Some Faces in the Crowd (12 page)

One girl in particular became one of the most important women in the world. She was a plump girl with large dimples. Her name was Emily. Emily hardly ever said anything. She was constantly singing snatches of popular songs absent-mindedly.

“Oh, the merry go round broke down,”
she would sing. “What will you have?”

“Hello, little pigeon,” Doc said to her as he came in one day, “from the back I thought you were Lana Turner.”

“Sure,” she said, “and I know you—Clark Gable.”

“Sit down and take a load off your mind,” he said to her when she brought his tea.

“Thanks,” said Emily, “and do I need it! I got the jitters—don’t tell anybody, but when I brought Mr. Small his lunch today, that little beetle made a pass at me.”

“Well, that’s too bad,” said Doc solicitously, “and Harry just married.”

“Because You’re Mine,”
Emily hummed. “He’s had three of the girls fired already for turning him down flatter than a carpet.”

“Listen,” said Doc, “if he tries anything again, let yours truly take care of it—tell him we’re engaged.”

“You
listen,” Emily said, “in the first place, when you help a lady in distress, keep your eyes off her legs, and in the second place, you got your own job to worry about.”

“Baby,” said Doc, “I got this job for life.”

“Yeah,” she said as she picked his saucer up, “but this is one pen where they let you out for
bad
behavior.”

For a big, healthy girl, Emily was pretty psychic. It all began when Doc surpassed every former effort for taking care of it. Everybody on the lot was agog over the search for a brand new female personality to play in Harry’s cavalcade, which was to be one generation longer than any cavalcade every filmed. The writers had concocted a central character that was expected to make Scarlett O’Hara look like Pollyanna. Harry Small said it was a star-making part, and so did everybody else after they heard him.

Doc had read the script and was devoting all his energies to casting the role of this heroine, Starr Maple. He even sent Harry Small a note telling him he thought he had a second cousin in East Orange, New Jersey, who would be perfect for it if she could only have her front teeth straightened.

One day a gorgeous redhead walked in. She was stately and poised, and her features were classic but not stony. She was what every man thinks about for those one-way trips to desert islands.

“I would like to see Mr. Small,” she sighed.

“Have you an appointment?” Doc asked.

“It’s about the role of Starr Maple,” she explained.

“Have you a girl in mind for the part?” Doc asked.

“I’m hoping to play it,” she said. “My name is Rosemary Laine.”

Doc looked her over from head to foot, especially foot.

“Rosie,” he said, “you look like too nice a girl to waste your time here. You don’t seem to know anything about the Starr character. I’ve got the script right here. She’s ten years older than you. She’s a brunette—and very short, she has to be real short for a story point.”

“But—are you sure?”

“Look at the last ten tests,” said Doc authoritatively. “Frances Connell, Jerry Baretti, Mary Alister, all of them brunettes, in their late twenties and not one of them over five-two.”

“If my agent gave me a bum steer, I’ll cut his throat,” Miss Laine said sweetly.

“You’d better go back and see him quick, sister,” Doc advised.

The next day Doc was called into Mr. Small’s office.

“Maybe I’m going up to a hundred a week,” Doc said, as he went in.

Judy opened her mouth and said absolutely nothing.

Harry Small was slumped in his chair as if he were hiding from Doc under his enormous desk. Doc had never been in there before. He suddenly felt dwarfed, the way he had felt on the floor of Yosemite Valley.

“Doc,” said Harry tensely, “do you remember seeing a girl by the name of Rosemary Laine?”

“Laine,” said Doc musingly. “Sounds familiar.”

“I wish she were more familiar,” Harry said. “Her agent promised she’d see me before she signed anywhere and Paramount nabbed her this morning. I just called him up and gave him hell for not sending her to me first and he tries to tell me he did—and she came back discouraged. Six weeks from starting date we let the perfect Starr Maple slip out of our fingers.”

“Starr Maple,” said Doc. “The script says Starr is a little brunette and the Laine kid was a great big redhead.”

Harry jumped to his feet. No prosecutor ever pointed a more accusing finger. “Then you did see her!”

“Now that you mention it, I did,” said Doc, a little less sure of himself. “She was here yesterday. But I could tell she wasn’t the type and I didn’t want to waste your time.”

“That’s damned nice of you,” Harry screamed. “The best bet of the year and you didn’t want to waste my time with her! Maybe we were going to change the part to fit her! Maybe you should stop running my business. Why must this happen to me, Harry Small, who never did nothing to nobody!”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Small,” said Doc, “I won’t do it again.”

“And I know why,” said Harry. “Because you’re fired. You’re getting out of here. Tonight.”

Doc went back to his desk very quietly. He didn’t even stop for his habitual gallantry to Judy. I noticed there was something wrong with him when I picked up the mail at his desk. He told me what had happened. It was tough. Doc loved that reception desk. I guess it was all the power he ever wanted in the world.

I helped him clean out his desk. In the middle drawer there was a comb, some hair tonic, a hand mirror, a marked script of the disastrous cavalcade epic and a
Motion Picture Almanac.
He took his things out slowly, one by one, as if he never wanted to finish.

“Maybe I should hang around a couple of days, to break the new man in,” he said.

“Where are you going from here?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “South America, Australia—I’ve got a soldier’s pension waiting for me there.”

A blonde woman with perfect skin and a placid, satisfied face came in.

“Would you call Mr. Small for me,” she said quietly.

Doc fell into his act. “Have you an appointment?” he asked stiffly.

“I’m Mrs. Small,” she said.

Doc jumped up from his desk and bowed.

“Then you
have
an appointment,” he said emphatically, “an appointment for life.” He opened the door for her with a click of his heels.

She swished through and Doc saw me watching him bow. He straightened up quickly and looked away.

He just couldn’t help going through with it, even when he was all washed up.

Emily came through. She blew Doc a kiss. “See you in the morning, Doc,” she trilled.

“Good night, little pigeon,” Doc said.

“Oh, seven lonely days make one lonely week,”
she hummed as she went out.

Doc pulled out the bottom drawer and drew out a huge blue volume,
The History of the Movies,
and a lot of loose typewritten pages.

“I was starting to write a book about Mr. Small,” he explained, “but now that I’m leaving so soon I guess I’ll have to make it a short story.”

He was ready to go.

“I still think that Rosemary Laine would have ruined Harry’s picture,” he said. “Someday maybe he’ll call me in and thank me and give me back my job.”

I didn’t hear a word about Doc after he walked out that night. The new man who took his place at the reception desk was efficient, and knew his place, which meant that all the fizz had gone out of the job.

One day I was sent to deliver a message to Mr. Small’s home in Bel Air. There is a big sign on Sunset, right on the corner of the road leading up to Mr. Small’s, that reads, “Visit the Movie Stars.” A man was barking through a megaphone to an insignificant young couple. The man was speaking to them as if they were a very large crowd.

“Peek into the intimate nooks and crannies of Hollywood,” he was declaring. “Be the special guest of a man who knows Hollywood from the inside, who has actually decided the destinies of movie stars. See the glamorous homes of Betty Grable, Bob Taylor, the new Paramount star Rosemary Laine, and the famous Norman castle of my very good friend Harry Small. And if you have any questions, any little whim your Hollywood guide can satisfy, I’ll take care of it.”

It was Doc! I jumped out of the car and rushed over to him. Before he could shake my hand he had to excuse himself grandiloquently from his audience.

“Doc—as I live, breathe and run errands,” I said, “how long have you been doing this?”

“Started yesterday,” he said. “Had a long vacation, you know. Took me several months to decide on the proper vocation. But now I’ve really found it!”

He had his important face on. “It’s a job with a real responsibility,” he continued. “As the first contact outsiders meet, I am the Face of Hollywood, as it were.”

As I drove off, he called to me, “Give my best to Harry,” loud enough for his pale little couple to hear. “He’s a swell little guy, but I’ll never cast another picture for him as long as I live.”

Driving on up the canyon to Small’s house, I couldn’t make up my mind whether to envy or feel sorry for Doc. He was either one of the greatest dead-pan comics or one of the most comical tragedians of our time. Or maybe he was closer to it than I would ever realize, maybe he really was the Face of Hollywood.

W
HEN CAPTAIN SCHOFIELD, A
Signal Corps officer, and Lieutenant Colonel Pierce, just out of AMG school, first met each other, at one of the beverage bars in the Pentagon Building, they were just about to go overseas. Running into each other a few evenings later at the Mayflower Hotel was an occasion, the Lieutenant Colonel insisted, that called for a drink.

“Well, are you all set, Colonel?” Schofield asked.

“As ready as a sixteen-year-old bride,” Pierce said.

That was not the way Pierce normally talked, but ever since he had bought his uniforms he had felt he was on an outing. And now this going overseas any minute. It was the most exciting thing that had happened to him since he had hit one over the fence with three men on, for good old Washington U. of St. Louis, nearly thirty years before. He was a paunchy man with thinning gray hair—the remains of a good-looking fellow, Captain Schofield decided. Pierce ordered two old-fashioneds, one without sugar for himself. The without sugar was a concession to the rigors of Army life. While they were waiting for the drinks, Lieutenant Colonel Pierce revealed that he was an income-tax expert from St. Louis who was going to have something to do with finance in occupied territory. He didn’t tell Captain Schofield where he was going, exactly, and Schofield kept his destination hush-hush too. All they let each other know was that it was a matter of days now—minutes, maybe. And both of them understood, though they didn’t tell each other, exactly, that their departure had something to do with the Main Show, as Pierce had heard it described by his BG in the Pentagon.

“Well, here’s luck to you, sir,” Schofield said when the drinks arrived. They clinked glasses with self-conscious ceremony. “That goes for you too, Captain,” Pierce said. Every morning for twenty-five years he had gone down to the office at nine and come home at five-thirty and he wished his wife Agnes and the folks in St. Louis could see him now. Like in the movies. The last few drinks and jokes with a fellow-officer before going over and getting into it.

Captain Schofield was a quiet, boyish man, a teacher in a boys’ school in Massachusetts. He was reserved and unemotional because his schools had taught him to be reserved and unemotional, but deep down he felt edgy about this overseas business too. That last-supper feeling. That last drink.

That evening at the Mayflower the two men liked each other, or at least they liked the idea of each other. “A damn nice fellow,” each one thought, and “God knows what the poor chap is getting in for.” They drank with the proper note of gay desperation and everything that each of them had to say was of great interest to the other.

“Here’s a toast to the Jap Navy,” Schofield said when the waiter brought the second round of drinks. “Bottoms up!” He had picked that up from a group of women Marines at the table next to him in a restaurant the night before. Pierce repeated it, laughing. Schofield thought it was rather good too. After all, they were both leaving any moment for overseas.

When they met in the Mayflower Lounge a few nights later it was a great joke. “Still here, Captain?” “Why, Colonel, I thought by this time you’d be God knows where!” They both laughed. The realization that this minute they might be having a drink together in a Washington hotel, the next minute be dropped down in the middle of a war, was titillating. They had three or four drinks, toasting each other’s forthcoming adventures again, and the Lieutenant Colonel began to observe the legs of the women coming down the steps.

“How about those over there?” he said. “Those aren’t too bad. Though god dammit, you don’t see legs the way they ought to be any more! These little ones coming up look like they’re set on bean poles. The way I like ’em is when you grab ’em above the knee you know you got something.”

Captain Schofield had never talked about women this way and he didn’t like drunks, but this was all right, this was war, the way he had heard of it, and the Lieutenant Colonel, for all his vulgarity, was certainly a square shooter. They had another drink and when they said good-bye they both felt the seriousness of the gesture.

“Well, old man, lots of luck to you again,” Pierce said.

“Thank you, Colonel. Maybe we’ll run into each other on the other side sometime.”

Lieutenant Colonel Pierce was into his third old-fashioned when Captain Schofield showed up two evenings later. “Hello, Captain,” said Pierce. “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” This time, when Schofield’s drink arrived, they didn’t bother with the toasts.

“Well, any news?” Pierce said.

“Something seems to be holding it up on the other end,” Schofield said. “Should be coming through any day, though. How about you, Colonel?”

“Oh, just the usual red tape, I guess. Ironing out wrinkles in AMG policy or something. Might take a few more days.”