I Confess (6 page)

"What did you say?"

"That I want to work with you again—in Spain."

"Ah so."

"And another thing, Jimmy. Nobody on the coast is going to know. You don't have to worry about that. My crew is decent, and Halloran . . . well, you know Hallo-ran."

"Yes, I know Halloran."

"So ... be seeing you, Jimmy."

"Be seeing you, Joe."

The telephone rang just as he closed the door behind him. It was Margaret. She wanted to know how I was feeling. "Great," I told her.

"I'm calling so early because Ted's got tickets for the opera, and I won't have time later."

"What are you going to see?"

''Fidelio, You don't mind?"

"Heavens, why should I?"

"Ted says I need distraction.*'

"Of course."

"I'll be in tomorrow."

"Fine."

"Has the Professor been in to see you yet?"

"No."

"He promised me he'd see you today. Tomorrow theyll start the examination. He said you had to rest a day before they start. Did you know that? Oh Roy, I almost forgot. We met Clayton in the bar." I started. "He told me how enthusiastic everybody on the coast is about your script. The German distributor too." Good old Clayton. "Isn't that wonderful?"

"Wonderful."

"Was he in to see you?"

"Yes."

"And he told you?"

"Yes, Margaret."

"You see! And who broueht you two together?"

"You did, Margaret." I had the feehng that she was not alone. "Are you alone?"

"No. Vera and Ted are with me. We're still in the bar." I could hear Ted's voice. "They send love."

"Thanks."

"You see ... I know with whom you can work."

"Yes, Margaret."

"I'm your little manager. I'll make you the most successful writer in the world."

I could see her sitting at the bar, nodding and smiling at the Baxters, and how they were admiring her.

"Joe lied to you, Margaret," I said. "They rejected the script. Joe fired me. Collins is doing the revision."

Seconds later she had herself in hand again. "But that's wonderful, Roy. Joe offered you two new pictures? What did I tell you! You're going to be famous. But don't let them have you cheap. You know what you're worth. Don't sign anything while you're in the hospital. Let me do the negotiating, the way I always ..."

"Goodnight, Margaret," I said.

She was still chattering excitedly as I hung up. She would continue to hold the receiver to her ear as if the connection had not been broken, and talk on and on and then bid me a tender farewell. The Baxters would be full of admiration. What a wife! Her husband a writer, and she the one who smoothed the way for him, faithfully and with selfless love, the one who had led liim to fame, laying aside her own aspirations to be an actress, negotiating for him, helping him to evaluate contracts that brought him together with such movie greats as Joe Clayton . . .

Ridiculous as it may seem, she had done just that. It was she who had brought Joe and me together. And I was grateful to her at the time. It was at a point in my life when I would have been grateful to anyone who made it possible for me to work for whomever, wherever, because I hadn't written a script in a year and a half and we were hard up. And Margaret had to share the blame for that.

It all began harmlessly, one might almost say touchingly. I was very happy when she told me she was pregnant, and we decided to get married at once! At the time, a child, a house and a family of my own were just what I wanted. It was a period in my life when I felt strongly that I wanted to be a solid citizen. Her parents came to the wedding. They were nice simple people from the Middle West; they owned a drugstore in Louisville, Ohio. Margaret had told them a lot about me and the wonderful things I was doing in Hollywood, and they regarded me with awe. They were very happy about the marriage. I liked them, especially Margaret's mother.

Then they went back to Louisville, and I began life as a married man. It was a good time. We had a wonderful doctor and Margaret went to see him regulariy. Mother and child were doing fine. My friends came to see us. They accepted Margaret as one of them, friendly and easily, with the informality that is characteristic of the social atmosphere in my profession, where anyone can become anything if he has talent.

For a while we lived peacefully. We were compatible. Then Margaret began to concern herself with my career. In order to make what follows more comprehensible, I must explain that in Hollywood, just as anywhere else where pictures are made, there is a pronounced atmosphere of inbreeding. Movie people socialize exclusively with movie people, and the only thing they talk about is motion pictures. They talk about pictures morning, noon and night, on the street, in restaurants, at the club, in bed. They talk about parts, actors, subject matter, intrigue, salaries, future projects. It's a disease. It's a specific form of exhibitionism, of self-exposure, a communication madness such as can be found in no other profession.

Doctors, engineers, physicists, lawyers—aD have outside interests—music, painting, or they collect stamps. They know how to Usten, and when work is done, they can turn it off. Not so the people of the theatre and motion pictures. They never turn oflf their profession, they have no outside interests, no hobbies, they have to talk mcessantly about what really absorbs them—their profession, day and night, year in, year out. They have to confide, they have to bare their souls, they get on their own and each other's nerves. Sometimes they try to escape from this plague of shop talk. They tear out into the countryside, to the desert, and come back a few days later, starved, burning with only one wish, avid to know what happened while they were away.

This was Margaret's world. She had been a part of it before we married, but then only as a pretty little girl whom you could pick up and take to a party, who drank

her brandy discreetly and modestly and was a social asset of sorts to the man who had brought her along. But now she was living in this world, so to say, as an equal. The working aristocracy of films, the only aristocracy that profession recognizes, had accepted her m her capacity as the wife of writer James Elroy Chandler.

As the wife of a writer, Margaret soon discovered that she no longer was only a pretty little girl whom you could pick up and take to a party, who drank her brandy discreetly and modestly and was a social asset of sorts to the man who had brought her along, but that now she was allowed to talk right along with the others, that they listened to her, turned to look at her, and nodded admiringly when she spoke.

Let me be fair. She never spoke about herself. She never tried to push herself into the forefront or lay stress on her talents or make herself interesting. If only she had! How harmless that would have been! But she did something much worse: she talked about me. She tried to push me into the limelight, stress my talent, make me sound fascinating. And that was an unpardonable sin.

Because, if there is one written law in this strange, unrealistic and questionable shadow world of motion pictures, then it is this: you can talk badly about all of mankind, but never may you glorify yourself or any member of your family. That is out. Others must extol your talents, not you, not yours. On the outside, yes, that's a different matter—^your manager and agent take care of you there and nobody in the business takes a word they say seriously. But inside, with your colleagues, you may talk only of your work, never of your successes. Among ourselves, every last one of us is a poor thing, naked, overworked and tired. In such surroundings, anyone who makes a show of himself, who tries to make the point that he or his are exceptional, is out of place. It is to be avoided at all cost. An exhibitionist is not going to tell another exhibitionist that he's better at exposing himself.

But just this was what Margaret started to do. She

Spoke badly of our colleagues, and that was all right. But then she went on to extol me, and that was anything but all right. I begged her to stop. She promised she would, but she couldn't keep her promise. Her tongue kept running away with her. "If only they'd let Jimmy. . . ." That was how it always began.

K only they'd let Jimmy . . . Warners would soon be in the black again. If only they'd let Jimmy . . . Bette Davis' last picture wouldn't have been a flop. If only they'd let Jimmy . . . Gordon McKeith wouldn't have written a role for Robert Montgomery that was so bad that poor Robert—who anyway didn't know what was good for him —^wouldn't have to be begging around for a new contract. Jimmy would have done this better, would have prevented that; Jimmy had said years ago that this and that would happen; Jimmy had a manuscript on file for three years and now Fox wanted to steal the idea. Jimmy was a hundred times better than any other writer, those present included. And it was only the stupidity of his superiors that prevented him from getting the Oscar for best original script every year. Yes, if only they'd let Jimmy . • .

Again, I must try to be fair and say that Margaret never did any of this in her own personal interest. She had been told and had had to listen bitterly to the fact that she didn't have a spark of acting ability. It wasn't surprising that she chose to transfer her own ambitions to her husband, that she wanted to see him successful, famous and sought after. Could anything have been more touching? Was any greater proof possible of her love? And my God, could there have been anything more disastrous?

Finally I had got her to the point where she refrained from "the glorification of Jimmy," at least when I was around. But soon everyone was telling me that in my absence she blew her "If only they'd let Jimmy" trumpet louder than ever. By now some of my friends were seriously annoyed. Others winked at me ironically, as much as to say: great idea of yours to make your wife your

publicity agent while you stand back protesting innocence. They congratulated me with rancor. Sometimes, somehow or other, a producer fell for her hymns of praise and they had the desired effect. That my colleagues didn't like it ... why should that bother me?

Our first quarrels were over this situation; Margaret's first tears flowed because of it. She was only doing it for my good, and I didn't understand, she sobbed. I felt ashamed and apologized. She promised not to do it again but I knew she would. I was right. The final catastrophe came as the result of her breaking that promise.

It was in the spring of 1941. Margaret was pregnant when we watched the preview of The Death of a Lady, The picture was based on an idea I had had in 1938. I was under contract to Warner Brothers at the time. They liked the idea and told me to write the script. It was a psycho-thriller, starring Dorothy McGuire. When I handed in the script it was declared disappointing. It hadn't come up to their expectations. They were very polite about it and immediately gave me another book to write. They gave my script to Dore Thompson for revision.

Things like that happen frequently, in fact more often than not. But it was happening to me for the first time, and it upset me. For Margaret it was the end of the world. She couldn't get over it. When I told her about it, she became hysterical. She became hard and bitter. She refused to speak to poor Dore Thompson, as if it were his fault. She said awful things about him whenever she could find a listener. I think part of her trouble was that then, for the first time, she got the feeling that maybe I really was just a middle-of-the road writer and would never make it to the top.

That preview took place on the evening of February 23. It happened to be a very cold day. The small projection room was poorly heated and filled to capacity. All technicians and the entire artistic staff were present—the producer, the director, and Jack Warner personally.

Margaret was by now big with child which made her self-conscious. Even maternity dresses couldn't hide the fact. She was irritable and felt insecure. She smiled her madonna smile courageously in every direction. She couldn't help noticing that many times it wasn't answered.

Then we watched the picture. She nudged me and cleared her throat indignantly when she saw the credits. "Written by Dore Thompson. Based on a short story by James Elroy Chandler."

"Shh!" I hissed desperately.

"What the hell!" she hissed back,

"Margaret, please!"

After that she was quiet, for ninety minutes, eerily quiet. She sat there, her hands folded over her stomach, her eyes glued on the screen. That she was so quiet worried me all the more because the picture wasn't good. I say this not because they scrapped my script. It really wasn't good, and the reviews and public reaction soon told the same story. Dore Thompson had made an indigestible, long-winded, leaden affair out of a theme that was based primarily on a certain breathlessness, on plot and, above all, on suspense. But right then all this was irrelevant. One of the rules of the business is that at the showing of a new film, the people who worked on it have to be congratulated as if it were a masterpiece. Whoever goes against this rule can never atone for his sin. This was the reason—or at least one of the reasons—why there was a general movement of congratulations and handshaking when the lights went on again.

Margaret sat there, her lips white. She wouldn't look at me. She remained seated while I got up to participate in the conversations going on around me. She had an excuse for remaining seated; everyone knew of her condition.

I went over to Dorothy McGuire first. "Wonderful, Dorothy," I said. "Really wonderful. I mean it. I think it's the best thing you've done."

"How sweet of you, Jimmy. But you're exaggerating."

*Tm not, Dorothy. Really. Don't you agree, Mr. Warner?"

Old man Warner nodded, smiled, and patted Dorothy's hand. "Yes, my child. I'm very happy about it."

"So am I!" It was Dore Thompson. He kissed Dorothy's hand. "In fact I'm crazy about your performance."

"Dore," I said, "it was my idea, but then Mr. Warner gave you the script, so I hope you'll be happy to know that I think you've done a great job."

"Thanks, Jimmy, thanks. Coming from you it does mean more." And so on and so forth.