W.E.B. Griffin - The Corps 03 - Counterattack

Actresses trusted him. If Jake showed up at some party and told you there was an early call tomorrow and it was time to drink up and tuck it in, you knew he had your interests at heart and not just the fucking studio’s. So you went home. Sometimes with Jake.

And the Producer, who found that Jake offered a comforting shoulder to weep on when his romances went sour, made it known among those of similar persuasion, a powerful group in Hollywood, that Jake was his best "straight" friend.

And he gradually came to be known as a man with a rare insight into how a motion picture or an actor should be publicized. In other words, his nerve endings told him what he could get printed in newspapers, or broadcast over the radio, and what would be thrown away.

Within two years, his pay tripled. And he began to run around not only with stuntmen and grips but also with a small group of the big-time actors. He fished with Duke Wayne, hunted with Clark Gable, played poker with David Niven, and with all three of them he drank and jumped on the bones of an astonishing number of ladies.

And he could often be found-puffing on his cigar and sipping at a cool beer-in screening rooms when daily rushes and rough cuts were screened. The stars of these opera invited him there. And they solicited his opinions, and he gave them. Sometimes his judgments were not flattering.

But, as the head of the studio said, "Jake is a walking public-opinion poll. He knows what the ticket buyers will like, and what they won’t."

Jake Dillon’s opinions of a story, a treatment, a screenplay, rushes, rough cuts, and final cuts were solicited and respected.

The only thing he failed to do, because he refused to do it, was talk some sense to David Niven. Niven was clearly on the way to superstardom. Which meant that very few people in Hollywood could understand why he was about to throw his career down the toilet. He was returning to England and again putting on the uniform of an officer of His Britannic Majesty’s Royal Army.

"You guys don’t understand," Dillon told the head of Niven’s studio. "David went to Sandhurst-that’s like our West Point. He’s an old soldier, and somebody blew the fucking bugle. He had to go."

With Europe at war, Hollywood’s attention turned to making war movies. One of them dealt with the United States Marine Corps, specifically with Marine fighter pilots. Headquarters USMC sent a full colonel to Los Angeles to serve as technical adviser. Ex-Marine Dillon was charged with keeping the Colonel happy.

Their relationship was a little awkward at first, for both of them were aware that the last time they’d met, Jake Dillon had been in Shanghai wearing sergeant’s stripes and standing at attention for the Colonel’s inspection. But the relationship quickly grew into a genuine friendship. This was based in large part on the Colonel’s realization that Jake was as determined as he was that the motion picture would reflect well on the Corps.

There was an element of masculine camaraderie in it, too. The Colonel took aboard a load one night at Jake’s house in Malibu and confessed that he couldn’t get it up anymore-not after his wife of twenty-two years had left him for a doctor at Johns Hopkins. Dillon was more than sympathetic; he arranged for the Colonel to meet a lady the Colonel had previously seen only on the Silver Screen. The lady owed Jake Dillon a great big favor, and she was more than happy to discharge it the way Dillon had in mind. She did wonders vis-a-vis restoring the Colonel’s lost virility.

And Jake took a load aboard and confessed to the Colonel that he’d felt like a feather merchant when he’d put David Niven on the Broadway Limited on his way to England. He was as much a Marine as Niven was a soldier. And Niven had gone back in. And here he was, sitting with his thumb up his ass in Malibu, with the country about to go to war.

When the Colonel returned to Washington, he wrote a Memorandum for the Record to the Director of Personnel, stating his belief that in the event of war, the Corps was going to require the services of highly qualified public-relations officers; that he had recently, in the course of his duties, encountered a man who more than met the highest criteria for such service; that he could be induced to accept a reserve commission as a captain; and that he believed a commission as a reserve captain should be offered to him, notwithstanding the fact that the man did not meet the standard educational and other criteria for such a commission.

The Colonel was two weeks later summoned to the office of the Deputy Commandant, USMC, who tossed his Memorandum for the Record at him.

"I know you and Colonel Limell don’t get along," the Deputy Commandant said. "I think that’s why he sent this to me-to make you look like a fool. Can you really justify giving this ex-sergeant a captain’s commission, or did you lose your marbles out in Hollywood?"

The Colonel made his points. Though he wasn’t sure how well they were being received, he did see the Deputy Commandant’s eyes widen when he told him how much money Jake Dillon was paid (it was more than twice as much as the Major General Commandant got); and he took some small comfort that he was neither interrupted nor dismissed.

When he was finished, the Deputy Commandant looked at the Colonel thoughtfully for a very long thirty seconds. Then he grunted and reached for his telephone.

"Colonel Limell, about this Hollywood press agent, the one who was a sergeant with the 4thMarines? Offer him a majority."

Then, surprising the Colonel yet again, Jake Dillon was not overwhelmed with gratitude when he was offered a Marine Majority.

"I’m not qualified to be a major. Jesus Christ! I was thinking about maybe a staff sergeant. Maybe even a gunnery sergeant. But a major? No way."

The Colonel argued unsuccessfully for thirty minutes that the greatest contribution Jake Dillon could make to the Corps was as a public-relations officer, and that to do that well, he had to carry the rank of a field-grade officer on his collar points. The best he was able to do was to get Jake to agree to come to Washington and talk it over.

"I’ll put you up, Jake."

"That’s nice, but we keep a suite in the Willard," Jake said. "I’ll stay there. I’ll catch a plane this afternoon, and call you when I get there."

Jake called two days later, at three in the afternoon, as soon as he got into the studio’s suite in the Willard. The Colonel, who had a certain sense of public relations himself, immediately called the Deputy Commandant.

"Sir, Mr. Dillon is in Washington."

"That’s the press-agent sergeant?"

"Yes, Sir."

"I want to talk to him."

"Yes, Sir, I thought you might want to. Sir, I understand you’re taking the retreat ceremony at Eighth and Eye today?"

"Splendid," the Deputy Commandant said, taking the Colonel’s meaning. "I’ll have my aide arrange two seats for you in the reviewing stand."

The Formal Retreat Ceremony (the lowering of the colors at sunset) is held at the Marine Barracks at Eighth and Eye Streets, Southeast, in the District of Columbia. The Marine Band, in dress blues, plays the Marine Hymn, while impeccably uniformed Marines march with incredible precision past the reviewing stand. The ceremony has brought tears to the eyes of thousands of pacifists and cynics.

Its effect on a former 4thMarines sergeant was predictable: When the Color Guard marched past, Jake Dillon was standing at attention with his hand on his heart. And tears formed in his eyes.

When the ceremony was over, and the Marine Band was marching off the field to the tic-tic of drum sticks on drum rims, a first lieutenant in dress blues walked up to him.

"Sir, the Deputy Commandant would like a word with you."

"Dillon?" the Deputy Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, in his dress blues, said to former Sergeant Dillon, offering him his hand.