Len Deighton - Close-Up

When I moved from my London home to Hollywood in 1978 I made a pilgrimage to the famed Hollywood sign. To my great dismay I found that the former real estate sign that later became the iconic landmark of “The Motion Picture Capital of the World” had become derelict.

Thankfully, due to the sterling work of some entertainment luminaries, the sign was later restored to its former glory but I never forgot how it had looked. So when I was asked to create a new design for Close-Up, Len Deighton’s wonderful tale of the glamour and sleaze of the film industry personified in the fictitious Marshall Stone, the sign’s deteriorating characters gave me the idea of dropping the letter “S”, alluding to Stone’s fall from favour.

I have a small collection of postcards of Hollywood movie stars’ homes and so it occurred to me that we should show Marshall’s lavish Beverly Hills residence, a colourful view of life during the star’s heyday, which contrasts sharply with the background of the sign. Marshall himself was added to the card, looking suitably pleased with himself – possibly he is off to an awards ceremony (though more likely to politely applaud a rival’s win than to collect one for himself).

For the book’s spine I went through my rather extensive collection of cigarette cards and found this card of “Continuity girl & Director on set”, one of my favourites from the series.

The back cover shows a part of the 1940s board game, Oscar – The Film Stars Rise to Fame. With triumph and scandal around every corner, and money dictating who would succeed and who would fail, it seemed the perfect metaphor for the highs and lows of Marshall Stone’s life, and the world of Hollywood in Close-Up!

Arnold Schwartzman OBE RDI

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by

Jonathan Cape Ltd 1972

CLOSE-UP. Copyright © Len Deighton 1972. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Introduction copyright © Pluriform Publishing Company BV 2011

Cover designer’s note © Arnold Schwartzman 2011

Len Deighton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Source ISBN: 9780007395774

Ebook Edition © MAY 2011 ISBN: 9780007395811

Version: 2017-08-22

In the recent past it has become fashionable for writers to use thinly disguised biographical material about ‘show-business’ figures, but I have not intended to depict any person, living or dead, or any film, institution or corporation, past or present.

Len Deighton

Cover designer’s note

Copyright

Epigraph

Introduction

1

The heavy blue notepaper crackled as the man signed his…

2

‘All my brother ever wanted to do is make this…

3

No oriental potentate had a more attentive retinue than followed…

4

The unit publicist on Stool Pigeon sent me the biography…

5

The phone at Weinberger’s bedside had the quietest ringing tone…

6

Marshall Stone had almost forgotten the miseries that airline companies…

7

There are places midway in status between antique showrooms and…

8

The Japanese signs and sentry boxes, and the section of…

9

And who was I kidding about contractual possibility. The publisher…

10

The same world to which Stone had sacrificed his sense…

11

‘Leo Koolman, only twenty months ago you joined this organization…

12

The Merchant of Venice at His Majesty’s Theatre: the first…

13

For Marshall Stone, his life was not made of the…

14

Christmas Day 1948, Bookbinder remembered it only too clearly. He…

15

Man From the Palace has a place in the history…

16

Cherrington is a public school by definition, simply because it…

17

A film is born on the day that the man…

18

In 1952 the tourists guessed wrongly; September was entirely gentle…

19

The countryside grew dark more slowly than the town. The…

20

This whole episode was as artificial as a bad film.

21

Show-business trade papers reflect the heady optimism of the people…

About the Author

Other Books by Len Deighton

About the Publisher

The story of Marshall Stone is the story of an actor. His dilemma is one that still faces many actors and actresses. Public television was born with the Berlin Olympics of 1936 and after a period of hibernation caused by World War Two, it soon became an affordable utility of the Western World, like hot water and electricity. But for actors and actresses television did not have the attraction offered by the theatre and films. Television became the residential home where reputations went to die and it has never escaped from this grim shadow.

Close-Up is the story of a writer and an actor. Actors, and sometimes writers too, are an exasperating breed; manic-depressives with a foot pressed hard on the accelerator or hard on the brake. Sadly, the film world does not treat these delicate temperaments with care and consideration. Few of us could withstand the sort of rollercoaster ride that leads to stardom and then back to earth again. Close-Up explains in detail the skills and hazards that the difficult art of acting involves. As you will no doubt detect, I like actors and actresses and all the other people who spend their lives making movies. I like them all so much that I had to write this book about them and about the convoluted way in which movies are made and devious movie deals put together. Writing several scripts – including two James Bond scripts – and producing two films, one of them a musical, gave me a wonderful insight into film, from the deal-making that starts the process to the editing and post-recording that ends it. This is how my education started.

‘Maybe you suddenly hate the way he parts his hair.’ This was Harry Saltzman’s way of describing the irrational personal showbiz dislikes that are impossible to account for in any other way. Harry felt that formal written contracts were only valuable when the parties concerned forgot the promises they had made at the start of the deal. He was right and I never needed to refer back to any contract I had with him. I was very fond of Harry Saltzman, who had co-produced the James Bond films and by buying the film rights for The Ipcress File in 1961 started both me and Michael Caine on our respective careers. But Harry was a very private person and it was a sad fact that he never seemed to distinguish between his friends and his enemies.