MASH 14 MASH goes to Moscow (19 page)

“Anyone who can get drunk enough to kiss a face like that deserves what help I can give,” Boris announced. “I declare that you, from this moment, are under the diplomatic protection of myself—that is to say, of Sheikh El
Noil
Snoil
the Magnificent!”

Sean O’Casey
O’Mulligan
, carried away by the emotion of the moment, kissed his hand.

“For Christ’s sake, stop that!” Boris said. “The only person allowed to kiss my hand is my dog, Prince!”

Shur
-lee
Strydent
thought Wesley St. James’s announcement over for a moment, and then a smile creased her face.

“Oh, of course!” she said. “I should have known …”

“Should have known what?”

“He knew instinctively, like in that movie, that although he had discovered me, it was quite clear that soon I would be an even
superer
superstar than he is. Poor, darling Sean!
Shur
-lee’s Little
Seanikins
took himself out of the picture, so to speak. I’ll make it up to him later, teach him that I am big enough to love him even though I am the world’s greatest superstar and he’s nothing but a miserable has-been. But in the meantime, what other handsome men have you on tap for me, St. John?”

“That’s St. James,” Wesley St. James said, rather snappishly.

“Whatever,”
Shur
-lee
Strydent
said. “We superstars can’t be bothered with unimportant details. Have you got a scrapbook or something?”

What followed, of course, is cinematographic (or movie) history.

Adamantly refusing to appear on television, and cleverly appealing to Wesley St. James’s vanity, she induced him to produce his first
Strydent
Opus, a Wesley St. James Production, written, produced, and directed by Wesley St. James and released through Wesley St. James International, Unlimited.

It was originally budgeted at $7.5 million, but when the books were finally closed, it had cost almost exactly twice that figure. Ms.
Strydent
was cast a wealthy, socially prominent Wellesley student who improbably fell in love with an impoverished, and somewhat rough around the edges, motorcyclist she first met in a Cambridge, Massachusetts, supermarket. The motorcyclist was played by Jamison James, the six-foot-two, 210-pound blond-haired star with dimples whom demographic studies had indicated was the second most popular handsome male star in the industry, right after Sean O’Casey
O’Mulligan
.

The story was simplicity itself. Girl finds boy. Girl loves boy. Boy dies of an unspecified disease. Girl walks bravely off into the sunset, tears streaming down her cheeks, as a 120-piece orchestra plays “Jesus Loves Me” softly in the background.

There were certain production problems. Jamison James was very unprofessional about the whole thing. He simply refused to get on the motorcycle, which was an integral part of the story. He had given his word, he said, to his personal secretary and “companion,”
Dickie
Darling, that he would take no greater risk with his famous profile than allowing Ms.
Strydent
to kiss him, once, on the forehead during the death-bed scene. He had no intention of riding around at great risk to life and limb on a stupid old motorcycle, and there wasn’t enough money in the world to get him to, as he put it, “let that person embrace me.” Doubles were provided, and skillful camerawork made it appear that Jamison James and
Shur
-lee
Strydent
had indeed been locked in passionate embrace, both on and off the motorcycle.

When the sneak preview of the film was held, in Akron, Ohio, a good 25 percent of the audience somehow came to the conclusion that it was a comedy and laughed out loud when they should have been sniffling into their hankies. A lesser man would possibly have been discouraged by this, but not Wesley St. James. He simply decided to match the production costs of $7.5 million with an equal amount for advertising. The money was spent entirely on television advertising, most of it shown during the breaks between Mr. St. James’s parade of daytime dramas. What was advertised bore little (some said no) resemblance to what the ticket buyers would get in the movies, but this little problem was solved by the simple technique of having the film open simultaneously in the nation’s 14,206 drive-in motion picture emporiums. Within a week, production and advertising costs had been earned back and there was only a faint murmur of outrage from the drive-in patrons.*

(*
Mr. St. James had known all along that the primary reason couples go to drive-ins is because they are somewhat cheaper if not, generally, quite as comfortable as the facilities offered for the same purpose by Holiday Inn and Howard Johnson’s. Neither is it necessary to register, at most drive-ins, as Mr. and Mrs. John Smith. What actually appears on the screen, in other words, is of little consequence. What was important is that the couples could honestly tell their parents they had seen Superstar
Shur
-lee
Strydent
at the drive-in.)

The film was then withdrawn from circulation for two months, after which it was brought back, for a one-night stand only, at regular (that is, indoor, sit-up) motion picture palaces. There were few complaints even then. People who have paid $3.50 a ticket are not generally willing to admit publicly that they have been swindled or hoodwinked. It was far easier to go along with the now rather widely held notion that
Shur
-lee
Strydent
was indeed the superstar of all time.

Meanwhile, production of the second
Shur
-lee
Strydent
film, a comedy in which a playful
rhinocerous
named Sam chases Ms.
Strydent
, who plays the role of a playful bank robber, through the hills and dales of Los Angeles’s Mac-Arthur Park, was frantically under way.

This (largely because, some cynics said, of the advertising budget) was even more successful than the first film, and it was quickly followed by
The Mermaid Who Fell into the Sea.
In this role, Ms.
Strydent
played the first mate of the S.S.
Mobile Bay,
who is blown overboard in a storm and becomes the White Goddess of a tribe of loin-clad South Pacific island dwellers, whose chief was played by another newcomer to the silver screen, a hard-rock musician who went by the name of Porky Pig, and whom studies showed was the third most popular male performer in show biz.

While she found success, of course, thrilling, Ms.
Strydent
found herself thinking more and more of her Darling
Seanikins
. As best as she was able, she had kept track of him. She had learned that he had grown a beard and was still living in the Royal
Abzugian
Embassy in Paris under the personal protection of Sheikh El
Noil
Snoil
the Magnificent. She dreamed of the moment when she could fly to him and take him again into her arms. What more could a girl ask of life, she reflected, than to be not only the superstar’s superstar, but to have Sean O’Casey
O’Mulligan
waiting for her at poolside, wearing those darling
shorty
-shorts, when she came home from a hard day at the studio.

She was at poolside, in fact, dreaming of just this and having her hair lovingly straightened by Larry Lovely, her personal hairdresser, when Wesley St. James came rushing in.

“Darling
Shur
-lee,” he piped, “you’ll never guess who I was just talking to and who wants to talk to you, with your permission of course.”

“I give up,”
Shur
-lee said, somewhat snappish after having been rudely brought back to reality in the midst of a delightful fantasy in which she had been fondly patting Darling
Seanikins
’ head, while he knelt at her feet, painting her toenails.

“Who lives in a big white house on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington?” Wesley St. James asked.

Shur
-lee
Strydent
thought it over for a minute and then shrugged. “Who cares?”

“Who would you say is the most important man in America?” Wesley asked.

“You’ve heard from Sean!” she said, excitedly.

“Not quite,” Wesley said. “Besides, he’s not an American.”

“Get to the point, Wesley!”

“How would you like to go to Moscow?” Wesley asked.

“Not very much,”
Shur
-lee replied. “Have you been at the sauce again, Wesley, darling?”

“No, I have not,” he said, somewhat peevishly. “Listen, darling, how do you feel about patriotism?”

“It’s all right, I suppose, but whatever can it have to do with me?”

“What would you say if I told you that Jim-Boy himself just telephoned to me, personally … I wonder who gave him my number? … and said that it’s your patriotic duty to go and entertain the Russians in Moscow.”

“What are they offering?”
Shur
-lee said. “I won’t go for less than a million up front and twenty percent of the gross.”

“What Our Beloved Leader has in mind, darling, is sort of a benefit,” Wesley said.

“Then let him go to Moscow,”
Shur
-lee
Strydent
said.

“Our Beloved Leader tells me that this is important to national security,” Wesley said.

“That’s his business,”
Shur
-lee replied reasonably. “Mine is being a superstar.”

“Now, listen, darling. It’ll be fun, really. Lots of publicity. And all you have to do is fly to Paris and pick up your co-star
…”

“Co-star? Co-star? Now, that
is
asking too much!
I
don’t have
co-stars.
I have
also stars,
and
special guest stars,
but no co-stars
…”

“We can work something out about the billing, I’m sure,” Wesley St. James said.

“Did you say
Paris,
Wesley? Did I hear you say
Paris?”

“That’s right. He’s sending his personal plane. It will make one stop in Maine, and then another in Paris, to pick up this featured player who’s going with you, and then right to Moscow.”

“You did say Paris?”
Shur
-lee
Strydent
said. “When do we leave?”