ON THE NIGHT of the premiere of Prairie Schooner in Pittsburgh, Cromwell, having been informed about Leila’s death in a car accident, gave a little impromptu speech to the audience before the film began.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he told them, “it is with profound regret that I inform you about the tragic death of the star of this film. None of you here know her name, not one of you has ever seen or heard of her before, but I assure you that after you have seen this one and only film of her tragically aborted career, you will never forget her. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to … Leila Millar.”
The lights went down. The movie began. When Leila’s name appeared on the screen (AND INTRODUCING LEILA MILLAR), there was a smattering of applause.
It is impossible to know if Cromwell’s impromptu speech had the effect of predisposing the audience toward liking the film, or if the film itself was solely responsible for their ecstatic response. A standing ovation.
There was no TV coverage of the premiere, since there were no big stars in the movie, but a local TV station ran a story about Leila on its evening news the following evening.
Helen Landau, a coanchor of the evening news, went out to the site of the accident with a small crew and shot the following segment.
Mike in hand, Helen walked along the shoulder of highway 381.
“A dream of stardom ended here yesterday,” Helen said, looking right into the camera.
She talked about Leila not only playing a waitress in the movie but having been a waitress in real life. A working-class girl. She talked about this being her first film.
“And so,” Helen concluded, “on what was to have been the happiest day of her life, a young woman, perhaps meant for stardom, died on this seemingly peaceful spot along state highway 381. But who knows, though stars die, their light shines on for generations, as perhaps will the light of … Leila Millar.”
The segment ended with a publicity still of Leila’s face from the movie, smiling her smile.
And so, while Saul was lying in a coma in that hospital in Pittsburgh, Leila’s story began to grow.
According to Cromwell’s original schedule, there were to be two more sneak previews before the film was released, but the advance word generated by Leila’s death created a demand that necessitated adding more sneaks to the schedule.
Normally, a large ad was placed in the papers of the city where the preview was to play, but that was no longer needed. The story of Leila’s story, along with a large picture of her, appeared in the newspapers of each city that was added to the schedule. On the night of the preview, the crowds in each city showed up in turn-away numbers.
There was just something about Leila’s story, even before her so-called full story was known, that caused it to spread. Even those people who only saw a movie every two years or so wanted to see Leila’s movie when they heard about her and her story.
A working-class girl. A waitress. Plucked from anonymity, where most people spend their lives, to be the star of a movie. And then to die on the day of the movie’s premiere, so that she never even got to see herself on the screen. All this created a tragic poignancy that was hard to resist, and a marketing bonanza that even a marketing genius like Cromwell could not have created on his own.
What made him the genius that he was, evil or otherwise, was the way he took control of it.
Even before the extended sneak preview schedule was concluded, he was getting telephone calls from representatives of large movie theater chains, which caused him to reconsider the release pattern for the movie. It seemed possible now to postpone the opening date and instead of opening gradually, to open the film on the same day all around the country, as if he had a blockbuster hit on his hands and not a small art movie.
Having all those Leila stories in all those newspapers was fine for the time being, but his experience with stories of this kind, with stories of any kind, warned him that it could all lead to an oversaturation of the marketplace long before the film opened.
Therefore what he needed was a definitive Leila story waiting in the wings, one of those feature-length bio pieces written by a reputable journalist with impeccable credentials.
A Pulitzer Prize-winning writer currently unemployed because his newspaper had recently folded came to Cromwell’s attention.
The man was getting on in years and his chances of being picked up by another paper (because of his age and his politics) did not seem very good.
He had won the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the civil war in Angola, but that was a long time ago and the civil war was still going on.
Cromwell called him, explained the nature of the project, and offered the kind of money that precluded needing time to think it over.
A deal was struck. Verbal at first, on the telephone, and then a formal contract was signed.
In all fairness to Cromwell, he had no idea where the story of Leila would lead. All he knew about her was what everybody knew. If he knew anything else, it was that she and Saul had been having an affair.
And because he knew this, he placed that circumspect call to Saul to see if he objected to having Leila’s story made public. He wanted it to be on the record that he had Saul’s approval to proceed.
And Saul, having no idea what he was agreeing to, gave it.
The same principles of investigative journalism apply whether you’re writing about the civil war in Angola, insider trading on Wall Street, or the story of Leila Millar. If you’re a scrupulous journalist, which this journalist was, and if you have a nose for the story, which he had, you sniff out the heartbeat of the story and then you follow it wherever it goes.
In what was supposed to be a perfunctory interview with Leila’s mother in Charleston, South Carolina, one of those mother interviews you had to have for a piece of this kind, our Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist found, or had handed to him by the mother, the heartbeat of the story. The baby that Leila had when she was fourteen and that she gave up for adoption.
The rest was not necessarily easy, but neither was it as difficult as one might imagine.
People working for hospitals and for adoption lawyers tend to uphold the confidentiality they’re supposed to uphold so long as they remain employed. Once they leave their jobs or are fired, they are not quite so strict with themselves.
When Cromwell was informed where the story was headed, he made only one request and that was for the journalist to leave Saul alone.
“I don’t want you to bother him,” Cromwell told him over the telephone. “He has suffered enough.”