he: A Novel(60)

Janet Gaynor is making $100,000 a picture, for three pictures a year.

Will Rogers is making $125,000 a picture, for three pictures a year.

Maurice Chevalier is making $150,000 a picture, for two pictures a year.

Mae West stands to make $500,000 for I’m No Angel alone.

Even Baby LeRoy, who is one year old, makes $2,500 for a week’s work on A Bedtime Story. He is no mathematician, but on a week-by-week basis Baby LeRoy is being paid more than he is.

The alimony settlement negotiated by Ben Shipman makes the comparative paucity of his income harder to bear. He was warned not to anticipate good news from the court, but even so the award still comes as a shock: in addition to losing his home, he also has to hand over half his salary to Lois for the first year, after which the payments will be reduced. Half his salary is a lot of money. Maybe, he thinks, he should just marry Baby LeRoy’s mother and live off the kid.

He is still in a rage when he is told that Hal Roach wants to see him. He has not even realized that Hal Roach is on the lot. Lately Hal Roach seems to spend most of his time flying his plane and killing animals that cannot run fast enough to escape Hal Roach’s gun.

This, and – it seems – trying to sabotage his star’s career.





118


He has not been getting along with Hal Roach as well as before. They have not been on good terms since he and Babe returned from their trip to Europe to find that the board of directors – personified always, for him, by Henry Ginsberg, who does Hal Roach’s dirty work – had suspended their contracts and salaries for the duration. He later learns that Hal Roach wrote to MGM during the dispute to warn of the possible break-up of the partnership, only to have Felix E. Feist over at MGM inform Hal Roach that this was unacceptable, and everything necessary should be done to keep the team together.

Everything necessary, that is, apart from giving them back their money.

Hal Roach doesn’t offer him a drink. He doesn’t care. He’s been drinking enough away from the studio, and in truth his head is foggy this morning. His head is foggy most mornings since the divorce. His head might be foggier still except that Henry Ginbserg has fired Richard Currier, who once supplied him with fine liquor for his dressing room. At least Prohibition has now ended, so supply is no longer the issue.

Consumption is the issue.

It will soon be Christmas, his first away from his daughter. He is not sure how he will cope. And yesterday was Teddy’s funeral. Teddy was buried at Forest Lawn.

Laughing gas. Of all the ways for a comic’s brother to die.

Hal Roach expresses his condolences on the loss of Teddy.

Thank you, he replies.

Hal Roach has suspended filming on Oliver the Eighth out of respect for his bereavement. They will pick up again in January. Despite any frostiness between them, Hal Roach is still a fundamentally decent human being.

Hal Roach also likes Lois, his ex-wife: not sexually – although who knows? – but in an avuncular way. Hal Roach thinks he is a fool to have left Lois. Hal Roach may well be right, because he is also starting to think this, but Hal Roach won’t hear it from his mouth.

We need to firm up the slate for next year, says Hal Roach.

– I’ve supplied Mr Ginsberg with some ideas.

– Mr Ginsberg informed me. Unfortunately, what you’re proposing to make are all two-reel pictures.

– That’s what we make. You built the studio on two-reel pictures. We became stars because of two-reel pictures.

– You made Pardon Us, and that was a feature. You made The Devil’s Brother, and that was a feature too. You’ve just finished Sons of the Desert, a feature, and that’s just great, maybe one of the best pictures you and Babe have put together. The previews are through the roof. Shorts don’t make money any more. Even if the studios want them, they can produce their own. They don’t need to buy them from us. Short pictures are dying.

He has in his possession the original scroll presented by the Academy to Hal Roach Studios for The Music Box. The picture wasn’t awarded a statuette, just the scroll, but Hal Roach decided that he should keep it, which was a kind gesture. Perhaps, too, Hal Roach needed the space it might otherwise have occupied for more dead animals.

A short picture won you an Academy Award, he tells Hal Roach.

– You’re not listening to me. That may be true, and The Music Box is a fine picture, but I’m trying to tell you that shorts won’t win me any more Academy Awards, and shorts won’t pay salaries. You must start thinking in terms of features. I can’t fund a slate of shorts and make them pay. Look, I’m not shelving short pictures entirely, but we all have to understand that their time is coming to an end. I’m going to need at least one feature a year from you. The first is this.

Hal Roach hands him a script – an outline, really. It’s clear that it’s something Hal Roach has been working on personally because his fingerprints are all over it, literally and metaphorically. It’s called Babes in Toyland.

Isn’t that an opera? he asks Hal Roach.

– Operetta. A little opera – you know, funny. I bought the rights from RKO, and MGM will finance it for a million, maybe a million and a half, as long as we get a singer for the male lead. Although, obviously, the picture is yours and Babe’s. Take the script away with you. Read it over the holidays. We’ll talk when you return.