The Dream Merchants (45 page)

“All right, I guess. But I wish I hadn’t started it. I’m working so hard and I’m so tired I can hardly keep my eyes open when I get home.” He could hear her yawn over the phone.

A wave of sympathy for her ran through him. Poor kid, she hadn’t known what she was asking for. Picture-making was hectic and exhausting work at its best. “Look, honey, I won’t keep you up, then. You got to get your rest so you can look pretty for the camera in the morning. I just wanted to hear your voice, I felt so lonely.”

“Don’t hang up, Johnny.” She seemed to be pleading. “I want to talk to you.”

He laughed. Sometimes you had to be firm with her. “Now look,” he said with mock sternness, “we’ll have the rest of our lives to talk. Tonight you’re gonna get some sleep.”

“All right, Johnny.” Her voice was filled with surrender to his masculine assertiveness.

“I love you, Dulcie.”

“I love you too, Johnny,” she answered.

“Good night, darling,” he said tenderly.

“Good night, Johnny.”

He hung the receiver back on the hook and stretched out on the bed. He smiled at her picture. It was a few minutes before he realized he hadn’t told her about Rocco. That was what he had wanted to talk to her about. Slowly the empty feeling seemed to creep back into him.

***

Von Elster watched her put down the phone. “Too bad he won’t let you stay in pictures. Some day when they will have talking pictures you will be even more wonderful an actress.”

She looked at him, a wise and knowing look on her face. “Who said he wouldn’t let me stay in pictures?” she asked softly.

He looked at her for a moment, then he raised her hand to his lips. “Forgive me, Dulcie,” he said, his voice filled with wonder. “You are a greater actress even than I thought.”

She looked over his head. Her eyes grew dark and thoughtful. It was easy to fool Johnny now, he was so in love with her. She felt a twinge of conscience and shook her head. Why should it bother her?

She had never loved him and had married him for only one reason. He was getting what he wanted, she held nothing back from him. It was only fair that she should get what she wanted.

She knew deep inside her that she would never be satisfied with one man. There was a constant driving inside her, challenging her. She would only be happy when every man in the world could see her and want her. She smiled to herself.

Soon every man would. When her picture came out.

AFTERMATH

1938

FRIDAY

It was the kind of day I should’ve stayed in bed. Nothing went right. And there was nothing I could do about it. Fridays just weren’t my days.

It started in the morning when I got to Peter’s house. They wouldn’t let me in to see him. His temperature had gone up and the doctor had forbidden visitors.

I talked awhile to Doris and Esther and tried to cheer them up a little. I don’t know whether I was convincing enough for them, but I do know that the more I talked, the more depressed I grew.

It was an intangible sort of feeling. It started off small, a little foreboding deep inside you. Then it seemed to grow larger like a black cloud moving in from the distance on a rainy day. At first you shrug it off, pay no attention to it. It isn’t going to bother you, it isn’t even coming your way. And then suddenly it’s pouring. That was the way it was with me.

I paid little attention to it when I left their house for the studio, but when I got to my office, I knew I had it. I was caught in the midst of a downpour with no shelter in sight and everything was all bollixed up from there on out.

I had spent more time at Peter’s house than I had expected, so I got to the studio after lunch. It was about two o’clock when I looked down at my desk and saw Larry’s note.

“Call me when you get in,” it read. It was signed by Larry.

I had the strangest impulse to leave the office and go home and put off seeing him until Monday, but I didn’t. Instead I pressed down the interoffice communicator and he answered.

“Stan and I would like to see you when you have a few minutes,” he said, the intercom giving his voice a queer metallic ring.

I hesitated a moment. “Come on in now,” I told him.

“Good,” he replied. “We’ll be right in.”

I sat down in my chair and wondered what he wanted. I didn’t have to wait long to find out. The door opened and he ushered Farber into my office.

I lit a cigarette. “Have a chair, boys,” I said more cheerfully than I felt. “What’s on your mind?”

Ronsen came right to the point. The words came from his lips and Farber’s mind. “I’ve decided to call a special meeting of the board for next Wednesday in New York. I think we ought to clarify Stan’s position without delay.”

I was still smiling. “Sounds all right to me,” I agreed readily. “What do you have in mind to clarify?”

“For one thing,” Ronsen said uncomfortably, “I think we ought to do something about creating a definite post for Dave. He’s been on the lot for several months now and he’s neither fish nor fowl. His responsibilities should be clearly designated. The way it stands now, nobody knows just what he’s supposed to do.”

“I have a good idea what to do with him,” I murmured gently. “But I don’t suppose it will coincide with yours.”

Farber flushed a little at my answer, but Ronsen grimly ignored it. “What we—uh, I mean—I have in mind,” he stammered a little, “is to have him elected vice-president. He will be in charge of production.”

I looked at him. “That’s a very nice-sounding title.” I nodded my head. “Vice-president in charge of production. A guy named Thalberg once had it over at Metro. Zanuck’s got it over at Twentieth Century-Fox.” I stopped for a moment to let them get my point and then continued: “But those guys knew their business. What the hell does this kid know? He doesn’t know the front end of a camera from his asshole.” I shook my head sadly. “Besides, gentlemen, we’ve got a production manager who does know his business. If you want to make a vee pee out of him, that will be all right with me, but I can’t see Dave in the job. He doesn’t know enough about it.”

Ronsen glanced uncomfortably at Farber. Farber returned his look implacably. Ronsen turned back to me. His voice was conciliatory. “There’s really nothing to get excited about, Johnny. It will only be a working title. Roth won’t really be in charge of production. Gordon will still stay in that job, but we have to give him a title of some importance.”

I didn’t answer for a moment. I looked at him steadily. I could see he was uncomfortable under my gaze; he shifted slightly in his seat. “Why?” I asked gently.

For the first time since he came into the office Farber spoke. “That’s part of the price you have to pay for a million dollars,” he said, his eyes staring into mine.

I turned my chair toward him. The chips were down and the cards were beginning to turn up on the table. This was it and I might as well get it over with as quickly as possible. “What’s the rest of the price we gotta pay, Stan?” I asked softly.

He didn’t answer; again it was Larry who did the talking, but I kept looking at Stan.

“Stanley will be elected to the board at that meeting along with Dave. He will be given a special authority to revamp the sales department along the lines of certain ideas he has.”

My voice was sarcastic as I answered. “And what ideas has he got, may I ask, or are there some relatives of his around that I don’t know about?”

“Wait a minute, Johnny,” Ronsen said quickly. “You haven’t heard his plans yet. You’re prejudiced, but the board has already agreed with them in principle.”

I turned and looked at him. “How come I haven’t heard about them? I’m on the board too, remember?”

His eyes shifted behind his glasses. “This came up the day after you left and we had to act right away. We tried to get in touch with you, but couldn’t.”

In a pig’s eye, they tried. I settled back in my chair comfortably and looked at them. “As president of this outfit I’m responsible for its operations. Those operations include sales policy and production policy. In other words, anything that pertains to the particular industry that this company is operating in. Your responsibility, Larry, is financial—to see that the company is always on a sound financial basis. When you start meddling in operations that are not your concern, you are endangering its financial standing and so imperiling your responsibility. I can well appreciate your concern and that of the board to protect the investment you have made thus far in the company. But an important factor to be considered is the qualifications of you people to pass upon any changes in how the company is to be run.”

My cigarette had gone out and I lit another. I looked at them in the manner a teacher looks at his class. “Let us examine those qualifications. Yours first. Your previous experience in this business has been confined to an association with the bankers who are presently in control of the Borden Company. These bankers, upon gaining control, tried for a while to run it along their lines of thinking. In the time they did so, they lost millions of dollars and were forced to turn to the industry to find a man that could operate the company profitably for them. They found one—George Pappas. And from there on out the responsibility was clearly his. The correctness of that decision is apparent in their financial position today.

“And our other estimable members of the board—what do they know about the picture business? As little or less than you. One is a member of a banking concern. One a member of a brokerage house on Wall Street.” I was ticking them off on my fingers as I spoke. “One is a member of a wholesale food-packing company, and still another a hotel man. And the last, but not least, is a sweet retired gentleman of means whose inherited fortune allows him to maintain residences in all the socially correct places, to which he shuttles back and forth as the seasons demand and serves on various boards of directors of companies in which his money is invested. He brings to all these boards the same sweetness and general lack of knowledge that he brings to ours.”

They were staring at my fingers, fascinated as I held my hand on the desk in front of them. I looked at them. “Shall I continue, gentlemen?” I asked gently. “Or is that enough?”

My voice grew cold. “I will not permit the same degree of incompetence to the operating management of this company that characterizes its board. This is a motion-picture company that at present faces a difficult and uncertain future. It needs experienced personnel, not amateurs. If your desire is to protect the money you have already invested, my advice to you people is simple. Proceed cautiously before you try to apply your experience to this business. It’s like nothing else you’ve ever come in contact with before.”

I smiled gently at Larry. His face was white and strained. “The one thing that you bring to this business that is needed is capital. You people either have money or know where you can get it. I do not underestimate its importance when I tell you: you work at your end of the business and let me work at mine.”

Larry’s voice was trembling with fury as he answered. He had probably never been spoken to so bluntly since he had been a baby. The veneer of politeness had been stripped from him. His words were savage. “Contrary to your stated opinion, Johnny, the board has already approved Stan’s suggestions and will proceed to make it official. They are running the company, not you. This is no longer a one-man concern as it was in Kessler’s day, and if you have any ideas of trying to run it on that basis, forget them.” he had risen to his feet in anger as he spoke.

I looked up at him easily. This was the kind of language I could understand. Plain talk. To hell with this business of being subtle and beating around the bush. My voice was calm, matter-of-fact. I smiled slowly. “You and your boys lost three million bucks screwing around with this outfit before you called on me to pull your nuts out of the fire. Well, if I’m gonna pull ’em out, I’m gonna do it in my way. I’m not gonna try to carry an added load of incompetent people who will only throw more monkey wrenches into the works.”

He stopped short as he started to sit down again. I almost laughed aloud at the way he looked, suspended in the air over his chair. A flash of fear crossed his face and quickly disappeared. He hadn’t thought I would go as far as I intimated. He thought I wanted the job more than anything else in the world. It was good he didn’t know how right he was. He searched for words and finally found them. His control had returned, his voice was once more bland and smooth. “What are we getting upset about?” he asked in a conciliatory voice. “It’s just a difference of opinion. I’m sure we can work something out that will be satisfactory to all of us.” I could see the three million dollars working around in his mind as he turned to Stanley with a placating look on his face. “Can’t we, Stan?”

Farber looked at me. My face was expressionless. He looked at Ronsen again. There was a familiar whine in his voice; I had heard it a long time before. “Then what do I get out of it? After all, I’m putting up the million dollars.”

Ronsen looked at me. His voice was reasonable, persuasive. When he spoke, I knew I had them temporarily. That was the trouble. I knew it would be temporary, that it wouldn’t last. It would become more difficult to deal with once they entrenched themselves. I knew what would happen. Sooner or later I would be out. The only way I was sure of winning was to keep them out now, but I couldn’t do that. I’d already agreed to accept the million dollars. The best I could hope for was to keep the pay-off price down as much as possible.

I leaned toward them as I spoke. “I’m not an unreasonable man,” I said gently. “I mind my own business and all I ask of people is to mind their own. I’m perfectly willing to have Stan elected to the board as an ordinary member without any special authority and I’m willing to give Dave a chance here at the studio. When there is time for him to develop, I’ll even be willing to give him a chance at running it, but not right now. There is too much at stake for us to take any risks.”

Ronsen looked at Farber. “That sounds fair enough, Stan. What do you say?” His voice was smooth enough to wrap around a baby’s behind.