ANOTHER ANGLE—JACOB KING AND EDDIE BINHOFF
driving past, looking at it, Jacob at the wheel of the Continental.
EDDIE BINHOFF
in the passenger seat, adjusts the rearview mirror.
ANOTHER ANGLE
The omnipresent tail seen in the rearview mirror.
EDDIE BINHOFF
We’ve got company.
JACOB
I have had this shit.
EDDIE BINHOFF
looks sharply at Jacob, then removes his pistol and makes sure it is in working order.
JACOB KING
suddenly revs the convertible up and careens down the empty highway at a dangerously high speed.
ANOTHER ANGLE
The tail gives chase.
ANOTHER ANGLE
Jacob suddenly slams on his brakes and the Continental skids into a U-turn. Jacob then heads back down the highway in the wrong lane, directly at the chase car.
EDDIE BINHOFF
Jesus, Jake …
ANOTHER ANGLE
A look of horror on the two men in the tail car. Desperately the driver crosses the highway trying to get out of the way of Jacob’s Continental.
ANOTHER ANGLE
Jacob’s car hits the right rear fender of the second car, spinning it around.
ANOTHER ANGLE
The passenger tries to get off a shot at Jacob and Eddie Binhoff.
ANOTHER ANGLE
The car takes off across the desert, Jacob’s Continental in pursuit. The car cannot find purchase in the desert sand and is once more clipped by Jacob’s convertible. It stalls.
ANOTHER ANGLE
Jacob lines up the other car and then heads his Continental straight into it. A horrendous crash. Jacob backs up for one more shot.
ANOTHER ANGLE
The man in the passenger seat staggers out of the car. He tries to get a shot off, but then seeing the Continental heading straight for him takes off across the desert.
ANOTHER ANGLE
Jacob wheels after the fleeing, running, stumbling man.
ANOTHER ANGLE
The man stands his ground and tries to squeeze off a shot.
ANOTHER ANGLE
Jacob driving as fast as he can on the desert sand hits the man squarely.
ANOTHER ANGLE
The man flies over the hood of the Continental, blocking Jacob’s vision for a moment, then slips off the hood.
ANOTHER ANGLE
The man dead in the desert sand.
ANOTHER ANGLE
Jacob wheels around and heads back toward the stalled second car. Once more he slams into it.
ANOTHER ANGLE
The driver dazed and bleeding, his head resting on the steering wheel.
ANOTHER ANGLE
Jacob bolts from the Continental, followed by Eddie Binhoff, gun in hand.
ANOTHER ANGLE
Jacob yanks open the battered door of the second car and pulls the bleeding driver out. Jacob is in an uncontrollable rage.
JACOB
Give me your fucking gun, Eddie.
EDDIE BINHOFF
hands his weapon to Jacob, who sticks it up the nose of the driver.
DRIVER
(whimpering)
Jake, I’m begging you, please …
JACOB KING
fires one shot. The shot tears off the end of the driver’s nose.
THE DRIVER
weeping uncontrollably, bleeding profusely from the spot where the end of his nose had been.
JACOB KING
now sticks the gun into the driver’s ear. He is still enraged.
JACOB
You fuck, you’re not worth killing. You just go back and you tell Lilo and Benny we are here to fucking stay. You understand that?
THE DRIVER
nods.
JACOB KING
lays the gun against the man’s ear and once more fires. The noise is thunderous.
THE DRIVER
claps his hands over his ears, deafened by the roar of the gun.
DRIVER
You’re crazy …
JACOB KING
leans close to the weeping man and screams into his ear.
JACOB
You fucking tell them that, too.
CUT TO:
“Great,” Marty Magnin said.
“Interesting,” Sydney Allen said.
As much as I would like to claim that the desert homicide sprang from the dank and darker subbasements of my own inspiration, Blue had in fact mentioned in her tapes that Jacob did tell her once he had run over some guy of Benny Draper’s in the desert, and shot the guy’s partner (I should say here that whenever Blue had cause to mention any of Jacob’s putative homicides, she would always refer to the victim as this guy or that guy, the anonymity of the word guy eliminating the necessity of the guy having a name and a personality and a father and a mother and women he fucked and maybe even children), first shooting off the guy’s nose, then his tongue and his ears and his thumbs and his kneecaps, and finally blinding him, his plan being to leave this human husk as a message to his employers, without the motor facilities to identify his tormentor, but finally he killed him with a bullet in his ear because, Jacob had told her, no man deserved to live out his remaining years in such misery. In crime’s Camelot, this seemed to pass as honor, and she was willing to accept it as such without question. To say the least, the revelations appeared indiscreet on Jacob King’s part, especially from a man otherwise so circumspect about the murders attributed to him, a man used to admitting nothing and denying the same, so I do not know if I believed her tale or not (it took only fourteen seconds on the tape, and was parenthetical to a meandering story about a Little Miss Marker knockoff she was once meant to do on a loanout to Warner’s, with Bogie and Jim Cagney). I did find the specificity of detail intriguing, but then she was always a woman with a fertile imagination, especially when it came to story, and I have been in enough story conferences to recognize the lust to embroider and punch up a sequence, a word here, some business there. In any event the scene I concocted on demand for Sydney Allen, even though it was never filmed, became just another story that attached itself to the ongoing and ever growing legend of Jacob King, and in time was even accepted as truth.
As it were.
VII
I coached her on the Pledge of Allegiance, Chuckie O’Hara said. Gave her line readings, told her where to breathe and where to pause. I used to do it with her on every picture. You shouldn’t forget, she couldn’t read when she became a star, she was only four, remember, and her scripts had to be read to her, that’s how she learned them, and she never really stopped doing it, she’d come to me for line readings even for the pictures I didn’t direct. And so I said to her, I pledge allegiance—pause—to the flag—pause, breathe—of the United States of America—pause, breathe—and to the republic for which it stands—pause. Chuckie, she said, why not a pause after “to the republic,” and I said, Because the clause shouldn’t be broken up, and she said, What’s a clause? Apparently they never got around to clauses in the English grammar course at the studio school. If they even taught grammar. The Little Red Schoolhouse. It was on Stage 11. I think the only geography she ever learned there was the map of movie star homes. The funny thing was, when she was called to testify before the Committee, she was asked if it was called the Little Red Schoolhouse because it was teaching Communist propaganda. It’s true. You can look it up. Needless to say, Moe French closed it down right after that. Red is for apples, not Communists, he liked to say. None of us had any idea what he meant, but we would all sit around in the executive dining room at the commissary, everyone agreeing right and left, That’s right, J.F., red is for apples, not Bolsheviks. Then all of a sudden Blue said, Why aren’t you going to the dinner, Chuckie? You’re not one of those Communists Moe is always talking about, are you? My dear, the chill that ran up my spine. I wondered what she had heard, and I even considered going to the dinner. I had bought a table anyway to keep
on the good side of Moe, but told him I couldn’t go because I was shooting. Moe didn’t seem to care if I went or not, he thought I was solid, I’d shot this short for him against Upton Sinclair in the 1934 election for governor, all the studios shot them and then showed them in their theater chains and pretended they were newsreels. It was the first time I ever used a hand-held camera, so it would have a grainy, man-in-the-street look. Mine had Walker Franklin’s cousin Esmeralda something, Nixson, she was a part-time actress and full-time maid, telling the camera she was voting for Sinclair because he would show California how well Russia really worked, and that he was going to build low-income housing for the colored in Beverly Hills. I have to admit it’s not a picture I include in my filmography. My God, I voted for Landon in 1936, and I have never told anyone this, you must never repeat it to a soul, for Hoover in 1932. I could not stand that cripple, waving that cigarette holder of his. Think of Jack Barrymore sober, with braces on his legs, and you’ve got him. A ham actor is all he ever was. So why did I join the Party then? Love’s mission. I was enamored of someone, so I joined as proof of my undying ardor. I loved it. All those fervent young revolutionaries, ready to try anything, even me.
I have a copy of Blue Tyler’s testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee. She was never asked if Cosmopolitan Pictures’ Little Red Schoolhouse was so named because it taught Communist propaganda.
It was Mr. French who wanted me to be at that dinner, Melba Mae Toolate said. I had an early call the next morning, and he said he would get Chuckie to rearrange my schedule, it was important that the biggest stars in the Industry be there, and I was Cosmo’s biggest star, I would introduce the main speaker, some congressman who was investigating Reds in the Industry, and afterwards I’d say this pledge. The real reason I didn’t want to go was because that rabbi guy, Barry Tyger, was always trying to feel me up, he’d put his arm around my waist and then let his thumb knock up against my boob, copping a cheap feel is what he was doing. At least the Catholic guy, the what do you call what he was …
The cardinal.
That’s right, I knew it had a bird name, at least the cardinal kept his hands to himself, but he must’ve been at least a hundred years old, I don’t think pussy was on his mind. Anyway he was wearing this swell outfit, kind of an orangey-red with buttons all the way down the front, neck to ankle, and a yarmulke, did you know Catholics wore yarmulkes? I thought it was just a Jew thing.
It’s called a biretta.
It looked like a red yarmulke, you ask me. I think if Mr. French knew that Jacob was going to show up that night, he would’ve said go home, you got an early call, we don’t want to get behind schedule on Red River Rosie. Mr. French was always telling me not to let Arthur get fresh if I had an early call, he meant I shouldn’t let Arthur fuck me.
How did Jacob know enough to show up?
Well, there were these big billboards on Sunset and all over, with my picture about fifty feet high, and the lettering saying “I Am an American Day” in red, white, and blue type, Jacob couldn’t have missed seeing it if he tried. I guess he just wanted to see me again, I don’t know, I really hadn’t thought of him much, except I kept hearing Rita was fucking him, and Chuckie said he heard he had a dick that belonged in a circus, it was the eighth wonder of the world. It was all right, I suppose …
Arthur French had a copy of the invitation squirreled away in the scrapbooks of his Hollywood years that he never liked to admit he still kept and, I suspect, browsed over in the small hours when sleep was difficult and bad memories and minor treasons laid siege and assaulted:
COSMOPOLITAN PICTURES AND J. F. FRENCH PRESENT
THE “I AM AN AMERICAN” DINNER
HONORING CONGRESSMAN THEODORE WILDER
RECIPIENT OF COSMOPOLITAN PICTURES FIRST ANNUAL
“I AM AN AMERICAN AWARD”
INVOCATION: HIS EMINENCE HUGH CARDINAL DANAHER
THE AMBASSADOR HOTEL FEBRUARY 19, 1947
BLACK TIE COCKTAILS DINNER
DANCING TO THE MUSIC OF BOB CROSBY AND THE BOBCATS
Arthur also had the clips, and the accompanying Cosmopolitan publicity photographs of his father embracing Theodore Wilder and introducing him to Irving Berlin and Sam Wood and Victor Fleming and Blue Tyler, and photos of Blue with the congressman’s wife, LuAnne Wilder, and with Shelley Flynn and Clark Gable and Walt Disney and Adolphe Menjou and Ginger Rogers and Barry Tyger, and with the cardinal, in his full ecclesiastical robes. It was Barry Tyger who in fact had suggested it might be better if the cardinal delivered the invocation rather than he because one of the congressman’s aides had inquired if there would a large Hebrew element attending the dinner.
There were no photographs in Arthur’s scrapbooks of Jacob King at the “I Am an American Dinner,” but he did have a copy of Congressman Wilder’s address:
“Communism is older than Christianity. It is the curse of the ages. It hounded and persecuted the Savior during His earthly ministry. Inspired His crucifixion. Derided Him during His dying agony, and then gambled for His garments at the foot of the cross. Communism has spent more than nineteen hundred years trying to destroy Christianity and everything based on Christian principles. Communists are now trying to take over the motion picture industry, and howl to high heaven when our Committee on Un-American Activities proposes to investigate them. They want to spread their un-American propaganda, as well as their loathsome, lying, immoral, anti-Christian filth, before the eyes of your children in every community in America.”
A headline in the next day’s Los Angeles Mirror: J. F. FRENCH TO FILM INDUSTRY AT EXTRAVAGANZA: “BACK ANTI-COMMIE CRUSADE.”
Another headline, in the same day’s Herald: BLUE TO LOUELLA: “I’VE BEEN AN ANTI-COMMUNIST SINCE I WAS FOUR.”
“My first exclusive,” Louella Parsons wrote. “Blue Tyler, who has thrilled movie audiences since she was four years old and has grown into a beautiful young woman, told me at the ‘I Am an American’ dinner last night that she has been an anti-Communist since her very first picture, the delightful Sunny Face. ‘In Russia, Louella,’ Blue told me, ‘they tell you what to do, but in America anyone can become a star like I have.’ Wise words, Blue. Blue also said that she wanted to talk to high school students about the importance of home life and good citizenship. And to think this True Blue American is still two years short of casting her first ballot, for an anti-Communist, this pillar is sure.”
Arthur remembered the Bob Crosby orchestra playing a syncopated dinner-music version of “America the Beautiful.” He and Blue were at the head table with his father and Chloe Quarles, from whom J. F. French was more or less separated, but who he thought a more appropriate dinner companion than his current attachment, a French Filly younger than Blue Tyler. Chloe was living in Montecito in sapphic bliss with a former Filly, a situation J.F. had not anticipated when he invented the Fillies, and the stable became in effect his own private brothel, but she was always available to be with J.F. on public occasions. The Wilders were also at the table, as well as Lilo Kusack and Rita Lewis, her breasts generously displayed in a Mainbocher dress, and Benny Draper (at Lilo’s invitation, his reasoning being that it could not hurt to have Benny and Moe breaking bread at the same table), Benny the only man in the ballroom not wearing a tuxedo, apparently his idea (this from Arthur in his droll mode) of solidarity with the workers. Blue was seated on Congressman’s Wilder’s right, pretending to be interested in what he had to say. What he had to say, according to Arthur, seemed to be about the Jews.
“Your industry, Mr. Frankel—” Congressman Wilder said.
“French,” J. F. French said.
“Excuse me,” the congressman said. “I must have been thinking of somebody else. Mr. French. French. Of course. Mr. French, your industry has got to be serious about this secret infiltration of all those Reds—”
“And pseudoliberals,” J. F. French interjected.
“They’re bad for the Jews, Moe,” Lilo Kusack said, inhaling his cigar and t
hen blowing perfect smoke rings past the congressman’s face. The whole evening seemed to entertain him.
“Exactly,” Congressman Wilder said, waving the smoke away. “Exactly right, Mr.…”
“Kusack. K-U-S-A-C-K. I come from Vilna.”
“Where is that, Mr. Kusack?”
“Tennessee,” Lilo Kusack said, not missing a beat. Rita Lewis tried not to laugh. There were times when she almost liked Lilo, and this was one of them.
“Did you know, Mr.…”
“French.”
“Did you know, Mr. French, that Edward G. Robinson’s real name is Emmanuel Goldenberg?”
“Nooooo,” Lilo Kusack said, drawing the word out. “Is that right?” He poured the last of a wine bottle into his glass and snapped his fingers at a waiter for another bottle. “Did you know that about Eddie, Moe?”
J. F. French stared impassively at Lilo Kusack.
“I didn’t know that, Lilo,” Blue Tyler said. “It takes up a lot of letters on a marquee, that must be the reason Eddie changed it.” She paused, counting on her fingers as if computing the number of letters in both names. “But Edward G. Robinson is only a couple of letters less than Emmanuel … what did you say his name was?”
“Goldenberg …”
“It really doesn’t matter with Eddie. He’s below the title anyway. I don’t know why he changed it then.”
Congressman Wilder turned and looked at Blue in puzzlement, as if she might have been pulling his leg, but irony, as Arthur always assured me, and as I learned in my brief acquaintanceship with her, was a tactic not included in her arsenal of dissembling.
“You’re so cute,” Blue Tyler said. She pursed her lips, placed her hand under her chin, and blew the congressman a kiss off her fingers. “It’s a good thing you’re so happily married to what’s-her-name over there, or I’d steal you away from her.” She mouthed the words, You make me wet, and then aloud said, “You going to eat that spud?” Before he could answer, Blue had speared the last roast potato from his plate and stuffed it into her mouth. “Rita,” she said, chewing noisily. “Arthur told me you used to fuck some Italian gangster in Cleveland when you were a kid.”
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