Квентин Тарантино - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - The First Novel By Quentin Tarantino

He saw him across the set earlier. But set protocol dictates that when an established actor—especially one who used to have his own hit television series—is guest-starring on your show, it’s the lead of the series’ obligation to approach the visiting actor and thank him for appearing on the show.

Just like Rick did when Darren McGavin guested on Bounty Law , and Edward G. Robinson, and Howard Duff, and Rory Calhoun, and Louis Hayward, and even Douglas Fairbanks Jr. It had been Rick’s place to welcome them aboard and thank them for their contribution. But as of two o’clock in the afternoon, Jim Stacy has yet to introduce himself and welcome Rick. Van Williams did on The Green Hornet . Ron Ely did on Tarzan. Gary Conway did on Land of the Giants . Efrem Zimbalist Jr. did on The FBI. But that little cocksucker Scott Brown on Bingo Martin didn’t. If you’re somebody and the series lead hasn’t introduced himself to you before you’re standing in front of the camera, you’ve just been told, in front of the whole crew, Fuck you!

Both men have been on the set long enough that Jim should have introduced himself by now. But Dalton is prepared to cut Stacy a little slack. This is the first day of his first series. He could be legitimately nervous. But if he doesn’t get his shit together soon, he’s going to have an enemy for life.

Well, Rick wouldn’t have long to wait. As he reads his paperback, he spots over the top of the pages CBS’s new swingin’ dick, in his red ruffled shirt and black jeans with the silver studs down the pant leg, making his way across the dusty Twentieth Century Fox western back lot, heading in his direction.

Well, it’s about fucking time , Rick thinks. The actor acts like he doesn’t see Jim approaching and continues reading his book.

When the devilishly handsome series lead reaches Rick’s chair, he says his name with a question mark at the end.

“Rick Dalton?”

Rick’s eyes rise from the paperback western, and he lowers the book into his lap. “You bet,” is his answer.

Jim Stacy sticks out his hand and says, “Jim Stacy. This is my show; welcome aboard.”

Rick smiles and shakes the swingin’ dick’s hand.

Stacy says, “We’re real glad to have a pro like you playin’ the heavy on the pilot. I just want you to know I was a big fan of Bounty Law . That was a damn good show, and you should be really proud of it.”

“Well, thank ya, Jim,” was Rick’s reply to Stacy. “Yes it was and yes I am.”

“And gotta tell you,” Jim Stacy continues, “I came damn close to joining you in The Fourteen Fists of McCluskey .”

“No kidding?” Rick says.

“Yeah,” Stacy tells him. “I was up for the Kaz Garas part. I mean, I didn’t stand a chance against him. He’d already starred in a Henry Hathaway movie by that time, but I wanted it real bad.”

Good-natured Dalton counters with, “Well, let me tell ya, I just got my part by sheer luck. Up until two weeks before shootin’, Fabian was in my role. Then he breaks his shoulder doin’ a Virginian —that’s how I got it. The director, Paul Wendkos, worked with me in the early days and he did a few Bounty Laws , so he suggested me to Columbia.”

Jim Stacy sits down in the empty director’s chair next to Rick that Sam formerly occupied, leans toward the Bounty Law star, and asks in a confidential manner, “Rick, I gotta ask you somethin’ I heard about. Was it true you almost got the McQueen role in The Great Escape ?”

Oh boy , Rick thinks, here we go again. The same stupid swingin’ dick, askin’ the same stupid passive-aggressive question.

Rick remembers sitting on the set of The Green Hornet , when series lead Van Williams, dressed in his full Green Hornet regalia, asked him about that same rumor. Or Ron Ely, practically naked, in his skimpy Tarzan loincloth. And in neither case were they good enough actors to hide the pity they held in the corner of their eyes.

Rick gives Jim Stacy the short-version answer to the question Marvin Schwarz asked him yesterday.

“Never had an audition, never had a meeting, never met John Sturges. Don’t think you can say I almost got the part—”

Rick stops short, but an implied “but” hangs in the air and Stacy says it. “… But ?”

Rick reluctantly continues, “ But … the story goes … for a brief moment, McQueen almost passed on the movie. And during that brief moment, I—apparently—was on a list of four.”

Stacy’s eyebrows rise and he leans in even closer. “You and who?”

“Me and the three Georges: Peppard, Maharis, and Chakiris.”

Stacy winces in pain and instinctively hits Rick on his shoulder and says, “Oh man, that’s gotta hurt. Against those three faggots, you would’ve definitely got it. I mean Paul Newman—maybe not—but the fuckin’ Georges?”

A fed-up Rick answers quickly back, “Well, I didn’t get it. McQueen did it. And frankly … I never stood a chance.”

Stacy laughs and nods his head, but then says, “Still …” and pantomimes sticking a knife in his heart and twisting the blade.

Rick looks at the grinning prick sitting next to him for a beat or two, then asks him:

“Hey, Jim, I was wonderin’ … whaddaya think of my mustache?”

Chapter Seventeen

The Medal of Valor

When Cliff was discharged from the military after World War Two, he had money and two Medals of Valor in his pocket. He also had to decide what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. Which, frankly, for the last few years wasn’t a decision he ever really thought he’d have to make. While Cliff was in Sicily during the war, he thought it was very likely he would die over there. However, once he was transferred to the Philippines to fight alongside the Filipino guerrillas against the occupying Japanese military, he was fucking positive he was never going to see home again. And then, once he was captured by the Japanese and put in their makeshift POW camp in the Filipino jungle, Cliff Booth considered himself a walking dead man. If, in his mind, Cliff hadn’t already kissed his life goodbye, he never would have attempted the daring escape from the camp that allowed him to lead the Filipino prisoners to overthrow their captors and execute all the camp personnel, escape into the jungle, and rejoin their brother resistance fighters.

Their escape was so daring and exciting that Columbia Pictures made a nifty little wartime action flick about it directed by Paul Wendkos, titled Battle of the Coral Sea. The Wendkos film was a highly entertaining but hugely fictionalized account of the escape. In the movie, it wasn’t Cliff and a bunch of Filipinos that pulled off the successful escape from the prison camp. It was an American submarine crew, led by their captain, played by Cliff Robertson, who performed the heroic adventure. And in a strange coincidence, way before Cliff Booth knew him, Rick Dalton played one of Robertson’s men.

The movie dispensed with a lot of the real-life details. It left out Cliff Booth, it left out the Filipinos, and the Japanese in the movie didn’t make a practice of cutting off most of the cast’s heads, the way they did in real life. Nor did it show the surviving prisoners decapitating the heads of the Japanese camp personnel once the tables were turned. Neither was the brutish Japanese commander of the camp as sophisticated, debonair, intellectual, and honorable as the one portrayed in the movie.

Shit , Cliff thought when he saw the movie, if that sadistic rock-headed bastard was that cool, I woulda stayed put till the war was over. In fact, Cliff Booth thought Cliff Robertson was the prick in the movie. He later admitted to Rick (who loved the movie), “The goddamn movie practically had me rootin’ fer the fuckin’ Japs.”