As they left the make-up department Jeff lingered behind a minute.
On a strip of cardboard he crayoned the name Orson Welles in large
block letters. And outside, without Pat's notice, he stuck it in
the windshield of his car.
He did not go directly to the back lot. Instead he drove not too
swiftly up the main studio street. In front of the administration
building he stopped on the pretext that the engine was missing, and
almost in no time a small but definitely interested crowd began to
gather. But Jeff's plans did not include stopping anywhere long,
so he hopped in and they started on a tour around the commissary.
'Where are we going?' demanded Pat.
He had already made one nervous attempt to tear the beard from him,
but to his surprise it did not come away.
He complained of this to Jeff.
'Sure,' Jeff explained. 'That's made to last. You'll have to soak
it off.'
The car paused momentarily at the door of the commissary. Pat saw
blank eyes staring at him and he stared back at them blankly from
the rear seat.
'You'd think I was the only beard on the lot,' he said gloomily.
'You can sympathize with Orson Welles.'
'To hell with him.'
This colloquy would have puzzled those without, to whom he was
nothing less than the real McCoy.
Jeff drove on slowly up the street. Ahead of them a little group
of men were walking--one of them, turning, saw the car and drew the
attention of the others to it. Whereupon the most elderly member
of the party threw up his arms in what appeared to be a defensive
gesture, and plunged to the sidewalk as the car went past.
'My God, did you see that?' exclaimed Jeff. 'That was Mr Marcus.'
He came to a stop. An excited man ran up and put his head in the
car window.
'Mr Welles, our Mr Marcus has had a heart attack. Can we use your
car to get him to the infirmary?'
Pat stared. Then very quickly he opened the door on the other side
and dashed from the car. Not even the beard could impede his
streamlined flight. The policeman at the gate, not recognizing the
incarnation, tried to have words with him but Pat shook him off
with the ease of a triple-threat back and never paused till he
reached Mario's bar.
Three extras with beards stood at the rail, and with relief Pat
merged himself into their corporate whiskers. With a trembling
hand he took the hard-earned ten dollar bill from his pocket.
'Set 'em up,' he cried hoarsely. 'Every muff has a drink on me.'
PAT HOBBY'S SECRET
Esquire (June 1940)
I
Distress in Hollywood is endemic and always acute. Scarcely an
executive but is being gnawed at by some insoluble problem and in a
democratic way he will let you in on it, with no charge. The
problem, be it one of health or of production, is faced
courageously and with groans at from one to five thousand a week.
That's how pictures are made.
'But this one has got me down,' said Mr Banizon, '--because how did
the artillery shell get in the trunk of Claudette Colbert or Betty
Field or whoever we decide to use? We got to explain it so the
audience will believe it.'
He was in the office of Louie the studio bookie and his present
audience also included Pat Hobby, venerable script-stooge of forty-
nine. Mr Banizon did not expect a suggestion from either of them
but he had been talking aloud to himself about the problem for a
week now and was unable to stop.
'Who's your writer on it?' asked Louie.
'R. Parke Woll,' said Banizon indignantly. 'First I buy this
opening from another writer, see. A grand notion but only a
notion. Then I call in R. Parke Woll, the playwright, and we meet
a couple of times and develop it. Then when we get the end in
sight, his agent horns in and says he won't let Woll talk any more
unless I give him a contract--eight weeks at $3,000! And all I
need him for is one more day!'
The sum brought a glitter into Pat's old eyes. Ten years ago he
had camped beatifically in range of such a salary--now he was lucky
to get a few weeks at $250. His inflamed and burnt over talent had
failed to produce a second growth.
'The worse part of it is that Woll told me the ending,' continued
the producer.
'Then what are you waiting for?' demanded Pat. 'You don't need to
pay him a cent.'
'I forgot it!' groaned Mr Banizon. 'Two phones were ringing at
talking Woll had to run along. Now I can't remember it and I can't
get him back.'
Perversely Pat Hobby's sense of justice was with the producer, not
the writer. Banizon had almost outsmarted Woll and then been
cheated by a tough break. And now the playwright, with the
insolence of an Eastern snob, was holding him up for twenty-four
grand. What with the European market gone. What with the war.
'Now he's on a big bat,' said Banizon. 'I know because I got a man
tailing him. It's enough to drive you nuts--here I got the whole
story except the pay-off. What good is it to me like that?'
'If he's drunk maybe he'd spill it,' suggested Louie practically.
'Not to me,' said Mr Banizon. 'I thought of it but he would
recognize my face.'
Having reached the end of his current blind alley, Mr Banizon
picked a horse in the third and one in the seventh and prepared to
depart.
'I got an idea,' said Pat.
Mr Banizon looked suspiciously at the red old eyes.
'I got no time to hear it now,' he said.
'I'm not selling anything,' Pat reassured him. 'I got a deal
almost ready over at Paramount. But once I worked with this R.
Parke Woll and maybe I could find what you want to know.'
He and Mr Banizon went out of the office together and walked slowly
across the lot. An hour later, for an advance consideration of
fifty dollars, Pat was employed to discover how a live artillery
shell got into Claudette Colbert's trunk or Betty Field's trunk or
whosoever's trunk it should be.
II
The swath which R. Parke Woll was now cutting through the City of
the Angels would have attracted no special notice in the twenties;
in the fearful forties it rang out like laughter in church. He was
easy to follow: his absence had been requested from two hotels but
he had settled down into a routine where he carried his sleeping
quarters in his elbow. A small but alert band of rats and weasels
were furnishing him moral support in his journey--a journey which
Pat caught up with at two a.m. in Conk's Old Fashioned Bar.
Conk's Bar was haughtier than its name, boasting cigarette girls
and a doorman-bouncer named Smith who had once stayed a full hour
with Tarzan White. Mr Smith was an embittered man who expressed
himself by goosing the patrons on their way in and out and this was
Pat's introduction. When he recovered himself he discovered R.
Parke Woll in a mixed compa
ny around a table, and sauntered up with
an air of surprise.
'Hello, good looking,' he said to Woll. 'Remember me--Pat Hobby?'
R. Parke Woll brought him with difficulty into focus, turning his
head first on one side then on the other, letting it sink, snap up
and then lash forward like a cobra taking a candid snapshot.
Evidently it recorded for he said:
'Pat Hobby! Sit down and wha'll you have. Genlemen, this is Pat
Hobby--best left-handed writer in Hollywood. Pat h'are you?'
Pat sat down, amid suspicious looks from a dozen predatory eyes.
Was Pat an old friend sent to get the playwright home?
Pat saw this and waited until a half-hour later when he found
himself alone with Woll in the washroom.
'Listen Parke, Banizon is having you followed,' he said. 'I don't
know why he's doing it. Louie at the studio tipped me off.'
'You don't know why?' cried Parke. 'Well, I know why. I got
something he wants--that's why!'
'You owe him money?'
'Owe him money. Why that--he owes ME money! He owes me for three
long, hard conferences--I outlined a whole damn picture for him.'
His vague finger tapped his forehead in several places. 'What he
wants is in here.'
An hour passed at the turbulent orgiastic table. Pat waited--and
then inevitably in the slow, limited cycle of the lush, Woll's mind
returned to the subject.
'The funny thing is I told him who put the shell in the trunk and
why. And then the Master Mind forgot.'
Pat had an inspiration.
'But his secretary remembered.'
'She did?' Woll was flabbergasted. 'Secretary--don't remember
secretary.'
'She came in,' ventured Pat uneasily.
'Well then by God he's got to pay me or I'll sue him.'
'Banizon says he's got a better idea.'
'The hell he has. My idea was a pip. Listen--'
He spoke for two minutes.
'You like it?' he demanded. He looked at Pat for applause--then he
must have seen something in Pat's eye that he was not intended to
see. 'Why you little skunk,' he cried. 'You've talked to Banizon--
he sent you here.'
Pat rose and tore like a rabbit for the door. He would have been
out into the street before Woll could overtake him had it not been
for the intervention of Mr Smith, the doorman.
'Where you going?' he demanded, catching Pat by his lapels.
'Hold him!' cried Woll, coming up. He aimed a blow at Pat which
missed and landed full in Mr Smith's mouth.
It has been mentioned that Mr Smith was an embittered as well as a
powerful man. He dropped Pat, picked up R. Parke Woll by crotch
and shoulder, held him high and then in one gigantic pound brought
his body down against the floor. Three minutes later Woll was
dead.
III
Except in great scandals like the Arbuckle case the industry
protects its own--and the industry included Pat, however
intermittently. He was let out of prison next morning without
bail, wanted only as a material witness. If anything, the
publicity was advantageous--for the first time in a year his name
appeared in the trade journals. Moreover he was now the only
living man who knew how the shell got into Claudette Colbert's (or
Betty Field's) trunk.
'When can you come up and see me?' said Mr Banizon.
'After the inquest tomorrow,' said Pat enjoying himself. 'I feel
kind of shaken--it gave me an earache.'
That too indicated power. Only those who were 'in' could speak of
their health and be listened to.
'Woll really did tell you?' questioned Banizon.
'He told me,' said Pat. 'And it's worth more than fifty smackers.
I'm going to get me a new agent and bring him to your office.'
'I tell you a better plan.' said Banizon hastily, 'I'll get you on
the payroll. Four weeks at your regular price.'
'What's my price?' demanded Pat gloomily. 'I've drawn everything
from four thousand to zero.' And he added ambiguously, 'As
Shakespeare says, "Every man has his price."'
The attendant rodents of R. Parke Woll had vanished with their
small plunder into convenient rat holes, leaving as the defendant
Mr Smith, and, as witnesses, Pat and two frightened cigarette
girls. Mr Smith's defence was that he had been attacked. At the
inquest one cigarette girl agreed with him--one condemned him for
unnecessary roughness. Pat Hobby's turn was next, but before his
name was called he started as a voice spoke to him from behind.
'You talk against my husband and I'll twist your tongue out by the
roots.'
A huge dinosaur of a woman, fully six feet tall and broad in
proportion, was leaning forward against his chair.
'Pat Hobby, step forward please . . . now Mr Hobby tell us exactly
what happened.'
The eyes of Mr Smith were fixed balefully on his and he felt the
eyes of the bouncer's mate reaching in for his tongue through the
back of his head. He was full of natural hesitation.
'I don't know exactly,' he said, and then with quick inspiration,
'All I know is everything went white!'
'WHAT?'
'That's the way it was. I saw white. Just like some guys see red
or black I saw white.'
There was some consultation among the authorities.
'Well, what happened from when you came into the restaurant--up to
the time you saw white?'
'Well--' said Pat fighting for time. 'It was all kind of that way.
I came and sat down and then it began to go black.'
'You mean white.'
'Black AND white.'
There was a general titter.
'Witness dismissed. Defendant remanded for trial.'
What was a little joking to endure when the stakes were so high--
all that night a mountainous Amazon pursued him through his dreams
and he needed a strong drink before appearing at Mr Banizon's
office next morning. He was accompanied by one of the few
Hollywood agents who had not yet taken him on and shaken him off.
'A flat sum of five hundred,' offered Banizon. 'Or four weeks at
two-fifty to work on another picture.'
'How bad do you want this?' asked the agent. 'My client seems to
think it's worth three thousand.'
'Of my own money?' cried Banizon. 'And it isn't even HIS idea.
Now that Woll is dead it's in the Public Remains.'
'Not quite,' said the agent. 'I think like you do that ideas are
sort of in the air. They belong to whoever's got them at the time--
like balloons.'
'Well, how much?' asked Mr Banizon fearfully. 'How do I know he's
got the idea?'
The agent turned to Pat.
'Shall we let him find out--for a thousand dollars?'
After a moment Pat nodded. Something was bothering him.
'All right,' said Banizon. 'This strain is driving me nuts. One
thousand.'
There was silence.
'Spill it Pat,' said the agent.
Still no word from Pat. They waited. When Pat spoke at last his
voice seemed to come from afar.
'Everything's white,' he gasped.
'WHAT?'
'I can't help it--everything has gone white. I can see it--white.
I remember going into the joint but after that it all goes white.'
For a moment they thought he was holding out. Then the agent
realized that Pat actually had drawn a psychological blank. The
secret of R. Parke Woll was safe forever. Too late Pat realized
that a thousand dollars was slipping away and tried desperately to
recover.
'I remember, I remember! It was put in by some Nazi dictator.'
'Maybe the girl put it in the trunk herself,' said Banizon
ironically. 'For her bracelet.'
For many years Mr Banizon would be somewhat gnawed by this
insoluble problem. And as he glowered at Pat he wished that
writers could be dispensed with altogether. If only ideas could be
plucked from the inexpensive air!
PAT HOBBY, PUTATIVE FATHER
Esquire (July 1940)
I
Most writers look like writers whether they want to or not. It is
hard to say why--for they model their exteriors whimsically on Wall
Street brokers, cattle kings or English explorers--but they all
turn out looking like writers, as definitely typed as 'The Public'
or 'The Profiteers' in the cartoons.
Pat Hobby was the exception. He did not look like a writer. And
only in one corner of the Republic could he have been identified as
a member of the entertainment world. Even there the first guess
would have been that he was an extra down on his luck, or a bit
player who specialized in the sort of father who should NEVER come
home. But a writer he was: he had collaborated in over two dozen
moving picture scripts, most of them, it must be admitted, prior to
1929.
A writer? He had a desk in the Writers' Building at the studio; he
had pencils, paper, a secretary, paper clips, a pad for office
memoranda. And he sat in an overstuffed chair, his eyes not so
very bloodshot taking in the morning's Reporter.
'I got to get to work,' he told Miss Raudenbush at eleven. And
again at twelve:
'I got to get to work.'
At quarter to one, he began to feel hungry--up to this point every
move, or rather every moment, was in the writer's tradition. Even
to the faint irritation that no one had annoyed him, no one had
bothered him, no one had interfered with the long empty dream which
constituted his average day.
He was about to accuse his secretary of staring at him when the
welcome interruption came. A studio guide tapped at his door and
brought him a note from his boss, Jack Berners:
Dear Pat:
Please take some time off and show these people around the lot.
Jack
'My God!' Pat exclaimed. 'How can I be expected to get anything
done and show people around the lot at the same time. Who are
they?' he demanded of the guide.
'I don't know. One of them seems to be kind of coloured. He looks
like the extras they had at Paramount for Bengal Lancer. He can't
speak English. The other--'
Pat was putting on his coat to see for himself.
'Will you be wanting me this afternoon?' asked Miss Raudenbush.
He looked at her with infinite reproach and went out in front of
the Writers' Building.
The visitors were there. The sultry person was tall and of a fine
carriage, dressed in excellent English clothes except for a turban.
The other was a youth of fifteen, quite light of hue. He also wore
a turban with beautifully cut jodhpurs and riding coat.
They bowed formally.