Love of the Last Tycoon: The Authorized Text (No Series) (23 page)

Dan bears, in some form of speech, a faint resemblance to Bradogue. This must be subtly done and not look too much like a parable or moral lesson, still the impression must be conveyed, but be careful to convey it once and not rub it in. If the reader misses it, let it go—don’t repeat. Show Frances as malleable and amoral in the situation, but show a definite doubt on Jim’s part, even from the first, as to whether this is fair dealing even towards the dead. Close this episode with the children rejoining the party.

Several weeks later the children have now made several trips to the mountain and have rifled the place of everything that is of any value. Dan is especially proud of his find, which includes some rather disreputable possessions of Ronciman. Frances is worried and definitely afraid and tending to side with Jim, who is now in an absolutely wretched mood about the whole affair. He knows that searching parties have been on a neighboring mountain—that the plane has been traced and that with the full flowering of spring the secret will come out and that each trip up he feels that the danger is more and more. However, let that be Frances’ feeling, because Jim has, by this time, read the contents of Stahr’s briefcase and late at night, taking it from the woodshed where he has concealed it, has gotten an admiration for the man. Naturally, by the time of this episode all three children are aware of what plane it was and who was in it and whose possessions they have.

One day also they have found the bodies, though I do not want to go into this scene in any gruesome manner, of the six or seven victims still half concealed by the snow. In any case, something in one of Stahr’s letters that Jim reads late at night decides him to go to Judge—–and tell the whole story, which he does against the threats of Dan, who is bigger than he is and could lick him physically. We leave the children there with the idea that they are in good hands, that they are not going to be punished, that they have made full restoration, and the fact that, after all, they could plead in court that they did not know anything more about the situation than “finders keepers.” There will be no punishment of any kind for any of the three children. Give the impression that Jim is all right—that Frances is faintly corrupted and may possibly go off in a year or so in search of adventure and may turn into anything from a gold digger to a prostitute, and that Dan has been completely corrupted and will spend the rest of his life looking for a chance to get something for nothing.

I cannot be too careful not to rub this in or give it the substance or feeling of a moral tale. I should [show] very pointedly that Jim is all right and end perhaps with Frances and let the readers hope that Frances is going to be all right and then take that hope away by showing the last glimpse of Frances with that lingering conviction that luxury is over the next valley, therefore giving a bitter and acrid finish to the incident to take away any possible sentimental and moral stuff that may have crept into it. Certainly end the incident with Frances.

Effect on children idea persists. Plane might fall in suburb of Los Angeles. He thinks it was hills, but it’s right there—a desolation he helped to create.

It is impossible to tell you anything of Stahr’s day except at the risk of being dull. People in the East pretend to be interested in how pictures are made, but if you actually tell them anything, you find they are only interested in Colbert’s clothes or Gable’s private life. They never see the ventriloquist for the doll. Even the intellectuals, who ought to know better, like to hear about the pretensions, extravagances and vulgarities—tell them pictures have a private grammar, like politics or automobile production or society, and watch the blank look come into their faces.

I could try, for instance, to make you understand what Stahr meant by his peculiar use of the word “nice,” something like what Saint-Simon meant by
la politesse,
and you would classify what I had said as a lecture on taste.

The Warner Brothers narrative writing and the Metro dramatic, packed—cut back and forth writing from Stahr.

[
Stahr and Prince Agge
]

“Come on: we’ll go get some lunch.” Casually he added: “Broaca is the best man in Hollywood except Lubitsch and Vidor. But he’s getting old and it makes him cross. He doesn’t see that a director isn’t everything in pictures now. That comes from the days when they shot off the cuff.”

“The cuff?”

They started out the door. Stahr laughed.

“The director was supposed to have the plot on his cuff. There wasn’t any script. Writers were all called gag-men—usually reporters and all souses. They stood behind the director and made suggestions, and if he liked it and it fitted with what was on his cuff, he staged it and took his footage.”

The situation on the big lot was that every producer, director and scenarist there could adduce proof that he was a money-maker. With the initial distrust of the industry by business, with the weeding out of better men from the needs of speed, with the emphasis as in a mining camp on the lower virtues; then with the growing complication of technique and the elusiveness it created—it could fairly be said of all and by all of those who remained that they had made money—despite the fact that not a third of the producers or one-twentieth of the writers could have earned their living in the East. There was not one of these men, no matter how low-grade or incompetent a fellow, who could not claim to have participated largely in success. This made difficulty in dealing with them.

Remember my summing-up in
Crazy Sunday
—don’t give the impression that these are bad people.

Actress
—introduced so slowly, so close, so real that you believe in her. Somehow she’s first sitting next to you, not an actress but with all the qualifications, loud and dissonant in your ear. Then she
is
one, but don’t let it drift away in detailed description of her career. Keep her close. Never just use her name. Always begin with a mannerism.

The Beard.
Monty Woolley’s beard. 50 peddle the muff. Family supported by beard. It hasn’t worked for seven weeks. It was wonderful in
Hurricane.
It got a poor deal Wednesday. For a gag going to cut it off—work I lose. How much prestige,
amour propre.
Damage to ego. $30,000. Fake beard cut off.