It wasn’t Brides. It was Fred Astaire, and the court decision was scrolling down the screen: “Intellectual property claim denied, irreproducible art form claim denied, collaborative property claim denied.” Which meant Fred’s estate and RKO-Warner must have lost, and ILMGM, where Fred had spent all those years covering for partners who couldn’t dance, had won.
“Broadway Melody of 1940,” I said, and watched the Beguine come up just like I remembered it, stars and polished floor and Eleanor in white, side by side with Fred.
I had never watched it sober. I had thought the silence, the raptness, the quality of still, centered beauty was the effect of the klieg, but it wasn’t. They tapped easily, carelessly, across a dark, polished floor, their hands not quite touching, and were as still, as silent as they were that night I watched Alis watching them. The real thing.
And it had never existed, that harmless, innocent world. In 1940, Hitler was bombing the hell out of London and already hauling Jews off in cattle cars. The studio execs were lobbying against war and making deals, the real Mayer was running the studio, and starlets were going pop on a casting couch for a five-second walk-on. Fred and Eleanor were doing fifty takes, a hundred, in a hot airless studio, and going home to soak their bleeding feet.
It had never existed, this world of starry floors and backlit hair and easy, careless kick-turns, and the 1940 audience watching it knew it didn’t. And that was its appeal, not that it reflected “sunnier, simpler times,” but that it was impossible. That it was what they wanted and could never have.
The screen cut to legalese again, ILMGM’s appeal already under way, and I hadn’t seen the end of the routine, hadn’t gotten it on tape or even backed it up.
It didn’t matter. It was Eleanor, not Alis, and no matter what Heada thought, no matter how logical it was, I wasn’t the one doing it. Because if I had been, litigation or no litigation, that was where I would have put her, dancing side by side with Fred, half turning to give him that delighted smile.
MONTAGE: Tight close-up comp screen. Title credits dissolve into one another: South Pacific, Stand Up and Cheer, State Fair, Strike Up the Band, Summer Stock.
Eventually I ran out of places to look. I went down to Hollywood Boulevard again, but nobody remembered her, and none of the places had Digimattes except A Star Is Born, and it was closed for the night, an iron gate pulled across the front. Alis’s other classes had been fibe-op-feed lectures, and her roommate, very splatted, was under the impression Alis had gone back home.
“She packed up all her stuff,” she said. “She had all this stuff, costumes and wigs and stuff, and left.”
“How long ago?”
“I don’t know. Last week, I think. Before Christmas.”
I talked to the roommate five weeks after I’d seen Alis in Brides. At the end of six weeks, I ran out of musicals. There weren’t that many, and I’d watched them all, except for the ones in litigation because of Fred. And Ray Bolger, who Viamount filed copyright on the day after I went out to Burbank.
The Russ Tamblyn suit got settled, beeping me awake in the middle of the night to tell me somebody’d won the right to rape and pillage him on the big screen, and I backed up the barnraising scene and then watched West Side Story, just in case. Alis wasn’t there.
I watched the “On the Town” routine again and looked up Painting the Clouds with Sunshine, convinced there was something important there that I was missing. It was a remake of Gold Diggers of 1933, but that wasn’t what was bothering me. I put all the routines up on the array in order, easiest to most difficult, as if that might give me some clue to what she’d do next, but it wasn’t any help. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers was the hardest thing she’d done, and she’d done that six weeks ago.
I listed the movies by date, studio, and dancers, and ran a cross-tabulation on the data. And then I sat and stared at the nonresults for a while. And at the array.
There was a knock on the door. Mayer. I blanked the screen and tried to think of a nonmusical to call up, but my mind had gone blank. “Philadelphia Story,” I said finally. “Frame 115-010,” and yelled, “Come on in.”
It was Heada. “I came to tell you Mayer’s going nuclear about your not sending any movies,” she said, looking at the screen. It was the wedding scene. Everybody, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, were gathered around Katharine Hepburn, who had a huge hat and a hangover.
“The word is Arthurton’s bringing in a new guy, supposedly to head up Editing,” Heada said, “but really to be his assistant, in which case Mayer’s out.”
Good, I thought, at least that’ll put a stop to the carnage. But if Mayer got fired, I’d lose my access, and I’d never find Alis.
“I’m working on them right now,” I said, and launched into an elaborate explanation of why I was still on Philadelphia Story.
“Mayer offered me a job,” Heada said.
“So now that he’s hired you as a warmbody, you’ve got a stake in his not getting fired, and you’ve come to tell me to get busy?”
“No,” she said. “Not warmbody. Location assistant. I leave for New York this afternoon.”
It was the last thing I expected. I looked over at her and saw she was wearing a blazer and skirt. Heada as studio exec.
“You’re leaving?” I said blankly.
“This afternoon,” she said. “I came to give you my access number.” She took out a hardcopy. “It’s asterisk nine two period eight three three,” she said, and handed me the piece of paper.
I looked at it, expecting the number, but it was a list of movie titles.
“None of them have any drinking in them,” she said. “There are about three weeks’ worth. They should stall Mayer for a while.”
“Thank you,” I said wonderingly.
“Betsy Booth strikes again,” she said.
I must have looked blank.
“Judy Garland. Love Finds Andy Hardy,” she said. “I told you I’ve been watching a lot of movies. That’s why I got the job. Location assistant has to know all the sets and stock shots and props and be able to find them for the hackate so he doesn’t have to digitize new ones. It saves memory.”
She pointed at the screen. “The Philadelphia Story’s got a public library, a newspaper office, a swimming pool, and a 1936 Packard.” She smiled. “Remember when you said the movies taught us how to act and gave us lines to say? You were right. But you were wrong about which part I was playing. You said it was Thelma Ritter, but it wasn’t.” She waved her hand at the screen, where the wedding party was assembled. “It was Liz.”
I frowned at the screen, unable for a moment to remember who Liz was. Katharine Hepburn’s precocious little sister? No, wait. The other reporter, Jimmy Stewart’s long-suffering girlfriend.
“I’ve been playing Joan Blondell,” Heada said. “Mary Stuart Masterson, Ann Sothern. The girl next door, the secretary who’s in love with her boss, only he never notices her, he thinks she’s just a kid. He’s in love with Tracy Lord, but Joan Blondell helps him anyway. She’d do anything for him, even watch movies.”
She stuck her hands in her blazer pockets, and I wondered when she had stopped wearing the halter dress and the pink satin gloves.
“The secretary stands by him,” Heada said. “She picks up after him and gives him advice. She even helps him out with his romances, because she knows at the end of the movie he’ll finally notice her, he’ll realize he can’t get along without her, he’ll figure out Katharine Hepburn’s all wrong for him and the secretary’s the one he’s been in love with all along.” She looked up at me. “But this isn’t the movies, is it?” she said bleakly.
Her hair wasn’t platinum blonde anymore. It was light brown with highlights in it. “Heada,” I said.