he: A Novel(39)

Making whoopee, huh? If you fellas are gonna take chances, you better be more careful.

He celebrates the release of the picture not at home with his family, but in Alyce Ardell’s apartment. He celebrates by fucking Alyce Ardell in her bed.

The big thing is, you got to keep it as far away from your wife as you can.

He has heard the talk about Alyce Ardell. Some say she is a gold-digger, but she has never asked him for money. He thinks there may be other men whom she does ask, but he does not want to know of them. If Babe suspects where he has been – and it may be that Babe does – nothing is said.

We married men, we gotta stick together.





83


At the Oceana Apartments, Unaccustomed As We Are will never appear on his television screen. The soundtrack discs have been lost, and he is not sure if a usable print still exists. He always preferred the silent pictures anyway, but it is no consolation.

Perhaps Unaccustomed As We Are has joined the ranks of the lost. If so, he will be sorry. It may not have been perfect, but it has a personal significance as the duo’s first talkie, even if no one else was exercised enough to preserve it.

He and Babe argued on the set of the picture. Or they argued on one of their pictures – this he knows – and it may as well be Unaccustomed As We Are. He holds that it may have been their only real argument. It is the sole argument he can remember, which means that it is either their only falling out or their only significant falling out. Either way, if a man is to recall a disagreement with his friend, then let it be one such as this.

Babe has his vanities. They are minor, but on occasion they rouse themselves to preen. One of Babe’s vanities is his hair. Babe does not like to see his hair in bangs. Babe prefers his hair to be slicked back and tidy, because Babe perspires under the lights.

But the Audience loves to see Babe’s hair smeared upon his forehead. Babe’s hair is a kind of barometer, a physical manifestation of the deterioration of any given set of circumstances. For the most part, Babe plays along, but not on this day. Babe announces that his hair will not be worn in bangs. Perhaps Babe, too, is feeling the pressure on the set. He tries to convince Babe that the bangs are necessary. Babe refuses to accept this. Voices are raised. Time is wasted.

Eventually, Babe settles for a degree of dishevelment. Apologies are exchanged. But he always knows when Babe is feeling low, because Babe starts complaining about his hair.

This, then, is the sum total of harsh words exchanged in all their years together.





84


Hal Roach is stretched. Hal Roach is a man on a rack. The rack is not uncomfortable, and comes with booze and cigars, but it is a rack nonetheless. In 1929, Hal Roach Studios will release close to fifty pictures, which means that Hal Roach will release close to fifty pictures, because Hal Roach is the studio.

Hal Roach tries to keep life informal on his lot. There is little security, and employees are identifiable only by the small brass numbered pins they are required to wear. It is not uncommon to see actors running errands for Hal Roach’s parents, who live in an apartment on the property. Everyone eats in the studio commissary on Washington Boulevard.

Hal Roach has built the reputation of Hal Roach Studios by ensuring that every film made has some measure of involvement from himself: an original story idea, a suggestion for improvements, even Hal Roach as director. If it does not, then by definition, it is not a Hal Roach picture.

Neither does Hal Roach make pictures in a hurry. This is not Poverty Row. The creative teams are given time to work. One has to spend money to make money, but one must have the money to spend in the first place. Hal Roach has money, possibly a great deal of it, but is also aware of how easy it is to go from having a great deal of money to having no money at all.

Hal Roach is amiable in public, but worries in private. Sometimes, when particularly vexed, Hal Roach plays the saxophone or the violin. Hal Roach finds this conducive to thought and reflection. Music flows through the lot, and the staff surmise that it is best to leave Hal Roach alone.

Hal Roach is playing his saxophone.

Hal Roach is being left alone.

Elmer Raguse is still complaining about damage to his equipment. Hal Roach believes that if Elmer Raguse were permitted to do so, Elmer Raguse would sleep on the lot each night alongside his valves and microphones, or find a way to take them home to bed with him.

Hal Roach has underestimated the impact that sound will have on his pictures. Hal Roach realizes that dialogue is not simply a spoken version of Beanie Walker’s title cards, that speech is not merely an adjunct to pantomime, that music and action and words must now work in unison. Hal Roach has always prized story, but sound recording has changed the manner in which every future tale will be presented. Some day soon, Hal Roach knows, a comedy will be made in which the humor arises from dialogue alone. Hal Roach would very much like that comedy to bear his name.

And there are rumors of affairs among his stars. There are always rumors of affairs – these people are alarmingly promiscuous – but Hal Roach needs to be kept aware of them, just in case fires must be extinguished.

Some of these rumors are more troubling than others.

Alyce Ardell has been glimpsed on the lot, or near the lot, or has passed the lot waving from a train window, naked from the waist up, while the Columbia Saxophone Sextette plays ‘Frogs’ Legs’. The details are unimportant. This is a family business. Discretion is required.