Tansi looked none too happy. “I forgot to mention that Jake was coming with us, Edna.”
I surveyed the new arrivaclass="underline" fiftyish, tall and lanky with a bony, vaguely patrician face, all angle and jut, razor sharp-and an alpine Adam’s apple, very mobile. It was the face of a man born to ease and minor gastrological irritation.
“Jack Warner personally assigned me to steer the production of Giant to a smooth conclusion. I’m a trouble-shooter, really. I’m the one who has to anticipate sudden disaster.”
“Do you expect me to be one of the disasters, Mr. Geyser?”
For a second he seemed flustered, glancing at Tansi, as if, somehow, this were her fault. “Ah no, Miss Ferber. I’m just along for the ride.”
But I immediately understood that this was not true. His forced jocularity, his physical proximity, his narrow-slatted glance-the eyes held too short a time, then focused elsewhere-suggested there was a problem in paradise. I wondered when I’d discover it. Jake Geyser leaned back, fumbled with a worn leather portfolio, and stared straight ahead. A cigarette smoker, I realized, given the pungent scent off the English tweed sports jacket and the artfully creased flannel trousers. An affected man, but not people smart. A dangerous man because he’d been given the job of gatekeeper.
And something else. As the limo cruised down Wilshire, along the Strip, through the wide, palm-fringed avenues, out to Burbank, Tansi got noticeably quiet, her body hugging the doorframe, her head tucked in, reminding me of a frightened wren. She seemed taken with the landscape, a tourist in town. The climate of the car sobered, chilled, with me watching them both and realizing-with some fascination-the deep dislike the one had for the other. The spinster Tansi with the Hollywood glitter eye shadow at odds with the servile factotum with the graying temples and the lacrosse-player profile, a man whose duty it was to keep things kosher.
But what things? His presence in the sleek car suggested a problem. Two guides? Who was I-an Eisenhower cabinet member? Or was his presence a reminder to Tansi to keep still? A problem-I smelled it. I knew it to my marrow.
Tansi and Jake positioned themselves on either side of me in the hot projection room, beseeching me to take coffee, a Danish, some water, maybe tea, an avocado salad, anything, everything. Tansi lost all humor, ill tempered now. Jake Geyser kept clearing his throat.
I leaned into Tansi and whispered, “What aren’t you telling me?”
The remark caught her off guard. Without thinking, her eyes staring at the as-yet blank screen, she whispered back, “I can’t tell you.” She realized she’d slipped and started stammering.
I shifted to Jake, rigid beside me. He’d overheard my off-hand remark to Tansi. Still looking straight ahead, he declared, “I think you’ll enjoy this. I…”
“Mr. Geyser…”
For a reason unbeknownst to me-had there been a transition I’d somehow missed? — he began rambling about his ivy-covered undergraduate days, his merry hours on the Princeton fencing team, varsity, summers at his grandparents’ beach house in Tidewater, Virginia, something that connected to a scene I’d be watching: Rock Hudson as the Texan Bick Benedict wooing the feisty Liz Taylor as Leslie, in ole Virginny. When the lights suddenly dimmed, he shut up as though slapped.
I got caught up in the flickering images-and, with a tightness at my throat, I heard Liz and Rock mouthing my words, albeit bowdlerized by Moffat and what’s-his-name. I found them satisfying, a little like a gentle wash of warm water over the body. Rock seemed wooden, almost freakishly large, but then-that was my Bick Benedict, a man who comes to understand his inner power and beauty only with decades of living behind him. And Liz Taylor, luminous with those violet eyes and that aristocratic chin, well, she filled the screen with the resolve, grit, and ferocity of coquette-cum-steel woman. I closed my eyes for a second: this was good stuff, truly.
But I was not prepared, not really, for the footage of the young James Dean-the rebellious, moody Jett Rink, the desperate wildcatter, the driven boy. That is, my Jett Rink. The way he cocked his head, brought his hand to his brow, and the walk-a strut that was still somehow a slouching glide. This was ballet. This was a new man, light years from John Wayne or Gary Cooper. This was-I remembered a statue of a young wrestler I’d seen in a museum in Naples, a Pompeiian boy, tight, tense, ready to pounce. Somehow, watching him now, I forgot that I had not written James Dean’s life-only Jett’s. But it was as though he’d entered my book before I’d written it-and told me what to say. I fairly lost my breath. Tears came to my eyes and I fluttered, a little foolish and unhappy. Liz Taylor stood on a stretch of arid land and then, suddenly, James Dean filled the screen, and he mumbled. I had no idea what he said.
Jake Geyser grunted, almost involuntarily, and what registered was his dislike of Dean. Tansi, on the other hand, seemed to hold her breath, fearful of moving. She gripped the back of the seat in front of her.
When it was all over, I said aloud in the sudden brightness of the room, “I didn’t expect James Dean to be…” I stopped, the writer suddenly wordless.
Tansi breathed in. “I know, I know. There ought to be a law.”
I turned to Jake. “But, Mr. Geyser, I sense something in you…”
“Not really.” He turned away.
“I read character for a living, sir.” I was furious at his dismissal.
He looked back. “My job is to honor Warner Bros. Studio, Miss Ferber. Not to denigrate its stars.”
I rolled my tongue into a cheek. “You let your body do that for you.”
Tansi savored the exchange, emboldened by my comments. “Jake is a stickler for punctuality, cleanliness, and law and order, I’m afraid. Jimmy Dean is usually late if he arrives at all. He doesn’t shave, he doesn’t bathe, he’s disorderly. Some days he’s the opposite of everything I’ve just said. Charming, funny…”
“I can’t wait to meet him,” I said.
Jake, I noticed, was drumming his index finger on the chair rail.
I’d my doubts about casting the feckless, untested Dean as the destructive Jett Rink, until Gadge Kazan arranged a private showing of his unreleased East of Eden. I’d left the projection room convinced in the rightness of George Stevens’ move, mesmerized by the darkswept performance. And when East of Eden opened, and James Dean suddenly-overnight, as it were-emerged as a movie sensation, the new image of Hollywood, the face on the cover of Photoplay and Movie Screen, the mumbling, plaintive voice of the lost and wayward youth, well, I knew he’d bring his peculiar stamp to the part with the authority of the branding of a prize steer at Reata Ranch. But I hadn’t expected the sheer translucence-yes, that was the word-of his performance.
Both guides now closed in on me, grasped my elbows, and squired me out.
“Could you two please let me do my own walking?” I said, annoyed. “I’ve managed to go from point A to point B in this lifetime without bouncing off the walls like a drunken sailor on leave.”
Both mumbled apologies, but each still tried to edge in.
Day two, I thought, of what already seemed like the one-hundred-year war.
Later that afternoon, happily abandoned for a couple hours by Tansi and Jake, I sat in an easy chair in the Warner Blue Room. Idly, I leafed through the movie script. I was not happy with the considerable changes to my plot, and now there was talk of major shifts in the climactic gala celebration near the end of the movie. Jett Rink, the brutal oillionaire, drunk and spiraling toward his ugly end. The studio was going for over-the-top melodrama. Character, I kept telling myself, is more important than plot.
“Edna, I’ve been looking for you.” A deep voice from the doorway. Flat, brusque, gravelly, but oddly melodic and filled with laughter.