HARRISON MARLOWE INDICTED 3 page

"I know what's going on," he said angrily. "You don't have to start acting like a movie star."

"Oh, what's the use?" she said bitterly. "What did you ever marry me for?"

"Or you me?" he asked, with equal bitterness.

As they stared at each other, the truth suddenly came to both of them. They had married because they both knew they had lost each other and wanted desperately to hold onto what was already gone. With the knowledge, the anger dissipated as quickly as it had come. "I'm sorry," he said.

She looked down at the coffeepot. "I am, too. I told you I was a spoiler, that I wouldn't be any good for you."

"Don't be silly," he said. "It wasn't your fault. It would have happened, anyway. The business is changing."

"I’m not talking about the business," Rina answered. "I'm talking about you and me. You should have married someone who could have given you a family. I've given you nothing."

"You can't take all the blame. We both tried in our own way but neither of us had what the other really needed. We just made a mistake, that's all."

"I won't be able to file for a divorce until after I finish this next picture," she said in a low voice. "It's all right with me if you want to file before then."

"No, I can wait," he said calmly.

She glanced up at the wall clock. "My God! I’m late!" she exclaimed. "I'll have to hurry."

At the door, she stopped and looked back at him. "Are you still my friend?"

He nodded his head slowly and returned her smile, but his voice was serious. "I’ll always be your friend."

She stood there for a moment and he could see the sudden rush of tears to her eyes, then she turned and ran from the room.

He walked over to the window, and lifting the curtain, looked out onto the front drive. He saw her come running from the house, saw the chauffeur close the door. The car disappeared down the hill on its way to the studio. He let the curtain fall back into place.

Rina never came back to the house. She stayed that night at Ilene's apartment. The next day, she moved into a hotel and three months later filed for divorce in Reno. The grounds were incompatibility.

And that, except for the legalities, was the way it ended.

David heard the violent slam of the door in his uncle's office. He got to his feet quickly and walked to the connecting door. He opened it and found his uncle Bernie seated in his chair, red faced and angry, gasping for breath. He was trying to shake some pills out of the inverted bottle in his hand.

David quickly filled a glass with water from the carafe on the desk and handed it to Norman. "What happened?"

Norman swallowed the two pills and put down the glass. He looked up at David. "Why didn't I go into the cloak-and-suit business with my brother, your uncle Louie?"

David knew no answer was expected, so he waited patiently until Norman continued. "Fifty, a hundred suits they make a day. Everything is calm, everything is quiet. At night, he goes home. He eats. He sleeps. No worries. No ulcers. No aggravations. That's the way a man should live. Easy. Not like a dog. Not like me."

David asked again, "What happened?"

"As if I haven't got enough troubles," Norman complained, "our stockholders say we're losing too much money. I run to New York to explain. The union threatens to strike the theaters. I sit down and work out a deal that at least they don't close the theaters. Then I get word from Europe that Hitler took over all our German properties, offices, theaters, everything! More than two million dollars the anti-semiten stole. Then I get a complaint from the underwriters and bankers, the pictures ain't got no prestige. So I buy the biggest, most artistic hit on Broadway. Sunspots the name of it is. It's so artistic, even I don't understand what it's all about.

"Now I'm stuck with an artistic bomb. I talk to all the directors in Hollywood about it. I'm not so dumb altogether that it don't take me long to find out they don't understand it neither, so I hire the director who did the play on the stage, Claude Dunbar, a faigele if I ever saw one. But fifty thousand he gets.

"A hundred and fifty I’m in already and no box office. So I call up Louie and say lend me Garbo. He laughs in my face. You ain't got enough money, he says. Besides, we got her in prestige of our own. Anna Christie by Eugene O'Neill she's making. Good-by, I says and call up Jack Warner. How about Bette Davis? Wait a minute, he says. I sit on the phone ten minutes.

"The pisher thinks I don't know what he's doin'? He's calling his brother Harry in New York, that's what he's doin'. Here I am, sitting on long distance in New York with the charges running up by the minute and he's calling back his brother Harry, who is two blocks away from where I'm sitting. Hang up the phone, I feel like telling him. I can call your brother for only a nickel.

"Finally, Jack gets back on the phone to me ninety-five dollars later. You're lucky, he says. We ain't got her penciled in for nothing until September. You can have her for a hundred and fifty grand. For a hundred and fifty, don't do me no favors, I tell him. The most she's gettin' is thirty, thirty-five a picture, maybe not even that.

"How much you want to pay? he asks. Fifty, I says. Forget it, he says. O.K., then, seventy-five, I says. One and a quarter, he says. One even and it's a deal, I says. It's a deal, he says. I hang up the telephone. A hundred and thirty-five dollars the call costs me to talk two minutes.

"So I go back to Wall Street and tell the underwriters and bankers we now got prestige. This picture is goin' to be so artistic, we'll be lucky if we get anybody into the theater. They're very happy and congratulate me and I get on the train and come back to Hollywood."

Bernie ran out of breath suddenly and picked up the glass of water again and drained it. "Ain't that enough trouble for anyone?"

David nodded.

"So enough troubles I got when I walk into my office this morning, you agree? So who do I find waiting but Rina Marlowe, that courveh. 'Rina, darling,' I say to her, 'you look positively gorgeous this morning.' Do I even get a hello? No! She shoves the Reporter under my nose and says, 'What's this? Is it true?'

"I look down and see the story about Davis in Sunspots. 'What are you getting so excited about, darling?' I say. 'That's not for you, a bomb like that. I got a part for you that will kill the people. Scheherazade. Costumes like you never in your life saw before.' And you know what she says to me?" He shook his head sadly.

"What?" David asked.

"After all I done for her, the way she spoke to me!" his uncle said in a hurt voice. " 'Take your hand off my tits,' she says, 'and furthermore, if I don't get that part, you can shove Scheherazade up your fat ass!' Then she walks out the door. How do you like that?" Norman asked in an aggrieved voice. "All I was trying to do was calm her down a little. Practically everybody in Hollywood she fucks but me she talks to like that!"

David nodded. He'd heard the stories about her, too. In the year since she had broken up with Nevada, she seemed to have gone suddenly wild. The parties out at her new place in Beverly Hills were said to be orgies. There was even talk about her and Ilene Gaillard, the costume designer. But as long as nothing got into print, they'd looked the other way. What she did was her own business as long as it didn't affect them. "What are you going to do about it?"

"What can I do about it?" Bernie asked. "Give her the part. If she walked out on us, we'd lose twice as much as we're losing right now."

He reached for a cigar. "I'll call her this afternoon and tell her." He stopped in the midst of lighting it. "No, I got a better idea. You go out to her place this afternoon and tell her. I'm damned if I'll let her make it look like I'm kissing her ass."

"O.K.," David said. He started back toward his own office.

"Wait a minute," his uncle called after him.

David turned around.

"You know who I ran into in the Waldorf my last night in New York?" Bernie asked. "Your friend."

"My friend?"

"Yes, you know who. The crazy one. The flier. Jonas Cord."

"Oh," David said. He liked the way his uncle put it, reminding him of the earlier conversation they had had about Cord some years ago. He and Cord had never exchanged so much as a word. He even doubted if Cord knew he was alive. "How did he look?"

"The same," his uncle replied. "Like a bum. Wearing sneakers and no tie. I don't know how he gets away with it. Anybody else they would throw out, but him? Shows you there's nothing like goyishe money."

"You talk to him?" David asked curiously.

"Sure," Norman answered. "I read in the papers where he's making another picture. Who knows, I says to myself, the schnorrer might get lucky again. Besides, with prestige like we're stuck with, we could use him. We could pay a lot of bills with his money.

"It's two o'clock in the morning and he's got two courvehs on his arm. I walk over and say, 'Hello, Jonas.' He looks at me like he's never seen me before in his life. 'Remember me,' I says, 'Bernie Norman from Hollywood.' 'Oh, sure," he says.

"But I can't tell from his face whether he really does or doesn't, he needs a shave so bad. 'These two little girls are actresses,' he says to me, 'but I won't tell you their names. Otherwise, you might sign them up yourself. If I like a girl,' he says, 'I put her under contract to Cord Explosives now. No more do I take any chances and let them get away from me the way you signed that Marlowe dame.' With that, he gives me such a playful shot in the arm that for two hours I can't raise my hand.

"I made myself smile even if I didn't feel like it. 'In our business, you got to move fast,' I says, 'otherwise you get left behind the parade. But that's over and done with. What I want to do is talk to you about this new picture I hear you're makin'. We did a fantastic job for you on your last one and I think we should set up a meetin'.'

" 'What's the matter with right now?' he asks. 'It's O.K. with me,' I says. He turns to the girls. 'Wait right here,' he says to them. He turns back to me an' takes my arm. 'Come on,' he says, draggin' me off. 'Come up to my office.'

"I look at him in surprise. 'You got an office here in the Waldorf,' I ask him. 'I got an office in every hotel in the United States,' he says. We get on an elevator an' he says 'Mezzanine, please.' We get off and walk down the hall to a door. I look at the sign. 'Gentlemen,' it says. I look at him. He grins. 'My office,' he says, opening the door. We go inside an' it's white and empty. There's a table there and a chair for the attendant. He sits down in the chair and suddenly I see he's very sober, he's not smiling now.

" 'I haven't decided yet where I'm going to release the picture,' he says. 'It all depends on where I can get the best deal.' 'That's smart thinking.' I says, 'but I really can't talk until I know what your picture is about.' 'I'll tell you,' he says. 'It's about the fliers in the World War. I bought up about fifty old planes — Spads, Fokkers, Nieuports, De Havillands — and I figger on havin' a ball flyin' the wings off them.'

" 'Oh, a war picture,' I says. 'That's not so good. War pictures is dead since All Quiet on the Western Front. Nobody'll come to see them. But since I got experience with you and we was lucky together, I might go along for the ride. What terms you looking for?' He looks me in the eye. 'Studio overhead, ten per cent,' he says. 'Distribution, fifteen per cent with all expenses deducted from the gross before calculating the distribution fees.' 'That's impossible,' I says. 'My overhead runs minimum twenty-five per cent.'

" 'It doesn't,' he says, 'but I won't quibble about it. I just want to point out some simple arithmetic to you. According to your annual report, your overhead during the past few years averaged twenty-one per cent. During that period, The Renegade contributed twenty-five per cent of your gross. Deduct that from your gross and you'll find your overhead's up to almost thirty-six per cent. The same thing applies to the studio,' he says. 'Volume governs the percentages and if I supply the volume, I shouldn't be burdened with ordinary percentages. I want some of the gravy, as you picture people call it.'

" 'I couldn't afford it,' I says. 'The way the picture business is going,' he says, 'you can't afford not to.' 'My board of directors would never approve it,' I says. He gets up, smiling. 'They will,' he says. 'Give 'em a couple of years an' they will. Why don't you take a piss long as you're here,' he says. I’m so surprised I walk over to the urinal. When I turn around, he's already gone. The next morning, before I get on the train, I try to locate him but nobody seems to know where he is. His office don't even know he's in New York. He disappeared completely." Bernie looked down at his desk. "A real meshuggeneh, I tell you."

David smiled. "I told you he'd learn fast. His arithmetic is right, you know."

His uncle looked up at him. "Don't you think I know it's right?" he asked. "But is he so poor that I have to give him bread from my own mouth?"

"If you'll follow me, sir," the butler said politely. "Miss Marlowe is in the solarium."

David nodded and followed silently up the staircase and to the back of the house. The butler halted before a door and knocked.

"Mr. Woolf is here, mum."

"Tell him to come in," Rina called through the closed door.

The butler held the door open. David blinked as the bright California sun suddenly spilled down on him. The roof of the room was a clear glass dome and the sides were of glass, too.

There was a tall screen at the far end of the room. Rina's voice came from behind it. "Help yourself to a drink from the bar. I’ll be out in a minute."

He looked around and located the bar in the corner. There were casual, canvas-covered chairs scattered all about the room and a large white rug over most of the floor.

Ilene Gaillard came out from behind the screen. She was wearing a white shirt with sleeves rolled to just above her elbows, and black man-tailored slacks that clung tightly to her narrow hips. Her white-streaked hair was brushed back in a severe straight line.

"Hello, David. Let me help you."

"Thanks, Ilene."

"Make another Martini for me," Rina called from behind the screen.

Ilene didn't answer. She looked at David. "What will it be?"

"Scotch and water," he answered. "Just a little ice."

"O.K.," she said, her hands already moving deftly behind the bar. She held the drink toward him. "There, how's that?"

He tasted it. "Great."

"Got my Martini ready?" Rina said from behind him.

He turned. She was just coming from behind the screen, tying a white terry-cloth robe around her. From the glimpse he caught of the tanned thigh beneath the robe as she moved, he guessed she was wearing nothing underneath. "Hello, Rina."

"Hello, David," she answered. She looked at Ilene. "Where's my drink?"

"David's obviously here on business," Ilene said. "Why don't you wait until after you've had your talk?"

"Don't be so bossy!" Rina snapped. "Make the drink!" She turned to David. "My father gave me Martinis when I was a child. I can drink them like water. Ilene doesn't seem to understand that."

"Here." Ilene's voice was clipped.

Rina took the Martini from her. "Cheers, David."

"Cheers," David replied.

She belted down half her Martini, then led him to one of the chairs. "Sit down," she said, dropping into another.

"Lovely house you have," he said politely.

"It is nice," she said. "Ilene and I had a wonderful time furnishing it." She reached up and patted Ilene's cheek. "Ilene has the most wonderful sense of color. You should speak to your uncle about letting her try her hand at art direction. I'm sure he'd find out that she could do a terrific job."

"Rina," Ilene said, a happy note in her voice, "I’m sure David didn't come here to talk about me."

"I'll speak to Uncle Bernie," he said politely. "I’m sure she could, too."

"See?" Rina said. "The trouble with Ilene is that she's too modest. She's one of the most talented people I ever met."

She held up her empty glass toward Ilene. "Refill."

David caught a glimpse of her lush, full breasts. It would take more than massage to keep her weight down if she kept on drinking like that.

Rina cut into his thoughts. "Did the old bastard decide to give me that part in Sunspots?"

David looked at her. "You have to understand my uncle's point of view, Rina," he said quickly. "You're the most valuable asset the company has. You can't blame him if he doesn't want to put you in a picture that's almost certain to lay an egg."

Rina took the drink from Ilene. "What it all boils down to," she said belligerently, ''is that he thinks I can't act. All I’m good for is walking around as near naked as he can get me."

"He thinks you're a fine actress, Rina. But more important, you're the one in a million who is a star. He's just trying to protect you, that’s all."

"I'll protect myself," she snapped angrily. "Do I get the part or don't I?"

"You get it."

"Good," she said, sipping her drink. She got out of her chair and he realized that she was slightly drunk. "Tell your uncle for me that I won't wear a brassière the next time I come to his office."

"I’m sure that will make him very happy." David grinned at her. He put down his drink and got to his feet.

"I think he wants to fuck me," she said, weaving slightly.

He laughed. "Who doesn't?" he asked. "I can name at least sixty million men who've thought about it."

"You don't," she said, her eyes suddenly looking right into his.

"Who says?"

"I do," she said seriously. "You never asked me."

"Remind me to get up my nerve sometime."

"What's the matter with right now?" she asked, pulling at the sash of her robe. It fell open, revealing her nude body. He stared, so surprised that he was unable to speak.

"Go downstairs, Ilene," Rina said without taking her eyes off him. "And see to it that dinner is on time."

David caught a glimpse of Ilene's eyes as she hurried past him and out the door. If he lived to be a hundred years old, he would never forget the depth of the pain and anguish he saw there.

Until he met Rina Marlowe, Claude Dunbar had been in love with only three things in his life — his mother, himself and the theater — and in that order. His Hamlet in modern dress was the most successful Shakespearean production ever played in a New York theater. But it was his direction of Sunspots, an otherwise mediocre play, that lifted him to the pinnacle of his career.

Sunspots was a three-character play dealing with two prospectors, living isolated lives at the edge of a great desert, and a young girl, an amnesiac, who wandered into their camp. It develops into a struggle between the men, the younger trying to protect the girl from the lechery of the older, only, after succeeding, to succumb himself to the lechery in the girl.

It was all talk and very little action, and despite a year's run on Broadway, Dunbar had been so surprised when Norman called and told him he had bought the play and wanted him to direct the motion picture that he had agreed without hesitation. It was only after he got to California, however, that he learned who was to play the lead.

"Rina Marlowe!" he'd said to Norman. "But I thought Davis was going to play it."

The producer had stared at him blandly. "Warner screwed me," he said, lowering his voice to a confidential whisper. "So right away I thought of Rina."

"But isn't there anyone else, Mr. Norman?" he'd asked, stammering slightly as he always did when upset. "What about the girl who played it on the stage?"

"No name," Norman said quickly. "This is an important property, this play of yours. We have to protect it with all the box office we can get. Rina never made a picture that didn't make money."

"Maybe," Dunbar admitted. "But can she act?"

"There's no better actress in Hollywood than that girl. You're a director. Go over to her house this afternoon with the script and see for yourself."

"Mr. Norman— "

But Norman had already taken his arm and was leading him to the door. "Be fair, Mr. Dunbar. Give the girl a chance, work with her a little. Then if you still think she can't do it, we'll see."

So efficient had the producer been in getting rid of him that he hadn't been aware of it himself until he stood outside the closed door, with the three secretaries staring at him.

He felt his face flush and to cover his embarrassment, he went over to the girl at the desk nearest the door. "Could you tell me where Miss Marlowe lives?" he asked. "And how to get there?"

The secretary smiled. "I can do better than that, Mr. Dunbar," she said efficiently, picking up the telephone. "I’ll arrange for a car to pick you up and take you there."

That afternoon, before he went to Rina's house, Claude Dunbar dropped into a theater that was playing her latest picture. He watched the screen in a kind of fascinated horror. There was no doubt that the girl was beautiful. He could even see that she had a type of animalism that would appeal to a certain type of audience. But she wasn't the kind of girl called for in the play.

The girl in the play was somber, introspective, frightened. As she tried to recapture her memory, she looked as she felt — gaunt, tortured and burned out by the heat of the desert. The fact that she was female caused the desire in the men, not her physical appearance. And it wasn't until the very climax that the play revealed the root of her fears to be her own capacity for lechery.

On the screen, Rina was exciting and bold, aware of her sexuality and continually flaunting it before the audience, but there was no subtlety in her acting. And yet, in all honesty, he felt the surge of vitality flowing from her. When she was on the screen, no matter who else was in the scene, he could not take his eyes off her.

He left the theater and went back to his hotel, where the car was going to pick him up. As was usual whenever he was disturbed, he called his mother. "Do you know who they want to play in the picture, Mother?"

"Who?" his mother asked, with her usual calm.

"Rina Marlowe."

His mother's voice was shocked. "No!"

"Yes, Mother," he said. "Mr. Norman tells me they couldn't get Bette Davis."

"Well, you turn right around and come home," his mother said firmly. "You tell Mr. Norman that you have a reputation to consider, that he promised you Davis and you won't accept that blond creature as a substitute!"

"But I already told Mr. Norman I'd talk to Miss Marlowe. He said if I wasn't satisfied after meeting her, he'd try to get someone else."

"All right," she said. "But remember, your integrity counts far more than anything else. If you're not completely satisfied, you come right home."

"Yes, Mother," he said. "Much love."

"Much love and take care," his mother replied, completing their farewell ritual.

Rina entered the room where he was waiting, wearing a black leotard that covered her body from her feet to her neck. Her pale-blond hair was pulled back straight and tied in a knot behind her head. She wore no make-up.

"Mr. Dunbar," she said, coming toward him unsmiling, her hand outstretched.

"Miss Marlowe," he answered, taking her hand. He was surprised at the strength in her fingers.

"I've looked forward to meeting you," she said. "I've heard a great deal about you."

He smiled, pleased. "I've heard a great deal about you, too."

She looked up and smiled for the first time. "I'll bet you have," she said without rancor. "That's why you're out here the first day you're in Hollywood. You probably wonder why in hell I should want to play in Sunspots?"

He was startled at her frank admission. "Why do you, Miss Marlowe? It seems to me you wouldn't want to rock the boat. You've got a pretty good thing going here."

She dropped into a chair. "Screw the boat," she said casually. "I'm supposed to be an actress. I want to find out just how much of an actress I am. And you're the one director who can make me find out."

He stared at her for a moment. "Have you read the script?"

She nodded.

"Do you remember the first lines the girl speaks when she wanders into the camp?"

"Yes."

"Read them for me," he said, giving her the script.

She took the script but didn't open it. " 'My name is Mary. Yes, that's it, I think my name is Mary.' "

"You're saying the lines, Miss Marlowe," he said, frowning at her, "but you're not thinking about them. You're not feeling the effort that goes into the girl's trying to remember her name.

Think it through like this. I can't remember my name but if I could, it's a familiar one. It's a name I've been called all my life, and yet it's hard for me to remember it. Even though it's a name that is mentioned often in church and I have even said it in my prayers. It's coming back now. I think I've got it. 'My name is Mary. Yes, that's it. I think my name is Mary.' "

Rina stared back at him silently. Then she got up and walked over to the fireplace. She put her hands up on the mantelpiece, her back toward him. She tugged at the knot in her hair and it fell around her shoulders as she turned to face him.

Her face was suddenly gaunt and strained as she spoke. " 'My name is Mary,' " she whispered hoarsely. " 'Yes, that's it. I think my name is Mary.' "

He felt the tiny shivers of goose flesh rising on his arms as he looked at her. It was the same thing he always felt whenever something great in the theater got down inside him.

Bernie Norman came down to the set on the last day of shooting. He shook his head as he opened the door and walked onto the big shooting stage. He should have known better than ever to hire that faigele to direct the picture. Worse yet, he should have had his head examined before he ever let them talk him into buying such a story. Everything about it was crazy.

First, the shooting schedule had to be postponed for a month. The director wanted thirty days to rehearse Rina in the part. Norman had to give in when Rina insisted she wouldn't go on before Dunbar said she was ready. That cost a hundred and fifty thousand in stand-by salaries alone.

Then the director had insisted on doing everything like they had done it on stage. To hell with the budget. Another fifty thousand went there. And on top of everything, Dunbar insisted that the sound in each scene be perfect. No looping, no lip-synching. Every word perfect, as it was spoken on the stage. He didn't care how many takes were necessary. Why should he, the bastard? Norman thought. It wasn't his money.

Three months over the schedule the picture went. A million and a half thrown down the drain. He blinked his eyes as he came onto the brilliantly lighted section of the stage.

Thank God, this was the last scene. It was the one in front of the cabin when the girl opens the door in the morning and finds the two men dead, the younger man having killed the older, then himself, when he realized the depths to which the girl had led him. All she had to do was look at the two men and cry a little, then walk off into the desert. Simple. Nothing could go wrong with that. Ten minutes and it would be over.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 558