Girl of My Dreams (20 page)

“It
never
happens again!” said Mossy. “You can all be replaced, replaceable parts if I say the word. “This
never. Happens. Again
!”

“Never,” said the production chief, blinking, reduced almost to tears.

“Never,” said Dunster Clapp.

“But what do we do about Trent?” asked Beeker Kyle.

“I wondered when anybody would ask,” said Mossy. Oliver Culp is on his way to bail him, and Esther Leah is going along to be the weeping aunt, Mrs. Gestikker.

“But Oliver,” Seaton Hackley began, “Oliver is just a fairy himself.”

“True, Seaton,” Mossy said, and Hackley was relieved his boss was back to using his social name. “But Oliver don't pick up boys to split their ass that I know of, and that's who Trent called, and Oliver called me.”

Oliver Culp was the librarian at Jubilee.

“Do you think this was a setup, Boss?” Curtt Weigerer asked, playing to the Zangwill paranoia that could surface at a critical moment. Jubilee was the newest of the majors, and sometimes the big studios played dirty tricks on each other. Mossy himself had used both Dunster Clapp and Curtt Weigerer to foster discontent at other studios among the craft unions starting up around Hollywood. Weigerer, a born enforcer, knew the notorious labor racketeer Willie Bioff from Capone days in Chicago. Bioff could make phone calls to start blue-collar trouble anywhere in the country. Weigerer himself, often called a fascist by free-spirited writers and actors, flourished in an atmosphere where fear and discipline were essential tools for controlling creative people whose habitual social state was anarchy.

“What do you mean a setup?” Mossy asked.

“I mean LB or Jack,” Weigerer said.

Mossy was capable of suspecting rival studio chiefs of sabotaging his product. They could have a star like Amberlyn followed, knowing he was looking for other men, and they could tip the vice squad, always eager for headlines, when cruising was going on. The studio or the police themselves could easily plant a cute boy in a parking lot.

“I don't frankly think Jack Warner or LB Mayer would stoop that low.”

Curtt Weigerer had worked for Harry Cohn at Columbia, had moved on for special assignments at Metro; he knew stooping. But he said, “Whatever you say, Boss.”

“What I say is I want you bastards I pay obscenely high salaries to be on sentry duty with my stars, and I don't want no actor or actress to be fifteen minutes in a lockup before one of you is on the case. Am I understood?”

Mossy saw pleaders all morning as kings in earlier times received underlings and favor seekers. Their ambition, greed, cunning was overmatched by his own. Mossy's system was simplicity itself. Loyalty was all he demanded, not agreement, only loyalty.

His office was crafted to intimidate. At the end of a private corridor, the seat of power was huge, an emblem of his necessities—the need always to be a step ahead of his visitor, to have a story people wanted, to show money when that helped and to conceal it when crying for economy, most of all to express domination in every gesture and design. A reflecting pool on one side of the room was a grandiose distraction. As were Monet's water lilies hanging above it. Strong men slumped in their seats, which was hard not to do because of the way Mossy had the chairs tilted backward on the supplicants' side of his desk. An aggressive wash of light shone on whoever sat across from Mossy; the person was virtually Klieged by a ceiling spot and a light from below, both of which Mossy controlled from his desk. The desk itself was massive, often bare, platformed like Mussolini's. When anyone objected to the harsh lighting, Mossy's excuse was that he talked to a lot of aspiring actors and actresses; he needed to be able to see how they'd show up on film.

But Mossy had another lighting idiosyncrasy. One side of his face was lit, while the other dipped into shadow. Disconcerting first-time visitors, Mossy became both sinister and cherubic because if he leaned one way the light on his head would tend to halate while his face looked like Beelzebub himself. This added to his mystery, and he often used the shadowy face when greeting a writer and again when firing him. One feature of Mossy's turn in this darker direction was that, at thirty-four, as old and as young as the century, he was beginning to lose a small amount of his dark russet-tinged hair from the top of his head, and the halo would often be highlighting a tiny bald spot on his crown. With his little tonsure, Mossy could resemble a medieval monk gravely purposed to sentence a dozen suspected heretics to a session on the rack prior to their execution. Perhaps all he actually said was, “Manny, I'm afraid we've decided to go in another direction,” but the effect was as if he'd told Manny his testicles were to be snipped and fried in whale oil.

In the long corridor leading to his office, one wall held photographs (some real, some composite fakes) of Mossy with stars and potentates, while the other was lined with a one-way mirror enabling Mossy to see into his waiting room—who was nervous, apprehensive, hopeful, annoyed. People had been known to cross themselves when the nod finally came from Elena Frye to proceed into the sovereign's presence.

At the very end of the corridor, just before the main chamber, you were flanked by two mirrors, a flat one opposite the one-way. If you looked in either of them you saw a great many frightened reflections of yourself. When Mossy deemed you important enough to rise from his desk and come across the room to greet you, what he saw was what he loved, an infinity of Zangwills. The most treacherous mirror was behind Mossy's desk, concealing a private door; actors were so inhibited by being made self-consciously aware of how they looked that they were disabled from conferring about anything more significant than a fresh wrinkle.

Mossy himself was the best actor on his own lot. Dressed as fastidiously as a gangster, he could charm, berate, mother, father, rage as he did with his toughs-in-waiting over Trent Amberlyn, cajole, play the fool when he had nothing to lose, become a tragedian with everything to gain—all better than anyone he hired. He could withhold approval, vengefully suspend an actor for refusing a bad picture and then, when he heard the actor was about to sign with Paramount, offer him the role of his career opposite Joan Crawford or Palmyra Millevoix. “A superprecautious son of a bitch,” the labor racketeer Willie Bioff once described Mossy, “with a pair of mountains for balls.”

His constitutional discontent seldom permitted Mossy, even on social occasions, not to be working. When I got to know her better I asked Esther Leah if Mossy ever slept. “And how,” she said. “You should see him, always on his back, with those long eyelashes at last closed, a smile on his face, as serene and guiltless as an angel.”

“But with the heart of a devil,” I was cheeky enough to say.

“Not really,” she said. “Just the brains of a devil, the heart of a hungry child.”

“Who can never have enough.”

“Who can never have enough.”

After Elena had shooed the chastened executives who had not been alert to the Trent Amberlyn arrest, she led in a petitioner that Monday morning, Willow Blatchley, the old silents tycoon. A man given to apoplectic rages, Blatchley had a stroke that left him speechless. The stroke occurred in 1927 after he had taken his new wife, Renata, half his age and looking for fame and fortune herself, to a screening of
The Jazz Singer
at Warner Brothers. Blatchley went into a tirade against sound on film, clutched at his throat, flailed his arms, and fell down a flight of stairs, a scene he had filmed many times in his pictures. Mossy had been given his first job in Hollywood by Blatchley and had learned moviemaking at his feet. Literally. On one occasion, before a premiere, he had made Mossy shine his shoes. Errands and dirty work, often followed by harsh reprimands, were Mossy's diet with the temperamental tycoon. Mossy had gone over to Metro in 1925, signaling, though neither of them knew it, his own sure rise and, even before sound, Willow Blatchley's sunset. When he was told the circumstances of Blatchley's stroke, Mossy had shrugged, “Melodrama is so old-fashioned.”

Yet Mossy granted the movie pioneer a brief appointment, and he was wheeled in by Renata, who serviced his needs and hadn't figured out how to leave her helpless husband. Blatchley could walk only jerkily, sixteen frames per second like his old two reelers, he scribbled ruefully to Mossy, so he needed the wheelchair.

Blatchley had a book in his lap. “He wants to produce for you,” Renata began. “He has a property he knows he can develop if you'll buy it. A bitter romance, a rich man, his unhappy wife, their lovers. We can work well together.”

“I'm sure you can, Renata,” Mossy said. “You're looking tip top, old man,” he added. “How's he holding up?”

“Doctors say he'll talk again soon.”

“Well then,” Mossy said with a smile, “I'm so glad you came in now.” He chuckled and Renata tried to. “Tell me, what's the property.”

“Willow wants you to know he has mellowed. He's a much easier, kinder man than when you knew him. In his stroke he has found humility.”

“That's nice, darling. I can't say I envy you. What's the property?”

With trembling hands, Blatchley lifted the book off his lap. “D-d-d-d-d,” he tried, but as he held the book he seemed to be shaking it at Mossy rather than offering it to him.

Renata took the book from her husband. “It's by Sinclair Lewis,
Dodsworth
,” she said. “We think Walter Huston would be perfect. He's cold lately, he'll come cheap.”

“I know the book and I saw the play. Keep your copy. It's a downer, people don't want that now. Huston's washed up. Glad you came in, keep your chin up old man.”

Elena hustled them out, wheelchair and wife, almost before they saw how much Mossy had enjoyed turning his old mentor, and tormentor, down. Mossy didn't want
Dodsworth
at Jubilee, but he owed a small favor to Sam Goldwyn and he suggested the book to him, with Walter Huston's name attached. Goldwyn got Willie Wyler to direct Huston in the part. When he heard about it, Blatchley had another stroke, this one fatal.

In came a clown, down on his luck. He'd made the silent-to-talkie transition, had a contract at Jubilee, but lately his comedy wasn't getting laughs. With a face like putty, he could make his features resemble a rooster, a spastic taxi driver, a jackhammer. Mossy admired him.

“Nobody likes my material any more,” he complained. “You ought to let me out of my contract. I'll go back to where I started, play county fairs, birthdays.”

Mossy saw the man was not just the traditional sad clown but acutely discouraged, and he tried to cheer him up. “That's an idea for a picture right there,” he said. “I'll get Maurice Sugarman on this, he's always spouting ideas, he'll like thinking about a county fair and a comic who's been laying eggs.”

“Jokes, though, I need jokes and business,” said the inconsolable clown.

“Sugarman will come in on it. He's full of jokes.”

“The worst of it is, I can't tell you.”

Mossy became more interested. He'd been suspicious when the comic asked out of his contract. Maybe Columbia or somebody was making him a better offer. Now he saw the man was in real pain. “What's so awful you can't tell.”

“I'm dead in my pants.”

“It happens,” said Mossy. “So I've heard.” He turned away from the sad comic.

“My wife is patient, but it's been weeks. I hate to admit it, I tried another woman.”

“I'm shocked.”

“It was worse. I don't know what to do.”

“This too shall pass,” Mossy intoned Biblically. He thought of something. “Hey, what about bringing your wife over to Catalina on my boat. Tell her you're going to star in a new picture and the chief insisted you steal his yacht for a few days. The sea air, the birds, the island itself. Go crazy.”

“Gee, the worst it could do is cheer me up. You know I dreamed I was on a boat, scared, we were going through the Panama Canal and everybody wanted to dunk me.”

“You flunk geography—it's the Equator where they dunk you. Panama Canal, you're home free.”

“So that's what it means.”

“Dr. Freud tells you what they mean. I put them on the screen. A county fair and the Panama Canal, a comic who needs a break. Sugarman's meat and potatoes. I'll send a car for you and the little lady to take you to my boat in Long Beach. Get out of here.”

Not that this was all generosity on Mossy's part. If he thought someone was what he called an official talent, he'd do anything not only to hang on but also to put the talent so heavily in his debt that when the Columbias and Foxes came around they had no one to talk to.

Writers slouched in. As MGM was known for being a producers' studio, Jubilee prized writers. “In the beginning was the word,” Mossy repeated to his salaried dreamers, “and in the end is my word. If you guys don't do your job, no one else has a job.” That didn't mean writers were happy; always disgruntled, they had to sit still for being condescended to by everyone else in the food chain. Ordered to appease church attacks on Hollywood, four writers were working on the story of Job, complaining they were in as much pain as Job himself. Mossy told them it would be spectacular when the Red Sea parted. They said that wasn't the Job story; a good man lost his family, property, and was struck with sores on his body, all because God and Satan were arguing over him. Mossy thought for a moment. “The story is God and Satan, Job is the field they play on. Walter Pidgeon and Lionel Barrymore fight over Trent Amberlyn. Get going, children, type me some good and evil.” The fun we had.

A red-maned actress, Brenda De Baule, had two minutes to convince Mossy she was right for a gangster moll after he had lost faith in the producer's ability to cast his own picture. “The part is important,” Mossy told her, “because if we don't believe she has a mind of her own we won't care when the heavy pushes her into a wall.” Declaiming a line from the script, the actress said, “This broad don't take no guff from nobody, and that means you, Mr. Big Nobody!” Mossy liked that. When they stood to shake hands, the actress stared at Mossy's fly before fixing on his eyes, keeping hold of his hand. She waved her hair off her face but it settled right back over one eye as she smiled goodbye. “Elena,” Mossy said to his secretary after the actress had gone, “find out if Miss De Baule is free for lunch tomorrow. Maybe today.”