Lillian and Dash (8 page)

She stood directly behind him and now saw him looking at her in the mirror. They said nothing. Did nothing.

“You know, if I had a piece of piano wire, I’d garrote you.”

“No, you wouldn’t.” She’d forgotten how calm his voice could be in very emotional moments. “You’d only
try to
garrote me. I wouldn’t let you garrote me.”

“So tell me why.”

“Because I want to breathe a while longer on this earth.”

“No. Why won’t you keep your dick in your fucking pants?”

Hammett took a breath and looked with sadness at the bartender. “My business.”

“Stand up and turn around.”

Hammett smiled. “Sounds like you’ve got a gun.”

“No. I want to hit you.”

“Fair enough.”

Hammett slid his stool back a bit and rose. The bartender moved away. Hammett turned around slowly and faced Lillian. He was tall and straight and clean. He was not smiling but nodding, seeming to acknowledge her right to some form of retribution, just not garroting.

His jacket was open. She had bought him this tie with a small floral design. His solar plexus, as best she could determine, lay behind the widest point on the gray silk. Hammett’s scarred, tubercular lungs lay behind that too. The punch, she knew, had to be sudden, had to be sharp, thrown with all the force she could muster and with all her anger channeled into it.

Lillian exploded at Hammett’s chest.

He caught her fist in midair, mere inches from his tie. His pale eyes narrowed: “Not here, Lilly.”

He was hurting her wrist. “Humiliation for humiliation.”

He pulled her close. “I said, not here.”

“I’m going to spit in your eye.”

“No, you are not.”

Once in Galatoire’s in New Orleans a man came over to the table where she was having crayfish gumbo with her father. As the man approached, Max Hellman touched her hand and quietly said,
Don’t say a word. Whatever happens, let me take care of this
. The man was large, but so was her father. The man stuck his head low over their food. He called Hellman
Maxie
and said something about
You people …
and
Better watch your kosher ass …
Max Hellman waited, smiled upward and spit squarely in the man’s eye. Since Max had not quite swallowed his gumbo, the sight was disgusting in the extreme. Max then rose quickly and landed the first hard blow before they took the other man away. Galatoire’s did not want to lose Max Hellman’s patronage.

Lillian Hellman spit squarely in Dashiell Hammett’s eye. The amount of phlegm she produced surprised her. Hammett snorted and laughed.

Hammett said to the bartender, “Hey, pal, how about a towel?” And then to Lillian: “You are really something, you are.” And then to the bartender again: “She’s got a legitimate gripe. We’re not married.”

Lillian said, “No, we were only lovers.”

I
T WAS RELATIVELY EARLY
for them to be driving home, not yet 1:30 a.m. Hammett claimed he was tired and produced convincing yawns to prove it, which was fine since they were with old friends, Myra Ewbank and Phil Edmunds. The yawning began, Lillian observed, after his first cigar and snifter of cognac. It may even have been partly real; he had after all been up early and locked away writing a
Thin Man
sequel the entire day. After his second cigar and cognac, his weariness became more phony and more honest.

Phil and Myra had a place, a modern, Frank Lloyd Wright-ish home in the hills above and beyond Hollywood. They were married but Myra’s credits were always in her own name. They were both writers under contract to M-G-M. Everyone knew Myra as the stronger writer. The couple were known in the business as “fixers,” actually as “fixers of last resort.” When a once-promising script had gotten mangled beyond recognition by half a dozen failed approaches, Myra
or Phil was called in to save the project before it was written off. Of all the staff writers, they were the only ones Louis B. Mayer could always identify correctly by name.

Myra, whom Lillian liked a great deal, once explained the simple secret of her success: go back and find the original script and then the first rewrite and discover exactly where the second version lost its way. Then simply bring it back to what Mayer or the production supervisor, David O. Selznick, liked about it to begin with. Pick up and follow that old trail. Of course, leave some small spaces for the big shots’ input as well. Just to make them feel as though they too were important fixers.

Once over lunch at the studio commissary, Myra told Lilly the story of what she had done with
Red-Headed Woman
. The popular novel had been far too racy for Mayer and certainly would have been bounced by the Hays Office. It had gone through seven rewrites and the studio’s last option was about to expire, so quite a bit of money had already been invested. The redhead in question was a beautiful but penniless young woman, Lil Andrews, who was willing to do anything—anything? Yes, anything—to improve herself in the world. Seduction of rich old men was her method of choice, and it was used exhaustively in the novel. She was killing old men off with bedsprings. Attached to the original screenplay was a memo recommending Garbo for the lead. A second memo said Garbo was not available, so the script was rewritten twice for Joan Crawford. Crawford still didn’t
want to touch it. A new director came into the picture and thought Lil Andrews ought to become the innocent victim of these powerful old lechers. So yet another version was written. And on it went for seven rewrites.

Myra found the original script and retyped it—not rewrote it—making one simple script change throughout: Lil Andrews actually loved and truly admired each and every old man she seduced on her way up the social and financial ladder. Myra attached a memo recommending Jean Harlow for the part. And Harlow, with her comic flair, vamped her way through the role.
Red-Headed Woman
was a great success. For her “typing” job, Myra Ewbank received fifteen thousand dollars, her regular fee and a bonus. “Took me all of two weeks. When I got the check,” she told Lilly, “I put it into my account that very morning. And when I endorsed it, I also wrote, ‘Hooray for Follywood.’ Of course I tried to make the
F
look a little like an
H
.”

“You’ve got your own account?”

“Sure. Don’t you?”

“Yes, but I’m not married to the guy.”

“What has that got to do with the price of babies?”

Lillian raised her glass. “May I ask you something even more personal …”

Myra nodded.

“The house, is it in both your names?”

“Actually, it’s mine. I bought it myself. Why? Thinking of getting your own place?”

“We’re talking. Maybe something in New York.”

“Oh no. I’ll really miss you two.”

“Don’t let on to Dash.”

That conversation confirmed what Hammett always averred, that Myra was the brains and the talent, Phil the charm and the studio connections. Together they had everything covered that was important professionally with Mayer at M-G-M. Hammett also knew that Phil Edmunds and Lillian had had a bit of a fling back when Arthur Kober got his wife her first job. Lilly knew that Hammett knew about Phil and hoped to see some indication of jealousy reveal itself, but she never did, other than a small disparagement of Phil’s talent. She thought he was a decent screenwriter. There were certainly worse. On the other hand, Hammett valued Edmunds as one of the most discreet drinkers at M-G-M and as the source of very reliable studio information.

Although Hammett was yawning, Lillian was the one who should have been exhausted. She had gotten back from New York and the opening of
The Children’s Hour
just two days earlier. She had been on the phone continually dealing with new production problems as they arose and requests for interviews and, even worse, well-wishers who wanted tickets and whose conversations with Lilly should have ended after her thankyous but did not. There were some very lavish Hollywood parties planned in her honor, but Hammett thought a quiet evening with Myra and Phil, old friends, would be a more pleasant way of reentering this artificial world. It didn’t hurt
that Hammett considered Myra the best cook on the West Coast and that she promised to make Stroganoff.

Both Phil and Myra were genuinely happy with Lillian’s success. They could not reasonably be jealous because much earlier, when they had read the final drafts of
The Children’s Hour
, they knew neither of them could ever have written it. They had chosen for themselves the relative anonymity and excessive pay of screenwriting over the more dangerous literary pursuit Lilly attempted. But word of the play’s enormous success had come west instantly, that is to say electronically, and Hellman had become a literary star out here as well.

During the evening Phil kept wanting to know more about the opening, more about the audience reactions, about the performances, more about the reviews, and who said what exactly. Lilly kept insisting she didn’t know or couldn’t remember. Anyone pan it? Myra asked.

“Of course,” Hammett said, “the Hearst flacks went after it like it was
Das Kapital
for lesbians.”

“Still,” Phil said, “it’s an unqualified Broadway success.”

Hammett said, “In New York there is no ‘unqualified’ anything.”

“For Christ’s sake, Lilly, tell us more about it, everything,” Phil said. “You haven’t even basked.”

Myra, who happened to be in the kitchen, called out, “Don’t humor the girl. She’s basking in silence. That’s the worst kind of basking to have to listen to.”

They didn’t speak very much as they ate the best Stroganoff in Southern California and drank a good Napa Valley burgundy. The bread and cheese were French, the dessert a baked Alaska. “Jee-sus,” Hammett said to the ceiling, “this woman could possibly cuisine her way into heaven … Brava, Myra Ewbank.”

At dinner there were toasts to Lillian’s success, and to future successes, to Myra’s wonderful meal, to friendship, and to more good work by all and bigger paychecks. Mostly the after-dinner talk was of the movie business. The transition came when Myra wondered aloud about something Lillian had been thinking for a while: Could there be a way to adapt her play about a possible lesbian affair into a film? “Not while Louie B. draws breath” was Myra’s opinion.

“Imagine,” said Lilly, “this from the genius who made that little redheaded tramp into a charmer? Turned Emma Bovary into Old Faithful.”

Myra said, “Your two ladies truly love one another. And that’s a Mayer taboo writ large. Only thing I can think of worse is maybe cannibalism.”

Hammett said, “Bite your tongue, Lill.”

Phil steered the conversation to the various projects in the works at the studio, not only what he and Myra were working on—he on some
Grand Hotel
dialogue; she on a first draft of
The Barretts of Wimpole Street
—but also about what future projects looked intriguing. “That’s how they get us hooked,” he said. “You go round and round always thinking
there’s a bigger, more wonderful brass ring coming on the next turn.”

“Sure, the ring shines, but it’s never gold. In fact, by the time you grab it, it’s usually not even brass. The real attraction is the check that comes when the carousel stops.” Hammett wished he hadn’t said it. “That’s the only gold there is.”

“Did you see the numbers on
The Thin Man
?” Phil asked. “In the stratosphere.”

“You didn’t tell me,” Lilly said.

“Didn’t know.” Dash downed his burgundy.

“Word is,” said Myra, “they’re going to make at least three more.
The Thin Man Picks His Nose … The Thin Man’s Fly Is Open … The Thin Man Wipes His Arse
 …”

“When it rains on you two, it really rains on you two.”

Dash said, “In the words of the ole Negro spiritual, ‘So when we gonna get dat Rolls-Royce car?’ ”

Lilly could tell that Dash had been told nothing about possible
Thin Man
sequels and that wasn’t a good thing. Could they be squeezing him out? By way of changing the subject, she said, “I see the studio optioned Hemingway’s short stories. Who’s going to get first crack at that?”

Phil: “How about Hemingway his own self?”

“Get out of here. The great man deigning to corrupt his art with a movie? For two bits a pop in crummy theaters? That’s not the Papa I’ve been drinking with.” Lilly turned to Dash. “Tell them about the spoon.”

“No.”

And Dash meant no, so Lillian told how one night at Ratoff’s Hemingway was particularly obnoxious and challenged Dash to bend a spoon inside his elbow by flexing his upper and lower arm muscles. “Dash said he didn’t do party tricks, nor did he ever fight—present company included—just for the hell of it. But if Hemingway wanted trouble all he’d have to do was lay a hand on him. Then the two of them stared at one another for the longest time. I thought, there’s a puffed-up African silverback and a lean, hungry tiger, and it’s a stalemate. At the end of it all, Hemingway called out to the crowd to step up and watch how he could bend the spoon.”

Hammett raised his empty glass. “Still, you have to tip your hat to the guy. He may not be Dostoyevsky but he has this powerful trick of making cardboard characters speak true. He does it better than any of us. By far.”

Edmunds said, “Alas.”

Myra said, “Don’t be so fucking willing to acknowledge his talent. He’s an overblown arrogant shit, fatuous, second-rate, and incredibly derivative. I despise him profoundly and resent his success absolutely.”

Myra’s outburst drew laughter, even though she had been dead serious. Phil said, “Please, dear, tell us how you really feel about the guy.”

Lillian realized anew why she liked Myra Ewbank so much and disliked most other Hollywood women she knew. Not only could Myra outwrite and outthink her husband and most everyone else, she could outcook, outtype, outwit, and
in a fairer world, outearn him as well. Lilly could count on two fingers of one hand the other women she knew like that.

Lillian asked Myra if Hemingway were a woman would she still dislike the work as much. “That’s my point, Lilly. A woman couldn’t get away with half the bullshit Hemingway gets away with, on and off the page. And a woman wouldn’t write that crap to begin with.”