The rock and roll star sat and sat and sat. He waited and waited and waited. The film ran on and on. And on screen he was nowhere to be seen. His part was on the cutting-room floor. He had immediately gotten stoned out of his mind and had to be taken home.
Moses Wartberg had celebrated his transformation from producer to head of a studio with a great coup. Over the years he had noticed that the studio moguls were furious with all the attention given actors, writers, directors and producers at the Academy Awards. It infuriated them that their employees were the ones who received all the credit for the movies that they had created. It was Moses Wartberg who years before first supported the idea for an Irving Thalberg award to be given at the Academy ceremonies. He was clever enough to have included in the plan that the award would not be a yearly one. That it would be given to a producer for constantly high quality over the years. He was also clever enough to have the clause put in that no one would be eligible to receive the Thalberg Award more than once. In effect many producers, whose pictures never won Academy Awards, but who had a lot of clout in the movie industry, got their share of publicity by winning the Thalberg. But still, this left out the actual studio heads and the real money-making stars whose work was never good enough. It was then that Wartbeng supported a Humanitarian Award to be given to the person in the movie industry of the highest ideals, who gave of himself for the betterment of the industry and mankind. Finally, two years ago, Moses Wartberg had been given this award and accepted it on television in front of one hundred million admiring American viewers. The award was presented by a Japanese director of international renown for the simple reason that no American director could be found who could give the award with a straight face. (Or so Doran said when telling me this particular story.)
On the night when Moses Wartberg received his award, two screenwriters had heart attacks from outrage. An actress threw her television set out of the fourth-floor suite of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Three directors resigned from the Academy. But that award became Moses Wartberg’s most prized possession. One screen writer commented that it was like members of a concentration camp voting for Hitler as their most popular politician.
It was Wartberg who developed the technique of loading a rising star with huge mortgage payments on a Beverly Hills mansion to force him to work hard in lousy movies. It was Moses Wartberg whose studio continually fought in the courts to the bitter end to deprive creative talent of the monies due them. It was Wartberg who had the connections in Washington. Politicians were entertained with beautiful starlets, secret funds, paid-for expensive vacations at the studio facilities all over the world. He was a man who knew how to use lawyers and the law to do financial murder; to steal and cheat. Or so Doran said. To me he sounded like any red-blooded American businessman.
Apart from his cunning, his fix in Washington was the most important asset that Tri-Culture Studios possessed.
His enemies spread many scandalous stories about him that were not true because of his ascetic life. They started rumors that with careful secrecy he flew to Paris every month to indulge himself with child prostitutes. They spread the rumor that he was a voyeur. That he had a peephole to his wife’s bedroom when she entertained her lovers. But none of this was true.
Of his intelligence and force of character there could be no doubt. Unlike the other movie moguls, he shunned the publicity limelight, the one exception being his seeking the Humanitarian Award.
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When Doran drove into the Tri-Culture Studios lot, it was hate at second sight. The buildings were concrete, the grounds landscaped like those industrial parks that make Long Island look like benign concentration camps for robots. When we went through the gates, the guards didn’t have a special parking spot for us, and we had to use the metered lot with its red-and-white-striped wooden arm that raised automatically. I didn’t notice that I would need a quarter coin to get out through the exit arm.
I thought this was an accident, a secretarial slipup, but Doran said it was part of the Moses Wartberg technique to put talent like me in its place. A star would have driven right back off the lot. They would never put it over with directors or even a big featured player. But they wanted writers to know that they were not to get delusions of grandeur. I thought Doran was paranoid and I laughed, but I guess it irritated me, just a little.
In the main building our identities were checked by a security guard, who then made a call to make sure we were expected. A secretary came down and took us up in the elevator to the top floor. And that top floor was pretty spooky. Classy but spooky.
Despite all this, I have to admit I was impressed with Jeff Wagon’s charm and movie business bottom line. I knew he was a phony and hustler, but that seemed natural somehow. As it is not unnatural to find an exotic-looking inedible fruit on a tropical island. We sat down in front of his desk, my agent and I, and Wagon told his secretary to stop all calls. Very flattering. But he obviously had not given the secret code word really to stop all calls because he took at least three during our conference.
We still had a half hour to wait for Wartberg before the conference would start. Jeff Wagon told some funny stories, even the one about how the Oregon girl took a slice out of his balls. “If she’d done a better job,” Wagon said, “she would have saved me a lot of money and trouble these past years.”
Wagon’s phone buzzed, and he led me and Doran down the hail to a luxurious conference room that could serve as a movie set.
At the long conference table sat Ugo Kellino, Houlinan and Moses Wartberg chatting easily. Farther down the table was a middle-aged guy with a head of fuzzy white hair. Wagon introduced him as the new director for the picture. His name was Simon Beilfort, a name I recognized. Twenty years ago he had made a great war film. Right afterward he had signed a long-term contract with Tri-Culture and become the ace schlockmaster for Jeff Wagon.
The young guy with him was introduced as Frank Richetti. He had a sharp, cunning face and was dressed in a combo Polo Lounge-rock star-California hippie style. The effect was stunning to my eyes. He fitted perfectly Janelle’s description of the attractive men who roamed Beverly Hills as Don Juan-hustler-semipimps. She called them Slime City. But maybe she just said that to cheer me up. I didn’t see how any girl could resist a guy like Frank Richetti. He was Simon Beilfort’s executive producer on the film.
Moses Wartberg wasted no time on any bullshit. His voice laden with power, he put everything right on the line.
“I’m not happy with the script Malomar left us,” he said. “The approach is all wrong. It’s not a Tri-Culture film. Malomar was a genius, he could have shot this picture. We don’t have anybody on this lot in his class.”
Frank Richetti broke in, suave, charming. “I don’t know, Mr. Wartberg. You have some fine directors here.” He smiled fondly at Simon Bellfort.
Wartberg gave him a very cold look. We would hear no more from Richetti. And Beilfort blushed a little and looked away.
“We have a lot of money budgeted for this picture,” Wartberg went on. ‘We have to insure that investment. But we don’t want the critics jumping all over us, that we ruined Malomar’s work. We want to use his reputation for the picture. Houlinan is going to issue a press release signed by all of us here that the picture will be made as Malomar wanted it to be made. That it will be Malomar’s picture, a final tribute to his greatness and his contribution to the industry.”