A Touch of Stardust (35 page)

“How the hell do you do that?”

Trying not to speak too fast, Julie laid out her idea. She would open with a scene of a pompous writer announcing to his fiancée that he cannot marry her—he can reach higher as soon as he sells the weighty drama he is about to present to a top publisher. She cries; he pretends to care. In truth, he has his eye on the publisher’s daughter. The meeting begins. He starts to outline the plot of his
book, describing it in dramatic terms—and this fades into the movie itself.

“The audience already knows he’s delusional about what he’s written,” she said. “They’re primed to laugh; that’s what makes this work.”

What unspools on the screen is pure clumsy farce. A few cuts—easily done with scissors—break in, in which the incredulous publisher asks the clueless author, You are serious about this?—then back to the absurdity of the original movie.

Finally, the epilogue. The author, after being laughed out of the boardroom, gets on the phone, trying to win back his fiancée. But she cheerily turns him down, announcing she is eloping with the publisher.

“That’s ridiculous,” Goldman growled.

“Of course it is,” she said. “It’s supposed to be. Everybody ends up looking like they’re in on the joke. And if it’s done right, it can save the studio thousands of dollars.”

“It’s a stupid idea.”

“Even if it rescued Mr. Mayer’s niece’s reputation from the trash barrel?” Don’t shrivel, she told herself. It’s dumb, it’s stupid, but with some tweaking it could work.

He yawned, stretching back, tipping his chair precariously. “Honey, this isn’t my kind of movie. Look, you’ve got a few more weeks—get something going soon or you’ll be out of luck. A piece of advice? This kind of fanciful stuff will get laughed out of the only boardroom that matters, and that’s the MGM boardroom.” He rocked back and forth, clearly pleased with himself.

Julie collected the pages, cheeks flushed. What should she do now? She could see it in her head, just how this would work. It meant finding exactly the right tone to get a seamless blend between the original movie and her material, but she was sure it could be done. And cheaply.

“I’ll think about what you’ve said,” she managed, moving toward the door.

“Don’t get too downcast. My offer of an evening watching some good movies is still open,” he said cheerily.

She stopped, took another deep breath, and asked. “Where
is
Sammy?”

“Look, he’s an old dog, and you probably won’t be around to walk him much longer.”

“You put him in a kennel?”

“Something like that.”

She exited, slamming the door. He might think he had the final word, but not after that.

Frances Marion’s receptionist looked up with a puzzled frown. “Do you have an appointment?” she asked a bit distantly.

“No, I don’t, but I would like to see Miss Marion for a few minutes if that is possible.” She was slightly breathless, swallowing back surges of panic and then frustration. Promising to talk quickly was almost an apology, she realized that now, a way of saying: This is not terribly important; I’ll tell you about it as fast as I can, so you can move on to weightier things.

“She’s leaving for the East Coast in a few hours.” The receptionist was now speaking in a slightly consoling tone, a more polite way of being dismissive.

“Please, I have to see her,” Julie said.

The door to the office behind the secretary’s desk opened. Frances Marion stood there, not looking surprised to see Julie. “I heard your voice,” she said. “Come on in; I have a few moments. You got here faster than I expected.”

“You were expecting me?” Julie asked, as she walked in. Marion closed the door behind her.

“The telephone is faster than your feet,” the older woman said, smiling slightly. “Okay, Julie—Goldman says you aren’t going to make the grade as a writer working for him. So tell me about this wacky idea he was chortling over.” Marion settled into her chair, folding her hands together on her desk, and waited.

Julie took a deep breath. “It’s about saving
Madhouse Nightmare
,” she began.

Marion chuckled. “God, that was terrible. L.B. was livid. Give me the details and show me the script. I tried this ploy once myself—not as easy to do with sound.” She reached for the script. Julie handed it over silently.

Marion read, then looked at Julie thoughtfully. “Your writing is good.” She tapped on the desk with one properly polished fingernail; for a few seconds, that was the only sound in the room.

Then Marion stood up, glancing at her watch. “Well, you’re still on the payroll,” she said. She gathered together the pages of Julie’s script, slipped a rubber band around it, and held it up inquiringly. “Mind if I keep this, show it to a couple of people?”

“No, of course not.”

“I’ll send it around before I leave. In the meantime, I don’t think you have to bother showing up at the Writers’ Building. Better to avoid Goldman. We’ll talk when I get back.”

Marion put a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t despair. Remember, we deal in clichés in this town. It’s always darkest before the dawn. Isn’t that comforting?”

Julie tried to smile and turned to leave. She hesitated at the receptionist’s desk. “Could I possibly use your phone?” she asked.

“Alloooo? Nobody home,” came a high-pitched voice over the wire.

“Carole, it’s me; don’t hang up.”

A cautious silence. “Julie?”

“Yes, you don’t have to pretend to be the maid.”

Carole giggled. “I’m getting pretty good at it, aren’t I?”

“Yes, but you’re even better at something else.”

“What’s that?”

Julie took a deep breath. “Adopting animals. Dogs—”

“Let me guess, you’ve found one that needs a home.”

“Yes, his name is Sammy.”

“Young? Old? Does he shed or bite?”

“He doesn’t bite. But he is old. Somewhat.”

Carole sighed. “This is some ancient, mangy mongrel, right?”

She couldn’t lie to Carole. “Yes,” she said, “but he’s a very nice dog.”

“Okay, hon, bring him up. I’ll be gone, but Clark is here.”

“Thank you.” Julie hung up the phone, hoping she wasn’t too late.

The Culver City Animal Shelter—when she finally found it—was a decrepit building in back of a gas station. As she walked in, the smell and the noise of what sounded like dozens of barking dogs almost made her step back.

“Lady, you’re too late today. We already did our rounds of picking up strays. We can come by tomorrow, but no sooner,” said a wiry attendant with a missing front tooth. He squinted, looking her over, wiping his hands on a stained apron.

“How long do you keep a dog?” she said.

He laughed. “Do you know how many of those critters wander the streets these days? Twenty-four hours, max. Sometimes a little more, if they look cared for. Then it’s the gas.” He pointed to a shed sheathed in metal to the right of the front door.

“I’m looking for a dog,” she said. “He—got lost.”

“Breed?”

“I think a mix. Some golden retriever, I think, but he’s black. Maybe a little collie.”

“Okay, a mutt. Puppy?”

“No.” The sight of Sammy moving slowly, his bones clearly aching, flashed through her mind. “He’s actually fairly old.”

The attendant shrugged. “Take a look at the cages, see if you see ’im.”

Julie walked to the end of the hall and into a long narrow room with metal cages stacked halfway to the ceiling. There was a dog in each one, some barking and pressing frantically against the bars, others lying curled in a still heap.

She felt unnerved as she walked farther down the narrow aisle. If these animals could talk, she knew what they would be begging for.

“Sammy?” she yelled. “Sammy dog?” The clamor was harrowing.

Then, at the very end of the aisle, she saw him. Probably the oldest, droopiest dog of them all. Sammy wasn’t barking, just watching her come his way. She reached a hand into his cage; he licked it.

“This is my dog,” she said to the attendant.

“Good timing, lady. He was due to be put down tonight.”

She exhaled a sigh of relief. Surely this particular mangy old dog, lucky enough to escape Abe Goldman’s tender mercies, would be a welcome addition to Carole’s menagerie.

Julie hadn’t counted on Clark’s reaction.

“
Another
one?” he said doubtfully, as she walked into the house with a clearly doddering Sammy by her side. Clark looked bleary-eyed, and she saw by his chair a stack of typewritten notes, obviously from Selznick, probably filled with another manic round of acting directives. He was wearing a torn tee shirt and a baggy pair of blue jeans, and sneezing, obviously fighting back a cold.

“He’s a gentle dog,” Julie said quickly. She pushed Sammy closer, hoping he would win Clark over by licking his hand.

“She’ll love him,” Clark said with resignation. “But we sure have a lot of animals around here.”

“She’s got a generous heart,” Julie ventured.

“Yeah, that’s for sure,” he said. He reached down and stroked the back of Sammy’s neck; the dog gazed up at him with a soulful expression.

“Okay, old guy,” he said. “As long as you know I’m the primary beneficiary of that.” He straightened, looking up at Julie. “Oh hell, one more animal isn’t going to make a big difference.”

Maybe it was an expression of relief, but Sammy promptly let go and peed on the floor.

Andy laughed when she told him the story. “So what happened?” he said.

“Well, Clark wasn’t fazed. Then Carole came in while we were cleaning up, took one look at this doddering old creature, saw the pleading look in his eyes, and immediately rushed to give Sammy a hug and a bowl of milk—which the cat took over immediately.”

“Good for you; you saved the dog.”

“Lucky for you I didn’t bring him here first,” she said with a small grin.

But she was too anxious to savor that triumph for long. Three more days of her six-week tryout gone. Julie couldn’t get that thought out of her head as she stood in Andy’s kitchen, scrubbing potatoes to bake for dinner, reminding herself to prick them so they wouldn’t explode in the oven. That had happened a few weeks ago. And even though Andy laughed at the time, it was embarrassing.