Marjorie Morningstar (52 page)

Marjorie felt the gooseflesh rise as he sang it. The song was built on the notion
of the moon seen as a wistful old bachelor peering down at the lovers on the street,
following them to their apartment, staring in at the bedroom window, envying them
their joy. The suggestiveness of the lyric was masked by the last touch, the wedding
ring of the girl glittering in the moonlight, as she pulled down the shade to shut
out lonely Old Moon Face.

She threw her arms around Noel’s neck. “Bless you, it is a hit.”

“I know it is,” Noel said. “I’m dickering for a villa on the Riviera. The melody’s
really got something, hasn’t it?”

He began to play it again. The door to the outer office opened and Sam Rothmore came
in, complete as Marjorie had pictured him to the cigar in his teeth. His clothes were
dark, correct, elegant, his pink wrinkled hands were manicured, and there was a touch
of majesty in his bearing despite the stoop, or perhaps because of it. “What’s all
the music-making?” he said in the throaty voice that Noel had caricatured so well.

Noel jumped up. “Sam, the envelope’s been delivered. Assemblyman Morton’s secretary
was—”

Rothmore nodded. “I talked to Morton on the phone an hour ago. Thanks.” He was looking
at Marjorie. “Hello, I’m Rothmore. And you’re Marjorie Morgenstern, and you’re a friend
of this low-life.”

“I hope I’m not intruding—”

“Not a bit. You’re a breath of fresh air in the old factory. Well, how’d you like
the plane ride?”

“Marvelous. I just wanted to go on flying forever.”

His glance flickered ironically to Noel, and back to her, and she noticed the terrible
blue shadows under his eyes. “Well, go ahead, Noel, finish what you were playing.”

“It’s a new song he just wrote,” Marjorie said. “I think it’s superb.”

“Oh, you wrote a new song? Interesting. Have you read any movie properties lately?”

Noel said, in a manner curiously mingling fear and arrogance, “Sam, I turned in three
reports before I left. Your secretary has them, and I told you—”

“I read your reports.”

“Oh. Are they all right?”

“Let’s hear your song.” He sat heavily in an armchair and looked at Noel. “Well, play
the song.”

“Are you really interested?” Noel stood awkwardly beside the piano stool.

“I like to know all about my staff’s talents. Go ahead. What’s the title?”

Noel told him. Rothmore nodded slowly, leaning on an elbow in the armchair. Noel played
and his employer sat slumped, holding the cigar, his eyes on the wall. Marjorie noticed
that he breathed through his mouth in shallow little gulps. When the song was over,
he said after a moment, “It’s all right.”

“I think it’ll be a hit. A hell of a hit,” Noel said.

“So do I,” Marjorie said.

Rothmore sighed. “What got you started writing songs again? Aren’t we keeping you
busy?”

“Sam, the thing just popped into my head and I wrote it out. At five this morning,
if you want to know. On my own time.”

Rothmore glanced at his wristwatch. “I guess I’ll have a scotch and soda. Usually
it makes me sleepy in the daytime, but I had too much coffee for lunch.” He started
to get up, but Noel sprang to the bar. “I’ll get it, Sam.” Rothmore sank back in his
chair, saying, “Make drinks for everybody.” He turned to Marjorie. “See? That’s what
we do to ourselves. We keep tightening up our nerves with tobacco and coffee, then
loosening them with alcohol. We do it all our lives. Then we blame God when we die
young.”

“I’d rather die ten years younger and smoke and drink all I please,” Noel said, clinking
glass and ice.

“You’re talking through your hat. Wait till you’re clipping the last few coupons like
me.”

“I’m glad you like
Old Moon Face
, Sam.”

Rothmore shrugged. “It’s a good song. So what?”

“So lots and lots of money,” Noel said. “Acres of cash.”

“Grow up,” Rothmore said. “How much money does a hit song make, five thousand dollars?
Ten is a lot.”

“Why, some of them make a hundred thousand.”

Rothmore screwed up his face and thrust the cigar in his teeth, and Marjorie could
hardly keep herself from laughing, he so exactly resembled Noel’s imitation of him.
“What are you talking about, the freaks?
Bananas
and
Silver Threads
? Are you figuring on writing a freak? Why don’t you just buy yourself a sweepstakes
ticket? It’s less work, and a much surer thing. What did you make on
It’s Raining Kisses
? Eighty-five hundred?”

Noel narrowed his eyes at Rothmore, handing him a drink. “To a hair. Been checking
with my publisher?”

“I know the business, a little bit. Once I owned a piece of a publishing house. Songwriting’s
for kids. Set aside your handful of geniuses, your Gershwins, Porters, Berlins, Rodgers,
and there’s nothing in it. Get yourself a small producer’s job and you can hire and
fire songwriters, good ones, all day like messenger boys.”

“What does that prove? A creative man doesn’t care which chairwarmer is hiring or
firing him,” Noel said. “It’s just the stupid bookkeeping of his career, which any
fool can do.”

“That sounds good,” Rothmore said, “except that all the songwriters out there are
breaking their necks, trying to warm chairs and do some stupid bookkeeping. Scribbling
isn’t all there is to creation. That’s lesson number one of this business. Though
I can see that you choke over it.” Rothmore pushed himself painfully out of his chair.
“Well, we’re boring Marjorie.”

“No, no,” the girl said, curled on the couch, watching the two men.

Rothmore’s look, resting on her, became kindly. He drank off his highball. “Let me
take both of you to dinner tonight.”

Noel glanced at Marjorie, who said, “Don’t we have tickets for a show?”

“Never mind tickets,” Rothmore said. “If you have any, change them for another night.”

Noel said to the girl, “You don’t argue with Sam. Thanks, Sam, it’ll be grand.”

Rothmore walked slowly out, leaving behind a gray haze of rich-smelling cigar smoke.

She knew from the gossip columns that it was the most expensive restaurant in New
York. The furnishings were old-fashioned, even dowdy, but the food was unbelievable,
and the wines better than any Noel had ever ordered. It was food such as Marjorie
had read about in French novels; she had never believed that such marvels of the cooking
art really existed. The caviar, the soup, the steaks, were all sauced and seasoned
to a creamy perfection of taste that was almost humiliating; she felt a bit like a
barbarian encountering civilization. So numbed was she by the pleasant assault on
her senses that she began following the argument between Noel and Rothmore only when
their voices rose. Noel apparently wanted the company to buy an obscure Italian novel,
twenty years old, which could be had for fifteen hundred dollars. Rothmore said it
wasn’t worth fifteen cents to the company. “It’s for Europeans. It’s adultery among
the poor, and the foreign poor at that, and she dies. What do you want to do, empty
the theatres?”

Noel said, “You assume the American people are too dumb to recognize a good thing.
It’s an anti-democratic notion, did you ever stop to think of that? They’re not too
dumb to elect the right president. Or so we all believe.”

“Why, you fool, do you think we opened our doors yesterday? We don’t have to assume
a damn thing. We
know
. Will you ever get it through your head that a movie house is a candy store? The
people are not dumb at all. They’re a hell of a lot too smart for the likes of you.
You try to sell them bread and spinach in your candy store, and they’ll go to the
candy store around the corner. You get the reputation for being a stupid bastard,
and after a while your store closes. Look, Noel, the Europeans keep making the kind
of pictures you like. In their own countries, the people line up for our pictures,
and their art plays to half-empty houses. The people have decided what movies should
be, not us. That’s the democracy you’re talking about. We’ll make anything they want.
You can’t ram what you like down their throats. You’re not in Russia.”

“You’re just hiding behind a false analogy,” Noel said. “A movie house isn’t a candy
store at all, it’s more like a library. You’ve filled the library with pap and prurience,
catering to the lowest instincts of the people, instead of meeting your cultural responsibility—”

“Cultural responsibility.” Rothmore buried his head in his hands. “Oh God.” He looked
at Marjorie. “Don’t give ’em what they want. Hell, no. They got low instincts. Give
’em what’s good for them—what
you
think is good for them. That’s your red-hot democrat talking. Isn’t that the whole
damned communist idea, Noel? Stick a gun in their ribs, and make ’em eat strawberries
and cream?”

“Oh, sure, see my whiskers and my bomb? The old story, epithets when you have no arguments.”

“No arguments?” Rothmore turned to Marjorie. “I’m glad I had no children. If I’d had
a son, he’d have turned out like this specimen. That’s all the colleges seem to be
producing these days, either rah-rah morons or this kind of souped-up snob who despises
the American people—”

“A beautiful instance,” Noel said, “of the abusive non sequitur. If you don’t like
Paramount movies, you’re a traitor to your country.”

“All right, do you think the American people are a lot of goddamn fools, Noel, or
don’t you? And try to be honest for a change instead of cute. Maybe it’s important.”

Noel paused, his face more serious than usual, then said slowly, “The answer is yes,
but no bigger fools than any other people. God made humanity with an average IQ of
100, Sam, and you’ll admit that’s about twenty points too low—”

“What the hell do you know about God, and what the hell is an IQ?” Rothmore rasped.
“Do you think an IQ is something real, like a nose? It’s a goddamn number dreamed
up by goddamn psychologists, and all it proves is that farmers aren’t as smart as
psychologists. If the farmers had enough time to waste to make up an IQ system, the
psychologists would all come out morons and the farmers geniuses. Because they’d give
a big credit for being able to grab a cow’s teat right, and nothing at all for counting
the number of triangles in some goddamn meaningless diagram.”

“You’re an anti-intellectual from way back, Sam, that’s no news.”

Rothmore turned belligerently to Marjorie. “And I’m the epithet man! Marjorie, who’s
right?”

“Oh, Lord, leave me out of it. This rice pudding is sublime, Mr. Rothmore. I’ve never
tasted anything so good.”

“Put down the spoon and talk. Let’s see what kind of girl he’s got.”

“Well”—she glanced sidelong at Noel—”I’ve always thought the way Noel does about—I
mean, I prefer the foreign movies, to be honest, Mr. Rothmore. But I must say you
put things in a little different light. If the people—after all, maybe they’ve decided
that they want heavy stuff in books, and light stuff on movie screens—candy, as you
put it. That’s what I never thought of.” She said to Noel, who was regarding her very
sourly, “Well, it’s true, isn’t it? Candy isn’t good for you, and all that, but people
eat tons of it, they like it. He says the Europeans keep making serious movies, and
their own people keep going for the American candy. Maybe that means the movie as
an art form is really candy making. That’s what never occurred to me before.”

Rothmore beamed on her, taking small gulps of air. “Bless your little heart. You at
least listen to the old bastard.” He said to Noel, “She’s one in a thousand. Marry
her.”

Noel said, “Why, because she’s taken in by a trivial sophistry that you don’t even
believe yourself? Do you call that a triumph? She’s twenty-one years old.”

“She’s smarter than you are, my boy.” Rothmore chuckled, deep in his chest. “If you
only knew.” With a gloating grin, he lit a cigar.

“Look, why don’t you fire me, Sam? I completely disagree with you on practically everything
that matters. I’ll go on recommending the
Smoke over Etna
kind of book till hell freezes over, because I believe in it, and nothing you say—”

Rothmore jabbed him in the chest with two fingers. “Now listen to me, junior. I was
trying to talk the front office into
Smoke over Etna
books when you were wetting your diapers. There’s room for both kinds of pictures,
that’s the whole truth of this matter. If you keep the budget low, and spot your releases
in the right big-city spots, you can come out all right on a small-audience movie,
and we’ve done it, and we do it. But that’s a very small part of our business in life.”
He pounded the table. “
We’ve got to supply the neighborhood houses and small towns with three hundred movies
a year, will you ever grasp that
? That’s our job. What country ever produced three hundred good books a year, or three
hundred good plays, or three hundred good
anything
? God damn it, your job as a story editor is to find grist for the mill, usable entertainment,
usable trash, if you want to be sniffy about it! Do I need you to tell me that
Smoke over Etna
is a good book? Don’t you think I can read? When you grasp this elementary point,
maybe you can start fitting into the organization. Maybe you’ll wind up producing
art pictures. What the hell do I care what you do? But you’ve got to understand what
business you’re in first.”

Noel answered acidly, “Getting me into this business was your idea, Sam, not mine,
and you still have to prove it was a good one. You’re not going to make me over in
your image. If I’m useful to you on my own terms, that’s a different matter.”

Rothmore said to Marjorie, “D’you see? This is it. You run into some kind of neurotic
stone wall with this boy at a certain point. All his intellect blanks out, and you—”

“Naturally, disagreeing with you constitutes a neurosis,” Noel said.

“Why do you bother with him?” Marjorie said. “I’m in love with him. I’m stuck with
him.”