To Kill the Duke (4 page)

“Two words,” replied Alex.

“Don’t think?” Ivan guessed.

“A good guess, comrade. John Wayne,” said Alex.

“Him again. Why? What is the connection? I’m too worried about everything around me to know anything about Marlene Dietrich and John
Wayne. I know that I am a peon in this world, but I don’t have a clue to why Uncle Joe is connected to Marlene Dietrich, who is connected to John Wayne, whose film I am showing tonight,” Ivan said, exasperated.

“What I tell you now will make very little sense, until you are done cleaning up the mess after tonight,” Alex said.

“I have to clean, too?” Ivan said disappointed.

“No. I’m being a wise guy again. You do some cleaning. But you get the table scraps, comrade. How do you think I got this vodka that we are imbibing? On my salary, which isn’t much more than yours? Ha! You get to watch the movies and eat damn well while the film is in progress. You’ll get a blanket or a dress or a hat or a coat that will be left behind. If you don’t want it, sell it on the black market. You’ll get bread, honey, silverware, dishes, pens, and most importantly…”

“Toilet paper!” cut in Ivan.

“Lots of toilet paper comrade. And it’s soft. No more chaffing from the rough wipe! Here, let me show you some,” Alex said gleefully as he got up and went to his bathroom.

Alex came back juggling a roll of toilet paper between his hands. He tossed it at Ivan, who caught it and started squeezing it softly. He then held it up against his cheek.

“Wow! I think it’s softer than my pillow.”

“No doubt, comrade. After tonight, you’ll have a roll to sleep on. A roll to trade on the black market and most importantly, a roll to wipe with,” Alex said with a chuckle.

“I think I’m going to like this job, comrade. Go on,” Ivan said.

“There isn’t much to add. Basically you will witness the highs and lows of Communism,” Alex said laughing. “But you’ll also see three westerns. John Wayne even sings in one of them!”

“Is that why Stalin wants to kill him?” Ivan asked

Alex broke out laughing. “Americans wanted to kill him, his singing is so bad.”

“I’m very confused about this John Wayne,” sighed Ivan.

“John Wayne will star in every western you show tonight. One is really good. It is called
Red River
, and Uncle Joe and the gang love it. They all wish they were him, and it is the only movie during which all of them will shut up and actually watch. You will show a bunch of Dietrich movies
to the Premier only. At some point he will talk to you about why he
really
hates Wayne,” Alex stated.

“And why is that, comrade?’ Ivan asked.

“Because he thinks that Wayne and Dietrich were lovers, and that really pisses off Uncle Joe. Now go to sleep to get ready,” Alex said as he draped a very thin blanket over his friend. Despite being able to carry oodles of goodies out after every movie showing, Alex had never been able to find a heavy blanket.

Ivan lay down wondering why he had ever left his day job and thought his new job would definitely be more fun that listening to medium-level officials talk. Oh well,
toughski shitski
and he dosed off to sleep.

chapter two

“The best thing about switching from being an actor to being a director is that you don’t have to shave or hold in your stomach anymore.”
— Dick Powell

“I’m not a paranoid, deranged millionaire.
Goddamit, I’m a billionaire!”
— Howard Hughes

“That’s what I aim to do.”
— John Wayne as Breck Coleman in “The Big Trail”

D
ick Powell was running behind schedule and he didn’t like that — especially when the cause was a very long phone call. He hadn’t liked it when he was an actor, and now as a producer and a director,
he really hated it.
This thought made him have a mini-flashback to the many pictures he had made. Now, he felt empathy for all the people he had worked with on his movies. After all, they’d helped make him a star. He made a mental note to treat everyone behind the camera with respect and better than he had been. He knew it would be hard to treat the people behind the scenes with a respect that would rival the pampering that the people in front of the cameras received, and being a big-star… albeit a humble one, he felt he could pull that off without a problem.

Some actors who turned producer and director ran into many problems with actors. Dick Powell felt he had encountered
everything
from
every actor and actress who ever spoke a word in Hollywood. He believed this was because of his total commitment and involvement in the Screen Actors Guild. For example, he had remembered when, on his first set as a bit player with one line, everyone ignored him. As his stock rose in the acting field – from bit player to mentioned player to co-star to big star – he always helped everyone on the set with any roles in the film.

“After all,” he had once said to a co-star who questioned Dick’s kindness to a bit player “that could be me all over again. I try to remember where I came from. It means something to me.”

Another time, a certain director was going to be fired because the director was way over the budget allocated for the film. Dick Powell liked the director, went to the producers and offered to work for a piece of the profits instead of his allotted salary. The director was retained, Powell’s salary was cut and he never realized one penny of the deal he agreed to with the producers. Dick Powell learned from that lesson.

“Producers’ words are their bonds,
unless
they made a mistake,” he liked to tell others with a chuckle.

A third lesson came after he had punched out another actor who was forcing himself on a much younger female bit player. She wanted nothing to do with the co-star. When the co-star asked Powell if he was gay, Powell punched him again.

“No, I have principles,” he’d told the co-star. “And, you’d better get to make-up.” Dick Powell wasn’t a homophobe, either. There were too many gays and lesbians already working in Hollywood who were very successful people and that kind of attitude would piss a lot of people off; people he might need at some point. No, Powell resented this particular actor for tossing out the line as if it were a bad line from a very bad movie script.

Everyone he met in Hollywood, he tried to bond with. In turn, most of the people he met befriended him.

“The actors and actresses won’t be a problem, Howard.” Dick had said to his co-producer and real boss, Howard Hughes, during the marathon phone call from the mysterious billionaire, which was the cause for Powell being late. Being a businessman first instead of an actor, he wanted to set
the tone for his office, and here he was, well after noon, reporting in. He could only imagine what people on the lot and in his office were thinking.

“Getting some part of his body surgically altered no doubt,” a secretary might say under her breath.

“Counting all his money… twice!” a studio guard might say to himself.

“Shacked up in a cheap motel,” another staffer might say very quietly.

“Buying anything he wants,” a different studio employee might say.

“Probably having the air conditioner in his basement bowling alley adjusted,” yet another employee might say.

The fact of the matter was none of the above. Dick Powell wasn’t into those types of things. Others he knew in Hollywood were… some way too much. Dick Powell wanted to be the best head of the studio that was financed by the richest man in America. And that man was Howard Hughes, who was very weird, but not so weird when it came to money. During their conversation, Hughes okayed the budget of $6 million. Big money for their next project —
The Conqueror
— which would take a couple of years to put together.

Powell expected Hughes to be ‘weird’ about the money. To Dick’s surprise, he wasn’t — he was ‘weird’ about the details. ‘Weird’ in demanding that the actress picked for the lead
had
to have huge boobs. ‘Weird’ in demanding that Marlon Brando be the lead, even though Brando’s contract was owned by another studio (though the script had been written with Brando in mind). ‘Weird’ that everything had to be 100% realistic in an adventure-action-drama film set in the 11th century, and that Hughes’ people had scouted out the Escalante Valley of Southern Utah, and (to them) it was a mirror image of what Tartar country must have looked like when the Mongols ruled the day. Howard also demanded that Powell visit the area and meet him there as soon as possible.

All this and a lot more about studio finances, in addition to Hughes screaming about taxes, the United States versus Russia and which actress had the best build in Hollywood was why Dick was late to the office. Right after Howard hung up, Hughes’ secretary called to set up a date when Mr. Hughes’ aircraft would pick up Dick Powell. Powell had to make arrangements with his wife about having plumbing repairs to his kitchen sink completed. And…Dick Powell always answered his fan mail,
even if it was his wife doing the reading and answering. He knew he was very lucky to have June Allyson Powell, a well-respected actress in her own right, as his wife.

“I know, the garbage has to be taken out,” June said to her husband, as she rolled her eyes upward.

“Check,” Dick Powell replied.

“I have to make sure that I don’t get excited when the plumber you hired to repair the kitchen sink bends over and I glimpse at his crack,” June said.

“Double check,” replied Dick, who wondered if all skilled craftsmen suffered from the same curse of bending over to repair things, while their ass cracks were bared wide for all eyes to see.

“I think I have a party to organize, along with paying some bills, ferrying our children from one event to the next, learning some lines from my upcoming movie, cooking some meals, landscaping, changing the oil on both cars, calling your mom, checking on my dad, doing the laundry, cleaning the windows and vacuuming the carpets,” June managed to say without taking a breath.

“Don’t forget to darn my socks, dear,” Powell said as he grabbed his wife and kissed her passionately.

“You know I really do most of these things every day,” she said with a sigh. “Don’t you think you could manage to do more than kiss me?”

And they made love right there, on the living room carpet.

“That will give you something to vacuum up,” Dick Powell said when he looked down at the imprints their bodies had made on the carpet.

“I’ll smile every time I run the vacuum over that area,” June said with a smile.

And she did.

And he knew he was lucky…
very
lucky to have her as his wife.