Blue Movie (17 page)

Angela had followed his words—dumbly at first, in half disbelief at what she was hearing; but then, convinced of his genuine concern, she, too, could consider the image dispassionately, as though he were talking about someone else. She slowly ground out her cigarette, looking down at the tray. “But that’s just it,” she said, almost petulantly, “it isn’t
me
they want to fuck, it’s
Angela Sterling.”

“But don’t you
identify
with her?”

“No,” she said firmly, “not with
that
Angela Sterling. Definitely not.”

The slight piety in her reply caused Boris to smile, thinking back to a curious incident of several years previous—six, to be exact, at a moment when Angela was enjoying the first bloom of stardom, as well as the first anguish of the heart. The occasion had been a Sunday afternoon cocktail party at Les Harrison’s big beach brownstone, with both Boris and Angela present. Angela, in fact, had been living with Les for about six months, and was nominally the
hostess
—but she had just been tactfully informed that her Mister Wonderful had decided not to divorce his wife after all, but on the contrary, to return to her (“gotta try again to make a go of it with Ethel—we owe it to the kids”) which was by no means true, but seemed to Les more considerate than just telling her to get lost. In any case, the news had caused Angela to sink into a veritable morass of self-pity and overindulgence lush-wise, so that she finally passed out on a bed in one of the guest rooms, after trying to phone her mother in Amarillo, Texas.

Also trying to telephone his mother that Sunday afternoon was a young man whom Boris had brought to the party—Grover Morse, from Macon, Georgia. Grover was a personable and star-struck boy of seventeen, who had been employed as a second assistant during the picture Boris had just completed—some of which had been shot on location in the Deep South.

The duties of a second assistant are those of an errand boy—bringing coffee to the director, chairs for the visitors, knocking on the actor’s dressing-room door when the camera is ready, and, of course, the proverbial myriad other things. The qualities of a great “second,” as they are called, are
one,
the ability to anticipate the requirements or needs of the members of the company; and,
two,
to attend to them without being asked, and to be quick and cheerful about it—though not so cheerful as to be obtrusive. Needless to say, a great second is far more rare than a good director or actor. Thus, when Grover Morse proved an exceptional talent at this most demanding and unrewarding of jobs, Boris suggested that he return to the Coast with the company and assured him he would have a lucrative future in the film game. Grover required no persuasion, but his doting mother did. Because he was an only child, just turned seventeen, who had never been further from home than the county line, she was understandably apprehensive about his setting out for Hollywood, notorious sin-fest capital of the world. Boris, of course, had been able to give her countless reassurances—one of which was that her son would telephone her as soon as they arrived. As it happened, they arrived on Sunday afternoon—and because Boris had an appointment with Les Harrison, they went straight from the airport to his Malibu manse, where, as it happened, a party was in progress. Boris had immediately reminded Grover about phoning his mother.

“Use the phone in there,” Les said, indicating somewhat arbitrarily one of the closed bedroom doors nearby.

The young lad obediently went in, shut the door behind him, sat down on one of the twin beds, and started dialing. It was a large room, half in darkness because of the drawn shades, and it was not until the operator had said there would be a five-to-ten-minute delay, and that she would call him back, that he suddenly realized he was not alone. On the other bed was a prone figure, on her back, indistinct except for a shadowed glimmer of blond hair and one raised arm, back of the hand resting on her brow.

He hung up very quietly—but at the sound, Angela stirred and cast a narrow look at him from beneath the back of her hand.

“I don’t know you,” she said in a drunken slur.

“No, ma’am—”

“Then what the hell are you doing in here?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, I didn’t see you when I came in—I was just using the phone.”

“You were, huh?”

“Yes, ma’am . . .”

When she continued to stare at him, or so it appeared, though actually just trying to focus, he felt obliged to add: “. . . I was calling my ma, back home. Operator said I’d have to wait.”

She gave a short, angry laugh. “What’s the matter—you in trouble, too?”

“Oh no, ma’am, I just have to let her know I got here okay.” He stood up. “I’ll see if I can’t get hold of another telephone. Sorry I disturbed you like that.”

She raised herself to one elbow and cleared her throat. “Listen, sonny,” she said, more distinctly now, “how’d you like to fuck Angela Sterling?”

“Ma’am?”

“I said how would you like to fuck Angela Sterling?”

“You mean . . . the movie-star?”

“That’s right.”

Grover, considerably flustered, shifted about uneasily, darting furtive looks at her, coughed, scratched his head.

“Well, ma’am, I just don’t rightly know what I should say—”

“Say yes or no,” she said with a snarl, “but just make goddamn sure it isn’t
no
because I’ve had about all
that
shit I can take today. Now lock the door and come on over here.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

And so, five or ten minutes later, when he was tucking in his shirt and zipping up his fly, and Angela was in the bathroom straightening herself out, Grover’s call came through, and he was on the phone speaking to his mother:

“Yes, ma’am, everything’s fine. Just like Mr. Adrian said it would be. See there, Ma, you had no call to worry, after all. . . . Oh sure, mighty nice, as nice a bunch of folks as you’d wantta meet. . . . You mean right now? Well, I’m with Mr. Adrian, we’re over at a friend’s of his house. . . . Party? Well, I guess it’s a kind of a party—
afternoon
party . . . don’t forget, we’re three hours earlier out here than you all are back home. Huh? Aw no, Ma, it ain’t no
Hollywood
kind of party, like you read about with them starlets and everything. Shoot, that’s all baloney anyway—like Mr. Adrian said—they just print that stuff to sell newspapers. Ain’t nobody’d believe it but a dang fool. Now
you
know that, don’t you, Ma?”

Boris had never revealed his knowledge of this incident, and had counseled young Morse to similar discretion. Thus, it remained one of the great trade secrets—only surfacing occasionally, of late, in the form of a drunken story told by Morse himself (who, after a brief period as second assistant, had become a stuntman, and finally, a hopeless boozer) and which was invariably discounted as the sort of lying fantasy that lurks in the heart of every red-blooded American male.

Boris was not too susceptible to reminiscence, but now as he gazed across the table at the fabulous golden beauty, blue eyes shining, moist red lips glistening in the candlelight, he felt this odd bit of knowledge somehow gave him a curious advantage—almost as though he could
blackmail
her into a good performance. At least it thoroughly dispelled the little-match-girl aura, which at times threatened to overwhelm anyone in the vicinity—not that Boris himself had ever been duped by it, for there were other stories as well which tended to characterize her as having a slightly different charisma than the one contrived by herself and her agent, and projected by the PR department at Metropolitan. It was known, for example, that on the occasion of signing her first studio contract, after two years of bit part and extra work, she tossed the pen onto the middle of the table, with an elaborate sigh of relief, and exclaimed: “There, that’s the last kike prick
I’ll
ever suck!” then dramatically raised her right hand, and her great blue eyes:
“As God is my witness!”

Although thereby becoming a contract player, she continued to be used at her specialty—beach and surfing movies, or “tits-and-ass flicks” as they were called—until she was further “discovered” by Les Harrison, who, in order to get her into bed, went through a fairly conventional Hollywood courtship—lunch at the Polo Lounge, dinner at La Scala and Mateo’s, and finally, a supporting role as a southern belle in a costume epic about the Civil War.

With golden, breast-length tresses, she proved to be so adorable in a lacy corset-cinching scene that Les’s father, old C.D. himself (a vigorous fifty-nine at the time), decided, after seeing the rushes, to dip in for a taste, little suspecting that by now Junior was nailing her repeatedly. His own courtship, unlike his son’s, was quite formal and straightforward, appearing, in fact, as a flat proposition—though not directly from him, whom she had never met, but through her agent, Abe “Lynx” Letterman.

“He’s got hot nuts for you, kid,” Abe said with cigar-hoarse enthusiasm. “It’s exactly the break we been waiting for!”

C.D.’s proposal was that the girl spend the weekend with him at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, in exchange for which she would play the fem lead in an upcoming romantic comedy opposite Rex McGuire, then being groomed, as everyone knew, for instant stardom.

“How can you make sure he won’t welsh on it?” Angie wanted to know.

Abe shook his head firmly. “Lissen, not
stitch one
do you take off before we got it in writing! I tole him awready, not
stitch one!”

“Oh yeah?” Angie’s perfect brow crinkled in cute petulance—already giving a hint of the wistful poignance, the deliciously bereft orphanlike countenance which was to make her a living legend in the hearts of Mr. and Mrs. U.S.A. “What if he just wants me to suck his cock?”

“Huh?”

“Well, then he’s got me, stitch one or not. I mean you don’t exactly have to get undressed to suck a cock, do you?”

Abe wagged a pious finger, shaking his head, “Uh-uh,
no touchy.
I tole him awready, ‘
no contract, no touchy pretty girlie!’
and I’ll be there to see that he don’t.”

“Who says he won’t get me up there and then just jerk off or something?”

“So?” Abe lifted his shoulders, “he jerks off—that’s a chance we gotta take. I mean, that’s a chance you take every day, right? You’re in a same room with a guy, in a car, in a elevator, in a movie house, on a plane,
anywhere,
he jerks off. So? Big deal. Lissen, what I’m telling
you
baby, is that not
stitch one
comes off without we got a deal,
in writing,
which I personally will draw up, and he will sign before I leave the hotel room.”

“What if they never make the movie?”

Abe was indignant. “What do you think, I’m a
putz?
It’s a
play-or-pay,
baby,
play-or-pay!
Starting October seven, rain or shine, we got ten weeks at thirty-five hundred a week! That ain’t
spit,
you know.”

In the scene which had caught Dad Harrison’s fancy, Angela was in her bedroom, getting dressed for a formal ball. At this stage she was still in her underwear—long ruffled pantaloons and a waist-cinch which her mother was tightening from behind, causing her to grimace in cute discomfort.

“Oh Momma,” she gasped, “ah jus’ won’t be able to
breathe,
much less
dance!”
Being from Texas, she could manage a passable southern accent—too much nasal twang, but still refreshingly non-Bronx considering it was a Hollywood film about the South.

The mother was played by Louise Larkin, a well-known character actress who had been under contract to the studio for many years, and whose forte was “the ideal American mom,” Waspville apple-pie style. She was master, to an almost caricaturish degree, of the southern idiom.

“Now don’t you fret youh pretty head about that, chile, you jus’ mind that
in between
dances you don’t stroll out onto the
veranda
with any of those boys down from Charleston! You heah?”

“Oh Momma, really!”

“Christ, look at that,” said C.D. to the film’s executive producer who was sitting beside him in the projection room, “it’s a
blond
Scarlett O’Hara! That’s the
real
Scarlett O’Hara! A
blonde!
A full-on
shicksa!
A
pink-nipple
. . .
blond . . . cracker!
What the hell’s her
name
anyway?”

Part of the arrangement between C.D. and Abe was that Angela would wear the same outfit—pantaloons, cinch, and long blond hairpiece—that she had worn in the scene. And he insisted on a note, signed by the wardrobe mistress, that the garments were, in fact, the same ones worn in the scene.

“What time did you break yesterday?” C.D. demanded of the exec as soon as the segment was finished.

“Five-thirty.”

He sighed. “Then there’s no chance,” at the same time picking up the phone and signaling to cut the sound on the rushes. He called Wardrobe, then handed the phone to the exec.

“Find out if those things she was wearing were sent to the laundry yet. If not, tell them to hold it. Tell them it’s
important.”

The exec, waiting for the ring to answer, shook his head seriously. “They’ll never admit it, even if the stuff
didn’t
go out yet—it’s a union regulation: ‘All costumes cleaned after wearing.’”

C.D. reached over and took the phone. “You’re right.” He hung it up. “Okay, reshoot the scene. It’s nothing, right? The set’s still standing—it’s a half hour’s work, an hour at most.”

He leaned over and gripped the other’s wrist. “And I want
that
take used in the film. And I want
you,
Cliff, I want
you
personally to see that those things she’s wearing
come straight to my office
as soon as she gets out of them. And do a few extra takes while you’re at it—let her work up a little sweat, you know, a little
juice . . .
because I’ve got me
one hell of an idea,
buddy-boy,
one hell of an idea!”