The Breaking Point (30 page)

Barry Jeans began the vogue of eating your steaks so rare that it was hard to tell whether they had been cooked at all, of wearing no topcoat in a blizzard, of sleeping nude (this the fans supposed, because no one in any movie saw him put on pyjamas), of having a tenderness for objects rather than human beings. Thus, in his most famous movies, the ones that went over the biggest, the last shot would be of the Menace stroking his old Ford car, or holding the tiller of a sail-boat, or even looking up at a giant oak tree with an axe in his hand and saying ‘You’ve got to go’. People came out with a lump in the throat. It made ordinary romance seem so trivial. The only bad picture Barry Jeans ever made was when he took the part of Adam in the great Biblical version of Genesis, and they had a shot of him patting a dinosaur on the back and saying, ‘I’ve lost my rib’. It did not ring true. But that was the fault of the scriptwriter.

When World War II came along the Menace wanted to join up, but the Pentagon rated his entertainment value so high, in helping to keep up the morale of the troops, that they wouldn’t let him, and he went right on making films. But he compensated for the lack of active service by sending more food parcels to Europe than all the rest of the British contingent in the United States put together. Barry’s spam kept many homes going, and thousands of housewives would have fallen for Goebbels’ propaganda about starving Britain if they had not been able to use Barry’s cooking fat.

When the war was over, and the Menace paid his first visit to Europe for ten years, with the idea of looking up his father - who had retired by now but was still living in Herne Bay - the crowds were so thick at Waterloo that they stretched right away to the river. Mounted police had to be called in, and people who did not know thought it was a Communist revolution at last.

Barry was embarrassed by the demonstration, but May enjoyed it. She had picked up an American accent during her years in the States, which Barry had not, and used a lot of phrases like ‘gotten’ and ‘I know it’ and ‘you’re welcome’. She did most of the talking into the microphone when they arrived, and told Barry to sit low in the car with his hat over his eyes. It made him more inaccessible than ever, and the crowd loved it. The publicity was so tremendous that they gave up the idea of getting to Herne Bay, and sent for Barry’s father to join them in their hide-out at Cape Wrath, where pictures were taken of Barry and his father looking out to sea, and Barry saying, ‘It’s good to be home’. Rumour had it that they were invited to Balmoral, but this was never proved.

New names, pop singers, and the teenage craze made no difference to the Menace. His fame was too deeply graven into the hearts of all men and women over thirty-five.They had been born and bred in the faith of Barry Jeans, and they would die in the faith of Barry Jeans. Besides, the kids liked him too. The greying hair - only at the temples, mind - and the slightest suspicion of a bag under the eye, and that line on the jaw, it did the same thing to the daughters that it had done to the mothers twenty years before; it made them dream. Who wanted to be kissed by the boy next door or the young man round the block when you could sit alone in perfect darkness and have Barry Jeans say ‘Some day’ out of a wide screen, and turn his back on you, and go? The inflection of his voice, the meaning he put into it, and never a glint in the eye, never a smile. Just the two words ‘Some day’. Phew!

The Menace never touched Shakespeare. May said it would be a mistake. Anyone can put on a beard and mouth a lot of words, she told him. God gave you a personality and you ought to keep to it. Barry was disappointed. He would have liked to have a shot at Lear. Hamlet and Richard the Third had been pinched already. ‘May’s right,’ said the entourage. ‘You don’t want to touch that stuff. And it doesn’t go over in Tokyo. No, you stick to the parts that made you big, and you’ll stay big.’

The entourage, otherwise ‘the boys’, consisted of Barry’s personal manager, his agent, his press-agent, his secretary, his make-up man and his stand-in. May would not have a woman secretary because if she was of a certain age she would try to boss Barry, and if she was young she would try something else. ‘The boys’ were safe.They were all hand-picked, with wives who did not matter.

Barry did not move without the boys and May, and even at home in Beverly Hills, in the lovely old reproduction of a Kent oast-house which had been built for him, the boys stayed around at week-ends just in case. A new script might come along, or a millionaire with money to burn, or an accountant with a new tax dodge, and if this should happen May wanted the boys to handle it. Barry himself must not be worried.

The Menace had no family. Only May. In early days this had been a disappointment. Publicity could have used photographs of Barry holding a youngster on his shoulder, or teaching a kid to swim in the pool or fly a kite. But as the years went by May and the boys agreed it was just as well as things were. A lanky son or a great gaggling daughter would have spoilt the Menace legend. Barry Jeans could remain the unknown, the untouchable, the guy who was every woman’s lover and no girl’s father. When a star begins to play fathers it is the thin edge of the wedge, and a grandfather, of course, is his finish.

‘Sweetie-pie,’ May would say, ‘the world wants you just the way you are.Your hands in your pockets, your hat over your eyes. Don’t alter a thing. And stay that way when you come off the set.’

Barry did. He hardly ever spoke, even at home. The people who knew him, all of them in Hollywood or elsewhere in the movie world, would gaze at the long spare figure drinking orange juice through a straw - he never touched hard liquor - and wonder how the devil he did it. His contemporaries had most of them got thick necks and paunches. Not Barry Jeans. Not the Menace. May had him up at six every morning, when he was not in the studio, doing Swedish exercises. And if there was not a party he was in bed by nine.

In all the years that the Menace had held the world, his name had never been connected with any scandal. He had broken up no homes. The beautiful women who had played opposite him could not even get a still of him sitting near them in the studio to take home. May did not allow it. The still might get publicized and printed in the papers, and then everyone would begin to talk. Passionate Italians, languorous French
vedettes
, belles from the deep South, dusky Puerto Ricans, whatever star of the moment was signed on to play opposite the Menace, they never got a word alone with him off the set. May or the boys were always there. And if a reporter, more enterprising than his fellows, caught Barry off guard in the break for lunch when the boys were in the washroom and May was powdering her nose, and asked him, ‘What do you think of Mitsi Sulva?’, or whatever the name was of the beautiful girl billed beneath him, he only answered just the one word ‘Great’. It was non-committal and absolutely safe. It could not give offence to the lady, and it could not offend May. Not even the most treacherous reporter could twist the word into anything else. A headline saying ‘Barry Jeans thinks Mitsi Sulva’s great’ did not mean a thing. And by the time the reporter was bringing up another question the boys were out of the washroom.

It was during the making of the first ‘feelie’ that the boys began to wonder whether the methods they had used to date would work any longer. As everybody knows, the ‘feelies’ came in during the late fall of ’59, and revolutionized the film business. The result was chaos until the technicians got the thing under control and the big combines had all their houses wired for ‘feel’, but the real panic was in the studios. How would the stars get by? How would the big names, and the biggest name of all - Barry Jeans the Menace - hold their own in the new medium? The point being that it was not just the wiring of the houses that fixed the ‘feelie’; the star had to be wired during the shooting - the gadget was concealed in his clothing - and the power was transmitted back to the ‘barker’, the name of the mechanism that in its turn fed the power machine which was hired out to the movie houses. Unless the current was Force A the barker could not do its stuff. And the terrible thing was that a star’s motivation, or Force, was an unknown quantity until it was put to the test.

It was not until Barry Jeans was on the floor rehearsing with Vanda Gray that the technicians signalled to the director that Barry’s Force was only ticking over at G. It was the lowest number on the dial, and not strong enough to feed the barker.The director ordered a break and went into a consultation with the team.

It was a delicate situation. Not even the director, who knew Barry well, had the courage to tell him he was only sending out Force G. The expert in charge of the mechanism was tough, though. He was in a strong position, because nobody else on the floor knew how it worked.

‘Let’s be realistic,’ he said. ‘This guy’s no damn good. I know he’s a star, I know he’s world-famous. So what? We’ve entered a new era. The “feelies” are going to put Jeans out of business.’

The production manager swallowed two tranquillizers.

‘This is serious,’ he said. ‘Not a word of all this must leave these four walls. If gossip got around the studios that Barry Jeans couldn’t make a higher grade than Force G, there would be such a scandal that Gigantic Enterprises Ltd would never recover. Speaking personally, I could never hold up my head again, and I’m not joking when I warn you that it would strike a serious blow at the entire film industry.’

The ‘feelie’ expert chewed gum and shrugged his shoulders.

‘Your move,’ he said. ‘I’ve done all I can. I’ve stepped up the kicking rate until the feeder’s darn near busted, but nothing happens. If I play about with the mechanism it may pack up altogether, and that’ll cost Gigantic Enterprises a million dollars.’

The director was saying something about getting in a psychiatrist to talk to Barry, and the production manager nodded thoughtfully.

‘There’s a Swede over at International,’ he said. ‘I believe he did wonders for Leila Montana when her voice went bass.’

‘That’s right,’ said the director. ‘Leila got back her confidence fine, but they still had to dub the voice in
Golden Girl
. Wait a minute . . .’ He turned to the expert, and asked if there was not some method similar to dubbing that could be worked with the feelie gadget. ‘Can’t we fake it?’ he said. ‘Try somebody else’s Force, and feed it to the barker?’

The expert shook his head. ‘No go,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to have direct transmission,’ and he launched into technical details far above any of their heads. The director listened carefully. It was vital for him and the team to understand the jargon. Unless a director knew exactly what happened on the floor he was no use. He was out of date. The feelies were here to stay.

‘We ought to have tested,’ he said. ‘We were crazy not to test. I had a hunch at the time that we were slipping somewhere.’

‘And what if we had tested?’ asked the production manager. ‘Do you mean to say that I should have gone to Barry Jeans and told him the result? He’d have blown his brains out.’

‘Not Barry,’ said the director, ‘he’s a grand fellow. Barry’s all right. It’s just that . . .’ He looked about him desperately. ‘Do you mean there’s no way of combining the Forces?’ he asked the expert as a final gesture. ‘No way of using some of Vanda’s Force in their scenes together? I mean, she’s Force A, isn’t she?’

‘She’s Force A all right,’ said the expert, still chewing.

‘Then how about it?’ said the production manager eagerly.

‘The ratio’s different for a female,’ said the expert, ‘and you can’t mix ’em. Not right now, anyway. Maybe in ten years when they’ve worked on it awhile.’

The director spread out his hands in a movement of defeat.

‘I’ve had it,’ he said. ‘I’m through. I can’t make this picture.’

The production manager, white to the lips, went to all the team in turn swearing each of them to secrecy.

‘There must be no leakage,’ he said, ‘absolutely none at all. If I hear there’s been a leak everyone is fired.’

Then he called up Barry’s boys and asked for a consultation in absolute secrecy. He did not even want May. May must be kept out of it for the moment.

The boys turned up, and they locked the doors of the production manager’s office and posted a guard outside.

‘What’s wrong?’ said Alf Burnell, Barry’s manager.

The production manager for Gigantic Enterprises put on his horn-rimmed spectacles. He wanted the full weight of the news to sink in.

‘A very serious situation has arisen,’ he said. ‘A discovery was made on the floor this morning. Barry is Force G.’

The boys sat in stunned silence. Then Bob Elder wiped his forehead. ‘Jesus,’ he said. He was Barry’s press-agent.

‘I need hardly tell you,’ said the production manager, ‘that I have sworn everyone to secrecy. And of course Barry himself does not know. We said there was a technical hitch.’

Ken Dory, Barry’s dramatic agent, asked the two questions the director had asked about dubbing the Force or combining it with that of someone else on the set. The production manager put him wise.

‘Nothing technical can be done,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to work on a different level. I suggest psychiatry. Call in the Swede from International.’

The boys whistled in unison. ‘May wouldn’t stand for it,’ said Alf Burnell. ‘She wouldn’t let a psychiatrist within a hundred miles of Barry.’

‘Then what are we going to do?’ asked the production manager. ‘You must realize that I’m responsible to Gigantic Enterprises for any hold-up, and a report will have to go through tonight.’

Slip Jewett, Barry’s make-up man, leant forward.

‘We can say Barry’s sick,’ he suggested. ‘I can work on him. I can produce a grand jaundice for you if you’ll give the word.’

‘How does that help us in the long run?’ said Ken, who was a realist. ‘Jaundice would tide Barry over a few days, or maybe a few weeks, but after that?’

‘Yep, after that?’ said Bob Elder. ‘What am I to tell the press? That the Menace is Force G? Do we all have to go in the poorhouse?’