J. Donleavy: Schultz

“O dear, Schultz. I suppose you’re right. That’s the thing I hate most about show business. You really do feel sometimes that these girls care only about furthering their careers. And will grossly misrepresent themselves to gullible producers and prostitute their talent in anything just to do so. While we who love the theatre with all our hearts are put upon to suffer such subterfuge.”

“Holy shit you fucking guys, come on, look what you’re doing, fucking nothing, be serious for a change, let’s get the show on the road.”

“Schultz. Dear Schultz. What show. What road. And must you refer to us, and especially his Amazing Grace, as you fucking guys.”

“Well what else are you, looking at porno magazines when there’s work to do.”

Binky reaching out to stretch and adjust his leg into a new position where it was cradled on a leather cushion in the crescent comfort of a mahogany gout stool. His voice, as it did when taking folk slightly to task, became even softer and kinder than usual.

“Dear Schultz, you are amazing aren’t you. Here I am chairman of this old and established theatrical management, beset by stage carpenters, librettists, wig makers, agents, composers, scene shifters, actresses’ husbands, theatre owners, guitar players, lawyers, playwrights, contortionists, posture artists and ponces, not to mention the continual stream of hoaxers and conmen, and here I sit, with an accredited reference book of actresses I have here open before me. Utterly sincere in my unending effort to cherish and promote the very highest standards in dramatic entertainment on the legitimate stage. Indeed to put it more briefly. Can’t you see I’m casting.”

“Of course I can see. But Jesus, every time I look at you fucking guys I’m thinking of the fucking seconds ticking away.”

“Schultz, your obtuse devotion to duty is commendable. But dear me, I do think you rather are at times contemptuous of your fellow colleagues and I’m sure you must realise that such terminology as you fucking guys is most unbefitting his Royal Grace.”

“Shit, you two were born with silver spoons in your mouths. I had to deliver fucking newspapers.”

“But Schultz both his Royal Grace and I are aware that you are the owner of silk shirts.”

“Every other stitch of clothing I’m wearing including the shoes, is from the men’s chorus line of The Best Bloody End’s Up. And what the fuck are silk shirts compared to your silver spoons from babyhood in big god damn castles. I never had chauffeurs, nannies, cooks, god damn grooms. And the way you sit around here doing nothing while I do all the work.”

“Ah Schultz, dear Schultz. I think we must pretend that you’re just temporarily unable to be calm because of your hemorrhoids. But we would love to hear more of your difficult deprived background. You simply must tell us more. You must. We have so very little to go on.”

Schultz’s immigrant parents had in the clothing business racked up considerable profits in their bargain basement Ladies’ Lingerie and Accessories store, first in Woonsocket and later in two other New England towns. While Schultz as a child prodigy with the violin had grown accustomed to being treated as a king by his family and near relations and as that sissy prick by the rest of the kids on his block. But having forsaken the violin and beaten the piss out of the astonished neighborhood bully, Schultz through a magazine advert applied to a school of dramatic art.

“If they hadn’t fucking well accepted me I’d be up to my neck right now merchandising ladies’ underwear.”

But a semester or two of this preparation for the acting stage so terrified Schultz’s parents that he might become a raging homosexual that they finally shipped him off to one of the better East Coast campuses to come into contact with brahmin gung ho ivy league type chaps while attending college. And a lacrosse and squash playing Schultz became at least superficially capable of waltzing and drawling in the best prep school manner when he cared to. Which to his credit was seldom.

“But Schultz you do at times quite surprisingly exhibit characteristics one usually only associates with the more refined of the American educated classes.”

“Bullshit.”

“Indeed I do believe his Royal Grace happened upon you in the middle of the most authentic la de da accent. Is that not true your Royal Esteem.”

“And hey for christ’s sake your Lordship you ruined the most important phone call of my life.”

His Lordship, as he so often was at this time of day, was seated on the chaise longue, leaning forward over a bowl full of gull’s eggs, peeling these one by one and anointing each faintly blue spherical whiteness with the tiniest sprinkle of celery salt. And it was not often that he would pause between bites of this sacred seasonal delicacy to raise his voice as he did now to Schultz.

“Schultz you won’t have a life if you ever do that ever again.”

“Just once I was doing it. An isolated incident.”

“Schultz your behaviour is, if I may say so, absolutely saturated with these isolated incidents.”

While Binky rather enjoyed recognising Schultz’s more gracious tendencies, he also loved embellishing Schultz’s background with remarks to the effect that Schultz’s folk were in textiles in a very big tycoonish way on the American East Coast.

“Of course Schultz we do in fact know that all the fine silk shirts you wear are afforded because you are the scion of a great textile dynasty with massive sprawling factories throbbing out household linens sold the world over. And we are only left to wonder why you don’t heavily invest in your own sure fire hit shows. Especially this, your latest, and I am sure your most promising. Even the title, Too Too Naughty And Not One Bit Nice, reverberates with the promise of massive gross box office returns.”

“And you can fucking well bet on that too. I’m going to sock the cunts right out of their fucking seats.”

“Did you hear that your Royal Grace. Are we to assume from these vulgar but fighting words here uttered before us by Schultz that he at last has a hit. And take out our cheque books. In spite of the fact that we know he could finance the show himself.”

It had been to this rumour of Schultz’s massive riches, spread by Binky in show business circles, that Schultz owed his early marriage. His future wife having first got wind of him while working under the title of musical co-ordinator in the employ of a prominent showbizz personality who enjoyed to call at Sperm Productions and sit about baring his innermost feelings.

“Is that bad that I don’t want to hurt people. Tell me if that’s bad. That I should hold the human race in high regard.”

While he was rather unaristocratically referred to as Big Al Duke, the celebrities’ celebrity, Big Al was also an outstanding jazz trombonist and composer who occasionally gave recitals on the concert stage. And he also took up and generously contributed to a bevy of charitable causes. Nor was he ever known to refuse help to those eager to step up the slippery ladders of showbizz into the big time.

“Go ahead just ask. What can I do for you.”

And Schultz, who seemed ripe for just such promotion, always at least pretended to appreciate this older man’s sincere counsel, help and heartfelt advice. Which Big Al dispensed freely, especially following attending rehearsals. And which advice, due to Al’s deep artistic convictions, invariably possessed one unerring characteristic. It was always wrong.

“Now Sigmund, I’m telling you the show needs less hoofing and more heart. It needs truth. Fine to have love lyrics but the secret of life needs to throb in every dance step. People these days want the truth along with their entertainment.”