he: A Novel(22)

But Jimmy Parrott is the reason why he is here, the reason Hal Roach has given him a second chance. Jimmy Parrott is an epileptic, and his fits are getting in the way of his acting. Hal Roach requires product, epilepsy or not, so another performer is required to take the pressure off Jimmy Parrott and ensure that Hal Roach can fill screens every week.

His deal with Hal Roach is for twelve and a half percent of the take. It’s not great, but Hal Roach can guarantee distribution and a profile. Still, he has worked too hard to allow himself to be shortchanged now. He argues for a better cut, and fails.

He will spend his career arguing for a better cut, and failing.

He tries to detail his grievances to Mae, but Mae no longer listens to his complaints as she once did. Mae wants to know her part in the Hal Roach deal. He has his own series, and twelve and a half percent of something, but she has nothing. Mae cannot go back to vaudeville without him – and would not, she says, even if she could – but what is she to do instead? He must ask Hal Roach to give her work.

And he does, but Hal Roach is not Broncho Billy Anderson. Hal Roach needs him, but not so badly that Hal Roach wants to piss money away by giving it to the woman who shares this new star’s bed. Nevertheless, Hal Roach has a wife, Marguerite, and understands how a woman’s unhappiness can prey on a man’s mind. Hal Roach agrees to give Mae a role in Under Two Jags, the first picture of the contract.

Mae plays a dancer, and dances well, but the female lead is Katherine Grant, and Mae has sixteen years, one marriage, and one child on Katherine Grant. Mae has years of half-empty theaters, miserable dressing rooms, and cold lodgings on Katherine Grant. One year earlier, Katherine Grant was crowned Miss Los Angeles, and went on to compete in the Miss America pageant. It does not matter that nudie pictures of her subsequently appeared, and attempts were made to extort money in return for the plates. The problem vanished, because Katherine Grant had signed a five-year contract with Hal Roach Studios.

Mae watches her common-law husband act alongside Katherine Grant, and understands that it is the beginning of the end for her.

When he returns home that evening, he finds Mae weeping.

She weeps, and she cannot stop.





43


He works without rest. He is driven. This time, he knows he is not going to be cast aside after three or four pictures. He notices also that Jimmy Parrott is drinking more than is advisable, and chews diet pills for breakfast. As Jimmy Parrott becomes more unreliable, so too does his own star rise.

Yet it remains a low star: low wages, low advances, low percentages. Harold Lloyd, who has his own unit at Hal Roach Studios, is making as much as Chaplin, while he is not even clearing $200 a week.

But then, he has not made a picture like Safety Last!

He sees Safety Last! at a studio screening: March, 1923. He goes into the theater feeling as though he has found a home at last on the lot – greeted with enthusiasm, the prodigal son returned, Hal has high hopes for you – and emerges after seventy-three minutes with the realization that his ambitions so far have been modest, and his talent is more modest still.

It does not matter that the most dangerous stunts in Safety Last! are performed by a double.

It does not matter that Harold Lloyd, a control freak, cannot bring himself to watch this double work.

It does not matter that the clock face from which Harold Lloyd hangs is a fa?ade constructed on the rooftop of another building.

It does not matter how the trick is done, only that the trick is done, and done well.

Climax upon climax, gag upon gag: the picture is a source of wonder to him, dreamed into life by a man with a false forefinger and thumb who is almost blind in one eye, all because of a prop bomb carried in the right hand on the wrong day.

(When he meets Harold Lloyd for the first time on the lot, he asks for any advice that might prove useful. This is what Harold Lloyd tells him:

– Always check the fuse.)

He knows what they say about Harold Lloyd: that Harold Lloyd has become too big for his boots; that Harold Lloyd requires multiple takes to film the simplest of scenes; that Harold Lloyd cannot even position a camera without hours of debate.

Even when Harold Lloyd is praised, the plaudits are conditional.

Harold Lloyd is not a comedian, Hal Roach informs his listeners one afternoon. Harold Lloyd is an actor. Harold Lloyd is the best actor I’ve ever seen in a comic role, but still just an actor pretending to be a comedian.

What of it? he thinks.

I am a stage comic pretending to be a screen actor.

Mae is a married woman pretending to be my wife.

Chaplin is a daemon pretending to be a human being.

Is this fair? No, of course it is not fair.

Chaplin, like Harold Lloyd, is a genius. But Harold Lloyd is not a genius like Chaplin. No one is.

And perhaps that is for the best.





44


Still Mae makes her demands, still Mae seeks her roles, but a new bitterness creeps into her claims upon him.

Mae wants her cut.

They fuck less often now. He tries to stay out of her way, using work as his excuse – and it is a valid one, for the most part, although he still likes a drink, even needs a drink, especially before returning home to this woman.

– Why don’t you get rid of her?

It is Jimmy Finlayson who asks, Jimmy Finlayson with his Scottish burr, and his false mustache, and two toes missing from his left foot. Jimmy Finlayson has moved from Jack Blystone to Mack Sennett to Hal Roach, and now Hal Roach has promised to make Jimmy Finlayson a star, like Ben Turpin. Jimmy Finlayson doesn’t entirely believe Hal Roach, but whatever happens, it’s better than working and dying in a Larbert foundry.