he: A Novel(20)

It is not much, but it is enough. The cloud breaks. Babe puts his hurt away.

I don’t want them to be dead, Babe says.

– What about injured?

– Only slightly. A finger.

– A toe.

– One ball.

– A ball each.

– A set.

He is still holding the treasured letter from Sir Alec Guinness when Ida appears from the kitchen.

What’s wrong? Ida asks.

– Nothing. Just something kind.

Do you hear? Do you hear, Babe?

Someone said something kind.





41


Broncho Billy Anderson, the Jewish cowboy, comes through for him.

Broncho Billy Anderson sells The Lucky Dog to Metro, and Metro signs on to release more of the company’s comedies, anchored by Broncho Billy Anderson’s lead actor. Broncho Billy Anderson sees in him something of what Mack Sennett saw in Chaplin, and Hal Roach saw in Harold Lloyd. Broncho Billy Anderson speaks to him in a different way from Isadore Bernstein, in a different way from Larry Semon. There is an enthusiasm to Broncho Billy Anderson’s words that he has not heard before, and a thoughtfulness to Broncho Billy Anderson’s expression.

But Broncho Billy Anderson is not an ideas man when it comes to comedy, and he feels the pressure to create gags, scenarios, bits of business for Broncho Billy Anderson’s pictures. He has grown too used to vaudeville, where the same act may put food on a table for years. The pictures consume, and their appetite is insatiable. Soon, he is forced to cannibalize his old routines – the steamroller from Nuts in May, the gavel from The Handy Man – but he finds that he enjoys the challenge. His mind begins to work in new ways. The results are not always successful, but the torpor of the stage begins to fall away.

And yet these disparate elements are not coalescing. He can see why. So can Broncho Billy Anderson.

Chaplin has the Little Tramp, with hat and cane.

Harold Lloyd has Harold, with boater and glasses.

But he, as yet, has no persona, no character. There is nothing to which the Audience can form an attachment. There is only a name, and even this is not his own. He tries on personalities like masks, only to discard them as imperfect. It is like attempting to catch a scent or sound with his fingers. It defies his grasp.

We’re okay, Broncho Billy Anderson tells him. We have time.

But he does not have time, not any more. Despite his reservations, his desire to protect himself, he has opened himself up to Broncho Billy Anderson. Broncho Billy Anderson’s belief has infected him, but Broncho Billy Anderson can only point the camera. Broncho Billy Anderson can only guide. Whatever is to follow, whatever is to save him, will come from him, and him alone.

But he has nothing.

Nothing but gags.

And there is Mae. He cannot work for Broncho Billy Anderson and wander the vaudeville circuit. He has made his choice. But he and Mae form a partnership. They are a double act, in life as on stage. Where he goes, so goes Mae. If he gives up the stage, so too must she.

What, then, is there for her?

Mae asks this question. She asks it before every picture.

– What is there in it for me?

Not that he does not love Mae. He does, for all their travails. He loves the smell of her, and the yielding of her flesh. He loves that she does not question his decision to leave vaudeville. He loves that she trusts in his gifts.

But Mae wants to work. Mae wants to be in pictures. And if he is to have a starring role, then Mae must star alongside him. He now makes it a condition of his employment.

Find something for Mae.

Every producer knows it. He will work hard and well, but Mae must be with him.

Broncho Billy Anderson has learned this to his cost, because Broncho Billy Anderson first assumes that Mae is his wife.

– She’s not your wife?

– No.

– But she has your name.

– I know, but the name isn’t real.

– Then why is she using it?

– We had to do it to avoid confusion.

– It hasn’t worked, because I’m confused.

– Well, you know how it is.

Broncho Billy Anderson knows how it is. Broncho Billy Anderson will remain married to the same woman, Mollie Schabbleman, for sixty years, but Broncho Billy Anderson knows.

– So why don’t you just marry her?

– I can’t. She’s already married to someone else.

Broncho Billy Anderson thinks that this might make a good gag if it were not the truth, and therefore sad.

But even this does not stop Broncho Billy Anderson from believing.

He panics. Metro is lukewarm about what it has seen so far. He falls back on burlesques. Rudolph Valentino is the biggest star in the world. Rudolph Valentino’s latest picture is Blood and Sand, so he will become Rhubarb Vaseline in Mud and Sand. Twenty-six minutes, three reels. It is a lot of money for Broncho Billy Anderson to invest, even with the Metro deal, but maybe this is the way to go.

And it’s good. It’s good from the first sight of the dailies, and it’s good in the edit, and it’s good on the screen.

Only Mae is not good. Mae is a twenty-eight-year-old woman (if she is to be believed, which she is not, because she is thirty-four and looks forty) who is convinced that she is beautiful enough to play Pavaloosky, the dancer and seductress who tempts the hero. Her common-law husband may love her fleshiness, but the camera does not, and Mae acts for people two cities away.