MASH 14 MASH goes to Moscow (17 page)

There was no detectable response to this at all from the audience, but the folks out there in TV land never knew this, for an alert technician in the control room pushed emergency button number two, which activated tape number two—enthusiastic applause (with whistles and shouts).

“Thank you so much,”
Shur
-lee
Strydent
cooed. “You’re so kind to little me. Now if the nice boys in the band will be so good as to back me up, I will try to make you happy with my first selection, that old favorite ‘I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.’ ”

As Miss
Strydent
sang her first number, Sean O’Casey
O’Mulligan
and Birdwell Richards, arm in arm, marched onto the set and slumped into chairs.
O’Mulligan
raised his head and stared in rapt fascination in the direction of Miss
Strydent
. A tear ran down his cheeks.

When she had finished, he got to his feet and marched over to her.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, kissing her wetly on the forehead, “isn’t she wonderful?”

Emergency button number two was pushed to encourage the audience.

“For my encore,”
Shur
-lee announced, “I will do ‘Oh, How We Danced on the Night We Were Wed.’ ”

Mr. O’Casey
O’Mulligan
made it back to his seat and
went to sleep. Fortunately, he chose to do so holding his head up with his hand, which permitted Happy Hal Harrington to comment that it wasn’t often one was privileged to see an actor of that stature and that experience overcome by emotion. He then thrust the microphone in the face of Birdwell Richards.

“And what do you think of our new superstar, Birdwell Richards?”

Mr. Richards had recovered sufficiently to be in desperate need of something to drink. But trouper to the core, he pulled himself together and enunciated, with perfect clarity and impeccable diction the following opinion:

“I can truthfully tell you, whoever you are, that I have never in my life heard someone sing who produced that reaction in me.” He thereupon jumped out of his seat and ran off stage, where he threw up into a fire bucket.

The folks at home didn’t see this, of course, which allowed Happy Hal to observe that
Merd
Johnson and ABS had again scored a big one for the good folks in TV land —a singer so unique that she had rendered the two finest actors in the world emotionally exhausted.

“Thank you so much, Happy Hal,”
Shur
-lee
Strydent
said, snatching the microphone out of his hand. “And for my final number … always leave them wanting more, I always say … I will do that beloved old religious melody, ‘Jesus Loves Me.’ ”

By the time she concluded that number, the audience had been sufficiently conditioned (some cynics might say brainwashed) to make unnecessary the use of emergency button number two. They applauded (with whistles and cheers) of their own free will.

And a star was born.

The question was what to do with her.

At an emergency conference convened the very next morning in the rather ornate boardroom of the ABS chairman of the board, the chairman himself was waiting, tapping his perfectly manicured fingernails impatiently on the high polished oak table as his staff came into the room, genuflected, and took their seats.

“We seem to have a teensy-weensy little problem, gentlemen,” he began. “We last night presented to our audience a … a
person
… ABS identified as a superstar. How this came to be, I don’t yet know, but you may take my word for it, heads will roll.* But since ABS said she was a superstar, a superstar she is, for ABS never lies. The fact that in my long and distinguished career I have never seen an uglier woman or heard a more painfully sour voice is, as we say, not relevant. The question before us, which is why I asked you here for the benefit of your wise counsel, is what the hell do we do with her? I will now entertain suggestions.”

(* He was as good as his word. Before the day was over, the “
Merd
Johnson and His Guests” show was cancelled, and a memorandum personally signed by the chairman of the board went out to all departments and all network-owned Stations that the names of Sean O’Casey
O’Mulligan
and Birdwell Richards were never to be broadcast over his airwaves unless absolutely necessary, and if it was necessary, they were to be mispronounced.)

There was a long silence in the room, as the senior executive staff looked thoughtful and wondered how they could avoid offering an opinion. Then, shockingly, the gold telephone placed before the chairman began to glow.* Eyes widened, for it was common knowledge that in all the world, only six people (the president of the United States, the chairman’s wife, and his girlfriend among them) had that unlisted number.

(* Bells, of course, were not permitted to disturb the tranquility of the boardroom.)

The chairman himself was visibly surprised to see it start to glow. He stared at it in disbelief for a full thirty seconds before reaching for it.

“Hello,” he said.

Normally, the voice of the calling party would not have been audible to anyone but the chairman, a good deal of engineering effort having been devoted to the notion that the chairman’s telephone calls, on the gold phone, should be absolutely private. But this voice, which had the timbre of a piece of chalk being scraped along a slate blackboard, got through all the filters and other technical barriers without losing more than one-half a decibel. It was clearly audible throughout the boardroom.

“Clarence, baby,” the piercing voice began. “I don’t mind telling you I cried. In fact, that’s what I called to tell you, Clarence, baby—I cried. Can you imagine that?” With visible effort, the chairman retained control of his voice and even managed to fix a rough caricature of a smile on his face.

“You are referring, I gather, Wesley, to
Shur
-lee
Strydent
?” No one in the room was surprised to see demonstrated that Wesley St. James was one of the privileged six to have access to the gold telephone. Fully 45 percent of the ABS advertising revenue came to the network from sponsors of the various daytime dramas (or soap operas) created and produced by Wesley St. James at the Wesley St. James Studios in Hollywood, California. Another 15 percent of ABS advertising revenues came from sponsors of the newest innovative wrinkle in the TV game, the Wesley St. James-ABS evening dramas (nighttime soap operas, very loosely based—the same titles were used—on great American novels).

“Who else?” Wesley St. James himself said.

“I cried a little too, Wesley,” the chairman said. “As a matter of fact, we’re having a little meeting right now to discuss how to deal with
Shur
-lee
Strydent
.”

“It seems to me that the least you could do in the face of such talent is refer to her as
Ms.
Shur
-lee
Strydent
,” Wesley St. James said, somewhat snappishly.

“You say you cried, Wesley?”

“I started to sniffle when she sang ‘I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen,’ ” Wesley St. James said. “Halfway through ‘Oh, How We Danced,’ the tears were running unashamedly down my cheeks, and when she sang, ‘Jesus Loves Me,’ I wept openly,” Wesley St. James said. “Right there in my own living room. I got my popcorn soggy, that’s how hard I cried.”

“I cried, too, Wesley,” the chairman said. This was true, but his tears were not shed for the same reasons.

“I’ve got to have her!” Wesley St. James said.

“Exactly how do you mean that, Wesley?” the chairman asked.

“You’re a filthy-minded old man, Clarence,” Wesley St. James said. “How can you even think of s-e-x in connection with that angel-voiced lady? That angel
-faced
lady?”

“Forgive me, Wesley,” the chairman said. “What exactly do you have in mind?”

“How much do you want for her contract?”

“I’m sure something can be worked out,” the chairman said smoothly, “between us, as friends and fellow gentlemen.”

“I’m sure something can, too,” Wesley St. James said. “Something mutually satisfactory. Not only do I have absolute faith in your honesty, Clarence, even if you are a filthy-minded old man, but I know how deeply it would pain you if I moved my shows over to, say, CBS.”

“I’ll get back to you just as soon as I have a look at her contract, Wesley,” the chairman said.

“Take your time, Clarence,” Wesley St. James said. “Anytime in the next ninety minutes.”

“Ciao,
Wesley,” the chairman said. There was only a click as Mr. St. James’s telephone was replaced in its receiver. Wesley St. James was far too busy a man, far too important a man, to have to concern himself with the usual social amenities, such as saying “hello” and “goodbye” when using the telephone.

The chairman hung up the gold telephone. He let his glance sweep the table, establishing momentary eye contact with each of his senior subordinates.

“I trust that proves once and for all that God
does
love ABS,” he said solemnly, “no matter what some people might say.” He paused, and then went on, “O.K. Let’s get to work. Somebody go find this ugly broad and sign her to an airtight lifetime contract. And make sure it includes a clause that permits us to sell her.”

Ms.
Shur
-lee
Strydent
arrived in Hollywood, California, the very next evening, by private, chartered jet. She was accompanied by two senior vice-presidents and a hairdresser. The chairman had been, frankly, a little worried that Mr. Wesley St. James had been in the same condition as
Mssrs
.
O’Mulligan
, Richards, and Johnson while viewing Ms.
Strydent’s
television debut and would attempt, once he saw her (and as importantly, heard her) sober, to back out of the gentlemen’s agreement between them for her services.

There was no basis for his concern. Mr. Wesley St. James himself met the aircraft at the Burbank field. Accompanying him were his vice-presidents for public relations, publicity, and artist relations. There was also the Cucamonga Senior High School Fife and Drum Corps and two muscular chaps carrying a large floral arrangement in the shape of a horseshoe. Across the massed tulips was a purple band on which had been placed three-inch-high golden letters spelling out “Welcome to Hollywood!”

As soon as the little jet taxied close, Mr. Wesley St. James bounced out of his Rolls-Royce
Corniche
convertible and took up a position at the end of a red carpet already in place. Mr. St. James, titan of TV though he unquestionably was, had not been endowed generously by the deity in the build department. He stood just a hair over four feet, eleven inches tall in his elevator Gucci loafers, and weighed about the same as a small-sized jockey—somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 pounds, depending on which of his collection of large golden wristwatches he had chosen for the occasion.

He was attired entirely in recycled denim. He had a denim Dutch boy cap on his rather bony little head, a denim jacket over his tiny little shoulders, and bell-bottom denims hiding his legs and feet. Around his neck, as a pendant, he wore the token of admiration awarded him by the television industry, a solid gold-plated die-struck medallion bearing the likeness of
Phineas
T. Barnum, with Barnum’s second most famous philosophical declaration, “This Way to the Egress”* spelled out in diamond chips along its circumference. His rather bloodshot eyes were shielded from the glare of the sun and the flash of the photographer’s lights by a set of pink-shaded sunglasses approximately four inches in diameter.