he: A Novel(69)

We can’t show the picture as it is, says Hal Roach. It’ll become a freak show.

In this, he knows, Hal Roach is correct. No one in the room wishes for The Bohemian Girl to become a magnet for ghouls. But Thelma Todd, as the Gypsy Queen, is the love interest in the picture. Cutting her scenes is not an option.

We’ll have to reshoot, he says.

We could hire another actress, says Henry Ginsberg.

Hal Roach nixes this. Replacing Thelma Todd will seem callous.

Let’s just give Mae more lines, he says. We’ll make her the love interest, cut most of the Gypsy Queen’s lines, and just recast that as a minor role.

How long will it take? asks Hal Roach.

– Two weeks. Perhaps even ten days, if we’re fast.

Hal Roach looks to Henry Ginsberg. Henry Ginsberg scribbles some figures on a pad. Babe sighs.

We can afford one week, says Henry Ginsberg.

What about flowers for the funeral? says Charlie Rogers. Can we afford those, or should we just pick some from the side of the road?

We’ll send a wreath, says Henry Ginsberg.

That’s the thing about Henry Ginsberg: Henry Ginsberg is impervious to sarcasm.

It’s settled then, says Hal Roach. We break, and we’ll reshoot in the first week of January. Keep me posted on the script, and with suggestions for a new Gypsy Queen.

Gentlemen, happy holidays, and I’ll see you at the cemetery.





135


At the Oceana Apartments, he realizes that Lois, his daughter, has now lived longer than Thelma Todd.

He feels remorse at his failings as a father to Lois, although he rarely speaks of them. He found holidays difficult in the aftermath of the divorce, and Christmas in particular. It pained him not to be part of his family, to be separated from his daughter in the days before and the days after. To ease his own pain, he would lie to her. He would tell her that he was going out of town for the season, although this was not the case. Only later in life did he confess to her the truth, and even then he struggled to articulate the reasons for his deception.

Such foolishness.

All those lost days.





136


Thelma Todd’s death hangs hooks in the water. They snag on flesh long after The Bohemian Girl has been forgotten.

Ted Healy, who was fucking Thelma Todd under Pat DiCicco’s nose, is not bright enough to leave Los Angeles. Ted Healy still goes to clubs, and still gets drunk, but somehow Ted Healy also contrives to marry and have a child. Ted Healy is celebrating this child’s birth when Pat DiCicco, who does not forgive and does not forget, spies him at the Trocadero on Sunset Strip. Pat DiCicco is drinking with Wallace Beery, the same Wallace Beery who was once tapped by Hal Roach to be Babe’s replacement during the first of the contract spats.

Ted Healy does not like Wallace Beery. In this, at least, Ted Healy shows some discernment. Given Wallace Beery’s present company, Ted Healy should just move on, but Ted Healy has somehow convinced himself that Thelma Todd’s death has brought to an end any lingering animosity Pat DiCicco may have toward him, or maybe Ted Healy is just dumb enough to believe that Pat DiCicco never knew about him and Thelma Todd to begin with.

Ted Healy argues with Wallace Beery. The argument grows heated. It moves outside, and Pat DiCicco moves with it, as a shadow follows the sun.

Together, Wallace Beery and Pat DiCicco beat Ted Healy so badly that Ted Healy dies two days later.

Which, he considers, at least proves conclusively that there is nothing funny about Wallace Beery.

He hears the rest of the story years later, when he moves to Fox, where there is no great love for MGM or Louis B. Mayer.

Wallace Beery has sobered up by the time Ted Healy dies in hospital, and realizes the depth of his troubles. Because Wallace Beery does not generally move in the kind of circles familiar with murder, it’s left to Louis B. Mayer to clean up the mess created by one of his biggest stars. Wallace Beery takes an unscheduled vacation to Europe. Louis B. Mayer dispatches Eddie Mannix and Howard Strickling, his bagmen, to make some calls and spend some money. Ted Healy’s wife Betty, a player on the MGM lot, is fired for talking to the press about the lack of progress in the investigation into her husband’s killing. Anyone else who complains gets a visit from Pat DiCicco, although these dissenting voices are rare. It’s fortunate that few people were fond of Ted Healy, apart from his wife, and who in this town cares what she, a nobody, thinks about anything anyway?

He cares.

He knows Betty Healy. Betty Healy plays his wife in Our Relations. In the years that follow, he is always available when Betty Healy calls, and listens as she speaks fondly of a man largely despised by others.

They got away with it, Betty Healy tells him. They killed Ted, and they got away with it.

And he can only reply, Yes, they got away with it.

That is what such men do.





137


At the Oceana Apartments, he is inclined to switch off the television when the Three Stooges appear. In part this is because they remind him of Ted Healy, who reminds him in turn of Thelma Todd. Mostly it’s because he does not find the Stooges funny. He sees no beauty in the Stooges. He sees no gentleness. He sees only hatefulness and violence.

He does, though, feel pity for them. Hal Roach might have been careful with a buck, but Hal Roach was no ogre. The Stooges suffered at Columbia under Harry Cohn, who was an ogre, and ran with the kind of men who made Pat DiCicco look like a priest. Harry Cohn would sign the Stooges only to cheap one-year contracts, and kept them in the dark about the level of their success. Harry Cohn also drank with the Stooges’ manager, Harry Romm, and together they fucked the Stooges three ways to Sunday.