Marcus sharpened his red pencil while he stared in despair at the script on his desk. The five screenwriters who’d worked on Song of the Thin Man had done their damnedest, and William Powell and Myrna Loy would try hard, but it was clear that the movie series had run its course. All Marcus could do was make a few suggestions where plot logic could be improved, and warn Mayer not to expect the colossal profits its predecessors had enjoyed.
He was still drafting the memo in his head when Arlene called him from the legal department.
“I heard from my pal at Doubleday,” she whispered down the line. “Deadly Bedfellows arrived the other day.”
Marcus curled his finger around the telephone cord and squeezed it until his knuckles hurt. “Is it really about the head of a studio writing department?”
“Uh-huh.”
That miserable son of a prick. “What else?”
“The lead character’s name is Mathias Addison.”
“He’s about as subtle as he is original,” Marcus said. “Quentin will be pleased to know it’s not about him.”
“He hasn’t escaped untouched. The plot revolves around how this Mathias Addison guy recruits into the Communist Party a talented new screenwriter by the name of Quinn Lubbock.”
“That bastard’s not going to be happy until he’s pissed off every last person in Hollywood, right down to the guy who peels the potatoes in the commissary.” He was going to ask Arlene if her pal could write up a synopsis of Deadly Bedfellows, but before he could, Anson Purvis marched into his office.
“Here’s your goddamned pile of cockeyed baloney.” He slammed a screenplay onto the desk and thundered back to his office.
Marcus told Arlene he’d call her back.
Months ago, when Marcus informed Purvis they’d not only be buying The Final Day, but offering him a generous contract, the guy was happier than a puppy with his first bone. He arrived at the studio in a gray checked suit with the price tag intact, all handshakes and thank-yous and yes-sirs. His face darkened, however, when Marcus told him that he wouldn’t be polishing The Final Day but had been assigned to adapt a picture from a Saturday Evening Post short story called Happily Never After. It was about a commitment-shy divorce lawyer and the girl in the newsstand out front of his office building, and Marcus pointed out that if he did a good job, it could be the first postwar movie Gene Kelly made after his discharge from the navy. And if that happened, his co-star would probably be Judy Garland or Melody Hope or June Allyson—not bad for a first movie.
But Purvis had just stared at him, his mouth curved down in a sour huff. In the end, Marcus told the guy, “Just write the damned movie,” and figured his best tactic was to give him enough time to realize how childish he’d acted.
An hour and a half after Purvis slammed Happily Never After onto his desk, Marcus finished the script and buzzed Purvis on the office intercom. “Get in here.” When he heard the guy’s footsteps stomp toward him, he thought, You picked the wrong fucking day, mister.
Purvis appeared in the doorway, his arms crossed.
Standing five foot nine to Purvis’ six foot three, Marcus needed all the intimidation he could mount, so he told the guy to take a seat while he stayed on his feet. He glanced down at Happily Never After, then looked up, glad he’d had the chance to rehearse this scene with Yip Wainright. “You got one thing right. It’s baloney.”
“I told you.” Purvis bristled.
“Let me clarify,” Marcus said. “It’s not baloney because you think it’s a frivolous love story set to music. It’s baloney because you’ve handed in a shoddy piece of work. The Final Day wasn’t perfect, but it pole-vaults what you’ve done here, and that’s a problem.”
Look at you, you big pouting baby. You’re only here because I went against my instinct, and you don’t even have the decency to do your best. You’ll be lucky if I don’t can your ass.
“No,” Purvis said, “that’s not the problem here.”
“Oh, yeah, Mr. I’ve Been In The Business Two Minutes? Why don’t you give me your considered assessment?”
Purvis slid forward to the edge of his chair and started tapping Marcus’ desk. “The problem isn’t that this movie’s a waste of time. As far as a Kelly and Garland musical goes, it’s fine. Guy meets girl; guy ignores girl; girl gets guy. This studio—this whole industry—has been churning out this junk since Edison invented the Kinetoscope. They know exactly how to nip-and-tuck it so the thing’ll mint money. That’s not the issue. The problem is that folks like you think the people who went to the movies before the war are the same ones going to the movies now.”
“Of course they’re the same,” Marcus said.
Purvis sat back in his chair, smirking. “You don’t come out of D Day, or Guadalcanal, or the Battle of the Bulge, or Iwo Jima the same person you went in.”
“Stories about people falling in love will never go out of fashion,” Marcus countered. “War or no war, people still love to love. Look at how well Anchors Aweigh and Meet Me in St. Louis did. Both those pictures made back three times their budget.”
“Maybe that’s the difference: You’re still looking to the past, and I’m looking to the future. I tell you, it’s hard to fall in love in a world where we drop bombs that can kill hundreds and thousands in a matter of minutes. Guys like you fail to recognize the world has changed.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean? Guys like me?”
“I’m talking about ones who stayed behind, safe in their offices while real men risked life and”—he reached down and struck his knuckles against his wooden leg— “limb.”
Marcus was about to launch into a lecture about how after the navy knocked him back he helped write the speeches that helped sell millions of dollars of war bonds. But a word of advice from Jim Taggert, his outgoing predecessor, came back to him: Never excuse, never explain. “Are you aware of how close you are to being fired?”
“Are you aware of how little I care, if this is the sort of dreck you’re going to waste my talents on?”
Dierdre buzzed Marcus’ intercom to say that a Mr. Gessler was on the line. Gessler was the code name Marcus and Oliver had agreed on—after the villain in William Tell, the movie that brought them together—if Oliver needed to call him at work. It didn’t happen often, but they felt they couldn’t be too careful.
Marcus wanted to toss Purvis out on his behind and jump on the line to Oliver. But Purvis might well have a point. Suddenly he longed for the good old days when all he had to do was show up and write movies, and then go home to Oliver’s chicken pot pie. He told Dierdre he’d call Gessler back.
Marcus sat down and glared at Purvis with what he hoped was an intimidating scowl, but the guy’s glacial blue eyes stared back at him as though to say, Now what?
“This studio,” Marcus said, “needs versatile writers capable of pulling together a top-notch screenplay from whatever material I throw at them. However, I recognize that some writers excel at particular genres and it’s to the studio’s advantage that we utilize each employee’s talents.”
Purvis lifted his hands to the skies like a tent-revival preacher. “That’s all I’m saying.”
“I don’t have any war movies on the boil right now, and I can’t have you sitting around tiddly-winking your day away, so—”
“I’ve got one.”
Of course you do.
Purvis leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Okay so there’s this navy pilot—Jimmy Stewart would be ideal—and he’s downed in the Pacific. He’s alive, but pretty banged up and thinks he doesn’t have much time left. His microphone is still working and the guy on the other end is his best buddy on the battleship heading for him. So that Jimmy doesn’t lose hope, the best buddy—Peter Lawford or Van Johnson, maybe—gets Jimmy to talk of his love for his girlfriend. The buddy links Jimmy’s speech across the whole navy network and everybody listens in to his big ‘This is what we’re fighting for’ speech. Civilian radio picks up the story so that by the time he’s rescued, he’s this big war hero.”
“Skip to the part when trouble sets in.”
“His girlfriend—I’d cast Gloria DeHaven—has up and married some other guy. So the military brass finds this lookalike actress to play the girlfriend, but that bugs the bejesus out of the girl’s new husband—Jack Carson, if we can get him.”
“Is there a twist?” Marcus asked.
Purvis’ face lit up. “The hero agrees with the husband that all this playacting makes a mockery of the sacrifices the boys are making out there, fighting for truth, justice, and the American way.”
“Please tell me it’s got a happy ending.”
“A boffo happy ending that’ll leave the women crying and the guys cheering.”
“You got a title for this masterpiece?”
“Pacific Broadcast, but I’m not married to it.”
“That’s a great title,” Marcus admitted. “I can see the poster already.”
“So . . .?”
“I need a detailed outline by the end of the week.”
Purvis jumped to his feet and shook Marcus’ hand.
Outside his window, the tops of the oak trees bent and snapped. It was the first of the Santa Ana winds blowing in from the desert. Angelenos liked to believe the hot, dry Santa Anas brought restlessness and dissatisfaction, shorter fuses and wilder tempers. It was said that the murder rate in LA went up when the Santa Anas were blowing dust along the boulevards.
His intercom buzzed. “Gessler again?” Marcus asked Dierdre.
“No, Arlene from Legal.”
Marcus picked up his phone. “Lemme guess—in the end, Mathias Addison gets snuffed out by a posse of gun-happy G-men?”
“My friend just called. Are you sitting down?”
“Do I need to be?”
“Mathias Addison is toppled in disgrace by his protégé, an ex-navy man awarded the Medal of Honor for his service during the war.”
Marcus felt his body go limp. “If the protégé’s name is something like Andrew Purdue, I’m going to punch a hole in my wall.”
“He’s only ever referred to by his nickname—Amp.”
“What kind of name is that?”
A gust of Santa Ana whipped the branches outside Marcus’ office, scraping them against the glass.
“It’s short for ‘Amputee.’”