I Lost My Girlish Laughter

by Jane Allen

  So my memory serves me right. This is Tom Dillon’s friend.

  “He’s awfully handsome, isn’t he?” sighs Myrtle. “Personally, I couldn’t be interested in a man unless he was handsome, though honestly some of the g-nomies these picture actresses make up to would put you away! Well, anyhow, Tom, you see got one of Tarn’s invitations the other evening to visit with her in her tent. Well, we all knew what that meant because by this time even the extras are on to Tarn. So Tom got a lot of kidding from the boys and is he sore? Anyhow, everyone knew we were that way about each other so Tarn had a lot of nerve, don’t you think?

  “Tom gets embarrassed about it all so he tells her off in plain language. That starts her off and she accuses Tom of discriminating against her and spoiling her scenes and demands that he get fired! Can you beat it? Everyone in the business knows Tom is a great guy and one of the finest cameramen and he would never let anything personal come between him and his camera….

  “Well, anyway, she gets Mr. Rethberg—he’s the assistant director you know, and a foreigner and they talk the same lingo. He swallows everything whole and she tells him that she wants him to direct the picture and if he will do what she says, she will get Mr. Faye off the picture and she will make a big director out of Mr. Rethberg.

  “So poor Mr. Rethberg believes her and Mr. Faye has trouble with him on the set and if Mr. Rethberg thinks Tarn will back him up he’s crazy! Because she backs right down and lets him take the rap, so then Mr. Rethberg gets sore and he spills the beans and Mr. Faye gets mad.

  “Honestly, that man is an angel to put up with what he has…and yesterday she just got too much for even him when she started on Mr. Anders and said, ‘The man is a clod—he has no sparkle!’ ”

  Myrtle gets this off in such a wicked caricature of Sarya that I cannot help laughing.

  Myrtle laughs too.

  “I’m pretty good,” she says candidly. “I’m going to be a star someday when dames like Sarya are back in Europe digging for potatoes, only I think maybe there’s something wrong with my name. It doesn’t work out right with numerology. Not that I am superstitious but look what happened to Carole Lombard when she stuck that extra ‘e’ on her name! Only I don’t see how an ‘e’ would help Myrtle, do you?”

  She might change the surname, I suggest helpfully, and then cannot resist asking what Bruce thought about it all.

  “Oh him. He’s all right. He never did pay her much attention and that probably made her mad, too. Maybe he’s a pansy though,” she adds thoughtfully, “because he never pays any attention to me either.”

  I do not protest Mr. Anders’s normality. I merely permit myself a small elation that he hasn’t turned out to be one of the wolves. I am thinking over Myrtle’s revelations and trying to evolve a tactful way I can get over to Mr. Brand what the root of the trouble is. He’s all burned up over Monk Faye when it is Sarya to blame. Regretfully I come to the conclusion that I am helpless as I cannot go and brutalize another girl’s reputation even if she does deserve it.

  I am so preoccupied with my thoughts that I am no longer watching my progress over the sand and consequently stumble and fall over someone. My victim proves to be Bruce Anders, which throws me into some confusion. He pulls me to my feet and steadies me with his hands, whereat I become conscious of the fact that the sight of him has brought on a peculiarly nervous panic. I forget all about Myrtle and merely grin foolishly at Bruce, thinking the while that I must control myself or I will betray my feelings.

  “Isn’t that funny?” shrills Myrtle. “We were just talking about you.”

  Her voice saves me.

  “I hope it was something nice…” he says, looking into my eyes. Myrtle goes off into a high gale of laughter.

  “It all depends,” she finally manages, “on what you call nice.”

  We can’t just go on and on this way so I briskly say that I must be getting back to Mr. Brand and advise Myrtle to keep in sight in the event that Mr. Brand wishes to call a meeting of the company.

  Bruce offers to walk me back to the hotel, his very tone putting Myrtle off if she thought to join us.

  “Everything is going to be all right now that you’re here,” Bruce smiles at me and he obviously isn’t including Mr. Brand and the others in that remark.

  To cover my silly embarrassment I hurriedly explain what caused our visit.

  “It has been pretty brutal,” admits Bruce, “but I imagine Mr. Brand will straighten it out. Anyway, it’s no ill wind that blew you here. I’m so darned glad to see you. Could you, do you suppose, perhaps dine and dance with me tonight?”

  “I’d adore to,” I say with a rush which is perhaps tactically wrong, for I have read somewhere that a girl shouldn’t be too eager where her emotions are involved. So just to prove that I don’t give a hang about tactics, I repeat recklessly that I would adore to in the event that Mr. Brand doesn’t option me for work.

  We arrive at the hotel to find Jim, Skinner, Tussler, and Tyson gathered together gloomily on the veranda. Jim throws me a look when he sees me with Bruce and I know it appears as though I chased out on the sands just to find him. I blush furiously and am wild with Jim for discomforting me so.

  “Where is S. B.?” I ask.

  “In a terrific pet,” says Jim. “Sarya got in some good work and he is convinced that Monk is deliberately ruining the picture.”

  “That’s not true,” says Bruce indignantly. “Mr. Faye has done everything a man could—under the circumstances.”

  “Yeah,” says Skinner. “What are the circumstances? Though I’ll bet I can guess….”

  Bruce doesn’t say anything. It is obvious to me why he can’t, so to cover him I quickly ask where the boss is now.

  “Showing off his manly chest on the beach,” says Skinner sourly. “ ‘Boys,’ he said to us, ‘you wait here while I take a little swim. I would like to be alone for a while so I can think.’ ”

  “What about Mr. Faye?” I ask. “Has he come ashore yet?”

  “We haven’t heard,” says Jim.

  I go to my room to change my clothes and phone the Isthmus. It takes some minutes to get my call through and when I am answered, I learn that Mr. Faye is working on the set. Yes, he knows Mr. Brand has arrived, says my informant, but he says to tell Mr. Brand he can’t see him.

  This strikes a suspicious note. Directors, no matter how important, don’t say things like that to Mr. Brand. I decide, however, to find Mr. Brand and at least relieve his mind about Mr. Faye.

  I find our boss on the beach doing a good job of quiet thinking in the company of Myrtle, who is jabbering furiously at him.

  “I think you are wonderful,” she is saying as I come up, “and so young, too….”

  S. B. is beaming fatuously.

  “From cameraman to producer in one reel,” I gag feebly to myself and then unburden to the boss the information that Mr. Faye is already working. He will be right along, says the boss, waving me off and I know I am being dismissed.

  I join the others at the hotel and we lounge around the veranda for an hour or so while the boss has a really good thinking session with Myrtle. When he finally appears he is tremendously pleased with himself and graciously suggests we all have lunch.

  “Let Monk wait,” he says. “Let him get good and nervous.”

  I have reason to doubt this psychology but keep mum. Why spoil the prospects of a good meal which is something I rarely get the chance to enjoy?

  Myrtle and Bruce join us at lunch and I can see she is following up her advantage by wearing a daring little number in cherry red with a tiny bow of red ribbon in her hair.

  I, for one, concentrate on the menu and ignore the table d’hôte luncheon for the à la carte menu, taking an evil delight in closing my eye to the dishes and picking at random anything that costs
the most.

  I am utterly shameless in my greed even when the waiter sets before me mushrooms under glass; some breast of pheasant and elegant canapés of imported caviar. This I plan to top off with hothouse strawberries. I am all ripe for the feast when I become aware of Bruce’s eyes boring into me and again I am victimized by a peculiar nervousness which affects my palate and destroys my appetite. Why is it that all the big moments of my life seem inextricably bound up with the condition of my stomach?

  In the midst of lunch, Sarya, followed by her maid and secretary, now essays to make an entrance. And what an entrance! She stops the dining room cold! She wafts toward us, a tender melancholy in her eyes, and extends a hand to Sidney. He goes all over caballero—rises and presses the dainty paw to his lips! I see Myrtle’s eyes narrow to a slit as she takes this big. Grudgingly she permits herself to be moved over a chair so that Sarya can have the place of honor beside Sidney.

  After lunch we all pile into a launch for the trek to the Isthmus. Sarya has changed into a blue and white yachting suit and crouches beside Sidney in the boat while Myrtle has to content herself crowded fanwise between Jim, Bruce and me at the other end. I am beginning to think that there will be some high comedy developments between the two girls and recklessly throw my chips on Myrtle.

  Around the bay we tear at breakneck speed and pull up on the Isthmus shore. On to land we scamper to be greeted by an unholy racket. Baboons jabber a belligerent chorus at us from the palm trees; tropical birds twitter madly; tom-toms beat a sinister monotone. For a moment I am completely taken in by it all. We might be thousands of miles away from civilization. Super has certainly outdone itself.

  Through the thick jungle (mostly props) we trot like a parcel of tourists and come through to a native compound teeming with glistening, dark-skinned aborigines, complete with feathered head-dresses and spears. The tom-toms beat louder.

  We join a circle of natives surrounding the center of the clearing where a group of bucks and girls are swinging a sinuous rhythm, jerking their lithe bodies about, heads thrown back, eyes rolling. The tom-tom players, apparently somnolent, are sitting motionless on their haunches, their hands alone alive, flaying the drums. The effect is oddly disturbing and we whites unconsciously press close together.

  Skinner, I think, starts to say something. Sidney shushes him.

  Wilder and wilder beat the drums and the glistening blacks writhe tortuously.

  Then over the beat of the drums comes a hoarse, frenzied voice through a megaphone.

  “Come on there—give it to me! Forget who you are—you’re savages now! Do you hear me? Savages!”

  Then only do we see Mr. Faye as he heaves into sight crouching in front of a camera on a platform pushed by the grips.

  “Monk! Monk!” yells S. B., not hesitating to speak for obviously Mr. Faye would be screaming directions only if we were shooting a silent sequence.

  Monk with a blood-curdling roar leaps to his feet and sways unsteadily. Only then do we see that he is glaringly naked but for a pair of trunks. His red hair stands ludicrously upright; his face almost matching it in color.

  “Cut!” he cries to the company. “Get off my set!” he bellows at us in drunken rage. “What the hell do you mean by breaking up my scene!”

  “It is Mr. Brand, Monk,” cries Sarya.

  The sound of her voice only seems to rouse him to a greater pitch of fury.

  “Throw that woman to the crocodiles,” he roars.

  Myrtle giggles. “Poor crocodiles!” she murmurs.

  Sarya is wild.

  “See!” she turns fiercely to Brand. “This is what I have been suffering! He is drunk, he is crazy!”

  “He’s crazy like a fox,” says Myrtle. “He’s shooting the swellest scene in the picture.”

  “She’s right,” says Mr. Brand. “Let him finish the scene. I’ll deal with him later.”

  Round one for Myrtle!

  We push back.

  “Roll ’em!” roars Monk to the cameras. “And you drums over there, give ’em hell!”

  Madder and faster beat the drums. The dancers jerk themselves into a frenzied passionate violence until they merge into one squirming mass of twisting bodies. Then with dramatic, thundering suddenness, they crumple exhaustedly. The surrounding blacks yell and stamp their applause.

  “Cut!” cries Monk, breaking the spell.

  “The guy ought to stay drunk all the time if he can deliver like this!” says Skinner limply.

  “Not on my pictures,” snarls the boss.

  Mr. Faye struggles over toward us swaying drunkenly from side to side. He is certainly a fearsome sight.

  He stops short of Sidney and laughs derisively.

  “It’s all yours, Sidney—my gift to you. The greatest scene I’ve ever filmed—my swan song!”

  “You’re drunk,” raps the boss.

  “You bet I’m drunk,” Monk breaks in. “And I never felt better in my life and I’m going to stay drunk always and never see another camera—or—a camera….” His voice breaks off incoherently, his eyes are blank.

  “You’re fired!” cries the boss but Mr. Faye doesn’t hear him. He has passed out cold!

  * * *

  —

  Two days later and we are still at Catalina. We have spent the first twenty-four hours very fearful about Mr. Faye who wouldn’t respond to treatment. But now he is out of danger and is even taking nourishment.

  Tonight we have just witnessed the jungle dance scene on the screen and it is terrific!

  “Poor Monk,” says Mr. Brand when we troop out of the hotel projection room. “It’s his genius that gets in his way. He’s so emotional but he always delivers.”

  “He is just wonderful,” coos Sarya.

  A strange change has taken place in Sarya these past two days. She is all sweetness and light and is doing her best to conciliate everybody, putting over the idea neatly to S. B. that if she had only realized how temperamental Mr. Faye’s genius made him she would not have hindered him in any way. Now she is willing to deliver herself over completely to him. She will be just clay in his hands!

  “Yeah! She’s a smart dame,” says Myrtle to me. We are in her room dressing for the dance at the Casino. Myrtle has kindly offered to loan me a dress.

  “What has her going is not Mr. Faye’s genius but the fact that Mr. Brand has been paying some attention to me. She even told him he ought to give me some more lines because I was such a clever little soubrette! Nuts! What she realizes is that Sidney isn’t always going to be eating out of her hand because Sidney is a wolf and there are other dames in the world, so she thinks she had better hurry up and get herself a good picture before she speaks out of turn.”

  “But Myrtle,” I ask with a definite want of delicacy, “won’t Tom get annoyed about you and Mr. Brand?”

  Myrtle giggles.

  “Tom and me have an understanding, a serious understanding. We’re going to be married someday. But in the meantime I want to get some place and Tom knows I’m smart enough to know where to stop. I’m not giving to Brand or anyone else. I don’t play that way and besides I enjoy making it really tough for myself.”

  She grins winningly at me. I am thinking here is a girl after my own heart.

  “I’m rooting for you,” I say.

  Mr. Brand is throwing a party tonight because he has finally, after Sarya apologized prettily, persuaded Monk to carry on with the picture. So all is lightness and gaiety once more and S. B. can throw himself whole-heartedly into the business of proving to Myrtle what a big guy he really is. Myrtle just twitters with appreciation but catching my eye, winks rapidly.

  She wheedles S. B. out onto the floor while I dance with Bruce. Have I told you that he is a heavenly dancer? Well he is, awfully smooth and graceful. We dance every danc
e together for thank goodness there is no one there to cut in as Jim and some of the boys are having a poker session.

  At the supper table, Myrtle makes frantic gestures to me to take a look at Sarya, who, swathed in white chiffon, is simply oozing toward little Mr. Tussler. His eyes, hypnotized, are fixed upon her in a fascinated stare.

  Later when Bruce and I are strolling in the moonlight along the beach, I see the flutter of Sarya’s chiffons ahead and Mr. Tussler stumbling close beside her. So, even Mr. Tussler, I think, has succumbed to Hollywood’s favorite sport.

  But I forget everything and everybody when Bruce stops suddenly and pulls me around to face him.

  “Did I ever tell you,” he inquires softly, “that you’re very kissable?”

  I do not answer. I just wait. His head is very close when I hear a shrill high voice.

  “Well,” says Myrtle, “I guess he isn’t a pansy, after all.”

  Love,

  Maggie

  11

  Sneak Preview

  March 3

  Dear Liz:

  Your sage comments on what you brutally refer to as my glandular disturbances are the fatuous theorizings of a gal whose horizons have been strictly limited to newspapermen and city rooms. Why not try an insurance salesman? I hate to shatter your smug conclusions but Jim Palmer runs true to type and is already back in circulation making up for lost time. Your taunts about how I used to yearn for just such an ideal in New York leave me cold. What you overlook is the discrepancy between an exciting myth and the flesh and blood actuality. Men like Jim are irresistible between the covers of a book but in everyday life too capricious and variable for comfort.

  You say my emotional hiatus over Bruce is a misdirected maternal complex complicated by my unnatural life and a spring urge. To a girl in my state of bliss that is very cold potato. In any event we are both being precipitate as Bruce has neither collapsed to his knees with an avowal nor has he yet asked for my hand. In fact he has been singularly controlled though most articulate with flowers and invitations. However, contrasting the haphazard and reckless fashion in which these Hollywood people plunge into intimacy, it is both restful and reassuring and to my mind pleasantly indicative of a more profound feeling.