Stars Screaming (14 page)

“
Pledging . . .
"
Pledged to Paramount

Pledging My Love,
an original screenplay by Raymond Burk
,
has been purchased by Paramount Pictures. Described by VP Jerome Sanford as a
"
mythic psychological thriller
," Pledging
will be produced and directed by Jon Warren beginning in the spring of 1971. Jack Rose will executive produce.

On the same day that Paramount announced the sale of his screenplay, Burk recognized Loretta Egan’s blue Volvo parked on
Balboa Avenue next to the park. She was sitting, reading a magazine, on a blanket spread out on the grass near a large brick barbecue.

Louie jumped out of the car and ran across the grass field, leaving Burk behind to carry the Big Wheel over to the picnic benches, where he remained seated for a full five minutes before Loretta looked up from her magazine. He waved hello, but she didn’t wave back or speak, merely stared at him as if she were trying to place his face.

“Ray Burk,” he finally said.

“Yes, I remember,” she said, then looked back at her magazine. “Columbia canceled my movie. Eastwood pulled out. He’s gonna make
Dirty Harry
over at Warner’s with Don Siegel.”

Burk lit a cigarette and waited a respectful few seconds before he spoke. “That’s really a bummer. I’m sorry.”

“I found out on Friday. They were already building sets. I was that close, Ray. That fucking close.”

Burk nodded sympathetically, while he puffed on his cigarette without inhaling. Nearby, another woman in a white bikini was lying on the grass with her face up to the sun. A pair of dark glasses and an open magazine rested on her lap.

Turning back to Loretta, Burk said, “Maybe if I made you dinner it would cheer you up.”

Loretta laughed, but her face was filled with sadness. “Maybe,” she said, “but I seriously doubt it.”

Burk shrugged and dropped his cigarette on the grass, stepping on it. “I think it’s worth a try.”

Loretta followed Burk back to his house. After they shared a beer and listened to side one of
Blue
, the latest album by Joni Mitchell. Loretta agreed to stay with Louie while Burk went out for groceries. He bought a bottle of Chianti, a three-pound Chateaubriand, two heads of romaine lettuce, and all the ingredients to make a Caesar salad from scratch. By the time he got home, it was dark and he found Loretta and Louie sprawled on the living room rug, playing Monopoly.

“I used to play games with my mom,” Louie told Loretta, while Burk was standing outside on the patio, lighting the barbecue. “But we could never finish, because she would always drink too much and forget what she was doing.”

Loretta rolled the dice and landed on Pennsylvania Avenue, a property owned by Louie that was already decorated with four bright-red
houses. “You owe me four hundred dollars,” Louie said, holding his hand out, palm up.

Loretta slowly counted out three gold hundreds and two blue fifties. “Here you go, Mr. Moneybags. Spend it wisely,” she said. She caught Burk smiling at her through the sliding glass doors. “And save some for your dad.”

“My dad doesn’t need any money. He’s gonna be rich.”

“Oh? He is?”

Louie nodded his head; then he rolled the dice and advanced to a railroad that he already owned. “They’re going to make his movie,” he said, as he pushed the dice across the board. “Your turn.”

Loretta heard a cabinet in the kitchen open and close. A moment later Burk came into the living room holding the bottle of red wine and two long-stemmed glasses.

“How come you didn’t tell me?” Loretta said, glancing at Burk after she passed
GO
and collected two hundred dollars from the bank.

“Tell you what?”

“About your movie. Louie said you got a green light.”

Burk stood quietly for a moment. Then he said, “It was in today’s
Variety.
I thought you saw it.”

“I don’t read the trades,” Loretta said, accepting the glass of wine Burk was holding out. “They depress me and make me jealous.”

“Are you jealous of me?”

Loretta paused to take a sip of wine and a drag off the cigarette burning in the ashtray by her elbow. “Of course I am,” she said mildly, “but I’ll get over it.”

On Louie’s next roll he was told to pick a card that sent him directly to jail. “Goody! I get to go to jail,” he said, giggling happily. “Now I can visit with my mom.”

Burk was still standing above them, and Loretta looked up and whispered, “He misses her terribly.”

“Yeah, I know he does,” Burk said, his voice choking up. He turned back toward the kitchen. “I’m gonna go put on the steak.”

After they were done eating, Burk cleared the table and washed the dishes while Loretta and Louie continued their game. In less than an hour Loretta was bankrupt.

“That was fun,” Louie said, giving Loretta a hug. “You’re a good loser. A lot better than my dad.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s he do?”

“He says bad words.”

“Really?”

“Sometimes. Not all the time.”

“Does he ever let you win?”

“Never,” Burk said from the kitchen. Then he told Louie to put on his pajamas and get ready for bed.

When Burk reappeared in the living room after reading Louie to sleep, all the lights were off and Loretta was lying on the couch with one hand propped behind her head and the other lightly stroking her thigh. After he switched on the stereo and adjusted the volume, Burk took a hit off the joint that she was now holding in the air above her head.

“You know what I want?” she said, shifting her body so Burk could stretch out next to her.

“No, what?”

“I want to screw your ears off,” she said, laughing, and she rolled on top of Burk and covered his face and neck with tiny kisses. “I want to celebrate your victory today, Mr. Hollywood.”

Burk remained silent and lay very still, his eyes straying around the room.

“Well? You’re not going to say anything?”

“I’m worried about Louie,” Burk said. “So I don’t think you should spend the night.”

Loretta, laughing without showing surprise, sat up quickly and pulled her sweater over her head, revealing small but perfectly formed breasts. “I don’t want to spend the night,” she said, in a voice that made it clear she was telling the truth. “I just want a good fuck. Do you think you can handle that, Ray?”

There was a long silence before he said, in a tone that was quiet and controlled, not wholly committed yet to the erection that tightened his pants, “Yes, I think I can handle that.”

On January 12, 1971, Sandra Burk pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter in Victorville Superior Court. She was given a two-year
sentence to be served at the California Women’s Prison in Frontera, a small rural community located twenty-five miles east of Los Angeles.

“She’ll be up there with the Manson chicks,” Gene told Burk when they spoke that evening.

“Wonderful.”

“Relax. She’ll be on the street in less than a year. When are you gonna see her?”

“She doesn’t want any visitors.”

“What about Louie? Does he know where she is?”

“I’m gonna tell him tonight.”

“Poor kid. How’s he doin’ otherwise?”

“Great.”

“Leaving LA was the right move, Ray.”

“I know. Berkeley’s cool. Timmy’s bookstore is doin’ great, too. He’s thinking of adding an art theater next door.”

“Say hello.”

“I will.”

“When are you coming down?”

“We start shooting in May.”

“I’ll see you then.”

“For sure.”

“Ray?”

“Yeah.”

“No more driving.”

Welcome to Hollywood II

After his nephew left the hotel, Daniel Schimmel sat silently for several moments, frowning as his eyes roved uneasily around his office. On the wall beside the window was a poster from the old Omaha Orpheum Theatre. The poster, faded yellow and curling at the edges, announced the opening of a vaudeville show on August 27, 1928—the very last to play the Orpheum, as it turned out.

Headlining the revue was songstress Lenora St. Folette, and preceding her were Elmer Freedom and His Performing Dachshund, Celia and Her Doves, acrobats the Campos Brothers, and Sad Sack the Clown; listed at the very bottom of the poster in the smallest type was the comedy team of Schimmel and Rheingold.

Following his lunch in the downstairs dining room, Daniel Schimmel came back to his office and dialed Max Rheingold’s number in Los Angeles. As he waited for Max to pick up, he sat back in his chair and lit a cigarette, reflecting on their shared past while he watched an occasional bird curve through the air outside his window. After the tenth ring he put the handset back in the cradle. Out-loud, in a voice without emotion, he said, “I tried to warn you, Max.
Que sera sera.
”

Seven

Monday: Ricky Meets Bobby and Burk Is Barred from the Set

Principal photography on
Pledging My Love
commenced at 8
A.M.,
Monday, May 17, 1971. Earlier that same morning, while Burk was sipping coffee and skimming the
Daily Variety
in his room at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Ricky Furlong was curled up on his daybed in the St. Francis Arms, staring numbly out his grime-coated window on the fourth floor.

Located three doors east of Western Avenue on Hollywood Boulevard, the St. Francis Arms was once a convenient oasis for many distinguished East Coast writers and actors who came to Hollywood for brief assignments at one of the many studios within walking distance. John Garfield came and went over the years, and so did John O’Hara and F. Scott Fitzgerald, before they gravitated west to the Garden of Allah apartments on the Sunset Strip. But that was back in the thirties and forties. Since then the St. Francis had deteriorated along with the neighborhood, and today the guests were a miserable collection of bums and barflies—grief-struck men and women with watery eyes and oily faces that were permanently flushed.

When the sky was light, Ricky left the hotel and walked down to Tiny Naylor’s, the twenty-four-hour diner on the northeast corner of La Brea and Sunset. And he—like Burk—was reading a copy of the
Daily Variety
, but Friday’s edition, which included a chart listing all the movies currently in production at each studio, along with the cast and other so-called “above the line” or creative personnel.

“Elliott Gould’s starring in something at Universal,” Ricky told Rose, his waitress, when she brought his coffee and a menu. “He sure got big all of a sudden. When I first got his autograph at the
Funny Girl
premiere, he was just some guy married to Barbra Streisand.”

Rose smiled. She was an ordinary-looking woman in her early thirties with a melancholy face and short dark hair that fit her head like a black beanie. Ricky sat in her section because he liked her not-too-bright smile, and the way she inflected the end of her sentences reminded him of Danny Lomax, a shortstop from Charlotte that he was secretly in love with in 1961, when he hit .351 and was voted Rookie of the Year in the Carolina League.

Rose said, “I hear Goldie Hawn’s doing a picture with Warren Beatty down the street at Columbia.”

“I already got her at the sneak of
Cactus Flower.
”

“She was good in that.”

“I didn’t see it,” Ricky said. He picked up the menu and ran his finger down the breakfast entrees. “I think I’ll have the hamburger patty and eggs, with the patty rare and the eggs up.”

“Tomatoes or potatoes?”

“Tomatoes.”

Rose plucked the menu out of Ricky’s hands and stuck it under her arm; she wrote up the order and clipped the check on the metal cylinder that spun in front of the kitchen slot. A fat black cook working over the big iron range stared at the check, then through the slot at Rose. “You know who was in here this morning?”

“Who?”

“Guess.”

“Paul Newman.”

“Guess again.”

When Rose hesitated, the cook said, “Marlon-fucking-Brando, that’s who.”

Ricky stared at the cook. He was smiling a wide smile and blisters of sweat popped off his forehead and his cheeks. Rose lit a cigarette,

leaving it burning in an ashtray while she moved down the counter, wiping away the crumbs and the coffee stains. “You’re teasing,” she said.

“Booth three,” the cook said, pointing with his right hand and using his left to crack two eggs in a frying pan that sizzled with grease. “Over there by the window. Ask Randi.”

“Ask me what?” said a bony-tough waitress who was totaling up a bill by the register.

“About Brando.”

“I waited on him. What’s the big deal?” Randi asked, speaking rather loudly as she looked in Ricky’s direction.

Ricky dropped his eyes into his lap and watched his agitated fingers refold his napkin. He knew Randi disliked him: A few weeks earlier, while he was leaving the restaurant—before the glass door had even closed behind him—he’d heard her say, “How can you stand waiting on that creep, Rose?”

“I don’t think he’s a creep,” Rose had said, springing quickly to Ricky’s defense.

“Yeah? So what do
you
call a guy who wears a baseball cap indoors and spends all day collecting autographs from movie stars? He’s a fucking creep if I ever saw one.”

After finishing his breakfast, Ricky left Tiny Naylor’s and walked north toward the intersection of Highland and Sunset. Once he reached the corner, he stood rigid and confused for several seconds, before he turned east, staying on the south side of the boulevard, where the stars of Gloria Grahame and Fred Astaire and several other of his favorite actors were enshrined on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. At Las Palmas, he stopped at Nate’s News and paged quickly through the latest issues of
Photoplay
and
Modern Screen.
As a general rule browsers were discouraged at Nate’s, but Phil Lasky, the grim-looking manager who roamed up and down the racks, honking “Pay or move on,” never hassled Ricky, knowing he would always purchase something, even if it was only a package of Necco wafers or Beeman’s spearmint gum.

Ricky continued east on Hollywood Boulevard. Near Seward a tall man in a wrinkled gray suit fell into step beside him. His gray hair and mustache were neatly trimmed, and he carried with him a battered black medical bag and a blue umbrella. As they passed the
lurid display of lingerie in the windows of Frederick’s of Hollywood, he introduced himself to Ricky as Dr. Breeze. “What do you make of those crotchless panties? Doesn’t leave very much to the imagination, does it?” he said, tapping the tip of his umbrella sharply against the window glass. “Pretty soon they’ll be showin’ live sex in there. After that, all bets are off. Right?”

Ricky nodded but remained silent, keeping his eyes on the sidewalk and the stars passing underneath his feet.

When they paused for a red light at Cahuenga, Ricky felt the doctor’s fingers tighten on his sleeve. “How’s your health?” the doctor asked, his voice suddenly intense, his eyes large and soulless. “Tell me how you’re feeling.”

The light changed and Ricky pulled his arm away as he stepped off the curb. “I’m feeling fine,” he said.

“I can give you a checkup.”

“No, thanks.”

The doctor dug through his medical bag until he found a badly wrinkled diploma. “Here. I’m Maxwell Breeze,” he said triumphantly, trotting now to keep up. “See, I’m a board-certified dermatologist from the University of South Florida. I have many offices in Los Angeles, the nearest of which is four blocks away, behind the All American Burger on Bronson.”

Once they passed the Taft building, Ricky heard the doctor begin to wheeze. “Slow down,” he called out, his breath strained. “I can’t keep up.”

Ricky looked over his shoulder with an apologetic expression. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t. I’ve got things I have to do.”

Ricky crossed the boulevard at Wilcox and sidestepped a bedraggled group of hippies bunched in front of Do-Rite Donuts, hawking blotter acid and Malaysian hash. In the next block he encountered a girl no older than thirteen with a dazed, drugged smile on her sun-peeled face. She was wearing thigh-high red boots, silver hot pants, and a see-through blouse with a large battery-operated crucifix attached to her chest that blinked on and off. A few feet away a big-bellied man wearing just a soiled T-shirt was evacuating his bowels in the doorway of Kurtz’s electronics. “Don’t you dare look at me!” he screamed, as Ricky hurried past.

Then, just before he reached Vine, Ricky noticed a young man kneeling in the center of the sidewalk. He was thin and small-boned,
and his round face was already damp with sweat as he furiously polished one of the coral terrazzo stars on the Walk of Fame.

Ricky paused and the young man looked up, probing him with his eyes as he continued to rub the chamois cloth across the nameless star in front of him. His ill-barbered hair was cut close to his skull, and next to him on the sidewalk was a can of Brasso, a root beer in a paper cup, and an open package of Hydrox cookies.

As he stared at Ricky, the young man’s eyes seemed to change from green to a deeper green—the eyes of an ageless child, Ricky thought, recalling a line from a poem he’d once read. “Will you be my friend?” the young man asked, looking in his lap and then back at Ricky’s face.

Not understanding why, exactly, but feeling united with this boy in some strange way, Ricky said, “Sure, I’ll be your friend.”

Late that same morning, when Bobby Sherwood moved into Ricky’s room at the St. Francis Arms, he would say, “I knew it would happen like this. It always does when I dream it will.”

Burk swiveled his chair and looked out the window of his office. The sky was a ceiling of deep blue, except for a few bruised clouds that were scattered over the Hollywood Hills. Directly below him a thin dark-complected man in his thirties was standing in the pale sunlight outside Stage Three, smoking a cigarette and reading the
Hollywood Reporter
. A gray Borsalino was tilted rakishly on his head and a shoulder holster was visible underneath his topcoat. Above the stage door, the red light was pulsating, indicating they were filming inside.

Laughter came from down the hallway and Burk spun around and sat back in the chair, staring at the blank walls and empty bookcases. After several seconds he picked up his phone and dialed Loretta.

“Guess what?” he said, trying to sound upbeat when she picked up. “I’ve got my own parking place. I don’t have to park in back with the rest of the peons.”

Loretta yawned. “That’s nice, Ray.”

“Al Pacino drove on the lot in front of me.”

“Ray?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you started shooting at eight.”

“We did.”

“So how come you’re not on the set?”

Burk glanced at the memo he found on his desk when he arrived, then he said, glumly, “Warren wants to work with the actors alone for the first week. He said having the writer around right at the start might make them less spontaneous.”

“When did he tell you this?”

“He didn’t. He wrote me a memo.”

“What are you supposed to do?”

“I don’t know. I feel like shit.”

“I can imagine.”

Outside, the light above the stage door blinked off. The actor wearing the Borsalino put out his smoke with his shoe, but when he reached for the door handle Robert Evans suddenly exploded by him, into the sunlight, followed by an overweight man wearing a beard and thick horn-rimmed glasses.

“Check this out,” Burk said. “I can see Evans and Coppola arguing in front of the
Godfather
stage. I hear they’re way over budget.”

“Brando’s supposed to be wonderful,” Loretta said, and there was a long pause that Burk did not try to fill. “Look, Ray, I’ll be in my office around eleven. Call me if you want to talk.”

Burk sucked in his breath. “It’s fuckin’ bullshit,” he said, his voice soft but now filled with rage. “I wrote the script. I should be there, hangin’ out. That’s the whole reason I’m down here. Jesus. . . .”

Burk’s voice trailed off. Loretta said after a short silence, “I gotta go. Call me later.”

When the line clicked, Burk hung up hard and got to his feet, waiting a few moments before he called Maria Selene. Nora, her secretary, said she was on a long distance call. “That’s okay. I’ll wait,” Burk said, glancing over the interoffice mail that was placed on his desk earlier that morning, along with the memo from Warren.

According to the daily call sheet, the cast and crew would be at Griffith Park all day, shooting scenes four through nine in the newly revised script—scenes that focused on the relationship between Barbara Sinclair and Ricky Horton on the morning after their high school
reunion. The night shots would be completed later that month, and the reunion itself—the movie’s opening scene—was slated for the second week. Tuesday the location would move to the Raincheck Room, a downscale bar on Santa Monica Boulevard where Tom Crumpler, the actor playing Eric Baldwin, was scheduled to step in front of the camera for the first time.