Faulkner & Hollywood

(continued)

By D.E. Fredd

"Miss Allain, I'm supposed to give you this note." I held it out with two fingers as Gladys taught me.

"Can't you just pull across the street into the park and read the sports page while I take a nap?" She slumped in the seat and shut her eyes.

I sat silently. I was a servant caught between two masters. After a few minutes she sat up. "Sorry, kid, I was being human for a few minutes. Let me see what Weinstein wants this time."

She read the note, put it on her lap for a moment then reread it.

"Is it bad news? Maybe I can help."

"No, it's not bad news. It's just that I've been parading around in my skimpy Maureen O'Sullivan, 'Me Tarzan; you Jane' costume that's all the rage now. And I was doing that for the last thirty-six hours, servicing some men Solly wants favors from. I haven't even had a bath or a square meal. You can't live on champagne and caviar all the time. What I wouldn't give for a nice brisket and some potato pancakes with applesauce from Wyman's deli..."

I sat awaiting directions. She patted my knee. "Listen to me. I bet Solly puts you through the wringer every day. I've heard about you from Gladys. If she says you're aces, you're okay by me. We're headed south to Jackson Street. There are some bungalows where the non-studio writers live when they're in town. Solly wants me to check on Bill Faulkner; he's late with a script and may have a little problem." As I slipped the Lafayette into first gear, she brought a thumb to her lips and tipped her head back open-mouthed to emulate what the "little problem" might be.

She dropped off into a deep sleep as I drove. I'm not good with age, but I thought she was at least as old as Gladys, maybe a few years more. Her features were pasty white and bloated like a body too long in a tub. She was in Solly's "date book" although I never drove him to see her. I'd seen her stills in the office casting albums. Her head shots must have been taken several years ago, and like every aspiring star, she had her photo snapped with some big names. In the early 1930s, I knew she had been in Eddie Cantor's Whoopee and played a bit part in Footlight Parade's "By the Waterfall" number with Cagney, Dick Powell and Joan Blondell. What she had done since then was a mystery, but she might have become what the industry called a "dead hoofer" by putting on too much weight in the hip and thighs for the camera.

I navigated to the right address, and when we came to a dead stop she snorted to consciousness. A long line of faded, pink stucco bungalows sat shoulder to shoulder, each with a napkin-size patio out front, a few jacaranda trees and a concrete planter standing guard by the door. Nothing seemed to fit, everything was out of place like a neat junkyard, including the steel-gray-haired gentleman sitting in one of those wooden deck chairs that are hard to open and impossible to close.

I'd heard of Faulkner. He was one of the big names Hollywood thought would add some class to its pictures now that the Hayes Act had established a committee to oversee decency and moral turpitude for the silver screen. I'd never read anything by him, but seen Today We Live with Joan Crawford, which he and Howie Hawks had written. The drinking stories involving Faulkner and Hawks were minor legends.

As Margot and I walked up the path towards him he barely nodded. His huge head tilted questioningly on his shoulders like a mistreated dog waiting for a human gesture as to what it was expected to do next. It was well past noon and in the high eighties. His tweed jacket hung on the back of the chair as a concession to the heat, but a long-sleeve white shirt and tie had not. One hand held a cigarette close to extinction, the other a glass just a few sips shy of being empty.

My mother would call him a good drunk. He was neat as a pin, his movements calculated not to offend or give away his condition. He rose slightly from the chair and tipped an imaginary hat in homage to Margot. Drinking was a quiet, depressing business for him as if there should be a wake nearby. He raised his glass towards an object in the sky.

"I've been watching it for twenty minutes. Can't exactly tell if it's a hawk or vulture."