Girl of My Dreams

by Peter Davis

  Late morning, when two more writers burst in, it was because Colonel DeLight had been unable to pacify them. After weeks of struggle, separately, on two problematic scripts for which neither could find a solution, Sid Croft and Reggie Chatwynd had just discovered Mossy had put them both on the same story to see what each could make of it independently. Sid, a bluff Midwesterner, had written silents and their title cards, while Reggie was a radio playwright brought over from England because of what was supposedly a demand for literacy in talkies.

  “So what’s on your mind, gents?” Mossy said pleasantly.

  “You know good and goddam well what’s on our minds,” said Sid.

  “I asked Sid’s help this morning with a plot point,” Reggie said, “he asked my help with an enigmatic character, and we discovered—mirabile dictu—that you have us working on the same blasted script.”

  “Ah, this kind of thing happens,” Mossy said as though consoling one for having fallen off a ladder, the other for a broken romance.

  “It’s not exactly a freak of nature,” Reggie said. “You had a few names and details changed, gave us the same picture to write. Utterly dishonorable.”

  “You’re a deceptive bastard,” said Sid.

  “Now wait a minute, boys. I thought I’d shorten the process, that’s all. Sid, you’re in the construction business, none better. Reggie, your dialogue’s razor-sharp. You both like to work alone. Thought I’d take the best of what you both turn in and maybe have Jamie McPhatter touch it up.”

  “Keep that illiterate drunk off my work,” Sid said. “Reggie, us together maybe?”

  “Don’t mind if I do, old boy.”

  Mossy smiled. “I’ll never lie to you, boys,” he lied, which he knew they knew. He’d deceived them, been found out, and talked his way around it until he got what he wanted in the first place. “Give me a weeper. Think of a rickety ladder—he climbs, he falls, he climbs back up—only this is about a girl who has to support her family. She—”

  “She’s a hooker,” Sid interrupted.

  “Don’t interrupt me when I’m interrupting myself,” Mossy said. “Actually, a hooker would have been fine before the Code. No, she’s a, a, an assistant curator at a museum, everything’s swell, she gets a promotion. Then she gets blinded in the accident, and I don’t like the car crash so give me something else, I like fires. Life is hard but she’s plucky. She lands a job—”

  “As a radio announcer,” Reggie broke in, remembering his earlier career.

  “That’s right,” Mossy said. “They give her stuff in Braille, you’ll figure it out. Loretta Young will be perfect. And the radio station owner falls in love with her.”

  The writers left, not only pacified but pleased. “He climbs, he falls, he climbs back up,” Mossy said to Elena. “I’m never more truthful than when I’m lying.”

  In these salad days, Mossy would rule by force, by truth, by guile, by lies, whatever weapon was at hand. Though he manipulated, he was not as manipulative as he was instinctual. Others planned their moves rigorously. Mossy simply, naturally moved and lured and struck by pure instinct, the hunter-gatherer-warrior habit. He seemed to be without intent, operating by reflex. His reflexes were as full of decision and direction as the deliberations of the most devious and sinister general or archbishop or foreign minister, each of whom he could impersonate depending on what the moment called for. Yet Mossy himself was not sinister unless we say that specialty is what evolution provided a bee. He stung or provided nutrition, but he acted without malice, from involuntary hunch, to protect Jubilee, promote his interests, to escape when he had to, win when he had any kind of advantage and often when he had none.

  Enter the fair Palmyra herself, answering a summons. “Ah, this is Adrian at his best,” Mossy complimented the reigning Hollywood dress designer rather than Pammy herself as he greeted his biggest female star. “Casual in the crushed velvet slacks, yet seductive above in the V-neck.”

  “Flattery will get you anywhere and no doubt does,” Pammy said, refusing to sit down. “Leave Brenda De Baule alone. She’s a nice kid.”

  “A nice kid she’s not. I only called her for lunch. See if I could do something.”

  “You already have. What do you want now?”

  Photoplay had a contest, and Pammy, with her electric compound of sexiness and wholesomeness was voted the star men most desired and women most admired in 1933. Her attributes projected well onto Mossy this morning, and he had trouble staying on his side of the desk. For her part, as she confided to Teresa Blackburn, Pammy wanted to stay as far as possible from Mossy and was ready to uppercut him if he put a hand on her blouse’s sleeve that she already resented his having identified as one of Adrian’s.

  “I can get Cukor for exactly two days to reshoot a couple of sequences,” Mossy said. “Don’t argue. When you do your first cute meet with Freddy March, it’s too much. The two of you look like you’re ready to jump each other. You’re scheming and he’s scheming, fine, but you’re also suspicious. You need to do that suspicious look you do so well you should get a patent on it.”

  “You’re too kind,” Pammy said, emphasizing her mock by blinking her lashes rapidly, “but I never allow my producers to get personal. Mr. Cukor and I will work it out, thank you.” She whirled, gave a slight wiggle at Mossy, and clicked her heels.

  Mossy called after her. “Hold on, I got a problem.”

  Without waiting for Pammy to turn around, Mossy described a conflict with Orville Wright. “He don’t want a girlfriend,” Mossy said, descending into his Bronx vernacular. “He gave us permission to do the picture, now he’s balking. The script and I say he’s gotta have a girlfriend waiting for him to make the first flight and come down safe. He says no, and he won’t let Wilbur have one either. Wilbur’s dead over twenty years and his brother still won’t let him have a girl. Will you talk to him when he comes out tomorrow, turn on some charm, tell him how honored you are to meet him, ect ect.”

  “He’s obviously too smart to fall for a petticoat display. It’s an insult to his dignity. And mine. I have to get back to the set. Go fish.”

  The two henchmen Seaton Hackley and Curtt Weigerer were in with the news that an actor had died on Stage 11 while the camera was rolling. A character actor with a genius for gesture who had once been prominent on the stage, Burns McElroy, was shooting a scene when he collapsed. “It’s a great scene,” said Hackley. “Imagine the publicity,” said Weigerer.

  “Imagine nothing, you heartless punks,” Mossy said. “Realism yes, reality no. Nobody wants to see actual death. Don’t develop the film or someone will pass it around as a stunt. Studio pays for the funeral, send Addie McElroy flowers. Have Owen Jant compose a note. What else?”

  “Boyd Drasnin lost twenty two thousand last night,” Hackley said, “playing poker with some sharpie down from Seattle. Boyd wants an advance.”

  “We don’t give advances to producers. And hush this. Public don’t want to hear about big Jew producers so rich they can drop that kind of dough and not feel it.”

  “Boyd feels it. He’s over in his office throwing up,” Curtt Weigerer said.

  “Probably a hangover. He lost my sympathy when he left his wife who’s worth ten of Drasnin who made us that turkey about southern belles in the foreign legion.”

  By now Felix Le Beau, a short director with a long cigar, had rushed in from Stage 11. He’d been directing the scene when Burns McElroy died. “Doc Lewiston pronounces him dead,” Le Beau said, “and I figure there’s nothing to do until the mortuary guys arrive so we shoot the rest of the scene, where Burns has no lines but he’s still on camera in his chair. We prop him up and his eyes are still open and we finish the scene where his son-in-law tells him he’s got to change his will. We’re on a two shot favoring McElroy see, and suddenly his left eye closes—not a wink but a dismissal, he’s completely shutting out his son-in-law, even better than we had it in the script. I can’t believe my luck and yell Cut! at the top of my lungs which is ha
rdly necessary but I’m so thrilled to see Burns has upstaged the villainous son-in-law.”

  “Dead, Burns McElroy steals his last scene. Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “Exactly,” Felix Le Beau said. “It’ll cut like butter.”

  “You win the compassion Oscar, Liebowitz. Get back to your set.”

  When Le Beau, who hadn’t been Liebowitz since high school, had gone, Hackley reminded Mossy that he said he couldn’t use the death on camera.

  “A good scene’s a good scene,” Mossy said.

  Petitioners arrived and departed like trains. But not me: I waited fussily in the writers building. The morning had begun irritatingly in the brutal sewing machine room, yet the day was full of promise in terms of my Dolls House treatment. I’d be knighted or maybe just patted on the back. I was tired of being patronized.

  “I’m labor,” Mossy told a director he had just replaced before the director had shot a single scene. “New York is capital. I’m with you guys, never forget it.” A writer begged Mossy for a chance to direct, have control over his material as it jumped off the page into the camera. “You’re already an architect,” Mossy told him, “why the hell would you want to become a carpenter?”

  Mossy told a producer bragging about his film that what Jubilee turned out was no less a team effort than the temples of India or the cathedrals of France. If the earliest motion pictures were projections of the filmer’s dreams, by 1934 most of the dreams were shadows not of individual imagination but of institutional fantasy, shadows of the country’s wishes and fears. The studio did not have the final cut; it was the final cut.

  At almost noon that morning Mossy issued what became known as the Santa Barbara Proclamation. He was occupied firing the immense Luther Chambliss, a two thousand a week writer whose weight was said to be about one third his salary and a man given to bombast. “You knew there was a problem in the first draft, Luther,” Mossy said.

  “Oh but that’s what I’ve clearly solved,” Luther said. “When I changed the—”

  “Oh but you clearly haven’t,” Mossy told him. “It’s as plain to anyone in the story department as it is to me. We’ll solve it in the next draft, writers tell me. We go through other drafts, two more sets of writers, the problem still exists. No one really likes the lead or in this case believes he has the balls to get rid of the crime syndicate running your small town. We make him police chief, or the D.A., we still don’t believe him. We give him a girlfriend, but that doesn’t help either. So we say—and I’ve traveled this road before—we’ll solve this when we have a director. He sees the problem, too, but he wants to get going and he says we’ll solve that on the set. The star says his character is weak, but we only have him six weeks and he tells me we’ll solve that in rehearsal, the other actors will help. Then we say we’ll solve it in production itself, the shooting will iron that out. We see the problem again in the rushes, and it’s like a toothache, but we say, okay, that’s what editing is for, we’ll kill this shit-covered beast in the cutting room. Yeah. Next fucking thing you know, we’re in a first preview in Santa Barbara, and there it is maybe thirty feet wide now and twenty feet high, bigger than any living thing, the same problem, tapping you on the shoulder saying, Hey, remember me, I’m still here. So, Luther, take your lard ass off my lot and into a steam room, you’re done at Jubilee. I’m going to solve this problem or I’m not going to make the picture.”

  “But why,” Luther Chambliss stammered, “why, why—”

  Mossy silenced him with a look of contempt, his eyes shining as if through the visor of a helmet. “Why? Because it rhymes with I. Meeting over.”

  Simple enough, if savage, when he held all the cards, though even when he didn’t Mossy could still prevail.

  When confronted, having run out of lies and strategy, he would equate the studio with himself. “Jubilee, c’est moi,” he had said when Pammy cornered him with a ruse he pulled on Teresa Blackburn, sending her on loan to Paramount to duck a promise to cast her as Joan of Arc because he had decided he’d try to pry Irene Dunne from Columbia instead. “This is better for Jubilee, which is better for me,” he told Pammy, “which in the end is better for everyone who works here including Teresa herself.”

  At the stroke of noon, Nils Maynard leaned in indignantly to say that April Devereau had stormed off his set screaming that Mossy had ruined her marriage and she’d be damned if she’d make another picture for him. Nils blamed Mossy for this because he’d seduced Devereau while she was, all Hollywood thought, relatively happily married to the publicist Tam Kilpatrick. Devereau had been the fourth most popular female star, according to Photoplay, for two years in a row, and getting her in a picture was a coup for Jubilee. “More important than adding a notch to your gun,” Nils fumed at Mossy. Mossy’s eyes shone more brightly as he opened the visor a half inch and prepared his counter. “Calm down,” he said to his director, “this is trivial.” He buzzed Elena. “Get me Miss Devereau in her bungalow.” Mossy took the offensive immediately. “April, damnit honey, you have a problem you come to me with it, you know you can. Remember the head waiter in Monterey when your veal chop was overdone? ‘Ennysing za matter mam’selle, I weel take care.’ Heh heh, we fixed that, didn’t we? Don’t close down a whole set, honey … yes, he’s here, he’s wild about your performance, we all are, but you’re keeping forty-two people from doing their jobs right now … I’ll be over to see you after lunch … There’s a good trooper.” He hung up. “Voilà, monsieur,” said Nils. “Your words, not mine,” said Mossy. Nils vanished back to his set.

  At last, just past noon, Comfort O’Hollie, secretary for writers who didn’t rate individual secretaries, came in with my summons to the front office. Be there in ten minutes. I started to shake. By this time I was truly uneasy—I seldom had the confidence nature gave a titmouse—and Comfort gave me the locker-room pep talk. “The more challenge, the more courage,” she told me. “As me grandmother, the infamous rabble-rouser says, believe it and you can achieve it.” I tried to compose myself. She socked my shoulder. “Get a grip.”

  I looked at her, wishing I were her male equivalent. Comfort sparkled, with black eyes and red hair both glowing, so young, only about eighteen, that writers’ protective instincts generally eclipsed their lust. “What makes you so brave?” I asked.

  “Me Da was in the Irish Republican forces”—newly arrived, Comfort said farces—“when the Troubles began in ’16, at which point in history me Ma was preggers to burst. The bloody British trapped me Da in a barn with his little band of fighters. They’d been delivering leaflets mostly, complaining about the treatment of the Irish, except for one little explosion at a train station that harmed nobody, so the story went. ‘Everyone out!’ the English lieutenant yelled, ‘Everyone out and no one gets hurt.’ No one moved a hair. The bastards threw in gas and the fighters began to choke. They put wet socks over their mouths and didn’t budge. ‘Out, out!’ the lieutenant yelled again, ‘and no one will be molested.’ The British knew me Da was the leader of his brave boys. Finally, the lieutenant shouted into the barn, ‘Come forth, O’Hollie, and the rest of your lads can go home. Come forth O’Hollie, come forth now!’ So me trusting Da, wanting his boys to return to their loved ones, did come forth, or come fort’ as we say. They blasted him to Heaven right there. ‘Come fort’ O’Hollie’ became a rallying cry, and they even yelled it at the funeral. The patriot who cut the throat of the lieutenant outside a pub yelled it again. I’m born three weeks later. Never had a father, but I did get me name from him.”

  Comfort’s grandmother, emboldened by her son’s martyrdom, had emigrated to Vancouver and ranged the Pacific northwest as a labor organizer, trying to unionize everyone who turned a screw or lifted a bale. An uncle was a grip on Westerns and had sent for Comfort. Grandmother O’Hollie became a legend among workers, and Comfort was trying to get her to come to Hollywood. “Buck up at battalion headquarters, Corporal Jant,” she said to me now. “Not an inch, don’t give an inch.” She so
cked my shoulder again and saluted.

  Bolstered, I almost danced through the lot to the executive building. I’d landed my first big fish after three years, and all I had to do was reel it in. A Doll’s House was to be my house. “Hey kid,” I heard myself called across the company street, “got me a part?” I looked up and saw someone who was all grin and ears, recognizing the wispy mustache and laughing eyes of Clark Gable, strolling from his set with gruff distinguished Walter Pidgeon, who nodded to me as though I weren’t quite invisible.

  “Sure, Clark, have it this afternoon,” I managed. He’d be awful as Torvald, no one would believe a woman could leave him, and he’d be playing a stuffed shirt for laughs. Pidgeon, though, was too stiff; a shirt can be too stuffed. Well, maybe Pidgeon. The two were on brief loan from Metro, and Gable had just finished another loan to Columbia where he had shot It Happened One Night with Capra. No one in town was hotter than Gable, whom I’d met for a moment in the commissary the week before. Had he heard I was hot, too? Visions of glory clouded my eyesight.

  The sight of Percy Shumway was never a consoling one to a writer approaching an audience with his majesty. Shumway was known for battering screenwriters with glib analogies to English novelists or playwrights solely for the purpose of putting them down. He always found a corner to sit in, an apparition wearing his permanent look of derision. Still, I thought possibly Shumway had been in Mossy’s previous appointment and was just leaving or even that he might have a helpful pointer or two about Ibsen. He had, after all, read literature at Oxford with I. A. Richards. So he claimed.

  The other person in the office was Jack Grader, a former football player, friendly in his way, but his job was basically to evaluate everything at the studio, including scripts, actors, performances, previews, directors, set decoration, budgets, cutters and cutting machines, virtually every element that went into the making of movies, including the finished pictures themselves. He substituted ranking for all other relationships to people and objects. That is only a fourth-rate gambler, he would say of a character on a Mississippi riverboat, where we need at least a second-rater. And the change would be made. What I saw when I entered the throne room, then, was the king with two of his more efficient hangmen.