Citizen Hollywood (Hollywood's Garden of Allah novels Book 3)

by Martin Turnbull

  When the house lights came up amid thundering applause, Gwendolyn stared at her clasped hands and thought about how pale they were and how she had no control over how restlessly they twitched.

  It’s over, she thought. I’ve spent ten years trying to break into the movies. Done everything I could think of. Made a fool of myself in a dozen different ways. I’ve fallen off billboards, gussied myself up in crinolines, had chili slopped on me, and set fire to a movie studio. I’ve slung cigarettes around a smoky nightclub in front of all the movers and all the shakers and all the sleazebags with any sort of pull, but it’s been for a big, fat nothing. I’ll be thirty in a couple of months and it’s time to admit that my brother was right. I have nothing to show for any of it.

  She felt Kathryn lay a gentle hand on her arm. “Gwendolyn, darling,” she said softly, “I’m so terribly sorry. I don’t know what to say.”

  Marcus slid his hand over Kathryn’s. “Ramon just pointed out that the Zephyr Room up on Wilshire isn’t too far away. If ever you were going to get rotten, stinking drunk, tonight would be it.”

  Gwendolyn attempted a laugh, but it came out more like a gurgle. She stood up and pulled Lillian’s fur around her shoulders. “Thanks, you guys, you too, Ramon, but I just want to go home.”

  They’d started to make their way up the aisle when Gwendolyn heard George Cukor call her name. She looked up to see his face crinkled in pity. “I’m so sorry!” he exclaimed. “I’ll admit—I was no fan of the fashion sequence, and I fought with Stromberg to have it taken out. But he’s the producer and had final say, and he insisted we keep it in. I didn’t mind because it meant you’d stay in the picture.”

  “But George,” Marcus said, “Gwendolyn wasn’t in the picture.”

  George could only raise his arms in bewilderment. “I was as shocked as you when that sequence came on and you were cut out. I asked Hunt what the hell happened, and he just shrugged and said the running time went a little long so some snips had to be made. I’m so sorry.”

  “Really, it’s okay,” Gwendolyn told him, and offered everyone a brave smile. “I had hopes for this chance, but it wasn’t meant to be. Clearly, none of it was meant to be, so I think I’m going to take my brother up on his offer.”

  Kathryn let out a pained groan. “No, Gwennie, not that.”

  “I’m nearly thirty.” Suddenly Gwendolyn was dying for a cigarette. “How much longer can I be expected to bang my head against the silver screen before I finally realize nobody wants me?” She turned to George. “My brother’s in the navy and he’s being restationed to the Philippines soon. He’s been after me to join him there.” She made a half-hearted wave toward the screen. “I’ve run out of reasons to say no.”

  “But the Far East is such a long way,” Marcus said.

  “Monty’s my only family. The older I get, the more I miss him.” Gwendolyn turned to Marcus and watched his eyes turn pensive. “I’ve reached the end of the line.”

  She went to walk up the aisle and out of the theater when George held up a hand to stop her. “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

  “George, really, whatever you’re about to say, save it for—”

  “Darryl Zanuck was here tonight.”

  “Zanuck?” Kathryn exclaimed. “Why would Fox be here?”

  “Because he’s screwing an MGM model,” George replied, “so he had to make out like he gives a damn about her career.” He turned to Gwendolyn. “He came up to me after the screening and asked about you.”

  “But I wasn’t even in the picture!”

  “He saw me talking to you before the curtain went up.” A sly smile widened on George’s face. “You ever heard of Max Arnow and Benny Thau?”

  Arnow was the head of casting for Columbia, Thau was his counterpart at MGM. Every actress worth her weight in hair rollers knew that. “What do you take me for?” Gwendolyn asked. “An amateur?”

  “Did you know they’re part of Zanuck’s floating poker game?”

  Kathryn broke in with a loud PAH! “It doesn’t bear thinking how much money my stupid boss has lost in Zanuck’s damned floating poker game. He should know better with Howard Hughes in the room.”

  George nodded. “They always have a couple of servers. He asked me if I thought you’d be interested in working the next one. Now, I know this isn’t an audition or a screen test, but with your ample charms, you won’t need long to attract attention. So before you abscond to the Far East on your one-way ticket, don’t you think you owe yourself one final chance?”

  CHAPTER 7

  Late in August, on a morning when the sun was already scorching Culver City like a broiler, Marcus slouched into the writers’ department and headed for the four coffee pots the receptionist filled with the strongest coffee west of the state border. He hadn’t slept all night and was now approaching his twenty-sixth hour of continuous wakefulness.

  Since the night of the Wizard of Oz premiere, he’d barely noticed anything that didn’t directly involve seeing, touching, kissing, falling asleep with or waking up next to Ramon Novarro. For the very first time in his life, he realized why people fell for all those dopey love songs. When Fred Astaire came on the radio singing “They Can’t Take That Away from Me” it was like Marcus heard the words for the very first time. And whenever he heard Bing Crosby warble “I’ve Got a Pocketful of Dreams,” it was impossible not to sing along.

  Colors were brighter, food was tastier, perfumes were sweeter and goddamnit, yes, even kittens were cuter. And he’d finally found someone to do the Sunday morning crossword puzzle with. He’d never had sex with the same person twice—hell, he never even knew the names of the guys he’d furtively groped in the shadows—so to fall asleep in the arms of someone he loved was a revelation. Even on days when neither of them caught two winks, let alone forty, having someone to love put a bounce in his step, a whistle on his lips, and a glow on the face of everyone he encountered.

  Marcus was feeding the first page into his typewriter when he noticed the silence. MGM’s writers’ department normally overflowed with a cacophony of clacking typewriters, water-cooler chit-chat, and bursts of laughter. But today, it was like all signs of life had been sucked out of the building.

  He hurried down the central corridor to the break room at the end. Nearly all the writers were huddled there like a gridiron team. They jumped as one when Marcus rounded the corner and asked what was going on.

  Jack McGowan, a genial guy in his forties who’d written Babes in Arms, said, “We’re deciding who’s going to approach Taggert.”

  Marcus looked at the strained faces. “About what?”

  “What do you think?” Jack demanded. “He gave us an ultimatum.”

  “Fellas,” Marcus said, “that was ages ago and nobody got fired. It was just a bluff to kick-start our asses.”

  “You positive?” Jack asked. “I’m about to sign on to a mortgage, so if I’m gonna get canned, I need to know.”

  “Yeah,” said the guy next to him. “My in-laws just asked me to loan them some dough to start a movie house in Pacoima. I don’t mind loaning it, but if it’s my head on the chopping block, I have to consider my own future.”

  “I really don’t think we have anything to worry about,” Marcus said.

  “I’d rather hear those words from Taggert’s mouth.”

  Marcus studied the men around him and wondered how he’d missed the tension simmering through the office.

  It’s because you’re in love, you big dummy.

  “How about this?” he told the group. “First chance I get, I will go into Taggert’s office and tell him he needs to set our minds at rest.”

  “Today,” McGowan said.

  “Today,” Marcus replied.

  The group disbanded, but Marcus didn’t return to his typewriter. Instead, he stared out of his window at soundstage 16, where they were shooting a new Thin Man movie. He watched a stagehand push a baby crib through the doors—in this picture, Nick and Nora Charles were having a baby. “Get
a load of you,” he whispered to himself. “Six months ago you’d have crapped yourself at the thought of calling Taggert out over something like this. And now you’re volunteering. This No More Mr. Nice Guy caper looks good on you.”

  Marcus spent the next hour or so hacking away at a rewrite of a new Lana Turner movie called These Glamour Girls. It was some silly bit of nonsense about what happens when a drunken student invites a dance hostess to a big college gala, but he was distracted by Taggert’s challenge.

  My idea was so much better than this fluff, he told himself. Why am I not working on William Tell?

  He had arrived at work at five o’clock on the morning of Taggert’s deadline, so he was almost positive he wasn’t the last. So who was it? Whatever game Taggert was playing, it was dirty pool.

  Dierdre, the department’s freckle-faced receptionist, poked her head around his doorway. “You’ve been summoned.”

  “What’s his mood today?” Marcus asked.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know what’s going on, but he’s been an absolute bear for weeks now.”

  Taggert’s frosted glass door was usually open, but not today. Marcus knocked and opened the door onto a corner office that evoked the day after tornado season. A dozen scripts were sprawled across the desk in from of Jim Taggert and a handful of chewed-up pencils were scattered among them. Sheets of balled-up legal paper filled a trash can on the window sill behind him and spilled across the floor. It was not the office of someone known for his obsession with neatness, punctuality and tidiness.

  “Cleaning house?” Marcus asked.

  Taggert didn’t look up. He told Marcus to take a seat. “I’ve got something here for you,” he said, and lifted a sheet of paper off his desk. Underneath, Marcus could see a personnel form; the subject line was “Termination of employment.”

  Marcus gasped silently. My submission couldn’t have been the last one in, he thought. I got here before the sun was even up.

  It occurred to Marcus for the first time that maybe all the other writers had gone in over the weekend and slipped their ideas into Taggert’s locked box like Hoppy had. He gripped the arms of his chair.

  Taggert handed him the paper in his hand. “I’ve just come from a story conference with Mayer. He was all hot under the collar because he came up with this title while he was banging some poor starlet at three o’clock this morning.”

  Marcus looked at Taggert properly for the first time. His eyes were bloodshot and he looked like he’d shaved in the dark half drunk.

  Taggert said, “I want you to go back to your desk and come up with three outlines to go with that title.”

  Marcus read the words on the paper in his hand.

  Three O’Clock in the Morning

  This is how we’re making movies now? Marcus thought. The boss comes up with a title while he’s getting laid and we’re supposed to write a story around it?

  Taggert grunted as though he’d read Marcus’ thoughts. “A drama, a comedy, and a mystery. What are you working on right now? The Lana Turner picture, right? I’m taking you off that so you can focus on this. This is just going be a B filler, but since you came up with that Nellie Bly picture we shot as a B but made profits like an A, let’s see if you can repeat history.”

  “If this is a B picture, why not give it to the poor slobs in the B Hive?” The B Hive was a derogatory term for the makeshift offices where the guys who churned out the B pictures toiled.

  “This ain’t that kind of B picture.” Taggert stifled a yawn. “This is a Louis B. Mayer B picture, a whole different dodo bird. You can close the door on your way out.”

  Marcus closed the door but didn’t leave Taggert’s office.

  “Something the matter?” Taggert poked his finger in the rotary dial of his telephone and looked at Marcus like it hurt to open his eyes.

  “A couple of months ago, you told us to come up with an idea along the lines of Robin Hood.” When Taggert didn’t say anything, Marcus pressed on. “You said the last person to get his submission in would lose his job.”

  “I know,” Taggert grunted.

  “There’s been no word from you about any of the ideas we submitted, let alone an announcement that someone’s been pink-slipped. Everybody’s on eggshells. It’s no way for creative people—”

  “You want my job?” Taggert cocked his head to one side. “Or do you just want to tell me how to do it?”

  Marcus held his hands up. “That’s not what I’m saying. If threatening people with their jobs was just a tactic to get everyone to pull something out of their ass, then fine. It worked and you got a bunch of ideas. But if you’re not going to sack anyone, just come out and say so.”

  Taggert’s face was a brick wall. “Pulled the short straw, huh?”

  “No. I volunteered.” Marcus waited for a response, hoping for some sign of begrudging respect that he’d volunteered for this potential suicide mission, but he didn’t get one. “What can I tell the troops?”

  “Who said you can tell them anything?”

  Marcus thought about the file sitting on Taggert’s desk. Okay, he thought, if that’s the way you want to play it. “Is there a termination notice sitting somewhere here under all this rubble?”

  “If there is, it’s no business of yours.” Taggert remained steadfastly poker-faced.

  “The guys out there, they have mortgages, and rents and loans, commitments to family members. If they’re facing the chop—”

  “We’re done here, Adler.” Taggert’s voice had turned low and mean.

  Marcus steeled himself. “I saw it,” he told his boss. “The termination memo. There on your desk.” He reached down and flipped over some papers until the personnel form lay uncovered and staring up at them both. He softened his voice and leaned down to press his finger on the form. “I’m not telling you how to do your job,” he said, “I’m just trying to remind you—”

  Taggert yanked the memo out of Marcus’ reach, but didn’t realize the top page had shifted to one side enough for Marcus to read the title of a one-page movie outline: The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.

  That’s not a bad idea, Marcus thought. Whoever suggested it didn’t deserve to lose his job just because he was the last one across some arbitrary finishing line. He met Taggert’s gaze and dropped his eyes again to the papers clenched in his boss’ hand. He could only see one word of the next line, but it was all he needed: Marr.

  CHAPTER 8

  Gwendolyn was in no hurry to return to Chasen’s Southern Barbeque Pit. The last time she was there, she’d tried to impress the guy in charge of casting for Gone with the Wind and ended up with a bowlful of chili oozing down her dress. Still, she reminded herself, this poker party was her very own Custer’s Last Stand. If she didn’t get Zanuck to notice her, tonight would be the end of the line. She had no more cards left to play. She braced herself for a moment before she pushed open the front doors.

  She asked a passing waiter to point her toward the back room. He gave her the typical well-hello-there she got whenever she wore a tight dress. This one was dark blood-red satin with black trim, and hugged all her best curves.

  “Poker?” the waiter asked.

  She nodded.

  “Down the back, follow the barbershop sign, keep going until you can’t go no further.” He gave her a curt nod, then followed it with a smile that Gwendolyn chose to interpret as Yeah, you’ll do but could have just as easily meant They’re going to eat you alive.

  * * *

  Gwendolyn expected to find herself in a sleekly decorated room with creamy damask drapes and dark velvet wallpaper. What she found instead was a large, rustic den paneled in rough wood. It felt like the inside of a log cabin, although she'd never been inside one. There were no decorations, no windows or curtains. It looked more like a hideout for some desperate gang of bank robbers than a room where Hollywood’s highest rollers gambled more money in a night than most people earned in a year.

  In the middle was a round table with ei
ght men around it: no jackets, no ties, all smoking and over forty. Daryl Zanuck was dealing out what looked like the first hand of cards. Everyone else at the table was churning out wisecracks about him taking the whole damn twentieth century to deal.

  A buffet table set off to one side was already loaded with ice buckets, cigarettes, cigars, matches, pitchers of water, and a dozen bottles of booze: whiskey, bourbon, gin—all top shelf stuff. In front of it stood a redhead in a silver dress so tight Gwendolyn knew she’d been stitched into it. She waved at Gwendolyn to come join her. She’d probably been very attractive ten or twelve years ago before booze, cigarettes, and late nights had started to take their toll. “The name’s Mae,” she whispered.

  Gwendolyn introduced herself and nodded toward the players. “I’m not late, am I? I was told nine o’clock.”

  “Nah,” Mae said. “This lot was just eager to get going tonight. You worked a gig like this before? No? It ain’t hard. Make sure there’s always plenty of ice. No such thing as too much ice around here. Same goes for nuts. Nuts for nuts, these guys. At about midnight, one of the waiters will bring in sandwiches. We don’t serve ’em until one of them yells ‘We got any sandwiches around here?’” She gave Gwendolyn a well-practiced once-over. “You some sort of actress?”

  Gwendolyn nodded and deposited her handbag next to Mae’s under the buffet table. She stood up to straighten her dress and surveyed the serious faces hunched over their cards. She knew the first four: Zanuck from Fox, Arnow from Columbia, Howard Hughes, and Thau from MGM. She’d seen the guy next to Thau plenty of times at the Cocoanut Grove, some sort of heavy hitter at MGM. The guy next to him looked familiar as well. He was Jerry Geisler, one of those big-shot Hollywood lawyers, although he didn’t look it: doughy, twitchy, and thinning on top. He also had a honker on him that would give Jimmy Durante a run for his money.