The Ferrari in the Bedroom (8 page)

“Don’t worry,” John said, as relaxed as ever, “it’s going good.”

“I don’t want to even imply that these are the fish we caught. Let ’em think it, but I don’t want us to say it.”

“We already shot that scene,” John said, “and it’s fine. The cook didn’t mention a thing.”

The chef was ready. “How iss zees?”

I was astounded. He really was French. Jack squinted through his eyepiece.

“Move it just a shade to the left.” Someone slid the tray a millimeter or so to the left.

“Hold it. Let’s shoot.”

Everyone instantly became silent and tense as the camera whirred, shooting close-ups of the tray of golden filets. Jack straightened up.

“Okay. Strike it.” His green glasses glinted malevolently. A pro at work.

“Well, that’s it for the kitchen scene.” Lee, Fenton’s assistant, was taking charge.

“Let’s get set up in the VIP Room. That’s gonna be a bugger.” Jack, Roy, Billy and Lee banged around with the cases of equipment, knocking down the lights. The chef, no longer useful, had suddenly become invisible. He stood sadly by his fish, hoping someone would say something to him.

“That looks pretty good,” I said, for want of anything better.

“Eet iss cold. She also iss cooked too much.” He shrugged his shoulders in that special way Frenchmen have, radiating both disdain and confusion simultaneously.

“Look, Fenton, I gotta get a hat for my scene.”

“Don’t tell me you don’t have that fantastic green hat you wore in the first show!”

“Dammit, Fenton, I was so rushed that I not only forgot my hat, I also forgot a spectacular scarf I have. Let’s go into town. I gotta pick something up.”

“Okay.”

Fenton seemed glad to get away from the Playpen for a bit.

“While they’re setting up in the VIP Room we can drive in to Lake Geneva.”

An important part of these Outdoor shows is costuming. Every guy who does them regularly has his own style. Some wear African veldt hats, others go for Stetson ten-gallon jobs. Buckskin shirts, Indian beaded headbands; it’s all part of the game. In the first “Fisherman’s World” I had worn my favorite fishing hat, an Effanem Crusher made by Martin Cantor of Bangor, Maine. They are great hats and I wore mine with the side brims pinned up Australian style. It had been a smash hit on the show. It even got fan letters. I had stupidly left it at home. It was like Charlie Chaplin forgetting to bring his cane, or Groucho leaving his false mustache on the dresser. Without a costume an actor is just another walking-around Joe. Make no mistake. Everyone who works these Outdoor epics is an actor and had better have his costume ready. This show was in color, so I needed something that would really reach out of the screen and grab ’em. This is subtler than it sounds. You don’t just pick up a red deer hunter cap or something ordinary that any straight fisherman would wear. It has to say something. Joe Foss without his hat would look like a tall insurance man.

We drove into town. Lake Geneva is really just one street; two rows of single story buildings and a lot of sky.
Essentially a summer resort, in the winter it is almost a ghost town. The first place we went into had a magnificent six-foot orange and black fringed scarf. The instant I laid eyes on it I knew it was right. It would look good with my Spanish corduroy shooting jacket which I would wear over a turtleneck hand-knit fisherman’s sweater that I had picked up in the South of Portugal on another Showbiz jaunt.

“Y’got any hats?”

The clerk, a dead ringer for Harold Lloyd, looked blankly at the two of us, obviously non-Lake Geneva types.

“Just them stocking caps.”

I glanced at them. Nothing.

We crossed the street to another place, more woodsy and hipper.

“Wouldja look at that, Fenton!
There’s
the hat!” Marked down from ten dollars, a magnificent loden green Robin Hood style topper with a spectacular red and yellow feather grabbed me where I lived. I jammed it on my head.

“My god, you’re right out of Charles Dickens!” Fenton laughed. “You look like Scrooge’s partner.”

I admired myself in the wavy mirror. With the orange and black scarf wound around my neck and billowing up to my eyes, my Robin Hood hat pulled low, I was ready for the color screen. There was also a shelf full of wild yellow and green stocking caps with big embroidered “Packers” badges on them. With a jolt it reminded me that I was back in the Midwest, where pro football is almost a religion. Packer fans look upon Chicago Bear addicts as infidels who need converting. Two stringy high school kids with lank blonde hair and that high-cheekboned look that you often see in the upper Great Lakes region watched surreptitiously as the two of us admired my hat. For an instant or two I thought
there’d be trouble, but it passed. We drove back to the hotel. I felt better about the whole thing now. My costume gave me confidence.

Lunchtime. Do they ever feed around this joint! Like most professional film crews, drinking is fairly liberal, never to excess but just enough to keep the spirits up. A black bread/baked ham sandwich, with a slice of Bermuda onion. As we sat around the crowded dining room I could feel the curious eyes of the paying customers. Midwesterners never react to film crews the way Easterners do. Easterners always secretly hope to get in the movies and are always nosing around, showing you their teeth, hoping they’ll get in a scene. Midwesterners pretend that they couldn’t care less.

There wasn’t much to do after lunch because the crew was laboriously setting up for the VIP scene. Starr, the hotel manager, a jovial giant with a Henry The Eighth fringe beard who breeds Morgan horses on his Wisconsin farm, shuffled around looking worried, with his little telephone call unit beeping constantly in his jacket pocket. There was a Bunny crisis and he was in the middle. The Bunny Mother (this is no joke; there
is
a Bunny Mother. There is even a Bunny Grandmother) had assigned girls other than the ones Fenton wanted to our scene because of “the schedule,” whatever the hell that was. Apparently Bunnies live under an iron dictatorial system and they are assigned to jobs, like bomber crews. Starr was sweating profusely.

“We got these rules. I don’t make ’em. They come from The Man himself.”

Again he spoke earnestly into the telephone, amid the dining room hubbub. From time to time Lee would appear, his glasses glinting malevolently. Obviously the VIP scene was a bummer.

I knew better than to get involved. They would call me
when I was needed. I wandered in and out of the maze of this fantastic resort. It really is like nothing I’ve ever seen, anywhere. I watched three spectacular girls and a skinny guy with knock-knees swimming in the wild, heated pool which is glass-enclosed and gives the impression of swimming amid the snowdrifts. All the while, unfortunately, in my mind was the nagging knowledge that I was not here for fun and games; was not part of the scene. It was just a job and I hoped it would go well. When you’re seen coast to coast as a professional it changes things.

Time dragged by. John and I sat in the Cartoon Room looking at the snow, sipping hot chocolate. He reminisced about his old Hollywood friends; his life since he left South Bend, Indiana, as a boy. People working together get very friendly on these jobs.

“About 1963 I just decided I’d retire.”

“That’s pretty young to hang it up,” I said.

“Oh, I don’t know. After eight years of a TV series you get pretty tired. And anyway, I wanted to do more fishing. My wife felt the same way, so here I am.”

He is now completely involved in Outdoor shows of one kind or another, because he loves doing them: the big Sportsman’s Show in Chicago, “Fisherman’s World”; making appearances at trade shows. I told him about a Broadway play I was going into.

“I’ve never really done any Legit—a little Stock. It’s too damn tough for me. Too much like work,” he said.

It was beginning to get dark outside. Snow had begun to fall. The hills on the horizon were fading in the gray mist of winter twilight. We talked on.

“Okay, you guys. They’re ready to shoot.” From nowhere Fenton appeared, highly charged as he always gets during actual shooting.

“Let’s get up there. They’re about ready to go.”

John and I hurried to our rooms to dress as formally as we could; ties, dark jackets. After all, this was the VIP Room.

I went down the hall to the room itself. They weren’t actually using the VIP Room but had taken a suite and moved a few things about so that it looked exactly like the real thing. Inside the room, a fantastic tangle of cables, tripods, light banks; orange, red, blue, gold, white, made the room look like some Dr. Strangelove laboratory. Two Bunnies, Bunny Nancy, a tall, languid brunette, and Bunny Pert, a short wispy gamin, honey blonde and disturbingly intelligent, fussed with the special VIP Room table settings, which are absolutely unchangingly rigid. Great crystal goblets, heavy massive pewter dishes, glowing candlelight.

“Now look, girls. Pert, you’re serving the fish. You move to Jean’s left. Serve him first, and then move around the back of the table and serve John. Okay, guys. John, you sit on that side…” Fenton was in charge. “…You take the other, Shep. And cheat. Cheat left.”

The crew milled about, eating peanuts. The sound man played with his huge earphones. Jack, always silent on the set, lurked in the background, his green glasses glowing in the candlelight.

“Hey, what the hell’s with the white baby spot? We lost it.” Jack glared around, looking for the light man. The sliding glass windows opening out on the balcony stood ajar. Outside on the balcony a glowing spot that had provided a highlight had somehow shifted position in the wind. All the while, I forgot to mention, a bitter Wisconsin glacial breeze blew through the voluptuous scene.

“Hey Billy, get that spot, baby.”

The spot swung in the darkness.

“Hold it. That’s it. Now lock it.”

Jack peered through his viewfinder.

“Shep, you follow that spot. Can you find it?”

I nodded. The TV fisherman of today has got to know how to play the lights. He may not know a Royal Coachman from a Hawaiian Wiggler but he better know sight lines and amber spots or he isn’t invited back.

“Nancy, you serve the wine. Y’got it, baby?”

Bunny Nancy smiled, her brilliant VIP Room velvet Bunny suit undulating. Bunnies wear special costumes in the VIP Room, purple velvet, sometimes dark red, trimmed in silver.

“Now look, baby, you show the wine to John, y’know, the label. Then pour a little in his glass. John, you sip it and nod. Got it?”

“What if I refuse it?”

John was playing for laughs.

“Then, Nancy, you come around the back of the table and pour some for Jean. Y’got it?”

Fenton, ever the master of dramatic scenes, was in the saddle. “Jean, John, are you guys listening?”

We weren’t. We had been drifting off into some inane gabble about the wine we were being served. Nancy was faking it by using an empty Coke bottle in rehearsal.

“Hey? Where’s that ice bucket?” A note of alarm from Fenton.

“Oh no!!” Lee, a note of terror in his voice, rushed around the room looking for the ice bucket.

“I refuse to drink wine unless it is properly chilled. Even on TV,” I quipped brilliantly.

Nobody laughed. This was costing about five-hundred-thousand dollars a minute, so every flubbed ice bucket meant more red ink. Finally everything was set. Silence descended on our tiny band of serious artists.

“All right, at my cue—Billy, you start the fireplace. Roy, hit the lights and we’ll roll.”

We all stood in position tensely, John and I seated like a pair of embalmed bon vivants amid sparkling glassware, the two Bunnies crouching nervously just out of camera range. Lee stood before us with his official-looking clapboard, slating the scene.

“VIP scene, shot one, take one.”

CLAP! went the board. Clapboards actually do that. A faint hum filled the room as the expensive color film whirred through the sprockets. The tape reels spun. Just out of camera range I could see the sound man hunching tensely over his V.U. meter.

“All right…”

Long pause.

“ACTION.”

I felt Bunny Nancy moving up from behind. She undulated past my chair. I grinned up at her as she began to pour wine into John’s glass.

“Hold it! Cut!”

We relaxed.

“Look, Honey, can you drop your shoulder? We got a fantastic shot of your shoulder.”

Fenton injected kindliness into his voice in spite of the wasted film. Bunny Nancy looked a little nervous.

“Did I do it wrong?”

“No, honey. Just hold your left shoulder down when you pour. I know it doesn’t feel natural, but it’ll look right on the film.”

She fiddled with the wine bottle. “Like this?”

“Okay. Fine. That looks a lot better. You ready, Jack?” Jack nodded. We went back to our places. John and I again
faking casual Playboy sophistication, two Gentlemen at their Leisure. I straightened my tie.

“VIP scene, take two, shot one.”

CLAP!

“ACTION.”

Again Nancy snaked past as only a Bunny can. Gracefully she poured wine. John nodded approval. She circled the table. I grinned. She poured. She replaced the bottle in the ice bucket and drifted out. John and I raised our glasses in a toast.

“Beautiful. Wrap it up. Great.” Fenton beamed.

A few lights were shifted. I watched
Bunny Pert rearrange her spectacular tray of fish. Since the fish had been cooked hours before, they looked great but were about as edible as Palmolive soap. Garnished with sprays of parsley and potato rosettes, they would look luscious on screen. I felt my stomach growling. It had been a long time since that black bread sandwich and all this pretending to eat had started the juices flowing.

“Now remember, Pert, serve Jean first. Nod to him and then serve John. Now watch your shoulder.”

“VIP scene, shot two, take one.”

CLAP!

It was a fiasco.

“Fer Chrissake, where’s that rock band coming from?” The sound man was picking up extra sounds. None of us could hear it.

“Shh!!” He held up his hand for silence as he concentrated on listening to the earphones.