It Happened One Knife

by JEFFREY COHEN

  They reversed the roles, and the result was classic. Or so I thought, until I heard Lillis and Townes rip it to pieces before my very ears.

  “Look at that lighting,” Townes grumbled from his seat behind the screen (you can actually see very well back there, although the image is naturally backward). “Who directed this turkey, anyway?”

  “I did,” Lillis reminded him.

  “Oh, yeah.” Townes grinned.

  Lillis pointed at the screen, as if we might be watching something else. “You see that? My tie’s inside the doctor coat in one shot, then outside, then back inside. And I knew it from the first dailies, but they wouldn’t let me go back and reshoot it. Cheap bastards. They said nobody’d ever notice.”

  “I’ve seen this movie fifty times, Harry,” I told him quietly, “and I never noticed until you said something just now.”

  He gave me a look that shut me up for twenty minutes.

  They proceeded like that for some time, noticing every tiny continuity error, groaning at some of the jokes that I’d always thought were brilliant, despairing at how each of them looked on-screen. But when they got to the examination scene, they both stopped talking.

  Perhaps the most well-remembered of any comedy scene the team ever performed, the scene halfway through Cracked Ice, in which Harry Lillis, playing Dr. Horatio X. Ledbetter, decides to perform a thorough examination of his prehistoric subject (Townes), is a seamless grafting of sophisticated verbal wit onto relentless slapstick that has never been equaled on film. Entire theses have been written in postgraduate film programs on the scene, and even those haven’t blunted its delirious momentum.

  At one point, Dr. Ledbetter slips on a bar of soap (don’t ask how a bar of soap ends up on the floor; just trust me, and go rent the movie), and the caveman, having been told to follow his doctor’s lead, deliberately slips on the floor, too. The camera stays on the empty room—a static shot— for forty-two seconds, and the grunting and groaning (and Lillis’s offscreen remarks, which he has insisted were adlibbed) is all we have to go on for the longest time. When the two men finally stand up, the caveman is in the doctor’s coat, and the doctor is wearing a leopard skin. It defies explanation, but it is hilarious.

  Tonight, neither Lillis nor Townes spoke during that scene—despite the raucous laughter coming from the audience—but they restarted the acid commentary immediately after. I didn’t dare open my mouth, and neither did anyone else in our small group. We listened, and we learned.

  The question-and-answer period after the film was priceless: even relatively innocent questions like, “When you were shooting that scene, did you have a cold?” were met with less-than-innocent answers (“A cold what?”). Anthony, with his digital video setup on a tripod, recorded the event, and never looked happier. Even when he looked at me, the alleged destroyer of his dreams, he couldn’t stop smiling.

  It went on for over an hour, far longer than Mitchell— who seemed terribly protective of Lillis—was comfortable with, but the two old pros showed no sign of flagging. When I finally ended the session, to groans from the audience followed by a long standing ovation, it was with the same feeling one has after any big (and enjoyable) moment in one’s life: Wow, that was great coupled with Is that it?

  After the audience left, we sat in the lobby of Comedy Tonight as Lillis and Townes continued to hold court. Townes, almost as tall as his partner (and better preserved, at least to the untrained eye), sat with his long legs stretched out in front of him. Sophie was still putting the snack bar back together, although there was precious little left; almost everything we’d had in stock had been sold. I’d have to call our candy distributor early tomorrow morning to get replacement snacks in time for the next evening’s showing.

  Sharon, Vic, Anthony, Jonathan, and I sat on the steps to the balcony, while Harry Lillis, in his wheelchair, and Les Townes, in my desk chair (the most luxurious seat I owned that wasn’t bolted to the auditorium floor), bantered themselves silly for an hour and a half. The woman from the Booth Actors’ Home, whom Harry introduced as Marion Borello, “a dame from way back when,” sat next to Lillis and rarely took her eyes off him, giving Harry looks I think he saw but chose not to return. Mitchell, glancing impatiently at his watch, hovered nearby, leaning on the snack bar and getting dirty looks from Sophie, who had just polished it to a mirrorlike finish. Dad sat in a folding chair I’d dusted off and set near the two guests of honor.

  “How did you come up with all that stuff when they’re on the floor?” I asked Lillis about the examination scene.

  Townes jumped in ahead of him. “Would you believe the studio wanted us to cut that?” he asked. “They said it was a shot of the wall for forty seconds, and nobody would want to watch it. Harry had to fight with them for a week over it, and to the day he died, H. R. Mowbrey insisted we were crazy.”

  Lillis grinned at his partner’s admiration for his work and his tenacity. “I threatened to walk off the lot and never come back,” he said. “I think Mowbrey wanted to take me up on it.” Lillis’s battles with the studio owner were the stuff of legend; while they were negotiating a contract extension in 1955, Lillis once actually sent a man in a gorilla costume to Mowbrey’s office with instructions to follow the poor man around all day and, well, ape every move Mowbrey made.

  “Whenever we got too deep into it, we sent Vivian in to talk to him,” Townes said. There was a moment after hearing the name of Townes’s late wife, and their on-screen leading lady, that the two men both grew quiet, but Dad, sitting on a folding chair to one side, broke the silence.

  “She could talk the studio into letting you guys have your way?” he asked. That’s it, Dad, rub in the sad memories a little bit. I love the man, but he sometimes has the sensitivity of cast iron.

  “Ah, Vivian,” Townes said. “The best straight man a comic ever had.” It didn’t answer Dad’s question, but that didn’t seem important.

  “Straight man?” Sharon, who was standing to my left, asked. “Why wasn’t she a straight woman?”

  Townes shook his head. “No such thing,” he said. “Margaret Dumont was Groucho’s straight man. Dorothy Lamour was Hope and Crosby’s straight man. If you weren’t a comic, you were the straight man, setting up the jokes. And nobody did it better than Vivian.”

  “Yeah, and you had to go screw it up and marry her,” Lillis replied. The group laughed, but I noticed a look passing between the two comedians that would indicate the humor wasn’t necessarily intentional. They were glaring into each other’s eyes like a pair of dogs trying to determine which was the alpha male. It wasn’t pretty. Marion Borello stopped beaming at Lillis long enough to look annoyed. At Les Townes.

  Dad broke the moment after the laugh died down. “How did you get to direct, Harry?” And the look between the two partners ended as Lillis began his story. Sometimes, my father is exactly the guy you want around.

  After another few questions, Mitchell announced his intention to cold-bloodedly murder anyone who stood between Harry Lillis and the door, and the little group broke up. I walked over to Les Townes first, and held out my hand. “I’m so glad you came,” I told him.

  He didn’t take my hand. “Then how come you didn’t invite me?” he asked.

  I was stunned for a few seconds, not sure if Townes was joking. “Mr. Townes, you have no idea how sorry I am about that. I didn’t know how to get in touch with you,” I said.

  “Harry knew. Did you ask?”

  “No,” I admitted. “It never occurred to me that you were around here, or that you’d come if we invited you. But I’m glad you did.”

  Townes thought for a moment, then shook my hand. “Apology accepted,” he said.

  Out on the sidewalk, we all hugged and tried to extend our time by just another few seconds, but Mitchell was adamant, and started readying the van to raise Lillis’s wheelchair. After Vic and Dad said good night and left, Sharon and I watched as Townes approached Lillis and bent over to take his hands. Marion stood to one side,
waiting to ride back in the ambulance with Lillis. It turned out she’d taken two buses and a train (then a taxi from the New Brunswick station) to get here tonight. “I don’t like to drive at night,” she explained.

  “That’s dedication,” I told her.

  Marion smiled. “Not just that,” she said.

  Les Townes held Harry Lillis’s hands in his own two for a long moment. The look exchanged between the two partners was affectionate, and sad.

  “Stay warm, Harry,” he said. “Just stay warm.”

  “You’re the best there is, Les,” Lillis told him. “Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. The best.”

  Townes turned away and nodded toward Sharon and me, then walked to his car, and drove off. I walked to Lillis just as Mitchell was attaching his chair to the lift apparatus.

  “That was very touching, Harry,” I told him. “I’m glad you guys got together tonight.”

  Lillis appeared to be wiping a tear from his eye. “Thanks for setting it up, Elliot,” he said. “It’s nice to remind myself after all these years what a dear, dear man Les Townes really is.”

  Mitchell started the motor on the lift, and Lillis (and the chair) rose up into the back of the ambulance. And just as Harry Lillis settled into the vehicle, he looked down at me again.

  “He murdered his wife, you know,” Lillis said. “Les killed Vivian, and then burned the house down.”

  And Mitchell closed the back doors of the ambulance.

  8

  If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, it’s just possible you haven’t grasped the situation.

  —JEAN KERR, PLEASE DON’T EAT THE DAISIES

  SATURDAY

  I spent the morning at my bedroom computer, scouring the Internet for information about Vivian Reynolds’s death. I hadn’t actually done much Internet research before, other than to look up a defunct comedian on the Internet Movie Database every once in a while, but I dove in now.

  The volume and breadth of information available was amazing, and somewhat frightening. There were entire websites devoted to Vivian’s memory, which was rather astounding, considering that she never really became a huge star. Her IMDb listing showed only three films before she began working with Lillis and Townes, and after that, she always played second fiddle (third fiddle) to the team. (I also discovered that there was a male actor named E. Vivian Reynolds, who appeared in five films between 1917 and 1934, ending his career playing “Butler” in Love at Second Sight.)

  A number of the Vivian Reynolds sites referred to her “tragic death,” but only one, www.whokilledviv.com, suggested the death was anything but an accident. Citing “sources within the LAPD at the time of the fire,” the (anonymous, like the “sources”) writer of the site tried to make the case that Reynolds was dead before her bungalow caught fire, and while no names were mentioned, it’s clear from references throughout the site that the person hosting it believed Reynolds’s marriage to Les Townes was less than idyllic.

  The facts I could confirm on multiple sites were these: On November 10, 1958, while Lillis and Townes were working on a film (Step This Way, which had no female lead), Vivian Reynolds spent the afternoon at the Hillcrest Country Club, across from 20th Century Fox on Pico Boulevard. She spent a few hours in the bar, but didn’t drink to excess, according to the bartender. She then left by herself.

  She must have gone home to Bel Air, because three hours later, the Los Angeles Fire Department responded to reports of a fire, and found the Townes/Reynolds home in flames. By the time Vivian’s body was found, it was identifiable only through dental records.

  The official record listed the fire as electrical in nature, and did not classify it as suspicious. Townes, at least outwardly inconsolable, didn’t return to the set of Step This Way for eight weeks, a very long time during the reign of the studio system (Clark Gable, for example, was back on the set of Somewhere I’ll Find You only thirty-eight days after Carole Lombard’s death in a plane crash). It was up to Harry Lillis, who was also grieving for a lost love, to shoot around his partner and eventually to cover Townes’s absence by claiming that he, Lillis, had pneumonia and couldn’t film. When they finally managed to finish the movie, it was hardly the team’s best effort (understandable, under the circumstances), and although they worked together for another five years, the seeds for Lillis and Townes’s split were planted the day Vivian Reynolds died.

  Still, the LAPD had been quick to declare the fire one of the accidental, electrical variety, and Vivian Reynolds’s death an awful consequence of that accident. No foul play was determined in the case. Clearly, it was up to me to bring in the experts.

  “So let me get this straight,” said Chief Barry Dutton. “You want me to investigate a death that was ruled an accident. ”

  “Yes,” I agreed. It was chilly in his office. You’d think the town would spring for a better heating system for their top law enforcement official. I’d brought coffee and doughnuts. You learn stuff when you hang around with cops.

  “And it took place in California,” Dutton continued.

  I nodded. “Bel Air, to be exact.”

  “In 1958.” Dutton, who was standing over me to better emphasize his intimidating physique, glared into my eyes.

  “That’s right,” I told him. It had seemed a better idea a few moments ago.

  Dutton sat down heavily. “I have three assaults to investigate, ” he said. “Five domestic disputes, any number of traffic violations, and two burglaries, one of which, you might recall, took place at your theatre. So tell me, Elliot, why am I sitting here talking to you about a Hollywood murder from the early days of Cinemascope?”

  “It was Vivian Reynolds, Chief. She was married to Les Townes, and Harry Lillis himself told me her husband murdered her.” This, too, had sounded much more convincing while inside my head.

  “It was fifty years ago. I’m sure the cops who issued the report on the fire are dead, or at least retired for the past three decades. The crime scene is probably a Wal-Mart by now.” Dutton’s voice was soothing, like he was talking to a dangerous maniac holding an AK-47.

  “It’s Bel Air,” I said. “At the very worst, the crime scene is now a Versace outlet.” He didn’t look convinced, and I had to admit, I was on shaky ground myself. “Look, I’m not asking you to take it up professionally; you’re three thousand miles and half a century removed from the investigation. But I’m asking: if I were going to look into it, what would I do?”

  Dutton reached into the box of doughnuts and pulled out an especially chocolate one, which he eyed like a lion going after a freshly killed antelope. “Oh, no,” he said. “I’m not going down that road again. I’m not helping you get involved in digging up information on a violent crime. I’m not encouraging you to annoy people who are better left unannoyed, just because you’ve decided you’re Philip Marlowe. Not happening, Elliot. Not this time.”

  “Okay, so how goes the investigation of Anthony’s missing film?” My face was, I assure you, all innocence.

  “That’s it? You’re dropping the Case of the Well-Done Starlet?” Dutton, for reasons I can’t fathom, appeared skeptical.

  “Sure,” I answered. “You convinced me. It was a long time ago, in a city far away.”

  “Stop talking like Luke Skywalker; you’re scaring me. You’re saying I’ve convinced you to be rational? Just like that? It hardly seems characteristic.”

  I took a doughnut, too. What the hell; I’d paid for them. So I’d do a few extra sit-ups . . . as soon as I started exercising. “Look. It was something an old man said about a woman he probably loved before his best friend married her. It was obvious the memory of her was painful for both of them. He was just babbling; it had been an emotional night. You should have been there, Chief.”

  “I was there,” Dutton said. “At least, at the public part. I’m an old Lillis and Townes fan myself. I was in the balcony. ”

  “You’re a brave man.” I still didn’t trust the balcony, no matter h
ow many thousands I’d spent rebuilding it.

  “You don’t get to be chief of police based solely on good looks,” Dutton said without the hint of a smile.

  “Anthony’s movie,” I changed the subject back again. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s an ongoing investigation. Why should I tell you anything?”

  I studied him. “Because I’m the owner of the business that was burglarized.”

  “True, but until I have a suspect . . .”

  “Because you’ve shared information with me before . . .”

  Dutton nodded. “There’s an experience I’d want to repeat. ”

  “How about this: because I bought the doughnuts, and if you want that last double chocolate, you’re going to have to tell me something.”

  His hand, in mid-grab for the pastry in question, stopped dead in the air. He considered. “All right, fine. I took the list of invitees you gave me and interviewed a number of those who might have some reason to take the film.” Then he snatched the doughnut before I could have completed an entire blink.

  I offered, “Such as Anthony’s father, who doesn’t want him to quit school; Carla, his girlfriend, who doesn’t want him to get too famous too fast; and Leo Munson, whose odd taste in films might be hiding a deep-seated obsession with bad movies?” I considered adding myself and Sharon, who might have been trying to spare the world the sight of Killin’ Time, but I think anything that might add the word “suspect” to my name on a police file is best left unsaid.

  “Yes, and a few of Anthony’s classmates,” Dutton said. “I’m not sure it wasn’t a frat prank or something. I even considered the idea that Anthony had stolen it himself to collect the insurance . . .”

  “. . . until you discovered he had no insurance on the film,” I finished for him.