20th Century Un-limited Read online

  This time he shoved me up against a wall. He’d been chewing on a wooden toothpick and he looked pretty mean.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” And when I didn’t answer, “You been snooping around in places where you shouldn’t be?” he now asked, looking very dangerous. I didn’t like the grip he had on my shirt collar either, and I was trying to get it off me.

  “I won’t tell anyone.”

  “Won’t tell anyone what?” The toothpick fell away and his canines were exposed and now I was feeling his hand on my throat a lot more.

  “I don’t care where you go!” I managed to get both hands under his one and could breathe a little better. “Or what you do.”

  “And…?” He wasn’t buying it.

  “I just want to make sure you don’t catch anything. That’s all!”

  “Why do you care what I catch?” he asked and gave me a further shove, but he let me go, and he left. Just in time, I noticed, since two other Alsop House guests came by us.

  I managed to squeak out a greeting to them and followed them closely in case Jonah was lying in wait for me upstairs.

  Later on that day he must have thought about it and had a change of heart. I was sitting in the Alsop lobby, reading a story by H.P. Lovecraft in an old copy of Weird Tales in a wooden carton being thrown out. I was waiting for Hank, who was making a phone call, when the stairway door opened and Jonah sauntered in. He didn’t look any friendlier than he had been earlier.

  “Ducky is meeting the rest of us up the street,” I said. Meaning that Jonah was welcome to join us.

  “I’ve been thinking, kid, about your unusual concern for my well-being.”

  He let that hang for a minute, and I wondered how much of a threat it was, while he took up another magazine on the table and pretended to look at it. “And I want you to know that I’ve come around to appreciate your sudden interest. But if you’re really that concerned, you should also be willing to…how should I put this? Invest in my future?”

  “Meaning…?” I responded cautiously. I wished Hank would finish his phone call and get over here.

  “Well, perhaps you’d be interested in the reason why I’ve taken up a…certain line of work?” Jonah asked.

  “I don’t need to know. And I’m not down on you, Jonah. Believe me!”

  “Okay, but see, let’s say I really needed the money that…line of work provided,” Jonah went on in a lower tone of voice. “And that other lines of work I’ve tried do not provide. Let’s say that I’ve decided that if I’m ever going to amount to anything here in this city of Los Angeles, that what I really need is not so much a new occupation, as an automobile. So I’m doing that line of work to more quickly save up to buy one.”

  This was news.

  “Okay. Let’s say that,” I agreed. “How much do you have saved up?”

  In an even more confidential voice, he added, “Let’s say I’ve already amassed a hundred fifty dollars…”

  So porno paid well, even in 1935.

  “A new Lafayette costs five ninety-five,” I said. “That’s the cheapest car on the market.”

  “I know that, kid. But a fellow I heard of from another fellow I know has a Willys-Knight that’s few years old, and he’ll sell it to me for three hundred bucks.”

  “What’ll who sell for three hundred bucks?” Sid asked, coming upon us in the lobby.

  Jonah quickly stuffed the condoms I’d once more held out to him into his jacket pocket. “Nothing.”

  “A previously owned Willy-Knight,” I said. “What model?” I asked Jonah.

  “A ’31 sedan. Hard top. Six windows.”

  “That’s not a bad price for the top of the line,” Sid opined. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Nothing,” Jonah said.

  “When you going to show it to us?”

  “When I get another hundred fifty dollars,” Jonah pointedly said, looking at me.

  He was right, though— to really get around L.A. you did need a car.

  “How about I go in halves on it with you, Jonah?” I asked, all innocence. “I’ve got the cash. We can work out a schedule of use.”

  “How do you know if this previously owned Knight,” Sid said, “is going to even run after you get it back here? It could be a dud.”

  “We don’t,” I said, then thinking fast, I added, “But I’m guessing you would know!”

  “Well, yes, I would,” Sid admitted, with no false modesty.

  “Because…?” I prodded.

  “Well, because my father and my uncles own an auto repair shop in Flatbush and so I sorta grew up around internal combustion engines. I helped fix up an older Knight engine too. The originals came over from England, you know. Along with the Rolls-Royce and the Bentleys.”

  “Guess who’s getting a ride home in a ’31 Knight,” I said to Sid.

  “If it runs,” Sid said.

  “The streetcar fare going there and coming back too, if need be, is on me,” I said.

  The following day was a Friday, and after lunch none of the three of us were working, so instead we were standing inside the sparkling new Chevrolet dealership showroom that had opened on Vermont, two blocks north of Beverly.

  “This sweet thing,” referring to the Knight, “is my own ride, bought brand new,” a fat young salesman declared. He was in a three-piece, light brown suit and sparkling white collar and cuffs. “Boss told me I had to turn it in and drive a Chevy. Said it was bad for business, me driving another marque.”

  “Sid here’s going to take a look at it,” Jonah said.

  “You got the money?” Fatty asked.

  “We’ve got the money,” I said.

  “Oh, it’s one of those deals?” the salesman said.

  “One of what deals?” Sid asked.

  “Nothing, I didn’t mean anything.”

  “You got a problem with my money?” I asked.

  He saw it was three to one and he calmed down. “It’s just, you know when fellows are in the pictures…”

  “We’re paying cash!” Jonah pointed out. “Cash!”

  “How do you know any of us are in the pictures?” Sid asked.

  “He sure is.” The salesman pointed to me and walked us back outdoors and up Vermont another block where two workmen in gray overalls were just finishing putting up a movie poster for Hey! Hay Fever!

  “That’s you, isn’t it, up there?” the salesman asked.

  “Well, I’ll be!” Sid mused.

  “What’d I tell you?” Jonah asked him.

  “Chocolate pudding?” Sid asked.

  “More like chocolate soufflé with this kid!” Jonah corrected. “No wonder he’s got cash. He’s a featured player!”

  Sure enough, there, bigger than life, and not much doctored except for colorization, were photos of me and Sue-Anne Schiller holding hands and smiling in our costumes. We were pictured quite large and in front, with a far more doctored and almost unrecognizably touched-up photos of Billy Bartlett and Milly dancing behind our heads. Musical notes were interspersed all around us and around the imperishable copy line: They’re just like your own friends! And they’re coming soon to a Movie Theatre near you!

  “Can we look at the damned car?” I asked the salesman.

  “Sure. Sure.”

  Sid acted like a pro. He folded back the multi-panel engine cover and stood high up on the front edge of the running board. He took out a hanky and wrapped it around his right hand and he touched this and he touched that and at last he hopped down and wiped both hands.

  “Battery’s old and all but fused to the connecting leads. But that’s all right since you keep brand-new batteries right here in the garage and can replace that old one, right?”

  “Where?” the salesman asked and looked at the engine.

  “While you’re in there,” Sid said, “check out the spark plugs. One or two look pret-ty rus-ty to me. Those’ll need to be changed too.”

  “Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, it’s just been sit
ting for a few months.”

  “And naturally we’ll have to take it for a spin to see what else happens to fall off or seize up,” Sid said, with a slick Brooklyn professionalism that gained my immediate admiration.

  “Naturally. Naturally.”

  While they were doing all that, I asked to use the salesman’s desk phone inside the Chevy showroom and called the studio, asking for Rafferty.

  Without identifying myself, I began: “I just want you to know that the cat is outta the bag big-time on Hey! Hay Fever! I’m looking directly up at myself and my costar, both of us twelve feet high and sweet as can be, on Vermont Avenue in Mid-City Los Angeles, for every passerby to see.”

  Rafferty laughed. “B.B. knows already.”

  “Not from me, he doesn’t.”

  “No. From the script boy. Who apparently could not be trusted and who I assure you will not be a script boy again anywhere in this town.”

  “Just as long as you know,” I said. “I didn’t want this to come as a horrible surprise at some meeting or other,” I added.

  He laughed again. “Thanks for the tip…I knew. By the way, where are you? Come in today. We’ve got lots of new lines for you to learn.”

  “Maybe Monday. But first I’m going to Frances Wannamaker’s agency, to sign my fat new studio contract.”

  “It’s there, waiting for you.” He laughed again. Then, in a lower voice, he added, “Did you know that little prick was doing it with the script boy and some other nobody and who knows who else on the set?”

  “If it were a little prick,” I replied, “I doubt that you or any of them would all be interested. Anyway, I suspect I know who else,” I said. “But I’m torn between telling you and blackmailing him myself.”

  “I believe you would!” Rafferty said, highly amused.

  “I would. If it’s worth the effort. Which…I doubt.”

  The others soon arrived back from their “test drive” without any apparent harm to auto or to any living creature, and so I got off the phone and we all went into the office, because it was, after all, despite the salesman’s line of bull, an official sale through the dealership. I made certain that Jonah’s name and my own were on the bill of sale. The salesman then even provided us with an official state registration of the vehicle and a license plate, and we were set.

  As we all tooled into the car, I said to Sid, “So you can drive and fix cars. Any cars?” I asked.

  “I ain’t seen one I can’t yet. But that doesn’t mean there’s not some Chinese model out there I never heard of.”

  “Why not come to the studio with me Monday? I’ll introduce you to the vehicle shop manager. He’s always bitching that he’s short of experienced help. He holds up shooting. He may be able to give you part-time work. They pay the highest in town. And,” I rubbed it in, “every once in a while they’re looking for drivers on film sets too. That’s hazard pay even if you’re driving an old lady at four miles per hour.”

  “I think I may be free Monday,” Sid allowed.

  “Yeah, Sid,” Jonah said, “check your busy schedule! You wouldn’t want to miss your afternoon appointment with Jean Harlow!”

  We arrived at the Alsop House and Pops and a few other residents came out and looked over the car. Pops said it was “a lot better than that Gosh-Darned Flivver I used to burn up.” He then amazed us by saying there actually was a “garage across the street for paying residents.” Who knew?

  “Hey, kid,” he added to me. “You got a phone call. That Wannamaker lady.”

  I phoned Frances from the lobby pay phone and she was breathless. “There’s been a palace coup!” she said.

  “Well, not quite. But I know all about it, and as we speak the posters are going up around town.”

  “Thom sent the new contracts here. You’ll both have to come in.”

  I gestured to Jonah, and asked would he want to drive me and Sue-Anne over to Wannamaker’s office on Robertson Blvd.

  He was game. So we picked her up, and although Jonah was interested in her, he was a total gentleman, which kind of surprised me.

  All was mayhem at Frances’s office, the reason being that her pregnant assistant, Gloria, had left early due to what her boss called “morning, afternoon, and just general all-day sickness!” On top of that, the messenger service hadn’t come by yet and the Wannamaker Agency had stacks for them to take around.

  “We’ve got our own messenger service,” I said and called Jonah indoors. I once again watched Frances size him up and like what she saw, and so I decided to shove them together.

  I explained that Frances needed—what was it?—five or six places he would have to drive to that afternoon?

  “Maybe…seven. I’ll pay for your services, Jonah, is it?” Frances said. And knowing what I did of Jonah now, I thought, will she ever!

  Sue-Anne and I got our ride, along with the signed contracts, down to MGM, and as we directed Jonah to the main office where he had to go to deliver the contracts we’d just signed, Jonah took me aside.

  “Listen here, Little Mary Sunshine. If you’re planning to fix me up in the studio here the way you’re busy fixing up Sid and Ducky and Hank, you just forget about it!”

  I made big eyes at him and said, “Why, Jonah Wolff, Junior, I have no idea what you are talking about, and I resent even what I suspect you may be hinting at.

  “Come on, Sue-Anne,” I said, grabbing her by the shoulder. “Enough of this riff-raff, girl! You and I have lines to learn.”

  14

  “Who wrote these lines?” I asked Seiter, not at all rhetorically, the next day I was back at work shooting.

  “Who knows? Someone in Scripts. Why?”

  “Teenagers haven’t talked like this to each other since Marie-Antoinette lost her head over a brioche. Tell him, Sue-Anne.”

  “Chris is kinda right, Mr. Seiter. This dialogue is… What’s the word I’m looking for, Christopher?”

  “The word I’d use is different than the one you’re looking for, Sue-Anne, and it’s also unprintable. The word you are looking for is ‘unbelievable.’ Let’s see, perhaps also ‘archaic.’ ‘Antique.’ ‘Irrelevant.’ ‘Risible.’ Am I getting warm?”

  “I suppose you could do better!” the director said, throwing the script down on the table and going over to the coffee urn in the room, always kept full and hot, and leaking with a cloth towel folded beneath it.

  “With my eyes closed, one hand tied behind my back, and a full frontal lobotomy! Yes, I could do better.”

  “Okay, hot shot. We’re shooting scene 74A tomorrow. You come in with better dialogue and we’ll look at it.”

  He stormed out of the room with an audible “little know-it-all son of a—” cut off by the door slamming on us.

  “I can write better than this…dog-doo.” I softened the last for her. “And if I get stuck, you’ll help me. Right, Sue-Anne?”

  The next morning at nine a.m., Jonah dropped off Hank, Sid, and me at the studio. “I’ll probably be by sometime later,” he told Sid, “if you need a ride back.” And when I looked up at him, Jonah said, “She said she had a big fight with that cockamamie messenger service. So I said I’d help her out.”

  “She” being my talent agent, Frances Wannamaker.

  “Who knows, but I may be stuck being her errand boy until she finds another service,” Jonah concluded. He didn’t sound that upset by the fact that he was “stuck” with a real job.

  Hank went straight to the design department. He had taken the news of me moving to my own room philosophically, but then he’d asked, “Can I come sleep with you every once in a while? I got used to you.”

  To which I had assented, thinking, this boy is too damn sweet for you, Chris Hall, you manipulative old bastard.

  But I also noticed that being alone did him good last night, as he came in this morning with a pad full of ideas from being alone and up half the night.

  I myself had stayed up until after one a.m., rewriting not only scene 74A, but 74B, 74C, an
d then 77A, B, and C too.

  “This is Sidney Devlin, of Flatbush, Brooklyn,” I introduced him to James Phyllis, our Vehicles Department head. “His mother breast-fed him on high-octane petrol with a motor oil chaser.”

  Sid meanwhile was looking around the enormous garage in wonder. Not only were there cars and trucks, decommissioned streetcars and city busses of varied makes, models, and vintages, but even the first three cars of a steam engine last used to supposedly crush to death Garbo for Anna Karenina.

  “Will ya look at that one?” Sid said under his breath to me at a 1926 Stutz Black Hawk yellow-bodied roadster with ink-black fenders, chrome trim, and black leather seats. It looked like a giant dragonfly that had just landed for a second.

  “Flatbush, huh,” J.P. asked. “You a Dodgers or Giants fan?”

  “I was a Dodgers fan. Now I’m a Black Hawk fan!”

  “A beauty, huh? That was owned by Priscilla Lane. She said it went too fast. She couldn’t slow it down. So we took it off her hands. Now take a look at this old Mercer Raceabout. Some bozo told me…”

  I left them together in auto heaven and popped into the Scripts department.

  A young male assistant at the front desk with a mop of fuzzy yellowish hair and big tortoiseshell glasses, altogether resembling a very young Marx Brother, was reading a newspaper. He looked up surprised and seeing pages under my arm, he quickly said:

  “No one’s in yet. I don’t expect them till eleven.”

  “What about the typists?”

  “The fellows do their own typing.”

  “Fine, I need a typewriter and an office for an hour. If you have any problem with that request, call Thom Rafferty.”

  It had been decades since I had used a typewriter, but their Royal manuals were kept oiled, cleaned, and in generally tip-top condition, with erasing ink nearby and nice soft paper and bright new ribbons in the carriages. Even better, the typewriter tabs were already set for the specific indents needed for an official screenplay page: for scene, then set-up; farther in for character name and out again for dialogue; so after a few minutes of reacquainting myself with all that and the noise it made, I was speeding along.

  At eleven on the dot, one writer showed up and was told that someone was in the empty office typing away, so he peeked in.