Marcus thought he had his share of problems until he learned about the bug in Kathryn’s apartment. She’d tried to pretend she wasn’t a teary, snotty, shaking mess when she came home that night, but that pretense only lasted until the second whiskey he put in front of her and the pair of Nembutals he left on her nightstand.
Since then, she’d been a far cry from her forthright, chatty self. It was like someone had turned down the volume and mislaid the dial. So when Marcus learned that the last day of filming the new Clark Gable movie, The Hucksters, was also the start of production for The Final Day, he arranged an all-day visit to the studio, where she didn’t need to be followed around by a clingy staff member from Publicity.
The Hucksters featured an all-star cast—Gable, Adolphe Menjou, Sydney Greenstreet, Deborah Kerr, and someone Marcus had his eye on: Ava Gardner.
She’d been at the Garden a few times during her disastrous marriage to Artie Shaw, where she’d endeared herself with her free-spirited bawdy humor. She’d acquitted herself very well on loan out to Universal in The Killers with Burt Lancaster, and now the studio was giving her screen time with Gable—a landmark moment for any up-and-comer. She was now on Marcus’ Actively Seek Properties For This Player list, which was the next rung on the ladder to Hollywood heaven.
Marcus and Kathryn walked down the laneways between soundstages, nodding and saying hello to workers and performers they knew. As they passed under the enormous METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER STUDIOS sign, they found a rare pocket of privacy. He was about to ask her how she was doing, but she spoke first.
“That Purvis guy, the one who sucker-punched you.”
“What about him?”
“I still don’t get why you didn’t fire him.”
Marcus flapped his lips. “In a perfect world, I’d have canned him on the spot. But this is Hollywood, where we only pretend it’s perfect. Fact is, he’s the new golden-boy writer around here. Our two biggest pictures during the holidays are shaping up to be The Final Day and Pacific Broadcast, and he wrote them both. I hate to say it, but he knocked them out of the park, which means I need him more than he needs me.”
Kathryn watched a group of extras costumed in voluminous eighteenth-century dresses for Green Dolphin Street pass by. “How can you trust him?”
The humiliation still stung. He didn’t blame her for bringing up the subject, but the sooner he could put it behind him, the better. “We’ve got to be able to trust some people. And others like Purvis and Wardell, you keep your eyes and ears open.”
She shrugged and walked in through the soundstage door.
The last scene to be filmed was one in which Gable and Menjou meet their biggest advertising client, Sydney Greenstreet, in his teak-lined boardroom. The actors were on set, waiting for their next take. Greenstreet, wearing a dark velvet jacket and a tall white homburg, was seated in an elevated, elaborately carved throne at the head of a conference table long enough to seat twenty. At the other end of the table, Gable and Menjou sat chatting in three-piece suits.
When Gable spotted Marcus and Kathryn, he smiled and stood. As they approached, he cheek-kissed Kathryn and thrust out his hand for Marcus. “I was just thinking of you,” he said. “I want my next one to be a war picture. Got anything up your sleeve?”
Marcus mentally searched through the scripts on his desk. “We’ve got something called Homecoming, about a guy who joins the Army Medical Corps.”
“Sounds promising,” Gable said. “I wanted The Final Day, but Mayer flat-out told me I was too old.”
“Isn’t that character supposed to be a greenhorn fresh out of boot camp?” Kathryn asked.
Gable grinned. “Mayer’s never heard of rewrites?”
Kathryn elbowed him in the ribs. “I shall have a stern word with him the next time I see him.”
Marcus was happy to see that Kathryn could still switch on the charm when she needed to. He’d never said anything—not even to Oliver—but he couldn’t help wondering if she’d started to fall for that FBI guy. After her trip to Reno, a girlish quality had seeped into her voice whenever she talked about him. He’d been praying something might come along to jolt reality into her, and was relieved when she appeared at his door with that listening bug in her hand.
He felt someone catch him by the elbow. It was Arlene, and she wasn’t smiling.
“I told my boss I needed to see the nurse,” she whispered.
Kathryn was deep in conversation with Gable and Menjou about Mayer’s recent divorce, so Marcus and Arlene stepped away.
“You’re going to be called into L.B.’s office today,” she told him.
“What for?”
“One of the typing pool gals just told me she spent the last two days working on dozens of copies of a declaration they’re going to ask employees to sign.”
Marcus swallowed hard. “Declaring what?”
“That you are not, nor have ever been, a member of the Communist Party.”
“For the love of Mike!” The soundstage suddenly felt suffocating.
“They’re taking this real serious, Marcus. But remember, you’re protected under the First Amendment. You’re free to belong to whichever political party you choose.”
“I’m not a fucking Commie!”
“They have no legal grounds to force you into signing a declaration like that. Whether you sign it or not, they can still subpoena you.”
“Subpoena? Who the hell—?” Her look of Surely you can’t be that naïve? arrested him. “The House Un-American Activities Committee?”
Arlene stared at him. “Your receptionist, the one with the red hair. Dierdre?”
He turned to see her approach him, her eyes wrinkled with trepidation. “I was told to track you down. You’ve been summoned.”
* * *
When Marcus entered his boss’ office, everyone was already seated around the table: Mayer, Eddie Mannix, and three humorless lawyer types he’d never seen before.
Marcus shook Mayer and Mannix’s hands, but Mayer didn’t bother to introduce the others.
“As you know,” Mannix said, “the HUAC have made it their business to root out subversives in any position to influence government policy or public opinion.”
“You mean Communists,” Marcus said, crossing his arms.
“Exactly so,” Mayer said.
“It seems fairly clear to us”—Mannix gestured toward the lawyers— “and our equivalents at other studios that the HUAC are planning to campaign Washington to interrogate key Hollywood contributors about the Communist influence here.”
The whole thing sounded like a rehearsed speech; Marcus wondered if he was the first audience. “If the HUAC get their hearings, it’ll be one long, tortuous succession of political grandstanding. Just because they set up their sandbox doesn’t mean any of us have to play in it.”
“Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t,” Mannix replied. “However, we feel that if we can present them with declarations of loyalty signed by everyone in the industry, they will, to use your phrase, pack up their sandbox and leave us all the hell alone.”
Marcus thought about The Hucksters and its plot about how advertising men will say anything to get their product sold. He eyed the sheet of paper on top of the stack in front of the lawyers. He could only make out a single word across the top: “DECLARATION.”
“You want me to declare, in writing, that I am not a member of the Communist Party?”
Mayer’s face brightened up. “That’s it.” He pushed his glasses back up his nose.
Marcus addressed the table. “You gentlemen have heard of the First Amendment, yes? As American citizens, we’re allowed to belong to whichever political party we choose. That’s kind of the whole point of the Constitution. I seem to recall that in among all that business about the right to freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press, there’s something about political freedom, too.”
“This is simply an evasive tactic,” Mannix said expansively. He gestured toward his bank of lawyers. “We’re looking to head the HUAC off at the pass. Nothing more.”
The stuffiest-looking lawyer in a bow tie slid the paper in front of Marcus. His pale blue watery eyes belied a hard-edged shrewdness. “If you’re not a Communist, signing this form will abrogate nothing.”
“Nothing but my constitutional rights. I shouldn’t have to sign anything, because you shouldn’t feel as though you need to ask me.” Marcus pushed the paper away.
“Look, Adler.” Mannix’s voice had grown curt. “If the HUAC hearings get up and running, and you don’t sign this form, you might be treated as an unfriendly witness. In front of cameras, and microphones, and reporters. Trust me, that is not something you want to experience.”
“Now listen here,” Mayer said, more softly now. “I admire your high-minded principles, and wish more people had them these days.”
Before Marcus could say anything, Mr. Watery Eyes pushed something else across the table toward him. “Besides,” he said, “there’s a bonus in it for you.”
The check lay just out of reach. A thousand dollars. “Why do you guys always make everything about money?”
“Don’t look at it that way,” Mayer told him. “You’re a company man, aren’t you? We’ve looked after you, haven’t we?” Except for that time when you fired me then rehired me into the B unit. “This is a ‘lesser of two evils’ type situation. Either you sign a piece of paper now and help us avoid a public nightmare, or you don’t sign it and face the all too real possibility of testifying before the HUAC in Washington. That’s what it comes down to.”
“The signing bonus is just our way of saying thank you,” Mannix added.
Marcus’ eyes darted back and forth between the loyalty oath and the check. If you’re just going to throw money at me . . . “All right,” he said.
Outside Mayer’s window, far off in the distance, a muffled boom hit the glass, rattling it for a moment. “That must be The Final Day,” Mannix said. “They’ve started shooting.”
Marcus asked the group if there was anything more. They told him there wasn’t. He held the check in his hand as he took the long walk to Mayer’s office doors, past Ida Koverman to the elevator, down the elevator to the foyer, and out into the harsh May sunshine. The first person he saw was Kathryn standing in the shade of an oak tree.
“Where’d you go?”
“To hell.” He headed for the first trashcan that came into view.
“What’s that?” she asked.
Marcus wondered if it was the opening salvo in a war he should have seen coming. He ripped the check in half, then in quarters. He kept ripping until the pieces were so small he couldn’t tear them anymore, then let them flutter from his damp palms.