Guy Vanderhaeghe - The Englishman’s Boy

“Gibson is the one with the theory that you’re selling out the union sympathizers. He says Fitz is always sniffing around about unions.”

“Gibson is a burned-out refugee from the old kerosene circuit -he’s got melodrama on the brain. I’ve got a job on a picture, nothing more.”

“I told them that. But all the stuff that’s happened in the last two or three years makes people very nervous. Hays. The morals clauses in contracts. Private dicks running all over Hollywood bribing housemaids, peeking in windows, reading mail for the studio bosses. The bosses have made up their minds about one thing – there aren’t going to be any more scandals. Arbuckle was just the tip of the iceberg. William Desmond Taylor gets murdered and half of Hollywood is suspected, big stars like Mary Miles Minter and Mabel Normand. Then the newspapers report Normand has a two-thousand-dollar-a-week cocaine habit. Zelda Crosby commits suicide. Dorothy Davenport has heroin-addict hubby Wally Reid locked up in the loonie bin and he dies in a padded cell. One disaster after another. Like Queen Victoria, the Great American Public is not amused; in Des Moines and Poughkeepsie they whisper Sodom and Gomorrah. Panic spreads among movie executives, they wring their hands, they sweat bullets. Does it bear thinking about? Your future, this beautiful industry which you built with your own two hands, this golden goose should be cooked by such irresponsible people? By these schmucks, these schickers, these pishers?” Rachel is rolling now, her hands are waving, her foot is going up and down so fast it’s become a tic. “Somebody save us! the moguls cry. We need a knight in shining armour! Find us a sanctimonious, two-faced little prick with a reputation pure as the driven snow! Enter Willie-Puller Hays, the man in charge of President Harding’s election campaign, former member of his illustrious cabinet, a shyster with his foot in the Washington door, a one-time legislator who can reassure men of influence, probity, and judgement there’s no need for government censorship – Let Willie pull that wire. And how well he does! Remember his famous statement that the potential of the movies for moral and educational influence is boundless, and it is our sacred duty to America’s youth to work in concert with their teachers and clergymen to make a wholesome impression on their minds?” Rachel sticks a forefinger in her mouth and mimes puking. “And the studio heads, Zukor and Loew and Fox and Goldwyn and Warner, they all nod their heads in grave unanimity. ‘That is so,’ they say. ‘Let us tenderly mould the minds of America’s youth so that they spend their nickels on our pictures. But let us not lead them astray. If we must reveal to them the mysteries of the female body such as – tits - let Cecil B. DeMille be the man to do it, tastefully, in an uplifting religious picture such as The Ten Commandments. Tit-shaking in godless Egypt, that’s the ticket. Tit-shimmying, belly-dancing, and butt-waggling raised to a level both educational and moral. Educational in the sense that we can show how people who had the misfortune not to be Americans once lived in utter tit-shaking misery. Moral in that we can show how God is inclined to punish tit-shakers as ruthlessly as Will Hays himself. This is the message we must impart to America’s youth! No tit-shaking! No tit-ogling! Unless in a good cause! Such as the moral and educational one in which we are ourselves engaged to assist America’s clergy and teachers!’ ”

A waiter has arrived to take our order. He discreetly hovers, overawed by her vehemence. I signal to Rachel we have company. She hasn’t looked at the menu but knows what she wants. What we both want. “Two steaks. Rare. Lots of fried mushrooms. Asparagus.”

The waiter flees. Rachel resumes, calmer, quieter. “Hays is making everybody gun-shy. Right now the studios use private detectives to dig up possible scandal, but it’s only a short step before we’ll be squealing on one another. The Hearst papers may howl about the Red terror in Russia, but it won’t be long before the Hollywood terror will teach the Bolsheviks a lesson or two. Maybe the boys in the office think you’re informing on their private life to Chance.”

I lean back in my chair. “I’m not.” I wait to let the statement sink in. “Besides, Chance hates Will Hays as much as any of us.”

“This I believe,” says Rachel. “A studio head who hates Mr. Hays. Whom they own lock, stock, and barrel. Who is their paid policeman. Where did you get this unimpeachable information from? Who’s your source? Mildred in wardrobe?”

“Chance told me himself.”

“Oh, yes, I forgot. The man with whom it is harder to get an audience than it was with Louis the Fourteenth chooses to unburden himself to My Little Truth Seeker.”

“I don’t know if you’d call it unburdening. We’ve had a number of conversations in the last couple of weeks.”

Her eyebrows lift sceptically. “Plural? Conversations?”

Just then, Bill Heidt, a writer at Fox, weaves drunkenly over to our table and invites Rachel to dance. She waves him away like a bad smell. “No time for dancing, Billy-boy. Rachel’s feet are firmly planted on the Road to Damascus. A revelation awaits her. Take a hike.”

Heidt, muttering, zigzags back to his table of cronies. When he arrives, his failure is applauded with shouts of derision.

“So tell me, what is the nature of your conversations, Harry?”

I know any mention of Shorty McAdoo is definitely out of bounds, but I don’t see any harm in gossip of a general kind. “They’re not very different from what you and I talk about at the office. He likes to talk about ideas. It’s not easy to explain… he’s a kind of amateur historian and philosopher.”

“So what’s he doing in Hollywood? In my experience, millionaire amateurs like Joe Kennedy, William Randolph Hearst, and Damon Ira Chance get into the picture business for only two reasons. Prestige pussy and to make money.”

I let it out before thinking. “He wants to make the great American movie.”

“Such a small ambition?”

“You don’t repeat what I just said. You understand? Not a word.”

“Tell me more. My lips are sealed.” She refills our glasses with gin, a subtle inducement.

“Okay, laugh if you want. The guy uses words like art when he talks about movies. He’s idealistic. He wants to make films like Griffith.”

“Now there’s a noble ambition,” says Rachel. “To make movies portraying the Negro as stupid, shiftless, and single-mindedly determined to slake his lust with white women. What a great public-relations job he did for the Klan and the lynching industry.”

“An admiration for Griffith as artist doesn’t necessarily make someone a Klansman, does it?”

“I find the two hard to separate, Harry. But then I’m a little touchy on the subject of the Klan. As a Jew I’ve got reason to be.”

“Don’t start tarring me with that brush, Rachel. I’m not defending the Klan. I’m not defending Griffith’s film. I am making a point. The point is that a bad man might be a good artist. Example. Byron. Good poet – bad man. See?”

“And what about Chance? What’s he? Good man or bad man?”

“From your tone of voice it sounds to me you may have already formed an opinion on the subject. All I’ve got to say is that he’s treated me very decently.”

“Maybe I have doubts because of the company he keeps.”

“Are you referring to me?”

“No. That bastard Fitzsimmons.”

With Fitz, I feel I’m on thinner ice. I light a cigarette. “I’ll grant you that Fitz is not an attractive personality. I’ve had my run-ins with him. He’s hard and he’s ignorant. In that respect he’s not much different from all the rest of the men in charge of studios. How’s he any different from Louis B. Mayer?”