[Stahr was to have received the Danish Prince Agge, who “wanted to learn about pictures from the Beginning” and who in the author’s cast of characters is described as an “early Fascist.”—Edmund Wilson’s explanation note]
“Any messages?”
“Mr. Robinson called in,” Miss Doolan said, as he started for the commissary. “One of the women told him her name but he’s forgotten it—he thinks it was Smith or Brown or Jones.”
“That’s a great help.”
“And he remembers she says she just moved to Los Angeles.”
“I remember she had a silver belt,” Stahr said, “with stars cut out of it.”
“I’m still trying to find out more about Pete Zavras. I talked to his wife.”
“What did she say?”
“Oh, they’ve had an awful time—given up their house—she’s been sick—”
“Is the eye trouble hopeless?”
“She didn’t seem to know anything about the state of his eyes. She didn’t even know he was going blind.”
“That’s funny.”
He thought about it on the way to luncheon but it was as confusing as the actor’s trouble this morning. Troubles about people’s health didn’t seem within his range—he gave no thought to his own. In the lane beside the commissary he stepped back as an open electric truck crammed with girls in the bright costumes of the regency came rolling in from the back lot. The dresses were fluttering in the wind, the young painted faces looked at him curiously and he smiled as it went by.
Episode 10
Eleven men and their guest Prince Agge sat at lunch in the private dining room of the studio commissary. They were the money men—they were the rulers and unless there was a guest they ate in broken silence, sometimes asking questions about each other’s wives and children, sometimes discharging a single absorption from the forefront of their consciousness. Eight out of the ten were Jews—five of the ten were foreign born, including a Greek and an Englishman—and they had all known each other for a long time: there was a rating in the group, from old Marcus down to old Leanbaum who had bought the most fortunate block of stock in the business and never was allowed to spend over a million a year producing.
Old Marcus functioned with disquieting resilience. Some never-atrophying instinct warned him of danger, of gangings up against him—he was never so dangerous himself as when others considered him surrounded. His grey face had attained such immobility that even those who were accustomed to watch the reflex of the inner corner of his eye could no longer see it—nature had grown a little white whisker there to conceal it; his armor was complete.
As he was the oldest, Stahr was the youngest of the group—not by many years at this date, though he had first sat with most of these men when he was a boy wonder of twenty-two. Then, more than now, he had been a money man among money men. Then he had been able to figure costs in his head with a speed and accuracy that dazzled them—for they were not wizards or even experts in that regard, despite the popular conception of Jews in finance. Most of them owed their success to different and incompatible qualities. But in a group a tradition carries along the less adept, and they were content to look at Stahr for the sublimated auditing and experience a sort of glow as if they had done it themselves like rooters at a football game.
Stahr, as will presently be seen, had grown away from that particular gift, though it was always there.
Prince Agge sat between Stahr and Mort Flieshacker the company lawyer and across from Joe Popolous the theatre owner. He was hostile to Jews in a vague general way that he tried to cure himself of. As a turbulent man, serving his time in the Foreign Legion, he thought that Jews were too fond of their own skins. But he was willing to concede that they might be different in America under different circumstances, and certainly he found Stahr was much of a man in every way. For the rest—he thought most business men were dull dogs—for final reference he reverted always to the blood of Bernadotte in his veins.
My father—I will call him Mr. Brady as Prince Agge did when he told me of this luncheon—was worried about a picture and when Leanbaum went out early he came up and took his chair opposite.
“How about the South America picture idea, Monroe?” he asked.
Prince Agge noticed a blink of attention toward them as distinct as if a dozen pair of eyelashes had made the sound of batting wings. Then silence again.
“We’re going ahead with it,” said Stahr.
“With that same budget?” Brady asked.
Stahr nodded.
“It’s out of proportion,” said Brady. “There won’t be any miracle in these bad times—no ’Hell’s Angels’ or ’Ben-Hur’ when you throw it away and get it back.”
Probably the attack was planned, for Popolous, the Greek, took up the matter in a sort of double talk that reminded Prince Agge of Mike Van Dyke except that it tried to be and succeeded in being clear instead of confusing.
“It’s not adoptable, Monroe, in as we wish adopt to this times in as it changes. It what could be done as we run the gamut of prosperity is scarcely conceptuable now.”
“What do you think, Mr. Marcus?” asked Stahr.
All eyes followed his down the table but as if forewarned Mr. Marcus had already signalled his private waiter behind him that he wished to rise, and was even now in a basket-like position in the waiter’s arms. He looked at them with such helplessness that it was hard to realize that in the evenings he sometimes went dancing with his young Canadian girl.
“Monroe is our production genius,” he said. “I count upon Monroe and lean heavily upon him. I have not seen the flood myself.”
There was a moment of silence as he moved from the room.
“There’s not a two million dollar gross in the country now,” said Brady.
“Is not,” agreed Popolous. “Even as if so you could grab them by the head and push them by and in, is not.”
“Probably not,” agreed Stahr. He paused as if to make sure that all were listening. “I think we can count on a million and a quarter from the road-show. Perhaps a million and a half altogether. And a quarter of a million abroad.”
Again there was silence—this time puzzled, a little confused. Over his shoulder Stahr asked the waiter to be connected with his office on the phone.
“But your budget?” said Flieshacker. “Your budget is seventeen hundred and fifty thousand, I understand. And your expectations only add up to that without profit.”
“Those aren’t my expectations,” said Stahr. “We’re not sure of more than a million and a half.”
The room had grown so motionless that Prince Agge could hear a grey chunk of ash fall from a cigar in midair. Flieshacker started to speak, his face fixed with amazement, but a phone had been handed over Stahr’s shoulder.
“Your office, Mr. Stahr.”
“Oh yes—oh, hello Miss Doolan. I’ve figured it out about Zavras. It’s one of these lousy rumors—I’ll bet my shirt on it…. Oh, you did. Good…. Good. Now here’s what to do—send him to my oculist this afternoon, Dr. John Kennedy, and have him get a report and have it photostated—you understand.”
He hung up—turned with a touch of passion to the table at large.
“Did any of you ever hear a story that Pete Zavras was going blind?”
There were a couple of nods. But most of those present were poised breathlessly on whether Stahr had slipped on his figures a minute before.
“It’s pure bunk. He says he’s never even been to an oculist—never knew why the studios turned against him,” said Stahr. “Somebody didn’t like him or somebody talked too much and he’s been out of work for a year.”
There was a conventional murmur of sympathy. Stahr signed the check and made as though to get up.
“Excuse me, Monroe,” said Flieshacker persistently, while Brady and Popolous watched, “I’m fairly new here and perhaps I fail to comprehend implicitly and explicitly.” He was talking fast but the veins on his forehead bulged with pride at the big words from N. Y. U. “Do I understand you to say you expect to gross a quarter million short of your budget?”
“It’s a quality picture,” said Stahr with assumed innocence.
It had dawned on them all now but they still felt there was a trick in it. Stahr really thought it would make money. No one in his senses —
“For two years we’ve played safe,” said Stahr. “It’s time we made a picture that’ll lose some money. Write it off as good will—this’ll bring in new customers.”
Some of them still thought he meant it was a flyer and a favorable one but he left them in no doubt.
“It’ll lose money,” he said as he stood up, his jaw just slightly out and his eyes smiling and shining. “It would be a bigger miracle than ’Hell’s Angels’ if it broke even. But we have a certain duty to the public as Pat Brady says at Academy dinners. It’s a good thing for the production schedule to slip in a picture that’ll lose money.”
He nodded at Prince Agge. As the latter made his bows quickly he tried to take in with a last glance the general effect of what Stahr said, but he could tell nothing. The eyes not so much downcast as fixed upon an indefinite distance just above the table were all blinking quickly now but there was not a whisper in the room.
Coming out of the private dining room
