Pleasant, in a way, to remember these things now, while his guffaws continued.
* * * * *
The barber-shop scene was cut, entirely; a conclave of studio executives decided after seeing the rushes that it simply did not ‘come off’. As it was only an episode in the chase, the cut did not spoil the finished picture. To Paul, however, it might have been his own lifeblood that had been arbitrarily drained away, and since he blamed the writers for it he looked for an early chance to get his own back. It came when one of them, a quiet, studious- looking youth named Mitchell who had said little during story conferences and had always seemed anxious that his more voluble partner should act as spokesman, chanced to visit the set on some personal business that had nothing to do with Paul. But Paul spotted him and drew him into a conversation that began quietly enough; soon, however, the youth was the centre of a group with Paul baiting him gleefully. When Carey came up, hearing a commotion, she was in time to catch Paul at his familiar game of repeating before a larger audience something he had originally tried out before her. “Of course you writers don’t really like motion pictures— how could you? Pictures have broken the bottleneck of words that’s been your mainstay for centuries—they’ve freed the world from the thraldom of Gutenberg! In one silent shot I can tell more of a story than you could set down in a whole chapter!”
“Yes, but to create a character, Mr. Saffron—” Mitchell began in feeble protest.
“All right,” Paul snapped. “Create your character—write your pages of dialogue to make your audience feel the way you want about him. Let’s say he’s the heavy—the worst villain you can invent—liar, crook, murderer—Simon Legree and Dracula rolled into one—take fifty pages to put your readers in a fine lather of hate. Then call me in with my camera and I’ll undo it all in ten seconds. And you know how?”
Mitchell stammered that he didn’t know how, but Paul was going to tell him anyway. “All I need is a little lame dog dodging traffic at a crossroads. Your villain comes along, picks him up, carries him over, sets him down again. Ten seconds. Not a word spoken. And the audience loves the guy for ever. Do you doubt it?”
“No,” Mitchell admitted, amidst the laughter. Then remarkably he seemed to acquire stature, shaking off the nervousness that had made him till then a rather ineffectual figure. He went on, gathering power as from some unsuspected source: “I don’t doubt it at all, Mr. Saffron. It’s always quicker to raise a prejudice than plant an opinion. That’s part of what’s wrong with the world today. You talk about the thraldom of Gutenberg, but it was under that thraldom that men learned to THINK. Today thinking’s out of style, it’s highbrow or longhair or whatever smear you have for it; you’ve learned to bypass the brain and shoot for the blood pressure—all your stuff is really for the twelve-year-old!”
“ALL my stuff?” Paul managed to interrupt. “How much of it have you seen? Did you ever see Erste Freundschaft?”
“Yes. Made in Germany in 1931, wasn’t it? A work of genius. Done anything half as good since?”
Carey thought this was too impertinent, even from one who had had provocation; she was taking Paul’s arm to drag him away when he shook himself free and shouted, turning on Mitchell again: “I’ll answer you. The best thing I ever did in my life was in Paris in 1939—a picture based on the Book of Job—it was unfinished when the Germans invaded and I spent three years in a prison camp because I wouldn’t leave it—in the end it was mauled and butchered and ruined by others—my best work— a SUPREME work—and the goddamned French won’t even let me over there now to salvage the cuts! And when I fought and protested—from over here—what help do you suppose I got from writers? I contacted the big names—put my case to them—appealed to them as fellow-artists —fellow-ARTISTS, forsooth—”
“Paul,” Carey interposed, knowing from experience that ‘forsooth’ was always a danger-word in his vocabulary. “Paul, don’t you think… the scene’s ready… everybody’s waiting… Mr. Mitchell, let Paul tell you about it later…”
Paul never did; he avoided Mitchell from then on, but when later in the day, still brooding over the incident, he had to talk to Randolph he took occasion to ask abruptly: “By the way, that fellow Mitchell… who the devil IS he? Is he ANYBODY? SOMEBODY?”
“Mitchell? You mean the writer? Why, no, he’s—he’s just a writer. Reminds me, his option comes up next week. Think we ought to let him go?”
Paul was about to take a clinching revenge when his mind somersaulted to the nobler battlefield just in time. He answered insolently: “Sure, it might be the making of him. He’s one of the few intelligent people I’ve met out here.”
“I think we’ll keep him,” Randolph replied coldly.
* * * * *
But there was another incident that really caused most trouble of all. It concerned an extra scene that Paul flatly refused to have, even though it was he who had first suggested it. The sequence called for a German agent in New York to convey news of wartime ship sailings to offshore submarines (just another item in the bag of tricks that had made Paul dislike the whole story when he had read the original script); and Paul had been seized with his own special idea late in the afternoon of the day before the scheduled shooting. As the scene was written, a sinister-looking person worked a radio transmitting set on what appeared to be a waterfront roof-top; but Paul’s inspiration was that the German agent should send signals by having secret operatives among the janitors of a skyscraper, so that the apparently random arrangement of lighted windows after office hours could spell out messages in code. The notion intoxicated Paul as he improvised it quite sensationally on the set—“high columns of illuminated print in celestial newspapers” was his description of the New York skyline at dusk; and as usual he managed to communicate a rare excitement to others, so that Greg was soon in Randolph’s office pleading for the somewhat radical and expensive last-minute change. But Randolph, on this occasion, needed no persuading. For the first time he displayed full approval of something that had emanated from Paul’s brain, and by morning his approval had soared to enthusiasm. Unfortunately by that time also Paul had begun to discover flaws in his own idea. Surely enemy submarines could not approach near enough to see the high buildings, and wouldn’t it be fantastically difficult to plant a special set of janitor spies in one of them? These and other objections Randolph stoutly discounted, and the argument that ensued was an ironic reversal of the usual.
“But it was your own idea,” Randolph was driven to exclaim, in utmost bafflement.
“That gives me a special right to throw it out,” Paul retorted. The wrangle wasted an entire morning (and therefore several thousand of Majestic’s dollars), and in the end the producer’s only comfort was that he could probably use the skyscraper idea in some other picture. Which he did, in due course, and it is fair to add that nobody found much amiss with it.
* * * * *
Since the scenes had not been shot in consecutive order, it seemed that the whole job ended suddenly, almost unexpectedly. One day the scene being done was the last, and there followed a party on the stage during which Paul could think of nothing but the impending battle about cutting. This lasted for a week, and after the dust had settled it looked as if he had got rather more than half of everything he wanted. But from his attitude one would have thought him abjectly defeated. He sulked and gloomed and then acquired one of those migraine headaches. There was no doubt of its reality. In the small office which had been assigned him Carey found him slumped in a swivel chair, grey-pale with bloodshot eyes and icy hands. She called a doctor over his vivid protests; whereupon he diagnosed his own case as if he were dictating a new scene. The doctor, somewhat intimidated, agreed that probably it WAS a migraine headache. He added, however, that a check-up might be a good thing, since Paul looked as if he had high blood pressure too. Paul agreed to call at the doctor’s office the next day, and then, as soon as he had gone, assured Carey he had no intention of doing any such thing. “I’m all right,” he sa
id, “if only those bastards would let me do my job without interfering.”
Carey then broke down. She saw this man, grey and worn and looking older than she had ever known him; she saw in him something worth everything and worth nothing, something singularly great and appallingly little and, in the deepest sense of all, pathetically helpless. She cried: “Oh, Paul, Paul, what can I do with you? Can’t you help yourself? Darling, is there no chance for you at all?”
“A couple of old crocks,” he muttered whimsically, touching her hand. “Isn’t that what you said we were? But we aren’t. You’re young, and I… well, I’ve still got that picture about children to do. You know my idea for it? The camera itself will be a child. And as the picture develops and the child grows up…”
But somebody came in just then with a message from Randolph, and afterwards, when she tried to get him back to the subject, he would only shake his head mysteriously. “Ah, I said enough. Wait till I do the thing. I will—one day.”
But the mere reminder of it seemed to have cured his headache; and a little later, apparently rejuvenated, he was ready for a final battle with Randolph.
This was about billing. He wanted Carey’s name to be given prominence equal to Greg’s, an absurd demand—first, because matters of that kind were none of his business, and second, because the Wilson name at the box-office meant so much more than hers. To her surprise Greg backed him on the issue, and she ascribed this at first to a charming though mistaken chivalry; but later she wondered if it were merely an extreme example of Paul’s influence over Greg. Randolph, who clearly considered her the only one with any sense, detained her afterwards for a few compliments. “You’ve been very co-operative, Carey. I do want to thank you and to say I hope we’ll be working together again.” He could not commit the studio, of course; it all depended on how Morning Journey turned out; but there was no harm in paving the way.
She was non-committal also in her reply.
He went on: “As for Greg, I don’t think I fully understand him these days. He used to FIGHT for top billing. What’s the matter with him… is he in love with that guy?”
Carey smiled. “Paul’s apt to do that to people.”
“To MEN?”
“Sometimes. You’re all for him or else you’re all against him.”
“Well, I’m neither,” Randolph said, untruthfully. “And that applies to you too, I should think.”
“I KNOW him,” she answered, with scorn or pride, whichever he decided it was.
* * * * *
After the last day’s shooting there came the anti-climax to which there was no parallel in the theatre, where rehearsals mount in a crescendo of tension, culminating in opening night and followed by either level activity or quick extinction. But movie-making offers a unique period of waiting while all the sub-assembly lines catch up—printing, distribution, publicity; and the nearest to opening night excitement that can happen at all is the sneak preview. Nearest, but still distant.
One rainy evening Carey drove out with Paul, Randolph, Greg, and several high personages from various studio departments—a convoy of limousines traversing interminable boulevards to converge eventually on a rather ordinary cinema in what seemed a less than ordinary suburb. Unannounced and unheralded, Morning Journey was there to be submitted to the verdict of an audience that had come to see something else. The distinguished visitors to whom it all mattered so much sat in a roped-off row at the back of the theatre, just behind the folks to whom it all mattered so little. There was the end of another picture to be endured, then a Mickey Mouse cartoon and a newsreel; finally, without any fanfare, Morning Journey began. The audience was small because of the weather, and Carey, unused to half-empty theatres, thought there was only tepid enthusiasm, but she was aware that the picture itself bored her by now, and that the popcorn noises were standard procedure and did not in any way reflect either the patrons’ visual enjoyment or lack of it. She was next to Paul, who kept cursing the music, which had been composed and arranged without his approval. Owing to his unfortunate tiff with the musicians this was actually the first time he had heard most of it, and he disliked it intensely.
There was, however, some scattered applause at the end of the picture, which was also the end of the show. Greg had left a minute before the curtain, anxious to reach the manager’s office before anyone spotted him for autographs; the others, unlikely to be so bothered, stayed in their seats while the audience filtered out. Then they joined Greg in the tiny office, waiting for the cards on which each patron had been invited to say whether he thought Morning Journey was Excellent, Good, or only Fair. There was also a space for ‘Remarks’. (The possibility that any Majestic picture might be downright Bad had been ignored.) About two hundred cards, duly filled in and collected by the ushers, were presently handed to Randolph by the theatre manager, a hard-bitten and presumably unprejudiced fellow who said he had liked the picture himself and thought his people had liked it too, but he couldn’t be sure—they were a tough bunch. Carey wondered why Randolph had chosen a tough bunch. Anyhow, the visitors were soon back in the cars, swishing through the endless unknown streets and across flooded intersections. Nobody talked much and everyone was glad to be dropped at his front door. “We’ll meet again tomorrow,” Randolph announced. Carey also wondered why he didn’t look at the cards during the drive; she decided he was enjoying peculiar power in a peculiar way.
It was still raining in the morning when the same group reassembled in Randolph’s office, the cards having by this time been sorted and placed in three heaps on his huge glass-topped desk. His pleasure in delaying the outcome had become definitely sadistic; one heap was much larger than the others, but his encircling arms as he leaned forward prevented closer observation. Paul was the only one who, not having come to pray, was able to scoff. “Our tribute to democracy,” he muttered, staring at the cards as at the trappings of some dubious religion. “He must have liked them because He made so many of them. A non sequitur if ever there was one. What about fleas, hookworms, boll-weevils?” Nobody answered.
At last Randolph spoke, smiling rather coldly as he referred to figures on his desk. “This is what you’re all waiting for, no doubt. Out of 215 cards we have 133 Excellents and 61 Goods. I think we can regard that as satisfactory —as far as it goes. Of course we can’t predict what the critics will say, or the big exhibitors… Would anyone like a whisky and soda so early in the morning?”
Put this way, the invitation drew no affirmative except from Paul, who said: “Sure. Why not?” So Randolph was forced to go to the small refrigerator concealed within an imitation bookcase whose false-fronted books were sets of Dickens and Thackeray. Everybody all at once began to smile and chatter —again except Paul, who glowered over his cigar as he watched Randolph’s reluctant hospitality.
Nobody looked at the cards, save at a few that had been put aside on account of some obscenity. These Randolph handed round for laughs. There were always two or three out of every batch. But here yet again Paul was the exception. He did not laugh. Indeed, he was rather prim about certain things —much more so than Carey, who could enjoy most jokes that most people found amusing.
* * * * *
After the sneak preview Randolph decided to shorten the picture by ten minutes’ playing time to suit the requirements of double-feature exhibitors. Paul protested, but not so energetically as might have been expected; he was going through his own anti-climactic period—the mood in which, after a job was done, he found it hard to take continued interest in it. Already, from certain hints he let fall, his mind was beginning to revolve on other ideas. It was during this period also that Carey gained an impression that Randolph would not be terribly disappointed if the picture did not do too well. Not, of course, that he would sabotage his own product, but there seemed a lack of zeal in his proddings of the publicity department—a lack which must certainly have communicated itself. The fact was, he disliked Paul so much that he could take real pleasure from the prospect of his d
ownfall, while at the same time he had an alibi for himself whatever happened, since it was on record that he had objected to the contract that had forced Paul into the company’s employment. And at the back of his mind there grew intoxicatingly the notion of a future picture with Carey in it which he himself would direct. His real hope was that Morning Journey would turn out to be one of those half-and-half failure-successes in which he could fix praise and blame just where he wanted each.
Carey could not enjoy her leisure during those further weeks of waiting. Unlike Paul, she was unable to generate new ideas to take the place of old ones, and the absence of daily work only made more room for her own private worries. She spoke of these to no one, not only because they were so intimate, but because something centrally sane in her makeup told her continually that she deserved no sympathy; by so many reckonings she was fortunate. Surely there could be no doubt of it when she looked back on her life. Yet she felt, at times, acutely unlucky as well as unhappy. She did not know what she wanted to do next, or where she wanted to go, and the fact that there were choices made the future harder to contemplate. Perhaps she would stay where she was till the fate of the picture was decided, then take the trip she had vaguely promised herself.