by Peter Davis
“Who’s the enemy?”
“God. Dullness. God can be very dull in his stillness and majesty. He doesn’t like anyone else to be the creator but himself. He thinks he’s the only artist, and the rest of us are impostors. His creations are always nobler than ours, but we stave him off and once in a while we do what he meant to do but hasn’t actually gotten around to doing yet. On rare occasions he might even help us. In the film of Queen Victoria, if we get to make it, I need to show her at her coronation ball not only as the young dazzler she was that night but as messenger of an age. You think I don’t need God for that?”
The contrast between what Nils was telling me and what I could see was stark. The crew was moving listlessly around the set, actors were slumped in their canvas chairs doing crossword puzzles or complaining to each other. “And today?” I asked.
“Today is bat crap,” Nils said, sighing, his entire frame sagging. “But I think it will hold your attention if we can show how tense things are between the prodigal son and his parents at this big family get-together where they want him to pledge his obedience and he wants to declare his independence by running off with, God help us, Devereau, who’s too old for the part, but that we can handle. Dialogue is the least of it here—it’s all in looks and shrugs and a camera that notices a napkin being twisted by the mother, a look the father shoots at his son, a note the son keeps folding and unfolding beneath the table, concern for the son on the features of the maiden aunt.”
“You’ll get all that this afternoon?”
“No. We’ll get the master, and that will tell me what I need in the two-shots, the close-ups, if Straker doesn’t make everything too unbearable. You want so bad for it to be good, not to have endless takes. Even at an orgy you can get tired of repetition.”
“You edit the film and you feel better,” I offered.
“Hardly. That’s when Hell hits. You see a rough cut, just you and the cutter. It’s ghastly. The minister resists temptation in too many scenes and you’re sick of him. The girl is sexy where you don’t want her to be, yet she’s a lump where you want her to be a morsel. No mirth where there’s supposed to be a laugh, no fear in a horror scene. Nothing works. Even the villain—juiciest part of the script—isn’t believable. You wonder where you can get some of the hemlock Socrates drank. There are those pills you bite down on. Self-immolation is good, you’re shrieking in agony as the flames eat you just before you lose consciousness, and that agony is joy compared to what you feel now. Plus you know you’ll never work again. Just impale yourself on the Moviola and have done with it.
“The cutter tells you to hold off, she hasn’t been editing pictures fifteen years for nothing, in the silents cutting was a real art, how about you go away till Wednesday and she’ll show you some stuff, maybe she’ll want you to reshoot a scene or two and this time give her a little coverage, maybe there won’t be too much egg on your face.
“So you stumble away, embarrassed, humiliated. You’ve let your underling, your cutter, who probably makes about a tenth of your salary, throw you off your own picture. You steer clear of the studio, go to Santa Anita, the beach, take your kid to the mountains. Wasting time, waiting for the hangman.”
“You’ve hated your films that much?” I asked. “And yourself?”
“Much more. But then you come back and have a look at the cutter’s new cut. Moves better, not so bad, she has minimized places where the picture drags and motivation is unclear, cut the talky exposition, punched up the good action you do have, the dramatic moments you haven’t quite ruined. Maybe you’re not dead yet. You jump over your producer’s head and ask Mossy’s permission to reshoot to make the villain more treacherous, the main actors are still on the lot, the sets you need luckily haven’t been struck yet because they’re being reused.
“You tell Mossy you’re on the verge of something fantastic, never been done, you just need three more days’ shooting. He says ‘pipe down with the bullshit, I already know you’re in trouble, my spies are everywhere as you should know, frankly I sneaked a look at the last third of the picture last night, it’s my studio don’t look so injured, and it is my considered opinion’—he says to you as you recontemplate suicide only this time it’s murder-suicide because you’re taking Mossy with you—‘that you may not be in as bad a fix as you think. Reshoot two days, tell Straker to get his ass in gear or he’s at Republic doing Westerns next month, and while you’re at it reshoot your star with her father and dress her differently, the audience won’t know how to react if she’s showing cleavage in that scene, we want brains and the audience doesn’t think the two can ever be found together, so put her glasses back on while you’re disguising her bazooms.’
“As it turns out,” Nils concluded, “Mossy is just a little bit right, even if not the way he thinks he is, you get a couple of ideas of your own, and you’re not dead yet and don’t have to kill him, and that’s how pictures get made.”
At last the director’s forces were arrayed for battle. He yelled, “Action!” and the camera moved smoothly on its tracks around the living room as the family argued about what was to become of their prodigal son. Though the actors barely saw him, Nils moved his hands as if he were conducting an orchestra. The take proceeded majestically as no fewer than five actors spoke, each one hitting his or her point, two of them interrupting each other to perfection. The camera came to rest on the son, whose eyes gave both his parents exactly the right degree of love and rebellion. “That’s all I’m going to listen to from either of you,” he said. “Please try to remember whose life this is.” He sighed. The master shot was over, and though I knew he would make them do it again, Nils was pleased. Everyone was. He shot his arms out, and a pair of white lovebirds flew from each sleeve. The four birds circled the set and came to perch on Nils’s shoulders as the cast and crew applauded. “Okay,” he said, “next we shoot Secret Shikse Rituals.”
The look on Dirk Straker’s face said he didn’t know who he hated more, his delighted crew or Nils Matheus Maynard with his dazzling legerdemain. I was left to wonder how long those birds would have waited patiently until Nils had a take he liked.
The actor playing the prodigal son handed me back the press release. “I’m from Butte, not Bozeman,” he said, “and my old man’s a grocer not a high powered land speculator, whatever that is. Other than that, it’s okay, I guess.”
Errand over. I was on my way off the sound stage when Nils summoned me. I walked obediently to his canvas chair with the block letters MAGICIAN on it. “Hey Jant, don’t you like the take?”
“Everyone else has already told you. You don’t need to ask me.”
“I need to make it unanimous,” he said.
“Thanks, it was great. If you do it again, maybe the father could look more stern.”
“Right, glad to hear it. Now cheer yourself, Owen. You’re too upright, dogged, gray. You’re already clean, innocent, aiming to please. Give yourself a break and Mossy will too. Cut loose. You’ve been wanted and found trying. That’s enough.”
As I left the stage I didn’t know whether to feel found out or complimented. Mossy had been having his own exertions far more complex than mine and of course having far more effect on an entire population. He was like the Russian landowners whose estates were measured not in hectares but in how many serfs they had, whom they described as souls. Counting extras, Mossy had twenty-two hundred souls in his domain that week in early 1934.
The child star Skip Teeter was in Mossy’s office with his parents, a pair of drunks everyone wanted to kick off the lot. They’d come out from Kentucky with Skip to escape bill collectors and had their son cadging for dimes on La Brea when he was spotted by the statesmanlike Hurd Dawn, then the new head of scenic design at Jubilee. Hurd either wanted to pick the boy up or thought he’d be perfect as Becky Thatcher’s brother in the first talkie version of Tom Sawyer that Jubilee was making. Skip soon became the adorable bucktoothed towheaded mischievous hero of a series of highly profitable B movi
es enjoyed by both parents and children. Skip and Company. Skip’s parents had been told by an executive at a rival studio that Jubilee was getting a bargain on Skip’s services for a mere three thousand dollars a week.
When Skip forgot a line that morning, Pa Teeter had hit him right there on the set. He hit his son hard enough to raise a lump on his forehead. “You smeared his makeup, you idiot!” Ma Teeter had yelled. The director had the parents thrown off the set while the script girl applied ice to Skip’s forehead. After three years, Skip was becoming somewhat ungainly, almost adolescent at twelve. He was bowlegged, his ears were growing outwards, and he had developed several moles on his cheeks that makeup turned into bumps rather than camouflaging. One of his shoulders slumped down awkwardly.
Mossy knew Pa Teeter was talking to another studio. “Three thousand dollars a week is a good deal of money for a twelve year old,” Mossy said to the Teeter family.
“It sure is, Mr. Zangwill,” Skip said, “but my old man is a selfish—”
“Shut your face, young fella,” said his father, “or I’ll shut it for you good.”
“Now, now,” said Mossy, “I understand you’ve hit the boy today. That’s not how we treat people at Jubilee.”
“You’re making millions off our son,” said Skip’s mother, “and we been told Skip could get five thousand a week at Fox or Warners, maybe more.”
“Hell, I could produce his pictures myself,” said Pa Teeter. Skip rolled his eyes.
“We have a contract with Skip signed by both of you,” Mossy said calmly. “It’s not in anyone’s best interests if Skip gets a reputation for walking out on agreements.”
“We didn’t say nothing about walking out,” Pa Teeter said, “but we oughta get what our boy is worth.”
“I don’t care about any of that, Mr. Zangwill,” Skip said, “but I’d sure like to get my puppy back I had to leave with my uncle in Kentucky. He’s grown up by now.”
“We’ll send for your pet right away,” said Mossy.
“I’m talkin’ do re mi,” said Pa Teeter, imitating a B movie he’d seen.
“I’m not deaf,” said Mossy. “Tell you what I’ll do. We’ll give Skip a bonus of a thousand dollars a week, but I want something in return. Two things.”
“That’ll be hunky doodle,” said Pa Teeter. “What kin we do ya for, Mr. Mossy?”
“First, I want the two of you to stay off Skip’s sets. Directors and producers have complained, and Skip is a precious asset Jubilee wants to protect.”
Skip looked triumphant and managed to hold his tongue.
The parents were sheepish, possibly hurt. Then Ma Teeter spoke up. “We ain’t gonna make trouble, sir, and if you don’t want us there we’ll stay away.”
“Good,” Mossy said, scowling at Pa Teeter until he nodded glumly. “Now the second point is Skip is getting on to adolescence fast. He’s almost at that awkward age. We want to correct his bowlegged walk, get his shoulders evened up, skim off those moles on his face, fix those floppy ears.”
Skip was stunned. He didn’t understand exactly what Mossy meant, but he knew pain when he saw it coming. “Mr. Zangwill,” he began, “I don’t have to be in pictures. I can go back to school, sir.”
“Hey,” said Pa Teeter, brightening, “you mean you’re gonna fit Skip out so he can be a star when he grows up, too?”
“That’s exactly what I mean, Pa.”
“Well, hunky doodle,” said both parents at once.
“That’s not for me,” Skip said. “I like being the way I am. No fixing up for me.”
“I understand, Skip,” said Mossy as understandingly as he could muster. “But you’re a very valuable property. I don’t mean just to the studio. You’re valuable to your parents and yourself. You’ll have money for college, for cars, you’ll be able to support a wife very well someday, and your parents in their old age.”
“Or right now,” Pa Teeter laughed. Ma Teeter laughed too.
Skip set his jaw. “No!” he said.
“You’ll do what the man said,” Ma Teeter told her son, “or your pa and I will know the reason why.”
“I’ll handle this, Ma,” Mossy said. “Skip, when you finish the picture you’re on at the end of the week, you’re going to get a vacation. Let Jubilee handle this. You won’t have to work at all while you’re healing. From the surgery. The result will be perfection.”
“Healing?” yelled Skip. “Surgery? I’ll run away, I swear.”
“Wouldn’t do any good, Skip,” said Mossy. “You’re too well known, you’d be recognized everywhere. Look, the operations won’t take more than a few weeks, and you’ll have three months off. Full pay.”
“No!” Skip thundered, but he was beginning to cry.
Mossy came around his desk. He gave Skip a fatherly pat on the shoulder and tousled his hair. “Hey champ,” he said, “I meant it when I said perfection.” Skip cringed from his boss’ touch. “Someday you’ll thank me for all this. I promise.”
The Teeter parents proudly led their son from the office, delighted at the thousand dollar a week raise. Skip was stumbling and weeping.
Skip Teeter never did get around to thanking Mossy. His career nosedived as an adolescent. The plastic surgeons and dermatologists left him looking more like a laboratory creation than a teenager. His smile, which had been so infectious, was destroyed into a leer. By the end of the decade he was as drunk as his parents, who by that time had spent all their son’s money anyway. He was a bitter young man, and he told people his life had been stolen from him. Right after Pearl Harbor Skip enlisted in the Navy and was killed—gladly, gratefully, I’ve always thought—at Guadalcanal. His obituary said Amos Zangwill had been his benefactor.
Mossy played us all as if we were instruments in his mighty orchestra. If an instrument was broken, it could be replaced. We were the Jubilee Philharmonic, conducted by Maestro Amos Zangwill, with the whole country for our audience plus wherever on the rest of the planet someone had a projector and a screen.
When the contrite Trent Amberlyn was pulled in late that afternoon, his look alternated between defeat and desperation. He was brought in by Curtt Weigerer, to whose brawny frame Trent seemed almost to be handcuffed. But he had a friend with him as well, a bit player named Boyard Boulton, a small pudgy man who had clearly never been in the office of a studio head before. His eyes flicked around the room like a lizard’s tongue, with his own little mixture of intimidation and contempt. Boy Boulton, as he was called, was known in a certain circle as Trent’s lady-in-waiting.
Mossy was frighteningly silent as Trent awaited his beheading. Curtt Weigerer knew he wasn’t supposed to speak either. Trent refused a chair and shifted his feet, a prisoner in the dock charged with conduct unbecoming a Jubilee star: picking up a fifteen-year-old to pay him for sex. “Mossy,” Trent offered when he could find words, “all I can say is I was sure the kid was at least nineteen or twenty. I’m so sorry.” He ran his fingers through his dirty unpresentable dyed blond hair. “I’m a wreck.”
“I swear, Mr. Zangwill,” Boy Boulton said, his eyes darting everywhere in the room but at Mossy, “some of these minors are unbelievably seductive little bastards if you know what I mean.”
“I can’t say I do, Boy,” said Mossy gently.
Curtt Weigerer snickered. Mossy gave a nodding cue. “Mr. Zangwill,” the henchman said, “wants only Jubilee employees present. This is Jubilee business now.”
“Excuse me,” Boy Boulton said, “I was only trying to help my friend.”
“We’ll help your friend,” Mossy said.
“I can’t tell you how ashamed I am,” Trent said when Boy Boulton had left.
“Your career could easily be over,” Mossy said.
“A blessing.”
“Self-pity won’t help.”
“It may make this bearable.”
“The scandal could be unbearable.”
“I know only too well,” Trent said.
“But that wouldn’t be any bette
r for Jubilee than it would be for you.” Mossy’s voice began to rise. “We can handle what happened,” he went on, “but you have to do what I tell you to do, which is to keep completely silent about this, to everyone including all your friends, which means you have to control that little shitheel who just minced out of here with his furtive fairy eyes. I don’t trust him.”
“He’ll do what I tell him to.”
“And you’ll do what I tell you to do, Trent,” said Mossy. “You need to work with someone smarter than you, and right now that’s me. Understand?”
“I understand.”
“You’re going to be married.”
“I’m what?”
“I’ll let you know when I decide who the lucky girl is.”
This was too much for the man about town who had been called by Photoplay, in a story I helped with, Hollywood’s most eligible bachelor. Trent was passing quickly from sniveling to defiant, as if something had actually changed in his position, which it assuredly had not. “God, in case you haven’t heard,” said Trent, “is dead, and you have not been chosen to succeed him.”
“Know anyone who can play the role better?” Mossy asked. “Besides, God is not dead, he’s on location. I’m filling in for him until he comes back, and you’re getting married. Remember, you’re an actor, so go ahead and act like the man you’re supposed to be, who your adoring fans believe you are.”
“I have to be who I have to be on the screen. In my private life I can be myself.”
“In your private life, yes, but being off camera doesn’t mean private, and when you’re off camera but in public you’re still who I say you are. Trent Amberlyn, heartthrob to five million teenage girls, twenty million bored housewives, twenty or thirty million wishful middle-aged and old ladies. I gave you your name, Mr. Bernard Gestikker, and I can take it away. Right now I’m telling you who Trent Amberlyn is.”
“I guess you can do that,” said Trent, abjectly folding his hand. But he was still a star, clearly wanting to remain one, if chastised, and he shook his head at his putative maker. Like everyone else at Jubilee, he could be both dazzled and mystified by the boss. “What drives you, Mossy?” he said. “What makes you make decisions like this?”