Playland

by John Gregory Dunne

  “Oh, Jerry,” she said, turning to face Jacob. “Don’t let’s ask for the moon, we have the stars.”

  He looked at her quizzically, then got up from the bed and joined her at the window. He had an erection. She had never known any man, not even Walker Franklin, who got so many erections. “My name isn’t Jerry,” he said, and she thought perhaps he might be a little angry.

  “It’s a line from a movie. Now Voyager.” A pause. “Jacob.” The “Jacob” was offered with a slight emphasis, so that he would not miss the point.

  “I never saw it.”

  “With Bette and that German guy, Paul, that was in Casablanca. He played Jerry.”

  “I didn’t see it.”

  “Well, you didn’t see anything, did you?”

  “I had things to do,” Jacob King said, enveloping her in his arms. After a moment, he said, “You know, the first time I ever saw the stars I was ten years old.”

  “What?” she said. Carole and the plane crash and her imagined funeral were forgotten. “What do you mean, ten years old? Were you blind or something?”

  “You don’t see the stars in Brooklyn. I got sent to this juvenile farm, it was upstate, in the mountains. I stole a car, and I couldn’t even drive. I just hot-wired it. I hit three cars in the block, then this old fart, he was crossing the street, how was I supposed to see him, I couldn’t even see over the wheel. I’d already been laid, but I’d never seen the stars. And there they were, at this juvey farm.”

  It was a story outside her realm of experience, but it freed her to talk about herself, the subject with which she was most comfortable. “When I was five I went to the premiere of Angels on Parade …”

  “What’s that got to do with the stars?”

  “Wait. Let me tell you. And after they ran it, Mr. French took me onstage and introduced me and said Let me present someone who is going to be Cosmopolitan Pictures’s brightest star. And I started to cry. Because the stars were in heaven. And when he said I was going to be a star, I thought he meant I was going to heaven. You know, like dying?” She burrowed into him. “I’m not even afraid of dying anymore. You know what I’m afraid of instead?”

  He tightened his hold on her. “You’re afraid of walking into someplace and nobody gives a shit, nobody knows who you are, you’re a nobody.”

  Blue twisted out of his arms and looked at him. This was not the way she would have put it, but it was more or less what she meant. “How do you know that?”

  “Because we’re alike, you and me.”

  “No, we’re not,” she said with a hint of petulance. He was not an actor, nor a director, nor a producer, nor did he own a studio, like Moe, nor was he a son, like Arthur. These were the only categories of people she really knew, and he fit into none of them. And a writer would certainly never live in a house like this. She did not know where production managers and makeup men and hairdressers and wardrobe mistresses lived, although she tried to remember them by their first names, and gave them all Christmas presents that the studio paid for and charged to the production number of whatever picture they had worked on with her. “Because I’m famous.”

  He smiled, and it occurred to her that he must be famous, too. In his way. Whatever that way was. Famous enough so that his presence made people nervous, people like Mr. French and Lilo and that awful Benny Draper, men whose business was making other people not just nervous but fearful. “Well, anyway,” she amended, “I’ve been famous longer than you.”

  A shrug, still smiling. “Yes, we are alike,” he said gently. “We’re in different lines of work, you and me, but we’re out there in the spotlight, because that’s where we want to be.”

  That was it. That was it exactly. How did he know that? “What kind of work are you in, Jacob?”

  “I’m a sportsman,” Jacob King said.

  IX

  There is very little in this narrative that Blue Tyler, Arthur French, and Chuckie O’Hara, each with a personal and totally self-absorbed perspective, could agree on, but they all agreed that the downfall of Benny Draper, leading to his violent demise, began the day he ordered a wildcat strike that pulled the gaffers off Cosmo’s Stage 7, the largest on the lot, where Chuckie, in the last week of shooting on Red River Rosie, two days behind schedule and hearing about it from J. F. French, who was threatening to replace him with Victor Higgins, Metro’s equally homosexual director of big-budget musicals (an idle threat, because J.F. would never pay a loan-out fee to L. B. Mayer, who he wished would choke on a fishbone), was preparing the production-number finale. Of course I looked up the trade papers for that day. The page-one headline in Daily Variety read, ALAN SHAY IDENTIFIED AS RED, while the Reporter’s front page was bannered with DIRECTOR SHAY TAKES FIFTH 47 TIMES; in both papers, the story of the ongoing negotiations with Benny Draper’s OMPCE was buried on page five: PROGRESS REPORTED IN LABOR TALKS, reported Variety, LABOR SETTLEMENT REPORTED NEAR, said the Reporter.

  It was our Manhattan Towers number, Chuckie O’Hara said. Rosie’s run away from the Red River Valley and come to New York, and she’s all the rage, of course, so down and dirty, a fifteen-year-old Texas Guinan, but the sophisticated New Yorkers just love her, and she has this society fiancé, who doesn’t know how old she really is, Billy Teasdale played the part, oh, how I loved that boy, but he was a monogamous fag, if you can believe it, he and Victor Higgins were together for years, Victor was always out on the town, playing the field, but Billy was just Miss Stay-at-Home, gardening and cooking, nothing says lovin’ like something in the oven. Anyway. Enough of unrequited amour. Blue was supposed to dance down the floating staircase of this penthouse apartment, one hundred and two steps, my dear, the bannister swathed in chiffon, Blue singing “Anything Goes,” ba ba bababa bum, “In olden days, a glimpse of stocking … was looked upon as something shocking …” It takes four and a half hours to light the master, Walter Sklar was the slowest cameraman on the lot, but he was Moe French’s nephew, and I always got stuck with him, I think his main job was to tell Moe if I was prancing around with anyone below the line. So it’s eleven-thirty and we haven’t had the first setup yet, and Blue’s acting cunty with wardrobe and makeup, she wants to show cleavage, she wants her knockers squished together, and I say to her, Blue, you’re playing fifteen, I know you’re nineteen, we’ll compromise, I’ll show just a tiny little hint of cleavage and see if I can prevail on Moe to run an ad campaign that says, “Blue’s Got Tits and Billy’s Got ’Em.” Anything to get a laugh out of my star. And she says, Billy wouldn’t know what to do with them. Quelle vrai. You have the rag on, dear, I say, or a little preggers, are we? You see, I had met this new gentleman friend, and I’d heard that Arthur was on hold, and that Arthur was being such a good sport about it, Arthur was born being a good sport, and he’ll die being one, it’s like he came over on the fucking Mayflower, he’s such a good sport. Fuck you, Chuckie, she said in that winning way of hers, but by that time the shot was finally ready, and the A.D. said, Places everybody, and the chorus boys and those loathsome French Fillies took their places, and Blue rode to the top of the staircase on a boom, and the A.D. said, Music ready, and I said, Rolling … and … action …

  I hated to lip-sync, Melba Mae Toolate said, and so in all my musical numbers I’d do the songs to a live mike, and then in postproduction I’d rerecord. I hated that picture. I never minded Chuckie being a fairy, but I never had to do love scenes with him, not that I had any love scenes with Billy Teasdale, because I was only supposed to be fifteen, and he didn’t know that, or his character didn’t, and so the thing was, was he going to kiss me or not, the jerk-off factor, Chuckie called it, the jerk-off factor was what made me a star. Billy was nice, I suppose, but I was always asking him if Victor was the husband and he was the wife, or vice versa, and he would tell me I had bad breath. Fuck him. I didn’t go to his funeral. He had a stroke or a hemorrhage or something bad in his head, he was on location, and they couldn’t get him to a hospital in time, Victor threw himself on Billy’s casket
at the funeral, that’s the only reason I wish I’d gone, to see that, it made Clark Gable furious, he said Victor should be barred from the Industry. He was such an asshole at times, Clark. One time he told me that my being with Jacob set a bad example for the Industry, and I said, What about all those old bags you married for their money and shit before Carole, Carole told me she thought you were cherry when she married you, she didn’t say that, but that got to him. Fuck him, too.

  Give me a little grapefruit juice, and while you’re up, throw a little vodka into it, put the juice in first, then the ice, then the vodka, and don’t stir it, that way the juice is like a chaser. Anyway, I’m up on this staircase waiting for Chuckie to say Action, and I look down and see Billy Teasdale picking his nose and looking at it, it really got me in the mood. I’m pissed off at Arthur, too, he’s being so fucking noble, he says this is just a phase I’m going through, I say, What’s just a phase, getting it twice a night regular, which I shouldn’t have said, then I get to look at Billy snacking on a little piece of snot, no wonder he had a fucking hemorrhage, the boogers clogged up his arteries, then Chuckie says, Action. The music starts, I start coming down the staircase, “In olden days, a glimpse of stocking …” Left foot over right foot, right food over left foot. “… was looked upon as something shocking …” I’m halfway down the stairs, when the whole stage goes dark, pitch-black, and I’m screaming, Will someone get me off these fucking stairs. I was making over twelve thousand dollars a week, I was the most valuable piece of property on the lot, and none of those people whose job depended on me knew how to get me off those fucking stairs. I thought I was going to die, and I thought it would’ve been a better ending going into that mountain with Carole …

  Arthur French was playing tennis at Hillcrest when his father’s secretary called the club and had the manager go to the courts and tell him that the electricians had walked out and he was to return to the studio immediately. Arthur always obeyed his father and went back to Cosmo without changing out of his tennis whites. Not changing was a mistake, he realized as soon as he walked into J. F. French’s office. J.F. was in a rage, and Arthur knew that sooner or later he would be the target of opportunity.

  “What do you mean, wildcat strike?” J. F. French was screaming at Lilo Kusack. “I don’t see no wildcats, I just see a bunch of bums, and that bunch of bums was walking out, that bunch of bums Benny Draper gets paid to keep in line. What the fuck I been paying him for, they won’t even follow orders?”

  “They are following orders, Moe,” Lilo Kusack said. He had assumed his reasonable, lawyer’s tone, speaking so low it was difficult to hear him. “They’re following Benny’s orders. That’s your problem.”

  “My problem is we got no product for the Christmas season, this keeps up …” J.F. stopped, as he seemed to see Arthur for the first time. “Lilo, who’s this tennis player just walked in here without knocking? Bill Tilden?” He ran his eyes over Arthur. “He’s a fageleh, Bill Tilden, you know that? You a fageleh, too? I should call you Bill, the way you let that little girl working her ass off down on Stage Seven get porked by that gangster man from New York …”

  “It’s just a phase,” Arthur French said.

  “Phase,” J. F. French said. “He’s got a dick bigger than your racket, I hear …”

  “Moe, Moe,” Lilo said soothingly. He knew Arthur would never defend himself against his father.

  “Don’t Moe, Moe me, Lilo,” J. F. French yelled. “I hear he’s sticking his racket into Rita, too.”

  Lilo inspected the shine on his shoes. There was no point in interrupting this tirade, or taking offense either. He knew history was on his side. Someday J. F. French would lose control of his studio, as all the oldtimers had lost control of theirs, Laemmle and Schulberg and Fox, all of them, and Lilo would make sure he was there to kick him when he was down. And kick him once more for good measure. As for Rita, she was who she was, at least she wasn’t fucking the poolboy anymore, she wasn’t a wife, there was no point in trying to put her on a leash, and he doubted any man would be capable of that. Even her fucking Jacob might prove useful in the long run, a way to wean Blue away from him when the time came, as come it must. Blue was the client whose viability he must protect. After that service was performed he would start thinking about getting rid of Rita. It was time he should be getting married again anyway, and Rita was not wife material. Nor was it a role she sought. Getting rid of her would sadden him. Rita’s brain might be in her pussy, but there were few men and no women whose brain he valued more.

  “You got nothing to say?” J. F. French said belligerently.

  “The electricians could be back this afternoon, Moe,” Lilo said evenly, “if you just let me bring Benny in and we make his deal.”

  “Such a tough guy, this Benny. The gangster man burns down his hotel, your hotel, Lilo …” J.F.’s hand shot out, his forefinger like an arrow, his voice rising, strangled, almost inarticulate, the artery in his neck pulsating. Lilo thought he might have a stroke right there, and that would be something he would enjoy. “… my hotel, and what does Benny-tough-guy do about it? He calls this wildcat thing against me. Better he should let his wildcats chew up the gangster man that’s fucking everyone I know. I think Benny’s wildcats got no teeth, is what I think.”

  In fact, Benny Draper had tried to tell Lilo of the plans he had for Jacob King, all of which involved cutting off his genitals, and one with hammering a pipe up his anus and pouring red hot battery acid in it. I am not hearing you, Benny, Lilo had said, I am an officer of the court, if I heard what you were saying, I’d have to report you or be charged with misprision of a felony. I am not hearing you, I will not be party to a conspiracy, but if you do anything to Jacob King right now, even the federal attorneys you’ve got in your pocket couldn’t stop a grand jury from indicting you. In truth Lilo was surprised that Benny had not done something stupid already. Quick and brutal vengeance was instinctive with him, a signature. He did not think Benny was getting any smarter, so perhaps Moe was right, perhaps Benny did talk the talk now better than he walked the walk. In which case a call to Jimmy Riordan might be in order. Not just yet. But a possibility.

  Down the line.

  To establish ground rules.

  And the length of any leash attached to Jake King.

  “I have the figures, J.F.,” Arthur was saying when Lilo focused back on the matter at hand. Arthur had picked up the numbers from business affairs before coming to his father’s office. The papers were sticky from his still-sweaty tennis clothes. “Make the deal now, the stoppage only costs ten thousand for the morning …”

  J. F. French looked at his son in wonderment. “I send Bill Tilden here to the University of Southern California, and you know what he learns? He learns ‘only.’ Like in ‘only ten thousand.’ Like it’s his money.”

  “Moe, with the insurance, you’d come out okay,” Lilo Kusack said.

  “Insurance.” J. F. French’s voice was beginning to rise again. “You must’ve been the one teaching Bill Tilden ‘only’ at the University of Southern California.”

  “The fact is, J.F.,” Arthur said, “it doesn’t matter when we settle. Because we are going to settle.” It was as if Arthur thought he could impress his father by taking the realistic approach. “We haven’t got any options …”

  The color was beginning to rise in J. F. French’s face when his secretary buzzed from the outer office.

  “You’re fired,” J.F. shouted. “I said no calls.”

  “Miss Tyler from Stage Seven,” the secretary said coolly. She had already been fired once before that morning, and she would be fired again that afternoon, and she would return the following day to be fired once, twice, or even thrice more. She had worked for J. F. French for eleven years, and she had stopped counting the number of times she had been fired, and she no longer cared that he was serious every time he dismissed her, always in a fury, or that he seemed not to know her first name. As a result she had never told him that her husb
and had polio and was confined to an iron lung in a Culver City hospital, because if he knew that he would have fired her for certain, it would make him obligated, and he despised obligation to other people, particularly those subservient to him. He expected her to keep his secrets, but she had as little interest in his women and what they did to him as he had in her private life, and its sorrows. Her name, the name J. F. French never bothered to learn, the name Arthur years later told me, was Dorothy Warnick—she was Miss Warren to J. F. French and sometimes she was Miss Warner and occasionally Miss Warnick, but never Mrs. anything—and often Dorothy Warnick contemplated what she would do if her health failed to the point where she could no longer take care of her husband, if indeed visiting him in his iron lung could be said to be taking care of him (this again from Arthur, who would talk to her, and call her Mrs. Warnick, but never Dorothy, this woman who had felt his father’s wrath as often as he, although J. F. French and his discontents were never mentioned). She dreamed of killing her husband in this eventuality, perhaps with a gun secured from the property department, and then killing herself so that her body fell by his infernal machine. I know this because Arthur had told it to me when we were working together on our heart-transplant screenplay, he thought it was something we might find a use for. I of course wanted to know what had happened to her, but Arthur of course had no idea, not being as unlike his father as he preferred to think, or pretend. “She says it’s urgent,” Mrs. Warnick said.