“A beautifully acted scene thrown away,” raged Stahr quietly. “It wasn’t centered. The camera was set up so it caught the beautiful top of Claudette’s head all the time she was talking. That’s) just what we want, isn’t it? That’s just what people go to see—the top of a beautiful girl’s head. Tell Tim he could have saved wear and tear by using her stand-in.”
The lights went out again. The unit manager squatted by Stahr’s chair to be out of the way. The take was run again.
“Do you see now?” asked Stahr. “And there’s a hair in the picture—there on the right, see it? Find out if it’s in the projector or the film.”
At the very end of the take Claudette Colbert slowly lifted her head revealing her great liquid eyes.
“That’s what we should have had all the way,” said Stahr. “She gave a fine performance too. See if you can fit it in tomorrow or late this afternoon.”
— Pete Zavras would not have made a slip like that. There were not six camera men in the industry you could entirely trust.
The lights went on; the supervisor and unit manager for that picture went out.
“Monroe, this stuff was shot yesterday—it came through late last night.”
The room darkened. On the screen appeared the head of Siva, immense and imperturbable, oblivious to the fact that in a few hours it was to be washed away in a flood. Around it milled a crowd of the faithful.
“When you take that scene again,” said Stahr suddenly, “put a couple of little kids up on top. You better check about whether it’s reverent or not but I think it’s all right. Kids’ll do anything.”
“Yes, Monroe.”
A silver belt with stars cut out of it… Smith, Jones or Brown…. Personal—will the woman with the silver belt who—?
With another picture the scene shifted to New York, a gangster story, and suddenly Stahr became restive.
“That scene’s trash,” he called suddenly in the darkness. “It’s badly written, it’s miscast, it accomplishes nothing. Those types aren’t tough. They look like a lot of dressed up lollypops—what the hell is the matter. Mort?”
“The scene was written on the set this morning,” said Mort Flieshacker. “Burton wanted to get all the stuff on Stage 6.”
“Well—it’s trash. And so is this one. There’s no use printing stuff like that. She doesn’t believe what she’s saying—neither does Cary. ’I love you’ in a close-up—they’ll cluck you out of the house! And the girl’s overdressed.”
In the darkness a signal was given, the projector stopped, the lights went on. The room waited in utter silence. Stahr’s face was expressionless.
“Who wrote the scene?” he asked after a minute.
“Wylie White.”
“Is he sober?”
“Sure he is.”
Stahr considered.
“Put about four writers on that scene tonight,” he said. “See who we’ve got. Is Sidney Howard here yet?”
“He got in this morning.”
“Talk to him about it. Explain to him what I want there. The girl is in deadly terror—she’s stalling. It’s as simple as that. People don’t have three emotions at once. And Kapper—”
The art director leaned his head forward out of the second row.
“Yeah.”
“There’s something the matter with that set.”
There were little glances exchanged all over the room.
“What is it, Monroe?”
“You tell me,” said Stahr. “It’s crowded. It doesn’t carry your eye out. It looks cheap.”
“It wasn’t.”
“I know it wasn’t. There’s not much the matter but there’s something. Go over and take a look tonight. It may be too much furniture—or the wrong kind. Perhaps a window would help. Couldn’t you force the perspective in that hall a little more?”
“I’ll see what I can do.” Kapper edged his way out of the row looking at his watch.
“I’ll have to get at it right away,” he said. “I’ll work tonight and we’ll put it up in the morning.”
“All right. Mort, you can shoot around those scenes, can’t you?”
“I think so, Monroe.”
“I take the blame for this. Have you got the fight stuff?”
“Coming up now.”
Stahr nodded. Kapper hurried out and the room went dark again. On the screen four men staged a terrific socking match in a cellar. Stahr laughed.
“Look at Tracy,” he said. “Look at him go down after that guy. I bet he’s been in a few.”
The men fought over and over. Always the same fight. Always at the end they faced each other smiling, sometimes touching the opponent in a friendly gesture on the shoulder. The only one in danger was the stunt man, a pug who could have murdered the other three. He was in danger only if they swung wild and didn’t follow the blows he had taught them. Even so the youngest actor was afraid for his face and the director had covered his flinches with ingenious angles and interpositions.
And then two men met endlessly in a door, recognized each other and went on. They met, they started, they went on. They did it wrong. Again they met, they started, they went on.
Then a little girl read underneath a tree with a boy reading on a limb of the tree above. The little girl was bored and wanted to talk to the boy. He would pay no attention. The core of the apple he was eating fell on the little girl’s head.
A voice spoke up out of the darkness:
“It’s pretty long, isn’t it, Monroe?”
“Not a bit,” said Stahr. “It’s nice. It has nice feeling.”
“I just thought it was long.”
“Sometimes ten feet can be too long—sometimes a scene two hundred feet long can be too short. I want to speak to the cutter before he touches this scene—this is something that’ll be remembered in the picture.”
The oracle had spoken. There was nothing to question or argue. Stahr must be right always, not most of the time, but always—or the structure would melt down like gradual butter.
Another hour passed. Dreams hung in fragments at the far end of the room, suffered analysis, passed—to be dreamed in crowds, or else discarded. The end was signalled by two tests, a character man and a girl. After the rushes, which had a tense rhythm of their own, the tests were smooth and finished—the observers settled in their chairs—Stahr’s foot slipped to the floor. Opinions were welcome. One of the technical men let it be known that he would willingly cohabit with the girl—the rest were indifferent.
“Somebody sent up a test of that girl two years ago. She must be getting around—but she isn’t getting any better. But the man’s good. Can’t we use him as the old Russian Prince in ’Steppes’?”
“He is an old Russian Prince,” said the casting director. “But he’s ashamed of it. He’s a Red. And that’s one part he says he wouldn’t play.”
“It’s the only part he could play,” said Stahr.
The lights went on. Stahr rolled his gum into its wrapper and put it in an ash-tray. He turned questionmgly to his secretary.
“The processes on Stage 2,” she said.
He looked in briefly at the processes, moving pictures taken against a background of other moving pictures by an ingenious device. There was a meeting in Marcus’ office on the subject of “Manon” with a happy ending and Stahr had his say on that as he had before—it had been making money without a happy ending for a century and a half. He was obdurate—at this time in the afternoon he was at his most fluent and the opposition faded into another subject—they would lend a dozen stars to the benefit for those the quake had made homeless at Long Beach. In a sudden burst of giving five of them all at once made up a purse of twenty-five thousand dollars. They gave well but not as poor men give. It was not charity.
At his office there was word from the oculist to whom he had sent Pete Zavras that the camera man’s eyes were 20/19, approximately perfect. He had written a letter that Zavras was having photostated. Stahr walked around his office cockily while Miss Doolan admired him. Prince Agge had dropped in to thank him for his afternoon on the sets and while they talked a cryptic word came from a supervisor that some writers named Marquand had “found out” and were about to quit.
“These are good writers,” Stahr explained to Prince Agge. “And we don’t have good writers out here.”
“Why you can hire anyone!” exclaimed his visitor in surprise.
“Oh we hire them but when they get out here they’re not good writers—so we have to work with the material we have.”
“Like what?”
“Anybody that’ll accept the system and stay decently sober—we have all sorts of people—disappointed poets, one-hit playwrights, college girls—we put them on an idea in pairs and if it slows down we put two more writers working behind them. I’ve had as many as three pairs working independently on the same idea.”
“Do they like that?”
“Not if they know about it. They’re not geniuses—none of them could make as much any other way. But these Marquands are a husband and wife team from the East—pretty good playwrights. They’ve just found out they’re not alone on the story and it shocks them—shocks their sense of unity—that’s the word they’ll use.”
“But what does make the—the unity?”
Stahr hesitated—his face was grim except that his eyes twinkled.
“I’m the unity,” he said. “Come and see us again.”
He saw the Marquands. He told them he liked their work, looking at Mrs. Marquand as if he could read her handwriting through the typescript. He told them kindly that he was taking them from the picture and putting them on another where there was less pressure, more time. As he had half expected they begged to stay on the first picture,
