To Kill the Duke (6 page)

“Anything but you guys getting Brando. Do you know how many stars or would-be stars my boss has lost to yours?” Strabala asked Powell.

“Strabala, just what are you talking about?” A frustrated Dick Powell asked, because Dick Powell couldn’t remember his studio signing any of Fox’s stars during his tenure.

“Hughes has fucked so many of my bosses’ girlfriends, while they thought that the girls were being loyal to them. There is no way he would loan out anything to you guys, let alone Brando,” Strabala said.

“You’re joking,” Powell said.
How does Howard have the time to make billions, invent things, fly planes and screw so many women?
Powell thought as he waited for Strabala to answer him.

“You don’t know do you, Dick?” Strabala said.

“Know what?!” Powell yelled.

“I forgot. You’re one of the
good guys
in Hollywood. Principled. A loving husband and father. Work hard, make an honest buck. A great boss. Everyone likes you. You don’t play in the promiscuous part of our community,” Strabala said.

“I will take that as a compliment… I think,” Powell said.

“So, you’re wondering what this has to do with business.” Strabala asked.

“You’re a mind reader, Strabala. Of course I want to know how what you just said has anything to do with us making a bona fide offer to your bosses to obtain your contract player for one picture,” a confused Dick Powell asked of his parallel at Fox Studios.

“Hold on Dick, it’s one of my bosses.”

Powell started to fume while he waited for Strabala to return to the phone line. He thought,
he should just throw the big money offer, because money was always more important in Hollywood than sex… or revenge — no matter how good the sex or how great the revenge.

“Basically… nothing, Dick. My bosses aren’t going to do anything for Howard. Tell Hughes that this time, his little dick — by the way, no pun intended — has finally cost him,” Strabala said.

There has to be a better… no, another way,
Dick Powell thought as he rubbed his chin thinking about how to answer what he’d just heard. Dick Powell, and for the most part the crowd he was in, didn’t think or act like Strabala’s bosses did. Dick Powell and his crowd loved being movie
makers and didn’t want to lose their collective fame and fortune over getting laid, getting high or anything else that was too risky. Dick Powell would take chances in making movies, but not in his personal life or the lives of those he loved and respected.

“Okay Strabala. I don’t have a clue on how to answer what you just told me. There are a lot of other actors out there… although Brando is perfect for the role. I’ll tell Howard and Oscar, and remember one thing,” Powell warned.

“What, you’re going to threaten me with Hughes’ money?” an indignant Strabala asked.

“No. Not at all. Paybacks in Hollywood are not pretty,” Powell warned as he hung up.

And Dick Powell meant it. Now, he had to tell Hughes and Millard.

“Miss Burchett,” Powell cried into the intercom system. “Please get me a couple of aspirins and some ice-cold water.”

He gobbled down the aspirins and drank two glasses of water. He took a deep breath and decided to take a nap before he called Hughes. Dick Powell was procrastinating and he knew it. He was also resting up, because he knew he would be on the phone a long time with his boss, and then he would have to meet with Oscar and inform Millard that Fox had nixed MB. And of course, the way things were going, Oscar Millard
would have already convinced
Brando to be in the film during their get together.

Could be worse. It could always be worse.
Dick thought to himself as he quickly dozed off.

He woke and felt amazingly refreshed.

“Naps are the best,” he once said to his wife June, after awaking from a nap on their den couch. He had dozed off while watching a football game on TV.

“You first started your naps
listening
to sports on the radio. Now, when you can watch the game… you still fall asleep,” she said.

“I did?” Powell said.

“I call it the ‘third-quarter’ nap. Whatever the sport… by the time it’s three-quarters over, you’re asleep,” she stated. “By the way, wives and mothers don’t nap.”

“You ought to try it,” he urged her.

Dick couldn’t believe that he had only been asleep for 20 minutes. He made a mental note to try and take a nap for no longer than 20 minutes every day he was in the office. He called his wife and they decided that this Saturday would be the best day for him to fly off with Howard and scout the location.

Howard… he decided to call him and get it over with. After all, the nap had refreshed him. He told his secretary to ring Hughes. Powell returned to read and answer some of his own fan mail while he waited for Howard Hughes to get on the line.

Surprisingly, Hughes was on the line very quickly, and then Dick Powell was put on hold. Even more astonishing was that Hughes, once he took Powell off hold, was extremely calm about not landing Brando.

“There are a lot of good actors in Hollywood. Not as good as Brando, but good. More importantly Dick, did you find a leading lady with the right dimensions to suit me?” Hughes asked.

Dick Powell rolled his eyes upward and sighed
maybe I should have drunk three martinis instead of taking a nap
, he thought.

“Well?” Hughes demanded.

“What about Oscar?” Powell asked his boss, changing the subject, while wondering if Hughes thought about anything else other than women’s breasts… very large ones to boot.

“I don’t want to talk about the writer. I want to talk about what actress with big tits you’re thinking about casting,” Howard Hughes said.

I guess not,
Dick Powell mused, and then got bold. “Howard, how did you make so much money, when it seems that all you do is think about humongous breasts?”

“I’m not telling,” Hughes said.

“Well, what about Oscar?” Powell repeated.

“I might tell him, I might not. I did love that movie he did about the navy divers. Regardless, he will be bummed and then I will get him laid
by a broad with big tits,” Hughes announced. “By the way Dick, Brando would have been great. But if you think about the screenplay, Oscar’s movie is basically a western set in the year what… 1182. Get a cowboy actor to play the main role.”

“Who? John Wayne?” Dick Powell said very sarcastically.

Hughes laughed. “When are we flying over the site for the shooting?”

“I’m free this Saturday, Howard,” Powell told his boss.

“No you are not. You belong to me. I’ll have a car pick you up to meet my plane. Get me Oscar’s address and I’ll make sure he gets laid. After he gets his rocks off, I’ll call him personally to tell him about Brando,” Hughes said.

“That’s very nice of you Howard,” praised Powell.

“I like having IOU’s from people in the dream factory known as Hollywood,” Hughes said.

“I bet you have a lot of IOU’s,” Powell replied.

For the next few days, Dick Powell worked harder than he could ever remember. He made sure he had three days off the following week so he could personally drive up with his most loyal staff members to scout the location he was sure Howard was going to pick out from the air during the fly-over. Powell was so sure of the location being the Escalante Valley in Southern Utah, that he had his secretary book a floor of rooms at the nearest hotel, under false names of course.

Powell went back to his work.

A few minutes later Miss Burchett beeped him on the office intercom and informed him that there were no hotels around the site that Dick assumed Howard would pick.

“What about motels?” Dick asked his secretary. Instantly he heard her line go dead. Right away he knew that she hadn’t checked on any being in the area.
But she walks great
he thought as he went back to work. A few more minutes went by and then the intercom beeped again. “Mr. Powell, what’s the difference between a hotel and a motel?”

Good question
, he thought to himself before he answered. He loved when people… especially his employees… asked him questions.

“There is no such thing as a bad question,” he always said to his workers when they were first hired. “All questions are good questions,” he would add when the newest employee was leaving his office.

Answering questions… any question, helped him with his own patience and knowledge.

Dick Powell was proud of both.

“Relying on patience made me a better man, husband, father, actor, friend and producer,” he once told his wife.

“But sometimes you take forever to make a decision,” June protested.

“Nobody’s perfect,” he would quip.

But by being patient… he didn’t make rash decisions. In Hollywood, rash decisions could make or break a movie or worse, a career. Dick Powell had never experienced either of those negative breaks.

But now he was experiencing a blank moment about Miss Burchett’s question on the difference between a hotel and a motel.

“Let’s see, hotels…how stupid of me. There can’t be any establishments like the Beverly Hills Hilton where Howard intends to shoot the film.
Can’t be any franchises that I’m used to out there providing weary travelers with rooms and meals,”
he said to himself.
A motel. Why can’t I come up with the difference
, he pondered. Then it hit him.
I have no knowledge of motels, because they are drive-up hotels where men and women meet each other to shack-up for a quickie. I’m not a traveling salesman looking for a cheap place, either. I have never been delayed by bad weather or lost on the road
, he thought. He quickly got Miss Burchett back on the intercom.

“Forget motels. That area will be devoid of them. Look for cottages,” he instructed. Within seconds, she was back on the intercom.

“I found a perfect place. ‘The Enchanted Cottages.’ Nine little cabins. I rented them all,” she said.

“Good job. Cottages for the stars and trailers for the rest of us working people,” he said. “If anyone at the hotel asks what we are doing there, just tell them we are with a mineralogy school looking for fossils.”

“What names should I book the rooms under?” she asked.

“The usual names will do,” Dick Powell told his secretary. Thus the stars were booked into the cottages under the nome de plumes of ‘Jack Frost,’ ‘Sally Frost,’ ‘Ralph Frost,’ ‘Irving Frost,’ etc.