Throw the Little Old Lady Down the Stairs!

THE making of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie The Red Badge of Courage, based on the Stephen Crane novel about the Civil War, was preceded by routine disclosures about its production plans from the columnist Louella Parsons (‘John Huston is writing a screen treatment of Stephen Crane’s classic, The Red Badge of Courage, as a possibility for an M-G-M picture); from the columnist Hedda Hopper (‘Metro has an option on The Red Badge of Courage and John Huston’s working up a budget for it. But there’s no green light yet’); and from Variety (‘Pre-production work on Red Badge of Courage commenced at Metro with thesp-tests for top roles in drama’), and it was preceded, in the spring of 1950, by a routine visit by John Huston, who is both a screen writer and a director, to New York, the headquarters of Loew’s, Inc., the company that produces and distributes M-G-M pictures. On the occasion of his visit, I decided to follow the history of that particular movie from beginning to end, in order to learn whatever I might learn about the American motion-picture industry.

Huston, at forty-three, was one of the most admired, rebellious, and shadowy figures in the world of motion pictures. I had seen him a year before, when he came here to accept an award of a trip around the world for his film contributions to world unity. He had talked of an idea he had for making a motion picture about the nature of the world while he was going around it. Then he had flown back to Hollywood, and to the demands of his employers, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and had made The Asphalt Jungle, a picture about a band of criminals engaged in pursuits that Huston described somewhere in the dialogue of the movie as ‘a left-handed form of human endeavour’. Now, on this visit, shortly after the sudden death, in Hollywood, of his father, Walter Huston, he telephoned me from his Waldorf Tower suite and said he was having a terrible time trying to make The Red Badge of Courage. Louis B. Mayer and most of the other top executives at M-G-M, he said, were opposed to the entire project. ‘You know something?’ he said, over the telephone. He has a theatrical way of inflecting his voice that can give a commonplace query a rich and melodramatic intensity. ‘They don’t want me to make this picture. And I want to make this picture.’ He made the most of every syllable, so that it seemed at that moment to lie under his patent and have some special urgency. ‘Come on over, kid, and I’ll tell you all about the hassle,’ he said.

The door of Huston’s suite was opened by a conservatively attired young man with a round face and pink cheeks. He introduced himself as Arthur Fellows. ‘John is in the next room getting dressed,’ he said. ‘Imagine getting a layout like this all to yourself! That’s the way the big studios do things.’ He nodded with approval at the Waldorf’s trappings. ‘Not that I care for the big studios,’ he said. ‘I believe in being independent. I work for David Selznick. I’ve worked for David for fifteen years. David is independent. I look at the picture business as a career. Same as banking, or medicine, or law. You’ve got to learn it from the ground up. I learned it from the ground up with David. I was an assistant director on Duel in the Sun. I directed the scene of the fight between two horses. Right now, I’m here temporarily on publicity and promotion. David –’ He broke off as Huston strode into the room. Huston made his entrance in the manner of an actor who is determined to win the immediate attention of his audience.

‘Hel-lo, kid,’ Huston said as we shook hands. He took a step back, then put his hands in his trouser pockets and leaned forward intently. ‘Well!’ he said. He made the word expand into a major pronouncement.

Huston is a lean, rangy man, two inches over six feet tall, with long arms and long hands, long legs and long feet. He has thick black hair, which had been slicked down with water, but some of the front strands fell raffishly over his forehead. He has a deeply creased, leathery face, high cheek-bones, and slanting, reddish-brown eyes. His ears are flattened against the sides of his head, and the bridge of his nose is bashed in. His eyes looked watchful, and yet strangely empty of all feeling, in weird contrast to the heartiness of his manner. He took his hands out of his pockets and yanked at his hair. ‘Well!’ he said, again as though he were making a major pronouncement. He turned to Fellows. ‘Art, order some Martinis, will you, kid?’

Huston sat down on the arm of a chair, fixed a long brown cigarette in one corner of his mouth, took a kitchen match from his trouser pocket, and scraped the head of the match into flame with his thumbnail. He lit the cigarette and drew deeply on it, half closing his eyes against the smoke, which seemed to make them slant still more. Then he rested his elbows on his knees, holding the cigarette to his mouth with two long fingers of one hand, and looked out of the window. The sun had gone down and the light coming into the suite, high in the Tower, was beginning to dull. Huston looked as though he might be waiting – having set up a Huston scene – for the cameras to roll. But, as I gradually grew to realize, life was not imitating art, Huston was not imitating himself, when he set up such a scene; on the contrary, the style of the Huston pictures, Huston being one of the few Hollywood directors who manage to leave their personal mark on the films they make, was the style of the man. In appearance, in gestures, in manner of speech, in the selection of the people and objects he surrounded himself with, and in the way he composed them into individual ‘shots’ (the abrupt close-up of the thumbnail scraping the head of a kitchen match) and then arranged his shots into dramatic sequence, he was simply the raw material of his own art; that is, the man whose personality left its imprint, unmistakably, on what had come to be known as a Huston picture.

‘I just love the light at this time of the day,’ Huston said as Fellows returned from the phone. ‘Art, don’t you just love the light at this time of the day?’

Huston gave a chuckle. ‘Well, now,’ he said, ‘here I am, spending the studio’s money on this trip, and I don’t even know whether I’m going to make the picture I’m here for. I’m auditioning actors at the Loew’s office and talking production up there and doing all the publicity things they tell me to do. I’ve got the Red Badge script O.K.’d, and I’m going down South to pick locations for the picture, but nothing is moving. We can’t make this picture unless we have six hundred Confederate uniforms and six hundred Union uniforms. And the studio is just not making those uniforms for us. I’m beginning to think they don’t want the picture!’

‘It’s an off beat picture,’ Fellows said politely. ‘The public wants pictures like Ma and Pa Kettle. I say make pictures the public wants. Over here,’ he said to a waiter who had entered with a tray holding six Martinis in champagne glasses. ‘No getting away from it, John,’ Fellows went on, handing Huston a drink. ‘Biggest box-office draws are pictures catering to the intelligence of the twelve-year-old.’

People underestimated the intelligence of the twelve-year-old, Huston said. He said he had an adopted son in his early teens, a Mexican-Indian orphan, Pablo, whom he had found while making Treasure of Sierra Madre in Mexico a few years ago, and his boy had excellent taste in pictures. ‘Why, my boy Pablo reads Shakespeare,’ he said. ‘Do you read Shakespeare, Art?’

Television was booming, Fellows said, and all the actors, singers, dancers, directors, producers, and writers who hadn’t been able to get work in Hollywood were going into television in New York. On the other hand, all the actors, singers, dancers, directors, producers, and writers who had gone into television in New York were starving and wanted to go back to Hollywood. ‘Nobody really knows what’s happening,’ said Fellows. ‘All I know is television can never do what pictures can do.’

‘Well just make pictures and release them on television, that’s all. The hell with television,’ Huston said. ‘Do you kids want the lights on?’ The room was murky. It made a fine tableau, Huston said. Fellows and I agreed that it was pleasant with the lights off. There was a brief silence. Huston moved like a shadow to a chair opposite mine and lit another brown cigarette, the quick glow from the match lighting up his face. ‘Been to the races out here, Art?’ he asked.

A few times, Fellows said, but David Selznick had been keeping him so busy he hadn’t had much time for horses.

‘The ponies have me broke all the time,’ Huston said. ‘You know, I can’t write a cheque for five hundred dollars. I am always broke. I can’t even take an ordinary vacation. But there’s nothing I’d rather spend my money on than a horse, especially when the horse is one of my own. There’s nothing like breeding and raising a horse of your own. I’ve got four horses racing under my colours right now, and in a couple of years I’ll have more, even if I have to go into hock to support them. All I want is one good winner of my own. Everybody I know is conspiring to take my horses away from me. Someday I’ll have one good winner, and then I’ll be able to say, “Well, you bastards, this is what it was all about!” ’

Financial problems, Huston said, had prevented him from taking the trip around the world. Although his M-G-M salary was four thousand dollars a week while he was making a picture, he had had to get the company to advance him a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which he was paying off in instalments. He was bound by his contract to make at least one picture a year for the next three years for M-G-M. He was a partner in an independent company, Horizon Pictures, which he had started a couple of years before with a man named Sam Spiegel, whom he had met in the early thirties in London. Huston had directed one picture, We Were Strangers, for Horizon, and he was scheduled to direct another – The African Queen, based on the novel by C. S. Forester – as soon as he had completed The Red Badge of Courage for M-G-M. Huston said he thought The African Queen would make money, and if it did, he would then make some pictures on his own that he wanted to make as much as he did The Red Badge of Courage. The reason L. B. Mayer and the other M-G-M executives did not think that The Red Badge of Courage could be a commercial success, Huston said, was that it had no standard plot, no romance, and no leading female characters, and, if Huston had his way in casting it, would have no stars. It was simply the story of a youth who ran away from his first battle in the Civil War, and then returned to the front and distinguished himself by performing several heroic acts. Huston, like Stephen Crane, wanted to show something of the emotions of men in war, and the ironically thin line between cowardice and heroism. A few months earlier, Huston and an M-G-M producer named Gottfried Reinhardt, the son of the late Max Reinhardt, had suggested to Dore Schary, the studio’s vice-president in charge of production, that they make the picture.

‘Dore loved the idea,’ Huston said. ‘And Dore said he would read the novel.’ A couple of weeks later, Schary had asked Huston to write a screen treatment – a rough outline for the detailed script. ‘I did my treatment in four days,’ Huston said. ‘I was going down to Mexico to get married, so I took my secretary along and dictated part of it on the plane going down, got married, dictated some more after the ceremony, and dictated the rest on the plane trip back.’ Schary approved the treatment, and the cost of making the picture was estimated at a million and a half dollars. Huston wrote the screenplay in five weeks, and Schary approved it. ‘Then the strangest things began to happen,’ Huston said. ‘Dore is called vice-president in charge of production. L. B. is called vice-president in charge of the studio. Nobody knows which is boss.’ His voice rose dramatically. ‘We were told Dore had to O.K. everything. We got his O.K., but nothing moved. And we know that L. B. hates the idea of making this picture.’ His voice sank to a confidential whisper. ‘He just hates it!’

For the role of the Youth, Huston said, he wanted twenty-six-year-old Audie Murphy, the most-decorated hero of the Second World War, whose film career had been limited to minor roles. Huston said he was having some difficulty persuading both Schary and Reinhardt to let Murphy have the part. ‘They’d rather have a star,’ he said indignantly. ‘They just don’t see Audie the way I do. This little, gentle-eyed creature. Why, in the war he’d literally go out of his way to find Germans to kill. He’s a gentle little killer.’

‘I hate stars,’ Huston said, exchanging his empty glass for a full one. ‘They’re not actors. I’ve been around actors all my life, and I like them, and yet I never had an actor as a friend. Except Dad. And Dad never thought of himself as an actor. But the best actor I ever worked with was Dad. All I had to tell Dad about his part of the old man in Treasure was to talk fast. Just talk fast.’ Huston talked rapidly, in a startling and accurate imitation of his father. ‘A man who talks fast never listens to himself. Dad talked like this. Man talking fast is an honest man. Dad was a man who never tried to sell anybody anything.’

It was now quite dark in the room. We sat in the darkness for a while without talking, and then Huston got up and went over to the light switch. He asked if we were ready for light, and then snapped the switch. He was revealed in the sudden yellow brightness, standing motionless, a look of bewilderment on his face. ‘I hate this scene,’ he said. ‘Let’s go out and get something to eat.’

Huston finished his drink in a gulp, set the glass down, and put a grey Homburg on his head, and the three of us rode down in the elevator. It was a warm, drizzly evening. The Waldorf doorman got us a cab, and Huston told the driver to take us to ‘21’. He raised one of the jump seats and rested his knees against it. ‘You know, I just love New York when summer is coming in,’ he said, emphasizing each word possessively. ‘Everything begins to slow down a little. And later on, the clatter and hassling sort of comes to a stop. And the city is quiet. And you can take walks!’ he said in a tone of amazement. ‘And you pass bars!’ he said, as though this were even more astonishing. ‘And the doors of the bars are open,’ he said, holding up his hands, palms toward each other, framing a picture of an open door. ‘You can go anywhere alone, and yet you’re never alone in the summer in New York,’ he said, and dropped his hands to his lap.

Huston first came to New York in 1919, when he was thirteen, to spend the summer with his father, who had been divorced from his mother several years before. John was born in the town of Nevada, Missouri, and had spent the better part of his childhood with his mother, first in Weatherford, Texas, and then in Los Angeles. His mother, who died in 1938, had been a newspaper-woman. For three years before coming to New York, Huston had been bedridden with what was called an enlarged heart, and he also suffered from an obscure kidney ailment. When he recovered, he went to visit his father. He had a marvellous birthday in New York the summer he turned eighteen, he said. He had come East again from Los Angeles, where he had won the amateur lightweight boxing championship of California, and he had moved into a small fourth-floor apartment on Macdougal Street; the apartment above was occupied by Sam Jaffe (the actor who, years later, played the part of the German safecracker in The Asphalt Jungle). Huston’s father, who was appearing on Broadway in Desire Under the Elms, came to the birthday celebration. Jaffe had asked John what he wanted as a present, and he had said a horse. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Sam’ (and there was great affection in his pronouncing of the name), ‘the kindest, most retiring guy in the world, had gone out and bought the oldest, saddest, most worn-out grey mare. It was all wonderful. The best birthday I ever had. Art, don’t you just love New York in the summer?’

Not to live in, Fellows said, and Huston said, with a sigh, that it would be difficult to keep horses in New York, and besides, when you came right down to it, he really liked the way of life in the motion-picture world.

‘It’s the jungle,’ he said. ‘It appeals to my nature. Louella Parsons and her atavistic nonsense. I really like Louella. She’s part of the jungle. It’s more than a place where streets are named after Sam Goldwyn and buildings after Bing Crosby. There’s more to it than pink Cadillacs with leopard-skin seat covers. It’s the jungle, and it harbours an industry that’s one of the biggest in the country. A closed-in, tight, frantically inbred, and frantically competitive jungle. And the rulers of the jungle are predatory and fascinating and tough. L. B. Mayer is one of the rulers of the jungle.’ He lowered his voice impressively. ‘I like L. B. He’s a ruler now, but he has to watch his step or he’ll be done in. He’s shrewd. He’s big business. He didn’t know a thing about horses, but when he took up horses, he built up one of the finest stables in the country. L. B. is tough. He’s never trying to win the point you’re talking about. His aim is always long-range – to keep control of the studio. He loves Dore. But someday he’ll destroy Dore. L. B. is sixty-five. And he’s pink. And healthy. And smiling. Dore is about twenty years younger. And he looks old. And sick. And worried. Because L. B. guards the jungle like a lion. But the very top rulers of the jungle are here in New York. Nick Schenck, the president of Loew’s, Inc., the ruler of the rulers, stays here in New York and smiles, watching from afar, from behind the scenes; but he’s the real power, watching the pack closing in on one or another of the lesser rulers, closing in, ready to pounce! Nick Schenck never gets his picture in the papers, and he doesn’t go to parties, and he avoids going out in public, but he’s the real king of the pack. And he does it all from New York!’ He uttered an eerie, choked laugh through clenched teeth. ‘God, are they tough!’

The taxi drew up before ‘21’. ‘Mr Huston!’ the doorman said, and Huston shook hands with him. ‘Welcome back, Mr Huston.’

It was close to midnight when Huston and Fellows and I emerged. Huston suggested that we walk, because he loved to walk at that time of the night. The drizzling rain had stopped and the air was clear, but the street was wet and shining. Huston said he wanted to go over to Third Avenue, because he liked to see into the bars there and because nobody over there looked like a studio vice-president. We headed for Third Avenue.

As we walked down Third Avenue, Huston started to take fast, important strides. ‘You know what I like about making this picture, Art?’ he said. ‘I’m going to be out in the country. On location.’ Walking along, he glanced into shop windows displaying silver plate and paintings. He stopped for a moment in front of the dusty window of an art shop and looked at the reproduction of a painting. ‘Modigliani,’ he said. ‘I used to spend hours in this town looking at Modiglianis.’ He had once done considerable painting himself, he said, but in recent years he had done little. We moved on, and suddenly, in the middle of the wet, glistening walk, we saw a man lying motionless, face down. He had one arm in the sleeve of a torn, brown overcoat, and the other arm was underneath him, the empty sleeve of the coat folded back over his head. His shoes were scuffed and ragged and they were pointed in toward each other. Half a dozen spectators stood gazing silently at the figure on the sidewalk. Huston immediately took charge. Putting his hands in his trouser pockets, he gave a peculiar quarter twist to his body. He took just a moment to push his hat back on his head, then squatted beside the motionless figure. He let another moment go by without doing anything, while the group of spectators grew. Everyone was very quiet. Huston lifted the hand in the overcoat sleeve and felt for the pulse. The Third Avenue ‘L’ rattled noisily by overhead, and then there was silence again. Huston held the man’s wrist for quite a long time, never looking up at the crowd. Then he took quite a long time putting the man’s arm back in its original position. Huston rose slowly to his feet. He fixed his hat forward. He put his hands back in his pockets. Then he turned to the audience, and, projecting his words with distinct care, he said, ‘He’s – just – fine!’ He gave a thick, congested laugh through his closed teeth. He tapped his hat forward with satisfaction, and jauntily led us away. It was a scene from a Huston movie.

Five weeks later, Huston was back at the Waldorf, in the same suite. When he telephoned me this time, he sounded cheerful. During his absence, The Asphalt Jungle had opened in New York and had been reviewed enthusiastically, but he didn’t mention that; what he felt good about was that he had just bought a new filly from Calumet Farms. When I went over to see him that evening, he was alone in his suite. Two days before, he had found a superb location for The Red Badge of Courage outside Nashville.

When Huston had returned to the studio after his Eastern trip, he told me, he had found that no preparations at all were under way for The Red Badge of Courage. ‘Those uniforms just weren’t being made!’ he said with amazement. ‘I went to see L. B., and L. B. told me he had no faith in the picture. He didn’t believe it would make money. Gottfried and I went to see Dore. We found Dore at home, sick in bed. The moment we entered, he said, “Boys, we’ll make this picture!” Maybe it was Nick Schenck who gave Dore the go-ahead sign. Anyway, that night Dore wrote a letter to L. B. and said in the letter he thought M-G-M ought to make the picture. And the next morning L. B. called us in and talked for six hours about why this picture would not make any money. You know, I like L. B. He said that Dore was a wonderful boy, that he loved Dore like his own son. And he said that he could not deny a boy who wrote that kind of letter to him. And when we came out of L. B.’s office, the studio was bubbling, and the uniforms were being made!’ Huston chortled. He picked up a pad of paper and started sketching horses as he talked. He and Reinhardt, he said, had found a marvellous actor named Royal Dano to play the part of the Tattered Man, and Dano had that singular quality that makes for greatness on the screen. Charlie Chaplin and Greta Garbo have that quality, he said. ‘The screen exaggerates and magnifies whatever it is that a great actor has,’ he said. ‘It’s almost as though greatness is a matter of quality rather than ability. Dad had it. He had that something people felt in him. You sense it every time you’re near it. You see it in Audie Murphy’s eyes. It’s like a great horse. You go past his stall and you can feel the vibration in there. You can feel it. So I’m going to make the picture, kid. I’m going to direct it on horseback. I’ve always wanted to direct a picture on horseback.’

The expenses at the Nashville site, he said, would be less than at the one he had originally hoped to get, in Leesburg, Virginia, and its terrain lent itself perfectly to the kind of photography he wanted – a sharply contrasting black-and-white approximating the texture and atmosphere of the Brady photographs of the Civil War.

‘Tell you what,’ Huston said, in his amazed tone. ‘I’m going to show you how we make a picture! And then you come out to Hollywood and you can see everything that happens to the picture out there! And you can meet Gottfried! And Dore! And L. B.! And everybody! And you can meet my horses! Will you do it?’

Several weeks later, Huston telephoned again, this time from California. He was going to start making The Red Badge of Courage in a month, and the location was not going to be in Tennessee, after all, but on his own ranch, in the San Fernando Valley. He didn’t sound too happy about it. ‘You’d better get out here for the fireworks,’ he said. ‘We’re going to have the Civil War right here on the Coast.’

When I arrived on the West Coast, Huston set about arranging for me to meet everybody who had anything to do with The Red Badge of Courage. The day I met Gottfried Reinhardt, the thirty-nine-year-old producer of The Red Badge of Courage, he was sitting in his office at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio, in Culver City, studying the estimated budget for the picture. It would be the fifteen-hundred-and-twelfth picture to be put into production since Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was founded, on 24 May 1924. The mimeographed booklet containing the estimate was stamped ‘Production No. 1512’. (The estimate, I learned later on, informed Reinhardt that the picture would be allotted nine rehearsal days and thirty-four production days; the footage of the finished film was expected to come to 7,865 feet; the total cost was expected to be $1,434,789.) Reinhardt’s office was a comfortable one. It was a suite, which included a small bath and a conference room furnished with leather armchairs. A brass plate engraved with his name was on the door. In his private office, in addition to a desk and several green leather armchairs and a green leather couch, he had a thick brown carpet, a bookcase with a set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and a potted plant six feet high. The walls were hung with old prints. On his desk, near several large cigarette lighters, a couple of ball-point pens, and a leather cigar box, stood a framed photograph of Max Reinhardt. The elder Reinhardt had a look of gentle but troubled thoughtfulness. There was a considerable resemblance between father and son.

‘Where you have your office is a sign of your importance,’ Reinhardt told me as we sat around talking. ‘I’m on the first floor. Dore Schary is two floors up, right over me. L. B. is also two floors up. I have a washbasin but no shower in my office. Dore has a shower but no bathtub. L. B. has a shower and a bathtub. The kind of bath facilities you have in your office is another measure of the worth of your position.’ He smiled sardonically. ‘An important director is almost as important as a producer,’ he continued, getting up and straightening one of the prints. ‘John’s office is a corner one, like mine.’

Reinhardt is a paunchy man with a thick mane of wavy brown hair; in his cocoa-brown silk shantung suit, he looked like a Teddy bear. There was a cigar in his mouth and an expression of profound cynicism on his face. A heavy gold key chain hung in a deep loop from under his coat to a trouser pocket. He speaks with a German accent but without harshness, and his words come out pleasantly, in an even, regretful-sounding way. ‘We promised Dore we would make our picture for one million five or under, and that we would make it in about thirty days,’ he said, sitting down at his desk again. He put a hand on the estimate and sighed heavily. ‘The producer’s job is to save time and money.’ He bobbed his head as he talked. A strand of hair fell over his face. He replaced it and puffed at his cigar in a kind of restrained frenzy. Then he removed the cigar and, bobbing his head again, said, ‘When you tell people you have made a picture, they do not ask, “Is it a good picture?” They ask, “How many days?” ’ He tapped the ash from his cigar tenderly into a tray and gave another heavy sigh.

Reinhardt, who was born in Berlin, arrived in the United States in 1932, at the age of nineteen, for a visit. He had been over here a few months when Hitler came to power in Germany, and he decided to stay. Ernst Lubitsch, who had worked with the elder Reinhardt in Europe, offered Gottfried a job, without pay, at Paramount, as his assistant on a film version of Noël Coward’s Design for Living, starring Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins, and Gary Cooper. In the fall of 1933, Reinhardt moved to Metro, as a hundred-and-fifty-dollar-a-week assistant to Walter Wanger, then a producer at that studio. Not long afterward, Wanger left and Reinhardt was made assistant to Bernard Hyman, who was considered a right-hand man of Irving Thalberg. Reinhardt became first a film writer (The Great Waltz) and then, in 1940, a producer (Comrade X, with Clark Gable and Hedy Lamarr; Rage in Heaven, with Ingrid Bergman and Robert Montgomery; Two-Faced Woman, with Greta Garbo, the last picture she appeared in). In 1942, he went into the Army. He worked on Signal Corps films for four years, and then returned to Metro and produced pictures featuring some of the studio’s most popular stars, including Clark Gable and Lana Turner. His recent pictures, however, had not been regarded as box-office hits by the studio. At the age of seventy-two, Reinhardt’s mother, a celebrated German actress named Else Heims, is still appearing in plays in Berlin. His father, who died eight years ago, came to Hollywood in 1934 to direct a stage production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Hollywood Bowl. (The production became famous because it presented an unknown young woman named Olivia de Havilland, who had never acted in public before, as a last-minute replacement for the star, who for some reason or other, was unable to go on.) Max Reinhardt was then invited by Warner Brothers to direct a movie production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This picture was not a hit. For the next five years, he ran a Hollywood school known as Max Reinhardt’s Workshop; for a short while in 1939, John Huston conducted a course in screen writing there. Max Reinhardt never got another directorial job in the movies. For many months he tried to obtain an appointment with L. B. Mayer, but Mayer was always too busy to see him.

At Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Gottfried Reinhardt had witnessed a succession of struggles for power among the executives at the studio. He had learned many lessons simply by watching these battles, he told me. ‘M-G-M is like a medieval monarchy,’ he said. ‘Palace revolutions all the time.’ He leaned back in his swivel chair. ‘L. B. is the King. Dore is the Prime Minister. Benny Thau, an old Mayer man, is the Foreign Minister, and makes all the important deals for the studio, like the loan-outs of big stars. L. K. Sidney, one vice-president, is the Minister of the Interior, and Edgar J. Mannix, another vice-president, is Lord Privy Seal, or, sometimes, Minister without Portfolio. And John and I are loyal subjects.’ He bobbed his head and gave a cynical laugh. ‘Our King is not without power. I found, with The Red Badge of Courage, that you need the King’s blessing if you want to make a picture. I have the King’s blessing, but it has been given with large reservations.’ He looked at me over his cigar. ‘Our picture must be a commercial success,’ he said flatly. ‘And it must be a great picture.’

There was a stir in Dave Chasen’s Restaurant in Beverly Hills when Dore Schary walked in. Chasen’s is run by the former stage comedian whose name it bears, and it is popular with people in the motion-picture industry. The restaurant is divided into several sections. The first one, facing directly upon the entrance, contains semicircular booths. This section leads to a long bar opposite another section of booths. There are additional sections behind and to the sides of the first two. The head waiter immediately led Schary to a front booth. Two waiters took up sentry-like positions there, facing each other across the table. All the other patrons focused their attention on Schary. They seemed to be looking around at everybody except the people they were with and with whom they were managing to carry on conversations.

‘I’ll read you Ben’s letter,’ a man near us was saying. ‘He writes, “Whenever I think of Byzantium, I remember you. I hope you survive the court intrigues of Hollywood’s twilight, and when the place crumbles, may you fall from a throne.” ’

‘I have news for you,’ said his companion. ‘It’s not twilight yet. It’s only smog.’

‘I have news for you,’ the first man said, staring without restraint at Schary. ‘Ben will be back here. He likes the court intrigues.’

Schary was not a bit self-conscious. He had an aura of immense self-assurance, as though he had reached a point where he could no longer be affected by anything that might happen in Chasen’s. He is an optimistic man, and he was talking to me optimistically about the movies. He respected foreign movies, he said, but he believed that the American picture industry provided more entertainment and enlightenment than any other movie-makers in the world. ‘Our scope is international,’ he said. ‘Our thinking is international, and our creative urges and drives are constantly being renewed with the same vigour that renews so many things in the American way of life.’ The motion-picture community generically referred to as Hollywood, he told me, is no different from any other American community that is dominated by a single industry. ‘We’re the same as Detroit,’ he said. ‘We just get talked about more, that’s all.’ He was almost the only man in Chasen’s who was not at that moment looking around at someone other than the person he was talking to.

Dave Chasen, a small, solemn man with soft, wistful eyes, came over and told Schary how happy he was to see him there.

Schary gave him a genial grin and went on talking to me about the picture industry. A man who seems to be favourably disposed toward the entire world, Schary has a chatty, friendly, homespun manner reminiscent of the late Will Rogers, but there is in it a definite hint of a firm-minded and paternalistic Sunday-school teacher. He is six feet tall, and he has a big head, a high, freckled forehead, and a large nose, shaped like a Saint Bernard’s. He spoke earnestly, as though trying to convey a tremendous seriousness of purpose about his work in motion pictures. ‘A motion picture is a success or a failure at its very inception,’ he told me. ‘There was resistance, great resistance, to making The Red Badge of Courage. In terms of cost and in other terms. This picture has no women. This picture has no love story. This picture has no single incident. This is a period picture. The story – well there’s no story in this picture. It’s just the story of a boy. It’s the story of a coward. Well, it’s the story of a hero.’ Schary apparently enjoyed hearing himself talk. He was obviously in no hurry to make his point. ‘These are the elements that are considered important in determining success or failure at the box office,’ he said, and paused, as if he felt slightly bewildered by the point he was trying to make. He finally said that there had been successful pictures that did not have these so-called important elements. Crossfire, which he had made, was one, and All Quiet on the Western Front was another. ‘Lew Ayres was the German equivalent of our boy,’ he said. ‘I’ll almost bet you that Remarque knew The Red Badge of Courage. In the main, when you set out to make a picture, you say, “I just have a hunch about this picture.” And that’s what I felt about this one. Call it instinct if you will. I felt that this picture is liable to be a wonderful picture and a commercial success.’

A man who had been standing at the bar picked up his Martini and strolled over to a front booth near us. ‘I have a great story for you,’ he said to the group seated there. ‘This actor comes back from a funeral and he’s bawling and carrying on, the tears streaming down his face. So his friend tells him he never saw anybody take a funeral so hard. The actor says, “You should have seen me at the grave!” ’ The story-teller gave an explosive burst of self-appreciation. He took a sip of his Martini and caressed the stem of the glass. ‘This old actor dies,’ he said, his eyes moving away from his audience as Walter Pidgeon entered with a large party and was seated in the front section. ‘The other old actors come to see him laid out in the coffin. “Joe looks terrific,” says one. “Why not?” says the other one. “He just got back from Palm Springs!” ’

Schary began talking about L. B. Mayer. ‘I know Mayer,’ he said. ‘I know this man. I know Mayer because my father was like him. Powerful. Physically very strong. Strong-tempered and wilful. Mayer literally hits people. But my father made this guy look like a May party.’ He gave me an easy grin.

Just then, a young man rushed over to the table, grabbed Schary’s hand, and cried, ‘Dore! Wonderful to see you, Dore!’ He held on to Schary’s hand, giving him an incredulous, admiring stare. ‘You look wonderful, Dore! You look wonderful!’

The young man continued to stare at Schary; he seemed to be waiting for confirmation of something. Then he said, ‘You remember me, Dore! Dave Miller!’

‘R.K.O.!’ Miller announced, as though he were calling out a railroad stop, and in the same tone he announced that he was directing a picture at Columbia. Schary gave him a broad, understanding grin.

Miller shook his head unbelievingly several times and then, reluctantly, started to back away. ‘You’re doing wonderful things now, Dore. Wonderful! The best of everything to you, Dore,’ he said. ‘The best.’

The maze of paths followed by all the individuals at M-G-M who work together to make a motion picture led inexorably to the office of Louis B. Mayer, and I found him there one day, behind a series of doors, talking to Arthur Freed, a producer of musicals for the studio. Mayer’s office was about half as large as the lounge of the Music Hall, and he sat behind a huge cream-coloured desk overlooking a vast expanse of peach-coloured carpet. The walls of the office were panelled in cream-coloured leather, and there was a cream-coloured bar, a cream-coloured fireplace with cream-coloured fire-irons, cream-coloured leather chairs and couches, and a cream-coloured grand piano. Behind Mayer’s desk stood an American flag and a marble statue of the M-G-M lion. The desk was covered with four cream-coloured telephones, a prayer book, several photographs of lions, a tintype of Mayer’s mother, and a statuette of the Republican Party’s elephant. The big desk hid most of Mayer, but I could see his powerful shoulders, decked in navy blue, and a gay polka-dot bow tie that almost touched his chin. His large head seems set upon the shoulders without an intervening neck. His hair is thick and snow-white, his face is ruddy, and his eyes, behind glasses with amber-coloured frames, stared with a sort of fierce blankness at Freed, who was showing him a report on the box-office receipts of his latest musical, then playing at the Radio City Music Hall.

‘Great! I saw it!’ Mayer said, sweeping Freed back with his arm. ‘I said to you the picture would be a wonderful hit. In here!’ he cried, poking his index-finger at his chest. ‘It wins the audience in here!’ He lifted his snowy head and looked at the cream-coloured wall before him as though he were watching the Music Hall screen. ‘Entertainment!’ he cried, transfixed by what he seemed to see on that screen, and he made the face of a man who was emotionally stirred by what he was watching. ‘It’s good enough for you and I and the box office,’ he said, turning back to Freed. ‘Not for the smart alecks. It’s not good enough any more,’ he went on, whining coyly, in imitation of someone saying that winning the heart of the audience was not good enough. He pounded a commanding fist on his desk and looked at me. ‘Let me tell you something!’ he said. ‘Prizes! Awards! Ribbons! We had two pictures here. An Andy Hardy picture, with little Micky Rooney, and Ninotchka, with Greta Garbo. Ninotchka got the prizes. Blue ribbons! Purple ribbons! Nine bells and seven stars! Which picture made the money? Andy Hardy made the money. Why? Because it won praise from the heart. No ribbons!’

‘Twenty-six years with the studio!’ Mayer went on. ‘They used to listen to me. Never would Irving Thalberg make a picture I was opposed to. I had a worship for that boy. He worked. Now they want cocktail parties and their names in the papers. Irving listened to me. Never satisfied with his own work. That was Irving. Years later, after Irving passed away, they still listened. They make an Andy Hardy picture.’ He turned his powerful shoulders toward me. ‘Andy’s mother is dying, and they make the picture showing Andy standing outside the door. Standing. I told them, “Don’t you know that an American boy like that will get down on his hands and knees and pray?” They listened. They brought Mickey Rooney down on his hands and knees.’ Mayer leaped from his chair and crouched on the peach-coloured carpet and showed how Andy Hardy had prayed. ‘The biggest thing in the picture!’ He got up and returned to his chair. ‘Not good enough,’ he said, whining coyly again. ‘Don’t show the good, wholesome, American mother in the home. Kind. Sweet. Sacrifices. Love.’ Mayer paused, and by his expression demonstrated, in turn, maternal kindness, sweetness, sacrifice, and love, and then glared at Freed and me. ‘No!’ he cried. ‘Knock the mother on the jaw!’ He gave himself an uppercut to the chin. ‘Throw the little old lady down the stairs!’ He threw himself in the direction of the American flag. ‘Throw the mother’s good, homemade chicken soup in the mother’s face!’ He threw an imaginary plate of soup in Freed’s face. ‘Step on the mother! Kick her! That is art, they say. Art!’ He raised and lowered his white eyebrows, wiggled his shoulders like a hula dancer, and moved his hands in a mysterious pattern in the air. ‘Art!’ he repeated, and gave an angry growl.

‘Andy Hardy! I saw the picture and the tears were in my eyes,’ Mayer said. ‘I’m not ashamed. I’ll see it again. Every time, I’ll cry.’

‘In musicals, we don’t have any of those phony artistic pretensions,’ Freed said.

Mayer gave no sign that he had heard Freed. ‘Between you and I and the lamp-post,’ he said, straightening his bow tie, ‘the smart alecks around here don’t know the difference between the heart and the gutter. They don’t want to listen to you. Marie Dressler! Who thought you could take a fat old lady and make her a star? I did it. And Wally Beery. And Lionel Barrymore.’ He leaned back in his chair, one hand tucked into his shirt, his eyes squinting, his voice turning into the querulous rasp of Dr Gillespie informing Dr Kildare of his diagnosis of the disease. Then, resuming his natural manner, he said, ‘The audience knows. Look at the receipts. Give the audience what they want? No. Not good enough.’ He paused.

‘Thoreau said most of us lead lives of quiet desperation,’ Freed said quickly. ‘Pictures should make you feel better, not worse.’

Again Mayer did not seem to hear. ‘The Red Badge of Courage,’ he said. ‘A million and a half. Maybe more. What for? There’s no story. I was against it. They wanted to make it. I don’t say no. John Huston. He was going to do Quo Vadis. What he wanted to do to the picture! No heart. His idea was he’d throw the Christians to the lions. That’s all. I begged him to change his ideas. I got down on my hands and knees to him. I sang “Mammy” to him. I showed him the meaning of heart. I crawled to him on hands and knees. “Ma-a-ammy!” With tears. No! No heart! He thanked me for taking him off the picture. Now he wants The Red Badge of Courage. Dore Schary wants it. All right I’ll watch. I don’t say no, but I wouldn’t make that picture with Sam Goldwyn’s money.’

In the few days remaining before rehearsals started, Huston had to attend budget and production conferences, he had to examine, with his cameraman and technical crew, the exact spots on his San Fernando Valley Ranch where the battle scenes for the picture would be shot, and he had to make a number of revisions in the screenplay, including some suggested by the Production Code Administrator of the Motion Picture Association of America, which had come to him in a copy of a letter addressed to Mayer:

Dear Mr Mayer:

We have read the script for your proposed production The Red Badge of Courage, and beg to report that the basic story seems to meet the requirements of the Production Code. Going through the script in detail, we call your attention to the following minor items.

Page 1 A: Here, and throughout the script, please make certain that the expression ‘dum’ is pronounced clearly, and does not sound like the unacceptable expletive ‘damn’.

Page 21: The expression ‘damn’ is unacceptable.

Page 41: The same applies to the exclamation ‘Lord’, the expression ‘I swear t’ Gawd’.

Page 42: The same applies to ‘Lord knows’ and the exclamation ‘Gawd’.

Page 44: The exclamation ‘Good Lord’ is unacceptable.

Page 65: The expression ‘hell to pay’ is unacceptable.

Joseph I. Breen, the writer of the letter, stated that three other uses of the word ‘Lord’ in the script were unacceptable, along with one ‘in God’s name’, two ‘damns’, and three ‘hells’, and, before signing off – cordially – reminded Mr Mayer that the final judgement of the Code Administrator would be based upon the finished picture.

Hedda Hopper, in the Los Angeles Times, headlined one of her daily columns with the news that Audie Murphy would star in The Red Badge of Courage. ‘The happiest and most appropriate casting of the year took place at M-G-M yesterday when Dore Schary gave Audie Murphy, the most decorated hero of World War II, the leading role in The Red Badge of Courage, with John Huston directing,’ she wrote. ‘For a change, we’ll have a real soldier playing a real soldier on the screen. It couldn’t happen at a better time.’

The administrative headquarters for the M-G-M studio is a U-shaped white concrete building identified, in metal letters, as the Irving Thalberg Building. The steps leading to the Thalberg Building, between broad, shrub-bordered lawns, are wide and smooth, and they shone whitely under the midsummer sun, as cool and as stately as the steps to the Capitol in Washington, as I headed for them one morning. A taxi drew over to the kerb and jerked to a halt. The door opened and Huston leaped out. He plunged a hand into a trouser pocket, handed the driver a wadded bill, and rushed toward the steps. He had stayed in town the night before, he said, at one of his three places – a small house in Beverly Hills he rented from Paulette Goddard – and he had expected his secretary to telephone him and wake him up. She had not telephoned, and he had overslept. He seemed angry and tense. ‘Audie’s waiting for me,’ he said irritably.

We went into a large reception room with grey-chequered linoleum on the floor, and Huston strode across it, nodding to a young man seated at a semicircular desk between two doors. ‘Good morning, Mr Huston,’ the young man said brightly. At once, the catches on both doors started clicking, and Huston opened the one on the right. I hurried after him, down a linoleum-floored corridor, whose cream-coloured walls were lined with cream-coloured doors. On each door was a slot holding a white card with a name printed on it. At the end of the corridor, we turned to the right, down another corridor, and at the end of that we came to a door with his name on it, engraved in black letters on a brass plate. Huston opened it, and a young lady with curly black hair, seated at a desk facing the door, looked up as we came in. Huston turned immediately to a bench adjoining the entrance. Audie Murphy was sitting on it. He stood up.

‘Hello, Audie. How are you, Audie?’ Huston said gently, as though speaking to a frightened child. The two men shook hands. ‘Well, we made it, kid,’ Huston said, and forced an outburst of ho-ho-hos.

Murphy gave him a wan smile and said nothing. A slight young man with a small, freckled face, long, wavy reddish-brown hair, and large, cool grey eyes, he was wearing tan twill frontier riding pants, a matching shirt, open at the collar, and Western boots with pointed toes and high heels.

‘Good morning,’ the secretary behind him said. ‘Publicity wants to know what do you do when you hit a snag in writing a script?’

‘Tell publicity I’m not here,’ Huston said in a tone of cold reproach. Then, his voice gentle again, he said, ‘Come in, Audie.’

Huston’s office had oak-panelled walls, a blue carpet, and three windows reaching from the ceiling to the floor. There was a long mahogany desk at one end of the room, and at the opposite end, facing it, was a blue leather couch. Several blue leather armchairs were scattered around the office.

‘Sit down, guys,’ Huston said, and himself sat down behind the desk, in a swivel chair with a blue leather seat. ‘Well,’ he said, clenching his hands and resting his chin on them. He swung from side to side in his chair a few times, then leaned back and put his feet on the desk on top of a stack of papers.

Murphy sat down in an armchair facing one of the windows and ran a forefinger across his lower lip. ‘I’ve got a sore lip,’ he said. ‘‘Bout six this morning, I went riding on my colt. I went riding without my hat, and the sun burned my lip all up.’ He spoke with a delicate plaintiveness, in the nasal, twangy drawl of a Texan.

‘I’ve got the same thing, kid,’ Huston said, pursing his lips. ‘Tell you what, Audie. Bring your colt out to my ranch. You can have your colt right there with you, any time you want to ride while we’re making the picture.’

Murphy fingered his sore lip, as if trying to determine whether Huston’s pleasant offer did anything for his affliction. Apparently it didn’t, so he looked sadly out the window.

‘We’ll do a lot of riding together, kid,’ Huston said. ‘That’s good riding country there in the hills, you know.’

‘I want you to hear this, Audie,’ Huston said, nervously unfolding a sheet of paper he had taken from his jacket. ‘Some new lines I just wrote for the script.’ He read several lines, then laughed appreciatively.

Huston continued to laugh, but his eyes, fastened on Murphy, were sombre. He seemed baffled and worried by Murphy’s unresponsiveness, because usually actors were quick to respond to him. He took his feet down from his desk and picked up a slip of blue paper one heel had been resting on. ‘Interoffice Communication,’ he read aloud, and glanced quickly at Murphy to get his attention. ‘To Messrs Gottfried Reinhardt, John Huston . . . SUBJECT: Hair for RED BADGE OF COURAGE Production. As per discussion this morning, we are proceeding with the manufacture of: 50 Hook-on Beards at $3.50 each, 100 Crepe wool Moustaches at 50c. each, 100 Crepe wool Falls at $2.50 each – for Production No. 1512 – RED BADGE OF COURAGE. These will be manufactured in the Make-up Department.’

Huston stopped reading, looked at Murphy, and saw that he had already lost his attention. ‘Well, now,’ Huston said, ‘let’s go get some breakfast. I haven’t had any breakfast yet.’

The door opened, and a stoop-shouldered young man with enormous, eager-looking eyes came in. He was introduced as Albert Band, Huston’s assistant. Huston moved toward the door.

‘Where you going?’ Band asked, blinking his eyes. His eyelashes descended over his eyes like two dust-mops.

Band said that he had had his breakfast, but he would come along and watch Huston have his.

We went out a side door to the studio gates, where a policeman in a stone hut looked carefully at each of us as we filed through. ‘Mr Huston,’ he said.

We went down a narrow street between low, grey-painted buildings of wood or stucco, which had shingles identifying them as ‘Men’s Wardrobe’, ‘International Department’, ‘Casting Office’, ‘Accounting Department’, and ‘Danger 2300 Volts’. Farther along the street were the sound stages, grey, hangar-like buildings. We passed a number of costumed actors and actresses, and people in casual summer dress who exchanged nods with Huston and looked piercingly at Murphy, Band, and me.

A portly gentleman in a grey pin-striped suit stopped Huston and shook hands with him. ‘Congratulate me,’ he said. ‘My picture opens next week in New York.’

‘I have news for you,’ the man said in a dry tone. ‘Dore Schary personally produces a picture, it gets into the Music Hall. I got Loew’s State.’

The M-G-M commissary is a comfortable restaurant with soft lighting, cream-coloured walls, an aquamarine ceiling, and modern furnishings. When Huston, Murphy, Band, and I entered, about a third of the tables were occupied, and most of the people sitting at them stared at our party without restraint. We took a table, and Huston ordered orange-juice, a hard-boiled egg, bacon, and coffee. Murphy fingered his sore lip.

‘Gottfried told me a great story yesterday,’ Band said, batting his enormous eyes at Huston. ‘Two producers come out of the projection room where one has just shown the other his picture and he asks, “Well, how did you like the picture?” “Great,” the other producer says. “What’s the matter – you didn’t like it?” the first producer asks. Isn’t that a great story?’ Band said with a short laugh.

‘A great story, Albert,’ Huston said, putting a brown cigarette in one corner of his mouth.

‘I’ve got another one,’ Band said. He took a kitchen match from his pocket, scraped the head of it with his thumbnail, and held the flame to Huston’s cigarette. ‘This producer doesn’t like the score that has been composed for his picture. “The music isn’t right,” he says. “It’s a picture about France,” he said, “so I want a lot of French horns.” ’ Band laughed again.

‘Got a newspaper, Albert?’ said Huston. Band said no. ‘Get me a paper, Albert,’ said Huston. ‘I want to see the selections.’ He did not look up as Band went out. Drawing deeply on his cigarette, he looked down through the smoke at the table and brushed away some shreds of tobacco.

Murphy fixed his gaze on the windows along the far wall. Huston looked at him. ‘Excited, kid?’ he asked.

‘Seems as though nothing can get me excited any more – you know, enthused?’ he said. ‘Before the war, I’d get excited and enthused about a lot of things, but not any more.’

The waitress brought Huston’s breakfast and Murphy’s cup of coffee. Huston squinted at Murphy over his drooping cigarette and told him that his hair looked fine. ‘You might taper the sideburns a bit, kid,’ he said, taking the cigarette from his mouth and resting it on an ashtray. ‘That’s all we need to do, kid.’ He took a few sips of orange juice and then pushed the glass aside, picked up the hard-boiled egg, and bit into it. ‘Audie, ever been in Chico, up north of San Francisco, near the Sacramento River?’ he asked expansively. ‘Well, now, we’ll be going up there on location to do the river-crossing scene and other stuff for the picture. And while we’re there, we’ll go fishing, kid.’

Band returned and handed Huston a newspaper. Huston took a couple of quick swallows of coffee and pushed his breakfast aside. Opening the paper on the table, he said that his filly Tryst was running that day and that he wanted to know what the handicappers had to say about her. He picked up the paper and held it in front of his face. The headline facing us read, ‘CHINESE REPORTED AIDING FOE’.

At an adjoining table, a young man was saying loudly, ‘He comes out here from Broadway and he thinks he’s acting in movies. Today on the set, I’m doing a scene with him, and he says to me, “I don’t feel your presence.” “So reach out and touch me,” I said.’

‘Look, I know you’re busy, I don’t wanna butt in, but this I gotta tell you,’ a roly-poly little man said, going up to the young man’s table. ‘I’m at Sam Goldwyn’s last night and he says he’s got a new painting to show me. So he takes me over to the painting and points to it and says, “My Toujours Lautrec!” ’

Huston closed the newspaper and folded it under his arm. ‘Let’s get back, guys,’ he said. He instructed Band to place a token bet on Tryst for him, and Band walked off.

Back in the Thalberg Building, Huston invited Murphy and me to see a number of test shots he had made on his ranch for The Red Badge of Courage. He had seen the tests and, with Reinhardt and Schary, had made the final decisions on the leading players in the cast. In addition to Audie Murphy as the Youth, there would be Bill Mauldin as the Loud Soldier, John Dierkes as the Tall Soldier, and Royal Dano as the Tattered Man. We trooped downstairs to a carpeted lounge in the basement and went into a projection room that contained two rows of heavy, deep leather armchairs. Beside the arm of one of the centre chairs was a board holding a telephone and a mechanism called a ‘fader’, which controls the volume of sound. The first shot showed the Youth, who had returned to his regiment after running away from battle, having his head bandaged by his friend, the Loud Soldier. Mauldin, dressed in Union blue, his ears protruding horizontally from under a kepi, said as he bound a kerchief around Murphy’s head, ‘Yeh look like th’ devil, but I bet yeh feel better.’

In the audience, Murphy said in a loud whisper, ‘I was biting my cheek so hard trying to keep from laughing.’

The next scene showed Murphy carrying a gun and urging some soldiers behind him to come on. ‘Let’s show them Rebs what we’re made of!’ Murphy called fiercely, on the screen. ‘Come on! All we got to do is cross this here field! Who’s with me? Come on! Come on!’ Murphy advanced, and Huston’s voice came on the sound track, laughing and saying, ‘Very good.’

Next there was a scene between Murphy and the Tall Soldier, played by John Dierkes. The Tall Soldier died, his breath rasping and then ceasing, and his hair blowing long and wild. The Youth wept.

Back in his office, where we found Band waiting for us, Huston, taking another cigarette, said that Dierkes would be just wonderful in the picture.

Murphy was back in his armchair, staring out the window as though lost in a distant dream. Huston gave him a sharp glance, then sighed and put his long legs up on the desk. ‘Well, now, Audie, we’re going to have such fun making this picture on my ranch!’ he said. ‘Let me tell you kids all about the ranch.’ There was a compelling promise in his tone. He waited while Murphy shifted his gaze from the window to him. Huston deliberately took his time. He drew on his cigarette, and blew the smoke away. He began by telling us that he had four hundred and eighty acres – rolling fields, pasture, a brook, and hills harbouring mountain lions and jaguars. He had paddocks and stables for his horses, a pen for eight Weimaraner puppies, dog-houses for the Weimaraner parents and three other dogs (including a white German shepherd named Paulette, after Paulette Goddard), and a three-room shack for himself, his adopted son Pablo, and a young man named Eduardo, who managed the ranch. Huston’s wife, the former Ricki Soma, and their infant son lived at Malibu Beach, and Huston commuted between the two establishments. At the ranch, Huston had a cowboy named Dusty, and, with a good deal of laughter, he described Dusty’s gaunt and leathery face and his big, black ten-gallon hat. ‘Oh, God!’ he said, with a shake of his head, ‘Dusty wants to be in the picture.’ He coughed out a series of jovial ho-ho-hos. Murphy, who had given him a quiet smile, developed the smile into hollow-sounding laughter. Huston seemed satisfied that he had finally got a response out of Murphy.

The door opened and Reinhardt stood there, an expression of cynical bewilderment on his face, a large cigar between his lips.

Reinhardt took a few steps forward, bobbing his head paternally at everyone. ‘There’s going to be trouble, John,’ he said, in a tone of dry, flat amiability. He chewed his cigar around to a corner of his mouth to let the words out. ‘The production office thought the river for the picture was a stream. In the script, it says, “The regiment crosses a stream.” Now they want to know what you mean you need hundreds of men to cross the Sacramento River?’ He bobbed his head again.

‘Ho! Ho!’ Huston said, crossing his legs on top of his desk. Murphy sat down again. Band paced the carpet in front of Huston’s desk.

‘Well, now, Gottfried, you and I are used to trouble on this picture,’ Huston said. He put a brown cigarette in his mouth. Band held a kitchen match to it. Huston cocked his head over the flame and gave Murphy a wry smile. ‘They’re afraid the soldiers will get their little tootsies wet,’ he said, with a titter.

Murphy smiled sadly. Band laughed and batted his eyes first at Huston, then at Reinhardt.

‘Now, Albert wouldn’t be afraid to cross the river, would you, Albert?’ Huston asked.

‘I have news for you,’ Band said. ‘I’m going to cross it. You promised me I could have a part in this picture.’

Reinhardt laughed, the upper part of his body bouncing energetically. As Band continued pacing in front of Huston’s desk, Reinhardt fell in ahead of him, and the two men paced together. Reinhardt’s gold key chain looped into his trouser pocket flopped noisily as he paced. ‘Everybody in Hollywood wants to be something he is not,’ he said as Huston watched him over the tips of his shoes. ‘Albert is not satisfied to be your assistant. He wants to be an actor. The writers want to be directors. The producers want to be writers. The actors want to be producers. The wives want to be painters. Nobody is satisfied. Everybody is frustrated. Nobody is happy.’ He sighed, and sat down heavily in a chair facing Murphy. ‘I am a man who likes to see people happy,’ he muttered through his cigar.

The door opened, and John Dierkes entered. ‘Hi, John! Hi, everybody,’ he said cheerfully, in a rasping drawl. He had a thick shock of stringy orange hair. ‘Hi, sport!’ he said to Murphy. ‘Hedda sure likes you, sport. Didja see what she said about you today?’

‘Sure did, Gottfried,’ said Dierkes. ‘It’s been growin’ and growin’ for weeks.’ He sat down, clasped his hands between his knees, and beamed at Murphy. ‘You learnin’ your lines, sport?’ he asked.

Huston recrossed his legs impatiently and said that he had just seen Dierkes’ screen test. ‘You look like an ugly bastard,’ Huston said. ‘You’re the only man I know who is uglier than I am.’

Dierkes dropped his long chin in an amiable smile. ‘That’s what you said the first time we met, John,’ he said. ‘In London. I was in the Red Cross and you were sure spiffy in your major’s uniform. 1943.’

‘I was on my way to Italy,’ Huston said. ‘That’s when we made The Battle of San Pietro.’

Reinhardt turned to Murphy. ‘Did you ever see the picture K-Rations and How to Chew Them?’ he asked in a loud voice. He tilted his cigar to a sharp angle and pointed a finger at himself. ‘Mine,’ he said.

‘England was just wonderful in the war,’ Huston said. ‘You always wanted to stay up all night. You never wanted to go to sleep.’

Reinhardt said, ‘I’ll bet I’m the only producer who ever had Albert Einstein as an actor.’ Attention now focused on him. He said that he had been making an Army film called Know Your Enemy – Germany, the beginning of which showed some notable German refugees. ‘Anthony Veiller, a screen writer who was my major, told me to tell Einstein to comb his hair before we photographed him. I said, “Would you tell Einstein to comb his hair?” He said no. So we photographed Einstein with his hair not combed.’ Reinhardt bounced merrily in his chair and laughed.

‘God, those English bootmakers!’ Huston said. ‘The love and affection they lavish on their boots! Whenever I go to London, I head straight for Maxwell and order boots made.’

Reinhardt got up and went to the door, saying that in the afternoon there was going to be a conference of the key members of the crew assigned to the picture. The cost of making a picture depended largely on the time it took, he observed. The director and his actors might work together only three hours of an eight-hour day; the balance of the time would be spent waiting for scenes to be prepared. Reinhardt wanted to discuss what he called the leapfrog method, which meant having an assistant director line up shots in advance, so that Huston could move from one scene to another without delay. ‘We bring this picture in early, we will be real heroes,’ Reinhardt said.

Huston gave me a copy of the script for The Red Badge of Courage and left me alone in his office to read it. The script was a mimeographed booklet in a yellow paper cover, which was stamped with the seal of M-G-M. Also on the cover were the words ‘Production No. 1512’ and the names of the film’s producer, Gottfried Reinhardt, and its director, John Huston. A notation on the flyleaf stated that the number of pages was ninety-two. Each shot described in the script was numbered. I turned to page 92. The last shot was numbered 344, and its description read:

As he trudges from the place of blood and wrath, his spirit changes. He is rid of the sickness of battle. He lifts his head to the rain, breathes in the cool air, hears a sound above him.

CAMERA PANS UP to a tree and a bird is singing.

FADE OUT

I turned to page 73, one the Breen Office had found unacceptable expressions on:

CLOSE SHOT – LIEUTENANT
Lieutenant

Come on, men! This is no time to stop! In God’s name, don’t just stand there! We’ll all get killed. Come on! I never seed sech lunkheads! Get movin’, damn yeh – Oh, yeh cowards – Yeh rotten little cowards!

FADE IN:

MED. LONG SHOT – EMBANKMENT ACROSS A RIVER – NIGHT

Low fires are seen in the distance, forming the enemy camp. Trees and bushes. A LOW WHISTLE IS HEARD from across the river.

MED. SHOT – THE OTHER SIDE OF THE RIVER

Moonlight reveals some bushes and trees, and a sentry walking into view. Crickets sing in the still night. The low whistle is repeated. The sentry puts his rifle to his shoulder, stands staring into the gloom.

CLOSE SHOT – SENTRY – IT IS THE YOUTH

The Youth

Who goes there?

MED. LONG SHOT – ACROSS THE RIVER

Southern Voice

Me, Yank – jest me. . . . Move back into the shadders, Yank, unless you want one of them little red badges. I couldn’t miss yeh standin’ there in the moonlight.

The script took me a couple of hours to read. It included several scenes written by Huston that did not appear in the novel, but for the most part the screenplay indicated that Huston intended to embody in his picture the Youth’s impressions of war exactly as Crane had described them.

After finishing the script, I went into a sort of back room of Huston’s office, used as a conference and poker room, where I found Mrs Huston. Mrs Huston had not seen her husband for several days. She is a striking girl with an oval face and long, dark hair drawn back tight from her face, parted in the middle, and done up in a bun in back. She was formerly a ballet dancer in New York, and is now an actress. She showed me around the room. There were a sofa and several chairs covered in brown leather. There were photographs of horses on the walls. There was a framed picture, clipped from a magazine, showing Huston with his father and captioned, ‘John Huston – for the last three years a major in the Army’s Signal Corps – has produced an important and engrossing documentary film, Let There Be Light. His father, Walter Huston, does an equally fine narration for this picture on the crackup and treatment of neuropsychopathic soldiers.’ There were certificates of awards – the One World Flight Award for Motion Pictures, and the Screen Writers Guild Award to Huston for his Treasure of Sierra Madre, which was described in the citation as ‘the best-written Western of 1948’, and two Motion Picture Academy statuettes – one for the best screenplay of 1948, the other for the best-directed film that year. A silver tray on a corner table was inscribed ‘To John Huston, One Hell of a Guy. The Macadamized Award from all the Members of the Asphalt Jungle.’

Albert Band came into the room. He said there ought to be a lot of fun with the new picture, especially when the company went on location at Chico.

Mrs Huston said that she was going along to Chico, where she would do some fishing. ‘I just love fishing,’ she went on, as if trying to convince herself.

Huston entered, greeted his wife, and announced that everybody ought to have a drink. He called his secretary in and told her that the key to the liquor was under one of the Oscars.

Huston looked astonished and, after a moment, laughed in a strained way. ‘Albert,’ he said, ‘get over to Gottfried’s office and find out when that goddam meeting is supposed to start.’

Since most of the film was to be shot about thirty miles from Hollywood, on Huston’s ranch, in the San Fernando Valley, Huston arranged to look over the terrain one day with Reinhardt and the production crew. I arrived at the ranch about eleven o’clock in the morning, and a few minutes later the crew drove up in a large black limousine. Houston came out of his ranchhouse to greet us, dressed in a red-and-green checked cap, a pink T-shirt, tan riding pants flapping out at the sides, tan leggings, tan braces, and heavy maroon shoes that reached to his ankles. Included in the crew were the camerman, Harold Rosson, a short, stocky, gum-chewing, middle-aged man with a sharp face; the unit manager, Lee Katz, a heavy-set man in his late thirties, with thin blond fuzz on his head, a brisk, officious manner, and a perpetual ingratiating smile; the ‘leapfrog’ director, Andrew Marton, a serious, pedantic Hungarian-American with a heavy accent and a nervous, solicitous manner, whose job it would be to arrange things so that Huston would not have to wait between scenes; the art director, Hans Peters, a stiff, formal German with cropped hair, who also had a heavy accent; another assistant director, Reggie Callow, a harassed-looking man with a large red face, a bowl-shaped midriff, and the gravelly voice of a buck sergeant; and the technical adviser, Colonel Paul Davison, a retired Army officer with a moustache, dark glasses, and a soldierly bearing. All were carrying copies of the script.

Reinhardt and Band drove up in a grey Cadillac convertible with the top down. Reinhardt had a navy-blue beret on his head and a cigar in his mouth. He came over and pumped Huston’s hand. ‘Happy birthday, John,’ he said.

‘Oh, yes. I almost forgot,’ Huston said. ‘Well, gentlemen, let’s get started.’

Everybody was wearing rough clothes except Reinhardt, who wore neat gabardine slacks of bright blue and a soft shirt of lighter blue. Band had on Russian Cossack boots, into which were tucked ragged cotton pants. Marton wore dungarees and a khaki bush jacket, which, he said, he had brought from Africa, where he had recently worked as co-director of King Solomon’s Mines. Colonel Davison wore Army fatigues.

Dusty, the Huston-ranch cowboy who wanted to play in the picture, stood around while the crew got organized. He went into the stables and returned leading a large black horse, saddled and bridled. Huston mounted it, and then Dusty brought out a white-and-brown cow pony.

‘I’ll ride Papoose, pal,’ Rosson said to Huston, and heaved himself aboard the cow pony.

‘He was once married to Jean Harlow,’ Band said to Colonel Davison, pointing to Rosson.

‘Let’s go, gentlemen!’ Huston called, waving everybody on. He walked his horse slowly down the road.

Rosson started after Huston. Reinhardt and Band followed in the Cadillac. The rest of us, in the limousine, brought up the rear of the cavalcade.

Marton peered out the window at Rosson, rocking along on the cow pony. ‘He used to be married to Jean Harlow,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Reggie, what do we do first?’

Callow said that they were going to stop at the location for the scene showing the Youth’s regiment on the march, to determine how many men would be needed to give the effect of an army on the march. It was Scene 37. All the script had to say about it was ‘MEDIUM LONG SHOT – A ROAD – THE ARMY ON THE MARCH – DUSK’.

Katz, whose primary job was to serve as a liaison man between the crew and the studio production office, was sitting up front. He turned around and said, smiling, ‘Mathematics means money.’

‘Everything is such a production,’ said Marton. ‘Why can’t they just turn Johnny loose with the camera?’

Colonel Davison, who was sitting in a jump seat next to Peters, cleared his throat.

‘Nothing,’ Marton said. ‘In Africa, we had a hundred and fifty degrees in the shade.’

Katz turned around again. There were beads of perspiration on his forehead and in the fuzz on his head. ‘You boys are going to have a time climbing these hills today,’ he said cheerily. ‘Hot, hot.’

The road for the MEDIUM LONG SHOT was a dirt one curving around a hill and running through sunburned fields. A large oak tree at the foot of the hill cast a shadow over the road. Huston and Rosson sat on their horses near the top of the hill, waiting for the rest of the party to struggle up to them through dry, prickly grass. Reinhardt was carrying a sixteen-millimetre movie camera. A hawk flew overhead, and Reinhardt stopped, half-way up the hill, and trained his camera on it. ‘I like to take pictures of birds,’ he said. When everyone had reached Huston and was standing around him, Huston pointed to the bend in the road.

‘The Army comes around there,’ he said commandingly. He paused and patted the neck of his horse ‘Colonel,’ he said.

‘Get away from my script!’ Callow said to Huston’s horse, who was attempting to eat it.

Huston gave Callow a reproachful look and patted the horse’s neck. ‘Never mind, baby,’ he said.

‘Gentlemen,’ Rosson said, ‘keep in mind we must not have these Western mountains in what was primarily an Eastern war.’ He dismounted and gave the reins of his pony to Band, who clambered clumsily into the saddle. The pony started turning in circles.

Marton handed him a cone-shaped tube with a rectangular window at the wide end. It would determine the kind of lens that would be needed for the shot. Huston looked at the road through the finder for a long time. ‘A slow, uneven march,’ he said dramatically. ‘The Union colonel and his aide are leading the march on horseback. Looks wonderful, just wonderful. Take a look, Hal.’ He handed the finder to Rosson, who looked at the road through it.

The two men discussed where the camera would be set up, how the shot of the column of soldiers would be composed, when the shot would be taken (in the early morning, when the light on the troops would be coming from the back). They also discussed the fact that the scene, like most of the others in the picture, would be photographed as if from the point of view of the Youth. Then they got to talking about how many men would be needed for the scene.

‘Maybe we could do with six hundred and fifty,’ Reinhardt said, giving Huston a knowing glance.

Katz said that the column would be spaced out with horses and caissons, and that they could get away with less than six hundred and fifty infantrymen.

The Colonel quickly cleared his throat and said, ‘Sir, to be militarily correct we ought to have a thousand infantry.’

‘Make the picture in Africa,’ Marton said. ‘Extras cost eighteen cents a day in Africa.’

‘That’s exactly fifteen dollars and thirty-eight cents less than an extra costs here,’ Callow said. ‘We could change it to the Boer War.’

‘If that’s the way you want it,’ Katz said. ‘Anything I can do you for.’

We went from one site to another, trudging up and down hills and breaking paths through heavy underbrush. The afternoon sun was hot, and the faces of the crew were grimy and wet, and their clothes were dusty and sprinkled with burs and prickly foxtails. Only Reinhardt seemed unaffected by his exertions. His blue slacks were still creased; and a fresh cigar was in his mouth as he stood beside Huston examining the site for a scene – to be shot some afternoon – that would show the Youth coming upon a line of wounded men, who would be moving down a path on a slope. Huston and Reinhardt looked at a grassy slope that led down to a road and a patch of trees. The distance from the top of the slope to the road was two hundred and seventy yards, Callow told Huston and Reinhardt. The three men estimated that they would need a hundred extras to make an impressive line of wounded men.

Huston looked through the finder at the slope. ‘The Youth sees a long line of wounded staggering down,’ he said, in a low voice.

‘We’ve got to have something for these men to do in the morning,’ Katz said. ‘We can’t have a hundred extras on the payroll and have them stand around with nothing to do for half a day.’

Huston lowered the finder. ‘Let’s just put the figures down as required for each shot, without reference to any other shot,’ he said coldly.

Callow sat by the side of the path, laboriously pulling foxtails out of his socks. ‘I’m stabbed all over,’ he said. ‘I fought the Civil War once before, when I was assistant director on Gone with the Wind. It was never this rough, and Wind was the best Western ever made.’

Reinhardt was aiming his camera at a small silver-and-red airplane flying low overhead.

‘There is a great story about Clarence Brown,’ Reinhardt said. ‘A friend says to him, “What do you want with all that money, Clarence? You can’t take it with you.” “You can’t?” Clarence says. “Then I’m not going.” ’ Band and Marton agreed that it was a great story, and Reinhardt looked pleased with himself.

Katz was saying that the first battle scene would have four hundred infantrymen, fifty cavalrymen, and four complete teams of artillerymen and horses, making a total of four hundred and seventy-four men and a hundred and six horses.

Huston, now on his horse, leaned forward in the saddle and rested the side of his face against the neck of the horse.

Huston said, with great conviction, ‘It looks just swell, Gottfried, just wonderful.’

Huston wheeled his horse and started across the slope at a canter. He approached a log on top of a mound of earth, spurred his horse, and made a smooth jump. Reinhardt trained his camera on Huston until he disappeared around a wooded knoll.

That night, John Huston celebrated his forty-fourth birthday at a formal dinner party in Hollywood attended by a couple of dozen of his closest friends and associates. The party was given by Reinhardt, in the private dining room of Chasen’s Restaurant. The host stood near the door. He looked cynical, and scornful of everything about him as he pumped the hand of each arriving guest, but he managed, with a half-smoked cigar fixed firmly in a corner of his mouth, to beam with delight. The guests all exuded an atmosphere of exclusiveness and intimacy. It seemed to have nothing to do with Huston’s birthday. The birthday, apparently, was merely the occasion, not the cause, of the guests’ effusions. Good will was stamped on the faces of all, but there was no indication as to whom or what it was directed toward. As they entered, the guests exchanged quick glances, as though they were assuring each other and themselves that they were there.

At one end of the room, a couple of bartenders had set up a double file of champagne glasses on the bar. Waiters circulated with platters of canapés. Reinhardt’s wife, a slender, attractive, sardonic-looking lady with large, brown, sceptical eyes and a vaguely Continental manner, moved with a sort of weary impishness among the guests. She was wearing a gossamer blue dinner gown embroidered with silver. The other ladies at the party – all wives of the friends and associates – were almost as festively adorned, but there was about many of them an air of defeat, as though they had given up a battle for some undefined goal. They stood around in groups, watching the groups of men. Mrs Reinhardt, with the air of one who refuses to admit defeat, bore down on Edward G. Robinson, John Garfield, and Paul Kohner, who was Huston’s agent. Robinson, who had recently returned from abroad, was talking about his collection of paintings. Garfield was acting exuberant. Kohner was a genial, tolerant onlooker. At Mrs Reinhardt’s approach, Robinson abandoned his paintings and, starting to hum, fixed on her a broad smile of welcome. ‘Silvia,’ he said, and continued to hum.

‘There is a rumour making the rounds,’ she said, pronouncing each syllable slowly and emphatically. ‘The men are going to play poker after dinner, and the ladies will be given the brush. You know what I am talking about?’

Garfield said, ‘The girls can go to a movie or something. Eddie, you buy any paintings in Europe?’

‘Not this trip,’ Robinson said, without ceasing to grin at Mrs Reinhardt. ‘In New York, a Rouault. The time before in Europe, a Soutine.’

‘Last night, I met somebody owned a Degas,’ said a tall and glamorous-looking but nervous girl with red hair, who had detached herself from a group of ladies and was now at Robinson’s elbow. Mrs Reinhardt and the three men did not bother to acknowledge her remark. ‘This Degas,’ the red-haired girl said miserably, ‘it’s getting out of the bathtub, for a change, not in.’

‘You are playing, too, Paul?’ Mrs Reinhardt asked Kohner as the red-haired girl, still ignored, moved back to her group.

‘Maybe I’ll go to Europe, Eddie,’ Garfield said. ‘I think I need Europe.’

Mrs Reinhardt joined her husband. ‘Gottfried! Did they make the crêpes Hélène, Gottfried?’

‘Yes, darling. I personally showed them how,’ he said, giving his wife a pat on the head. ‘Mingle with the wives. You must mingle.’

‘I won’t mingle,’ said Mrs Reinhardt. ‘I have an odd interior climate.’ She wandered off.

Huston, very sunburned, arrived with his wife. In the lapel of his dinner jacket, he wore the ribbon of the Legion of Merit, awarded to him for his work on Army Signal Corps films in the war. ‘Well!’ he said, looking oppressed, and slightly alien to the overflowing intimacy that was advancing toward him.

‘John!’ Reinhardt said, as though it had been a couple of years instead of a couple of hours since they had last met. ‘Ricki!’ he said, greeting Mrs Huston with the same enthusiasm.

As Huston confronted the party about to envelop him, his face was contorted, like a baby about to explode into tears; then he relaxed into a slouch and went forward to meet his celebrators.

‘Johnny!’ someone said, and he quickly became the hub of a wheel of admirers. Mrs Huston, looking tremulous and beautiful, started uncertainly after him but stopped behind the circle, which included a director, William Wyler; a writer, Robert Wyler; Huston’s lawyer, Mark Cohen; and Paul Kohner. As Mrs Huston joined a group of wives, there was a good deal of laughter in the circle around her husband. Cohen, a scholarly-looking gentleman with pince-nez, laughed good-naturedly at everything everybody said. Robert Wyler, William’s elder brother and husband of an actress named Cathy O’Donnell, laughed at everything William said. Huston laughed without waiting for anything to be said.

‘God love ya, Willie!’ Huston said to William Wyler, putting a long arm all the way around his friend’s shoulders and shaking him.

Wyler, a short, stocky, slow-speaking man with a self-absorbed expression, drew back and looked up at him. ‘Johnny, you’re getting older,’ he said.

‘Ho! Ho! Ho!’ Huston said, forcing each laugh out with tremendous care. ‘I’ve had nine lives so far, and I regret every one of them.’

At the door, Reinhardt greeted Sam Spiegel, Huston’s partner in Horizon Pictures, and Spiegel’s wife, Lynne Baggett, a tall, statuesque actress with fluffy blonde curls piled up on top of her head.

‘So, Gottfried, you start rehearsals next week,’ Spiegel said, his eyes flickering busily around at everybody except the man he was talking to. Spiegel, whose professional name is S. P. Eagle, is a stout, hawk-nosed man in his late forties with sad, moist eyes, an expression of harried innocence, and a habit of running his tongue swiftly along his upper lip. He was born in Austria, came to America in 1927, was working in Berlin for Universal Pictures when Hitler came to power, in 1933. He met Huston later that year, when both were looking for work in the British motion-picture industry. In 1947, learning that Huston was looking for fifty thousand dollars, Spiegel got the money and gave it to him in exchange for a promise to found an independent motion-picture company – Horizon Pictures – and to put half the money into it. Spiegel had then promoted, from the Bankers Trust Company in New York, a loan of nine hundred thousand dollars for Horizon’s first film. He had gone on to promote for himself an extensive knowledge of what all the other producers in Hollywood were up to, and a proprietorship over Huston that most of them were jealous of. Reinhardt beamed at him as warmly as he had at the other guests. Mrs Reinhardt welcomed the Spiegels with an intensely playful air of surprise at their presence. Spiegel lingered at the door, stared at the admirers surrounding Huston, and told Reinhardt, without being asked, that he had just finished producing a Horizon film starring Evelyn Keyes, Huston’s third wife (the present Mrs Huston is his fourth), and that he planned to make two more pictures while he was waiting for Huston to complete his Metro assignment with Reinhardt. ‘Then John will make The African Queen with me,’ Spiegel said. ‘I get him next, Gottfried.’

‘The African Queen can be a commercial success. It will give John the kind of commercial hit he had when he made The Maltese Falcon in 1941,’ Spiegel said blandly.

‘Fine,’ Reinhardt said, ignoring the implication that The Red Badge of Courage would be a commercial failure.

‘You go to a movie or something, baby,’ said Spiegel. ‘A nice double feature.’ He tapped her arm, and they moved on into the room.

Mrs Reinhardt, watching them go, gave a cry of mock hysteria. ‘Gottfried, nobody ever listens to anybody else!’ she said. ‘It’s a condition of the world.’

‘Fine,’ Reinhardt said to her, and turned to greet a couple of late-comers. They were Band and his wife, a pert, slim girl, formerly a photographer’s model, whose picture had appeared twice on the cover of a magazine called Real Story. The Bands were late because they had stopped to pick up a present for Huston. The present was a book of reproductions of French Impressionists.

‘I believe in friendship,’ Band said to Reinhardt, then made his way to Huston and delivered the present.

Huston unwrapped his present. ‘This is just swell, amigo – just wonderful,’ he said to Band. He closed the book and took a cigarette box out of his pocket. It was empty. ‘Get me some cigarettes, will ya, kid?’ he said.

Dave Chasen came into the room, sucking at a pipe, and asked Reinhardt if everything was all right.

‘I’ll stay a minute,’ Chasen said, and sighed. ‘What I have to listen to out there! And everybody wants to sit in the front. If I put everybody in the front, who will sit in the back?’ He went over to Huston, saying ‘John!’

‘Dave! God love ya, Dave!’ Huston said, giving the restaurateur his long-armed embrace.

‘Dave!’ half a dozen voices called. ‘Dave! Dave!’ Everybody seemed to make it a point to sound his name, but only Mrs Reinhardt appeared to have anything to say to him. She told him that she was worried about her black French poodle. ‘Mocha is so neurotic, Dave, he refuses to eat. Dave, he wants lobster. Can I take home some lobster for Mocha, Dave?’

At dinner – before the men started their poker game and the women went to a movie – the guests sat at circular tables seating six, and between courses they moved from table to table, discussing the party as compared to other parties. Everybody was talking about the decline of big parties. People were cutting down on the big parties, they said. When did Nunnally Johnson give that big tent party? Four years ago. The tent alone, put up over his tennis court, had cost seven hundred dollars. The tent was of Pliofilm, and you could look up and see stars in the sky through it. You hardly ever found a party any more where the host rented a dance floor from that company that rented terrific dance floors. It was easier, and less expensive, to give a party at Chasen’s.

‘We entertain each other because we never know how to enjoy ourselves with other people,’ Reinhardt said to the guests at his table. ‘Hollywood people are afraid to leave Hollywood. Out in the world, they are frightened. They are unsure of themselves. They never enjoy themselves out of Hollywood. Sam Hoffenstein used to say we are the croupiers in a crooked gambling house. And it’s true. Every one of us thinks, You know, I really don’t deserve a swimming pool.’

The guests did not seem to mind what he had said, but on the other hand, there was no indication that anyone had listened to him.