Serenade. Part 7

"O.K., then, Herman. You handle it. Three fifty while he's learning English, and then after the script is ready and we start to shoot, five. Six weeks' guarantee, at five hundred."

Stoessel turned to Hudson and Lahr. "I guess Mr. Ziskin don't need any introduction around here. He's interested in this man for a picture. Tell him that much, will you? Then we give him the rest of it."

Lahr didn't act like he was any too fond of Mr. Ziskin, or Stoessel either, for that matter. "Why don't you tell him yourself?"

"He speak English?"

"He did a minute ago."

"Sure, I speak English. Shoot."

"Well, say, that makes it easy. O.K., then, you heard what Mr. Ziskin said. Get your make-up off, put on your clothes, and we'll go out and talk."

"We can talk right now."

I was afraid to take my make-up off, for fear he would know me. They still thought I was Sabini, I could see that, because there hadn't been any announcement about me, and I was afraid if he placed me there wouldn't be any three fifty or even one fifty. I was down, that day, and he knew it. "All right, then, we'll talk right now. You heard Mr. Ziskin's proposition. What do you say?"

"I say go climb a tree."

"Say, that's no way to talk to Mr. Ziskin."

"What the h.e.l.l do you think a singer works for? Fun?"

"I know what they work for. I handle singers."

"I don't know whether you handle singers. Maybe you handle b.u.ms. If Mr. Ziskin has got something to say, let him say it. But don't waste my time talking about three hundred and fifty dollars a week. If it was a day, that would be more like it."

"Don't be silly. "

"I'm not being silly. I'm booked straight through to the first of the year, and if I'm going to get out of those contracts it's going to cost me dough. If you want to pay dough, talk. If not, just let's stop where we are."

"What's your idea of dough?"

"I've told you. But I've been wanting to break into pictures, and to get the chance, I'll split the difference with you. I'll do a little better than that. A thousand a week, and it's a deal. But that's rock bottom. I can't cut it, and I can't shade it."

We had it hot for a half hour, but I stuck and they came around. I wanted it in writing, so Stoessel took out a notebook and pen and wrote a memo of agreement, about five lines. I got a buck out of my pants and made him a receipt for that, first of all. That bound them. But when we got that far I had to tell my name. I hated to say John Howard Sharp, but I had to. He didn't say anything. He tore out the leaf, waved it in the air, handed it to Ziskin to sign. "John Howard Sharp--sure, I've heard of him. Somebody was telling about him just the other day."

They went, and a boy came in for Sabini's trunk, and Lahr went out and came back with a bottle and gla.s.ses. "Guy has broke into pictures, we got to have a drink on that...Where did you say you were booked?" did you say you were booked?"

"With the Santa Fe, mas.h.i.+ng down ballast."

"Happy days."

"Happy days."

"Happy days."

The crowd was gone and she was all alone when I ran down the hill, waving the cape at her. She turned her back on me, started to walk to the bus stop. I pulled out the wad of five Lahr had given me. "Look, look, look!" She wouldn't even turn her head. I took my coat off her, put it on, and dropped the cape over her shoulders. "...I wait very long time."

"Business! I been talking business."

"Yes. Smell very nice."

"Sure we had a drink. But listen: get what I'm telling you. I been talking business."

"I wait very long."

I let her get to the bus stop, but I didn't mean to ride on a bus. I began yelling for a taxi. There weren't any, but a car pulled up, a car from a limousine service. "Take you any place you want to go, sir. Rates exactly the same as the taxis--"

Did I care what his rates were? I shoved her in, and that did it. She tried to stay sore, but she felt the cus.h.i.+ons, and when I took her in my arms she didn't pull away. There weren't any kisses yet, but the worst was over. I halfway liked it. It was our first row over a little thing. It made me feel she belonged to me.

We went to the Derby and had a real feed. It was the first time I had been in a decent place for a year. But I didn't break the big news until we were back at the hotel, undressing. Then I kind of just slid into it. "Oh, by the way. I got a little surprise for you."

"Surprise?"

"I got a job in pictures."

"Cinema?"

"That's right. A thousand a week."

"Oh."

"h.e.l.l, don't you get it? We're rich! A thousand a week--not pesos, dollars! Three thousand, six hundred pesos every week! Why don't you say something?"

"Yes, very nice."

I didn't mean a thing to her! But when I took the cape, and stood up there in my drawers, and sang the Toreador song at her, like I had at the Bowl, that talked. She clapped her hands, and sat on the bed, and I gave her the whole show. The phone rang. The desk calling, to ask me to shut up. I said O.K., but send up a boy. When he came I gave him a five and told him to get us some wine. He was back in a few minutes and we got a little tight, the way we had that night in the church. After a while we went to bed, and a long while after that she lay in my arms, running her fingers through my hair. "You like me?"

"Yes, much."

"Did I sing all right?"

"Very pretty."

"Were you proud of me?"

"...You very fonny fallow, you, Hoaney. Why I be proud? I no sing."

"But I I sang." sang."

"Yes. I like. Very much."

Chapter 8.

I didn't like Hollywood. I didn't like it partly because of the way they treated a singer, and partly because of the way they treated her. To them, singing is just something you buy, for whatever you have to pay, and so is acting, and so is writing, and so is music, and anything else they use. That it might be good for its own sake is something that hasn't occurred to them yet. The only thing they think is good for its own sake is a producer that couldn't tell Brahms from Irving Berlin on a bet, that wouldn't know a singer from a crooner until he heard twenty thousand people yelling for him one night, that can't read a book until the scenario department has had a synopsis made, that can't even speak English, but that is a self-elected expert on music, singing, literature, dialogue, and photography, and generally has a hit because somebody lent him Clark Gable to play in it. I did all right, you understand. After the first tangle with Ziskin I kind of got the hang of how you handle things out there to get along. But I never liked it, not even for a second.

It turned out he wasn't the main guy on his lot, or even a piece of the main guy. He was just one producer there, and when I showed up the next morning he seemed even to have forgot my name. I had his piece of paper, so they had to pay me, but I wandered around for a week not knowing what I was supposed to do or where I was supposed to do it. You see, he didn't have his script ready. But my piece of paper said six weeks, and I mean to collect on it. After four or five days they shoved me in what they call a B picture, a Western about a cowboy that hates sheep and the sheep man's daughter, but then he finds some sheep caught in a blizzard and brings them home safe, and that fixes it all up. I couldn't see where it fixed anything, but it wasn't my grief. They had bought some news-reel stuff on sheep caught in the snow, and that seemed to be the main reason for the picture. The director didn't know I could sing, but I got him to let me spot a couple of campfire songs, and on the blizzard stuff, Git Along, Little Dogies, Git Along.

They finished it toward the end of September, and gave it a sneak preview in Glendale. I thought it was so lousy I went just out of curiosity to see how bad they would razz it. They ate it up. On the snow stuff, every time I came around the bend with a lamb in my arms, breaking trail for the sheep, they'd clap and stamp and whistle. Out in the lobby, after it was over, I caught just a few words between the producer, the director, and one of the writers. "B picture h.e.l.l--it's a feature!"

"Christ, would that help the schedule! We're three behind now, and if we can make an extra feature out of this, would that be a break! Would that be a break!"

"We got to do retakes."

"We got to do it bigger, but it'll get by."

"It'll cost dough, but it's worth it."

She hadn't come with me. We were living in an apartment on Sunset by that time, and she was going to night school, trying to learn how to read. I went home and she had just gone to bed with her reader, Wisdom of the Ages, a book of quotations from poetry, all in big type, that she practiced on. I got out the guitar and some blank music paper that I had, and I went to work. I split up that song, Git Along, Little Dogies, Git Along, into five-part harmony, one part the straight melody, the other four a quartet obbligato in long four-beat and eight-beat notes, and maybe you think it wasn't work. That song is nothing extra to start with, and when you try to plaster polyphonic harmony on top of it, it's a job. But after a while I had it done, and went to bed with her to get a little sleep.

Next morning, before they could get together and really think up something dumb, I got the producer, the director, the writer and the sound man together in the producer's office, and I laid it down to them.

"All right, boys, I heard a little of what you said last night. You thought you had a B picture here, and now you find out if it's fixed up a little bit, you can get away with it for a feature. You want to do retakes, put some more money in it, do it bigger. Now listen to me. You don't have to put one extra dime in this if you do what I tell you, and you can make it a wow. The big hit is the snow stuff. You've got at least ten thousand feet of that that you didn't use. I know because I saw it run off one day in the projection room. The problem is, how to get more of that stuff in, and tie it up so it makes sense so they don't get tired of it before you've really made full use of it. All right, this is what we do. We rip out that sound track where I'm singing, and make another one. I do that song, but after the first verse I come in, singing over top of myself, see? My own voice, singing an obbligato to myself on the verse. Then when that's done, I come in and sing another one on top of that. Then I come in on top of that, so before the end of it, there's five voices there--all me--light falsetto for the tenor part, heavier for the middle point, and plenty of beef in the ba.s.s. Then we repeat it. At the repeat, we start a tympanum, a kettle drum, just light at first, but keeping time to the slug of his feet, and when he gets in sight of the ranch-house we bang h.e.l.l out of it, and let the five-part harmony swell out so the thing really gets there. All during that, you keep cutting in the snowy stuff, but not straight cuts. Slow dissolves, so you get a kind of dream effect, to go with the c.o.c.k-eyed harmony on that song. And it doesn't cost you a dime. Nothing but my pay, and you've got me anyhow, for another two weeks. How does it hit you?"

The producer shook his head. His name was Beal, and he and the director and the writer had been listening like it was merely painful, my whole idea. "It's impossible."

"Why is it impossible? You can put all those parts on your loops, I know you can. After you've checked your synchronization, you run them off and make your sound track. It's absolutely possible."

"Listen, we got to do it big, see? That means we got to do retakes, we got to put more production in, and if I got to spend money, I'd a h.e.l.l of a sight rather spend it on that than on this. This way you say, I got to pay an arranger, I got to hire an orchestra--"

"Arranger, h.e.l.l. It's already arranged. I've got the parts right here. And what orchestra?"

"For the kettle drum, and--"

"I play the kettle drum myself. On every repeat of the song, I tune it up. Just a little higher, to get a sense of climax, a little louder, a little faster. Don't you get it? They're getting near home. It'll build. It'll give you what you're looking for, it--"

"Nah, it's too tricky. Besides, how can a G.o.ddam cowboy be singing quartets with himself out there in the snow? They wouldn't never believe it. Besides, we got to pump up the rest of the picture, the beginning--"

"O.K., we'll do that, and then they'll believe everything. Look."

It had suddenly popped in my mind about my voice coming back at me, that night in the arroyo, and I knew I had something. "In that campfire song, the second one, Home On The Range, we do a little retake and show him singing it at the mountains. His voice comes back, in an echo. It surprises him. He likes it. He begins to fool around with it, and first thing you know, he's singing a duet with himself, and then maybe a trio. We don't do much with it. Just enough that they like it, and we establish it. Then in the snow scene it's not tricky at all. It's his own voice coming back at him from all over that range--out there all alone, bringing home those sheep. They can believe it then, can't they? What's tricky now?"

"It's not enough. We got to do retakes."

Up to then the sound man had sat like he was asleep. He sat up now and began to make marks on a piece of paper. "It can be done."

"Even if it can be done, it's no good."

"It can be done, and it's good."

"Oh, you're telling me what's good?"

"Yeah, I'm telling you."

The technical guys on a lot, they're not like the rest of them. They know their stuff, and they don't take much off a producer or anybody. "You went and bought ten thousand feet of the prettiest snow stuff I ever saw, and then what did you do? You threw out all but four hundred feet of it. It's a crime to waste that stuff, and the lousy way you fixed up the story, there's no way to get it in but the way this guy says. All right then, do like he says, and get it in. It'll build, just like he says it will. You'll get all those angle shots in, all those far shots of miles of sheep going down that mountain, all but the little bits that you never even tried to get in before, and then toward the end of it, the ranchhouse where they're getting near home. I'll give him a light mix on the first of it, and on all the far shots, and when we get near the end--we cut her loose. That kettle drum, that's O.K. It'll get that tramp-tramp feel to it, and go with the music. The echoes on Home On The Range I can work with no trouble at all. It's O.K. And it's O.K. all down the line. It's the only chance you got. Because listen: either this is a little epic all by itself, or it's a G.o.ddam cheapie not worth h.e.l.l room. Take your pick."

"Epic! That's what I've been trying to get."

"Well then, this is how you get it."

"All right, then, fix it up like he says. Let me know when you've got something for me to look at."

So he, I, and the cutter went to work. When I say work I mean work. It was sing, rewrite the parts, test the mix, run it off, and do it all over again from morning to night, and from night to almost morning, but after a couple of weeks we had it done and they gave it another preview, downtown this time, with the newspapers notified. They clapped, cheered, and gave it a rising vote. The Times next morning said "Woolies" was "one of the most vital, honest, and moving things that had come out of Hollywood in a long time," and that "John Howard Sharp, a newcomer with only featured billing, easily stole the picture, and is star material, unless we miss our guess. He can act, he can sing, and he has that certain indefinable, je-ne-sais-quoi something. He's distinctly somebody to watch."

So the next day eight guys showed up to sell me a car, two to sell me annuities, one to get me to sing at a benefit, and one to interview me for a fan magazine. I was a Hollywood celebrity overnight. When I went on the lot in the afternoon I got a call to report to the office of Mr. Gold, president of the company. Ziskin was there, and another producer named London. You'd have thought I was the Duke of Windsor. It seemed I wasn't to wait till Ziskin got his script ready. I was to go into another one that was waiting to shoot. They had been d.i.c.kering with John Charles Thomas for it, but he was tied up. They thought I would do just as well, because I was younger and bigger and looked the part better. It was about a singing lumberjack that winds up in grand opera.

I said I was glad they liked my work, and everything was fine if we could come to terms on money. They looked kind of funny, and wanted to know what I was talking about. We had our agreement, and I was pretty well paid for a man that started in pictures just a little while ago.

"We did have an agreement, Mr. Gold."

"And we still got it."

"It ran out today."

"Get his contract, Ziskin."

"He's sewed for five years, Mr. Gold, absolutely for five years from the date on the contract, with options every six months, same as all our talent, with a liberal increase, two fifty I think it was, every time we take up our option. A fine, generous contract, and frankly, Mr. Sharp, I am much amazed by the att.i.tude you're taking. That won't get you nowheres in pictures."

"Get his contract."

So they sent down for my contract, and a secretary came up with it, and Gold took a look at it, put his thumb on the amounts and handed it over. "You see?"

"Yeah, I see everything but a signature."

"This is a file copy."

"Don't try to kid me. I haven't signed any contract. That may be the contract you were going to offer me, but the only thing that's been signed is this thing here, that ran out today."

I fished out the memo I had got off Ziskin that night in the dressing-room. Gold began to roar at Ziskin. Ziskin began to roar at the secretary. "Yes, Mr. Ziskin, the contract came though at least a month ago, but you gave me strict orders not to have any contracts signed until you gave your personal approval, and it's been on your desk all that time. I've called it to your attention."

"I been busy. I been cutting Love Is Love."

The secretary went. Ziskin went. London looked sore. Gold began drumming on his desk with his fingers. "O.K., then. If you want a little more dough, something like that, I guess we can boost you a little. Tell you what we do. We won't bother with any new contract. You can sign this one here, and we'll take up the first option right away, and that'll give you twelve fifty. No use quarreling about a few hundred bucks. Report on the set tomorrow morning to Mr. London here, and you better be going down and getting measured for your costumes so you can start."

"I'm afraid twelve fifty won't do, Mr. Gold."

"Why not?"

"I prefer to work by the picture."