Larry Moran was a bareback rider in a circus who broke into the movie game in the early days as a double for a Western star who couldn’t ride a horse.
The hero would always learn in a very dramatic scene that the damsel was in distress and he would run for his horse and then Larry would carry it on from there—riding to the rescue from every possible angle—all afternoon.
Every girl in the company used to look up when Larry did his stuff. He was a feverish young man with an almost primitive force. He had a strong sensuous face, a well-trained body and an athletic mind. His agility and eagerness were electrifying. He was violent, he could walk faster than most men run, he was aggressive and nimble-brained; no wonder he climbed the Hollywood ladder two rungs at a time.
Larry spent two months riding to the rescue with the wind in his ears and the dust in his mouth before he caught on to the movie racket. One day he raced over a bump and swallowed too much dust; he coughed and spat and had an inspiration.
“Why must I keep racing through this lousy dust?” Larry asked. “Why don’t you shoot lots of cameras at me at once from different angles, and get the whole chase knocked off at one crack?”
That was one of the most brilliant things that had been said in Hollywood up to that time. The director shook his head in disgust.
“When I want advice from you,” he bellowed, “I’ll ask for it.”
Larry’s suggestion had never been tried before and it was obviously ridiculous. The director told him to keep moving. Those were the days when anybody who knew how to fit a crank into a camera was a cameraman and a director was the guy who could yell the loudest.
Larry was convinced that either he or the picture business would have to go. “This game is nutty,” he said. “For a calm, quiet, sensible life, give me a circus any day, you nippleheaded fuck-up.”
Just then a little man, who called himself a producer, one of the first to suspect that people would actually pay to see pictures moving on a screen, reached out and drew Larry back into the industry.
The producer told him he had heard his idea.
Larry told him he could take the idea and do with it as his imagination directed.
The producer told him his idea would cut a shooting schedule on a Western in half—he must be a genius or something.
Larry told him he thought he could direct pictures a whole lot better than that clown behind the megaphone.
The producer said, “Kid, you’ve got the job. I’ll put you on at seventy-five a week.”
Larry said, “That’s pretty cheap for a genius, but I’ll take a stab at it.”
Larry’s stab cut deep into Hollywood. He became the industry’s first great Western director.
Hollywood was rising like a new world out of the sea, and on its highest peak stood Larry Moran, circus performer.
Larry Moran helped to give America something to do in the evening. He was God’s gift to the moment. He was an artist and a pioneer and a drunkard and a tough guy and he caught the fancy of a nation.
Dames wanted Larry Moran for a thousand reasons. Society women winked at his vulgarity—he was a target for every little girl whose insides squirmed with the itch for a career. When he walked through the studio he left a wake of sighing secretaries.
But there could be no permanence for Larry Moran; life was a grab bag, he could reach into it to his elbows; every month there was a new picture and a new salary and a new fame.
Larry’s mind was always leaping ahead, inventing new camera angles, improving the lighting, speeding up the tempo—and going on the most complex and rambunctious binges known to man. Larry’s hair grew gray, his pictures were longer and more mature—Larry and his industry were growing up. It was 1925 and he was thirty-one—he had lived ten years in Hollywood, a lifetime long enough to span the conception and revelation of a new world that lived and trembled on a thousand silver screens.
The late twenties were a nightmare to Larry Moran. Suddenly the silent screen stood up and screamed, trying its voice like a new baby, and the sound split the earth, and futures and careers and fortunes were swallowed up—and among them, suddenly shaken from his pedestal and devoured by oblivion, was Larry Moran.
For it must be told, it cannot be explained. Hollywood swallows its children. Watch, as it bears them, suckles them and suddenly leaps upon them from the rear and gulps them down.
Time caught up with Larry Moran and gave him the razzberry as it passed him by. People told one another how sorry they were for him. His money ran out—there had always been a leak at the bottom. Then his health ran out—an unkind columnist said his mind was pickled in alcohol. One morning he woke up in a Hollywood hotel with a bad hangover and very little more and he looked at himself in the mirror. His face was lined with purple veins from too much drinking and his eyes were glazed and sunken with not enough forgetting.
“Larry,” he said to himself, “I knew you when. If you don’t get yourself a job today, I’ll see you in hell, and that’s a place inhabited strictly by agents and supervisors.”
He sent his suit out to be pressed. He gave the bellboy the line about it being easier to tip him in a lump sum at the end of the month. He drew his clothes on gingerly, to save the creases, and took the redcar to Classic Pictures, Inc. Classic Pictures was the brainchild of Sammy Glick, Hollywood’s boy producer, an amoral young man with a cold eye and a quick head. Maybe Larry wouldn’t admit it to himself, but he picked Glick because the older producers knew him too well for what he was. His virility made him sense their pity and resist their condescension.
Larry was tense inside and trying to be as casual as possible when he gave his name to Doc, the receptionist.
“Larry Moran!” Doc said. “I thought I remembered you.”
“That’s great,” said Larry—he wished people wouldn’t remember him. “I want to see Sammy Glick.”
“Any special business?” Doc asked.
“Hell, yes,” said Larry. “I was toying with the idea of going back to work.”
Doc called Glick’s secretary, Judy Becker.
“Larry Moran’s out here,” Doc said. “Goes back aways.” Remember him? He wants to see Mr. Glick.”
Larry Moran? Larry!
Judy was almost thirty-five. She had been one of those secretaries on the old lot. She had the same feeling now she used to have when she watched Larry Moran drive into the studio in his Austrian limousine, the only one of its kind in the country. One day she had been sent down to give him a message on the set; she remembered how he strode across the set to her, making a riding whip whistle in the air—she remembered being frightened by his youth and his fierceness.
She was young enough to be shy and excited then, and her message slipped under her tongue. It was a desperate moment and he had put his arm around her in front of the whole company, saying, “Take it easy, sister.” He was a fresh guy and she should have minded; she looked up into his face and told him the whole message and she was all mixed up. She wished it were longer and she was sweating and blushing and glad it was over just the same.
“Can you hear me? I said Larry Moran’s out here,” Doc repeated. “The old-timer.”
“Oh,” Judy said, making a nonstop return flight. “Send him right in.”
She had thought he was dead; it was such a dreadful thing to think. She looked into her mirror; it was such a silly thing to do, he wouldn’t even notice her. She daubed a bit of rouge on her cheeks to hide that studio pallor.
She could hear him coming. Should she recognize him? She didn’t want to hurt him. She felt choked up. She didn’t want to see him again, ever. She stared at the door, waiting for him.
Larry entered as jauntily as possible. This job was now or never and he must be casual—don’t let them get inside you—that’s it, smile, wink at the secretary.
“Hello, honey, is the boss in?”
“It may take a little doing, Mr. Moran. I’ll remind him who you are. Won’t you please have a seat?”
“Thank you,” Larry said quietly.
Judy had expected him to tell a dirty story about waiting rooms. She had found the change she feared. He was like a great volcano that has become quiescent. He seemed to be a much smaller man that she had remembered. And not as handsome. The shock of thick, brown hair that had given him a wild, careless look was gone. His hair was thinned now, and tamed. Everything about him was thinner and tamer.
There was a long silence. She had waited so many years to see him that she couldn’t think of anything to say.
Larry waited an hour and fifteen minutes to see Mr. Glick. She wanted to remind him of the time he put his arm around her absentmindedly on the old lot—she wanted to tell him what it meant for her still. She was copying her shorthand notes and banging the typewriter as loud as she could.
Finally she said, “You can go in now, Mr. Moran.”
Larry went in and found a little fellow, a dark man with an unattractive puss, behind an enormous desk.
Sammy Glick was friendly and smiling—he came forward and shook Larry’s hand softly.
Sammy knew the old-timer wanted a job; he couldn’t insult him, and he hoped to pass the whole thing off as a social call.
Larry could see what Sammy was trying to do. Did this young punk think he was a complete rum-dum?
“Listen, Sammy,” said Larry. “You and me know our business. I’m not the kind of a guy to beat around the bush. You’ve proved that you’ve got the courage of your convictions—you’ve got a fresh slant on this racket, and you’re going up. I was the biggest director in the game and I wouldn’t take up your time if I wasn’t sure I could still deliver.”
“Sure,” said Sammy, “everybody knows what you’ve done, but the business is changing. You were tops in the blood-and-thunder days. I guess you could still give us cards and spades on mellerdrammer, but times have changed. That old hokum is dead and buried; the people want something new, something fresh and light; they want young love, action, music and laughter.”
“Listen,” said Larry desperately. “Everybody in town says I can’t come back. If you give me a break you’ll be the white-haired boy.”
“Why kid ourselves?” Sammy said. “I already am.”
Larry beat a retreat.
“How about your second-unit stuff?” he asked. “God knows I know enough about this business to swing those—”
“But the tempo’s changed,” said Sammy, less politely. He didn’t have time for this. “I said all the people want now is young love, action, music, and laughter. I don’t think you’ve got the pace for that sort of thing anymore.”
Larry stood up. He felt leaden inside.
Sammy put his hands in his pockets. He was uncomfortable; he didn’t want an old-timer like Larry Moran going out hating his guts—it hurt his pride; it wasn’t good for his reputation.
“Listen,” Sammy said, “we all have our ups and downs, that’s the law out here.” He fished into his pocket and said, “Take this C-note. And there’s no hurry about paying it back.”
Larry clenched his fists. This had never happened before. He was wondering if he could squash this cockroach on the big green blotter of his big shiny desk.
And then something strange happened. Something hidden in Larry Moran, some alien thing that Larry did not recognize, reached out to grasp that bill. A broken voice inside him said, “Thanks, Sammy,” and his hand slipped into his pocket, where the bill rested quietly, hiding from the shame.
Sammy Glick’s phone rang. It was Tony Kreuger, the agent, one of his pals.
“Hey, Tony, howya, baby?” he said. “Naw, I’m not busy, lay it on me.” Then he laughed. “That’s right. Always ready for a good lay. You kill me, Tony.”
Larry walked slowly out of the office, his head hanging down as if his neck were broken.
When he came out Judy tried to look at him without pity, and she was able to, because she loved him. To Judy Becker he was still a force and a danger.
For Larry the show was over and he didn’t have to act any more.
“Well, girlie,” he said, “it looks like the curtain on the third act for me. It’s all over but the piano playing as you walk out.”
“What did he say?”
“He says he wants young love, action, music and laughter,” Larry said. “He says he wants four things I ain’t got.”
He looked her over once more. For some crazy reason he hoped Sammy Glick didn’t get to first base with her. Then he gave her an informal salute.
“Take it easy, sister,” he said, and started out.
Judy watched him walking out of her life. She was frantic for a moment and then was sure.
“Larry, wait.”
He whirled around in surprise.
“It isn’t too late,” she said, “believe me, Larry.”
He smiled faintly. “What’s it to you?”
“Everything,” she said. She knew it sounded too dramatic, but she didn’t care. This was no time for caution—you don’t think of subject and predicate when you’ve wanted a man for sixteen years.
“On the level,” she said. “I used to watch you on the old lot. It’s been that long.”
Larry looked at her. He believed her, “This is one screwy day,” he said.
“Larry, let me see you tonight, let me help you.”
“Don’t waste your time,” Larry said. “I’m old hat. I told you what he said. I can’t give you young love, action, music and laughter—that’s what you want—that’s what we all need.”
“I never did like formulas,” she said, “and anyway, I’ll take my chances.”
“No,” he said, “it’s crazy, it’s too late.”
“Not for me,” she insisted. “It’s my turn. The old wheel has finally stopped on my number.”
Judy knew there must be something about this moment that would burn them both. She knew that this was the last time, that if he walked out into the street now, and she went back to her dictation, that was the end for both of them.
“This will sound nutty,” she said. “I’ve been in love with you for sixteen years. I was in love with you when girls buzzed around you like bees. I was in love with you when you went off on yachting parties and stayed drunk for weeks, when the scandals came and the papers had to be hushed up. I was in love with you for a million years, and now—”
Larry looked at her hard and wrinkles spread in ripples from his eyes as he smiled.
“You win,” he said.
“Call for me at the Villa Carlotta at eight o’clock.”
“Okay,” he said, “what’s your name?”
“Judy,” she said. “Judy Becker.”
“I’ll be there, Judy,” he said, “in tails—we’re going formal.”
Larry was back at eight. He had downed four highballs. His dress suit was tight around the shoulders and slightly faded. He drove up to the Villa Carlotta in a taxi; the fare was ninety cents. He gave the driver his hundred-dollar bill. The driver laughed and said, “I haven’t seen one of them things since the Depression.”
“Okay,” Larry said. “Then wait here. We can use you—we’re going places.”
Judy came down in a purple evening gown. She must have spent a lot of time on her face—it didn’t look so round and white. She took his hand and squeezed it hard twice. She had been very excited all afternoon thinking of this and now she was subdued and slow moving.
He helped her into the taxi almost too elegantly and said, “To Chasen’s.” He turned on the radio. It played too loud at first, and then too soft, and this was very funny and they laughed at it together.
In the taxi Judy teased him, “It looks like you’ve got a head start on me,” and Larry said, “I have a feeling this is one race we’re going to end up together.” The radio swung with Artie Shaw. Larry looked at her and said, “I wish you had forced this on me fifteen years ago,” and Judy answered, “Don’t be silly. It couldn’t have happened then. You were too busy.”
They kissed then, for the first time, and the driver looked around and grinned and said, “Here’s Chasen’s.”
“Just like in the movies,” Judy laughed.
“I haven’t felt like this since I was a kid,” Larry said as they went in. “Young-love Sammy Glick should see us now.”
Nearly everybody who eats in places like Chasen’s watches the door, lapping up the success with their filets, eager to see the new people who are entering the charmed circle. When Larry came in with Judy on his arm, people put their heads together and wondered who they were, and one lady thought she had seen Judy at some party the week before and then Wally Connors, Judy’s boss when he was production manager for Larry on the old lot, looked up and said, “Jesus, that’s Larry Moran—haven’t seen the old cock in years.”
Connors walked over to Larry’s table and seemed very glad to see him.
“Hello, Larry,” he said, “where’ve you been keeping yourself?”
“Hello, Wally old kid, I’ve been traveling,” Larry said.
“Abroad?” Connors asked. “Why didn’t you look me up when you got back, you dog?”
“I’ve just been traveling from one hotel to another, jumping the rent,” Larry said.
Connors threw his big head back and roared. “Still the same old Larry Moran,” he said. “But on the level, you’re looking great. Things must be picking up for you.”
“Can’t complain,” said Larry. “Korda wants me to make a picture in England, but you know how I feel about this town.”
“Sure do,” said Connors. He was glancing over toward his table. He couldn’t quite make Larry out, and he’d rather let it go at that before he got involved.
“By the way,” Larry said, “you know Miss Becker, don’t you? Used to be with us on the old lot.”
“Of course,” said Connors, vaguely, “good to see you again.”
There was an awkward silence. Connors glanced over at another table and waved. “There’s Lolly Parsons,” he said. “Gotta see her a minute. Give me a ring, Larry, and we’ll have lunch sometime.”
“He and I used to be great pals,” Larry said.
“I can see that,” Judy said.
“See,” said Larry, “they still come over to me—we’re in, kid.”
He picked up the menu and read it from cover to cover. It gave him a kick to see those prices again. Then he beckoned the waiter with an authoritative wave.
“Why isn’t the 1931 Liebfraumilch on the wine list?” he demanded.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the waiter answered, “we have the 1933.”
“But the 1931 is the best year,” Larry said triumphantly.
Larry leaned back. He had won his right to belong again. He ordered the ’33 and lobster Thermidor. He squeezed Judy’s hand. “Baby,” he said, “I haven’t felt so good in years.”
“You didn’t have to order all that,” she said, “it’s too expensive. We don’t need all that stuff to have a good time.”
She was wondering how he could afford it. He told her not to worry, just leave everything to him.
Larry was getting drunk, and pretty soon Judy had a glow on too, and more people stopped over to say hello, and Larry leaned back very full and comfortable. He was beginning to feel his old warmth.
He asked for a phone extension and called Ciro’s and said, “Reserve a table for two for Mr. Larry Moran,” and he hung up and blew Judy a kiss.
Judy was drunk, not from wine but from the exquisite illusion of being out with the Larry Moran they all wanted to know. And I always thought I was a little too heavy to play Cinderella, she smiled at herself in her little makeup mirror.
“Snap out of it, Judy girl,” Larry said. “You’re a million miles away.”
And Judy snapped, giving herself to the moment. She’d forgot about thinking, she wouldn’t look before or after. “I’m right with you, Larry boy,” she said. “Have you heard the one about the Polish starlet who went to bed with the writer …?”
They both howled then, and started out, Larry yelling back to the headwaiter, “Next time have that 1931.” And they roared with laughter, all the way out to the taxi. “Next stop, Ciro’s,” Larry shouted, “and step on it, we open the show!”
“Young love, action, music and laughter, yowzer!” Larry Louis-Armstronged, and then he sang the words in time to the radio, “Young-love, action-and-music, laughter, do-dee-o-do. Can you imagine that little shrimp saying I don’t know anything about young-love, action-and-music, laugh-ter? Wait’ll I get one good picture under my belt, I’ll show that little worm—I wouldn’t have him as my office boy. Judy baby, you brought me luck—I love you, we’ll knock this town dead.”
“We?” Judy asked.
“Damn right!” said Larry, “we’re made for each other. We’ll fly down to Tijuana tonight and get hitched.”
“Kiss me,” Judy said.
“Are ya happy, honey? Say something.”
“Hold me, Larry,” she said. “Just hold me.”
Ciro’s was filling up. There was an air to that place with its smart patterns of black and white, the rustle of evening gowns, the seminude cigarette girls, the tailored moguls and their panting stooges, ingratiating agents doing business after dark, beautiful women with wet lips and cool mascara still searching for something, and poised ladies who had arrived, leaning back to watch the procession. With a well-practiced professional grin, the bandleader was driving his musicians through an impassioned cha-cha-cha.
It was not quite real, this topsy-turvy world into which Larry and Judy entered, holding hands and laughing—laughing because all of a sudden life was just too funny for words.
They were led to a table in a corner, ordered more wine and joined the dancers on the floor. As they whirled, they were tighter and tighter together until they almost fell. Somebody said, “If that’s what you want to do there’s a motel across the street.” It was Tony Kreuger, the tough little kid who used to be California lightweight champ until he met Sammy Glick and found out it was a softer racket to be a ten-percenter.
Larry and Judy just laughed at Tony, and Tony didn’t like it. But he didn’t know who Larry was so he couldn’t come on too strong until he found out.
Now Larry was making love out loud to Judy, and the waiters smiled, and Judy shook her finger, but Larry only kissed it noisily, saying, “We got a right—this is our engagement party! Hey, waiter, another bottle of champagne for me and the bride.”
When they got up to dance again, they noticed that Tony Kreuger was sitting right behind them with a blond showgirl.
“Those guys give me a royal pain,” Larry said. “Just another Hollywood tough guy. Like to see him get tough with me.”
When the floor show began, Larry didn’t bother watching it, he was too busy watching Judy. His eyes made love to Judy.
“As soon as this is over,” he said, “as soon as they wrap up the floor show we’re heading for the last round-up.”
Tony Kreuger looked over and glared. He had found out who Larry was. “Shut up,” he growled.
Larry stiffened. “Who do you think you’re talking to?”
“Don’t give me that act,” Tony said. “I heard all about you from Sammy Glick. Just because he’s nice enough to give you a handout today you think you can come here and be a big shot.”
This was a shock to Judy. She must have loved Larry from way back because she still didn’t pity him; she understood—nothing was going to come between them.
“Larry, sit down,” she begged.
Her voice pierced the fog that was settling around his head.
“Sorry, baby,” he said. “Let’s blow—let’s have some fun.”
Tony felt very proud of himself; his eyes shone like a cat’s.
Larry staggered out, Judy trying to help him without appearing to. They tumbled into the taxi, and Larry pulled all the bills he had left out of his pocket and told Judy to count them. She did, fearfully. There were fifty dollars left; she would like to tell him to save them, to take it easy, but there was no time, no time like the present, no time but this for young love, action, music and laughter; time was ticking, time was chasing itself around the block; last call for fun. So she shut her eyes again, they would loop the last loop together, and she said, “Fifty bucks, honey,” and he grinned and yelled two loud words to the driver, “Clover Club,” and he grabbed her chin and kissed her possessively and said, “Now we’re gonna see some action!”
And Judy said, “I’m right with you.” If Larry was going to lose his last fifty bucks, he was going to lose sight of Tony Kreuger, too. This night he would lose his shame and his weariness. Judy was with him. She was going to hold on to him; he could lose everything but her.
The Clover Club was one of those quiet, swanky places where big men threw away big money with such ease you forget it was money at all. It was very exclusive, for they had to be careful whom they took their money from. Larry and Judy climbed the steps to the door, and a dark face looked out at them from a peephole.
The face said, “Sorry, boss, don’t know you.”
Larry said. “That’s your fault, I’m Larry Moran.”
The face was puzzled. It said, “Wait a minute,” and disappeared.
In a moment it bobbed up again with another face. The new face started out more diplomatically. “I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t get the name.”
“You better get the name,” Larry said, “Or you’ll get a lot more than that.”
Larry pranced on the step like a mad bull; he puffed fury into the air; he held his head high in the air and looked down on these guardians of the gate.
He had won. He heard the bolt sliding and the knob turning. The big door swung open to them.
Inside, Hollywood was having an expensive good time. Larry stormed in; Judy thought he would make everybody look at him. She caught a glimpse of Wally Connors, and there was Sammy Glick, but Hollywood has always suffered from convenient nearsightedness. Nobody turned, nobody seemed to look, the rhythm of the Clover Club flowed on unchanged.
Larry shouldered his way into the crowd at the roulette table and asked Judy, “When’s your birthday, child?” “August fourteenth,” she said, and without hesitating he put five one-dollar chips on it.
The wheel spun and the little ball did its dance.
The wheel slowed, the little ball let each number catch it for a moment, then jumped away again, like a flirtatious girl, until it hopped securely into the arms of fourteen.
Judy said, “Try twenty-eight, that’s the year we first met,” and the wheel spun once, and spun again. But twenty-eight didn’t seem to show, and Judy was nervous—it had to for her sake; and the third time the ball leaped in, as if it knew it was overdue.
The wall of blue chips in front of Larry was growing higher. The man next to him said, “You’re getting to them,” and Judy noticed that several others looked over. Larry hadn’t time to look up.
Then Larry put all forty blue chips on red, the whole stack, and the weasel looked up in appreciation. And Judy prayed, and red it was, four hundred dollars in chips, sliding across the table to them; that little ball was human, it understood them, and knew their needs.
Larry and Judy and the wheel were going crazy; they were all spinning around together; they were hoping to spin forever. It seemed to Judy that they were out in a wonderful sort of snowstorm; it was snowing blue chips that would become a great fortress to protect them against the world.
When Judy saw the wall of blue chips grow higher and higher, she asked, then begged, “Let me cash in half of that for you—and play with the rest. Let’s see what it looks like—in real money.”
She came back from the cashier’s with a thousand dollars in cash—two five-hundred-dollar bills that first felt cool and crisp and then grew warmer and warmer until her hand began to perspire from their heat.
Back at the table Larry was drawing a crowd. A waiter was serving Scotch-and-sodas, courtesy of the house. The Bern-heimers who owned this elegant casino—illegal but winked at by the local DA—only did this for their best customers. Larry drank his quickly, too quickly Judy thought, and sprinkled chips across the board like seeds. He and Judy were the center of a circle of amazement and envy. “Who is this lucky sonofabitch?” somebody asked. Someone thought he was a big developer from the east. Someone else had heard he had made millions running in booze from Canada in the Prohibition days. Then Sammy Glick came up behind him, watched him hit again, watched him take another highball from the tray, and said, “You don’t know who that is? Larry Moran. The director. He was in my office just today. One of my oldest friends.”
Larry was ahead three thousand and the wheel was still spinning. Wally Connors said, “Larry—he’s been making pictures in England. Helluva guy, Larry. One o’ my favorite people.” And he went through the room proclaiming to everyone that his pal Larry Moran was hitting the wheel like his feet were attached to secret pedals and he owned it.
The name was hoisted above the room like a flag. Larry Moran had ten thousand dollars. Everybody saluted.
“It’s time to cash in,” Judy said.
She was right. The room was buzzing with Larry Moran. With every moment and every dollar he was becoming a better director. “He can still do a better job than half these punks drawing down big dough,” one producer said. “He had a great touch,” another said.
“The touch of a winner c’n make a lousy actress look good.” The old producer came up to him and shook his hand. “Congratulations, Larry,” he said, “glad to see you back. I’ve got a hunch Hollywood needs you more than England does. How would you like to meet me at the Vendome tomorrow at one o’clock?”
“Okay, pal, you got it.” Larry said. This time the ball bounced out of fourteen, but what’s a hundred dollars?
“Why, hello, Mr. Glick,” Judy said.
It was Sammy. He put his arm around Larry and whispered into his ear.
“Listen,” he said. “I happened to hear what A.D. said to you. How about dropping into my office first, about ten? I may have something hot for you.”
Larry nodded. The wheel was still spinning. He was hot. He would rub one producer against another like flints. He would start a real fire again.
Judy’s “cash in” seemed to be lost in the buzz of excitement building in volume around Larry. Like a star down front center stage, he took a stack of blue chips and set them on fourteen again. A blonde, a little tipsy, a bit player hungry for stardom, leaned over and kissed Larry on the check and set a few chips on top of his. “Lucky you, lucky me, baby,” she said.
The little blonde took the loss of her chips like a good sport. “Lose some, win some,” she said, moving in between Larry and Judy, handing Larry another drink and taking one herself. “My name is Penny. Your lucky Penny. My birthday’s June sixth. Sixth month, sixth day. Let’s play her together, honey.”
“Larry, it’s time to cash in,” Judy said, trying to push between them. “Cash in, Larry.”
“Spoilsport,” Penny said. “Party-pooper. Go away. We’re havin’ fun.”
This time the little ball came to rest on double-zero. The croupier raked in Larry’s stack of chips. “Double zero.” Judy said to the blonde. “That’s your birthday. Double-zero.”
When Larry blew another stack, and then another, the little blonde pouted. “Boo hoo, there goes my paycheck,” and then eyeing Larry’s dwindling but still substantial stack, “You give Penny five o’ yours, I’ll win it back. When’s your birthday?”
“He already played his birthday, and won,” Judy said. “You only have one birthday a year.”
Larry looked over at her, almost as if he had forgotten she was there.
“I need that grand,” he said.
Judy’s hand tightened around the bills. “No, Larry, please.”
“My dough,” he said. His words were beginning to thicken. “Give it to me, Judy. Gotta get more chips.”
People were beginning to notice them, in a different way. Some edged away. Nobody likes trouble. Especially in a casino. Things have got to flow nice. Nice when the money flows in. Flows in flows out. But don’t make waves.
Judy wanted to put that money in a bank for Larry. Give him some breathing time. Space to move back into the stream again. But Larry didn’t have a bank. He had a few chips in his hand and the wheel and his head were spinning together. When Judy held back he made a sudden move, grabbed the bills from her hand, and asked the croupier to turn them into chips to be placed on lucky numbers and rebuild the blue castle around them.
Judy wasn’t a partner anymore, merely a bystander, a witness to a night of wonders turning into a horror show, like the old Academy Award winner she had seen, the splendid Dr. Jekyll becoming the grotesque Mr. Hyde.
Ten by ten and then five by five the blue chips, as if drawn to a magnet in the croupier’s hand, moved back across the board from Larry’s dwindling pile. Judy watched and felt hopeless as five hundred dollars’ worth of new chips followed the other back to the croupier.
Larry just shrugged, had another drink and tried again, and again. He looked around for his little blonde mascot but Penny had moved on. David Selznick had just came in and he was flashing money at the crap table and beginning to draw a crowd. Judy didn’t really have to look around to know what was happening. The little blonde knew her Hollywood. D.O.S., as the insiders called him, was hot and famous after Gone With the Wind, and now with a new hit with Hitch … “Hey, David,” she was saying, “remember me, at the Spiegel party? Penny—I’m your lucky Penny …”
All the chips he had left Larry could hold in his own hand now. His eyes were a little glassy and the big smile of the early winner now seemed to be frozen on his face. Wally Connors glanced over at him and said to a friend, “Well, I guess once a lush, always a lush.” Other players at the table drew away from him as if he were suddenly infected with a deadly disease. No sweet smell here. The sour odor of failure. The Hollywood disease. Worse than TB in the old days. Worse than VD terminal.
Sammy Glick came by on his way to smooch D.O.S. and got the picture on the run. “Blew it again,” he said. “I knew it. Hit me for a hundred in my office and blows it. Fuckin’ has-been.”
Larry heard that and wheeled around. “Listen, you little sonofabitch. I heard that! I got more talent in my little finger ’n’ you’ve got in your whole—”
Two Clover Club bouncers straight out of Warner Brothers B-movies closed in.
“All right, Mr. Moran, it’s good night now.” Judy followed in a kind of cold trance, as they started moving him toward the door. “Wait a minute—wanna see the boss—sign a chit—five-hundred-dollar credit …”
Judy saw how they were able to move him without roughing him. Almost without making a scene. Though Errol Flynn said to his date, who looked like a cheerleader from Hollywood High, “Hey, I remember him. Larry Moran. Made one of my first pictures. Been wondering where he went.” To which the little jailbait beauty, who was not as dumb as she looked, said, “Well, now you know.”
Outside the club Larry was ready to pound on the door and demand his rights, but somehow Judy managed to get him back to the cab.
“Nex’ stop, Barney’s Beanery,” he said. “Open all night. Barney’s a pal.”
“Next stop, bed,” Judy said.
“Yours or mine?” Larry laughed. How could he still laugh, Judy wondered. Or maybe that’s how he went on winning, or losing and laughing.
“I’ll drop you at your apartment,” Judy said.
There was nothing to say now, so Larry whistled the “Hi-ho” theme from Snow White. In a few minutes they were at Larry’s apartment, a run-down three-story stucco on Yucca north of Hollywood Boulevard.
“Sure you don’ wanna come in?”
“I’m sure,” Judy said, thinking of all the times she would have said “Yes! Yes!” in her fantasies.
“Well, we had a run for our money,” Larry said. He was actually grinning. He wasn’t part of the tragedy. Only she was. Now he was the onlooker.
“I’ll call you—how’s for lunch at the Derby, OK?”
She nodded, thinking, almost admiring—how will he pay for it? He never worries: When he sings, “Life is just a bowl of cherries,” by God he means it …
He wasn’t too drunk or too broke to notice the look on her face, and he wouldn’t have been Larry Moran if he hadn’t wanted to leave her with an upper—“Come on, baby, it’s singin’ in the rain, let a smile be your umbrella, ’member what your boss Sammy said, what they want now is young love, action, music ’n’ laughter!”
She watched him manage to both lurch and swagger his way to the door of the faded yellow-brown stucco apartment. And she wondered when he’d find the hundred-dollar bill she always carried in her change purse.
Now if this had been one of Sammy’s movies, Judy was thinking as she slowly drove home, Larry would have multiplied his thousand by ten, marched out in triumph, signed a new contract and she would have become Mrs. Larry Moran.
But this was Hollywood, the dream factory, with emphasis on factory, where she wasn’t Loretta Young, and Larry Moran wasn’t Larry Moran anymore.