he: A Novel(70)

Maybe Harry Cohn was not so different from Hal Roach after all.

He meets one of the Stooges, Jerome Horwitz – Curly Howard to the Audience – at a fundraiser for the troops. Jerome Horwitz has a reputation as a womanizer and a drinker, but all this is behind him now. His brother, Moses Horwitz, has hit Jerome Horwitz so often on the head in the course of their routines that Jerome Horwitz’s brain is bleeding into his skull. Jerome Horwitz shuffles as a consequence, and speaks with a slur.

But Jerome Horwitz keeps working, because Harry Cohn orders him to work, and Moses Horwitz continues to hit Jerome Horwitz on the head, because Moses Horwitz is afraid that the Stooges will otherwise be thrown off the lot. Eventually, Jerome Horwitz suffers a massive stroke and –

And returns to work, because Harry Cohn decrees it, and Moses Horwitz resumes hitting Jerome Horwitz on the head, except not so hard now, and Moses Horwitz tries to hit Larry Fine more often instead, just to take some of the pressure off his brother. So Jerome Horwitz shuffles and slurs for another year until a final stroke paralyzes him on the set of Half-Wits Holiday, leaving Jerome Horwitz to spend the rest of his days in a chair.

All because Moses Horwitz couldn’t pull a punch.

In his years with Babe, the only serious injury he suffers comes when he misjudges a step on set and tears a tendon.

Babe would rather have quit than strike him hard.





138


Babe takes the view that 1936 can only be better than 1935.

Babe is an idealist, and the gods laugh at idealists.

But 1936 does begin well, because Henry Ginsberg resigns.

Hal Roach is throwing money at features, and Henry Ginsberg’s sole purpose is to stop Hal Roach throwing money at anything. But features require investment, and Hal Roach’s creditors understand this even if Henry Ginsberg does not.

Jimmy Finlayson has been collecting for a going-away gift for Henry Ginsberg. Jimmy Finlayson has been collecting for a going-away gift ever since Henry Ginsberg joined the studio in the hope that, if Henry Ginsberg were given a going-away gift, Henry Ginsberg might go away. Now that Henry Ginsberg is actually going away, Jimmy Finlayson suspends the fund and spends the money on liquor instead.

The Bohemian Girl has been salvaged. It now contains so little of Thelma Todd that she might as well not be present at all, but the Audience flocks to it, and even Hal Roach has to admit that it hangs together well. But Hal Roach will not admit this to him, or recognize his contribution to saving the picture. Together, he and Hal Roach are storing up slights.

Let me explain something to you, Hal Roach says to him, as he stands on the splayed skin of a new dead animal. You see this studio? I built it, with my money. You see the pictures we make? I pay for them, with my money. You see the house you live in, the car you drive, the boat you own? You paid for them, but with my money.

This, of course, is not entirely true. Hal Roach makes pictures with other people’s money as well as his own, and does not share the profits.

So if you want to invest your money in your own studio, Hal Roach continues, or find some other sucker to do it for you, then be my guest. When you do, you can make all the decisions you want, and you can film all the gags you like, and you can ignore all the instructions you don’t like. You can run your studio into the ground, but my studio, you’re not going to run into the ground. My studio is going to remain just the way it is. You know what your problem is?

He tells Hal Roach that he does not.

– You want to be like Chaplin. You want to make a million dollars a picture. You want to follow your vision. But nobody is Chaplin but Chaplin. If Chaplin makes a million dollars a picture, Chaplin makes it because Chaplin has gambled his own money on the production and come out a winner. But you want to gamble my money, which means you’re not Chaplin.

– I know I’m not Chaplin.

– Then stop trying to behave like him.

– But maybe if you paid me more money …

Hal Roach smiles. It’s the first time Hal Roach has smiled at him in weeks.

– Maybe if you could stay married to the same woman, you’d have more money.

He smiles back. It’s a truce, although it will not last.

– I’ll take that under consideration.

– How is –?

Hal Roach pretends to fumble for the name, although Hal Roach knows it well.

Ruth, he prompts.

– Yes, Ruth.

Ruth’s fine, he lies.





139


He leaves the lot. He has work to do, but it can wait.

The Chaplin jibe has hit its mark.

Chaplin releases Modern Times. It is a marvel. He sees it twice, because he cannot catch all its beauty in a single viewing. Chaplin is making art in Modern Times, while he dresses up as an idiot in one picture and spends a week trying to cut a dead woman from another. Hal Roach believes that he has delusions about his place in the firmament, but he does not.

He knows that these pictures on which he lavishes such attention and imagination are fillers.

He knows that they are forgotten almost as soon as they are seen.

He knows Hal Roach is right, that the days of short pictures have passed, and the only way to keep making them is to do as Harry Cohn does with the Stooges and produce throwaways as quickly and cheaply as possible, recycling an endless cacophony of rage and violence.

But he knows, too, that these pictures are his art. They are all that he can fashion, and he cannot regard them as Hal Roach does. He cannot dismiss them as inconsequential. He cannot say that they do not matter, and therefore to lavish on their creation more money, more time, more care, more sweat, more pain, more joy than is necessary is to engage in foolishness.