Berners smiled.
'Grand Motel,' he repeated. 'By God! I think you've got
something. Grand Motel.'
'I said Grand Hotel,' said Pat.
'No, you didn't. You said Grand Motel--and for my money it wins
the fifty.'
'I've got to go lie down,' announced Pat. 'I feel sick.'
'There's an empty office across the way. That's a funny idea Pat,
Grand Motel--or else Motel Clerk. How do you like that?'
As the fugitive quickened his step out the door Bee pressed the hat
into his hands.
'Good work, old timer,' she said.
Pat seized Mr Marcus' hat, and stood holding it there like a bowl
of soup.
'Feel--better--now,' he mumbled after a moment. 'Be back for the
money.'
And carrying his burden he shambled toward the lavatory.
FUN IN AN ARTIST'S STUDIO
Esquire (February 1941)
I
This was back in 1938 when few people except the Germans knew that
they had already won their war in Europe. People still cared about
art and tried to make it out of everything from old clothes to
orange peel and that was how the Princess Dignanni found Pat. She
wanted to make art out of him.
'No, not you, Mr DeTinc.' she said, 'I can't paint you. You are a
very standardized product, Mr DeTinc.'
Mr DeTinc, who was a power in pictures and had even been
photographed with Mr Duchman, the Secret Sin specialist, stepped
smoothly out of the way. He was not offended--in his whole life Mr
DeTinc had never been offended--but especially not now, for the
Princess did not want to paint Clark Gable or Spencer Rooney or
Vivien Leigh either.
She saw Pat in the commissary and found he was a writer, and asked
that he be invited to Mr DeTinc's party. The Princess was a pretty
woman born in Boston, Massachusetts and Pat was forty-nine with red-
rimmed eyes and a soft purr of whiskey on his breath.
'You write scenarios, Mr Hobby?'
'I help,' said Pat. 'Takes more than one person to prepare a
script.'
He was flattered by this attention and not a little suspicious. It
was only because his supervisor was a nervous wreck that he
happened to have a job at all. His supervisor had forgotten a week
ago that he had hired Pat, and when Pat was spotted in the
commissary and told he was wanted at Mr DeTinc's house, the writer
had passed a mauvais quart d'heure. It did not even look like the
kind of party that Pat had known in his prosperous days. There was
not so much as a drunk passed out in the downstairs toilet.
'I imagine scenario writing is very well-paid,' said the Princess.
Pat glanced around to see who was within hearing. Mr DeTinc had
withdrawn his huge bulk somewhat, but one of his apparently
independent eyes seemed fixed glittering on Pat.
'Very well paid,' said Pat--and he added in a lower voice, '--if
you can get it.'
The Princess seemed to understand and lowered her voice too.
'You mean writers have trouble getting work?'
He nodded.
'Too many of 'em get in these unions.' He raised his voice a
little for Mr DeTinc's benefit. 'They're all Reds, most of these
writers.'
The Princess nodded.
'Will you turn your face a little to the light?' she said politely.
'There, that's fine. You won't mind coming to my studio tomorrow,
will you? Just to pose for me an hour?'
He scrutinized her again.
'Naked?' he asked cautiously.
'Oh, no,' she averred. 'Just the head.'
Mr DeTinc moved nearer and nodded.
'You ought to go. Princess Dignanni is going to paint some of the
biggest stars here. Going to paint Jack Benny and Baby Sandy and
Hedy Lamarr--isn't that a fact, Princess?'
The artist didn't answer. She was a pretty good portrait painter
and she knew just how good she was and just how much of it was her
title. She was hesitating between her several manners--Picasso's
rose period with a flash of Boldini, or straight Reginald Marsh.
But she knew what she was going to call it. She was going to call
it Hollywood and Vine.
II
In spite of the reassurance that he would be clothed Pat approached
the rendezvous with uneasiness. In his young and impressionable
years he had looked through a peep-hole into a machine where two
dozen postcards slapped before his eyes in sequence. The story
unfolded was Fun in an Artist's Studio. Even now with the strip
tease a legalized municipal project, he was a little shocked at the
remembrance, and when he presented himself next day at the
Princess's bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel it would not have
surprised him if she had met him in a turkish towel. He was
disappointed. She wore a smock and her black hair was brushed
straight back like a boy's.
Pat had stopped off for a couple of drinks on the way, but his
first words: 'How'ya Duchess?' failed to set a jovial note for the
occasion.
'Well, Mr Hobby,' she said coolly, 'it's nice of you to spare me an
afternoon.'
'We don't work too hard in Hollywood,' he assured her. 'Everything
is "Ma�ana"--in Spanish that means tomorrow.'
She led him forthwith into a rear apartment where an easel stood on
a square of canvas by the window. There was a couch and they sat
down.
'I want to get used to you for a minute,' she said. 'Did you ever
pose before?'
'Do I look that way?' He winked, and when she smiled he felt
better and asked: 'You haven't got a drink around, have you?'
The Princess hesitated. She had wanted him to look as if he NEEDED
one. Compromising, she went to the ice box and fixed him a small
highball. She returned to find that he had taken off his coat and
tie and lay informally upon the couch.
'That IS better,' the Princess said. 'That shirt you're wearing.
I think they make them for Hollywood--like the special prints they
make for Ceylon and Guatemala. Now drink this and we'll get to
work.'
'Why don't you have a drink too and make it friendly?' Pat
suggested.
'I had one in the pantry,' she lied.
'Married woman?' he asked.
'I have been married. Now would you mind sitting on this stool?'
Reluctantly Pat got up, took down the highball, somewhat thwarted
by the thin taste, and moved to the stool. 'Now sit very still,'
she said.
He sat silent as she worked. It was three o'clock. They were
running the third race at Santa Anita and he had ten bucks on the
nose. That made sixty he owed Louie, the studio bookie, and Louie
stood determinedly beside him at the pay window every Thursday.
This dame had good legs under the easel--her red lips pleased him
and the way her bare arms moved as she worked. Once upon a time he
wouldn't have looked at a woman over twenty-five, unless it was a
secretary right in the office with him. But the kids you saw
around now were snooty--always talking about calling the police.
&
nbsp; 'Please sit still, Mr Hobby.'
'What say we knock off,' he suggested. 'This work makes you
thirsty.'
The Princess had been painting half an hour. Now she stopped and
stared at him a moment.
'Mr Hobby, you were loaned me by Mr DeTinc. Why don't you act just
as if you were working over at the studio? I'll be through in
another half-hour.'
'What do I get out of it?' he demanded, 'I'm no poser--I'm a
writer.'
'Your studio salary has not stopped,' she said, resuming her work.
'What does it matter if Mr DeTinc wants you to do this?'
'It's different. You're a dame. I've got my self-respect to think
of.'
'What do you expect me to do--flirt with you?'
'No--that's old stuff. But I thought we could sit around and have
a drink.'
'Perhaps later,' she said, and then, 'Is this harder work than the
studio? Am I so difficult to look at?'
'I don't mind looking at you but why couldn't we sit on the sofa?'
'You don't sit on the sofa at the studio.'
'Sure you do. Listen, if you tried all the doors in the Writers'
Building you'd find a lot of them locked and don't you forget it.'
She stepped back and squinted at him.
'Locked? To be undisturbed?' She put down her brush. 'I'll get
you a drink.'
When she returned she stopped for a moment in the doorway--Pat had
removed his shirt and stood rather sheepishly in the middle of the
floor holding it toward her.
'Here's that shirt,' he said. 'You can have it. I know where I
can get a lot more.'
For a moment longer she regarded him; then she took the shirt and
put it on the sofa.
'Sit down and let me finish,' she said. As he hesitated she added,
'Then we'll have a drink together.'
'When'll that be?'
'Fifteen minutes.'
She worked quickly--several times she was content with the lower
face--several times she deliberated and started over. Something
that she had seen in the commissary was missing.
'Been an artist a long time?' Pat asked.
'Many years.'
'Been around artists' studios a lot?'
'Quite a lot--I've had my own studios.'
'I guess a lot goes on around those studios. Did you ever--'
He hesitated.
'Ever what?' she queried.
'Did you ever paint a naked man?'
'Don't talk for one minute, please.' She paused with brush
uplifted, seemed to listen, then made a swift stroke and looked
doubtfully at the result.
'Do you know you're difficult to paint?' she said, laying down the
brush.
'I don't like this posing around,' he admitted. 'Let's call it a
day.' He stood up. 'Why don't you--why don't you slip into
something so you'll be comfortable?'
The Princess smiled. She would tell her friends this story--it
would sort of go with the picture, if the picture was any good,
which she now doubted.
'You ought to revise your methods,' she said. 'Do you have much
success with this approach?'
Pat lit a cigarette and sat down.
'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 C
orker 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.
The Pat Hobby Stories Page 11