The Magic Christian (6 page)

It was also decided that owing to the failure of
Downy,
it would be to certain advantage to make a clear break at this point and change the name of the mother company—a new name which would embrace both aspects of the M.R. postulate; and so it was decided: LADY APHRODITE.

Grand arranged that a number of prominent biologists, physicians, philosophers, church representatives, film stars, congresswomen, nursery-school teachers, and so on, should come forward in unsolicited endorsement of the moral correctness and practicality of the product.

Promotionwise, it did seem to capture the imagination of the public. Grand’s contention at conference was that it appealed to the “magnificent bohemian strain in the great middle class,” and “to the return-to-nature elements dormant within them like a sleeping giant.”

“In offering these two products across this grand land of ours,” he said at final conference, “Lady Aphrodite has presented a pure dichotomy. At last a satisfactory choice may be made, a side taken, and yet
each side
shall enjoy the security—on this particular issue at least—of
operating within an absolute.
Gentlemen, I say this product may well spell ‘home-run’ in the hearts of Mr. and Mrs. U.S.A.!”

Small matter though, for both products were, as it turned out, nothing more nor less than some kind of delayed-action
stench-bomb
—hydrogen sulfide or the like—causing a great stench and embarrassment to a number of people. Apparently it was simply another joke by Grand at their expense, and not altogether in the best of taste. At least so the press thought (when they got wind of it) and they were down on this Grand and his staffers like the proverbial ton. It cost him plenty to clear.

“A
ND HOW IS
our Miss Sally Hastings these days?” Agnes asking this genially of Ginger Horton while giving Guy a meaningfully coy glance—for she had tried to interest her nephew in the young lady.

“Poor Sally,” said Ginger Horton, putting on her look of extremest nonchalance. “She’s become rather tiresome, I’m afraid.”

“That
is
a shame,” said Agnes. “Such a lovely girl—didn’t you think so, Guy?”

“A most charming girl,” said Guy Grand.

“And yet, I must say,
you
didn’t seem to notice,” his aunt went on, rather severely, “hardly spoke two words all evening—though, if I’ve a shred of intuitiveness, she was very much attracted to
you,
Guy.”

“We met later at her place,” Guy explained.

“Guy, you didn’t!” said Agnes in genuine annoyance.

“Yes, of course,” said Guy. “Just for a little tête-à-tête—nothing more certainly.”

“Well,”
said Agnes, taking a long sip of her tea, and pursing her lips before speaking again to Ginger, “that
is
a shame, Ginger. And such a
clever
girl, too; but then I suppose so many of them are, aren’t they—young girls, I mean, of her sort? Personally, of course, I put
quality
before
cleverness
—don’t
you,
Guy?”

“Oh, I should think that goes without saying,” said Guy easily.

Grand’s entrance into the world of championship boxing, significant though it may have been, went completely unnoticed by the savants of the press. They continued about their business, promoting the Champ. They said the Champ had plenty of heart and moxie, and that while he might not be the brightest guy in the whole world, by golly, he was nobody’s fool, and pound for pound, he could punch with the best of them.

In the columns they set up hypothetical matches:

Maybe you’re asking, “Could the Champ have taken the Rock’s primeval right-cross?” The answer to that? He
could,
and he could have dished something out to boot!
“But,”
you want to know,
“could
he have handled the Bomber’s Sunday-one, I mean the one that could snap a two-by-four from nine inches!” Look, you want me to tell you something? If Champy couldn’t roll that punch, you know what he
could
do? He could just
laugh
it off! “Granted,” you say, “but could the Champ have lasted with Big John L., when the chips were down bloody-bare-bone-knuckle in the 108th stanza?” You want my answer to that, buddy? Okay, I’ll tell you something. I was standing with the Champ and his gray-haired Mom one Saturday afternoon on the corner of Darrow and Lex when some punk hood comes up and starts slapping Champ’s Mom around.

“You dirty old slut!” he yelled, slapping her around. The Champ’s Mom! Can you imagine!?!
Well,
if you think the American heavyweight boxing champion of the world stands idle while some cheap runt of a punk roughs up his
Mom
—
you’ve
got another think coming, Mister!
You’d
better put on your think-cap, Mister! The answer is
N. . . O. . .
spells “NO!” “Okay,” you say, “so far, so hunky-do-ray-me, but could the Champ have notched Demetrias—when Demi was swinging with the old net and trident, and the Champ was hog-tied?” What? You want my answer to that buddy? Okay, just listen. If Champ. . .

The Champ was a national hero. He became a TV personality, and his stock in trade was a poignant, almost incredible, ignorance. He was good-natured and lovably stupid—and, boy-oh-boy, was he
tough!

Well, Grand got through somehow, put his cards on the table (two million, tax-free) and made an arrangement whereby the Champ would throw the next fight in a gay or effeminate manner and, in fact, would behave that way all the time, on TV, in the ring, everywhere—swishing about, grimacing oddly, flinching when he struck a match, and so on.

The next big bout was due to go quite differently now. The challenger in this case was a thirty-three-year-old veteran of the ring named Texas Powell. Tex had an impressive record: 40 wins (25 by K.O.), 7 losses and 3 draws. He had been on the scene for quite a while and was known, or so the press insisted, as a “rugged customer,” and a “tough cookie.”

“Tex has got the punch,” they said. “The big
if
is: Can he deliver it? Will he remain conscious long enough to deliver it?
There’s
your Big If in tonight’s Garden bout!”

Well, the fix was in with Tex too, of course—not simply to carry the fight, but to do so in the most flamboyantly homosexual manner possible. And finally, a fix—or
zinger,
as it was called in those days—was in with the Commission as well, a precaution taken under best advice as it turned out, because what happened in the ring that night was so “funny” that the bout might well have been halted at the opening bell.

Fortunately, what did happen didn’t last too long. The Champ and the challenger capered out from their corners with a saucy mincing step, and, during the first cagey exchange—which on the part of each was like nothing so much as a young girl striking at a wasp with her left hand—uttered little cries of surprise and disdain. Then Texas Powell took the fight to the Champ, closed haughtily, and engaged him with a pesky windmill flurry which soon had the Champ covering up frantically, and finally shrieking, “I can’t
stand
it!” before succumbing beneath the vicious peck and flurry, to lie in a sobbing tantrum on the canvas, striking his fists against the floor of the ring—more the bad loser than one would have expected. Tex tossed his head with smug feline contempt and allowed his hand to be raised in victory—while, at the touch, eyeing the ref in a questionable manner.

Apparently a number of people found the spectacle so abhorrent that they actually blacked-out.

“G
INGER. . .”
A
GNES BEGAN
lightly, “when did you first realize that Sally Hastings was perhaps. . . well, a bit
common?”

“Agnes, it was
Bitsy
who knew it first,” exclaimed Ginger Horton with perfect candor.

“The dog?” asked Grand.

“What
can
you mean by that, Ginger?” Agnes wanted to know, dubious herself, yet casting her nephew a quick and cutting look to show where her allegiance lay even so.

“She didn’t really love our Bitsy, Agnes,” said Ginger narrowly, “. . . and Bitsy
couldn’t
have cared less I assure you!”

Grand’s work in cinema management and film editing had apparently not diminished his strong feeling for dramatic theatre, so that with the cultural ascension of television drama, he was all the more keen to get, as he put it,
“back on the boards.”

“There’s no biz like show biz,” he liked to quip to the other troupers, “. . . oh, we have our ups and downs, heck yes—but I wouldn’t trade one whiff of grease paint on opening night, by gosh, for all the darn chateaux of France!”

Thus did he enter the field, not nominally of course, but in effect. There was at this time a rather successful drama hour on Sunday evening. “Our Town Playhouse” it was called and was devoted to serious fare; at least the viewers were told it was serious fare—truth to tell though, it was by any civilized standard, the crassest sort of sham, cant and weak-kneed pornography imaginable. Grand set about to interfere with it.

His arrival was fairly propitious; the production in dress rehearsal at that moment was called
All Our Yesterdays,
a drama which, according to the sponsors, was to be, concerning certain emotions and viewpoints, more or less
definitive.

Beginning with this production, Grand made it a point that he or his representative contact the hero or heroine of each play, while it was still in rehearsal, and reach some sort of understanding about final production. A million was generally sufficient.

The arrangement between Grand and the leading actress of
All Our Yesterdays
was simplicity itself. During final production, that is to say, the Sunday-night nation-wide presentation of the play, and at the top of her big end-of-the-second-act scene, the heroine suddenly turned away from the other players, approached the camera, and addressed the viewers, point-blank:

“Anyone who would allow this slobbering pomp and drivel in his home has less sense and taste than the beasts of the field!”

Then she pranced off the set.

Half the remaining actors turned to stare after her in amazement, while the others sat frozen in their last attitudes. There was a frenzy of muffled whispers coming from off-stage:

“What the hell!”

“Cue! Cue!”

“Fade it! For Christ’s sake, fade it!”

Then there was a bit of commotion before it was actually faded—one of the supporting actors had been trained in Russian methods and thought he could improvise the rest of the play, about twelve minutes, so there were one or two odd lines spoken by him in this attempt before the scene jerkily faded to blackness. A short documentary film about tarpon fishing was put on to fill out the balance of the hour.

The only explanation was that the actress had been struck by insanity; but even so, front-office temper ran high.

On the following Sunday, the production,
Tomorrow’s Light,
took an unexpected turn while the leading actor, in the role of an amiable old physician, was in the midst of an emergency operation. His brow was knit in concern and high purpose, as the young nurse opposite watched his face intently for a sign.

“Dr. Lawrence,” she said, “do you . . . do you think you can save Dr. Chester’s son?”

Without relaxing his features, the doctor smiled, a bit grimly it seemed, before raising his serious brown eyes to her own.

“I’m afraid it isn’t a question of saving
him,
Miss Nurse—I only wish it were—it’s a question of saving my dinner.”

The nurse evidenced a questioning look, just concealing the panic beneath it
(for he had missed his cue!),
so, laying aside his instruments, he continued, as in explanation:

“Yes, you see, I really think if I speak one more line of this drivel I’ll lose my dinner.” He nodded gravely at the table, “. . . vomit right into that incision I’ve made.” He slowly drew off his rubber gloves, regarding the astonished nurse as he did so with mild indignation.

“Perhaps that would be
your
idea of a pleasant Sunday evening, Miss Nurse,” he said reproachfully. “Sorry, it
isn’t
mine!” And he turned and strode off the set.

The third time something like this happened, the producer and sponsor were very nearly out of their minds. Of course they suspected that a rival company was tampering with the productions, bribing the actors and so on. Security measures were taken. Directors were fired right and left. Rehearsals were held behind locked doors, and there was an attempt to keep the actors under constant surveillance, but . . . Grand always seemed to get in there somehow, with the old convincer.

In the aftermath, some of the actors paid the breach-of-contract fine of twenty-five or fifty thousand; others pleaded temporary insanity; still others gained a lot of publicity by taking a philosophic stand, saying that it was true, they had been overcome with nausea at that drivel, and that they themselves were too sensitive and serious for it, had too much integrity, moral fiber, etc. With a million behind them, none seemed to lack adequate defense arrangements. Those who were kicked out of their union usually became producers.

Meanwhile the show went on. People started tuning in to see what new outrage would happen; it even appeared to have a sort of elusive comic appeal. It became the talk of the industry; the rating soared—but somehow it looked bad. Finally the producer and the sponsor of the show were put on the carpet before Mr. Harlan, the tall and distinguished head of the network.

“Listen,” he said to the sponsor as he paced the office, “we want your business, Mr. Levet, don’t get me wrong—but if you guys can’t control that show of yours . . . well, I mean
goddamn
it, what’s going on over there?” He turned to the producer now, who was a personal friend of his: “For Christ’s sake, Max, can’t you get together a
show,
and put it on the way it’s supposed to be without any somersaults? . . . is
that
so hard to do? . . . I mean
we
can’t have this sort of thing going on,
you
know that, Max, we
simply cannot have
. . .”