Close up, p.20
Close-Up, page 20
Stone walked on to the set at eight minutes past three. Already the stand-ins had been lit and studied, and the light falling upon them measured in foot candles by the lighting cameraman and translated into a focal aperture setting for the operator. The focus puller had measured their distance from the camera with a tape measure kept under the front nodal point of the lens. The focus puller had set the distance and calculated the depth of field from his tables to be sure that the movement of the action would not require a change of setting. One of the assistants had drawn chalk lines around the stand-ins’ feet. These were the ‘marks’. An actor’s skill was often measured according to his ability to stop exactly at this place where the camera was focused, without being seen to look down at the ground. The lights were keyed for this position too. A muffled or a missed line of dialogue could be faked, or inserted, after but an actor who didn’t hit his marks must be reshot.
‘Jesus, Marshall,’ shouted Richard Preston. ‘You made it, you made it. You shouldn’t have come.’ Stone smiled uncertainly. Preston grabbed him by the shoulders, held him at arms’ length and looked into his eyes as if to discover a secret. Perhaps failing to find it, he embraced Stone. ‘That’s what makes a superstar. You climb out of a sick-bed in defiance of the doctors.’
‘The show must go on,’ piped Stone, mimicking Judy Garland.
‘A four-inch pancake for Mr Stone,’ called Preston. Stone had ceased to be embarrassed at his need for platforms to make him look taller when photographed against cars or doors or other actors. Now he was pleased when a director took the trouble to make him look bigger and more powerful on the screen. For the long-shots, doorways were always rebuilt smaller, and the rickshaw that was seen in this sequence had been specially constructed in a scaled-down version for him.
Preston put his arm around Stone and walked him to the first position, whispering advice, praise and affection to him all the time. The actor was dwarfed by the tall thin boy.
‘First positions, everyone,’ called the first assistant. ‘No run through.’ The stand-ins disappeared and a dozen extras took up position.
‘Camera! Background action! Action!’
Stone moved furtively, stealing up to where six Japanese soldiers were heaving boxes. ‘Japanese soldiers,’ shouted Preston, ‘those boxes are heavy. Bloody heavy!’ The Japanese soldiers moved more slowly, puffing and blowing in simulated exertion as they moved the empty cardboard boxes. The camera dolly moved along with Stone, keeping him in the centre of the picture.
They all watched Stone creeping forward. He cheated to camera as he pretended to be able to see round the corner. Then he stood up, stepped forward and froze in horror. His feet were exactly on the marks as the camera tracked in for his close-up.
‘Cut. Print it,’ shouted Preston. It wasn’t exactly what he wanted but he too had tasted the heady elixir of melodrama. ‘Bloody marvellous, Marshall,’ he yelled. With a gesture he offered the star to the crew. ‘A man out of his sick-bed,’ he called, and began to clap. It produced an enthusiastic round of applause from all present.
Edgar Nicolson, and his production manager for five successive films, finished applauding and eyed each other sardonically. The production manager knew that his boss had read the riot act to Preston and had practically rehearsed the whole reconciliation.
‘Good acting,’ said Nicolson.
‘And Stone was good too,’ said the production manager.
9
People in the East pretend to be interested in how pictures are made, but if you tell them anything, they never see the ventriloquist for the doll.
F. Scott Fitzgerald.
From the desk of Marshall Stone
Twin Beeches
Tonbridge
Kent
Monday evening
My dear Peter,
Just had the most splendid idea and couldn’t reach you on the phone. Why not let you use my name! How much more powerful and intimate it would be if it was an autobiography! Naturally this would mean you taking a back seat as far as the credits were concerned, but, after all, the chaps at your publisher’s would know that you had done it and that is the main thing, isn’t it.
For a title I think we couldn’t do better than The Autobiography of Marshall Stone, with the Karsh portrait as cover and frontispiece. I was looking at that photograph today and it is such a wonderful likeness. How he got such a result from my mug I will never know! It would make a dramatic dust cover.
It would also be possible to have someone do a really good introduction about me. Shall I have a word with Larry or Steve McQueen? Or perhaps Vanessa? What thinkest thou, scribe?
Affectionately,
MARSHALL
97 Greenwood Gardens
London, NW6
Tuesday
Dear Mr Stone,
Thank you for your letter dated yesterday. There would be many disadvantages in ghosting an autobiography along the lines you suggest. For one thing, it would prevent me having chapters outside your physical presence. Also I’m not sure that it would be possible in terms of my contract with the publisher.
As to the other suggestions, these would probably be better considered at a later date. Certainly I would not want to do anything until the first draft has been seen by the publisher.
Yours truly,
PETER ANSON
From the desk of Marshall Stone
Twin Beeches
Tonbridge
Kent
Thursday
Peter,
Have I put my foot in it?
It’s just that seeing the work and trouble you are putting into it, I wanted to do everything I could to assure the very biggest sale you can get.
There being a few misguided souls who would buy anything I wrote – bless them. And a big name on the foreword might do even better than that.
Do think about this,
Love,
MARSHALL
And who was I kidding about contractual possibility. The publisher would jump at the chance of having Marshall Stone’s rather than my name on the cover.
Bernie – the publicity man from Stool Pigeon – sent me a clipping from an American paper. On the jungle-encrusted compliments slip he’d scribbled an explanation.
Since you are making a collection of prize flackery, allow me to donate this specimen. Please note that it originates from KI New York and is nothing to do with us. However it did syndicate into 248 publications! Best wishes,
BERNIE
SUZY IS A MOD MISS
On the millionaire-before-thirty route is nineteen-year-old Welsh thesp Suzy Delft. She’s a glutton for hard work and the gayest of cherubs in the new screenstar style of the seventies.
‘Show-biz flows in my veins. Born in a trunksville.’ The ‘today’ jargon is what Suzy uses to tell it like it is. ‘Sure, there are nasties and nowhere people here, baby. So there are anywhere, but the true pros are all heart and they are the ones I while away the hours with.’
Suzy’s heart beats to another drum, a mod miss who knows her own mind, she says, ‘All my money is spent on threads. Since I was a little girl in a village not far from where Richard Burton was born, I’ve had a talent for clothes. If I had the time I would be a haute couture fashion designer.’
Famous model Suzy has discarded her minis for knicker-bocker suits to play opposite Marshall Stone in the movie Stool Pigeon. Her Paris hairdresser, ‘the greatest crimper in the world’, she says with a smile and a carefree shrug of her pretty shoulders, has given her a streaked frizz pixie cut which makes her look fab.
Suzy is verbal about things she doesn’t like (‘blah things’ in Suzy’s language). Politics are blah and so are ‘pigs’ and cabbage and weekend parties where they dress for dinner. Suzy loves spaghetti, Mick Jagger and her beautiful twenty-thousand-dollar lilac-colour Lamborghini.
It ended abruptly. Some sub-editor had snipped it to fit against a furniture store advertisement. I added it to my file.
There were other letters in the same mail, including one from my stepson. Neither Mary nor Marshall Stone had been close to their son for the last few years. He’d come up to London a couple of weeks before our marriage and we’d had a strained dinner with him and his German wife. Mary would have liked to be closer to them, but she never said so. When I first began my book it seemed a good opportunity to renew the contact with Edward John. I was wrong.
Northwestern Typewriters and Calculating Machines Ltd
Area Manager: E. J. Brummage
Dear Mr Anson,
Thank you for your letter. I am not in contact with my father and have not followed his career with the care that you so clearly have.
I have no memories of my father that I would care to share with you and in no circumstances would I meet with you to discuss your planned biography of him.
Furthermore, without being discourteous, I wish to point out that should your book mention me in connexion with him or his career or activities I would consider that damaging. I will not hesitate to seek redress at law should you be so ill advised as to mention me in this or any other book.
Yours truly,
E. J. BRUMMAGE
Mary read the letter and smiled to show me that she was not as hurt as she clearly was. I suspected that she’d written other letters that had been equally rebuffed. Perhaps she knew why her son was so anxious to keep his father’s world at arm’s length, but if she did know she never told me.
She put the letter back into the tray on my desk, handling it carefully, as if everything concerned with my book was precious to her. I appreciated the gesture. I think the letter from Edward John helped her decide about her diaries. The next morning I found a bundle of note books and odd pages and a leatherbound diary on my desk.
1948. September. London, Monday
Eddie is going to be a star. I’m happy that the months of separation have finally proved worthwhile. It was in the newspapers and the phone has hardly stopped ringing all day. Eddie sent a telegram. I wish he had phoned instead.
1948. September. London, Thursday
Today I called the London office of Koolman International five times. Miss Samson is very sympathetic and I wouldn’t like to believe that she is holding information back but do they truly not know where Eddie is? She must have heard the panic in my voice when I mentioned the bills, for she raided her own petty cash and sent twenty pounds by messenger in a cab. She has told me to send all the rest of the bills to her and they will arrange payment direct.
This diary has become more like an account book lately.
1948. September. London, Tuesday
If only I had known that Eddie had had an affair with the Samson girl, I’m sure I would never have been able to tell her about the bills and feeling so wretched when Eddie is away. The poor little bitch thought I knew all the time. Eddie has a lot to answer for. He is the perennial adolescent. He’s sick and probably always has been. He’s incapable of establishing a satisfactory relationship with anyone of either sex. People like that always want to be evangelists or reformers or actors because they get their satisfaction from exploiting other people’s emotion. [‘Exploiting’ had been crossed through and ‘manipulating’ inserted.]
I suppose I shouldn’t have mentioned the Samson girl to Eddie on the phone. There have probably been dozens since then. He didn’t seem at all concerned about me knowing. He said he only took as lovers girls he wouldn’t want as friends. He thought that was some sort of compliment to me. I shall never understand the working of the masculine mind. [‘Never’ was underlined twice.] All that time hoping he would phone! Then when he phones, we argue. Perhaps he’ll never phone again. I can tell it upsets him for acting. I do love him.
1948. October. London, Monday
Little Eddie’s school is no problem. Why can’t Eddie send for us. I dread to think what the answer is.
1948. October. London, Friday
They begin filming. I’m happy for Eddie but I would be happier with him. One letter a week is not enough. I write to him every day without fail. His letters are typewritten. Does that mean his secretary does them from dictation. I hope not.
Eddie can play the cowboy beautifully. I’d love to read the script. He has the feeling for that sort of story, and the accent won’t be a problem for Eddie, he’s so good at impersonations. At the office I keep telling the senior partner that I’m leaving but I don’t go. One of the partners undoubtedly suspects that there is something wrong between me and Eddie. My secretary doesn’t really believe that the man in the newspaper photo is my husband. Eddie’s school lets him come home on Fridays now, that’s so much better. Only four weeks to the start of his Christmas holidays. Thank goodness I now have enough money to make it a happy one for him.
1948. December. London, Thursday
What a wonderful surprise. Eddie used the occasion of Mr Koolman’s birthday to persuade him to let me fly out there. And phoned from the Koolman house with the party sounds as background!
1948. December. Malibu, California, Saturday
I know I’m behaving like a stage-struck schoolgirl and yet I can’t help it. We live right on the beach and listen to the breakers all night. Even now in winter I can sunbathe and I’m getting a tan. But best of all, is looking round our own little house and seeing Eddie talking as an equal to the great stars. It’s like a dream. It almost makes the time in London worthwhile. But it’s just not fair the way they make him work! Even on Christmas Day he had a meeting that lasted late into the afternoon. And yet Eddie never complains.
1949. January. Malibu, California, Tuesday
I’m worried about Eddie and the little ‘San Francisco’ restaurant. Not just the fact that he’s put money into it – that only comes to five thousand dollars – but because of the effect it’s had on Eddie. The old man is a dear, although I can hardly understand a word he says, and I know that Eddie used some of his pronunciations in the film. But why is Eddie so keen to make the San Francisco a chic place to eat?
Tonight someone said ‘Why is it called The Flying Taco?’ and Mr Bookbinder said, ‘Because it’s bound to bring you down.’ Eddie laughed, but he went red. I know that signal of old, don’t I?
Eddie can not make that place a fashionable restaurant – no one can. And anyway the old man feels out of place there now. I know he would prefer it to be what it was previously: a little cheap place for his Mexican friends. Eddie is so stubborn.
What am I becoming when I write ‘only $5,000’? – Last year that would have been a fortune.
1949. April. Malibu, California, Friday
Today I saw the film almost completed, what they call a ‘rough assembly’. I like it very much. For the first time I discovered that a vaquero is a Mexican cowboy. Eddie says the film looks as if it’s been put together by a man wearing boxing gloves. They are going to re-edit it. The rumour is that poor Edgar will have his part cut down. (He will end up on the cutting-room floor, as they say here.) Poor Edgar, he’s so sad.
Another ‘Flying Taco’ joke: Eddie so wanted someone to say the food is good. Gary Cooper said. ‘It is good, but it takes a real man to hold it down.’
Eddie was consumed with shame. He identifies with his restaurant venture and believes that everyone who makes a joke about it is attacking him and of course that’s just not true. He makes us go there almost every night. I can’t face Mexican food any more and the steaks are always over-done. Tonight Eddie went into the kitchen and shouted at the cook. Everyone could hear. It’s not the way to handle it. Why won’t he retire gracefully from the restaurant, the money is nothing to him now. Already they are talking about Eddie getting fifty thousand dollars a film. In fact his market value is four times that but he has the seven-year contract with Koolman Studios. As Eddie says, he’s one of the richest slaves in America.
Tonight after dinner we went to a gambling club with Mr Koolman and Mr Bookbinder. I almost got the idea that they wanted Eddie to fall prey to gambling and other extravagances. They are pressing him to buy a big house in Beverly Hills near the B. H. Hotel. Perhaps they think that if they can get us hooked on high-living we will be easier to handle. So many stars are in debt to the studio. How can they bear it. I’m happy at Malibu. I can’t face another move. And in a big house I’d feel more separated from Eddie.
1949. April. Malibu, California, Monday
Today I asked Mr Bookbinder to show me the film again. I suppose one can get used to seeing films sitting all alone like that, but I felt rather furtive. What with all the talking and notetaking in the theatre last evening I realized that today I was seeing Last Vaquero for the first time.
I felt ashamed. I felt ashamed that I have been living with such a man without appreciating it. Eddie’s performance, as the man who becomes the marshal of the little Western town, is breathtaking. Not that the man is anything like Eddie, but that is the miracle of it. As an actor he shows a depth of understanding about people and love, and a warmth that he doesn’t know about in real life. How can that be possible? When, at the end, he goes out to be shot down by the men who were once his friends, I found myself crying. I was crying for his wife. What am I doing, I thought, I am his wife.
Cedric Hardwicke said that as the world has become more theatrical so has the theatre become more drab. This is the paradox with Eddie (must I start to call him Marshall, as the publicity insists?) He is a brittle theatrical personality and, I fear, becoming more so every day, and yet as an actor his stature grows.
1949. May. Malibu, California, Tuesday
Eddie is famous. Rave reviews in almost every New York paper. A mad party started, people arriving at the house as if by magic, Eddie is just stunned with joy.
1949. June. Beverly Hills, California, Friday
The new house is fantastic. Why shouldn’t it be for over half a million dollars? I never did feel at ease in the house at Malibu. It was lovely being right on the beach but I was frightened of burglars, especially when Eddie was away. It would have been so easy for someone to walk along the seashore and break open the glass doors on the sun porch.
