B00AZRHQKA EBOK (22 page)

19

Larry to the company:

“Play your parts, for God’s sake! Or more specifically, let your parts play you. Everybody still seems too bloody self-conscious. The dancers. All I see is technique. The singers, it’s like your vocal coach is sitting out front. The players, you’re like you’re at dramatic school hoping to get a good mark. Let go, for the love of God! Forget about scoring, forget about making a hit, forget you’re on stage. Be in Chicago. Be in New York. Be in nineteen-oh-eight. Don’t worry so much about how to do what you’re doing, just do it! Can I say it any plainer than that? Do it! Is there anybody here who remembers that famous little poem from Pinafore Poems? Listen:

'The Centipede was happy quite,

Until the Toad, in fun

Said, “Pray, which leg goes after which?”

That worked her mind to such a pitch,

She lay distracted in a ditch,

Considering how to run.’”

The company responds with laughter and applause.

20

A crisis of conscience.

I hope I handle it better than I did the last one. I will.

There is a plan afoot to get rid of Larry.

Is that why AC sent for his wife? For the first time? Apparently, she has some power in the situation and all important moves require her O.K.

Neysa Bayes Clune thinks that she looks like Nora. She is wrong. The only mildly successful nose job did not help.

I have the impression that if Mrs. Clune would leave herself alone, she might be a fairly attractive woman but she is her own principal preoccupation. She and tennis.

She travels with a large Vuitton trunk, which holds a dryer and beauty equipment of every sort.

A hairdresser comes in daily. Also, a makeup man, or woman. Mrs. C. changes her clothes three times daily.

She spends two months a year at Maine Chance. One month a year at The Spa, and one in Montecatini. She has had two face-lifts, AC tells me, each performed by the renowned Dr. Converse in New York. She has a daily massage no matter where she is.

Her only activity is tennis which explains why the Clunes live in Palm Springs and in Palm Beach most of the time. In either place, she has a daily lesson and is said to be comparatively expert. She loves to win, hates to lose—thus her matches are carefully arranged.

She seems manufactured, somehow. Plastic.

When AC wants to rile her, which is too often, he calls her “Goldberg”—Nora Bayes’s real name.

I was working with AC when she turned up with her maid and twenty-two pieces of luggage.

“Jesus!” he said. “I thought I told you
light.
I only got so much room around here.”

“So get more,” she said, and disappeared into the bedroom.

AC continued to dictate. In view of the fact that they have not seen each other since the day after the opening night here—I would say that at the Clunes’, the honeymoon is definitely over.

Later, he filled her in.

“The show is on,” he said. “He’s done the job. Now
fuck
’im! A fresh son-of-a-bitch from the start! You know what he told me once? I mean in front of everybody? Well, not everybody—but in front of the whole creative team? He told me, 'Shut up!’ I didn’t make too much out of it then and there but I thought to myself: O.K., you prick, I’ll fix you. Just give me time. Well, so I took my time and now
I’m
in the driver’s. How about that? 'Shut up,’ he tells me. I mean it would be as if Chapman said to
you,
'Shut up.’”

“What the hell are you gassing about?” Neysa asked. “Do you know? Chapman. Chapman for Jesus’ sake is my
chauffeur.
So what’s that got to do with a big director? Maybe he
had
to tell you to shut up. Maybe you were talking too much the way you usually do. Me, I close my ears off but everybody can’t do that.”

“Hey, nag. Did I invite you up here? Show me your invitation. Oh, yeah. I did. I forgot. But God Almighty, you show up and right away you’re gettin’ on my nerves.”

“Never mind your nerves so much. All I want to see is you not screw up this show. I’ve got a stake in it, too, y’know. Or did you forget?”

“Fat chance I get to forget—with a nag like you around.”

“So a guy says, 'Shut up.’ So don’t be so thick-skinned. The main thing is he’s got the show on for you, didn’t he? And held all these freaks together and out of each other’s hair and from down one another’s throats. God, the way he operates, he ought to be a Secretary of State. So now you want to fire him.”

“Are you…What’re
you,
bananas? Fire ’im? Who said anything about fire? You realize the bum’s got me for three per cent of the gross and five per cent of the profits across the board which means including everything—record and stock and amateur and
movie,
for Chrissake?”

“If you don’t stop yelling at me, Art—you know what I’m going to do?”

“Yeah,
what?”

“I’m going to
stay
here,” she said.

“Great! That’s all I need.”

“You. You don’t know
what
you need.”

“Yeah? Well, whatever it is
you
can’t give it to me.”

“You mean I
won’t.”

“Take off, willya?”

“So if not fire him so what
are
you gassin’ about?”

“You know, I look at you sometimes and I can hardly believe it. The years you’ve been around with me—and seen me do business—and you still know from strictly nothing. Only forehand and backhand and that’s it. Nothing rubbed off on you, did it?”

“Just a little shit, darling. That’s all.”

“The thing is, I’m gonna get this bum to quit. Not fire,
quit.”

“And what if he won’t?”

“He will.”

“But what if not?” she insisted.

“So I’ll have to try something else.”

“Like what?”

He turned to speak to me. I could hardly have been more surprised. I would have sworn he had forgotten all about me. He tends to do that.

“Has he got it on with anybody in the company?” he asked me.

“Probably with
her,”
said Neysa, pouring herself a drink. “That’d be a switch for you, won’t it?”

He pretended not to hear her.

“Has
he?” he pursued.

“I don’t know.”

“Find out!” he ordered. “There’s always somebody with these guys. A dancer, a singer—”

“An acrobat,” said Neysa. She laughed and went into the bedroom and closed the door.

“Bitch,” he said. Then to me, “Look. Find out. Please. Ask around. One thing. There’re damn few secrets around a company. Everybody thinks they’re gettin’ away with everything and the truth is nobody’s gettin’ away with nothin’.”

“Why don’t you ask Eddie?”

“Who?”

“Eddie Convery.”

“What’s
he
got to do with anything?”

“Oh,” I said innocently. “I thought he was your man in there.”

“Y’see that?” he shouted. “Like I said. Everybody knows everything. How do
you
know that?”

“Because I heard Buddy beefing to Jenny one night. And he said, 'What’s that klutz doing in our chorus?’ And Jenny said, 'Ask Mr. Clune.’ So I figured. Then I’ve noticed how he feeds us stuff all the time. Not always accurate, by the way.”

“What
is?
You think everything you read in
The New York Times
is accurate f’Chrissake? You’ve got to have information in this business. Masses of information. Not just a little squirt here and there.
Masses!
And when you get enough, you sort it out and pretty soon, you
know
…Get ’im up here.”

“Eddie?”

“Who do y’ think? Walter Kerr?”

Half an hour later, Eddie sat with us, drinking Coke from a bottle. He is small and stocky and wears a toupee that Buddy tells me cost $750. The fact is, I had no idea it
was
a toupee until Buddy told me. He is a good deal older than any of the other dancers, has been around for years, is a professional gossip and an unpleasant personality. His attempts at cosmetic improvement are not successful. He seems often to be on the verge of tears. I feel sorry for him. He is a failure, a loser, a washout. They say that in this business you cannot write anyone off—but I believe one can safely write
him
off, as an artist, that is. So he has to make his way and hang on, somehow, with supplementary activity such as this—spying for the producer.

He listens to Art digging for scuttlebutt, skillfully. Art does not come directly to the Larry question, but in his devious way, pretends he needs to know of the whole company’s inner life.

“I don’t give a damn what any of them do privately, you understand.”

“Me neither,” says Eddie.

“But in a company—it starts to affect the work, and the performances, and the whole life—you know what I mean?”

“Thirty-three shows, Mr. Clune.”

“What?”

“—I’ve been in. The same in every one.”

“I don't want any cliques in this one. I swear I’ll break up every one!”

“Well,” says Eddie. “It usually breaks down into the straights and the gays and then the gays break into he-he’s and she-she’s so that’s three and there’s always a fourth—the nothings or the
real
marrieds.”

Art says, “Like you take a man like Larry—now he’s a guy
really
keeps his nose clean. I mean to say—he plays no favorites, he’s got no axes to grind, debts to pay, nothing—right?”

“Well,” says Eddie carefully. “I really don’t know.”

I sit there wondering if either of them honestly thinks he is snowing the other. AC is so damned transparent and Eddie is an accomplished intriguer. He knows what AC wants and would love to give it to him. Those tiny eyes of his reflect his inner unrest.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” asks Art.

“No favorites—
that’s
probably right. But there’re some he sure seems to admire more than some others.”

“Like who?”

“Oh, several.”

“Name me
one.”

“Well…like Gloria. For instance.”

“Oh?”

“Sure. Everybody’s on that.”

“You think he’s got something going there?”

“No, no. I didn’t mean
that.”

“But has he?”

“Oh, I doubt it. He’s very good friends with her husband.”

“Doesn’t mean a thing,” said AC. “On the road. What the hell. Who cares?”

“But I don’t think so.”

“Is he with
anybody?”

“I don’t know. I could check it out.”

“Get back to Gloria.”

“Yes?”

“Like what?”

“Like he spends an awful lot of time on her scenes—a lot of people have noticed it. In fact, her Nibs did the other day.”

“Go ahead. Keep going.”

He points to me and pantomimes a scribble. I am to begin taking it down.

Eddie says, “She asked me to go get her a Fresca—so I did. She never came up with the quarter by the way—”

AC gets out a quarter and flips it to him. He pockets it. Can I believe my eyes?

“—so I bring her the Fresca, and She’s sitting there in the wing—and he’s working on the scene with Gloria, over and over—and She’s drinking that Fresca, and She says to me, 'Maybe I’ll ask them to let me switch parts with that chick.’ I mean it was a joke, sort of, on account of Gloria’s getting all that attention—but I mentioned it to Russ and
he
mentioned it to Larry. So a couple days later, I was playing backgammon with her in her dressing room and Larry comes in with some new pages for her and he says, 'Or maybe you won’t need them. I hear you’d like to switch parts with Gloria.’ And She plays it
so
cool and keeps playing and says,
'Anything
for a little direction, dearie. Some days out there I feel like I’m going to be picked up for
vagrancy!’
So I laughed and She laughed, but he didn’t, and he said: 'Tell you what, dearie. You get rid of your coach and I’ll start directing you. Otherwise, it’s like trying to carry on a twin affair—no good for anybody.’

“Well, with this, She stopped playing, and She says, 'I don’t even know what you’re
talking
about.’ And he says, 'I’m talking about Harry Silverman, that half-assed mediocrity you made us hire to play the detective—he’s inept, by the way—and who coaches you every night and every morning for which like a fool you pay him—and tells you which part of my direction to accept and which to reject—and gives you phony, idiotic readings, and ridiculous pieces of business—and you have this amateur idea that the more direction you get the better, while the fact is that you are a unique and remarkable and creative talent who just needs to be left alone as much as possible. But you won’t even leave
yourself
alone, you’re so goddamn determined to make it if it kills you and it probably will, you poor brute.’ Well. She looks at him for a long time and She says, 'I don’t know
what
you’re talking about or
where
you get the stupid idea that Harry Sil—’ And he stops her and says, 'From
him!
That’s where.’ 'You’re full of shit!’ She yells. 'He never talks to you.’ 'I never said he did,’ he says. 'But he gets drunk every night at Gilhooley’s and tells anybody who’ll listen. A frustrated genius, in
his
opinion. All frustrated geniuses turn into lushes. So what do you say? A deal? And I’ll even keep him in the show if you want me to.’ I want to tell you. I’ve never seen her thrown before. She says to me, 'Get me Harry in here. Right away.’ Larry tries to stop her. He says, 'Wait a minute.’ But She’s off the handle and yelling and yells, 'Don’t tell
me
what to do in my own fucking dressing room!’ And to me She says, 'Harry. And Val. And Art. And call Doctor Ross, I need him right away.’ Well—I don’t have to tell you—when Our Little Lady of the Flowers cracks the whip…In about ten seconds flat—her dressing room looked like the stateroom scene in
A Night at the Opera
with The Marx Brothers.” He got up and did a really remarkable imitation of Groucho—holding out his hand and saying to the imaginary manicurist— “‘You better cut ’em short, honey. It’s getting pretty crowded in here!’ And finally, She had poor Harry sitting in her chair and I want to tell you it was weird because the room is so full of mirrors—I mean there’s not space that isn’t a mirror and one on the ceiling—don’t ask
me!
—and so the number of people in the room was multiplied like by about twenty and Harry sat there—he didn’t know
what
the hell—and it looked like that scene from
M
—you know?—with Peter Lorre? And finally, She made everybody shut up and She said to Harry, 'Are you my coach?’ And he said, 'Of course not.’ And She said, 'Have you ever given me any directions or readings or advice on anything?’ 'No,’ he said. 'Do I pay you anything?’ She asked. 'Or does anybody connected with me?’ 'No,’ he said. Oh God, if She’d only left it there—but no—She had to go too far. No taste. So She kept going and said, 'So what you are is just a lousy bit player. Right?’ 'Right,’ he said. And then She tore it. She said, 'Say it.’ The poor guy turned green. 'Say what?’ 'Say what you are.
Say it!!’
She was screaming now—and Harry stood up, I thought he might keel over—and Larry said, 'O.K. That’s enough. Let’s adjourn.’ But once more from her:
'Say it!,
you little shit!’ And he said, 'All right, I’ll say it. I’m your
coach!’
She was so stunned She couldn’t talk for once.
'Not
a little shit. Your
coach!
And yes, you
do
pay me. You pay me five hundred a week. And I quit and I hope you bomb out every day of your life from here on in.’ As he started out, Val grabbed him by the lapels and Harry belted him right in the mouth and a kind of free-for-all started but it wasn’t so much punching as it was pushing and shoving—but Harry got out and nobody’s seen him since. I don’t know what they’re going to do about his part. I’m up for it, by the way. If you could put in a good word.”