“That part’s O. K.,” I said, “but tell me one thing: how are you going to sex up Betty Lee Fenton?”
“Why not — so you keep it clean? She ain’t crippled. She can throw herself around if somebody shows her how, can’t she? Anyhow, you don’t have to depend on her. There’s other girls over there — Ann Meadows and Gracie King and — and if you want to take anybody else, go ahead. I’m sending Danny Finn along with you. I was thinking you might work him in something along the line that he’s a drunk piano player that Gracie — say — is taking along to open a dance-hall in this mining town, and she’s got some girls with her and — you know — you can work it up.”
“Didn’t Paramount try something like that with Gene Pallette in Fighting Caravans three or four years ago? I didn’t see the picture, but I heard—”
“What of it?” Max asked. “Is the stuff you write going to be like anybody else’s? That’s what I’m counting on — the Parish touch — the angle you got that nobody else can come anywheres near.”
“Go on,” I said, “I bet you tell that to all the writers. Have you got a copy of the script?”
“Miss Shepherd’ll give you one. I appreciate this a lot, Bugs.” He shook a fist at me. “Like that, see, but clean.”
I said, “Absolutely,” and — with Danny Finn — flew over the mountains to Serrita.
I found Fred LePage in his tent — besides housing the company, the tents served as a U. S. cavalry encampment in the picture — rehearsing a small dark girl in a one-eyed fade-away. (A one-eyed fade-away is where a character that has been rebuffed glances sidewise — fearfully or reproachfully as a rule — into the camera or at whoever did the rebuffing, and slinks off.) Fred greeted me with open arms. “Hello! What are you doing here?”
“Didn’t Max wire you?”
His grin went away. “Maybe. I stopped reading his wires. He’s driving me nuts.”
“A fine business,” I said. “The director of a horse opera going temperamental.”
He had the decency to seem embarrassed. “Well, if you were in my shoes—” He broke off. “Uh — you know Kitty Doran? This is Bugs Parish.”
The small dark girl dimpled and held out her hand. “How do you do?”
Fred growled, “Come on, what’s the bad news?”
When I told him he hit the top of the tent and spun there. I had expected him to yell his head off, of course, but he put on a really grand performance.
“You know how Max is,” I said with soothing intent as soon as I could get a word in. “He hears Feldman’s going in for sex in the open spaces — we’ve got to have sex in our open spaces. What the hell? He’ll probably change his mind before—”
“That’s just it,” he howled. “He’ll change his mind again and stick me with a week’s retakes and I’m already three days behind. What was the idea of sending us way over here in the first place? And with nothing ready. I got to do every damned thing myself. What’s he trying to do — make a bum out of me? Why don’t he give me some of those crooner shorts if that’s what he’s trying to do?”
Fred was only a run-of-the-mine director, but his habit of getting pictures into the can a little ahead of his schedule and a little under his budget made him worth his wages, and he knew it.
I said, “I don’t blame you for squawking. Let’s see what you’ve shot and we’ll save as much of it as we can.”
He said, “I know it’s not your fault, but, by God, Max is driving me nuts.”
Betty Lee Fenton, our little gingham girl, came in and said: “Hello, Bugs. Say, is Max sticking this guy Finn in the picture? He knows I don’t like to work with him.”
“Danny’s a good comic, whatever else you say about him.”
She made a face. “The else is plenty.”
“How are you on good clean sex?”
“What?”
“I don’t mean tonight, or anything like that; I mean in the picture.”
“What is this — a gag?”
I moved my head up and down. “And it’s got Fred here rolling on the floor. The picture’s new title is Go West with Sex.”
Then it was her turn. “I might’ve known it,” she shrieked. “Once I let Max talk me into a ride-ride-bang-bang, he thinks he can do anything to me. Well, he can’t, and he might just as well find it out right now. If he’s crazy, I’m not. Don’t he think my public’s got a right to the kind of a characterization they expect of me? Does Fox try things like that with Janet Gaynor? Of course not. Sheehan’s got too much sense. Max is a fool.”
Fred said to her, “Now for God’s sake don’t you start cutting up.”
She turned on him: they were not very fond of each other. “Listen, Mr. Lubitsch, I’ve had—”
I said, “Come, come, my gal, you’re yelling before you’re hurt. Maybe—”
She turned on me. “You’re damned right I am! And I’m veiling long distance to Max right now.” And out she went.
Kitty Doran said primly, “I think she’s unreasonable.”
Fred said: “What? Oh! Uh — better scoot, Kitty. We got to work.”
“All righty.” She smiled brightly at him and came over to me. “I’m awfully, awfully glad to have met you, Mr. Parish, and I hope— Well, by-by, Freddy.” She waved her hand at both of us and went out.
“Whaty is thaty?” I asked Fred.
“She’s all right, just a kid that had a couple of bits in my last picture. I’m giving her a small part in this.” He looked as if a thought had struck him. “We might build it up a little. She’s pretty good.”
“She must be — if she needs private coaching in one-eyed fade-aways.”
“She’s just a green kid, of course,” he admitted, “but — you’ll see. You don’t think you got a chance of changing what La Fenton calls her characterization, do you?”
“No. I’m counting on Ann for the chief—”
“Sure,” he said, “and we can build up Kitty’s part, too. She’s just a green kid, but she takes direction swell and—”
“What the hell is this?” I asked.
He scowled at me. “Are you going to start that too? Any other director can pick a girl out of the line because he knows talent when he sees it, but with me it’s got to be because I’ve fallen for the dame and she’s playing me for a sucker. You and Ann ought to incorporate.”
“Ann doesn’t think your Kitty’s got talent?”
“Ann’s just being disagreeable. What’s the matter with women? Look here, Bugs: I’m not saying this kid’s a Hepburn; I’m saying she’s got something. What do you know about it? You’ve never seen her work. Wait till you do.”
That seemed reasonable enough. I said: “O. K., Freddy. Get your author and let’s start pushing his masterpiece around.’
I sat beside Ann at dinner that night and we went for a walk down a canyon afterwards. “What’s the matter with everybody?” I asked.
“I hadn’t noticed,” she said. “Location fever, I guess.”
“Sure, but that oughtn’t to come till you’ve been out a couple of weeks, and here you’ve all been out only since — what? — Sunday and you’re already split up into tight little groups going around dog-eyeing each other.”
“Well, Fred’s been in a bad humor and I guess it’s catching.”
“What’s the matter with him?” I asked.
She laughed, though not very happily. “It started with the Indians. It was somebody’s bright idea to send us to hell and gone over here because these Indians had never been used in pictures before. You know what I mean? Simple, natural, unspoiled, that kind of junk. What a bright idea that was! Never having worked in pictures before, these little red brothers had no idea of what extras get. All they knew was what they read about Garbo and Gable and they started off putting anything from a hundred dollars a day up on their price tags. Then, when we got ’em over that, we found out they didn’t have any horses and most of ’em didn’t know how to ride, so we had to get horses and teach them. Then Fred tried shooting them without putting Indian make-up on ’em — some more of that natural stuff — and had to shoot ’em all over again. All that wasted time and money — and you know how Fred is about the schedule and budget.” We took about ten steps in silence, then she said, “And then this cutie.”