West of Sunset (21 page)

“I'm sure I will,” he said, and thanked her.

He would get used to it, he knew. Asheville or Santa Monica, a flophouse or a palace—after the last few years he'd become adaptable as a hermit crab. Soon enough, as he set to work, this estrangement would fade and blur into a new routine. He was a poor boy from a rich neighborhood, a scholarship kid at boarding school, a midwesterner in the East, an easterner out West. If he'd ever belonged anywhere, those places were gone, the happiness he recalled there as fleeting as the seasons. Tom was right, and yet his fear was that he would die like him, a wanderer far from home—the fate of all men. Why should he be an exception?

Encino wasn't that much different from Malibu. The nearest neighbors were miles away and passed him on the highway without a hint of recognition. Besides Magda and the man at the store, he knew no one. His first week, Sheilah found reasons to make the drive out, as if looking in on an elderly relative, bringing him a fuzzy bathmat and new pillows, but that Friday she had a premiere. He ended up working late and eating dinner in the commissary with Oppy, whom he suspected had taken up residence in the Iron Lung. He and Sheilah rendezvoused for some dancing at the Zebra Room, and by then he was tired. Tomorrow UCLA was playing Carnegie Tech, a big game. It was more convenient—and nicer—to stay at her place. They spent the weekend together, which made returning to Belly Acres that much harder.

The girl Magda bragged of he never saw. Wednesdays when he came home the dishes in the drainer were put away, the wastebaskets emptied, the toilet spotless.

He missed Flora, as he knew he would. He hated cooking for himself almost as much as he hated wasting money on restaurants. He was capable of making hamburgers and grilled cheese sandwiches and heating cans of soup, but the results, while perfectly edible, were depressing, plus he was never home, so half of what he bought went bad. In Tryon he'd lived on potted meat, soda crackers and apples, and he laid in a supply of these for emergencies, along with his Hershey bars, the worst thing for his insomnia. Left alone, he ate like a child and felt dull and unhealthy. Because the commissary was lively and cheap, he began to eat all of his meals there, sharing a table with Oppy three times a day.

At night they were the only writers, surrounded by extras and technicians working swing shift.
The Wizard of Oz
was shooting, and the booths were full of munchkins and flying monkeys forking up chicken croquettes and spaghetti, napkins tucked into their collars to protect their costumes. In his desk Oppy kept a bottle of rye he broke out before the siren died, and by dinnertime he was loose-lipped. His mood depended on how his afternoon picks had done at Santa Anita—usually poorly, though once in a while he was ebullient. Like Scott, he was afraid he wouldn't be renewed, which at his age would be disastrous. He had five children by three wives he was still paying alimony. He'd been in pictures from the beginning, churning out two-reelers for Griffith and Biograph, and Scott attended his stories of the early days as if they were sacred lore. Unlike Anita Loos, he'd never graduated to the big money. He'd worked for everyone from Goldwyn to Hal Roach, bouncing around town, latching on to any assignment he could find.

“They don't have a clue. Know how many credits I got? A hundred forty-six. Know how many Huxley's got? One. They're paying him three grand a week, and they want to give
me
the ax.”

Scott, who was making only twelve-fifty, didn't say that
Pride and Prejudice
had won the Oscar. “You ever get one for
The Louis Pasteur Story
?”

“Lousy bastards stole it from me. I handed them the set-up on a platter and they gave it to Goldwyn's brother-in-law. Everyone talks about the unions. When it comes down to it, it's a family business.”

“What are you on now?”

“Some godawful pug pic for Wally Beery. I got a beaut of a title for it though.” His hands framed an invisible marquee. “The Roar of the Crowd.”

“Not bad. I'll trade you
Madame Curie
.”

“That piece of crap? No dice.”

“So what do you do if they don't extend you?”

“Call my agent and wait for the merry-go-round to come around. It will, it just takes a while sometimes. Don't worry about me, I got some rainy day money I can fall back on.”

While they talked, Oppy kept peeking over Scott's shoulder as if he was spying on someone. When they'd finished and were leaving, he stopped beside the table directly behind them. It hadn't been cleared, and with no attempt to disguise his actions, as if he were a customer at a bakery, he plucked two hard rolls from a basket, wrapped them in napkins and shoved one in each pocket.

Here, Scott thought, was his future.

After dinner he left Oppy to his office and pecked away at
Madame Curie
, but there was no one to impress. He could only postpone going home so long. Eventually he had to pack up his briefcase, get in the car and drive over the mountains again, the city glowing in the rearview mirror as he climbed the pass, then absolute blackness. The store at the crossroads was closed, a pink neon clock guarding the darkened filling station. For miles the road was a straight shot. Beyond the sign for the dam the only landmarks were telephone poles. Twice he slowed for the gate before he finally turned in. He never remembered to leave a light on, and rubbed his thumb over the doorknob to find the keyhole.

“Here I am,” he said to the living room. “Did you miss me?”

Part of his disaffection was the holidays. For Christmas he'd arranged for Scottie to see Zelda in Montgomery, but he and Sheilah had no special plans. He had trouble summoning the mood when every day he expected Eddie Knopf to walk into his office and tell him he was finished. Ober said he didn't know anything, and Scott armored himself against the inevitable. Instead of putting his last check against his debts, he told Ober to go ahead and pay Scottie's spring tuition.

The morning of the Christmas party he was deep in his easy chair, lost in Conrad, when there was a knock at the door. He thought that out of decency they would wait till next week, but closed the book and stood, ready to accept his fate.

Before he could get it, Dottie burst in with the paper, Alan shutting the door behind him.

“Did you see this?” she asked, shoving the front page at him.

“We thought maybe you knew something,” Alan said.

FOREIGN
ENVOY
LEAPS
TO
DEATH
, the headline read, with a picture of the Arroyo Seco Bridge in Pasadena. It was a famous jumping-off spot, taller than the Hollywoodland sign. The city had erected fences. Scott skimmed the article, stopping on the name: Gerhardt Reinecke.

“Not very original,” Alan said. “But effective.”

“When did it happen?”

“Last night,” Dottie said.

“Merry Christmas.” Alan made a heave-ho gesture.

“Jesus.” His first thought was Ernest. He refused to believe he would execute someone in cold blood. He could see Mank walking with the German, patting his shoulder like a mob boss coddling a nervous accountant. Producers were men who knew how to solve problems. All the studios had underworld ties, not just Metro. It wasn't politics, it was business. This is what happens when you cross Hollywood. After the riots in Berlin, there was no need to pretend anymore.

“No more European market,” he said.

“No more European censor,” Dottie said.

“So they just picked him up and chucked him over,” Alan said.

“I imagine he was dead by then.”

“I wouldn't bet on it,” Dottie said.

They hadn't heard anything more from their sources, and told him to keep an ear out, as if the three of them might somehow be implicated. He'd never met the man, the connection between them tenuous at best, and yet he felt vaguely guilty.

The news made the Christmas party stranger than usual, a ghoulish celebration. He wandered through the bacchanal in shock, stopping at the commissary to watch the grips and secretaries dancing, aware that in a safe in some producer's office—if not here at Metro, then on another lot—there was likely a coded ledger akin to a bookie's cryptic dib sheets that could testify to the industry's collective and murderous intent.

As he was fleeing, crossing the plaza in front of the Iron Lung, Oppy intercepted him, plowed and wearing an artfully crushed stovepipe hat. “You there, my fine fellow. Do you know if they've sold the prize turkey that was hanging at the poulterer's?”

“Why, Mr. Scrooge,” Scott played along. “I thought Christmas was a humbug.”

“The hell it is. They picked me up for six months. Took 'em long enough, the dopes.”

“Congratulations.”

“How 'bout you?”

“Not a word.”

“That's tough. Listen, if there's anything I can do.”

“Thanks,” Scott said.

He saved his consternation for the drive home, frowning as the radio burbled on. He didn't blame Oppy, the old rummy was just trying to survive, and still Scott couldn't believe it. He'd worked hard on all of the projects they'd given him and hadn't touched a drop on the lot. It must have been something he'd said, an unintentional slight. Like Reinecke, he'd crossed the wrong person.

Sheilah had heard the murder rumors, but not even the
Hollywood Reporter
would touch them. Every so often Dottie checked in with him, bringing news from Pasadena. Officially Reinecke was a suicide. There was no investigation, no formal inquest. Benchley never mentioned him, and as Christmas came and went, Scott understood the whole town was content to let his death remain, like Jean Harlow's or Thelma Todd's, an open secret.

In Encino, so far out in the hills, the nights were quiet. The rainy season was underway, and when he couldn't sleep, he took his chloral and waited, listening to the downspouts run and the cottage settle, conjuring from a single creak a dark figure on the stairs.

He dreamed he'd killed a woman. Barefoot, wearing a white gown, she lay in the high, haylike grass of a field just beyond his headlights, her eyes open. He didn't know how he'd killed her, or why, only that he had. He'd brought her here in his car. Her death was an accident, but he was afraid it would look suspicious. To save himself he needed to bury the body, which he did, digging her grave deep, sweating with the effort, terrified that eventually she'd be found, his life ruined. Within the dream, he had a creeping dread that it wasn't a nightmare but a memory, his sin, like the woman's identity, willfully forgotten. His fear was so strong that on waking—as if he were mad or an amnesiac—he couldn't be sure it hadn't happened.

He asked Magda to lock the gate, and in the mornings remembered to leave a light on. In the store he watched the other customers, letting them check out first. Once, driving home, he turned early to see if he was being followed, but the other car went straight.

He didn't have to be a detective to know what was coming. Friday after lunch, Eddie called. Could he please come upstairs and see him? Scott was tempted to take his briefcase and leave. Sunday was New Year's Day, and half the offices in his wing were dark. Oppy was tapping away, likely filling pages with gibberish, but Dottie and Alan were in New York, Huxley on a beach in Mexico. Childish as it was, as Scott made the long walk to the elevator, he thought that now he'd never get his name on his door.

Eddie was apologetic, shaking his hand, telling him how great he was, how much everyone loved
Three Comrades
. As of today, he was off
Madame Curie
. Whatever pages he had he should turn in to his secretary.

“All I need is another week.”

It wasn't Eddie's decision. For the last month of his contract, Scott was being loaned out to Mayer's son-in-law, David O. Selznick. He needed all hands on
Gone with the Wind
.

Only in Hollywood could you be simultaneously fired and put on the hottest property in town.

“That piece of crap?” Scott said. “No dice.”

But Monday he showed up on time.

S
elznick was of the new generation. Unlike Mayer and Goldwyn and Laemmle, he hadn't sold buttons in Minsk or shirtwaists in Krakow on the narrowest of margins to leave the bosom of his family and endure weeks in steerage dreaming of streets paved with gold only to wash up in the shtetl-like tenements of the Lower East Side where daily he fought his neighbors, those same margins and the Italian rackets, earning a second fortune he used to bankroll a third and, as mere by-product, creating from the dusty foothills of West L.A. a gilded fiefdom called Hollywood. He was American, therefore soft, without Thalberg's genius. To compensate he paid more, buying the talent he lacked, and put in longer hours than any of the old guard, aided by prescribed doses of amphetamines.

Scott's job for him on
Gone with the Wind
was to polish the previous polish of Sidney Howard's script, a task that changed from moment to moment as Selznick, distracted by every fleeting notion and under pressure to start shooting, produced a gusher of memos.

Scene 71: Wouldn't Scarlett be mad when Rhett laughs at her? Would she really let him get away with it without saying something? One good kicker here.

Scene 75: We should feel badly for Charles but also understand it's not Scarlett's fault her trap has caught the wrong man. She can't laugh at him for falling for her and neither can we. It's a comic misunderstanding but he has to keep his dignity.

Scott was further hamstrung by Selznick's dictum that he use only Margaret Mitchell's dialogue. It was like trying to finish a vast, intricate puzzle with the wrong pieces.

The novel wasn't awful, as he'd feared. When it had first come out he'd dismissed it as a bloated costume drama, all hoopskirts and magnolia blossoms. Now, having to read it closely, he found it shallow yet compelling, staying up late and closing the fat book with satisfaction. In Scarlett he saw Zelda's wildness and pride, in Rhett his own rage and dissipation. They weren't innocents like Romeo and Juliet. Their love was undeniable for the same reasons it couldn't survive. It would end in ruin, which, thematically, fit with the backdrop of the Lost Cause, doomed from the start. Selznick was right, it would make a great movie, if he'd ever let go of it.

Gone with the Wind
was his. He'd personally acquired the rights while the novel was still in manuscript, staking fifty thousand dollars on a first-time author. The casting of Scarlett had taken over two years, becoming a public sweepstakes, with stars like Lana Turner and Joan Bennett openly campaigning for the role, which, in Cinderella fashion, finally went to a Brit, Scott's leading lady from
A Yank at Oxford
, Vivien Leigh, scandalizing the book's fans.

Like Mank, what Selznick really wanted was to write the script himself. Scott was the ninth writer he'd hired, and he was still sending out dozens of notes on each scene. Like Ahab, he thought of nothing else, but he was trying to turn over drafts too fast and his mind wasn't organized. Often Scott was asked to restore lines Selznick had ordered cut that same day.

The process was made harder by the fact that he didn't sleep and expected his writers to keep the same hours, pulling all-nighters with him on the top floor of the production office while in the soundstages graveyard shift was finishing the sets. Afraid of taking pills, Scott relied on his insomnia and his Cokes to keep him going, fixing lines with a broken-backed copy of the novel open beside him like a dictionary while his secretary catnapped, shoeless, on the couch. Every couple of hours Selznick called them in for a story conference, going over the last set of changes scene by scene, reading the dialogue out loud in his Yiddish-tinged Pittsburgh accent while chomping on a cigar so that Suellen and Melanie and Prissy all sounded like two-bit fight promoters.

“Whaddya think?” he asked the room, making the secretaries look up from their dictation. “I know it's right outta the book, but something's off. I want her to say something stronger, like, ‘I could never love a man like that'—not that exactly, but close. Scott? Carolyn? Anyone?”

Thalberg, when Scott had worked with him, said almost nothing, instructing by his silences. At the end of a story conference, after listening to everyone's pitches, he would simply nod to anoint the winner or shake his head and make a single oblique suggestion reframing the main difficulty. He didn't worry about dialogue or costumes or music. He had people to do that. Selznick lacked his trust and bogged down in the small stuff, going round and round.

Technically they were already in production. Back in December Selznick had shot his climactic scene, the burning of Atlanta, torching RKO's old exteriors from
King Kong
. Instead of Gable and Vivien Leigh, their stand-ins drove a buckboard through the flames, doubled over to hide their expendable faces. Since then Selznick had been paying his contract players—most, like Scott, on loan—to wait around while he fiddled with the script. Unlike Metro, the studio was too small to absorb so much overhead, and the trades knew it, speculating on his downfall and questioning Mayer's judgment. “The Son-in-Law Also Sets,”
Variety
taunted.

For Scott it was like watching a mad king hold court as the castle was laid siege. Night after night they leapfrogged along, finishing one draft and starting another, addressing questions Selznick had forgotten he'd asked the last time. Scott's contract was up in two weeks. Though he had no shot at a credit, the longer he hung on the better chance he had of being hired by another studio, and he matched Selznick's maniacal singlemindedness with his own, sleeping in his spare time and dreaming of the characters, carrying the novel around like a bible. He knew better than anyone how to live in an imaginary world.

He was tired. Once he'd been a night owl, a prowler of back alleys, brimming with cash and passwords. Now the late hours made him dull. Like Selznick, the studio never rested. While the stars slept safely behind the monogrammed gates of their Bel Air mansions, the elves of third shift mended their costumes and pieced together their scenes, added music and sound effects and titles. To revive himself, Scott took the elevator down and walked outside past the cutting rooms and scoring stages to the commissary for a piece of cherry pie à la mode or a square of fudge, wondering at the odd carpenters and painters playing cards where during the day the famous kibitzed, as if they might be actors as well. At three in the morning the lot took on a fantastic aspect, the moonlight imbuing the false fronts with a pregnant solidity, and as he walked back to the office he imagined his producer unable to sleep and haunting the empty streets. He would meet his girl here as if she were a figment born of his separateness. The question was how.

He had a week left on his contract when Selznick summoned him for their first conference of the night and there at his place at the table sat another writer with another secretary.

“John Van Druten,” Selznick said, as if Scott should know who he was.

While he understood it was inevitable, he was still jealous. He shook the man's hand and took the chair opposite him, recalling Paramore.

They weren't collaborating. He was off the project. As with
Madame Curie
, he was to hand over everything to his successor. He'd be paid for his remaining days. He'd done good work. Selznick would be happy to give him a recommendation. All he had to do was call Carolyn and she'd arrange it.

For this, Scott thanked him.

At midnight he found himself outside the gate, suddenly unemployed, his briefcase weighted with unopened Cokes. In the oil fields beyond the lot, plumes of fire spouted geyserlike above the derricks, burning off impurities. He called Sheilah from a chop suey parlor on Crenshaw and she told him to come over. He still had to drive across town. After she'd done her best to comfort him, she slept, soughing, while he lay there wide awake, leafing through scenes like Selznick, second-guessing himself.

His pass was good for another week. Rather than waste this last opportunity, each morning he reported to the Iron Lung, sending Eddie pitch memos with ideas for Joan Crawford and Garbo. His entire time at Metro he'd been assigned to women's pictures, but with war imminent, spy thrillers were big. Why not combine the two? With the shamelessness of a carpetbagger he cobbled together a scenario in which a happily married wife discovers her husband is secretly a Bund member. In another he made it a mother and son, a mother and daughter, two best friends, a next-door neighbor, the parish priest. He worked out his plots in detail, each of them taking place around a submarine base, or sometimes a shipyard. The secretary's eyes went dead when she saw him coming, and the memos were full of typos. Treachery was everywhere.

Will consider
, Eddie replied.

Though Scott hadn't told anyone he was leaving, Friday Dottie and Alan and Benchley and Oppy took him out to Stern's Barbecue for a proper send-off. They joked about him raiding the supply closet.

“What are you going to do with all of your free time?” Dottie asked.

“What I came here to do,” he said. “Write.”

They raised their glasses as if he were the lucky one.

In his office he watched for Mr. Ito, and was gratified to see him a final time, stalking through the weeds beneath the billboard, tail twitching. He would miss the boulevard with its trolleys, and the drugstore, even the dusty parking lots, each car, including his own, carrying its mystery. He left
Nostromo
for the next resident, and his marked copy of
Gone with the Wind
. When the siren blew, he packed up his briefcase as if it were any other Friday, took the elevator down and wished the guard a pleasant weekend.

He spent it with Sheilah, putting off going home until Monday, and then was stuck there when his car died, completely and finally, a mile short of the gate, forcing him to pay a tow truck and take out a bank note at extortionate interest to buy Sid Perelman's old Ford. He called Ober, who called Swanie Swanson in the Hollywood office to scare him up another job.

Compounding his bad luck, he came down with a rattling chest cold. As Sheilah predicted, he'd worked himself sick, and took to bed again, sketching a short story on his lapboard—a fired screenwriter trying to sneak back on the lot.

By design he'd avoided spending time at Belly Acres. Now he knew why. For whole days he spoke to no one, padding to the bathroom and the kitchen in his house slippers. The quiet was unearthly, dispelled by only the trains calling across the valley, the occasional plane headed for Glendale. He wished he were at Sheilah's but didn't dare presume.

Wednesday he met Magda's housekeeper Luz, not a girl at all but a tiny, graying Filipina who muttered to herself in her mother tongue as she cleaned. He apologized for his whiskers and his robe and the wastebasket full of balled tissues.

“Is okay,” she said, nodding, and kept dusting.

According to Swanie, Scott was on Selznick's short list for
Rebecca
. Sheilah brought him a copy from the library, and he started blocking out a treatment. The novel felt like a gloss on
Jane Eyre
—a humble heroine marrying into a landed family. He saw echoes of Thornfield Hall and Tara in Manderley, and there was some genius in having the first Mrs. DeWinter hover over the proceedings like a ghost, though how he would suggest that on-screen he had no idea. Selznick would line up a dozen hacks behind him anyway. As with
Three Comrades
, he'd have to build his draft to withstand their chisels if he wanted a credit.

He calculated his wages on paper. At the least he'd get six weeks at twelve-fifty, enough to stake him for the summer and part of the fall. If Selznick paid him what he was worth, he'd be able to start his novel, though if
Rebecca
was a success, he could choose his next two or three jobs and put away a serious nest egg. He was aware—as he was aware of his dwindling savings—that he was counting on the man who'd just let him go to hire him back again, but ascribed the irony to the madness of the business. Like a starlet, he waited for Swanie to call.

I wish you could go to Havana with the group too,
he wrote Zelda.
If I had the means, you know I would happily pay your way, but currently I'm between engagements, which is a polite way of saying Metro has decided they can survive without me. I'm again that sorriest of species, the freelancer. I have prospects but must stand ready to snatch whatever chance is offered me. The good news is that Scottie is planning to come down there for Easter, so you at least have that to look forward to.

Out of obligation more than any real desire, he wanted to say he'd try to visit her soon, but knew she'd take it as a promise and dun him with it later. Better to be honest than feed a false hope.

As the days passed, his own fluctuated between the grandiose and the desperate. He was deciding which of his old friends he could appeal to for a loan when Swanie called with a job—not
Rebecca
but a college picture for United Artists starring Ann Sheridan. Six weeks at fifteen hundred.

“What happened to
Rebecca
?” Scott asked. What happened to
Marie Antoinette
?

“Hitchcock wanted his own guy.”

“Did you show him the treatment?”

“You'll like UA,” Swanie said. “It's cake compared to Selznick.”

Winter Carnival
. There was no point arguing. It was only after he said yes that Swanie told him he had a cowriter, a kid named Budd Schulberg. It was his treatment. The picture was set at Dartmouth; he'd graduated just a few years earlier.

“Schulberg as in B. P. Schulberg?” The head of Paramount.

“Nice kid.”

Not surprisingly, he was. When Scott met him the next day at the studio he was polite and earnest, telling Scott how much he admired
Gatsby
. Like a fledgling prince, from birth he'd been raised to rule with equanimity. Though his profile belonged to the ghettos of the Old World, like Scottie's dance partners from Choate and Andover he possessed a courtliness that spoke of money. He was tweedy, affecting a pipe, but stubby as a bulldog, a shorter version of Stromberg. He'd majored in English and wanted to know Scott's opinion of Malraux, and was pleased to hear he was a fan of
The Trial
. Europe was falling, the war was just a matter of time. And what about the Screenwriters' Guild? Could the unions work with the studios? Though they'd just met, he was forthright to the point of being unguarded. Scott thought his confidence came from being born into royalty. No one had ever told him to shut up.