The magnificent villas are concealed behind immense hedges from which hosts of gardeners hang, trying to give the foliage as quadratic a form as possible. That’s how it has to be.
John Clark lives in a palace. It effortlessly outshines even the ones which were erected along the banks of the Loire in the Renaissance.
The gate opens as though by an invisible hand, and Liliencron glides up the driveway in the Chevrolet, wide-eyed in wonderment. A servant in a tailcoat is already awaiting him.
And that’s just the overture. The actual opera begins after the walk through the hall out onto the terrace, where the eye sweeps across a landscape reminiscent of the Scottish Highlands: lakes on which little ships pitch and toss, meadows with ponies galloping around, pavilions, fountains, even a fairground carousel for the children.
Liliencron can’t believe his eyes. Has he, without noticing it, shuffled off his mortal coil, and this is paradise? Is he in the curvature of space-time that Einstein always spoke about?
He looks for signs of human life. Then John Clark comes towards him. Completely unsuspecting that he has just become associated with the theory of relativity.
“Welcome to Hollywood!” says John Clark, shaking his hand.
“Thank you!” says Liliencron.
John Clark explains cheerfully to his visitor how he recently acquired the adjoining piece of land from James Stewart, for the sole purpose of tearing down his house and erecting a chimpanzee enclosure in its place.
“My name is Carl Liliencron,” replies Liliencron.
Clark pauses. Then he remembers Jack Warner telling him that the man was from Berlin, that he doesn’t speak a word of English, and that he doesn’t even know who Rita Hayworth is.
“Rita Hayworth?” asks Clark, just to make sure.
Liliencron shakes his head in confusion.
So Warner wasn’t exaggerating, for a change.
The oddball from Berlin looks like a civil servant, thinks Clark. If he’d had any say in it, his guardian angel would have looked quite different.
“Okay, let’s go,” decides John Clark.
He waves at his wife and the children, who are off in the distance feeding the flamingos.
“Family,” he sighs, sinking into the back seat of the car.
“Yes,” replies Liliencron.
“Do you have family?” asks Clark.
“Yes,” replies Liliencron.
Other than that, their journey is a silent one.
“Warner Brothers Pictures” is spelt out in large letters over the entrance gate of the studio city. Gigantic billboards of current box office smashes are plastered over the facade. Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn, Dark Victory with Bette Davis, Angels with Dirty Faces with James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart.
The porter eyes the new silver Chevrolet warily. Only when he recognises John Clark does he salute and open the barrier.
He instructs the chauffeur to hold the official studio badge up to the windscreen.
“My name is Carl Liliencron,” replies Liliencron.
It happens all of a sudden. The Chevrolet catches fire and blazes fiercely. Men with iron bars jump onto the bonnet and smash the windscreen. Glass, nothing but glass everywhere. The caretaker, Zinke, is handing out the petrol canisters. The porter roars: “Down with the Jews!”
Liliencron wrenches the steering wheel around and speeds into Klamtstrasse. Home! He has to save Sirius!
The Chevrolet skids across the studio grounds and comes to a standstill just seconds before colliding with the main building.
“Hey, man!” cries Clark. “What a drive!” He wipes the sweat from his brow. “That’s Hitler style!”
Liliencron laughs hysterically. Then he falls unconscious.
John Clark isn’t quite sure why, but he likes his new chauffeur.
*
Every Friday is payday. That’s the norm in Hollywood. Even movie stars get paid on a weekly basis.
A chauffeur’s salary is roughly equivalent to the amount the Clark family spends on flamingo feed each month.
When Carl puts the few notes down on the table each payday, he always comments drily: “Hardly a noteworthy amount.”
This new life in the new world often plunges him into existential-philosophical moods. What he once was, he is no more. So who is he? The nagging questions arise especially when he puts on his chauffeur’s cap in the mornings. And in the evenings, too, when he comes home. His existence has shrunk to the smallest of spaces: a bungalow, in which a suitcase stands. One of those wooden shacks that are being knocked up day after day in Hollywood so that even the minor employees can have a roof over their heads.
Carl stares into nothingness. The naked walls. The bare rooms. The silent days. The empty nights, nothing but black holes.
Only the suitcase is full of memories. When they awake, they haunt Liliencron. He is exhausted.
“What’s the point of surviving if you’re not living?”
“Oh, Carl,” says Rahel. “We are living.”
“My name is Carl Liliencron. That’s all I can say.”
Rahel takes her husband in her arms and comforts him.
“You can say yes too. Try to say yes more often.”
In this respect, Sirius is having an easier time of it. He can communicate without any problems in the new homeland. He likes it in Hollywood.
He recently met a dog who works in the movie business. As an extra. It was a very interesting encounter. The dog told him that his dream is to work for Disney, as a dubbing voice for Goofy. But, as he knows very well, talent alone isn’t enough – it’s all about who you know.
Hollywood is a hard place. Sirius discovered that when his paws hurt after particularly long walks. There are hardly any paths with grass. It’s all concrete.
He thinks back to Berlin. Is his tree still standing? Is the yellow ball still in the garden? In his haste, he forgot to take it with him. That rankles with him at times.
Rahel is in the process of teaching him a new trick. Yowling chansons. “The French are very good at it,” she says.
She puts a record on, and Sirius tries to yowl the melody. He does a pretty good job of it with Maurice Chevalier. The song Y’a d’la joie is about how the Eiffel Tower is bored.
If even the Eiffel Tower is bored, then how must Rahel feel? She’s still looking for something to do with her time. The children have left home.
Georg has received a scholarship. His dream is coming true; he is studying medicine. He lives on the university campus in West Hollywood.
Else has taken on a post as a nanny in the house of Erich Wolfgang Korngold. The composer left Vienna five years ago and followed Max Reinhardt to Hollywood. Now he’s contracted with Warner Brothers, and in February he got his first Oscar for the film score to Robin Hood. Else is surrounded all day long by the sound of his piano playing.
Good old Jack Warner. He helps countless Jews to escape from Germany, he pulls strings in the White House, he takes the new arrivals under his wing and directs their journey from suffering to happiness, called destiny. He is a one-man dream factory.
Poor old Carl Liliencron. He is still having nightmares. In his heart, he’s still the bearer of the golden Cothenius Medal. His eyes need to adjust, from plankton, which is tinier than four thousandths of a millimetre, to Sunset Boulevard which spans 35 kilometres. Hollywood is reaching for the stars, while Liliencron can’t even fly yet.
But that will soon change. After all, he’s a guardian angel now.
*
Peter Lorre celebrates his birthday with a party. The Liliencrons arrive at eight o’clock on the dot.
They are the first to arrive. And the only ones there. In Hollywood, people arrive late to prove how important they are. The later the hour, the more important. The rule applies to the unimportant people too. Someone who is unimportant comes later than someone who is even more unimportant.
A short man with a hat perched askew turns up relatively early. He seems to be familia
r with the house and the garden, for he walks purposefully over to the barbecue and gets himself a bratwurst. Then he fetches a beer from the icebox.
“Billy Wilder,” he says, introducing himself.
He claims to be one of Peter Lorre’s closest friends. It wasn’t so long ago that the two of them were sharing a room.
“One room!” emphasises Wilder. “It was clear that at least one of us had to make it. Peter was the first, he became Mr Moto. I wrote the screenplay for Ninotchka for Ernst Lubitsch, which wasn’t bad either. A Mexican cleaning woman has been living in the room ever since.”
Liliencron laughs. For the first time since he stepped onto American soil, Rahel sees her husband roar with laughter.
“He’s laughing!” she cries.
“That’s my job,” replies Wilder. “I sincerely hope your husband won’t be the only one.”
“It’s wonderful to speak German again,” says Liliencron.
“Is that your dog?” asks Wilder, pointing at Sirius, who is snuffling around the barbecue and wagging his tail. “What language does your dog speak?”
Liliencron is baffled. What language does Sirius speak?
“Look,” says Wilder. “He wants a piece of sausage. He’s wagging his tail. He wants to be happy. A sausage is a sausage, regardless of language. There’s a universal language of happiness, you know.”
The garden fills up. Erich von Stroheim, Vicky Baum, Otto Preminger, Marlene Dietrich, Robert Siodmak, Fritz Lang, everyone is there. Everyone who had to leave their homeland. Hollywood has suddenly become a neighbourhood of Berlin.
Fanfare. Peter Lorre steps out onto the terrace. He greets his guests, and the small band play Lili Marleen. Everyone dances, and tears flow.
“It’s my fault,” calls Lorre, as he walks over to the Liliencrons.
He frames the word “fault” by gesticulating speech marks with his fingers, intended to illustrate his sarcasm.
“Stop!” calls Marlene Dietrich. “That was my invention.”
“What?” interjects Fritz Lang. “Surely the only German hand motion that has a claim to copyright is the Hitler salute.”
“My dear Liliencrons,” says Peter Lorre, raising his glass. “You have to get out of Berlin! Come to Hollywood! That was my advice to you that day on the telephone. And now you’re here.”
Applause. Fanfare from the band. The guests embrace the Liliencrons and wish them luck.
Carl Liliencron has tears in his eyes.
“My God,” says Rahel. “Now he’s even crying.”
“That’s life,” replies Robert Siodmak. “No happiness without tears. No sorrow without a smile.”
The band plays Why Have You Forgotten Waikiki?
Billy Wilder is a force to be reckoned with on the dance floor. In Berlin, he occasionally had to make ends meet as a ballroom dance partner for widows.
“What’s your dream?” he asks suddenly.
Liliencron shrugs. He doesn’t understand the question.
Wilder clicks his fingers. “Singing? Then become a singer. Burgling? Then become a burglar. Re-invent yourself. You need a dream to get yourself up in the morning.”
And with those words, he’s already back on the dance floor.
At two in the morning, Humphrey Bogart rocks up with his dog Zero on the lead. He’s drunk.
“Who fancies a game of Skat?” he slurs. Lorre taught him the card game, and he’s been addicted ever since.
Sirius and Zero sniff one another. It could be the beginning of a wonderful friendship.
The band play Over the Rainbow.
This is the night that Carl and Rahel Liliencron truly arrive in Hollywood. They dance, closely intertwined, even after the band has long stopped playing. Suddenly, they too are speaking the universal language of happiness.
“We’re living,” whispers Rahel.
“Yes,” replies Carl.
*
One morning, Liliencron wakes up and decides that he will no longer be called Liliencron. For some reason, the name is standing in his way. Even though it’s still unclear to him what that way is and where it might be leading. But the name is too cumbersome. It feels as though he has to constantly lug around the suitcase he emigrated here with.
“My name is Carl Liliencron.”
He doesn’t want to hear that sentence anymore. He doesn’t want to be an outsider anymore. He wants to have the kind of name someone has when they belong.
Why not Carl Crown?
Short. Quick. Clear. Snazzy. Cheerful. Brilliant. Confident. Affluent.
That’s it.
John Clark is the first to hear the new name, and he is very taken with it.
“Yeah,” he says, “good idea. Makes things easier.”
He looks the freshly-baked Carl Crown up and down, then suggests: “New name, new clothes.”
The two men have pretty much the same build, so the clothes the Hollywood star fetches from his wardrobe fit Carl perfectly.
A pair of white flannel trousers with coloured pleats – fit.
A light-blue polo shirt and an ochre-coloured silk sweater vest – fit.
A green double-breasted cashmere jacket – fits.
A pocket handkerchief: pink with a yellow diamond-pattern.
Shoes: white full brogues with a Derby cut.
John Clark claps his hands with delight. “Now I like how my guardian angel looks!”
Carl Crown is still a little unsure. He looks like someone who wants to be a trumpet-player in a jazz band.
But maybe that is what he wants, and he just doesn’t know it yet.
“Let’s go and have a drink!” says John Clark.
He says that a lot. Every time there’s something to celebrate, in fact, and even if it’s just some tiny insignificant detail, like a door opening after he rings the bell. Another reason to celebrate. John Clark was always in an excellent mood; you had to give him that.
They drive to the Formosa, sit up at the bar and order Gin Fizz.
“Is Hitler really such a bad guy?” asks Clark.
“Yes,” answers Crown.
“Do you play golf?” asks Clark.
“No,” answers Crown.
Just the usual things people talk about at a bar. When they’re really talking to each other for the first time.
“Do you like blondes?” asks Clark.
“Yes,” answers Crown.
“And your girlfriend?”
“No girlfriend,” says Crown.
“Is your wife a blonde?”
“No.”
“No girlfriend?” John Clark throws his head back in laughter. “Well, that’ll soon change with the way you look now.”
Another round of Gin Fizz. And another.
When Carl Crown comes home that night, his wife sees a drunken man in a light-blue polo-shirt and an ochre-coloured silk sweater vest.
Rahel cries bitterly.
In the early hours of the following morning, the German Wehrmacht marches into Poland. Adolf Hitler has sparked off the Second World War.
*
The year of 1939 will go down in movie history, everyone in Hollywood is already sure of that.
The Wizard of Oz is coming to movie theatres in August, Stagecoach in September, Mr Smith Goes to Washington in October, Ninotchka in November, and finally, in December, Gone with the Wind.
The Great Dictator, Rebecca and The Philadelphia Story are currently being filmed.
One day, people will call this “The Golden Age”, or something like that.
It’s not a bad moment to be living in Hollywood. Carl Crown spends every free minute he has in the movie theatre. He is learning the universal language of happiness. He has enough time, after all; his job as a guardian angel consists mainly of waiting around.
Every morning, at 6 AM on the dot, he picks up John Clark and chauffeurs him to the studio. Clark is filming The Sea Hawk, with Errol Flynn.
Crown then drinks a cup of coffee in the Brown Derby, before the matinee opens
around the corner in the El Capitan Movie Palace.
At lunchtime, John Clark usually wants to do a “bit of exercise”. By that, he means physical training with some starlet. He has his own bungalow on the studio grounds, of course, but too many curious reporters hang around there.
So his guardian angel drives the couple to a secluded clearing in the Laurel Canyon and discreetly absents himself. The bottle of champagne on the back seat has to be cooled to just the right temperature. Based on his experience, after ten minutes it’s usually safe for Crown to make his way back.
He then enjoys the afternoon programme in one of the numerous cinemas on Hollywood Boulevard.
At six in the evening, the hardest part of his job begins. This is when John Clark is in the mood to party.
He asks to be driven straight to Don the Beachcomber, where a group of people are already waiting for him, ready to embark upon a Martini marathon.
The later the hour, the harder things get for the guardian angel. In the Trocadero, he has to point demonstratively at his watch when a dancer lays her head in John Clark’s lap. Charlie Dotter empties an ice bucket over his friend to cool him off.
“Time to go,” says Crown.
“Aw, come on,” pouts Clark, “let’s just stop by the Banana House quickly.”
The Banana House is not the kind of place to end the evening on a sedate note; to say that the venue has a lively atmosphere would be a major understatement.
A real-life grizzly bear lurches around on the dance floor in rhythm with the band, chimpanzees and impalas run around freely, pelicans fly through the air, the waiters sit on dromedaries, and the girls hang from vines. Both man and mammal dance the hula.
Carl Crown likes this place. There’s absolutely nothing to remind him of Klamtstrasse here.
John Clark, of course, is quite keen to turn the night into a legendary one. But after just one drink, his guardian angel is already telling him it’s time to go home.
At least Clark has a souvenir from the jungle with him. A full-busted mamba, who nestles down lasciviously on the back seat.
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