Some Faces in the Crowd (28 page)

He does a couple of low-budget jobs for Republic and Monogram and then he’s down to those shoestring deals on Poverty Row, but Matty is no good unless he’s doing things in a big way. If he has a waterfall scene he’s used to renting Niagara. If he was shooting a scene supposed to take place in Heaven he’d tell me to hire God. So he was no good trying to scale himself down to those thirty-set-ups-a-day, $150,000 quickies. It wasn’t long before Matty lined up with the has-beens. Though you’d never know how tough the going was from talking to Matty. You know the old gag about never being unemployed, you’re just “between pictures.” Well Matty worked that one up to a high art. “I’ve just dropped in on my way back from Fox,” he’d say, when we found him in his usual place at the far corner of Larry’s bar. “It looks like Darryl is going to have something really big for me in a couple of months.”

And then he’d offer to buy us a drink and come up with some funny story of the old days even I had never heard before and the way he’d talk shop and laugh with us you’d think it was his name that was up in lights instead of Jack Ford’s or Johnny Huston’s.

But lately, some of us began to notice that in spite of the prosperous front and the jokes and the winks and those “important jobs” he was always about to get, Matty was beginning to show signs of wear and tear. The suit was pressed, all right, but it was getting a little threadbare. He still had those fifteen-dollar monogrammed shirts, but the cuffs were getting a little stringy. And then one night he called me and asked if he could stay at my place. Said they had just painted his room and the fumes were bothering him, but I didn’t have to be a genius to know he had been bounced from his one lousy room in one of those cheap boarding houses between Hollywood Boulevard and Franklin. And that morning when I was going off to work I slipped him a fifty and he started to say, “Don’t be silly, Red—well, I’ll pay you back tomorrow,” the way he usually did. But this time he did something I had never seen him do before. He stopped right in the middle and looked at that bill for what seemed like a full minute and then his eyes suddenly filled. Not knowing him the way I do, you probably would not be so affected, but for me, seeing him through all these years chipper and jaunty and so much more fun to be with than most the guys I knew who worked regularly, well I can’t put it into words, but it was something, let me tell you.

I thought about it all morning on the set. And I guess when I’ve got something on my mind it shows on my stupid face because, when we broke for lunch, Vic Flanner, the director, and one of the best, came up and said, “What’s the matter, Red?” So I told him about Matty.

Now Vic is an old-timer too. I guess he goes back as far as any of them, D.W. included, so right away he was interested. “I didn’t know Matty Moran was still around,” he said.

You see, that’s why Hollywood is such a funny place. In some ways it’s a small town, but it’s built on a lot of different levels. All the big producers are buddy-buddies, and ditto the big directors, the assistants, the top writers and the bottom writers, but top is top and bottom is bottom and the twain don’t meet very often. So it was perfectly possible for Matty to be right across the street all these years and Vic not know it because if he goes anywhere it’s probably to Chasen’s or Romanoff’s or one of those places where they throw ten-dollar bills away like paper napkins.

Anyway, I give him an earful about Matty and he gets to thinking. His next picture is one of those super-duper epics called
San Juan Hill.
Now a picture like that is such a big deal that they use what they call a second-unit director to take some of the load off the regular director. The second-unit director usually shoots exterior backgrounds and tie-in shots, none of the important dialogue scenes, naturally, though sometimes he’s allowed to handle routine dialogue, like when the butler says, “Just a minute, I’ll see.” You know, the odds and ends.

“I don’t know why Matty couldn’t shoot second unit on
San Juan,”
Vic says. “I’ll talk to the front office about it.”

So that’s the way, after fifteen years on the outside, Matty finally got back on a studio payroll again. $350 a week. He couldn’t have kept himself in Alexander & Oviatt ties on that in the fat days, but all of us in Stage One had quite a ball the day the deal was definitely set. And you should have seen Matty. If he was full of beans under circumstances that would have driven most of us to Suicide Bridge, there was no holding him on the ground now.

He made an entrance into Stage One that put C.B. in the piker class. “Larry,” he ordered, using his hand like it was some kind of a scepter, “buy everybody in the house a drink and put it on my check.” If Sari or one of his other famous wives had shown up just then I would of sworn that time was running backwards like those trick shots in a Pete Smith short and that this was the Matty Moran of twenty years ago.

Knowing his old ways, I couldn’t help wondering how this deal was going to work out, because Matty never could play second fiddle to anybody. But I got a ringside seat when Vic Flanner switched me over as first assistant to the indefatigable Mr. M.

Well to everybody’s amazement including yours truly, Matty pitches in and does a whale of a job. The first day out on location near San Berdoo he knocks off eight setups, three more than I had figured, because everything takes longer outside of the studio. He always was a fast worker when he was in the mood (wrapped up a feature in eleven days once), and this time he was keeping the company on its toes like the old Moran and then some. And of course all of us boys from Stage One, the grips, the juicers, the camera crew and the sound men, were really behind him, and that never hurt a director yet. In five days’ shooting he’s two days ahead of schedule, and that schedule wasn’t one of those padded jobs, because I made it out myself. I might of been tempted to feather it a little to make Matty look good, but sure as taxes I’d of had our hawk-eyed production manager on my neck. Anyway, the form Matty was showing, he didn’t need any special favors from anybody. He was like an old race horse that’s just been itching for someone to get him out on the track and give him his head.

And it wasn’t only speed. The rushes looked swell. Way above the average background and pickup stuff. Those rushes had mood and the timing was sharp and Matty was getting a lot of nice little touches in that weren’t called for in the script. You could tell the way our producer, Oscar Mittels, talked to Matty after the second day’s rushes that the old master was scoring. Mittels’ secretary—you know the old studio grapevine—even told me she had heard the big boss mention to the studio manager that Matty had certainly seemed to’ve learned his lesson, and that it might be an idea to sign him to a low-salary contract as a regular second-unit man.

The second-unit schedule was seventeen days, and when Matty wrapped up his job in twelve he went to Vic and asked him if he could stay on the picture, taking over some of the minor dialogue scenes. Well, as usual, Vic was having his hands full with that bitch star of ours, Mona Moray, and Mittels’ crying because he was two days behind schedule, so he told Matty to go ahead, and gave him his blessings.

On the first day Matty drew some unimportant scenes with a couple of twenty-five-dollar-a-day bit players and I must say everything went smoothly. They say a champ can never come back and usually that’s as true for the movie racket as it is for the fight racket. But this time it sure looked like old Matty was crossing all the pessimists. “If you keep this up,” I ribbed him, “us common people won’t even let you in Stage One. You’ll have to go over to Romanoff’s with the big shots.”

“Success never has gone to my head,” Matty declared. “It’s the great men who are truly humble.”

“Amen,” I said.

The next day Matty had his first scene of any importance. It was just a routine moment in the picture, but it called for the two leads, Grant Gibson and Mona Moray.

It was only a simple tie-in shot. A telegram arrives, Mona takes it and says, “It’s for you, dear.” That’s all, just those four words and a little look at the end, the kind nobody has to tell Mona how to do. I figured we’d have it in the can in half an hour, master shot, close-up and all.

Well, Grant and Mona rehearse the scene once, and Matty doesn’t like the reading. Where she’d said, “It’s for
you,
dear,” Matty thinks it ought to be “It’s for you,
dear.”

“I think that sounds too sarcastic,” Mona says. “After all, I’m supposed to be sympathetic in this part.”

“I’ll tell you what you’re supposed to be about it,” Matty says. “After all, I’m directing this picture.”

I see Mona look at Grant and they both look at me. I know what they’re thinking—it’s Vic Flanner who’s directing this picture. Matty is just filling in with second unit.

Well, they don’t get anywhere with the rehearsal, so Matty says, “All right, turn ’em, we’ll go for a take,” “Twirl ’em,” I call out, “Quiet!” and my heart’s in my throat. I can see that look on Matty’s face. Live actors in front of him for the first time in all these years. Famous stars. Matty Moran is back in the big time.

They go through their little scene and Mona still says, “It’s for
you,
dear.”

“Cut,” Matty said. And I see signs of that famous temperament flushing up his face. “You’re ruining that line. Don’t emphasize ‘It’s for
you
…’ The lowest moron in the balcony knows it’s for him. It’s that
‘dear’
I want you to work on. Not sarcastic. Just a little hint of cattiness around the edges. You can be catty, can’t you, Mona?”

The script girl laughed. That was some question to ask the lot’s champion feline. I could almost feel those beautifully painted claws reaching out to pin Matty for the kill.

“I’m an actress,” Mona snapped. “I can be anything the script calls for. But we play these parts a little differently now from when you were doing them, Mr. Moran.”

Matty’s temperature, or should I say temperament, was rising. He never could stand backtalk from an actress. Would I ever forget that terrible moment when he bounced his own wife Sari off the set? Irrepressible, did I say? The word I was reaching for is incorrigible.

“That’s the trouble with this business,” Matty was shouting. “A bunch of hams who don’t know how lucky they are to be eating every day trying to tell the director how to interpret their parts.”

“Why you, you barbarian, you
has-been,”
Mona screamed. “I’m going to play this part the way Vic Flanner tells me to play it.”

“I’ll let you in on a little secret.” Matty threw it back in her teeth. “I’m a better director than Flanner. Maybe he knows how to get along with the front office better, but he never could touch me for real feeling.”

Remember that old wheeze about signing your own death warrant? This sounded more like Matty was writing his own epitaph. I found myself already thinking of him as the late, departed Mr. Moran.

Mona Moray hadn’t been talked to like this since she changed her name from Gertrude Schindler. “I refuse to stand here and be insulted by an—an old bum,” Mona exclaimed in her best dramatic soprano. “Do you realize that one word from me to Mr. Mittels and you’re back in—in the gutter?” Mona was one of those girls who sounded a lot better when she had someone writing her dialogue.

“Hams, hams, I’m surrounded by hams!” Matty shouted. “Now, are you going to play the scene my way, or do I have to get somebody else who can give me what I want?”

I just stood there with an awful silence in my mouth, watching what I thought had been the comeback of Matty Moran go into reverse. Mittels had pulled every string he knew to sign Mona to a new contract and here was Matty, in on a pass, firing her!

“Just whom do you think you are?” Mona demanded. She never said
who
any more. It was beneath her.

“I think I’m Matty Moran,” this character of mine shouted back, “and I’ve fired better actresses than you.”

That’s all, brother. Mona flounces off the set, and I begin getting hot-and-cold flashes.

Mona must have sprinted over to Mittels’ office like Mrs. Blankers-Koen, for the next thing we knew the head man himself was on the phone. Mr. Moran was to go to his office immediately.

Well, five minutes, ten minutes pass, and the silence on the set is thicker than Beverly Hills smog. When I can’t stand it any more I move across the street to Stage One to fortify myself.

A few minutes later in comes Matty, looking chipper as ever, grinning like his last picture has just been held over at the Music Hall.

“In?” I says.

He put his thumb out and turned it toward the floor in that ancient gesture of defeat.

“Oscar said he’d put me back on second unit, but first I had to apologize to Mona Moray.”

“So?”

“So I say Oscar, m’boy, I’d rather turn myself in at the Motion Picture Home than take back anything I said to that bag!”

“Matty”—I’m so upset I’m calling him by his first name —“hasn’t it ever occurred to you that eating a little humble pie has its virtues over not eating at all?”

“Red,” he says, not even bothering to answer so foolish a question, “have you got a dime handy? I’ve got to call Goldwyn. Sam told me to be sure and get in touch with him when he went back into production. Don’t be surprised if I step into an important assignment.”

So now we’ve got Matty back in Stage One with us all the time. I should of known the Matty Morans of our town don’t come back. They just go on being legends. So let’s drink up to the fresh carnation and the ready grin of a legend that walks like a man.

W
HEN I WAS TAKING
a quick look at a Broadway column the other day, my glance was caught by a boldface heading, “Typical gesture of Joshua Duggan’s.”

Now, Joshua Duggan happens to be an interesting fellow, any way you look at him, so I read with eagerness the little paragraph that followed.

Joshua Duggan, Broadway hero recently discharged from the army with the rank of full colonel and ribbons from here to Hoboken, has taken a precious week off from rehearsal of his new show to go to Zodiac, Illinois, to present a posthumous silver star to the widow of Master Sergeant Luther Bissell. Heartwarming story behind this item is that Luther, a hero of both world wars, used to be the doorman at the East Fortieth Street theatre where Duggan had his record run in
Blow the Man Down,
which probably would be running yet if Duggan hadn’t volunteered for active duty six months before Pearl Harbor. A week out of a play rehearsal is time that never can be recaptured, and it’s a long way from the Stork Club to Zodiac, but people who know Joshua Duggan and his oversize heart aren’t surprised to find him putting the heart before the box office. In fact, this mission to Zodiac might be called a typical Duggan gesture.