‘If you were eighteen, see, I’d give you that line about being nuts about you.’
‘But why any line at all?’
‘Oh, come off it!’ he advised her. ‘You wanted to paint me, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, when a dame wants to paint a guy--’ Pat reached down and undid his shoe strings, kicked his shoes onto the floor, put his stockinged feet on the couch. ‘--when a dame wants to see a guy about something or a guy wants to see a dame, there’s a payoff, see.’
The Princess sighed. ‘Well I seem to be trapped,’ she said. ‘But it makes it rather difficult when a dame just wants to paint a guy.’
‘When a dame wants to paint a guy--’ Pat half closed his eyes, nodded and flapped his hands expressively. As his thumbs went suddenly toward his suspenders, she spoke in a louder voice.
‘Officer!’
There was a sound behind Pat. He turned to see a young man in khaki with shining black gloves, standing in the door.
‘Officer, this man is an employee of Mr DeTinc’s. Mr DeTinc lent him to me for the afternoon.’
The policeman looked at the staring image of guilt upon the couch.
‘Get fresh?’ he inquired.
‘I don’t want to prefer charges--I called the desk to be on the safe side. He was to pose for me in the nude and now he refuses.’ She walked casually to her easel.’ Mr Hobby, why don’t you stop this mock-modesty--you’ll find a turkish towel in the bathroom.’
Pat reached stupidly for his shoes. Somehow it flashed into his mind that they were running the eighth race at Santa Anita--
‘Shake it up, you,’ said the cop. ‘You heard what the lady said.’
Pat stood up vaguely and fixed a long poignant look on the Princess.
‘You told me--’ he said hoarsely, ‘you wanted to paint--’
‘You told me I meant something else. Hurry please. And officer, there’s a drink in the pantry.’
. . . A few minutes later as Pat sat shivering in the centre of the room his memory went back to those peep-shows of his youth--though at the moment he could see little resemblance. He was grateful at least for the turkish towel, even now failing to realize that the Princess was not interested in his shattered frame but in his face.
It wore the exact expression that had wooed her in the commissary, the expression of Hollywood and Vine, the other self of Mr DeTinc--and she worked fast while there was still light enough to paint by.
TWO OLD-TIMERS
Esquire (March 1941)
Phil Macedon, once the Star of Stars, and Pat Hobby, script writer, had collided out on Sunset near the Beverly Hills Hotel. It was five in the morning and there was liquor in the air as they argued and Sergeant Gaspar took them around to the station house. Pat Hobby, a man of forty-nine, showed fight, apparently because Phil Macedon failed to acknowledge that they were old acquaintances.
He accidentally bumped Sergeant Gaspar who was so provoked that he put him in a little barred room while they waited for the Captain to arrive.
Chronologically Phil Macedon belonged between Eugene O’Brien and Robert Taylor. He was still a handsome man in his early fifties and he had saved enough from his great days for a hacienda in the San Fernando Valley; there he rested as full of honours, as rolicksome and with the same purposes in life as Man o’ War.
With Pat Hobby life had dealt otherwise. After twenty-one years in the industry, script and publicity, the accident found him driving a 1933 car which had lately become the property of the North Hollywood Finance and Loan Co. And once, back in 1928, he had reached a point of getting bids for a private swimming pool.
He glowered from his confinement, still resenting Macedon’s failure to acknowledge that they had ever met before.
‘I suppose you don’t remember Coleman,’ he said sarcastically. ‘Or Connie Talmadge or Bill Corker or Allan Dwan.’
Macedon lit a cigarette with the sort of timing in which the silent screen has never been surpassed, and offered one to Sergeant Gaspar.
‘Couldn’t I come in tomorrow?’ he asked. ‘I have a horse to exercise--’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Macedon,’ said the cop--sincerely for the actor was an old favourite of his. ‘The Captain is due here any minute. After that we won’t be holding you.’
‘It’s just a formality,’ said Pat, from his cell.
‘Yeah, it’s just a--’ Sergeant Gaspar glared at Pat. ‘It may not be any formality for you. Did you ever hear of the sobriety test?’
Macedon flicked his cigarette out the door and lit another.
‘Suppose I come back in a couple of hours,’ he suggested.
‘No,’ regretted Sergeant Gaspar. ‘And since I have to detain you, Mr Macedon, I want to take the opportunity to tell you what you meant to me once. It was that picture you made, The Final Push, it meant a lot to every man who was in the war.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Macedon, smiling.
‘I used to try to tell my wife about the war--how it was, with the shells and the machine guns--I was in there seven months with the 26th New England--but she never understood. She’d point her finger at me and say “Boom! you’re dead,” and so I’d laugh and stop trying to make her understand.’
‘Hey, can I get out of here?’ demanded Pat.
‘You shut up!’ said Gaspar fiercely. ‘You probably wasn’t in the war.’
‘I was in the Motion Picture Home Guard,’ said Pat. ‘I had bad eyes.’
‘Listen to him,’ said Gaspar disgustedly. ‘That’s what all them slackers say. Well, the war was something. And after my wife saw that picture of yours I never had to explain to her. She knew. She always spoke different about it after that--never just pointed her finger at me and said “Boom!” I’ll never forget the part where you was in that shell hole. That was so real it made my hands sweat.’
‘Thanks,’ said Macedon graciously. He lit another cigarette, ‘You see, I was in the war myself and I knew how it was. I knew how it felt.’
‘Yes sir,’ said Gaspar appreciatively. ‘Well; I’m glad of the opportunity to tell you what you did for me. You--you explained the war to my wife.’
‘What are you talking about?’ demanded Pat Hobby suddenly. ‘That war picture Bill Corker did in 1925?’
‘There he goes again,’ said Gaspar. ‘Sure--The Birth of a Nation. Now you pipe down till the Captain comes.’
‘Phil Macedon knew me then all right,’ said Pat resentfully, ‘I even watched him work on it one day.’
‘I just don’t happen to remember you, old man,’ said Macedon politely, ‘I can’t help that.’
‘You remember the day Bill Corker shot that shell hole sequence don’t you? Your first day on the picture?’
There was a moment’s silence.
‘When will the Captain be here?’ Macedon asked.
‘Any minute now,’ Mr Macedon.’
‘Well, I remember,’ said Pat, ‘--because I was there when he had that shell hole dug. He was out there on the back lot at nine o’clock in the morning with a gang of hunkies to dig the hole and four cameras. He called you up from a field telephone and told you to go to the costumer and get into a soldier suit. Now you remember?’
‘I don’t load my mind with details, old man.’
‘You called up that they didn’t have one to fit you and Corker told you to shut up and get into one anyhow. When you got out to the back lot you were sore as hell because your suit didn’t fit.’
Macedon smiled charmingly.
‘You have a most remarkable memory. Are you sure you have the right picture--and the right actor?’ he asked.
‘Am I!’ said Pat grimly. ‘I can see you right now. Only you didn’t have much time to complain about the uniform because that wasn’t Corker’s plan. He always thought you were the toughest ham in Hollywood to get anything natural out of--and he had a scheme. He was going to get the heart of the picture shot by noon--before you even knew you were acting. He turned you around and shoved you down into that shell hole o
n your fanny, and yelled “Camera”.’
‘That’s a lie,’ said Phil Macedon. ‘I got down.’
‘Then why did you start yelling?’ demanded Pat. ‘I can still hear you: “Hey, what’s the idea! Is this some -- -- gag? You get me out of here or I’ll walk out on you!”
‘--and all the time you were trying to claw your way up the side of that pit, so damn mad you couldn’t see. You’d almost get up and then you’d slide back and lie there with your face working--till finally you began to bawl and all this time Bill had four cameras on you. After about twenty minutes you gave up and just lay there, heaving. Bill took a hundred feet of that and then he had a couple of prop men pull you out.’
The police Captain had arrived in the squad car. He stood in the doorway against the first grey of dawn.
‘What you got here, Sergeant? A drunk?’
Sergeant Gaspar walked over to the cell, unlocked it and beckoned Pat to come out. Pat blinked a moment--then his eyes fell on Phil Macedon and he shook his finger at him.
‘So you see I do know you,’ he said. ‘Bill Corker cut that piece of film and titled it so you were supposed to be a doughboy whose pal had just been killed. You wanted to climb out and get at the Germans in revenge, but the shells bursting all around and the concussions kept knocking you back in.’
‘What’s it about?’ demanded the Captain.
‘I want to prove I know this guy,’ said Pat. ‘Bill said the best moment in the picture was when Phil was yelling “I’ve already broken my first finger nail!” Bill titled it “Ten Huns will go to hell to shine your shoes!”‘
‘You’ve got here “collision with alcohol”,’ said the Captain looking at the blotter. ‘Let’s take these guys down to the hospital and give them the test.’
‘Look here now,’ said the actor, with his flashing smile, ‘my name’s Phil Macedon.’
The Captain was a political appointee and very young. He remembered the name and the face but he was not especially impressed because Hollywood was full of has-beens.
They all got into the squad car at the door.
After the test Macedon was held at the station house until friends could arrange bail. Pat Hobby was discharged but his car would not run, so Sergeant Gaspar offered to drive him home.
‘Where do you live?’ he asked as they started off.
‘I don’t live anywhere tonight,’ said Pat. ‘That’s why I was driving around. When a friend of mine wakes up I’ll touch him for a couple of bucks and go to a hotel.’
‘Well now,’ said Sergeant Gaspar, ‘I got a couple of bucks that ain’t working.’
The great mansions of Beverly Hills slid by and Pat waved his hand at them in salute.
‘In the good old days,’ he said, ‘I used to be able to drop into some of those houses day or night. And Sunday mornings--’
‘Is that all true you said in the station,’ Gaspar asked, ‘--about how they put him in the hole?’
‘Sure, it is,’ said Pat. ‘That guy needn’t have been so upstage. He’s just an old-timer like me.’
MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD
Esquire (April 1941)
I
The swarthy man, with eyes that snapped back and forward on a rubber band from the rear of his head, answered to the alias of Dick Dale. The tall, spectacled man who was put together like a camel without a hump--and you missed the hump--answered to the name of E. Brunswick Hudson. The scene was a shoeshine stand, insignificant unit of the great studio. We perceive it through the red-rimmed eyes of Pat Hobby who sat in the chair beside Director Dale.
The stand was out of doors, opposite the commissary. The voice of E. Brunswick Hudson quivered with passion but it was pitched low so as not to reach passers-by.
‘I don’t know what a writer like me is doing out here anyhow,’ he said, with vibrations.
Pat Hobby, who was an old-timer, could have supplied the answer, but he had not the acquaintance of the other two.
‘It’s a funny business,’ said Dick Dale, and to the shoe-shine boy, ‘Use that saddle soap.’
‘Funny!’ thundered E., ‘It’s suspect! Here against my better judgement I write just what you tell me--and the office tells me to get out because we can’t seem to agree.’
‘That’s polite,’ explained Dick Dale. ‘What do you want me to do--knock you down?’
E. Brunswick Hudson removed his glasses.
‘Try it!’ he suggested. ‘I weigh a hundred and sixty-two and I haven’t got an ounce of flesh on me.’ He hesitated and redeemed himself from this extremity. ‘I mean fat on me.’
‘Oh, to hell with that!’ said Dick Dale contemptuously, ‘I can’t mix it up with you. I got to figure this picture. You go back East and write one of your books and forget it.’ Momentarily he looked at Pat Hobby, smiling as if he would understand, as if anyone would understand except E. Brunswick Hudson. ‘I can’t tell you all about pictures in three weeks.’
Hudson replaced his spectacles.
‘When I do write a book,’ he said, ‘I’ll make you the laughing stock of the nation.’
He withdrew, ineffectual, baffled, defeated. After a minute Pat spoke.
‘Those guys can never get the idea,’ he commented. ‘I’ve never seen one get the idea and I been in this business, publicity and script, for twenty years.’
‘You on the lot?’ Dale asked.
Pat hesitated.
‘Just finished a job,’ he said.
That was five months before.
‘What screen credits you got?’ Dale asked.
‘I got credits going all the way back to 1920.’
‘Come up to my office,’ Dick Dale said, ‘I got something I’d like to talk over--now that bastard is gone back to his New England farm. Why do they have to get a New England farm--with the whole West not settled?’
Pat gave his second-to-last dime to the bootblack and climbed down from the stand.
II
We are in the midst of technicalities.
‘The trouble is this composer Reginald de Koven didn’t have any colour,’ said Dick Dale. ‘He wasn’t deaf like Beethoven or a singing waiter or get put in jail or anything. All he did was write music and all we got for an angle is that song O Promise Me. We got to weave something around that--a dame promises him something and in the end he collects.’
‘I want time to think it over in my mind,’ said Pat. ‘If Jack Berners will put me on the picture--’
‘He’ll put you on,’ said Dick Dale. ‘From now on I’m picking my own writers. What do you get--fifteen hundred?’ He looked at Pat’s shoes, ‘Seven-fifty?’
Pat stared at him blankly for a moment; then out of thin air, produced his best piece of imaginative fiction in a decade.
‘I was mixed up with a producer’s wife,’ he said, ‘and they ganged up on me. I only get three-fifty now.’
In some ways it was the easiest job he had ever had. Director Dick Dale was a type that, fifty years ago, could be found in any American town. Generally he was the local photographer, usually he was the originator of small mechanical contrivances and a leader in bizarre local movements, almost always he contributed verse to the local press. All the most energetic embodiments of this ‘Sensation Type’ had migrated to Hollywood between 1910 and 1930, and there they had achieved a psychological fulfilment inconceivable in any other time or place. At last, and on a large scale, they were able to have their way. In the weeks that Pat Hobby and Mabel Hatman, Mr Dale’s script girl, sat beside him and worked on the script, not a movement, not a word went into it that was not Dick Dale’s coinage. Pat would venture a suggestion, something that was ‘Always good’.
‘Wait a minute! Wait a minute!’ Dick Dale was on his feet, his hands outspread. ‘I seem to see a dog.’ They would wait, tense and breathless, while he saw a dog.
‘Two dogs.’
A second dog took its place beside the first in their obedient visions.
‘We open on a dog on a leash--pull the camera back to
show another dog--now they’re snapping at each other. We pull back further--the leashes are attached to tables--the tables tip over. See it?’
Or else, out of a clear sky.
‘I seem to see De Koven as a plasterer’s apprentice.’
‘Yes.’ This hopefully.
‘He goes to Santa Anita and plasters the walls, singing at his work. Take that down, Mabel.’ He continued on . . .
In a month they had the requisite hundred and twenty pages. Reginald de Koven, it seemed, though not an alcoholic, was too fond of ‘The Little Brown Jug’. The father of the girl he loved had died of drink, and after the wedding when she found him drinking from the Little Brown Jug, nothing would do but that she should go away, for twenty years. He became famous and she sang his songs as Maid Marian but he never knew it was the same girl.
The script, marked ‘Temporary Complete. From Pat Hobby’ went up to the head office. The schedule called for Dale to begin shooting in a week.
Twenty-four hours later he sat with his staff in his office, in an atmosphere of blue gloom. Pat Hobby was the least depressed. Four weeks at three-fifty, even allowing for the two hundred that had slipped away at Santa Anita, was a far cry from the twenty cents he had owned on the shoeshine stand.
‘That’s pictures, Dick,’ he said consolingly. ‘You’re up--you’re down--you’re in, you’re out. Any old-timer knows.’
‘Yes,’ said Dick Dale absently. ‘Mabel, phone that E. Brunswick Hudson. He’s on his New England farm--maybe milking bees.’
In a few minutes she reported.
‘He flew into Hollywood this morning, Mr Dale. I’ve located him at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.’
Dick Dale pressed his ear to the phone. His voice was bland and friendly as he said:
‘Mr Hudson, there was one day here you had an idea I liked. You said you were going to write it up. It was about this De Koven stealing his music from a sheepherder up in Vermont. Remember?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, Berners wants to go into production right away, or else we can’t have the cast, so we’re on the spot, if you know what I mean. Do you happen to have that stuff?’
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 247