Harlan Ellison - Spider Kiss

For several hours he lay there, staring at the play of lights on the ceiling from night-running trucks grinding past on the highway. Staring at lights, with his hands crossed against his chest as though he were laid out with lilies, smelling the embalmer’s formaldehyde.

Rockabilly was completed and in the cans ten days ahead of schedule. The Gods Upstairs threw a cast party at which Stag was gifted with a solid gold cigarette case and lighter, his first name tastefully spelled out in rubies on the face of it.

Leslie Parrish kissed the boy several times, but for the most part smiled briefly, politely. The director made a short speech about how they had accomplished more in Rockabilly than they had set out to do, chiefly because of their friend the star,

Stag Preston; the producer ventured a darkling hint about Academy Awards, and the hint was chased by impressed oooh’s and aaah’s . Stag found it necessary only to smile and bow and wink knowingly during the proceedings—until he was able to break away to ball an extra, a short girl with pixie black hair named Marcie, from Joplin, Missouri.

The film was sneak previewed in five locations simultaneously: The State Theatre in Kalamazoo, Michigan;

The Varsity Theatre in Evanston, Illinois; The Boyd Theatre in Philadelphia; Radio City Theatre in Minneapolis; The Esquire Theatre in Stockton, California. There had been some talk of letting word slip at The Manor in San Mateo, California—word that Stag’s first picture would be screened there—but the studio decided not to rig the results with a horde of teen-aged admirers. The sneaks went off as scheduled and when the cards had been returned, no one doubted they had a star and a money maker.

Even the most critical moviegoer—in this case a “Cinema Reviewer” for a college newspaper visiting a girl friend in Stockton—hailed Stag as (quote) That seldom-seen phenomenon, the personality that endears, excites and visually leaps off the screen (unquote).

Then followed two weeks of tour cross-country, banging the tympani for Rockabilly (which oddly enough, was getting the sort of puff that removed the picture from the category of “teen-age rock’n’roll ditties” and lent it serious attention).

Stag was heavily exposed: via tv interviews, in fan magazine pieces, at women’s luncheons, across the high school circuit, during record shop appearances and benefits, and he appeared, with fanfare, as a feature of half-time ceremonies at the Dartmouth-Harvard game. It was to his credit that the catcalls from Ivy Leaguers too sophisticated to accept Stag as anything more than an adolescent idol—were sparse and drowned under by applause and “gimme a locomotive!”

When the night of the premiere arrived, the De Mille Theatre was the brightest jewel in all Times Square. Father Duffy’s statue winced and averted its eyes; too much neon, too many cerulean minks, too much voltage in the air.

The beaverboard portraits of Stag that rose seventy-three feet above the De Mille marquee showed the boy in an artist’s conception that was a cross between Horatius at the bridge and The Little Dutch Boy Who Stuck His Finger In The Dike.

Stag arrived with his co-star on his arm. Miss Parrish smiled briefly, politely, and was borne inside after the radio interviews.

One hundred and fifty-eight minutes later, as the audience poured out onto Times Square, Stag, Shelly, Freeport, Joe Costanza and an amorphous mass of hangers-on found they had left America and were residing in Valhalla.

Stag Preston was a hit. Not just a success, for that was a status that both Shelly and Freeport had known … but a hit … an unqualified smash … a state where everything touched turned to U-235. There was the feeling , a sort of tension in the air, a very noticeable difference in the way people looked and the way the lights blinked, and the way everything had a crystal ring in its tone. There was no contesting it, because it couldn’t be defined by science or emotion or any other yardstick. It was like God or Goodness or the odor of a bakery. It was success, and the top of the ant-hill, so why think about it, why not just swing with it? It was there; you could sense it even before the columnists told you you’d been right. And the amorphous mass grew as the bandwagoners arrived.

They made it to Freeport’s suite—Shelly noted with momentary uncertainty that Carlene was present—and sat waiting out the graveyard shift … the first papers with reviews of Rockabilly . There was too much nervous laughter, too many handshakes and assurances that “you got it made, kid.” It was a leech throng, satiated with its own need for luxury and surroundings of achievement. Shelly despised them intensely, seeing them now as an outsider, realizing he had been umbilically joined to them, might still be, but was in the process of cutting the cord.

Carlene made of herself a remote island on the other side of the room for most of the evening, chattering with whoever paddled into her lagoon. They felt no need to talk to each other; he knew which bed she would occupy that night. It was very much like the relationship of a couple married thirty years.

Finally, the newspapers arrived.

A rush was made for the entertainment sections, and the business of absorbing, shifting, and reading another began. In twenty minutes, with shrieks across the room of, “ Jeezus on toast , do you see what Crowther said?” and whoops of elation, the verdict had come down from the pundits.

A composite might have read like so:

After the current spate of greasy-haired, wailing, no-talent teen-agers who have given us a surfeit of insipidness, the announcement of The Current Conqueror’s appearance on film did not stir this reviewer. However, last night at the De Mille Theatre, Stag Preston made his acting debut in a bit of persiflage titled Rockabilly and the result was just short of incredible .

After dispensing with the banal plot (poor boy from Down South makes the Big Time and loses his Soul), the songs gauged to pre-puberty intellects and the rather pedestrian performances of the supporting cast, we are left only with Mr. Preston and his talent.

Happily, this is more than enough.

Stag Preston is definitely not another squawker-turnedactor. He has a remarkable grasp of matters thespic, a very sure comedic touch, and a personality that at once commands

and repels. This critic views Mr. Preston as a troubling shadowy resonance of that vitality and je ne sais quoi , that salt-lick of anti-social renegade behavior only briefly glimpsed, yet deified, in James Dean. But there is much more than the surly restlessness of a Dean in Preston. The singer has a driving personality dichotomously self-destructive yet vastly appealing. His manner with essentially carbon-copied dialogue from endless ‘B’ movies is miraculous; nuances, subtleties, depths we usually only see in the best imported films .

Even when singing, in an area of music long lost to maturity and any depth of perception, Stag Preston manages to capture a sensitivity that marks him a performer of rare gifts. This is Stag Preston’s show, from first to last, and he runs it with assurance, skill and verve.

As they say in the trade, he plays like a baby doll. Give this one 3 1/2 stars, and cover any side bets about Oscar nominations.

That might have been a composite review. And, in point of fact, with the exception of the final paragraph, one columnist wrote it just that way. Stag was a hit.

Rockabilly was a hit.

“My Sad Dog Heart"—the ballad Stag sang in the picture— was a hit.

Shelly paid himself a stock dividend—the Mercedes was rebored. Again.