‘Hello, good looking,’ he said to Woll. ‘Remember me--Pat Hobby?’
R. Parke Woll brought him with difficulty into focus, turning his head first on one side then on the other, letting it sink, snap up and then lash forward like a cobra taking a candid snapshot. Evidently it recorded for he said:
‘Pat Hobby! Sit down and wha’ll you have. Genlemen, this is Pat Hobby--best left-handed writer in Hollywood. Pat h’are you?’
Pat sat down, amid suspicious looks from a dozen predatory eyes. Was Pat an old friend sent to get the playwright home?
Pat saw this and waited until a half-hour later when he found himself alone with Woll in the washroom.
‘Listen Parke, Banizon is having you followed,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why he’s doing it. Louie at the studio tipped me off.’
‘You don’t know why?’ cried Parke. ‘Well, I know why. I got something he wants--that’s why!’
‘You owe him money?’
‘Owe him money. Why that--he owes me money! He owes me for three long, hard conferences--I outlined a whole damn picture for him.’ His vague finger tapped his forehead in several places. ‘What he wants is in here.’
An hour passed at the turbulent orgiastic table. Pat waited--and then inevitably in the slow, limited cycle of the lush, Woll’s mind returned to the subject.
‘The funny thing is I told him who put the shell in the trunk and why. And then the Master Mind forgot.’
Pat had an inspiration.
‘But his secretary remembered.’
‘She did?’ Woll was flabbergasted. ‘Secretary--don’t remember secretary.’
‘She came in,’ ventured Pat uneasily.
‘Well then by God he’s got to pay me or I’ll sue him.’
‘Banizon says he’s got a better idea.’
‘The hell he has. My idea was a pip. Listen--’
He spoke for two minutes.
‘You like it?’ he demanded. He looked at Pat for applause--then he must have seen something in Pat’s eye that he was not intended to see. ‘Why you little skunk,’ he cried. ‘You’ve talked to Banizon--he sent you here.’
Pat rose and tore like a rabbit for the door. He would have been out into the street before Woll could overtake him had it not been for the intervention of Mr Smith, the doorman.
‘Where you going?’ he demanded, catching Pat by his lapels.
‘Hold him!’ cried Woll, coming up. He aimed a blow at Pat which missed and landed full in Mr Smith’s mouth.
It has been mentioned that Mr Smith was an embittered as well as a powerful man. He dropped Pat, picked up R. Parke Woll by crotch and shoulder, held him high and then in one gigantic pound brought his body down against the floor. Three minutes later Woll was dead.
III
Except in great scandals like the Arbuckle case the industry protects its own--and the industry included Pat, however intermittently. He was let out of prison next morning without bail, wanted only as a material witness. If anything, the publicity was advantageous--for the first time in a year his name appeared in the trade journals. Moreover he was now the only living man who knew how the shell got into Claudette Colbert’s (or Betty Field’s) trunk.
‘When can you come up and see me?’ said Mr Banizon.
‘After the inquest tomorrow,’ said Pat enjoying himself. ‘I feel kind of shaken--it gave me an earache.’
That too indicated power. Only those who were ‘in’ could speak of their health and be listened to.
‘Woll really did tell you?’ questioned Banizon.
‘He told me,’ said Pat. ‘And it’s worth more than fifty smackers. I’m going to get me a new agent and bring him to your office.’
‘I tell you a better plan.’ said Banizon hastily, ‘I’ll get you on the payroll. Four weeks at your regular price.’
‘What’s my price?’ demanded Pat gloomily. ‘I’ve drawn everything from four thousand to zero.’ And he added ambiguously, ‘As Shakespeare says, “Every man has his price.”‘
The attendant rodents of R. Parke Woll had vanished with their small plunder into convenient rat holes, leaving as the defendant Mr Smith, and, as witnesses, Pat and two frightened cigarette girls. Mr Smith’s defence was that he had been attacked. At the inquest one cigarette girl agreed with him--one condemned him for unnecessary roughness. Pat Hobby’s turn was next, but before his name was called he started as a voice spoke to him from behind.
‘You talk against my husband and I’ll twist your tongue out by the roots.’
A huge dinosaur of a woman, fully six feet tall and broad in proportion, was leaning forward against his chair.
‘Pat Hobby, step forward please . . . now Mr Hobby tell us exactly what happened.’
The eyes of Mr Smith were fixed balefully on his and he felt the eyes of the bouncer’s mate reaching in for his tongue through the back of his head. He was full of natural hesitation.
‘I don’t know exactly,’ he said, and then with quick inspiration, ‘All I know is everything went white!’
‘What?’
‘That’s the way it was. I saw white. Just like some guys see red or black I saw white.’
There was some consultation among the authorities.
‘Well, what happened from when you came into the restaurant--up to the time you saw white?’
‘Well--’ said Pat fighting for time. ‘It was all kind of that way. I came and sat down and then it began to go black.’
‘You mean white.’
‘Black and white.’
There was a general titter.
‘Witness dismissed. Defendant remanded for trial.’
What was a little joking to endure when the stakes were so high--all that night a mountainous Amazon pursued him through his dreams and he needed a strong drink before appearing at Mr Banizon’s office next morning. He was accompanied by one of the few Hollywood agents who had not yet taken him on and shaken him off.
‘A flat sum of five hundred,’ offered Banizon. ‘Or four weeks at two-fifty to work on another picture.’
‘How bad do you want this?’ asked the agent. ‘My client seems to think it’s worth three thousand.’
‘Of my own money?’ cried Banizon. ‘And it isn’t even his idea. Now that Woll is dead it’s in the Public Remains.’
‘Not quite,’ said the agent. ‘I think like you do that ideas are sort of in the air. They belong to whoever’s got them at the time--like balloons.’
‘Well, how much?’ asked Mr Banizon fearfully. ‘How do I know he’s got the idea?’
The agent turned to Pat.
‘Shall we let him find out--for a thousand dollars?’
After a moment Pat nodded. Something was bothering him.
‘All right,’ said Banizon. ‘This strain is driving me nuts. One thousand.’
There was silence.
‘Spill it Pat,’ said the agent.
Still no word from Pat. They waited. When Pat spoke at last his voice seemed to come from afar.
‘Everything’s white,’ he gasped.
‘What?’
‘I can’t help it--everything has gone white. I can see it--white. I remember going into the joint but after that it all goes white.’
For a moment they thought he was holding out. Then the agent realized that Pat actually had drawn a psychological blank. The secret of R. Parke Woll was safe forever. Too late Pat realized that a thousand dollars was slipping away and tried desperately to recover.
‘I remember, I remember! It was put in by some Nazi dictator.’
‘Maybe the girl put it in the trunk herself,’ said Banizon ironically. ‘For her bracelet.’
For many years Mr Banizon would be somewhat gnawed by this insoluble problem. And as he glowered at Pat he wished that writers could be dispensed with altogether. If only ideas could be plucked from the inexpensive air!
PAT HOBBY, PUTATIVE FATHER
Esquire (July 1940)
I
Most writers look lik
e writers whether they want to or not. It is hard to say why--for they model their exteriors whimsically on Wall Street brokers, cattle kings or English explorers--but they all turn out looking like writers, as definitely typed as ‘The Public’ or ‘The Profiteers’ in the cartoons.
Pat Hobby was the exception. He did not look like a writer. And only in one corner of the Republic could he have been identified as a member of the entertainment world. Even there the first guess would have been that he was an extra down on his luck, or a bit player who specialized in the sort of father who should never come home. But a writer he was: he had collaborated in over two dozen moving picture scripts, most of them, it must be admitted, prior to 1929.
A writer? He had a desk in the Writers’ Building at the studio; he had pencils, paper, a secretary, paper clips, a pad for office memoranda. And he sat in an overstuffed chair, his eyes not so very bloodshot taking in the morning’s Reporter.
‘I got to get to work,’ he told Miss Raudenbush at eleven. And again at twelve:
‘I got to get to work.’
At quarter to one, he began to feel hungry--up to this point every move, or rather every moment, was in the writer’s tradition. Even to the faint irritation that no one had annoyed him, no one had bothered him, no one had interfered with the long empty dream which constituted his average day.
He was about to accuse his secretary of staring at him when the welcome interruption came. A studio guide tapped at his door and brought him a note from his boss, Jack Berners:
Dear Pat:
Please take some time off and show these people around the lot.
Jack
‘My God!’ Pat exclaimed. ‘How can I be expected to get anything done and show people around the lot at the same time. Who are they?’ he demanded of the guide.
‘I don’t know. One of them seems to be kind of coloured. He looks like the extras they had at Paramount for Bengal Lancer. He can’t speak English. The other--’
Pat was putting on his coat to see for himself.
‘Will you be wanting me this afternoon?’ asked Miss Raudenbush.
He looked at her with infinite reproach and went out in front of the Writers’ Building.
The visitors were there. The sultry person was tall and of a fine carriage, dressed in excellent English clothes except for a turban. The other was a youth of fifteen, quite light of hue. He also wore a turban with beautifully cut jodhpurs and riding coat.
They bowed formally.
‘Hear you want to go on some sets,’ said Pat, ‘You friends of Jack Berners?’
‘Acquaintances,’ said the youth. ‘May I present you to my uncle: Sir Singrim Dak Raj.’
Probably, thought Pat, the company was cooking up a Bengal Lancers, and this man would play the heavy who owned the KhyberPass. Maybe they’d put Pat on it--at three-fifty a week. Why not? He knew how to write that stuff:
Beautiful Long Shot. The Gorge. Show Tribesman firing from behind rocks.
Medium Shot. Tribesman hit by bullet making nose dive over high rock. (use stunt man)
Medium Long Shot. The Valley. British troops wheeling out cannon.
‘You going to be long in Hollywood?’ he asked shrewdly.
‘My uncle doesn’t speak English,’ said the youth in a measured voice. ‘We are here only a few days. You see--I am your putative son.’
II
‘--And I would very much like to see Bonita Granville,’ continued the youth. ‘I find she has been borrowed by your studio.’
They had been walking toward the production office and it took Pat a minute to grasp what the young man had said.
‘You’re my what?’ he asked.
‘Your putative son,’ said the young man, in a sort of sing-song. ‘Legally I am the son and heir of the Rajah Dak Raj Indore. But I was born John Brown Hobby.’
‘Yes?’ said Pat. ‘Go on! What’s this?’
‘My mother was Delia Brown. You married her in 1926. And she divorced you in 1927 when I was a few months old. Later she took me to India, where she married my present legal father.’
‘Oh,’ said Pat. They had reached the production office. ‘You want to see Bonita Granville.’
‘Yes,’ said John Hobby Indore. ‘If it is convenient.’
Pat looked at the shooting schedule on the wall.
‘It may be,’ he said heavily. ‘We can go and see.’
As they started toward Stage 4, he exploded.
‘What do you mean, “my potato son”? I’m glad to see you and all that, but say, are you really the kid Delia had in 1926?’
‘Putatively,’ John Indore said. ‘At that time you and she were legally married.’
He turned to his uncle and spoke rapidly in Hindustani, whereupon the latter bent forward, looked with cold examination upon Pat and threw up his shoulders without comment. The whole business was making Pat vaguely uncomfortable.
When he pointed out the commissary, John wanted to stop there ‘to buy his uncle a hot dog’. It seemed that Sir Singrim had conceived a passion for them at the World’s Fair in New York, whence they had just come. They were taking ship for Madras tomorrow.
‘--whether or not,’ said John, sombrely. ‘I get to see Bonita Granville. I do not care if I meet her. I am too young for her. She is already an old woman by our standards. But I’d like to see her.’
It was one of those bad days for showing people around. Only one of the directors shooting today was an old timer, on whom Pat could count for a welcome--and at the door of that stage he received word that the star kept blowing up in his lines and had demanded that the set be cleared.
In desperation he took his charges out to the back lot and walked them past the false fronts of ships and cities and village streets, and medieval gates--a sight in which the boy showed a certain interest but which Sir Singrim found disappointing. Each time that Pat led them around behind to demonstrate that it was all phony Sir Singrim’s expression would change to disappointment and faint contempt.
‘What’s he say?’ Pat asked his offspring, after Sir Singrim had walked eagerly into a Fifth Avenue jewellery store, to find nothing but carpenter’s rubble inside.
‘He is the third richest man in India,’ said John. ‘He is disgusted. He says he will never enjoy an American picture again. He says he will buy one of our picture companies in India and make every set as solid as the Taj Mahal. He thinks perhaps the actresses just have a false front too, and that’s why you won’t let us see them.’
The first sentence had rung a sort of carillon in Pat’s head. If there was anything he liked it was a good piece of money--not this miserable, uncertain two-fifty a week which purchased his freedom.
‘I’ll tell you,’ he said with sudden decision. ‘We’ll try Stage 4, and peek at Bonita Granville.’
Stage 4 was double locked and barred, for the day--the director hated visitors, and it was a process stage besides. ‘Process’ was a generic name for trick photography in which every studio competed with other studios, and lived in terror of spies. More specifically it meant that a projecting machine threw a moving background upon a transparent screen. On the other side of the screen, a scene was played and recorded against this moving background. The projector on one side of the screen and the camera on the other were so synchronized that the result could show a star standing on his head before an indifferent crowd on 42nd Street--a real crowd and a real star--and the poor eye could only conclude that it was being deluded and never quite guess how.
Pat tried to explain this to John, but John was peering for Bonita Granville from behind the great mass of coiled ropes and pails where they hid. They had not got there by the front entrance, but by a little side door for technicians that Pat knew.
Wearied by the long jaunt over the back lot, Pat took a pint flask from his hip and offered it to Sir Singrim who declined. He did not offer it to John.
‘Stunt your growth,’ he said solemnly, taking a long pull.
‘I do not want any,’ said
John with dignity.
He was suddenly alert. He had spotted an idol more glamorous than Siva not twenty feet away--her back, her profile, her voice. Then she moved off.
Watching his face, Pat was rather touched.
‘We can go nearer,’ he said. ‘We might get to that ballroom set. They’re not using it--they got covers on the furniture.’
On tip toe they started, Pat in the lead, then Sir Singrim, then John. As they moved softly forward Pat heard the word ‘Lights’ and stopped in his tracks. Then, as a blinding white glow struck at their eyes and the voice shouted ‘Quiet! We’re rolling!’ Pat began to run, followed quickly through the white silence by the others.
The silence did not endure.
‘Cut!’ screamed a voice, ‘What the living, blazing hell!’
From the director’s angle something had happened on the screen which, for the moment, was inexplicable. Three gigantic silhouettes, two with huge Indian turbans, had danced across what was intended to be a New England harbour--they had blundered into the line of the process shot. Prince John Indore had not only seen Bonita Granville--he had acted in the same picture. His silhouetted foot seemed to pass miraculously through her blonde young head.
III
They sat for some time in the guard-room before word could be gotten to Jack Berners, who was off the lot. So there was leisure for talk. This consisted of a longish harangue from Sir Singrim to John, which the latter--modifying its tone if not its words--translated to Pat.
‘My uncle says his brother wanted to do something for you. He thought perhaps if you were a great writer he might invite you to come to his kingdom and write his life.’
‘I never claimed to be--’
‘My uncle says you are an ignominious writer--in your own land you permitted him to be touched by those dogs of the policemen.’
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 241