. “Everything.”

  Was that his voice? It didn’t sound like his voice. It sounded more like Lew Carteret’s voice. Poor old Lew. Those were great old times when we ran World-Wide together. And that time I lost my shirt in the market and Lew loaned me 50 G’s. Wonder what ever happened to Lew.

  Then he realized this was Lew Carteret, and that he was listening to Lew’s voice. “A. D., this has sure been a tonic for Mimi and me. I know we didn’t come here to talk shop, but—well you always used to have faith in me, and …”

  “Sure, sure, Lew,” A. D. said. “Here, you’re one behind. Let me pour it. For old times.”

  He could feel an imperceptible trembling in his hand as he poured the wine.

  Under the table a small, slender leg moved slowly, with a surreptitious life of its own, until it pressed meaningfully against his. Jenny had never slept with anybody except Bill. She was frightened, but not as frightened as she was of living the rest of her life in Hollywood as the wife of a grip in a bungalow court.

  Bruce flipped open his cigarette case—the silver one that Lita had given him for his birthday—and lit a cigarette confidently. “By the way, A. D., Lita let me read the script on Wagons. That’s a terrific part, that bank clerk who has to go west for his health and falls in with a gang of rustlers. Wonderfully written. Who’s going to play it?”

  “Any leading man in Hollywood except you,” Nathan said.

  Bruce looked undressed without his assurance. The silence was terrible.

  Lita said, “But, A. D., that part was written for Bruce.”

  All the rest of his face seemed to be sagging, but Nathan’s hard black eyes watched them with bitter amusement. “There isn’t a part in the studio that’s written for Bruce. The only thing that kept Bruce from being fired months ago was me. And now there’s no longer me.”

  Lita looked up, really frightened now. “A. D. What do you mean?”

  “I mean I’m out,” he said. “Finished. Washed up. Through. Hudson called to say the Board voted to ask for my resignation.”

  “What are you going to do now?” she said.

  He thought of the thing he had promised himself to do when his time came, drop out of sight, break it off clean. Hollywood had no use for anticlimaxes on or off the screen. But as he sat there he knew what would really happen. Move over, Colonel Selig and J. C. Blackburn, he thought. Make room for another ghost.

  The floor show was just starting. The undiscovered Rosemary Clooney was putting everything she had into her number, and playing right to A. D.’s table. Don’t let the stars get in your eyes …

  And as she sang, André smiled in anticipation. So far everything had gone just as he had planned. And now the time had come to move A. D. up to that ringside table.

  MEMORY IN WHITE

  HE ALWAYS USED TO stand at the entrance of the Grand Street gymnasium, a little yellow man in an immaculate white suit, white Panama hat, white shoes, white tie. This was Jose Fuentes.

  If you remember him at all, and you must be an old-timer at the fight clubs if you do, you remember a tough little Mexican kid with a wild left hook, weak on brains but strong on heart. Young Pancho Villa the Third, he used to call himself. No champion, never in the big money, just another one of the kids who come along for a while, who only know how to throw roundhouse punches with either hand and to bounce up after a knockdown without bothering to take their count and get their wind. The kind the fans go crazy about for a year or two and then don’t recognize when they’re buying peanuts or papers from them outside the stadium a year or two later.

  Club fighters, they’re called, a dime a dozen, easy to hit and hard to hurt. At least, hard to knock out. Plenty of hurt, sure, plenty of pain, but that all comes later, when they can’t seem to get fights any more, when they start hanging around the gym. Not training, not working, just sort of hanging around.

  Now there are plenty of bums hanging around the gym every day in the week. A bum is any boxer who thinks he’s going to be on Easy Street when he hangs up his gloves, and winds up on Silly Avenue instead. After that, they just hang around. They hang around waiting for another break, another manager, or a chance to pick up two, three dollars a round sparring with somebody’s prospect, or a job as a second, or to put the bite on an old friend or a cocky youngster who wants to feel like a big shot. The gym is the only place they know, so all they can do is hang around and hope to make a dollar.

  But no one ever hung around like Young Pancho Villa the Third. Young Pancho went into the occupation of hanging around the gym as if it were a serious and respectable profession. None of this sitting around all da
y on the long wooden benches with your legs stretched out in front of you as if life were one long rest period between rounds. No loitering for a man who calls himself Young Pancho Villa the Third, in honor of the Indian guerrilla whom the compañeros in the cantinas still sing that corrido about. And his valiant little namesake who lost his flyweight championship in a San Francisco ring, and, some hours later, his life in a San Francisco hospital. No panhandling for a man with a name like that. No, Young Pancho Villa the Third had a vision. He was going to get somewhere in the world. He was going to be an announcer.

  For it was a funny thing, whenever he tried to think back to his days in the ring, all those, fights, even that high point in his career, that main event at the Legion when Pete Sarmiento had him down nine times but couldn’t put him away, all those beatings, all those rounds, all those punches he threw and the ones he caught, the whole thing seemed to run together. He would start thinking how it was in that tenth round against Sarmiento, hanging onto Pete to keep from going down, and instead he would be hanging onto Frankie Grandetta, or was it Baby Arizmendi? The memories kept spilling over and running together.

  There was only one memory that stood out sharply, refusing to blend with the others. It was a memory in white, the memory of a man in a very white suit, a very important man with a megaphone who used to climb through the ropes while Young Pancho and his opponent were sitting in their corners, and say in a very important voice to which everybody listened in respectful silence, “Lay-deez and gen-tle-men …”

  A white suit, a megaphone and everybody listening. That was the vision. Young Pancho Villa the Third, the stocky little Mex with a child’s face hammered flat as an English bulldog’s, walked down Main Street in pursuit of a vision, a white-linen, double-breasted vision that floated ahead of him, leading him past the burleycue houses and the pool parlors, the nickel flophouses, the dime flophouses and the exclusive clean-sheets-every-week two-bit flophouses, leading him past the saloons with their threadbare elegance, the gaudy juke boxes, the gaudy and threadbare B-girls, past all those wonderful and tempting ways to spend his money. But Young Pancho kept his thick little hands in his pockets until he came to Manny (Nothing Over Five Dollars) Liebowitz’ High Class Clothing Store for Men.