The Early Ayn Rand (17 page)

He read and handed the paper back to her without a word.

“Well?” she asked.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have said what I said, Miss Nash,” he answered in his low, clear voice, and she could not tell whether it was perfectly polite or perfectly mocking. “But you asked for my candid opinion, and when I’m asked I usually give it.”

“You still hold to that opinion?”

“Yes. Perhaps I should add I’m sorry.”

She gave a little unnatural laugh which tried to be gay and friendly, but failed. “You realize that it’s a rather . . . well, unusual opinion, Mr. Ayers, to put it gently?”

“Quite,” he answered with a charming smile, “and I’m certain that it means nothing whatever.”

“Quite,” she was tempted to reply, but didn’t. Of course, his opinion should mean nothing to Claire Nash, because she was Claire Nash. She had a palace in Beverly Hills and two Rolls-Royces, and she had immortalized the ideal of sweet maidenhood on the screen. For her, five gentlemen had committed suicide—one of them fatally—and she had had a breakfast cereal named in her honor. She was a goddess, and her shrines were scattered all over the world, little shrines of glass with a tiny window in front, through which an endless stream of coins poured night and day; and the sun never set on that golden stream. Why should she feel such anger at the insult of any single man?

But Winston Ayers had come to Hollywood, and Winston Ayers had been expected and invited and begged to come to Hollywood for more than three years. Winston Ayers was England’s gift to the theaters of the world, or perhaps the theaters of the world had been a gift thrown into Winston Ayers’ nonchalant, expert hands; and these hands had created without effort or notice such miracles of drama and laughter that Ayers’ opening nights became riots, and from the theatrical pages of the world press there looked upon his worshiping public the face of a new playwright, a young playwright who looked bored. Winston Ayers had been offered one hundred thousand dollars for one screen story. And Winston Ayers had refused.

Claire Nash tightened the soft, luminous folds of her sky-blue negligee around her shoulders, pink as clouds of dawn over the satin sky. She bent her head wistfully to one shoulder, her head with the golden tangle of hair as a sun rising from the clouds, and she smiled the sweet smile of a helpless child which had made her famous. It had cost more sleepless nights and diplomacy than she cared to imagine for Mr. Bamburger, president of Wonder-Pictures, to arrange this interview between his great star and the man he wished to become his great scenarist. Mr. Bamburger had hoped that Claire Nash would succeed where all had failed, as she usually did, and induce the Box-Office Name to sign. “Don’t stop at the price,” Mr. Bamburger had instructed her, and she hadn’t known whether he had meant himself or her.

But the interview did not seem to succeed. For the Box-Office Name had said a thing . . . a thing . . . well, she would not care to repeat it to Mr. Bamburger nor to anyone else.

The soft twilight of her dressing room hid the angry little flash of red on Claire’s cheeks. She looked at the man who sat before her. He was tall, young, inexplicable. He had very clear, very cold eyes, and when he spoke, he narrowed his eyelids with a strange, slow movement that seemed to insult whatever he was looking at; she hated the movement, yet found herself watching eagerly to see it. “Much too handsome for a writer,” she decided in her mind.

“So you think,” she began bravely, “that screen actresses . . .” She could not force herself to finish the sentence.

“. . . are not worth writing for,” he finished it for her courteously, just as courteously as he had said it before, in the same even, natural voice that seemed utterly unconscious of the bombshell his words set off in her mind.

“Of course . . .” She fumbled desperately for something brilliant and shattering to say. “Of course, I . . .” She failed and ended up in a furious hurry of stumbling words. “Of course I wouldn’t hold myself as an example of a great screen actress, far from it, but there are others who . . .”

“On the contrary,” he said charmingly, “on the contrary. You are the perfect example of a great screen actress, Miss Nash.” And she didn’t know whether she should smile gratefully or throw him out.

The pink telephone on a crystal stand by her side rang sharply. She took the receiver.

“Hello? . . . Yes. . . .” She listened attentively. She wasn’t yawning, but her voice sounded suddenly as if she were. “My dear, how many times do I have to say it? It was final. . . . No. . . . A definite no! . . . To the Henry Jinx Films as well. . . . I’m sorry.”

She let the receiver drop from her hand and leaned back on the pillows of her chaise longue, little sparks glittering through the mascara needles. “My manager,” she explained lazily. “My contract here expires after this picture, and all the studios are hounding the poor man to death. I wish he wouldn’t bother me about it.”

This was what she said; what she wanted to say was: “You see?”

The telephone rang again before she had a chance to observe the effect.

“Hello? . . . Who? . . . About Heddy Leland?” Claire’s face changed suddenly. Her round cheeks drew up with a jerk and swallowed her eyes, so that there were no violets left, but only two slits of black needles across her face, sticking out like iron lances lowered for battle; and no fan would have recognized the sweet, world-famous voice in the shrill barks showered suddenly upon the pink receiver which seemed to blush under the flow: “You dare ask me again? . . . No! I said, no! . . . I won’t allow it! I never want to see that girl on my set again! . . . I don’t give a damn about her excuses! . . . You heard me? I’m not accustomed to repeating twice! . . . And I hope, my dear Mr. Casting Director, that you won’t bother me again for any five-dollar extra!”

She slammed the receiver down so hard that the crystal stand rang under it with a thin, musical whine. Then she noticed an expression, an actual expression in the eyes of Winston Ayers, the first she had seen in them: it was an expression of mocking astonishment. The look on her face did not quite suit the ideal of sweet maidenhood; she realized that.

She shrugged her beautiful shoulders impatiently. “An insolent extra,” she tried to explain calmly. “Imagine, today, on the set, I was doing my best scene—oh, what a scene! I had had such a hard time getting into the mood of it—and I’m so sensitive to things like that—and just as I got it, right in the midst of it, that creature tumbled from the sidelines straight into me! Almost knocked me down! Of course, the scene was ruined. We had to retake it and I couldn’t do it again! Because of an extra!”

“She did it on purpose, of course?” he asked lightly, and the tone of his voice answered his own question.

“I don’t care! She said someone pushed her. It makes no difference. I told them I won’t have her on my set again!” She took a cigarette, then broke it and flung the pieces away. “Let us return to our interesting subject, Mr. Ayers. You were saying . . .”

“I’ll enter anyway!” a young, ringing voice exploded suddenly behind the door. The door flew open. Something wild, tall, disheveled burst in, slammed the door behind, and stood suddenly still.

The girl wore a tight little suit that ended abruptly above the knees of two strong, thin, exquisite legs. The legs seemed grown fast to the floor, straight and taut; the light from the pink lamp cut a thin, glittering line on each stocking, and they looked like two jets from a fountain, flung up and frozen. She seemed to be standing on tiptoe, but it was only her small, high-heeled pumps that made her seem so, the pumps and the tenseness of her slim body stopped abruptly in flight. Her short hair was thrown back in disorder, as it had been left after she had torn off her screen costume, and a thin line of greasepaint still showed at the edge of her forehead. Her face had odd, irregular lines, impish and solemn and somber all at once. Her eyes, immense, glittering, incredible, were dark and still.

Claire Nash jumped to her feet and stood looking at the intruder, her little mouth hanging open in amazement.

“Excuse me for entering like this, Miss Nash,” said the girl. Her voice was unexpectedly steady, as if she had had time to pull some reins within her and to bring it under control.

“Why . . . Heddy Leland!” Claire stammered, incredulous and suffocated.

“Your secretary wouldn’t let me enter,” the girl said evenly, “but I had to enter. It was my last opportunity to see you. If they send me away tonight, I won’t be able to get on the lot again.”

“Miss Leland, I . . . I really fail to understand how . . .” Claire began grandly, and ended much more naturally, exploding, “Of all the brazen nerve . . . !”

“Please excuse me and listen to me, Miss Nash,” the girl said quietly and firmly. “It was not my fault. I am very sorry. I ask your forgiveness. I promise you that it will never happen again.”

Claire seated herself slowly on the chaise longue and draped the blue folds of the negligee carelessly and majestically about her. She was beginning to enjoy it. She said leisurely:

“No, it will never happen again. Haven’t you understood that I do not want you back on my set?”

“Yes. I have. That’s why I came. I thought that perhaps you hadn’t understood what my work here meant to me. I was promised two weeks. Please, allow me to remain. I . . .” She hesitated for the first time. “I . . . need it very much.”

“Really?” said Claire. “Were you under the impression that a studio is a charitable institution?”

The girl’s lean, tanned cheeks blushed very slightly, so slightly that Winston Ayers was alone to notice it. She made an effort, as if forcing herself on against an overwhelming desire to say something quite different from what she actually said in her level, steady voice:

“Forgive me. You are quite right. It was in very bad taste on my part to mention that. That doesn’t matter. But, you see, I’m just starting in Hollywood. It’s difficult to get an opening, even for extra work, to be seen. My whole career may depend on what I do in this picture.”

“Your whole career?” said Claire sweetly. “But, my dear girl, what makes you think that you have a career before you?”

The girl hadn’t expected it. She looked at Claire closely. Two soft, mocking dimples creased Claire’s cheeks. She continued, shrugging, “There are thousands and thousands of girls like you in Hollywood and every one of them thinks she has a career waiting for her.”

“But . . .”

“Let me give you some advice, Miss Leland. Friendly advice—really, I don’t hold that little incident against you. Think of the thing you can do best—then go and do it. Forget the movies. I am more experienced than you are and I know the business: the screen is not for you.”

“Miss Nash . . .”

“Oh, don’t say it’s heartbreaking and all that! Let me tell you the truth. You are not particularly pretty. Thousands of better-looking girls are starving here. You haven’t a chance. It really doesn’t matter whether you work here or not. You won’t get far anyway. Go back home and try to marry some nice, respectable fellow. That would be the best thing for you.”

Heddy Leland looked at her; looked at the man who sat silently watching them.

“Please excuse my intrusion, Miss Nash,” she said as if she were reciting disjointed words without meaning, for her voice had no expression at all. She turned and walked out and closed the door evenly behind her. The soft curtains of peach velvet rustled and billowed slightly and fell back to immobility.

Claire lit a cigarette with magnificent disdain.

“Why did you give that advice to the girl?” Winston Ayers asked.

“Oh!” Wrinkles gathered on Claire’s pretty little nose. “Oh, it makes me sick! When I see one of those girls who gets five bucks a day and wants to be a star! Everybody wants to be a star. They think that to be a star means nothing at all!”

“Precisely, Miss Nash. It means
nothing at all.
”

Claire spilled ashes on her blue satin without noticing it. “You’re saying that to me?” she breathed.

“I was under the impression,” he answered, “that I had said it before. You were kind enough to inquire why I refuse to write for Hollywood. Perhaps I can make myself clear now. You see, I believe that screen actresses are not great artists, rare talents, exceptions. They are not one in a thousand, they are just one out of the thousand, chosen by . . .”

“By?”

“. . .
chance.
”

Claire said nothing. No proper words would come to her.

“Look about you,” he continued. “Thousands and thousands of girls struggle for a place in the movies. Some are as beautiful as you are, and some are more beautiful. All can act as you act. Have they a right to fame and stardom? Just as much or just as little as you have.”

“Do you realize,” said Claire, and her voice made funny little gurgling sounds in her throat, but she was past caring about her voice or what it said, “do you realize, Mr. Ayers, that you are speaking to a woman who is considered one of the world’s geniuses?”

“The world,” said Winston Ayers, “would never have seen that genius, if someone hadn’t told it so—by chance.”

“Really,” Claire stammered, “I don’t mean to be begging for compliments, Mr. Ayers, but . . .”

“Neither do I mean to be insulting, Miss Nash. But look at it objectively. There’s no one in this business with an honest idea of what’s good and what’s bad. And there’s no one who’s not scared green of having such an idea for himself. They’re all sitting around waiting for someone to tell them. Begging someone to tell them. Anyone, just so they won’t have to take the awful responsibility of judging and valuing on their own. So merit doesn’t exist here. What does exist is someone’s ballyhoo which all the others are only too glad to follow. And the ballyhoo starts with less discrimination and from less respectable sources than the betting at a racetrack. Only this is more of a gamble, because at a track all the horses are at least given a chance to run.”