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Fitzgerald, F. Scott
(Francis Scott) f
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THE LAST TYCOON
COPYRIGHT, 1941 BY
CHARLES SCBIBNER'S SONS;
RENEWAL COPYRIGHT 1969
FRANCES SCOTT FITZGERALD SMITH
All rights reserved. No part of this book
be reproduced in any form without
the permission of Cimrks Scribners Sons.
Printed in the Unfed of America
FOREWORD
SCOTT FITZGERALD died suddenly of a
ber 21, 1940) the day after he had written the of
Chapter 6 of his novel. The text which is is a
made by the author after considerable rewriting; but It is by
no means a finished version. In the margins of every
one of the episodes, Fitzgerald had written comments a
of them are included in the noteswhich Ms dissat-
isfaction with them or indicated his ideas revising
His intention was to produce a novel as concentrated as
carefully constructed as The Great Gatsby had been, and he
would unquestionably have sharpened the effect of most of
these scenes as we have them by cutting and by heightening
of color. He had originally planned that the novel should be
about 60,000 words long, but he had written at the time of Ms
death about 70,000 words without, as will be seen from Ms
outline, having told much more than half his story. He had
calculated, when he began, on leaving himself a margin of
10,000 words for cutting; but it seems certain that the novel
would have run longer than the proposed 60,000 words. The
subject was here more complex than it had been in The Great
Gatsbythe picture of the Hollywood studios required more
space for its presentation than the background of the drinking
life of Long Island; and the characters needed more room for
their development.
This draft of The Last Tycoon, then, represents that point in
the artist's work where he has assembled and organized his
6 THE LAST TYCOON
material and acquired a firm grasp of his theme, but has not
yet brought it finally into focus. It is remarkable that, under
these circumstances, the story should have already so much
power and the character of Stahr emerge with so much inten-
sity and reality. This Hollywood producer, in his misery and
grandeur, is certainly the one of Fitzgerald's central figures
which he had thought out most completely and which he had
most deeply come to understand. His notes on the character
show how he had lived with it over a period of three years or
more, filling in Stahr's idiosyncrasies and tracing the web of his
relationships with the various departments of his business,
Amory Elaine and Antony Patch were romantic projections
of the author; Gatsby and Dick Diver were conceived more or
less objectively, but not very profoundly explored. Monroe
Stahr is really created from within at the same time that he
is criticized by an intelligence that has now become sure of
itself and knows how to assign him to his proper place in a
larger scheme of things.
The Last Tycoon is thus, even in its imperfect state, Fitz-
gerald's most mature piece of work. It is marked off also from
his other novels by the fact that it is the first to deal seriously
with any profession or business, The earlier books of Fitz-
gerald had been preoccupied with debutantes and college
boys, with the fast lives of the wild spenders of the twenties.
The main activities of the people in these stories, the occasions
for which they live, are big parties at which they go off like
fireworks and which are likely to leave them in pieces. But the
parties in The Last Tycoon are incidental and unimportant;
Monroe Stahr, unlike any other of Scott Fitzgerald's heroes, is
inextricably involved with an industry of which he has been
one of the creators, and its fate will be implied by his tragedy.
The moving-picture business in America has here been ob-
served at a close range, studied with a careful attention and
dramatized with a sharp wit such as are not to be found in
combination, in any of the other novels on. the subject. The
THE LAST TYCOON 7
Tycoon is far and the we had
Hollywood, and it is the one us
It has to this
an outline of the rest of the as to
develop it, and with the
deal, often vividly, with the
1941
CHATTER 1
THOUGH I HAVEN'T ever been on the I up la
pictures. Rudolph Valentino came to my pioiy
or so I was told, I put this down only to
before the age of reason I was in a to the
wheels go round.
I was going to write my
Daughter, but at eighteen you never quite get to aay-
thing like that. It's just as well it would have as flat as an
old column of Lolly Parsons*. My father was in the picture
business as another man might be in cotton or steel, I
took it tranquilly. At the worst I accepted Hollywood with the
resignation of a ghost assigned to a haunted house, I
what you were supposed to think about it but I was obstinately
unhorrified.
This is easy to say, but harder to make people understand.
When I was at Bennington some of the English teachers who
pretended an indifference to Hollywood or its products, really
hated it Hated it way down deep as a threat to their existence.
Even before that, when I was in a convent^ a sweet little nun
asked me to get her a script of a screen play so she could *teach
her class about movie writing** as she had taught them about
the essay and the short story. I got the script for her, and 1
suppose she puzzled over it and puzzled over it, but it was
never mentioned in class, and she gave it back to me with an
air of offended surprise and not a single comment. That's what
I half expect to happen to this story.
10 THE LAST TYCOON
You can for like I did, or you can
it the we for we don't
understand. It can be but only dimly and in
Not half a to
the whole of in And perhaps
the closest a can to the set-up is to try under-
stand one of men*
The world from an I knew. Father always had us
travel back forth way from school and college. After
my sister died when I a junior, 1 travelled to and fro alone,
and the journey always me think of her, made me some-
what solemn and subdued, there wore picture peo-
ple I knew on board the plane, and occasionally there was an
attractive colege boybut not often during the depression. I
seldom really fel during the trip, what with thoughts
of Eleanor and the sense of that sharp rip between coast and
mast at least not till we had left those lonely little airports in
Tennessee.
This trip was so rough that the passengers divided early into
those who turned in right away and those who didn't want
to turn in at all. There were two of these latter right across
from me, and I was pretty sore from their fragmentary con-
versation that they were from Hollywood one of them be-
cause he looked like it: a middle-aged Jew, who alternately
talked with nervous excitement or else crouched as if ready
to spring, in a harrowing silence; the other a pale, plain, stocky
man of thirty, whom 1 was sure I had seen before. He had
been to the house or something. But it might have been when
I was a little girl, and so I wasn't offended that he didn't recog-
nize me.
The stewardess she was tall, handsome and flashing dark,
a type that they seemed to ran to asked me if she could
make up my berth,
"and, dear, do you want an aspirin?* She perched on the
side of the seat and rocked precariously to and fro with the
June * -or
LAST TYCOON 11
^XT
No.
"Tve so busy Fve had no
to ask you*** She sat me aad us in.
"Do you gum?"
This reminded me to get rid of the thai had
ing me for hours. I it in a of put
it into the automatic ash-holder.
"I can always tell are ntce s w the ap-
provingly, "if they wrap their in put it
in there,*
We sat for awhile in the half-light of the It
vaguely like a swanky restaurant at
meals. We were all lingeringand not on
the stewardess, I think, had to keep why she
was there.
She and I talked about a young actress I knew., she
had flown West with two years before. It in the very low-
est time of the depression, and the young actress
out the window in such an intent way that the stewardess
afraid she was contemplating a leap. It appeared though
she was not afraid of poverty, but only of revolution.
"I know what mother and I are going to do,* she collided to
the stewardess. "We're coming out to the Yellowstone
we're just going to live simply till it all blows over. Then well
come back. They don't kill artists you knowf*
The proposition pleased me. It conjured up a pretty picture
of the actress and her mother being fed by kind Tory bears
who brought them honey, and by gentle fawns who fetched
extra milk from the does and then lingered near to make pil-
lows for their heads at night. In turn I told the stewardess
about the lawyer and the director who told their plans to
Father one night in those brave days. If the bonus army con-
quered Washington, the lawyer had a boat hidden in the Sac-
ramento River, and he was going to row up stream for a few
months and then come back "because they always needed
lawyers after a revolution to straighten out the legal side. 5 *
12 LAST TYCOOH
The director He an
old suit, in did say whether
they were his own or he got the prop de-
partment and he going to the Crowd. I
remember Father saying: T3ut they II look at your hands!
They'll know you haven't work for years. And
they'll ask for your union card.* And I remember how the
director's face Ml, and how he was wfaUe he ate his
dessert, and how funny and puny they sounded to me*
"Is your father an actor, Miss Brady?* the stewardess.
Tve certainly heard the name. 5 *
At the name Brady, both the mea across the aisle looked up.
Sidewise that Hollywood look, that always seems thrown
over one shoulder. Then the young, pale, stocky man unbut-
toned his safety strap and stood in the aisle beside us.
**Are you Cecilia Brady?* he demanded accusingly, as if I*d
been holding out on him, *I 1 recognized you. I'm
Wylie White."
He could have omitted this for at the same moment a new
voice said, "Watch your step, WylieP, and another man
brushed by him in the aisle and went forward in the direction
of the cockpit Wylie White started, and a little too late called
after him defiantly:
T only take orders from the pilot.*"
I recognized the Mad of pleasantry that goes on between
the powers in Hollywood and their satellites.
The stewardess reproved Mm:
"Not so loud, please some of the passengers are asleep.**
I saw now that the other man across the aisle, the middle-
aged Jew, was on his feet also, staring, with shameless eco-
nomic lechery, after the man who had just gone by. Or rather
at the back of the man, who gestured sideways with his hand
in a sort of farewell, as he went out of my sight
I asked the stewardess: **Is he the assistant pilot?**
She was unbuckling our belt, about to abandon me to Wylie
White*
LAST TYCOON 13
**N0, That's Mr. He has the the
*bridal suite* only he has it The is
in uniform.* She up; *I to oat if
to be grounded in Nashville.*
Wylie White was
"Why?"
"It's a storm coming up the Valley,"
"Does that mean well have to all
If this keeps up! w
A sudden dip indicated it It
White into the seat opposite me, the
precipitately down in the direction of the
the Jewish man into a sitting position, the un-
ruffled exclamations of distaste that the we
settled down. There was an introduction,
"Miss Brady-Mr. Schwartz* said a
great friend of your father's, too.*
Mr. Schwartz nodded so vehemently I
hear him saying: It's true. As God is my judge, if s true! 1 *
He might have said this right out loud at one in Ms
life but he was obviously a man to whom something
pened. Meeting him was like encountering a has
been in a fist fight or collision, and got Battened* You at
your friend and say: *What happened to you?* And he an-
swers something unintelligible through broken and swol-
len lips. He can't even tell you about it.
Mr. Schwartz was physically unmarked; the exaggerated
Persian nose and oblique eye-shadow were as congenital as the
tip-tilted Irish redness around my father's nostrils*
"Nashville!" cried Wylie White. That means we go to a
hotel We don't get to the mast til tomorrow night if then.
My God! I was bom in Nashville.**
*I should think you'd like to see it again/*
"NeverI've kept away for fifteen years. I hope 111 mv&c
see it again***
But he would for the was down
14 THE LAST TYCOON"
down, down, like in the Cupping my
the window 1 saw the blur of the city far away on the
left. The "Fasten your beltsNo smoking"
on we the storm.
*Did you hear what he said?"" Schwartz from one of his
fiery silences across the aisle,
"Hear what?" Wylie.
"Hear what he's calling himself," said Schwartz. *Mr. Smithl"
"Why not?" Wylie.
*Oh nothing,* said Schwartz quickly. *I just thought it was
funny, Smith. 9 " I never heard a laugh with less mirth in it;
I suppose there has been nothing like the airports since the
days of the stage-stops nothing quite as lonely, as somber-
silent. The old red-brick depots were built right into the
towns they marked people didn't get off at those isolated
stations unless they lived there. But airports lead you way
back IB history like oases, like the stops on the great trade
routes. The sight of air travellers strolling in ones and twos
into midnight airports wiE draw a small crowd any night up
to two. The young people look at the planes, the older ones
look at the passengers with a watchful incredulity. In the big
transcontinental planes we were the coastal rich, who cas-
ually alighted from our cloud in mid-America. High adventure
might be among us, disguised as a movie star. But mostly it
wasn't. And I always wished fervently that we looked more
interesting than we did just as I often have at premieres,
when the fans look at you with scornful reproach because
you're not a star.
On the ground Wylie and I were suddenly friends, because
he held out his arm to steady me when I got out of the plane.
From then on, he made a dead set for me and I didn't mind.
From the moment we walked into the airport it had become
plain that if we were stranded here we were stranded here
together. (It wasn't like the time I lost my boy the time my
boy played the piano with that girl Reina in a little New Eng-
LAST TYCOON ig
1 at 1
wasn't Guy oa die air
and 10 she the
like her Ms as she
showed a chord, 1 a 5
When we the Mr.
us, too, but he in a of All the we
trying to get at the he
at the door that led out to the as if he
the plane would him. Then 1 for
a few minutes and I but
when I came back he White
WMte talking Schwartz as as if a
great track had just backed up over He at
the door to the any 1 the of
White's remark . . .
** I told you to shut up. It you right*
"I only said **
He broke off as I came up if any
It was then half -past two in the morning.
"A little,* said Wylie White. They don't well be able
to start for three hours anyhow, so of the are
going to a hotel. But I'd like to take you out to the
Home of Andrew Jackson.'*
**How could we see it in the dark?* demanded Schwartz,
THell, it'll be sunrise in two hours.*
**You two go," said Schwartz.
"All right you take the bus to the hotel. It's still waitmg-
he's in there." WyMe's voice had a taunt in it "Maybe if d be a
good thing. 9 *
"No, 111 go along with you,* said Schwartz hastily.
We took a taxi in the sudden country dark outside, and he
seemed to cheer up. He patted my knee-cap encouragingly.
"I should go along/" he said, "I should be dhaperone. Once
upon a time when I was in the big money, I had a daughter-
a *
l6 THE LAST TYCOON
He as if she to as a
asset.
TouTl another," Wylie *YouTl get it all
back. Another of the you'll be Cecilia's
papa is, wont he s Cecilia?"*
*Where is this Hermitage?" Schwartz presently. *Far
away at the end of nowhere? Will we miss the plane?"
*Skip it," said Wylie. *We toVe the steward-
ess along for you. Didn't you admire the stewardess? I
thought she was pretty cute."
We drove for a long time over a bright level countryside,
just a road and a tree and a shack a tree, and thea sud-
denly along a winding twist of woodland, I could feel eve0 in
the darkness that the of the woodland were green that it
was all different from the dusty olive-tint of California* Some-
where we passed a negro driving three cows ahead of him,
and they mooed as he scatted to the side of the road.
They were real cows, with warm, fresh, silky lanks, and the
negro grew gradually real out of the darkness with Ms big
brown eyes staring at us close to the car, as Wylie gave Mm
a quarter. He said "Thank you-thank you/* and stood there,
and the cows mooed again into the night as we drove off.
I thought of the first sheep I ever remember seeing hun-
dreds of them, and how our car drove suddenly into them on
the back lot of the old Laemmle studio. They were unhappy
about being in pictures, but the men in the car with us kept
saying:
"Swell?*
"Is that what you wanted, Dick?**
"Isn't that swell?** And the man named Dick kept standing
up in the car as if he were Cortez or Balboa, looking over that
grey fleecy undulation. If I ever knew what picture they were
in, I have long forgotten.
We had driven an hour. We crossed a brook over an old
rattly iron bridge laid with planks. Now there were roosters
THE LAST TYCOON 17
and we
a
*I it'd be T
son of
Is as an We
ante my my my 1 to
the so ! to to my
which has a end" He put his
"Cecilia, me, so 1 can the
fortune? 1 *
He disarming ennuch, so I let my lie on his
shoulder.
*Wfaat do you do, Go to
"1 go to I'm a junior."
**Ofa, I your 1 but 1
had the of But a I
in Esquire juniors have to learn, Cecilia.**
"Why do people w
"Don't apologizeknowledge is power.*
*You ? d know the you we on our
to Holywood, 5 * I said. It's always and
the times."
He pretended to be shocked.
Tou mean girls in the East have no private ives?*
'That's the point. They got private lives. You're
ing me, let go.*
"I can't. It might Schwartz, and I this is the first
sleep he's had for weeks. Listen, Cecilia: I once had an
with the wife of a producer,, A very short affair. When it was
over she said to me in BO uncertain terms, she said: Don't you
ever tell about this or 111 have you thrown out of Hollywood
My husband's a much more important man than youl"*
I liked him again now, and presently the taxi turned down a
long lane fragrant with honeysuckle and narcissus, and
stopped beside the great grey hulk of the Andrew Jackson
house. The to tell us it,
iS THE LAST TYCOON
but Wylie at Schwartz, we
out of the car.
**You can't get into the now,*" the taxi man told us
politely.
Wylie and I went sat the wide pillars of the
step.
*What about Mr. Schwartz," I *Who is her
To hell with Schwartz. He was the head of some combine
once First National? Paramount? United Artists? Now he's
down and out But hell be back. You can't flunk out of pic-
tures unless you're a dope or a drank."*
"You don't like Hollywood," I suggested.
*Yes I do. Sure I do. Say! This isn't anything to talk about
on the steps of Andrew Jackson's house at dawn."*
T fife Hollywood/" I persisted.
"It's all right. It's a mining town in lotus land. Who said that?
I did. It's a good place for toughies, but I went there from
Savannah^ Georgia. I went to a garden party the first day.
My host shook hands and left me. It was all there that
swimming pool, green moss at two dollars an inch, beautiful
felines having drinks and fun
"And nobody spoke to me. Not a soul* I spoke to half a
dozen people but they didn't answer. That continued for an
hour, two hours then I got up from where I was sitting and
ran. out at a dog trot like a crazy man. I didn't feel I had any
rightful identity until I got back to the hotel and the derk
handed me a letter addressed to me in my name.**
Naturally I hadn't ever had such an experience, but looking
back on parties Yd been to, I realized that such things could
happen. We don't go for strangers in Hollywood unless they
wear a sign saying that their axe has been thoroughly ground
elsewhere, and that in any case it's not going to fall on our
necks in other words, unless they're a celebrity. And they'd
better look out even then.
*You should have risen above it,* I said smugly. "It's not a
THE LAST TYCOON 1
slam at you are a at the
they've before*"
*"Such a pretty girl to say things**
There was an IB the sky, and
could see me plain thin and lots of
and the kicking of a mind. 1 wonder I Hie
in that dawn, five years ago. A little 1 sup*
pose, but at that age, when one has the
most adventures are good 5 1 only a and a
to go on for hours.
Wyiie stared at me with really
then suddenly we were not Mr. Schwartz
apologetically into the pretty scene.
"I fell upon a large he said, the
comer of his eye.
Wyiie jumped up.
"Just in time, Mr. Schwartz," he said. *Tle Is just
starting, Home of Old Hickory-America's president The
victor of New Orleans, opponent of the National and
inventor of the Spoils System."
Schwartz looked toward me as toward a Jury.
"There's a writer for you s w he said. "Knows everything and
at the same time he knows nothing,**
"What's that?" said Wyiie, indignant
It was my first Inkling that he was a writer. And while I
like writers because if you ask a writer anything, you usually
get an answerstill it belittled him in my eyes. Writers aren't
people exactly. Or, if they're any good, they're a whole Id
of people trying so hard to be one person. It's like actors,
who try so pathetically not to look in mirrors. Who lean back-
ward trying only to see their faces in the reflecting chande-
liers.
"Ain't writers like that, Celia?** demanded Schwartz. M l have
no words for them. I only know it's true.*
Wyiie looked at him with slowly gathering indignation. "I've
beard that before/* he said. "Look, Manny, Tm a more practical
2O THE LAST TYCOON
man than you any day! IVe sat in an office and listened to
some mystic stalk up down for hours spouting tripe that'd
land him on a nut-farm anywhere outside of California and
then at the end tel me how he was, and I was a
dreamer and would I kindly go away and make sense out of
what he*d said.**
Mr. Schwartz's face fell into its more disintegrated align-
ments. One eye looked upward through the tall elms. He
raised his hand and bit without interest at the cuticle on his
second finger. There was a bird flying about the chimney of
the house, and his glance followed it. It perched on the chim-
ney pot like a raven, and Mr. Schwartz's eyes remained
ixed upon it as he said: "We can*t get in, and it's time for
you two to go back to the plane.*
It was still not quite dawn. The Hermitage looked like a
nice big white box, but a little lonely and vacated still after
a hundred years. We walked back to the car. Only after we
had gotten in, and Mr. Schwartz had surprisingly shut the taxi
door on us ? did we realize he didn't intend to come along.
"I'm not going to the Coast I decided that when I woke up.
So 111 stay here, and afterwards the driver could come back
for me. w
"Going back East?** said WyBe with surprise. "Just be-
cause w
"I have decided/* said Schwartz, faintly smiling. ^Once I
used to be a regular man of decisionyou'd be surprised.** He
felt in his pocket, as the taxi driver warmed up the engine.
"Will you give this note to Mr. Smith?"
"Shall I come in two hours?" the driver asked Schwartz.
"Yes . . . sure. I shall be glad to entertain myself looking
around."
I kept thinking of him all the way back to the airport trying
to fit him into that early hour and into that landscape. He had
come a long way from some ghetto to present himself at that
raw shrine. Manny Schwartz and Andrew Jackson it was hard
to say them in the same sentence. It was doubtful if he knew
LAST TYCOON 21
who as he but
he if bis
Jackson
able to understand. At of life
menti a breast a shrine. to lay
no one wanted a his
Of course we did not for we
got to the airport we the Mr.
not continuing, and forgot
wandered away into
the mountains, and we off in less an
Sleepy-eyed travellers from the and I
a few minutes on one of Iron use for
couches. Slowly the idea of a perilous journey
out of the debris of our failure: a new tall,
some, lashing dark, exactly like the she
sucker instead of Frenchy red-and-blue, went us
with a suitcase. Wylie sat beside me as we waited.
Did you give the note to Mr, SmithF* 1 half
"Yeah."
**Who is Mr, Smith? I he Mr.
trip. 9 *
*lt was Schwartz's fault*
*Tm prejudiced against steam-rollers,** I said **My
tries to be a steam-roller around the house, I tel to
save it for the studio,**
I wondered if I was being fair; words are tie
at that time in the morning. *SiHl, he steam-rollered me into
Bennington and I've always been grateful for that*
There would be quite a crash," Wylie said, "if steam-roller
Brady met steam-roller Smith.**
Ts Mr, Smith a competitor of Father s?*
*Not exactly. I should say no. But if he was a competitor,
I know where my money would be. 8 *
"On Fatherr
Tm not*
22, THE LAST TYCOON
It was too early in the morning for family patriotism. The
pilot was at the desk with the purser and he shook his head
as they regarded a prospective passenger who had put two
nickels in the electric phonograph and lay alcoholically on a
bench fighting off sleep. The first song he had chosen, "Lost,"
thundered through the room, followed, after a slight interval,
by his other choice, "Gone," which was equally dogmatic and
final The pilot shook his head emphatically and walked over
to the passenger.
"Afraid we're not going to be able to carry you this time,
old man."
"Wha? w
The drunk sat up, awful-looking, yet discernibly attractive,
and I was sorry for him in spite of his passionately ill-chosen
music.
"Go back to the hotel and get some sleep. ThereTl be an-
other plane tonight.'*
"Only going up in ee air."
"Not this time, old man,"
In his disappointment the drunk fell off the bench and
above the phonograph, a loudspeaker summoned us respect-
able people outside. In the corridor of the plane I ran into
Monroe Stahr and fell all over him, or wanted to. There was
a man any girl would go for, with or without encouragement.
I was emphatically without it, but he liked me and sat down
opposite till the plane took off.
"Let's all ask for our money back," he suggested. His dark
eyes took me in, and I wondered what they would look like
if he fell in love. They were kind, aloof and, though they often
reasoned with you gently, somewhat superior. It was no
fault of theirs if they saw so much. He darted in and out of
the role of "one of the boys" with dexterity but on the whole
I should say he wasn't one of them. But he knew how to shut
up, how to draw into the background, how to listen. From
where he stood (and though he was not a tall man, it always
LAST S3
up) he the
of his like a to
He a
for rest or the for it
We sat in he
a I
the 1
didn*t or not to but
his so be me
and and I I
from or of Mm* I
to say and I he in the
manner.
Til you this ring, Ceciia.*
T beg your pardon. I didn't I w
Tve got half a like it"
He handed It to me, a the S in
relief. I had baen thinking oddly its
his ingeis, which were Hike the rest of
Ms body, and Ike his the
and the dark curly hair. H spiritual at but he
was a fighter somebody out of his he
was one of a gang of kids in the Bronx, me a de-
scription of how he walked always at tie of Ms
this rather frail boy occasionally throwing a
ward out of the comer of Ms mouth,
Stahr folded my hand over the ring, stood up and
Wylia
*Come up to the bridal suite/" he said. **See you Mar,
Cecilia."
Before they went out of hearing, I heard Wylies question:
TDid you open Schwartz's noteP" And Stahr:
TSfot yet*
I must be slow, for only then did I reaMze that Stator was
Mr.
24 THE LAST TYCOON
Afterwards WyMe told me what was in the note. Written
by the headlights of the taxi, it Illegible,
**Dear Moiwoe, You are the best of them al I have always
admired your mentality so when you turn against me I know
it's no use! I must be no good and am not going to continue the
journey let me warn you once again look outl I know.
friend
Stahr read it twice, and raised Ms hand to the morning
stubble on his chin.
**He*s a nervous wreck/* he said. ^There's nothing to be done
absolutely nothing. I'm sorry I was short with himbut I
don't like a man to approach me telling me it's for my sake.**
"Maybe it was," said Wylie.
"It's poor technique."
Td fall for it,* said Wylie. Tm vain as a woman. If anybody
pretends to be interested in me, 111 ask for more, I like advice."
Stahr shook his head distastefully. Wylie kept on ribbing
him he was one of those to whom this privilege was permitted
"You faD for seme kinds of flattery," he said This little
Napoleon stuff.*"
It makes me sick," said Stahr, *but it's not as bad as some
man trying to help you,"
*lf you don't like advice, why do you pay ma? 3 *
"That's a question of merchandise,* said Stahr. Tm a mer-
chant I want to buy what's in your mind."
"You're no merchant," said WyMe. TE knew a lot of them
when I was a publicity man, and I agree with Charles Francis
Adams"
"What did he say?"
THe knew them all-Gould, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Astor-
and he said there wasn't one he'd care to meet again in the
hereafter. Well they haven't improved since then, and that's
why I say you're no merchant"
"Adams was probably a sowbelly," said Stahr. "He wanted
LAST TYCOON 25
to be bat he the or
the
**He
It You and
out get al up ? and las to in
you out.* He Ms "You to
so and
always are so
selves. You just ask to be 1 Eke and
I like them to like me, but I my put
iton the inside,"
He broke off.
"What did I say to in the Do you
ber exactly? 1 *
Ton said, 'Whatever you're the is No!* **
Stahr was silent
"He was sunk,* said WyMe, *but 1 Mm out of it We
took Billy Brady's daughter for a ride. w
Stahr rang for the stewardess.
TThat pilot,* he said, ^would he if I sat up in
with him awhile?*
*Thafs against the rales, Mr. Smith."
*Ask Mm to step in here a minute he*s free."
Stahr sat up front all afternoon. While we slid off the
less desert and over the table-lands, dyed with colors
like the white sands we dyed with colors when I was a
Then in the late afternoon, the Moun-
tains of the Frozen Saw slid under our propelers and we
close to home.
When 1 wasn't dozing I was thinking that I wanted to many
Stahr, that I wanted to make him love me, Oh, the conceit!
What on earth did I have to offer? But I didn't think like that
then. I had the pride of young women, which draws its strength
from such sublime thoughts as Tm as good as she is.** For my
purposes I was just as beautiful as the great beauties who must
have inevitably thrown themselves at his head. My little spurt
26 THE LAST TYCOON
of of course me fit to be a
brilliant ornament of any
I know now it was absurd* Though Stain's was
founded on nothing more a night-school course in
stenography, he a ago run ahead through track-
less wastes of perception into where very few men were
able to follow Mm. But in my reckless conceit I matched my
grey eyes against his brown for guile, my young golf-and-
tennis heart-beats against Ms, which must be slowing a little
after years of over-work And I planned and I contrived and I
plotted any woman am tel you but it never came to any-
thing, as you will see. I still like to think that if he'd been a
poor boy and nearer my age I could have managed it, but
of course the real truth was that I had nothing to offer that
he didn't have; some of my more romantic ideas actually
stemmed from pictures Street* for example* had a great
influence on me. If s more than possible that some of the pic-
tures which Stahr himself conceived had shaped me into what
I was.
So ft WES rather hopeless. Emotionallyy at feast, people can't
live by taking in each other*s washing*
But at that time It was different: Father might help, the
stewardess might help. She might go up in the cockpit and
say to Stahr: Tf I ever saw love, it's in that girls eyes*
The pilot might help: "Man, are you blind? Why don't you
go back there?**
Wylie White might helpinstead of standing in the aisle
looking at me doubtfully, wondering whether I was awake or
asleep.
"Sit down," I said. **Whaf s new? where are weF*
"Up in the air."
"Oh, so that's it. Sit down.* I tried to show a cheerful inter-
est: *What are you writing?*
"Heaven help me, I am writing about a Boy Scout The Boy
Scout"
Ts it
2J
*l me to it He ten
of me or me, a
he so So in
*I say not,* I *Tve all
my lfe. w
eh? Well, 111 II If use all
to me I a of my
I my off. I up, the
putting a me
^Almost there, 5 * she
Out the window 1 could see by the we in a
land.
"I just funny,* she "up in the
cockpit- that Mr* Smith or Mr. Stahr 1
Ing his name*
**It 9 s never on any pictures," 1
*Oh. Well, he's asking the a lot
mean he's interested? You know?*
T[ know,"
T mean one of them told me be bet he could Mr,
solo iying in ten minutes. He has a
what he said.**
I was getting Impatient
^Well, what was so f tinny T
^Well, finally one of the pilots asked Mr* Smith if he liked his
business, and Mr. Smith said, 'Sure. Sure I like it It's nice
the only sound nut in a hatful of cracked ones/ *
The stewardess doubled up with laughter and I could have
spit at her.
T mean calling all those people a hatful of nuts. I
cracked nuts,* Her laughter stopped with unexpected sudden-
ness, and her face was grave as she stood up. "Well, I've got to
finish my chart 1 *
"Goodbye.**
Obviously Stahr had put the pilots right up on the throne
with him and let them rule with Mm for awhila Years ktar
28 THE LAST TYCOON
I travelled with one of those same pilots and he told me one
thing Stahr had said.
He was looking down at the mountains.
"Suppose you were a railroad man/' he said. "You have to
send a train through there somewhere. Well, you get your sur-
veyors' reports, and you find there's three or four or half a
dozen gaps, and not one is better than the other. You've got
to decide on what basis? You can't test the best way except
by doing it. So you just do it."
The pilot thought he had missed something.
"How do you mean?"
"You choose some one way for no reason at all because
that mountain's pink or the blueprint is a better blue. You see?"
The pilot considered that this was very valuable advice. But
he doubted if he'd ever be in a position to apply it
"What I wanted to know/* he told me ruefully, "is how he
ever got to be Mr. Stahr.**
I'm afraid Stahr could never have answered that one; for
the embryo is not equipped with a memory. But I could an-
swer a little. He had flown up very high to see, on strong wings,
when he was young. And while he was up there he had looked
on all the kingdoms, with the kind of eyes that can stare
straight into the sun. Beating his wings tenaciously finally
frantically and keeping on beating them, he had stayed up
there longer than most of us, and then, remembering all he
had seen from his great height of how things were, he had
settled gradually to earth.
The motors were off, and all our five senses began to read-
just themselves for landing. I could see a line of lights for the
Long Beach Naval Station ahead and to the left, and on the
right a twinkling blur for Santa Monica. The California moon
was out, huge and orange over the Pacific. However I hap-
pened to feel about these things and they were home, after
all I know that Stahr must have felt much more. These were
the things I had first opened my eyes on, like the sheep on
the back lot of the old Laonmle studio; but this was where
THE LAST TYCOON 2Q
Stahr tad come to earth after that extraordinary illuminating
flight where he saw which way we were going, and how we
looked doing it, and how much of it mattered. You could say
that this was where an accidental wind blew him, but I don't
think so. I would rather think that in a "long shot*" he saw a new
way of measuring our jerky hopes and graceful rogueries and
awkward sorrows, and that he came here from choice to be
with us to the end. Like the plane coming down into the
Glendale airport, into the warm darkness.
CHAPTER 2
IT WAS nine o'clock of a July night and there were still some
extras in the drug-store across from the studio I could see
them bent over the pin-games inside as I parked my car.
"Old" Johnny Swanson stood on the corner in his semi-cowboy
clothes, staring gloomily past the moon. Once he had been as
big in pictures as Tom Mix or Bill Hart now it was too sad to
speak to him, and I hurried across the street and through the
front gate.
There is never a time when a studio is absolutely quiet.
There is always a night shift of technicians in the laboratories
and dubbing rooms and people on the maintenance staff
dropping in at the commissary. But the sounds are all different
the padded hush of tires, the quiet tick of a motor running
idle, the naked cry of a soprano singing into a nightbound
microphone. Around a comer I came upon a man in rubber
boots washing down a car in a wonderful white light a foun-
tain among the dead industrial shadows. I slowed up as I saw
Mr. Marcus being hoisted into his car in front of the adminis-
tration building, because he took so long to say anything, even
good night and while I waited I realized that the soprano was
singing, Come, come, I love you only over and over; I remem-
ber this because she kept singing the same line during the
earthquake. That didn't come for five minutes yet.
Father's offices were in the old building with the long bal-
conies and iron rails with their suggestion of a perpetual tight-
rope. Father was on the second floor, with Stafar on one side
THE LAST TYCOON 31
and Mr. Marcus on the other this evening there were lights
all along the row. My stomach dipped a little at the proximity
to Stakr, but that was in pretty good control nowI'd seen Mm
only once in the month I'd been home.
There were a lot of strange things about Father's office, but
111 make it brief. In the outer part were three poker-faced
secretaries who had sat there like witches ever since I could
remember Birdy Peters, Maude something, and Rosemary
Schmiel; I don't know whether this was her name, but she was
the dean of the trio, so to speak, and under her desk was the
kick-lock that admitted you to Father's throne room. All three
of the secretaries were passionate capitalists, and Birdy had
invented the rule that if typists were seen eating together more
than once in a single week, they were hauled up on the carpet.
At that time the studios feared mob rale.
I went on in. Nowadays all chief executives have huge
drawing rooms, but my father's was the first. It was also the
first to have one-way glass in the big French windows, and
IVe heard a story about a trap in the floor that would drop
unpleasant visitors to an oubliette below, but believe it to be
an invention. There was a big painting of Will Rogers, hung
conspicuously and intended, I think, to suggest Father's essen-
tial kinship with Hollywood's St. Francis; there was a signed
photograph of Minna Davis, Stahr's dead wife, and photos of
other studio celebrities and big chalk drawings of mother and
me. Tonight the one-way French windows were open and a
big moon, rosy-gold with a haze around, was wedged helpless
in one of them. Father and Jacques La Borwitz and Rosemary
Schmiel were down at the end around a big circular desk.
What did Father look like? I couldn't describe him except
for once in New York when I met Mm where I didn't expect
to; I was aware of a bulky, middle-aged man who looked a
little ashamed of himself, and I wished he'd move onand
then I saw he was Father. Afterward I was shocked at my im-
pression. Father can be very magnetic he has a tough jaw and
an Irish smile,
32 LAST TYCOON
But as for La I Let me just
say lie an is a
commissar, let it go at up
cadavers or Mm or
how lie got any use out of me, as it
amazed everyone the who up
them. Jacques La Borwitz Ms no doubt, but so
have the sub-microscopic so has a prowling for
a bitch and a bone. Jacques Laoh my!
From their expressions I they had been talking
about Stahr. Stahr had ordered or forbidden some-
thing, or deled Father or junked one of LA Borwitz* pictures
or something catastrophic, they were sitting there in pro-
test at night in a community of and helplessness,
Rosemary Schmiel sat pad in hand, as if ready to write down
their dejection.
Tin to drive you home dead or alive,* I told Father. *A11
those birthday presents rotting away in their packages!*
**A birthday!** cried Jacques in a lurry of apology. **How old?
I didn't know."
^orty-three,* said Father distinctly.
He was- older than that four yearsand Jacques knew it; I
saw him note it down in his account book to use some time,
Out here these account books are carried open in the hand
One can see the entries being made without recourse to lip-
reading, and Rosemary Schmiel was compelled in emulation
to make a mark on her pad. As she rubbed it out, the earth
quaked under us.
We didn't get the full shock like at Long Beach, where the
upper stories of shops were spewed into the streets and small
hotels drifted out to sea but for a full minute our bowels were
one with the bowels of the earth like some nightmare attempt
to attach our navel cords again and jerk us back to the womb
of creation.
Mother's picture fell off the wall, revealing a small safe
Rosemary and I grabbed for other and did a
LAST 33
the 0r at
and to his
"Are all the lie to the
of 1 you It a I
it all Or it to her
the
The still, a We our
to the had
and out the ton
balcony. all the
we we
wailing for a shock as a
we went into Stafar's entry to Ms
The office big, but not as big as sat cm
the side of his couch rubbing Ms the
he had been asleep, and he wasn't yet he
dreamed it When we he ft al
rather funny until the to I
Mm as unobtrusively as He
while he to the but as the
reports came in, his eyes to pick up
**A couple of water have burst,* lie to
^they're heading into the back lot.*
^Gray's shooting in the French Village, 9 * said Father,
"It's flooded around the Station, too, and in the Jungle and
the City Corner, What the heU nobody to be hurt** In
passing he shook my hands gravely: 4 *WhercVe you been,
Ceciliar
**You going out there, Monroe?** Father asked
*When all the news is in. One of the power lines is off, too
I've sent for Robinson."
He made me sit down with Mm on the couch and tell about
the quake again.
"You look tired,** I said, cute and motherly.
*Yes,* he agreed, Tve got no place to go in the evenings,
so I just work.**
34 THE LAST TYCOON
"111 some evenings for you/*
*I to play with a gang," he saicl thoughtfully,
*T>efore I was married. But they all drank themselves to death.**
Miss Dooian, his secretary, came in with fresh bad news.
"Robbyll take care of everything when he comes,** Stahr
assured Father. He turned to me. "Now there's a man that
Robinson. He was a trouble-shooter fixed the telephone wires
in Minnesota blizzards nothing stumps Mm. He*! be here in
a minute you'll like Robby.**
He said it as if it had been his life-long intention to bring
us together, and he had arranged the whole earthquake with
Just that in mind
"Yes, you'll Ike Robby,** he repeated. "When do you go back
to college?"
Tve just come home, 3 "
*Tfou get the whole summer?"
Tin sorry," I said. *TI1 go back as soon as I can."
I was in a mist. It hadn't failed to cross my mind that he
might have some intention about me, but if it was so, it was
in an exasperatingly early stage I was merely "a good prop-
erty." And the idea didn't seem so attractive at that moment
like marrying a doctor. He seldom left the studio before
eleven.
"How long/* he asked my father, before she graduates from
college. That's what I was trying to say."
And I think I was about to sing out eagerly that I needn't
go back at all, that I was quite educated already when the
totally admirable Robinson came in. He was a bowlegged
young redhead, all ready to go.
*This is Robby, Cecilia," said Stahr. **Come on, Robby."
So 1 met Robby. I can't say it seemed like fate but it was.
For it was Robby who later told me how Stahr found his love
that night
Under the moon the back lot was thirty acres of fairyland
not because the locations really like African jungles
LAST TYCOON 35
at
by but like the
of like of in an
I In a an attic, but a 101 fee
like that, at of in an
way, it all
When Robby of al-
ready out the in the
"We'll it out the on
Robby a moment "It's city this
an act of God? Say look there!*
On top of a of the
were floating down the current of an
idol had come unloosed from a set of It
earnestly on its way, stopping to
in the shallows with the other debris of the tide. The
gees had found sanctuary along a scroll of on Its
forehead and seemed at first glance to be on an
interesting bus-ride through the scene of the ioodl
"Will you look at that, Monroe!** said Robby. "Look at
dames!**
Dragging their legs through sudden bogs s they
way to the bank of the stream. Now they could see the women,
looking a little scared but brightening at the prospect of
"We ought to let 'em drift out to the waste pipe, 3 * said
gallantly, "but DeMille needs that head next week.**
He wouldn't have hurt a fly, though, and presently he was
hip deep in the water, Bshing for them with a pole and suc-
ceeding only in spinning it in a dizzy circle. Help arrived, ad
the impression quickly got around that one of them was very
pretty, and then that they were people of importance. But
they were just strays, and Robby waited disgustedly to give
them hell while the thing was brought finally into control and
beached.
"Put that head backP he called up to them. *You think its
a souvenir?**
36 THE LAST TYCOON
One of the the
of the idol, and Robby set her on solid ground;
the other one and to
Stahr for judgment
"WhatTl we do with them, chief r
Stahr did not answer. Smiling faintly at him from not four
feet away was the face of Ms dead wife, identical even to the
expression. Across the four feet of moonlight, the eyes he knew
looked back at him 9 a curl blew a little on a familiar forehead;
the smile lingered, changed a little according to pattern; the
lips parted the same. An awful fear went over him, and he
wanted to cry aloud. Back from the still room, the
muffled glide of the limousine hearse, the falling concealing
flowers, from out there In the dark here now warm and glow-
Ing. The river passed him in a rush, the great spotlights
swooped and blinked and then he heard another voice speak
that was not Minna's voice.
*"We*re sorry,** said the voice, **We followed a truck In
through a gate.*
A little crowd had gathered electricians, grips, trackers,
and Robby began to nip at them like a sheep dog.
*. . . get the big pumps on the tanks on Stage 4 . . . put a
cable around this head . . , raft It up on a couple of two by
fours . . . get the water out of the jungle first, for Christ's
sake . . . that big *A* pipe, lay it down ... all that stuff is
plastic. . . .*
Stahr stood watching the two women as they threaded their
way after a policeman toward an exit gate. Then he took a
tentative step to see if the weakness had gone out of his knees.
A loud tractor came bumping through the slush, and men be-
gan streaming by him every second one glancing at him, smil-
ing, speaking: "Hello, Monroe. , . . Hello, Mr. Stahr . * . wet
night, Mr. Stahr . . , Monroe . . . Monroe . . . Stahr . . . Stahr
. . . Stahr."
He spoke and waved back as the people streamed by in the
darkness, looking, I suppose,, a little Hfce the Emperor and tbe
LAST TYCOOH 37
Old Guard, is no so but It has its and
the of a
the and the
and the of he bad that no
to The old
there clay but still he
the last of the was a sort of low
dheer as by.
CHAPTER 3
BETWEEN THE NIGHT 1 got back and the quake, I'd made many
observations.
About Father, for example. I loved Father in a sort of ir-
regular graph with many low swoopsbut I began to see that
his strong will didn't fill him out as a passable man. Most of
what he accomplished boiled down to shrewd. He had ac-
quired with luck and shrewdness a quarter interest in a boom-
ing circus-together with young Stahr. That was his life's
effort all the rest was an instinct to hang on. Of course, he
talked that double talk to Wall Street about how mysterious
it was to make a picture, but Father didn't know the ABC's of
dubbing or even cutting. Nor had he learned much about the
feel of America as a bar boy in Ballyhegan, nor did he have
any more than a drummer's sense of a story. On the other
hand, he didn't have concealed paresis like ; he came
to the studio before noon, and, with a suspiciousness devel-
oped like a muscle, it was hard to put anything over on him.
Stahr had been his luck and Stahr was something else again.
He was a marker in industry like Edison and Lumiere and
Griffith and Chaplin. He led pictures way up past the range
and power of the theatre, reaching a sort of golden age, be-
fore the censorship.
Proof of his leadership was the spying that went on around
him not just for inside information or patented process
secrets but spying on his scent for a trend in taste, his guess
as to how things were going to be. Too much of his vitality
LAST 39
was by tie of it
Ms la 10 db
as the of a die
too we by up the
But 1 to a
of is my for fol-
lows. It is a 1 in oa A
my
I in the the
are
In the the a up to
the outside balcony of the He fin-
gered to an
mounted to the to the
ment below.
Miss Doolan, Stahr's told him It be
buzzed for her at He tad in Ms
lug the small commotion*
"Pete Zavxasi* Stahr "-the man?"
They him to a It
"Hell of a thing, 9 * he **1 be*d to
I don't know why. He was all right we two
years ago why should he come here? How did he get inf*
*He bluffed it with his old studio pass,* said
Doolan. She was a dry hawk, the wife of an
TPerhaps the quake had something to do with it*
*He was the best camera man in town,** Stahr said. When
he had heard of the hundreds dead at Long Beach, he was still
haunted by the abortive suicide at dawn. He told Catherine
Doolan to trace the matter down*
The first dictograph messages Hew in through the warm
morning. While he shaved and had coffee, he talked and lis-
tened. Bobby had left a message; **If Mr* Stahr wants me tell
him to bell with it I'm in bed.** An actor was sick or thought so;
the Governor of California was a out; a
4<> THE LAST TYCOON
visor had beaten up Ms wife for the prints and must be "re-
duced to a writer" these three affairs were Father's job unless
the actor was under personal contract to Stahr. There was
early snow on a location in Canada with the company already
there Stahr raced over the possibilities of salvage, reviewing
the story of the picture. Nothing. Stahr called Catherine
Doolan.
"I want to speak to the cop who put two women off the
back lot last night. I think his name's Malone."
"Yes, Mr. Stahr. I've got Joe Wyman about the trousers."
"Hello, Joe/' said Stahr. "Listen two people at the sneak
preview complained that Morgan's fly was open for half the
picture ... of course they're exaggerating, but even if it's only
ten feet ... no, we can't find the people, but I want that
picture run over and over until you find that footage. Get a
lot of people in the projection room somebody'll spot it"
"Tout passe If art robuste
Seul a TeternM! 9
"And there's the Prince from Denmark," said Catherine Doo-
lan. "He's very handsome." She was impelled to add point-
lessly, "for a tall man."
"Thanks," Stahr said. "Thank you, Catherine, I appreciate
it that I am now the handsomest small man on the lot. Send
the Prince out on the sets and tell him well lunch at one."
"And Mr. George Boxley looking very angry in a British
way."
"I'll see him for ten minutes."
As she went out, he asked: "Did Hobby phone in?"
"No."
"Call sound, and if he's been heard from, call him and ask
Mm this. Ask him this did he hear that woman's name last
night? Either of those women. Or anything so they could be
traced."
"Anything else?"
TLL LAST T1CQC\* 41
*No, but fcil it's he stil!
1 of
too. I they*
She his oa ker
looking.
* oh,
Just ask if he can be
The
he "em, you of
Which of had a car, a
of the
It of
Not which on the tot
here In So for
then.
at Mr, It was a
smile he a
man pushed into it a
of respect toward his as his
rapidly to a so that not feel
it finally as it a of
times a little hurried fired, but any-
one who had not angered him within the torn. Or he
did not intend to insult, aggressive outright
Mr. Boxley did not smile back. He came in with the air erf
being violently dragged, though no one apparently a
on him. He stood in front of a chair, and It as if two
invisible attendants seized his arms and set Mm down forcibly
into it. He sat there morosely. Even whea he lit a dj^uretee on
Stahr's invitation, one felt the match was to it by
exterior forces he disdained to control
Stahr looked at Mm courteously.
^Something not going well, Mr. BoxleyP"
The novelist looked back at Mm in thunderous silence.
*I read your fetter, 1 " said The of the pleasant
4& THE LAST TYCOON
young headmaster was He as to an equal, but with
a faint two-edged deference.
"I can*t get what I write on paper," broke out Boxley. "You've
all been very decent, but it's a sort of conspiracy. Those two
hack youVe teamed me with listen to what I say, but they
spoil it they seem to have a vocabulary of about a hundred
words."
**Why don't you write it yourself?"* asked Stahr.
T have. I sent you some.*
TBut it was just talk, back and forth,* said Stahr mildly,
"Interesting talk but nothing more.*
Now it was all the two ghostly attendants could do to hold
Boxley in the deep chair. He struggled to get up; he uttered
a single quiet bark which had some relation to laughter but
none to amusement, and said:
**I don't think you people read things, The men are duelling
when the conversation takes place. At the end one of them
falls into a well and has to be hauled up in a bucket"
He barked again and subsided.
"Would you write that in a book of your own, Mr. BodeyF*
"What? NateaUy not*
"You'd consider it too cheap."
"Movie standards are different,* said Boxley, hedging.
"Do you ever go to them? 1 *
"No almost never.**
"Isn't it because people are always duelling and falling down
wellsF
"Yesand wearing strained facial expressions and talking in-
credible and unnatural dialogue.**
"Skip the dialogue for a minute,* 9 said Stahr. "Granted your
dialogue is more graceful than what these hacks can write
that's why we brought you out here. But let's imagine some-
thing that isn't either bad dialogue or jumping down a well
Has your office got a stove in it that lights with a match?*
"I think it has/* said Boxley stiffly, "but I never use it."
"Suppose you're in your office. YouVe been fighting duels
LAST 43
or all day too to or any
like we all gel
A
the She see
to She of her
her and it out on a table"
Stahr up, ills on his
"She has a a
box. She the OB the the
back into her her to the
opens it and puts is one in the
box and she to it by the
that there's a stiff wind in the fast
your telephone rings. The girl It op,
and says deliberately into the Tve *
of black gloves in my life." She up, by the
again, and just as she lights the match s you
suddenly and see that there's another in the
ing every move the girl makes *
Stahr paused He picked up his keys and put In his
pocket
"Go on,* said Boxley smiling. "What bappensT*
"I don't know,*" said Stahr, *I was just making pictures.**
Boxley felt he was being put in the wrong.
"It's just melodrama,** he said.
"Not necessarily,* 9 said Stahr. "In any case, nobody has moved
violently or talked cheap dialogue or had any facial expression
at all There as only one bad line, and a writer like you amid
improve it. But you were interested.**
*What was the nickel f orF* asked Boxley evasively.
"I don't know,* said Stahr, Suddenly he laughed. T)h, yes
the nickel was for the movies."
The two invisible attendants seemed to release Boxley. He
relaxed, leaned back in his chair and laughed.
*What in hell do you pay me for?" he demanded. "I don't
understand the damn stuff."
44 THE LAST TYCOON
"You will," said Stahr grinning, "or you wouldn't have asked
about the nickel."
A dark saucer-eyed man was waiting in the outer office as
they came out.
"Mr. Boxley, this is Mr. Mike Van Dyke/' Stahr said. "What
is it, Mike?"
"Nothing," Mike said. "I just came up to see if you were
real/'
"Why don't you go to work?" Stahr said. 1 haven't had a
laugh in the rushes for days."
"I'm afraid of a nervous breakdown."
"You ought to keep in form," Stahr said. "Let's see you ped-
dle your stuff." He turned to Boxley: "Mike's a gag man he
was out here when I was in the cradle. Mike, show Mr. Boxley
a double wing, clutch, kick and scram."
"Here?" asked Mike.
"Here."
"There isn't much room. I wanted to ask you about "
"There's lot of room."
"Well," he looked around tentatively. "You shoot the gun."
Miss Doolan's assistant, Katy, took a paper bag, blew it
open.
"It was a routine," Mike said to Boxley, "back in the Key-
stone days." He turned to Stahr: "Does he know what a
routine is?"
"It means an act," Stahr explained. "Georgie Jessel talks
about 'Lincoln's Gettysburg routine.* "
Katy poised the neck of the blown-up bag in her mouth.
Mike stood with his back to her.
"Ready?" Katy asked. She brought her hands down on the
side. Immediately Mike grabbed his bottom with both hands,
jumped in the air, slid his feet out on the floor one after the
other, remaining in place and flapping his arms twice like a
bird
"Double wing," said Stahr.
THE LAST TYCOON 45
and then ran out the screen door which the office boy held
open for him and disappeared past the window of the bal-
cony.
"Mr. Stahr," said Miss Doolan, "Mr. Hanson is on the phone
from New York/*
Ten minutes later he clicked his dictograph, and Miss Doolan
came in. There was a male star wailing to see him in the outer
office, Miss Doolan said,
"Tell him I went out by the balcony," Stahr advised her.
"All right. He's been in four times this week. He seems very
anxious."
"Did he give you any hint of what he wanted? Isn't it
something he can see Mr. Brady about?'*
"He didn't say. You have a conference coming up. Miss
Meloney and Mr. White are outside. Mr. Broaca is next door
in Mr. Reinmund's office."
"Send Mr. Roderiguez in," said Stahr. "Tell him I can see
him only for a minute."
When the handsome actor came in, Stahr remained standing.
"What is it that can't wait?" he asked pleasantly.
The actor waited carefully till Miss Doolan had gone out
"Monroe, I'm through/' he said. "I had to see you."
"Through!" said Stahr. "Have you see Variety? Your pic-
ture's held over at Roxy's and did thirty-seven thousand in
Chicago last week"
"That's the worst of it. That's the tragedy. I get everything
I want, and now it means nothing."
"Well, go on, explain."
"There's nothing between Esther and me any more. There
never can be again."
"A row."
"Oh, no worseI can't bear to mention it My head's in a
daze. I wander around like a madman. I go through my part
as if I was asleep."
"I haven't noticed it," said Stahr, "You were great in your
rushes yesterday."
46 THE LAST TYCOON
"Was I? That just shows you nobody ever guesses."
"Are you trying to tell me that you and Esther are sepa-
rating?"
"I suppose it'll come to that. Yes inevitably it will."
"What was it?" demanded Stahr impatiently. "Did she come
in without knocking?"
"Oh, there's nobody else. It's just me. I'm through."
Stahr got it suddenly.
"How do you know?"
"It's been true for six weeks."
"It's your imagination/' said Stahr. "Have you been to a
doctor?"
The actor nodded.
"I've tried everything. I even one day in desperation I
went down to to Claris. But it was hopeless. I'm washed up."
Stahr had an impish temptation, to tell him to go to Brady
about it. Brady handled all matters of public relations. Or was
this private relations. He turned away a moment, got Ms face
in control, turned back.
"I've been to Pat Brady," said the star, as if guessing the
thought. "He gave me a lot of phoney advice and I tried it
all, but nothing doing. Esther and I sit opposite each other
at dinner, and I'm ashamed to look at her. She's been a good
sport about it, but I'm ashamed. I'm ashamed all day long.
I think Rainy Day grossed twenty-five thousand in Des Moines
and broke all records in St. Louis and did twenty-seven thou-
sand in Kansas City. My fan mail's way up, and there I am
afraid to go home at night, afraid to go to bed."
Stahr began to be faintly oppressed. When the actor first
came in, Stahr had intended to invite him to a cocktail party,
but now it scarcely seemed appropriate. What would he want
with a cocktail party with this hanging over him? In his mind's
eye he saw him wandering haunted from guest to guest with
a cocktail in his hand and his grosses up twenty-seven thou-
sand.
"So I came to you, Monroe. I never saw a situation where
47
a out, I to if far ad-
roe to ME 111 ask
on 0a tie
and
*Flve Mr* Stahr,**
*Tm sorry,* *Td a few
*F!ve to my the
the 1 the
I go
*T0u sit said take of time and
over.*
In the two of the
tea
Hie was a of
whom one the of
wood "a on
In Holywood,^ "a veteran,* Tihat old
woman on the lot,* *the in tbe btz*;
of course, in she was as a
maniac, a virgin, a a a
Witkwt being aa old maid, she was, He
women, rathex old maidlsh. erf the
and her salary was a hundred a A
plicated treatise could be written oa she it*
or more than that or nothing at aE Her lay in ordi-
nary assets as the bare fact she was a and
adaptable, quick and trostworthy, "knew the game 3 * and
without egotism* She had been a great friend erf Miima's,
over a period of years Stahr had to
amounted to a sharp physical revulsion.
She and Wylie waited in silence occasionally addressktg a
remark to Miss Doolan. Every few minute ReMmtted, the
supervisor, called up from Ms office, where he and Broaca, the
director, were waiting. After ten minutes Stahr's button weat
on, and Miss Doolan called Reinmund and Broaca; sbnulta-
and the tt of
48 THE LAST TYCOOH
Stahr holding the man's arm. He so up
when Wylie White how he he Ms
mouth and began to tell Mm and there.
*Oh, IVe had an awful time/ 9 he but Stahr
sharply.
*No, you haven't Now you go and do the role the
way I said.**
Thank you, Monroe.**
Jane Meloney looked after him without speaking.
"Somebody been catching flies on faimP* she asked a phrase
for stealing scenes.
Tm sorry 1 kept you waiting,* Stahr said. *Come on in.*
It was noon already and the conferees were entitled to
exactly an hour of Stabi's time. No less, for such a conference
could only be interrupted by a director who was held up in
his shooting; seldom much more, because every eight days
the company must release a production as complex and costly
as Eeinhardf s Miracle.
Occasionally, less often than Eve years ago, Stahr would
work all through the night on a single picture. But after such
a spree he felt badly for days. If he could go from problem
to problem, there was a certain rebirth of vitality with each
change. And Kke those sleepers who can wake whenever they
wish, he had set his psychological dock to run one hour.
The cast assembled included, besides the writers, Reinmund,
one of the most favored of the supervisors, and John Broaca,
the picture's director.
Broaca, on the surface, was all engineer large and without
nerves, quietly resolute, popular. He was an ignoramus, and
Stahr often caught him making the same scenes over and over
one scene about a rich young girl occurred in all his pictures
with the same action, the same business. A bunch of large dogs
entered the room and jumped around the girL Later the girl
went to a stable and slapped a horse on the rump. The ex-
planation was probably not Freudian; more likely that at a
4ft
in he a
a gill As a for
it on Ms
a a
a of he
by liis
of He a as
go. At he had of the
or are to But lie got
Ms out in and by an
on to
a
man.
WyEe White, of in any
as aa of the He
half His of in
The for this is
Saturday/" *I it's aH im-
proved."
Refmzrund the two a erf
gratulatkm.
"Except for one thing,* said "I see
why it should be produced at all, I've to put it
away. 3 *
There was a moment of shocked
of protest, stricken queries.
*lf s not your fault/* Stahr said. T some-
thing there that wasn't there-that was all" He look-
ing regretfully at Reinmund: "It's too bad It was a good play.
We paid fifty thousand for it**
"What's the matter with it, Monroe?* asked Bjnoaca bluntly.
"Well, it hardfy seems worth while to go it,* smd Stahr,
Keinmund and Wylie WMte wore both thinking of the pro-
fessional effect on than* Rdnmiaad had two pictures to his
50 I. AST TYCOON
account this year bet a to
his to the
closely
^Couldn't you us clue,* Tills
is a good of a blow, Monroe.*
*1 just wouldn't put to it,* *Or
Coltnaa either. I wouldn't to it *
**SpeciBcaI!y, Monroe,* WyMe "What didn't
you like? The scenes? the the humor? coostracHoB?*
Stahr picked up the script his let it fall as if it
were s physically, too heavy to handle*
"I don't like the people,** he said, T wouldn't Hke to
them if I knew they were to be somewhere* Td go
somewhere else.*
Reinmund smiled, but worry in his eyes.
"Well, that's a damning oiticism,* he said *I thought the
people were rather interesting.**
**So did I said Broaca. TL thought Em was veiy sympathetic,
TDid you?* asked Stahr sharply. **I could fust barely believe
she was alive. And when I came to the end, I said to myself,
*So what?"
There must be something to do,** Reinmund said. T^aturally
we feel bad about this. This is the structure we agreed
on w
"But it's not the story," said Stahr. Tve told you many times
that the first thing I decide is the kind of story I want We
change in every other regard, but once that is set weVe got
to work toward it with every line and movement This is not
the kind of a story I want The story we bought had shine
and glow it was a happy story* This is aH full of doubt and
hesitation. The hero and heroine stop loving each other over
trifles then they start up again over trifles. After the first
sequence, you don't care if she never sees him again or he her."
That's my fault," said Wylie suddenly. Tou see, Monroe, I
don't think stenographers have the same dumb admiration
for their bosses thev had in 1929. They've been laid off
LAST 51
has on,
aE w
at a
That's not he The pn of tfc%
is the girl did for htr
if you to call II any
you her la any
a of Or you
at all are
and 1 to all the lot 1
to do a O'Neill 111 buy
Jane Meloney* her off
it was to be all If he had
to abandon the he at It like
She had been in this any of
Broaca^ with whom she a
years ago.
Stahr turned to Reinmund.
*You ought to have the
what Mud erf a picture I wanted I the
that Corliss and McKelway couldat say and got of it
Remember this in the future if I order a I
that kind of ear* And the fastest racer you
wouldn't do. Now * He looked around. *~shall we go any
farther? Now that I've told you I don*t even lite the Mad of
picture this is? Shall we go on? We've got two At the
end of that time Fin going to put Corliss and McKelway
this or something eke is it worth wMleF*
**WeH, naturally/* said Reinmtiad* T think it is. I fed bad
about this. I should have wanted Wylia I thoqght he had
good ideas."
"Monroe's right,* said Broaca bluntly. T felt this was wrong
all the time, but I couldn't put my finger on it*
WyHe and Jane looked at him contemptuously and ex-
changed a glance.
5& THE LAST TYCOON
TDo yon can get hot on It agaMF
Staler, not unkindly* "Or I try
Td like another shot," said Wylie.
*How about you, Jane?*
She nodded brieiy.
*"What do you of the
"Well naturally I'm prejudiced in her favor.*
**You better forget it w said Stahr wamingly. "Ten million
Americans would put thumbs down on girl if she walked
on the screen. We've got an hour and twenty-five minutes on
the screen you show a woman unfaithful to a man for
one-third of that time and you've the impression that
she's one-third whore. 9 *
Ts that a big proportion?* 1 ' Jane slyly, and they
laughed.
"It is for me,* said Stahr thoughtfully, **even if it wasn't for
the Hays office. If you want to paint a scarlet letter on her
back, it's aU right, but that* s another story. Not this story. This
is a future wife and mother. However "however *
He pointed his pencil at Wylie White.
* this has as much passion as that Oscar on my desk**
*What the hem" said Wylie. "She's full of it Why she goes
to "
"She's loose enough/* said Stahr, ** but that's all. There's one
scene in the play better than all this you cooked up, and youVe
left it out When she's trying to make the time pass by changing
her watch7
**It didn't seem to fit," Wylie apologized.
"Now,** said Stahr, Tve got about fifty ideas. Tm going to
call Miss Doolan." He pressed a button. % And if there's any-
thing you don't understand, speak up**
Miss Doolan slid in almost imperceptibly. Pacing the floor
swiftly, Stahr began. In the first place he wanted to tell them
what kind of a girl she was what kind of a girl he approved
of here. She was a perfect girl with a few small faults as in
the play* but a perf ect girl not because the public wanted her
THE LAST TYCOON 53
that way but because it was the kind of girl that he, Stahr,
liked to see in this sort of picture. Was that clear? It was no
character role. She stood for health, vitality, ambition and love.
What gave the play its importance was entirely a situation in
which she found herself. She became possessed of a secret that
affected a great many lives. There was a right thing and a
wrong thing to doat first it was not plain which was which,
but when it was, she went right away and did it. That was the
kind of story this was thin, clean and shining. No doubts.
"She has never heard the word labor troubles/' he said with
a sigh. "She might be living in 1929, Is it plain what kind of
girl I want?"
"It's very plain, Monroe."
"Now about the things she does," said Stahr. "At all times, at
all moments when she is on the screen in our sight, she wants
to sleep with Ken Willard. Is that plain, Wylie?"
"Passionately plain."
"Whatever she does, it is in place of sleeping with Ken Wil-
lard. If she walks down the street she is walking to sleep with
Ken Willard, if she eats her food it is to give her strength to
sleep with Ken Willard. But at no time do you give the impres-
sion that she would ever consider sleeping with Ken Willard
unless they were properly sanctified. I'm ashamed of having
to tell you these kindergarten facts, but they have somehow
leaked out of the story."
He opened the script and began to go through it page by
page. Miss Doolan's notes would be typed in quintuplicate and
given to them, but Jane Meloney made notes of her own.
Broaca put his hand up to his half-closed eyes he could
remember "when a director was something out here," when
writers were gag-men or eager and ashamed young reporters
full of whiskey a director was all there was then. No super-
visorno Stahr.
He started wide-awake as he heard his name.
"It would be nice, John, if you could put the boy on a
pointed roof and let him walk around and keep the camera
54 THE LAST TYCOON
on Mm. You get a not sus-
pense, not pointing for kid on the in the
morning.*
Broaca brought himself in the
*AU right/* he said, * just an of danger.*"
"Not exactly," said Stahr. *He to fall off the
roof. Break into the scene with it.*
Through the window," Jane Meloney. **He could
climb in his sister's window. 9 *
That's a good transition," said Stahr. *Eight Mo the diary
scene.*
Broaca was wide-awake BOW.
*T11 shoot up at fainC lie said. **Let him go away from the
camera. Just a fixed shot from quite a distance let him go
away from the camera. Don't follow Mm. Pick Mm up in a
dose shot and let him go away again. No attention on him
except against the whole roof and the sky. 9 * He liked the shot
it was a director's shot that didn't come up on every page
any more. He might use a crane it would be cheaper in the
end than building the roof on the ground with a process sky.
That was one tMng about Stahr the literal sky was the limit
He had worked with Jews too long to believe legends that
they were small with money.
"In the third sequence have him Mt the priest," Stahr said.
*Whatr Wylie cried, "and have the Catholics on our neck."
Tve talked to Joe Breen. Priests have been hit It doesn't
reflect on them.**
His quiet voice ran onstopped abruptly as Miss Doolan
glanced at the clock.
"Is that too much to do before Monday?** he asked Wylie.
Wylie looked at Jane and she looked back, not even bother-
ing to nod. He saw their week-end melting away, but he was
a different man from when he entered the room. When you
were paid fifteen hundred a week, emergency work was one
thing you did not skimp > nor when your picture was threat-
ened As a "free lance* writer Wylie had failed from lack of
LAST TYCOON" 55
Si*tlir to cm\ for .ill of fffict
not off he left the
in the of the lot. He felt a
of
a of the
Just him to do his to p t
his of in if the
the as as a
Out of the the
the She her
in her a few it
coming at the
the border* That no like
Broaca as He
that Reinmund was on his up. He
dred and fifty a for his
writers and stare who got He a of
English he had the and
Broaca hoped they hurt his feet, but he
his shoes from FeeTs put Ms hat
with a feather. Broaca was years of He a fioe
record in the war, but he had felt the
himself since he had let Ike Franklin in the
with his open hand.
There was smoke In the room, it, Ms
great desk, Stahr was withdrawing further in all
courtesy, still giving Reinmund an ear an ear.
The conference was over.
[Stahr was to ham received the
"wanted to learn about pictures from the
in the antho/s cast of characters is as an Dearly
Fascist?]
"Mr. Marcos calling from New York/* said Miss Doolan.
"What do you meanr demanded Stahr. "Why 9 I saw him
here last night**
56 THE LAST TYCOON
"Well, he's on the a call and
Jacobs* voice. It s Ms
Stain laughed.
Tin at lunch,* he "There's no
fast enough to there,"
Miss Doolan to the to
the outcome.
"It's all right,* It a
Mr. Marcus called East this to tell the
quake and the iood on the lot, and it he
them to ask you about it It a didnt
understand Mr. Marcus. I she got up.**
T think she did/* said Stahr
Prince Agge did not understand of but, looking
for the fabulous, he felt It was triumphantly Amer-
ican. Mr. Marcus, whose quarters could be across the
way, had called his New York office to ask Stahr about the
flood. The Prince imagined some intricate relationship without
realizing that the transaction had place entirely within
the once brilliant steel-trap mind of Mr. Marcus, which was
intermittently slipping.
"I think she was a very new secretary,** repeated Stahr. ""Any
other messages?"
"Mr. Robinson called in/* Miss Dookn said, as he started
for the commissary. "One of the women told Mm her name,
but he's forgotten it he thinks it was Smith or Brown or
Jones/'
"That's a great help."
"And he remembers she says she just moved to Los
Angeles."
u l remember she had a silver belt,* Stakr said, "with stars
cut out of it*
Tm still trying to find out more about Pete Zavras. I talked
to his wife."
"What dM she
THE LAST TYCOON 57
"Oh, they've had an awful time- given up their house she's
been sick w
"Is the eye-trouble hopeless?"
"She didn't seem to know anything about the state of his
eyes. She didn't even know he was going blind."
"That's funny."
He thought about it on the way to luncheon, but it was as
confusing as the actor's trouble this morning. Troubles about
people's health didn't seem within his range he gave no
thought to his own. In the lane beside the commissary he
stepped back as an open electric track crammed with girls
in the bright costumes of the Regency came rolling in from the
back lot. The dresses were fluttering in the wind, the young
painted faces looked at him curiously, and he smiled as it went
by.
Eleven men and their guest, Prince Agge, sat at lunch in
the private dining room of the studio commissary. They were
the money men they were the rulers; and unless there was
a guest, they ate in broken silence, sometimes asking ques-
tions about each other's wives and children, sometimes dis-
charging a single absorption from the forefront of their
consciousness. Eight out of the ten were Jews five of the ten
were foreign-born, including a Greek and an Englishman; and
they had all known each other for a long time: there was a
rating in the group, from old Marcus down to old Leanbaum,
who had bought the most fortunate block of stock in the busi-
ness and never was allowed to spend over a million a year
producing.
Old Marcus still managed to function with disquieting resil-
ience. Some never-atrophying instinct warned him of danger,
of gangings up against him he was never so dangerous him-
self as when others considered him surrounded. His grey face
had attained such immobility that even those who were accus-
tomed to watch the reflex of the inner corner of his eye could
58 THE LAST TYCOON
no longer see it. a
to conceal it; his was
As he was the oldest. Stain the of the group-
not by at he sat
most of these he a boy of twenty-two,
Then, more now* he a man
money men. Then he to in Ms head
with a speed and accuracy that them for they were
not wizards or even in that regard, despite the pop-
ular conception of Jews in finance. of owed their
success to different and incompatible qualities. But IB a group
a tradition carries the less adept; and they were content
to look at Stahr for the sublimated auditing, and experience
a sort of glow as if they had done it themselves, like
at a football game.
Stahr, as will presently be seen, had grown away from that
particular gift, though it was always there.
Prince Agge sat between Stahr and Mort Fleishacker, the
company lawyer, and across from Joe Popolos the theatre
owner. He was hostile to Jews in a vague general way that
he tried to cure himself of. As a turbulent man, serving his
time in the Foreign Legion, he thought that Jews were too
fond of their own skins. But he was willing to concede that
they might be different in America under different circum-
stances, and certainly he found Stahr was much of a man in
every way. For the rest-he thought most business men were
dull dogs for final reference he reverted always to the blood
of Bernadotte in his veins.
My father I will call him Mr. Brady, as Prince Agge did
when he told me of this luncheon was worried about a picture,
and when Leanbaum went out early, he came up and took his
chair opposite.
*How about the South America picture idea, Monroe?" he
asked.
Prince Agge noticed a blink of attention toward tihem as
LAST TYCOON" 59
of tlu> ai
"We're it," said
"With
"It's out of be any
in or
you throw It and get II back.*
Probably the for the
took up the in a of
"It's not in as we to this
times in as it It be as we ma the
gamut of is
""What do you Mr. Marcus?"
All eyes followed his down the as if
Mr. Marcus had already Ms
him that he wished to rise 9 in a
position in the waiter's arms. He at
helplessness that it was hard to realize that in the
he sometimes went dancing with his
^Monroe is our production geaies ? w he *!
Monroe and lean heavily upon him. I not the
myself. 9 *
There was a moment of silence as he moved the
There's not a two million dollar in the
said Brady,
"Is not,* agreed Popolos, **Even as if so you
by the head and push them by and in, is not*
Trobably not w agreed Stabr, He paused as if to sure
that all were listening, *I think we can count on a and
a quarto: from the road-show. Perhaps a million and a half
altogether. And a quarter of a mfflion abroad**
Again there was silencethis time puzzled, a little confused.
Over his shoulder Stahr asked the waiter to be connected with
his office on the phone.
"But your budgetP said Fleishacker, *TT0ur budget is seven-
60 THE LAST TYCOON
teen hundred and iffy I your
tations only add up to profit*
Those aren't my expectations/* *"We f re not
of more than a miUion a half.*
The room had grown so motionless Agge
hear a grey chunk of ash fall a in midair. Fleisfaaclcer
started to speak, his face but a phone
had been handed over Stahr's shoulder.
*Your office, Mr. Stahr. 9 *
'"Oh, yes oh, hello, Miss Doolan. Fve figured it out about
Zavras. It's one of these lousy rumors 111 bet my shirt on it
. . . Oh, you did. Good. . . . Good. Now here's what to do:
send him to my oculist this afternoon Dr. John Kennedy
and have him get a report and have it photostated you under-
stand?**
He hung up turned with a touch of passion to the table at
large.
TDId any of you ever hear a story that Pete Zavras was
going blindF
There were a couple of nods. But most of those present were
poised breathlessly on whether Stahr had slipped on his
figures a minute before.
"It's pure bunk He says he's never even been to an oculist
never knew why the studios turned against him,** said Stahr.
"Somebody didn't like him or somebody talked too much, and
he's been out of work for a year.**
There was a conventional murmur of sympathy. Stahr signed
the check and made as though to get up.
"Excuse me, Monroe, 9 * said Fleishacker persistently, while
Brady and Popolos watched. Tm fairly new here, and perhaps
I fail to comprehend implicitly and explicitly." He was talking
fast, but the veins on his forehead bulged with pride at the
big words from N. Y. U. TDo I understand you to say you
expect to gross a quarter million short of your budget?**
TLfs a quality picture,** said Stahr with assumed innocence.
It had dawned on them aH now, but they still felt there was
LAST TYCOON 6l
a IB it It Nte
in his
Tor two said tt li V
a \\ rite it off a&
will this"! in
Some of still lie It was a and i
favorable but he left In no
It'll money,* he as he up, his jaw fust
slightly out his "It be a
bigger miracle If It But we
a certain duty to the public, as Pat has at
dinners. It's a good for the to slip
IB a picture tbatll money.*
He nodded at Prince Agge. As the his
quickly, he tried to in a last the
effect of what Stahr but he tel
not so much downcast as aa
just above the table, were all but
was not a whisper in the room.
Coming out of the private
a comer of the commissary proper. it to
eagerly. It was gay with with sol-
diers, with the sideburns and braided of the
From a little distance they were wad
a hundred years ago, and he tike
men of his time would look as in
pictura
Then he saw Abraham Lincoln, and his sud-
denly changed. He had been brought up in the of
Scandinavian socialism when Nicolay's biography
read. He had been told Lincoln was a whom he
should admire* and he hated Mm instead, he was
forced upon him. But now seeing him sitting here, Ms
crossed, his kindly face fixed on a forty-cent dinner, including
Ms as if to
62 THE LAST TYCOON
self from the erratic air-cooling now who
in America at last, stared as a tourist at the mummy of
in the Kremlin. This s then, Lincoln* Stahr era
far ahead of him, turned waiting for him but still Agge
This, then* he thought, was what they al to be.
Lincoln suddenly raised a triangle of pie jammed it
in his mouth, and* a little frightened, Prince Agge hurried to
join Stahr.
"I hope you're getting what you want,** said Stabr, feeling
he had neglected him. "Well have some in half an hour
and then you can go on to as many sets as you want.*
"I should rather stay with you/* said Prince Agge,
Til see what there is for me, w said Stahr, Then weU go on
together.**
There was the Japanese consul on the release of a spy story
which might offend the national sensibilities of Japan. There
were phone calls and telegrams. There was some further infor-
mation from Robby.
"Now he remembers the name of the woman. He's sure it
was Smith,* said Miss Doolan. ""He asked her if she wanted
to come on the lot and get some dry shoes, and she said no
so she can't sue.**
"That's pretty bad for a total recall 'Smith.' That's a great
help.** He thought a moment: **Ask the phone company for a
list of Smiths that have taken new phones here in the last
month. Call them all*
"AH right."
4
*HOW ABE 00,
you down.*
Stahr the
toward the set of a be
row. Director a
that, however fast he to be a 0r
two ahead. He the of
had used it himself. He Ms be
had used everything. There no
that would surprise him. His the of
tions, and Stahr by effective not
on Ms own grounds. Goldwyn
him, and Bidingwood had led Goldwyn into to set out
a part in front of fifty people with the he
ipated: his own authority had
Stahr reached the brilliant set and
It's no good," said Ridingwood. "No I
care how you light it 1 *
*Why did you call me about it?* Stahr
to him. "Why didn't you take it up with ArtP*
T didn't ask you to come down, Monroe.*
**You wanted to be yoiir own supervisor.*
Tm sorry, Monroe/* said Ridingwood patiently, *but I
didn't ask you to come down."
Stahr turned suddenly and walked back toward the camera
set-up. Hi eyas of a erf vMtois moved
64 THE LAST TYCOON"
momentarily off the of the In and
then moved vacantly to the They
Knights of Columbus. They the in pro-
cession, but this the
Stahr stopped her chair. She a low
displayed the bright of her and back.
each take, the blemished surface was over with an
emollient, which was removed immediately the take. Her
hair was of the color and viscosity of drying blood, but
was starlight that actually photographed in her eyes.
Before Stahr could speak, he heard a helpful voice
Mm:
"She's radiunt. Absolutely radiuot*
It was an assistant director, and the intention was delicate
compliment The actress was being complimented so that she
did not have to strain her poor skin to bend and hear. Stahr
was being complimented for having her under contract. Hi-
dingwood was being remotely complimented.
"Everything all right?" Stahr asked her pleasantly.
"Oh, it's fine/ 9 she agreed,, " except for the ing publicity
men.**
He winked at her gently.
"We 11 keep them away/' he said
Her name had become currently synonymous with the
expression "bitch/' Presumably she had modelled herself after
one of those queens in the Tarzan comics who rule myste-
riously over a nation of blacks. She regarded the rest of the
world as black. She was a necessary evil, borrowed for a single
picture.
Ridingwood walked with Stahr toward the door of the stage.
"Everything's all right," the director said. "She's as good as
she can be,"
They were out of hearing range, and Stahr stopped suddenly
and looked at Red with blazing eyes.
"You've been photographing crap/* he said. "Do you know
what she reminds me of in the rushes "Miss Foodstuffs.' "
LAST gg
"Tin to git the
"Come me, w
1 tell to
It as it is,* 9 the
His car and
"Get in," said
it He til at
was the The girl had got the oa Mm
the first day her He was a
and lie had let her her
his
*Tou he TE told you I 1
her she out I'm
to call It of,
*The picture?"
"No. I'm on It**
"All
Tm sorry, try else
The car up in of
I finish this said EeA
"It's now/* said ia
"
"'He ia we out I had Mm tie
last night"
"Now listen, Monroe *
"If s my busy day, Bed," said Ton lost
about three days ago.**
It was a sorry mess, Ridingwood thought. It he would
have slight, very slight loss of positionit probably
he could not have a third wife fust now as he had planned*
There wasn't even the satisfaction of raising a row about it
-if you disagreed with Stahr, you did not advertise it Stahr
was his world's great customer, who was always almost
always
66 THE LAST TYCOON
"How about my he *I left it a
chair OB the set*
*I know you dld, w "Here it is."
He was frying so to be
kpse that he had that he had it in his
*Mr. Stahr's Projection Room* a picture
theatre with four rows of overstuffed In front of the
front row ran long tables with kmps s tele-
phones. Against the wal was an piano, left there since
the early days of sound. The had redecorated and
reupholstered only a year before* but already it was
again with work and hours.
Here Stahr sat at two-thirty and again at six-thirty watching
the lengths of film taken during the day. There was often a
savage tensity about the occasionhe was dealing with fatts
accomplisthe net result of months of buying, planning, writ-
ing and rewriting, casting, constructing, lighting, rehearsing
and shooting the fruit of brilliant hunches or of counsels of
despair, of lethargy, conspiracy and sweat At this point the
tortuous manoeuvre was staged and in suspension these were
reports from the battle-line.
Besides Stahr, there were present the representatives of all
technical departments, together with the supervisors and unit
managers of the pictures concerned. The directors did not
appear at these showings officially because their work was
considered done, actually because few punches were pulled'
here as money ran out in silver spools. There had evolved a
delicate staying away.
The staff was already assembled, Stahr came in and took
his place quickly, and the murmur of conversation died away.
As he sat back and drew his thin knee up beside him in the
chair, the lights in the room went out There was the flare of
a match in the back row then silence.
On the screen a troop of French Canadians pushed their
canoes up a rapids. The scene had been photographed in a
THE LAST TYCOON 67
studio tank, and at the end of each take, after the director's
voice could be heard saying "Cut," the actors on the screen
relaxed and wiped their brows and sometimes laughed hilar-
iouslyand the water in the tank stopped flowing and the
illusion ceased. Except to name his choice from each set of
takes and to remark that it was "a good process/' Stahr made
no comment
The next scene, still in the rapids, called for dialogue
between the Canadian girl (Claudette Colbert) and the
courrier du bois (Ronald Colman), with her looking down at
him from a canoe. After a few strips had run through, Stahr
spoke up suddenly.
"Has the tank been dismantled?"
"Yes, sir."
"Monroethey needed it for n
Stahr cut in peremptorily.
"Have it set up again right away. Let's have that second
take again."
The lights went on momentarily. One of the unit managers
left his chair and came and stood in front of Stahr.
"A beautifully acted scene thrown away,* raged Stahr
quietly. "It wasn't centered. The camera was set up so it caught
the beautiful top of Claudette's head all the time she was talk-
ing. That's just what we want, isn't it? That's just what people
go to see-the top of a beautiful girl's head. Tell Tim he could
have saved wear and tear by using her stand-in.**
The lights went out again. The unit manager squatted by
Stahr's chair to be out of the way. The take was run again*
"Do you see now?" asked Stahr. "And there's a hair in the
picture-there on the right, see it? Find out if it's in the pro-
jector or the film."
At the very end of the take, Claudette Colbert slowly lifted
her head, revealing her great liquid eyes.
"That's what we should have had all the way," said
Stahr. "She gave a fine performance too. See if you can fit it
in tomorrow or late this af tamoon,"
68 THE LAST TYCOON
Pete Zawas would not a slip like
were not six in the you
trust
The lights went on; the supervisor and unit for that
picture weal out
a Monroe, this stuff was shot yesterday it
last night*
The room darkened. On the screen the head of
Siva, immense and imperturbable, oblivous to the fact that ia
a few hours it was to be washed away ia a Mood Around it
milled a crowd of the faithful.
"When you take that scene again,** said Stahr suddenly, **put
a couple of little kids up on top. You better check about
whether it's reverent or not, but I think it's all right Kidsll do
anything.**
"Yes, Monroe,"
A silver belt with stars cut out of it. ... Smith, Jones or
Brown. . . . Personal will the woman with the silver belt
who ?
With another picture the scene shifted to New York, a gang-
ster story, and suddenly Stahr became restive.
"That scene's trash,** he called suddenly in the darkness.
*lt*s badly written, it's miscast, it accomplishes nothing. Those
types aren't tough. They look like a lot of dressed up lollipops
what the hell is the matter, Lee?"
"The scene was written on the set this morning,** said Lee
Kapper. "Burton wanted to get all the stuff on Stage 6.**
"Well it's trash. And so is this one. There's no use printing
stuff like that She doesn't believe what she's saying neither
does Gary. 1 love you* in a close up they'll duck you out of
the house! And the girl's overdressed. 9 *
In the darkness a signal was given, the projector stopped,
the lights went on. The room waited in utter silence. Stahr's
face was expressionless.
"Who wrote the scene?" he asked after a minute.
"WyHe White."
9
% he
fee fa,*
*Put on that fat
got Is
Trie got in this
**Talk to It, to I
girl is in It's as as
at -*
The art out of tibe
"Yeah."
*There*s the
all the
"What is It,
"You tel said *It f s II
eye out It cheap."
"It wasn't"
T know It wasn't. There's not the bat
something* Go over and a It be few
much fantiture-~or the a
help* Couldrit yon the in that hall a
more?*
TH see what I can do.** Ms
row, looking at his watch.
TH have to get at it away,* he said. TD
and well put it up in the
"AH right Lee* you can
youf*
*I think so 9 Monroe,**
1 take the blame for this. Have you got the stoffT
^Coming up now."
Stahr nodded* Kappa: hrrfl out, and the room wait dark
again. CM the screen four staged a terrific match
in a cellar. Stahr laughed.
TLook at Tracy/* he said TLook at Mm go down after that
7 THE LAST TYCOON
The fought over over. the
Always at the end
touching the opponent in a friendly on the
The only one in the a could
have murdered the other three. He in only if
swung wild and didn't follow the blows he had them.
Even so s the youngest actor was afraid for his face and the
director had covered his finches with ingenious and
interpositions.
And then two men met endlessly in a door, recognized
each other and went on. They met, they started, they went on.
Then a little girl read underneath a tree with a boy reading
on a limb of the tree above. The little girl was bored and
wanted to talk to the boy. He would pay no attention. The
core of the apple he was eating fell on the little girl's head.
A voice spoke up out of the darkness:
"It's pretty long, isn't it, Monroe?"
"Not a bit," said Stahr. Tft's nice. It has nice feeling.*
*1 just thought it was long."
"Sometimes ten feet can be too long sometimes a scene
two hundred feet long can be too short. I want to speak to
the cutter before he touches this scenethis is something that'll
be remembered in the picture.**
The oracle had spoken. There was nothing to question or
argue. Stahr must be right always, not most of the time, but
alwaysor the structure would melt down like gradual butter.
Another hour passed. Dreams hung in fragments at the far
end of the room, suffered analysis, passed to be dreamed in
crowds, or else discarded. The end was signalled by two tests,
a character man and a girl. After the rushes, which had a
tense rhythm of their own, the tests were smooth and finished;
the observers settled in their chairs; Stahr's foot slipped to the
floor. Opinions were welcome. One of the technical men let
it be known that he would willingly cohabit with the girl; the
rest were indifferent
"Somebody sent up a test of that girl two years ago. She
X, iST T\ Tl
be she isn't any But
the wi use us the old ia
Steppe*?"
fe an old the
of it a one he be
"It's the he
on, bis its
put He to Ms
retaiy*
*The on 2," she
He in at the
a of by an
ions There a in on the
ject of a and had Ms sty
on as lie
out a happy for a a He
at this in the he was at his aai
the opposition faded into a
dozen stars to the for the
less at Long Beach. In a of five erf
all at made up a purse of
They gave well, but not as It not
At his office there was word from the oculist to be
sent Pete Zavras that the 19-20:
approximately perfect He had written a
was having photostated. Stahr walked around his
while Miss Doolan admired Mot Prince had
in to thank him for his afternoon on the and
talked, a cryptic word came from a
writers named Tarfefon had "finmd oT and to
quit
These are good writers/* Stahr explained to Prince Agge,
"and we don't have good out
7^ THE LAST TYCOON
"Why, you can Mre Ms In sur-
prise.
*Oh, we Mre but get out not
writersso we to the we faave. w
"Such as whatr
"'Anybody that'll the and
we have all sorts of
playwrights college j^rib we put them on an m pairs,
and if it slows down, we put two writers behind
them, IVe had as many as working mdepeiidently
on the same idea.*
T3o they like thatr
"Not if they know about it. They're not geniusesnone of
them could make as much any other way. But these Tarletons
are a husband and wife team from the East pretty good play-
wrights. They've just found out they're not alone on the story
and it shocks them shocks their sense of unity that's the word
theyTl use."
"But what does make the the unity?"
Stahr hesitated his face was grim except that his eyes twin-
kled.
*Tm the unity,* he said. *Come and see us again. 5 *
He saw the Tarletons. He told them he liked their work,
looking at Mrs. Tarleton as if he could read her handwriting
through the typescript. He told them kindly that he was taking
them from the picture and putting them on another, where
there was less pressure, more time. As he had half expected,
they begged to stay on the first picture, seeing a quicker credit,
even though it was shared with others. The system was a
shame, he admitted gross, commercial, to be deplored. He
had originated it a fact that he did not mention.
When they had gone, Miss Doolan came in triumphant
*Mr. Stahr, the lady with the belt is on the phoned
Stahr walked into his office alone and sat down behind his
desk and picked up the phone with a great sinking of his
stomach. He did not know what he wanted He had not
LAST TYCOON 73
the as he had the
of At he to if
if the was aa
had got tip to like as he had hud 4
up like and
her the
"Hello," he said.
"Bella*
As he the for a vi-
bration of last the of to
him, and he it off an of
*WeU you were to lad,** ha you
moved . That all we a
*Oh, yes, 3 * the voice still "I bad 0n a
silver belt last Bight"
Now, where from
*Who are youf* the said, a of
geois dignity.
*My name Is Monroe Stahr, 5 * be
A pause. It was a on the
and she seemed to have it
"Oh, yes yes. You the of Davis**
Yes.*
Was it a trick? As the whole of last
to Mm the very skin with that as if
phonis had touched it he thought it not be
a trick to reach him from Not yet
Minna. The curtains blew suddenly into the the
whispered on his desk, and bis heart at the
intense reality of the day outside his window* If le go
out now this way, what would happen if he her
the stony veiled expression, the mouth for
poor brave human laughter.
*Td like to see you. Would you like to come to the studio?*
Again the hesitancy then a blank refusal
"Oh, I don't think I ought to, Fm awf idly sorry. *
74 THE LAST TYCOON
This last was a a
skin-deep vanity to aid, to his
urgency.
Td like to see you," he "There's a
nell~I m that *
"Could I come and see you?*
A pause again, not from he felt, but to
her answer.
"There's something you don't know," she finally*
*Oh, you're probably married," he was It has
nothing to do with that. I you to here openly,
bring your husband if you
"It's it's quite impossible."
*I feel silly even talking to you s but your secretary insisted
I thought Td dropped something in the lood last night and
you'd found it"
"I want very much to see you for five minutes."
"To put me in the movies? 9 *
That wasn't my idea."
There was such a long pause that he thought he had
offended her.
**Where could I meet you?** she asked unexpectedly.
"Here? At your housed
"No somewhere outside."
Suddenly Stahr could think of no place. His own house
a restaurant? Where did people meet? a house of assignation,
a cocktail bar?
Til meet you somewhere at nine o'clock," she said.
"That's impossible, I'm afraid.**
"Then never mind."
"AH right, then, nine o'clock, but can we make it near here?
There's a drug-store on Wilshire *
It was a quarter to six. There were two men outside who had
come every day at this time only to be postponed. This was
THE LAST TYCOON 75
an hour of fatiguethe men's business was not so important
that it must be seen to, nor so insignificant that it could be
ignored. So he postponed it again and sat motionless at his
desk for a moment, thinking about Russia. Not so much about
Russia as about the picture about Russia which would con-
sume a hopeless half hour presently. He knew there were many
stories about Russia, not to mention The Story, and he had
employed a squad of writers and research men for over a year,
but all the stories involved had the wrong feel. He felt it could
be told in terms of the American thirteen states, but it kept
coming out different, in new terms that opened unpleasant
possibilities and problems. He considered he was very fair to
Russia he had no desire to make anything but a sympathetic
picture, but it kept turning into a headache.
"Mr. Stahr Mr. Dnimmon's outside, and Mr. Kirstoff and
Mrs. Cornhill, about the Russian picture."
"All right send them in."
Afterwards from six-thirty to seven-thirty he watched the
afternoon rushes. Except for his engagement with the girl, he
would ordinarily have spent the early evening in the projec-
tion room or the dubbing room, but it had been a late night
with the earthquake, and he decided to go to dinner. Com-
ing in through his front office, he found Pete Zavras waiting,
his arm in a sling.
"You are the Aeschylus and the Euripides of the moving
picture," said Zavras simply. "Also the Aristophanes and the
Menander."
He bowed.
"Who are they?" asked Stahr smiling.
"They are my countrymen."
"I didn't know you made pictures in Greece."
"You're joking with me, Monroe," said Zavras. "I want to say
you are as dandy a fellow as they come. You have saved me
one hundred percent."
"You f eel all right now?"
70 THE LAST TYCOON
"My arm is nothing. It feels like someone kisses me there.
It was worth doing what I did, if this is the outcome.*'
"How did you happen to do it here?" Stahr asked curiously,
"Before the Delphic oracle," said Zavras. "The Oedipus who
solved the riddle, I wish I had my hands on the son-of-a-
bitch who started the story.* 5
"You make me soixy I didn't get an education, 9 * said Stahr.
"It isn't worth a damn/' said Pete. "I took my baccalaureate
in Salonika and look how I ended up."
"Not quite," said Stahr.
*lf you want anybody's throat cut anytime day or night,"
said Zavras, **iny number is in the book/*
Stahr closed his eyes and opened them again. Zavras*
silhouette had blurred a little against the sun. He hung on to
the table behind him and said in an ordinary voice:
"Good luck, Pete."
The room was almost black, but he made his feet move,
following a pattern, into his office and waited till the door
dicked shut before he felt for the pills. The water decanter
clattered against the table; the glass clacked. He sat down in
a big chair, waiting for the benzedrine to take effect before
he went to dinner.
As Stahr walked back from the commissary, a hand waved
at him from an open roadster. From the heads showing over
the back he recognized a young actor and his girl, and watched
them disappear through the gate, already part of the summer
twilight Little by little he was losing the feel of such things,
until it seemed that Minna had taken their poignancy with
her; his apprehension of splendor was fading so that pres-
ently the luxury of eternal mourning would depart. A childish
association of Minna with the material heavens made him,
when he reached his office, order out his roadster for the first
time this year. The big limousine seemed heavy with remem-
bered conferences or exhausted sleep.
Leaving the studio, lie was still tense,, but the open car
THE LAST TYCOON 77
pulled the summer evening up close, and he looked at it. There
was a moon down at the end of the boulevard, and it was a
good illusion that it was a different moon every evening, every
year. Other lights shone in Hollywood since Minna's death:
in the open markets lemons and grapefruit and green apples
slanted a misty glare into the street. Ahead of him the stop-
signal of a car winked violet and at another crossing he
watched it wink again. Everywhere floodlights raked the sky.
On an empty corner two mysterious men moved a gleaming
drum in pointless arcs over the heavens.
In the drug-store a woman stood by the candy counter. She
was tall, almost as tall as Stahr, and embarrassed. Obviously
it was a situation for her, and if Stahr had not looked as he
did most considerate and polite she would not have gone
through with it They said hello, and walked out without
another word, scarcely a glance yet before they reached the
curb Stahr knew: this was just exactly a pretty American
woman and nothing more no beauty like Minna.
"Where are we going?" she asked. "I thought there'd be a
chauffeur. Never mind I'm a good boxer."
"Boxer?"
"That didn't sound very polite." She forced a smile. "But
you people are supposed to be such horrors."
The conception of himself as sinister amused Stahr then
suddenly it failed to amuse him.
"Why did you want to see me?" she asked as she got in.
He stood motionless, wanting to tell her to get out imme-
diately. But she had relaxed in the car, and he knew the unfor-
tunate situation was of his own making he shut his teeth and
walked around to get in. The street lamp fell full upon her
face, and it was difficult to believe that this was the girl of
last night. He saw no resemblance to Minna at all.
Til run you home," he said. "Where do you live?"
"Run me home?" She was startled. "There's no huny-Tm
sorry if I offended you."
"No. It was nice of you to come. I've been stupid. Last
78 THE LAST TYCOON
night I had an idea that you were an exact double for someone
I knew. It was dark and the light was in my eyes. 9 *
She was offended he had reproached her for not looking
like someone else.
"It was just that!" she said. "That's funny ."
They rode in silence for a minute.
"You were married to Minna Davis, weren't you?" she said
with a flash of intuition. "Excuse me for referring to it*
He was driving as fast as he could without making it con-
spicuous.
"I'm quite a different type from Minna Davis/* she said,
"if that's who you meant. You might have referred to the
girl who was with me. She looks more like Minna Davis than
I do."
That was of no interest now. The thing was to get this over
quick and forget it
"Could it have been her?" she asked. "She lives next door."
"Not possibly/* he said. "I remember the silver belt you
wore.*
"That was me all right/*
They were northwest of Sunset, climbing one of the can-
yons through the hills. Lighted bungalows rose along the
winding road, and the electric current that animated them
sweated into the evening air as radio sound.
"You see that last highest light Kathleen lives there. I live
just over the top of the hill."
A moment later she said, "Stop here."
"I thought you said over the top/*
"I want to stop at Kathleen's."
Tm afraid I'm "
"I want to get out here myself," she said impatiently.
Stahr slid out after her, She started toward a new little house
almost roofed over by a single willow tree, and automatically
he followed her to the steps. She rang a bell and turned to
say good night
Tm sony you were disappointed," she said.
THE LAST TYCOON 79
He was sorry for her nowsorry for them both.
"It was my fault. Good night."
A wedge of light came out the opening door, and as a girl's
voice inquired, "Who is it?" Stahr looked up.
There she was face and form and smile against the light
from inside. It was Minna's face the skin with its peculiar
radiance as if phosphorus had touched it, the mouth with its
warm line that never counted costs and over all the haunting
jollity that had fascinated a generation.
With a leap his heart went out of him as it had the night
before, only this time it stayed out there with a vast benefi-
cence.
"Oh, Edna, you can't come in/' the girl said. *Tve been
cleaning and the house is full of ammonia smell."
Edna began to laugh, bold and loud. "I believe it was you
he wanted to see, Kathleen/' she said.
Stahr's eyes and Kathleen's met and tangled. For an instant
they made love as no one ever dares to do after. Their glance
was slower than an embrace, more urgent than a call.
"He telephoned me," said Edna, "It seems he thought "
Stahr interrupted, stepping forward into the light.
"I was afraid we were rude at the studio, yesterday even-
ing."
But there were no words for what he really said. She lis-
tened closely without shame. Life flared high in them both
Edna seemed at a distance and in darkness.
"You weren't rude," said Kathleen. A cool wind blew the
brown curls around her forehead. "We had no business there."
"I hope you'll both/' Stahr said, "come and make a tour of
the studio."
"Who are you? Somebody important?"
"He was Minna Davis's husband, he's a producer/' said
Edna, as if it were a rare joke, "and this isn't at all what he
just told me, I think he has a crush on you,"
"Shut up, Edna," said Kathleen sharply.
As if suddenly realizing her offensiveness, Edna said, "Phone
80 THE LAST TYCOON
me, will you?" and stalked away toward the road. But she
carried their secret with her she had seen a spark pass be-
tween them in the darkness.
"1 remember you," Kathleen said to Stahr. "You got us out
of the flood/'
Now what? The other woman was more missed in her
absence. They were alone and on too slim a basis for what
had passed already. They existed nowhere. His world seemed
far away she had no world at all except die idol's head, the
half open door.
"You're Irish,** he said, trying to build one for her.
She nodded.
Tve lived in London a long timeI didn't think you could
tell."
The wild green eyes of a bus sped up the road in the dark-
ness. They were silent until it went by.
"Your friend Edna didn't like me,* he said. "I think it was
the word Producer."
"She's just come out here, too. She's a silly creature who
means no harm. I shouldn't be afraid of you,"
She searched his face. She thought, like everyone, that he
seemed tired then she forgot it at the impression he gave of
a brazier out of doors on a cool night.
"I suppose the girls are all after you to put them on the
screen."
"They've given up," he said.
This was an understatement they were all there, he
knew, just over his threshold, but they had been there so long
that their clamoring voices were no more than the sound of
the traffic in the street. But Ms position remained more than
royal: a king could make only one queen; Stahr, at least
so they supposed, could make many.
*Tm thinking that it would turn you into a cynic," she said.
"You didn't want to put me in the pictures?'*
"No."
That's good. I'm no actress. Once in London a man came
THE LAST TYCOON 8l
up to me in the Carlton and asked me to make a test, but I
thought awhile and finaEy I didn't go."
They had been standing nearly motionless, as if in a moment
he would leave and she would go in. Stahr laughed suddenly.
"I feel as if I had my foot in the door like a collector."
She laughed, too.
"I'm sorry I can't ask you in. Shall I get my reefer and sit
outside?"
"No," He scarcely knew why he felt it was time to go. He
might see her again he might not. It was just as well this
way.
"You'll come to the studio?" he said. "I can't promise to go
around with you, but if you come, you must be sure to send
word to my office."
A frown, the shadow of a hair in breadth, appeared
between her eyes.
"I'm not sure," she said. "But I'm very much obliged."
He knew that, for some reason, she would not come in
an instant she had slipped away from him. They both sensed
that the moment was played out. He must go, even though he
went nowhere, and it left him with nothing. Practically, vul-
garly, he did not have her telephone number or even her
name; but it seemed impossible to ask for them now.
She walked with him to the car, her glowing beauty and
her unexplored novelty pressing up against him; but there was
a foot of moonlight between them when they came out of the
shadow.
"Is this all?" he said spontaneously.
He saw regret in her face but there was a flick of the lip,
also, a bending of the smile toward some indirection, a mo-
mentary dropping and lifting of a curtain over a forbidden pas-
sage.
"I do hope we'll meet again," she said almost formally,
Td be sorry if we didn't."
They were distant for a moment. But as he turned his car
in the next drive and came back with her still waiting, and
82, THE LAST TYCOON
waved and drove on, he felt exalted and happy. He was glad
that there was beauty in the world that would not be weighed
in the scales of the casting department
But at home he felt a curious loneliness as his butler made
him tea in the samovar. It was the old hurt come back, heavy
and delightful. When he took up the first of two scripts that
were his evening stint, that presently he would visualize line
by line on the screen, he waited a moment, thinking of Minna.
He explained to her that it was really nothing, that no one
could ever be like she was, that he was sorry.
That was substantially a day of Stahr's. I don't know about
the illness, when it started, etc., because he was secretive, but
I know he fainted a couple of tones that month because
Father told me. Prince Agge is my authority for the luncheon
in the commissary where he told them he was going to make
a picture that would lose money which was something, con-
sidering the men he had to deal with and that he held a big
block of stock and had a profit-sharing contract
And Wylie White told me a lot, which I believed because
he felt Stahr intensely with a mixture of jealousy and admi-
ration. As for me, I was head over heels in love with him then,
and you can take what I say for what it's worth.
CHAPTER 5
FRESH AS the morning, I went up to see him a week later.
Or so I thought; when Wylie called for me, I had gotten into
riding clothes to give the impression I'd been out in the dew
since early morning.
Tin going to throw myself under the wheel of Stahi's car,
this morning," I said.
"How about this car?" he suggested. "If s one of the best
cars Mort Fleishacker ever sold second-hand."
"Not on your flowing veil," I answered like a book. "You
have a wife in the East/*
"She's the past," he said. "You've got one great card, Celia
your valuation of yourself. Do you think anybody would look
at you if you weren't Pat Brady's daughter?"
We don't take abuse like our mothers would have. Nothing
no remark from a contemporary means much. They tell you
to be smart, they're marrying you for your money, or you tell
them. Everything's simpler. Or is it? as we used to say.
But as I turned on the radio and the car raced up Laurel
Canyon to The Thundering Beat of My Heart, I didn't believe
he was right. I had good features except my face was too
round, and a skin they seemed to love to touch, and good
legs, and I didn't have to wear a brassiere. I haven't a sweet
nature, but who was Wylie to reproach me for that?
"Don't you think I'm smart to go in the morning?" I asked.
"Yeah. To the busiest man in California. He'll appreciate
it. Why didn't you wake him up at four?"
84 THE LAST TYCOON
"That's just it. At night he's tired. He's been looking at
people all day ? and some of them not bad. I come in in the
morning and start a train of thought/'
*1 don't like it. It's brazen."
""What have you got to offer? And don't be rough."
"I love you," he said, without much conviction, "I love you
more than I love your money, and that's plenty. Maybe your
father would make me a supervisor."
"I could marry the last man tapped for Bones this year and
live in Southampton.'*
1 turned the dial and got either Gone or Lost there were
good songs that year. The music was getting better again.
When I was young during the depression, it wasn't so hot, and
the best numbers were from the twenties, like Benny Good-
man playing Blue Heaven or Paul Whiteman with When Dai/
Is Done. There were only the bands to listen to. But now I
liked almost everything except Father singing Little Girl,
Jou*ve Had a Busy Day to try to create a sentimental father-
and-daughter feeling,
Lost and Gone were the wrong mood, so I turned again
and got Lovely to Look At, which was my kind of poetry. I
looked back as we crossed the crest of the foothills with the
air so dear you could see the leaves on Sunset Mountain two
miles away. It's startling to you sometimes just air, unob-
structed, uncomplicated air.
"Lovely to look atde-lightful to know-to" I sang.
"Are you going to sing for Stafar?" WyBe said. "If you do,
get in a line about my being a good supervisor."
"Oh, this'll be only Stahr and me," I said. "He's going to look
at me and think, Tve never really seen her before.' **
"We don't use that line this year," he said.
"Then he'll say 'Little Cecilia/ like he did the night
of the earthquake. He'll say he never noticed I have become
a woman.*
Ton won't to do a thing."
THE LAST TYCOON 85
"111 stand there and bloom. After he kisses me as you would
a child
That's all in my script/* complained Wylie, a and I've got
to show it to him tomorrow/ 9
"he'll sit down and put his face in his hands and say he
never thought of me like that/'
"You mean you get in a little fast work during the kiss?"
"I bloom, I told you. How often do I have to tell you I
bloom/'
"It's beginning to sound pretty randy to me/* said Wylie.
"How about laying off I've got to work this morning/*
Then he says it seems as if he was always meant to be this
way/*
"Right in the industry. Producer's blood/' He pretended to
shiver. "I'd hate to have a transfusion of that/'
"Then he says "
"I know all his lines/* said Wylie. "What I want to know is
what you say/'
"Somebody comes in/' I went on.
"And you jump up quickly off the casting couch, smoothing
your skirts/*
"Do you want me to walk out and get home?"
We were in Beverly Hills, getting very beautiful now with
the tall Hawaiian pines. Hollywood is a perfectly zoned city,
so you know exactly what kind of people economically live
in each section, from executives and directors, through tech-
nicians in their bungalows, right down to extras. This was the
executive section and a very fancy lot of pastry. It wasn't as
romantic as the dingiest village of Virginia or New Hampshire.
but it looked nice this morning.
"They asked me how I knew* sang the radio, "-my true
love was true"
My heart was fire, and smoke was in my eyes and every-
thing, but I figured my chance at about fifty-fifty. I would walk
right up to Mm as if I was either to walk tihooufijh Mm
86 THE LAST TYCOON
or kiss him on the mouth and stop a bare foot away and say
"Hello" with disarming understatement
And I did though of course it wasn't like I expected:
Stahr's beautiful dark eyes looking back into mine, knowing,
I am dead sure, everything 1 was thinkingand not a bit em-
barrassed. 1 stood there an hour, I think, without moving, and
all he did was twitch the side of Ms mouth and put his hands
in Ms pocket.
"Will you go with me to the ball tonight?" I asked.
"What ball?"
*The screen-writers* ball down at the Ambassador.**
a Oh, yes." He considered. 1 can't go with you. I might just
come in late. We've got a sneak preview in Glendale."
How different it all was from what you'd planned. When
he sat down, I went over and put my head among Ms tele-
phones, like a sort of desk appendage, and looked at him; and
his dark eyes looked back so kind and nothing. Men don't often
know those times when a girl could be had for nothing. All
I succeeded in putting into his head was:
"Why don't you get married, Celia?"
Maybe he'd bring up Robby again, try to make a match
there.
^What could I do to interest an interesting man?" I asked
him.
"Tell Mm you're in love with Mm."
"Should I chase Mm?"
"Yes," he said smiling.
"I don't know. If it isn't there, it isn't there."
*Td marry you," he said unexpectedly. "I'm lonesome as hell.
But I'm too old and tired to undertake anything."
I went around the desk and stood beside Mm.
"Undertake me.'*
He looked up in surprise, understanding for the first time
that I was in deadly earnest
"Oh, no/' he said. He looked almost miserable for a minute.
"Pictures are my girl. I haven't got much time- " He cor-
THE LAST TYCOON 87
rected himself quickly, 1 mean any time. If d be lie marrying
a doctor."
"You couldn't love me."
"It's not that," he said andright out of my dream but with
a difference: a l never thought of you that way, Celia. IVe
known you so long. Somebody told me you were going to
marry WyMe White/*
"And you had no reaction/*
"Yes, I did. I was going to speak to you about it* Wait till
he's been sober for two years."
*Tm not even considering it, Monroe/'
We were way off the track., and just as in my day-dream
somebody came in only I was quite sure Stahr had pressed
a concealed button,
111 always think o that moment, when I felt Miss Doolan
behind me with her pad, as the end of childhood, the end of
the time when you cut out pictures. What I was looking at
wasn't Stahr but a picture of him I cut out over and over: the
eyes that flashed a sophisticated understanding at you and
then darted up too soon into his wide brow with its ten thou-
sand plots and plans; the face that was aging from within,
so that there were no casual furrows of worry and vexation
but a drawn asceticism as if from a silent self-set straggle or
a long illness. It was handsomer to me than all the rosy tan
from Coronado to Del Monte. He was my picture, as sure as
if he had been pasted on the inside of my old locker in school.
That's what I told Wylie White, and when a girl tells the man
she likes second best about the other one then she's in love,
I noticed the girl long before Stahr arrived at the dance. Not
a pretty girl, for there are none of those in Los Angeles one
girl can be pretty, but a dozen are only a chorus. Nor yet a
professional beauty they do all the breathing for everyone,
and finally even the men have to go outside for air. Just a
girl, with the of one of Raphael's comer and a
88 THE LAST TYCOON
style that made you look back twice to see if it were some-
thing she had on.
1 noticed her and forgot her. She was sitting back behind
the pillars at a table whose ornament was a faded semi-star,
who, in hopes of being noticed and getting a bit, rose and
danced regularly with some scarecrow males. It reminded me
shamefully of my Bret party, where mother made me dance
over and over with the same boy to keep in the spotlight. The
semi-star spoke to several people at our table, but we were
busy being Cafe Society and she got nowhere at all.
From our angle it appeared that they all wanted something.
^You're expected to fling it around/' said Wylie, * c like in the
old days. When they find out you're hanging on to it, they
get discouraged. That's what all this brave gloom is about
the only way to keep their self-respect is to be Hemingway
characters. But underneath they hate you in a mournful way,
and you know it."
He was right I knew that since 1933 the rich could only be
happy alone together.
I saw Stahr come into the half-light at the top of the wide
steps and stand there with his hands in his pockets, looking
around. It was late and the lights seemed to have burned a
little lower, though they were the same. The floor show was
finished, except for a man who still wore a placard which said
that at midnight in the Hollywood Bowl Sonja Henie was going
to skate on hot soup. You could see the sign as he danced
becoming less funny on his back. A few years before there
would have been drunks around. The faded actress seemed to
be looking for them hopefully over her partner's shoulder.
I followed her with my eyes when she went back to her
table*
and there, to my surprise, was Stahr talking to the other
girl. They were smiling at each other as if this was the begin-
ning of the world.
Stahr had expected nothing like this when he stood at the
head of the steps a few minutes earlier. The "sneak preview"
THE LAST TYCOON 89
had disappointed him, and afterwards lie had had a scene
with Jacques La Borwitz right in front of the theatre, for which
he was now sorry. He had started toward the Brady party
when he saw Kathleen sitting in the middle of a long white
table alone.
Immediately things changed. As he walked toward her, the
people shrank back against the walls til they were only murals;
the white table lengthened and became an altar where the
priestess sat alone. Vitality welled up in him, and he could
have stood a long time across the table from her, looking and
smiling.
The incumbents of the table were crawling back Stahr and
Kathleen danced.
When she came close, Ms several visions of her blurred; she
was momentarily unreal Usually a girl's skull made her real,
but not this time Stahr continued to be dazzled as they
danced out along the loor to the last edge, where they
stepped through a mirror into another dance with new danc-
ers whose faces were familiar but nothing more. In this new
region he talked, fast and urgently.
"What's your name?"
"Kathleen Moore/'
"Kathleen Moore," he repeated.
"I have no telephone, if that's what you're thinking."
"When will you come to the studio?"
"It's not possible. Truly."
"Why isn't it? Are you married?"
"No."
"You're not married?"
"No, nor never have been. But then I may be."
"Someone there at the table."
"No." She laughed. "What curiosity!"
But she was deep in it with him, no matter what the words
were. Her eyes invited him to a romantic communion of unbe-
lievable intensity. As if she realized this, she said, frightened:
"I must go back now. I promised this dance. 9 *
tO 3r<r- r^l. Cv^lcKr w hfc
gO THE LAST TYCOON
"It's impossible." But her expression helplessly amended the
words to, "It's just possible. The door Is still open by a chink,
if you could squeeze past. But quickly so little time."
1 must go back/* she repeated aloud. Then she dropped her
arms, stopped dancing, and looked at him, a laughing wanton,
"When I'm with you, I don't breathe quite right/* she said.
She turned, picked up her long dress, and stepped back
through the mirror. Stahr followed until she stopped near her
table.
"Thank you for the dance,* she said, "and now really, good
night"
Then she nearly ran.
Stahr went to the table where he was expected and sat
down with the Cafe Society group-from Wall Street, Grand
Street, London County, Virginia, and Odessa, Russia. They
were all talking with enthusiasm about a horse that had run
very fast, and Mr. Marcus was the most enthusiastic of all.
Stahr guessed that the Jews had taken over the worship of
horses as a symbol-for years it had been the Cossacks mounted
and the Jews on foot Now the Jews had horses, and it gave
them a sense of extraordinary well-being and power. Stahr
sat pretending to listen and even nodding when something
was referred to Mm, but all the time watching the table behind
the pillars. If everything had not happened as it had, even
to his connecting the silver belt with the wrong girl, he might
have thought it was some elaborate frame-up. But the elusive-
ness was beyond suspicion. For there in a moment he saw
that she was escaping again the pantomime at the table indi-
cated goodbye. She was leaving, she was gone.
There," said Wylie White with malice, "goes Cinderella.
Simply bring the slipper to the Regal Shoe Company, 812
South Broadway/*
Stahr overtook her in the long upper lobby, where middle-
aged women sat behind a roped-off space, watching the ball-
room entrance.
"Am I responsible for this?" he asked.
THE LAST TYCOON Ql
"I was going anyhow" But she added almost resentfully,
They talked as if I'd been dancing with the Prince of Wales.
They all stared at me. One of the men wanted to draw my
picture, and another one wanted to see me tomorrow,"
That's just what I want/ 3 said Stahr gently, "but I want to
see you much more than he does"
"You insist so/* she said wearily. "One reason I left England
was that men always wanted their own way. I thought it was
different here. Isn't it enough that I don't want to see you?"
"Ordinarily," agreed Stahr. "Please believe me, I'm way out
of my depth already. I feel like a fool But I must see you again
and talk to you."
She hesitated
There's no reason for feeling like a fool/' she said. "You're
too good a man to feel like a fool. But you should see this for
what it is."
"What is it?"
"You Ve fallen for me-completely. You've got me in your
dreams."
Td forgotten you/' he declared, "till the moment I walked
in that door."
"Forgotten me with your head perhaps. But 1 knew the first
time I saw you that you were the kind that likes me *
She stopped herself. Near them a man and woman from the
party were saying goodbye: Tell her hello-tell her I love her
dearly/* said tie woman, * you bothall of you the children. 9 *
Stahr could not talk like that, the way everyone talked now,
He could think of nothing further to say as they walked to-
ward the elevator except:
"I suppose you're perfectly right**
"Oh, you admit it?"
"No, I don't/* he retracted, "It's just the whole way you're
made. What you sayhow you walk the way you look right
this minute" He saw she had melted a little, and his hopes
rose. Tomorrow is Sunday, and usually I work on Sunday,
but if there's anything you're curious about in Hollywood, any
9& THE LAST TYCOON
person you want to meet or see, please let me arrange it."
They were standing by the elevator. It opened, but she let
it go,
"You're very modest/* she said. "You always talk about show-
ing me the studio and taking me around. Don't you ever stay
alone?**
Tomorrow 111 feel very much alone."
"Oh, the poor man I could weep for him. He could have all
the stars jumping around him and he chooses me."
He smiled he had laid himself open to that one.
The elevator came again. She signalled for it to wait
*Tm a weak woman/* she said. "If I meet you tomorrow,
will you leave me in peace? No, you won't. You'll make it
worse. It wouldn't do any good but harm, so I'll say no and
thank you."
She got into the elevator. Stahr got in too, and they smiled
as they dropped two floors to the hall, cross-sectioned with
small shops. Down at the end, held back by police, was the
crowd, their heads and shoulders leaning forward to look
down the alley. Kathleen shivered.
"They looked so strange when I came in," she said, "as if
they were furious at me for not being someone famous/'
"I know another way out," said Stahr.
They went through a drag-store, down an alley, and came
out into the clear cool California night beside the car park. He
felt detached from the dance now, and she did, too.
"A lot of picture people used to live down here," he said.
"John Barrymore and Pola Negri in those bungalows. And Con-
nie Talmadge lived in that tall thin apartment house over the
way."
"Doesn't anybody live here now?"
"The studios moved out into the country," he said, "what
used to be the country, I had some good times around here,
though."
He did not mention that ten years ago Minna and her
mother had lived in another apartment over the way.
THE LAST TYCOON 93
"How old are you?" she asked suddenly.
Tve lost track-almost thirty-five, I think."
""They said at the table you were the boy wonder.**
Til be that when Tin sixty/' he said grimly. "You will meet
me tomorrow, won't you?"
Til meet you," she said, "WhereF
Suddenly there was no place to meet She would not go to
a party at anyone's house, nor to the country, nor swimming,
though she hesitated, nor to a well-known restaurant She
seemed hard to please, but he knew there was some reason.
He would find out in time. It occurred to him that she might
be the sister or daughter of someone well-known, who was
pledged to keep in the background. He suggested that he
come for her and they could decide.
"That wouldn't do," she said. "What about right here?-the
same spot"
He nodded pointing up at the arch under which they stood.
He put her into her car, which would have brought eighty
dollars from any kindly dealer, and watched it rasp away.
Down by the entrance a cheer went up as a favorite emerged,
and Stahr wondered whether to show himself and say good
night.
This is Cecilia taking up the narrative in person. Stahr came
back finally it was about half past three and asked me to
dance.
"How are you?" he asked me, just as if he hadn't seen me
that morning. "I got involved in a long conversation with a
man.**
It was secret, too he cared that much about it
"I took him for a drive," he went on innocently. T didn't
realize how much this part of Hollywood had changed. 3 *
"Has it changed?**
"Oh, yes," he said, "changed completely. Unrecognizable.
I couldn't teU you exactly, but it's aH changed everything.
94 THE LAST TYCOON
It's like a new city.** After a moment he amplified: "I had no
idea how much it had changed."'
"Who was the man?" I ventured.
**An old friend/* he said vaguely, "someone I knew a long
time ago."
I had made Wylie try to find out quietly who she was. He
had gone over and the ex-star had aslced him excitedly to sit
down. No: she didn't know who the girl was a friend of a
friend of someone even the man who had brought her didn't
know.
So Stahr and I danced to the beautiful music of Glenn Miller
playing Tm on a See-Saw, It was good dancing now, with
plenty of room. But it was lonely lonelier than before the
girl had gone. For me, as well as for Stahr, she took the evening
with her, took along the stabbing pain I had felt left the great
ballroom empty and without emotion. Now it was nothing, and
I was dancing with an absent-minded man who told me how
much Los Angeles had changed.
They met, next afternoon, as strangers in an unfamiliar
country. Last night was gone, the girl he had danced with was
gone, A misty rose-and-blue hat with a trifling veil came along
the terrace to him, and paused, searching his face. Stahr was
strange, too, in a brown suit and a black tie that blocked him
out more tangibly than a formal dinner coat, or when he was
simply a face and voice in the darkness the night they had first
met.
He was the first to be sure it was the same person as before:
the upper half of the face that was Minna's, luminous, with
creamy temples and opalescent browthe cocoa-colored curly
hair. He could have put his arm around her and pulled her
dose with an almost family familiarity already he knew the
down on her neck, the very set of her backbone, the corners
of her eyes, and how she breathed the very texture of the
dothes that she would wear.
THE LAST TYCOON 95
"Did you wait here ail night," she said, in a voice that was
like a whisper.
"I didn't move-dldif t stir."
Still a problem remained, the same one there was no special
place to go,
Td like tea/* she suggested, "if it's some place you're not
known."
"That sounds as if one of us had a bad reputation.'*
"Doesn't it?" she laughed.
"We'll go to the shore/' Stahr suggested. "There's a place
there where I got out once and was chased by a trained seal.**
"Do you think the seal could make tea?"
"Well-he's trained. And I don't think hell talk I don't think
his training got that far. What in hell are you trying to
hide?"
After a moment she said lightly: "Perhaps the future," in a
way that might mean anything or nothing at alL
As they drove away, she pointed at her jalopy in the parking
lot
"Do you think it's safe?"
"I doubt it. I noticed some black-bearded foreigners snoop-
ing around."
Kathleen looked at him alarmed.
"Really?" She saw he was smiling. "I believe everything you
say," she said. "You've got such a gentle way about you that I
don't see why they're aE so afraid of you." She examined him
with approvalfretting a little about his pallor, which was ac-
centuated by the bright afternoon. TDo you work very hard?
Do you really always work on Sundays?"
He responded to her interest impersonal yet not per-
functory.
"Not always. Once we had we had a house with a pool
and all and people came on Sunday. I played tennis and
swam. I don't swim any more.**
"Why not? It's good for you. I thought all Americans swam."
"My got very thina few years ago, it embarrassed
98 THE LAST TYCOON
me. There were other things I used to do lots of things: I
used to play handball when I was a kid, and sometimes out
here I had a court that was washed away in a storm."
*You have a good build,** she said in formal compliment,
meaning only that he was made with thin grace.
He rejected this with a shake of his head.
*1 enjoy working most/ 7 he said. "My work is very con-
genial/*
*Did you always want to be in movies?"
"No. When I was young I wanted to be a chief clerk the
one who knew where everything was.**
She smiled.
That's odd. And now you're much more than that/'
"No, Tm still a chief clerk," Stahr said. "That's my gift, if I
have one. Only when I got to be it, I found out that no one
knew where anything was. And I found out that you had to
know why it was where it was, and whether it should be left
there. They began throwing it all at me, and it was a very
complex office. Pretty soon I had all the keys. And they
wouldn't have remembered what locks they fitted if I'd given
them back.**
They stopped for a red light, and a newsboy bleated at him:
"Mickey Mouse Murdered! Randolph Hearst declares war on
China!"
"WeH have to buy his paper," she said.
As they drove on, she straightened her hat and preened her-
self. Seeing him looking at her, she smiled.
She was alert and calm qualities that were currently at a
premium. There was lassitude in plenty California was filling
up with weary desperadoes. And there were tense young men
and women who lived back East in spirit while they carried
on a losing battle against the climate. But it was everyone's
secret that sustained effort was difficult here a secret that
Stahr scarcely admitted to himself. But he knew that people
from other places spurted a pure rill of new energy for awhile.
They were very friendly now. She had not made a move or a
THE LAST TYCOON 97
gesture that was out of keeping with her beauty, that pressed
it out of its contour one way or another. It was all proper to
itself. He judged her as he would a shot in a picture. She was
not trash, she was not confused but clearin his special mean-
ing of the word, which implied balance, delicacy and propor-
tion, she was "nice."
They reached Santa Monica, where there were the stately
houses of a dozen picture stars, penned in the middle of a
crawling Coney Island. They turned down hill into the wide
blue sky and sea and went on along the sea till the beach slid
out again from under the bathers in a widening and narrowing
yellow strand,
*Tm building a house out here," Stahr said, "much further
on. I don't know why I'm building it"
"Perhaps it's for me/* she said.
"Maybe it is"
"I think if s splendid for you to build a big house for me
without even knowing what I looked like."
"It isn't so big. And it hasn't any roof. I didn't know what
kind of roof you wanted."
"We don't want a roof. They told me it never rained here.
It-"
She stopped so suddenly that he knew she was reminded
of something.
"Just something that's past," she said.
"What was it?" he demanded, "another house without a
roof?""
"Yes. Another house without a roof."
"Were you happy there?"
"I lived with a man," she said, "a long, long time too long.
It was one of those awful mistakes people make. I lived with
him a long time after I wanted to get out, but he couldn't let
me go. He'd try, but he couldn't. So finally I ran away."
He was listening, weighing but not judging. Nothing
changed under the rose and blue hat She was twenty-five or
08 THE LAST TYCOON
so. It would been a waste If she had not loved and been
loved.
*We were too close/* she said, **We should probably have had
children to stand between us. But you can't have children
when there's no roof to the house/ 7
All right, he knew something of her. It would not be like
last night when something kept saying, as in a story confer-
ence: "We know nothing about the girl We don't have to
know much but we have to know something.* 3 ' A vague back-
ground spread behind her, something more tangible than the
head of Siva in the moonlight
They came to the restaurant, forbidding with many Sunday
automobiles. When they got out, the trained seal growled
reminiscently at Stahr. The man who owned it said that the
seal would never ride in the back seat of his car but always
climbed over the back and up in front It was plain that the
man was in bondage to the seal, though he had not yet ac-
knowledged it to himself.
Td like to see the house you're building," said Kathleen. "I
don't want teatea is the past"
Kathleen drank a coke instead and they drove on ten miles
into a sun so bright that he took out two pairs of cheaters from
a compartment. Five miles further on they turned down a
small promontory and came to the fuselage of Stahr's house.
A headwind blowing out of the sun threw spray up the
rocks and over the car. Concrete mixer, raw yellow wood and
builders* rabble waited, an open wound in the seascape, for
Sunday to be over. They walked around front, where great
boulders rose to what would be the terrace.
She looked at the feeble hills behind and winced faintly at
the barren glitter, and Stahr saw
"No use looking for what's not here, 5 * he said cheerfully.
Think of it as if you were standing on one of those globes
with a map on it I always wanted one when I was a boy.*
1 understand," she said after a minute. "When you do that,
you can feel the earth torn, can't you?*
THE LAST TYCOON 99
He nodded.
"Yes, Otherwise it's all just manawi waiting for the morn-
ing or the moon/*
They went in under the scaffolding. One room, which was to
be the chief salon, was completed even to the built-in book
shelves and the curtain rods and the trap in the loor for the
motion picture projection machine. And to her surprise, this
opened out to a porch with cushioned chairs in place and a
ping-pong table. There was another ping-pong table on the
newly laid sod beyond.
"Last week I gave a premature luncheon,** he admitted, a l
had some props brought out some grass and things. I wanted
to see how the place felt/'
She laughed suddenly.
"Isn't that real grass?"
"Oh, yes it's grass. 3 *
Beyond the strip of anticipatory lawn was the excavation for
a swimming pool, patronized now by a crowd of seagulls,
which saw them and took flight
"Are you going to live here all alone?" she asked him, "not
even dancing girls?**
"Probably. I used to make plans, but not any more. I thought
this would be a nice place to read scripts. The studio is really
home."
"That's what I've heard about American business men."
He caught a tilt of criticism in her voice.
"You do what you're bom to do," he said gently. "About once
a month somebody tries to reform me, tells me what a barren
old age I'll have when I can't work any more. But if s not so
simple."
The wind was rising. It was time to go, and he had his car
keys out of his pocket, absent-mindedly jingling them in his
hand. There was the silvery "hey!" of a telephone, coming
from somewhere across the sunshine.
It was not from the house, and they hurried here and there
around the garden, like children playing warmer and colder-
10O THE LAST TYCOON
closing IB finally on a tool shack by the tennis court. The
phone, irked with delay,, barked at them suspiciously from the
wall. Stahr hesitated.
"Shall I let the damn thing ringF
"I couldn't Unless I was sure who it was.*"
^Either if s for somebody else or they've made a wild guess.**
He picked up the receiver.
"Hello . . . Long distance from where? Yes, this is Mr,
Stahr."
His manner changed perceptibly. She saw what few people
had seen for a decade: Stahr impressed. It was not discordant,
because he often pretended to be impressed, but it made him
momentarily a little younger.
TEt' s the President/' he said to her, almost stiffly.
"Of your company?**
"No, of the United States.**
He was trying to be casual for her benefit, but his voice was
eager.
"All right, 111 wait," he said into the phone, and then to Kath-
leen: *Tve talked to him before.**
She watched. He smiled at her and winked, as an evidence
that while he must give this his best attention, he had not for-
gotten her.
"Hello," he said presently. He listened. Then he said, "Hello**
again. He frowned.
"Can you talk a little louder," he said politely, and then:
"Who?, . .What's that?"
She saw a disgusted look come into his face.
M I don't want to talk to him/* he said. "No!"
He turned to Kathleen:
"Believe it or not, it's an orang-outang,"
He waited while something was explained to him at length;
then he repeated:
"I don't want to talk to it, Lew. I haven't got anything to
say that would interest an orang-outang."
He beckoned to Kathleen^ and when she came close to the
THE LAST TYCOON 101
phone, he held the receiver so that she heard odd breathing
and a gruff growl. Then a voice:
"This is no phoney, Monroe. It can talk and it's a dead ringer
for McKinley. Mr. Horace Wickersham is with me here with a
picture of McKinley in his hand *
Stahr listened patiently.
"We've got a chimp," he said, after a minute. "He bit a chunk
out of John Gilbert last year. ... All right, put him on again."
He spoke formally as if to a child.
"Hello, orang-outang.'*
His face changed, and he turned to Kathleen.
"He said 'Hello.'"
"Ask him his name/' suggested Kathleen.
"Hello, orang-outang-God, what a thing to be!-Do you
know your name? ... He doesn't seem to know Ms name.
. . . Listen, Lew. We're not making anything like King Kong,
and there is no monkey in The Hairy Ape. ... Of course
I'm sure. I'm sorry, Lew, goodbye. 79
He was annoyed with Lew because he had thought it was
the President and had changed his manner, acting as if it
were. He felt a little ridiculous, but Kathleen felt sorry and
liked him better because it had been an orang-outang.
They started back along the shore with the sun behind them.
The house seemed kindlier when they left it, as if warmed by
their visit the hard glitter of the place was more endurable if
they were not bound there like people on the shiny surface of
a moon. Looking back from a curve of the shore, they saw the
sky growing pink behind the indecisive structure, and the point
of land seemed a friendly island, not without promise of fine
hours on a further day.
Past Malibu with its gaudy shacks and fishing barges they
came into the range of human kind again, the cars stacked
and piled along the road, the beaches like ant hills without a
pattern, save for the dark drowned heads that sprinkled the
sea.
102 THE LAST TYCOON
Goods from the city were increasing in sight blankets, mat-
ting, umbrellas, cookstoves, reticules full of clothing the pris-
oners had laid out their shackles beside them on this sand. It
was Stahr's sea if he wanted it, or knew what to do with it-
only by sufferance did these others wet their feet and fingers
in the wild cool reservoirs of man's world.
Stahr turned off the road by the sea and up a canyon and
along a hill road, and the people dropped away. The hill be-
came the outskirts of the city. Stopping for gasoline, he stood
beside the car,
a We could have dinner/* he said almost anxiously.
"You have work you could do."
"No I haven't planned anything. Couldn't we have dinner?"
He knew that she had nothing to do either no planned
evening or special place to go.
She compromised.
*Do you want to get something in that drug-store across
the street?"*
He looked at it tentatively.
"Is that really what you want?"
"I like to eat in American drug-stores. It seems so queer and
strange.**
They sat on high stools and had tomato broth and hot
sandwiches. It was more intimate than anything they had done,
and they both felt a dangerous sort of loneliness, and felt it in
each other. They shared in varied scents of the drug-store,
bitter and sweet and sour, and the mystery of the waitress,
with only the outer part of her hair dyed and black beneath,
and, when it was over, the still life of their empty plates a
sliver of potato, a sliced pickle and an olive stone.
It was dusk in the street, it seemed nothing to smile at him
now when they got into the car.
"Thank you so much. It's been a nice afternoon."
It was not far from her- hosa They felt the beginning of
the hill, and the louder sound of the car in second was the be-
ginning of the end. Lights were on in the climbing bungalows
THE LAST TYCOON 103
he turned on the headlights of the car. Stahr felt heavy in
the pit of his stomach.
"WeH go out again."
"No,** she said quickly, as if she had been expecting this, "I'll
write you a letter. I'm sorry I've been so mysteriousit was
really a compliment because I Like you so much. You should
try not to work so hard. You ought to marry again."
*0h, that isn't what you should say," he broke out protest-
ingly. "This has been you and me today. It may have meant
nothing to you it meant a lot to me. I'd like time to tell you
about it"
But if he were to take time it must be in her house, for they
were there and she was shaking her head as the car drew up to
the door.
"I must go now. I do have an engagement. I didn't tell you."
That's not true. But it's all right"
He walked to the door with her and stood in his own foot-
steps of that other night, while she felt in her bag for the key.
"Have you got it?"
Tve got it," she said.
That was the moment to go in, but she wanted to see him
once more and she leaned her head to the left, then to the
right, trying to catch his face against the last twilight. She
leaned too far and too long, and it was natural when his hand
touched the back of her upper arm and shoulder and pressed
her forward into the darkness of his throat. She shut her eyes,
feeling the bevel of the key in her tight-clutched hand. She
said "Oh" in an expiring sigh, and then "Oh" again, as lie pulled
her in close and his chin pushed her cheek around gently. They
were both smiling just faintly, and she was frowning, too, as
the inch between them melted into darkness.
When they were apart, she shook her head still, but more in
wonder than in denial. It came like this then, it was your own
fault, now far back, when was the moment? It came like this,
and every instant the burden of tearing herself away from
them together, from it, was heavier and more unimaginable.
104 THE LAST TYCOON
He was exultant; she and could not blame Mm, but
she would not be part of his exultation^ for It was a defeat. So
far it was a defeat. And she thought that if she stopped it
being a defeat, broke off and went inside, it was still not a
victory. Then it was just nothing.
"This was not my idea," she said, <fi not at all my idea,"
"Can I come in?**
"Oh, no-no "
Then let's jump in the car and drive somewhere.**
With relief, she caught at the exact phrasingto get away
from here immediately, that was accomplishment or sounded
like it as if she were leeing from the spot of a crime. Then
they were in the car, going down hill with the breeze cool in
their faces, and she came slowly to herself. Now it was all
clear in black and white.
'We'll go back to your house on the beach,** she said.
"Back there?"
Tes well go back to your house. Don't let's talk. I just want
to ride.**
When they got to the coast again the sky was grey, and at
Santa Monica a sudden gust of rain bounced over them. Stahr
halted beside the road, put on a raincoat, and lifted the canvas
top. "We've got a roof/* he said.
The windshield wiper ticked domestically as a grandfather's
dock. Sullen cars were leaving the wet beaches and starting
back into the city. Further on they ran into fog the road lost
its boundaries on either side, and the lights of cars coming to-
ward them were stationary until just before they flared past
They had left a part of themselves behind, and they felt
light and free in the car. Fog fizzed in at a chink, and Kathleen
took off the rose-and-blue hat in a calm, slow way that made
him watch tensely, and put it under a strip of canvas in the
back seat She shook out her hair and, when she saw that Stahr
was looking at her, she smiled.
The trained seal's restaurant was only a sheen of light off
THE LAST TYCOON
toward the ocean. Stahr cranked down a window and looked
for landmarks, but after a few more miles the fog fell away,
and just ahead of them the road turned off that led to Ms
house. Out here a moon showed behind the clouds. There was
still a shifting light over the sea.
The house had dissolved a little back into its elements. They
found the dripping beams of a doorway and groped over mys-
terious waist-high obstacles to the single finished room, odorous
of sawdust and wet wood. When he took her in his arms, they
could just see each other's eyes in the half darkness. Presently
his rain coat dropped to the floor.
a Wait," she said.
She needed a minute. She did not see how any good could
come from this, and though this did not prevent her from being
happy and desirous, she needed a minute to think how it was,
to go back an hour and know how it had happened. She
waited in his arms, moving her head a little from side to side as
she had before, only more slowly, and never taking her eyes
from his. Then she discovered that he was trembling.
He discovered it at the same time, and his arms relaxed.
Immediately she spoke to him coarsely and provocatively, and
pulled his face down to hers. Then, with her knees she strug-
gled out of something, still standing up and holding him with
one arm, and kicked it off beside the coat. He was not trem-
bling now and he held her again, as they knelt down together
and slid to the raincoat on the floor.
Afterwards they lay without speaking, and then he was full
of such tender love for her that he held her tight till a stitch
tore in her dress. The small sound brought them to reality.
Til help you up," he said, taking her hands.
"Not just yet. I was thinking of something."
She lay in the darkness, thinking irrationally that it would be
such a bright indefatigable baby, but presently she let him
help her up. . . . When she came back into the room, it was lit
from a single electric fixture.
1OS THE LAST TYCOON
**A one-bulb lighting system," he said. "Shall I turn it off?"
*No. It's very nice* I want to see you.**
They sat in the wooden frame of the window seat, with the
soles of their shoes touching.
**You seem far away/" she said.
"So do you."
"Are you surprised?**
"At what?"
That we're two people again. Don't you always think
hope that you'll be one person, and then find you're still two?"
*1 feel very close to you.**
**So do I to you/* she said.
"Thank you."
"Thank you "
They laughed.
"Is this what you wanted?" she asked. "I mean last night."
"Not consciously.**
*1 wonder when it was settled/* she brooded. "There's a
moment when you needn't, and then there's another moment
when you know nothing in the world could keep it from
happening."'
This had an experienced ring, and to his surprise he liked
her even more. In his mood, which was passionately to repeat
yet not recapitulate the past, it was right that it should be
that way.
*1 am rather a trollop," she said, following his thoughts. "I
suppose that's why I didn't get on to Edna."
"Who is Edna?"
The girl you thought was me. The one you phoned to who
lived across the road. She's moved to Santa Barbara."
"You mean she was a tart?"
"So it seems. She went to what you call call-houses."
That's funny. 9 *
Tf she had been English, I'd have known right away. But
she seemed like everyone eke. She only told me just before
she went away."
THE LAST TYCOON 10/
He saw her shiver and got up, putting the raincoat around
her shoulders. He opened a closet., and a pile of pillows and
beach mattresses fell out on the floor. There was a box of
candles, and he lit them around the room, attaching the elec-
tric heater where the bulb had been.
"Why was Edna afraid of me?" he asked suddenly.
"Because you were a producer. She had some awful ex-
perience or a friend of hers did. Also, I think she was ex-
tremely stupid."
"How did you happen to know her?"
"She came over. Maybe she thought I was a fallen sister. She
seemed quite pleasant. She said 'Call me Edna* all the time
Tlease call me Edna/ so finally I called her Edna and we
were friends."
She got off the window seat so he could lay pillows along it
and behind her.
"What can I do?" she said. Tm a parasite."
"No, you're not." He put his arms around her. "Be still. Get
warm."
They sat for awhile quiet
"I know why you liked me at first," she said. "Edna told me."
"What did she tell you?"
"That I looked like Minna Davis. Several people have told
me that"
He leaned away from her and nodded.
"It's here," she said, putting her hands on her cheekbones
and distorting her cheeks slightly. "Here and here."
"Yes," said Stahr. "It was very strange. You look more like
she actually looked than how she was on the screen."
She got up, changing the subject with her gesture as if she
were afraid of it.
Tm warm now," she said. She went to the closet and peered
in, came back wearing a little apron with a crystalline pattern
like a snowfall. She stared around critically.
"Of course we've just moved in," she said, "and there's a
sort of echo."
108 THE LAST TYCOON
She opened the door of the veranda and pulled in two
wicker chairs, drying them off. He watched her move, in-
tently, yet half afraid that her body would fail somewhere and
break the spell. He had watched women in screen tests and
seen their beauty vanish second by second, as if a lovely statue
had begun to walk with the meagre joints of a paper doll. But
Kathleen was ruggedly set on the balls of her feet the fra-
gility was, as it should be, an illusion.
"It's stopped raining," she said. "It rained the day I came.
Such an awful rain so loud like horses weeing/'
He laughed.
"Youll like it. Especially if you've got to stay here. Are you
going to stay here? Cant you tell me now? What's the
mystery? 77
She shook her head.
"Not now if s not worth telling.*
**Come here then.*"
She came over and stood near him, and he pressed his cheek
against the cool fabric of the apron.
"You're a tired man/' she said, putting her hand in his hair.
"Not that way,"
*I didn't mean that way," she said hastily. a l meant you'll
work yourself sick."
"Don't be a mother, 9 * he said.
"All right. What shall I be? y>
Be a trollop, he thought. He wanted the pattern of his life
broken. If he was going to die soon, like the two doctors said,
he wanted to stop being Stahr for awhile and hunt for love
like men who had no gifts to give, like young nameless men
who looked along the streets in the dark.
"You've taken off my apron," she said gently.
"Yes."
*Would anyone be passing along the beach? Shall we put
out the candles?"
o doa't put out the candles."
THE LAST TYCOON 1OQ
Afterwards she lay half on a white cushion and smiled up at
him.
"I feel lite Venus on the half shell," she said.
"What made you think of that?"
"Look at me-isn't it Botticeffi?"
"I don't know/* he said smiling. "It is if you say so."
She yawned.
"I've had such a good time. And I'm very fond of you.* 9
"You know a lot, don't you?"
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, from little things you've said. Or perhaps the way you
say them,**
She deliberated.
"Not much/' she said. *I never went to a university, if that's
what you mean. But the man I told you about knew everything
and he had a passion for educating me. He made out sched-
ules and made me take courses at the Sorbonne and go to
museums. I picked up a little."
"What was he?"
"He was a painter of sorts and a hell-cat. And a lot besides.
He wanted me to read Spengler everything was for that. All
the history and philosophy and harmony was all so I could
read Spengler, and then I left him before we got to Spengler.
At the end I think that was the chief reason he didn't want me
to go r
"Who was Spenglerr
"I tell you we didn't get to him," she laughed, "and now I'm
forgetting everything very patiently, because it isn't likely 111
ever meet anyone like him again."
"Oh, but you shouldn't forget," said Stahr, shocked. He had
an intense respect for learning, a racial memory of the old
schules. "You shouldn't forget."
"It was just in place of babies."
"You could teach your babies/' he said.
"Could I?"
"Sure you could. You could It to then* while t"bny were
110 THE LAST TYCOON
young. When 1 want to know anything, I've got to ask some
drunken writer. Don't throw it away.*'
a All right/" she said, getting up. "Ill tell it to my children.
But it's so endless the more you know, the more there is just
beyond, and it keeps on coming. This man could have been
anything if he hadn't been a coward and a fool."
"But you were in love with him."
"Oh, yes with all my heart/* She looked through the win-
dow, shading her eyes. "It's light out there. Let's go down to
the beach/'
He jumped up, exclaiming:
""Why, I think it's the granion! >s
"What?"
"It's tonight. It's in all the papers/' He hurried out the door,
and she heard Mm open the door of the car. Presently he re-
turned with a newspaper.
"It's at ten-sixteen. That's five minutes.*
"An eclipse or something?"
"Very punctual fish/* he said. "Leave your shoes and stock-
ings and come with me/'
It was a fine blue night. The tide was at the turn, and the
little silver fish rocked off shore waiting for 10.16. A few sec-
onds after the time they came swarming in with the tide, and
Stahr and Kathleen stepped over them barefoot as they flicked
slip-slop on the sand. A negro man came along the shore to-
ward them, collecting the grunion quickly, like twigs, into
two pails. They came in twos and threes and platoons and
companies, relentless and exalted and scornful, around the
great bare feet of the intruders, as they had come before Sir
Francis Drake had nailed his plaque to the boulder on the
shore.
"I wish for another pail/' the negro man said, resting a
moment.
"You've come a long way out," said Stahr.
"I used to go to Malibu, but they don't like it, those moving
picture people."
THE LAST TYCOON III
A wave came la and forced them back, receded swiftly,
leaving the sand alive again.
"Is it worth the trip?* Stahr asked.
*t don't figure it that way. I really come out to read some
Emerson. Have you ever read Mm? 5 *
"I have/' said Kathleen. "Some."
Tve got him inside my shirt. I got some Rosicracian litera-
ture with me, too, but I'm fed up with them.**
The wind had changed a little the waves were stronger
further down, and they walked along the foaming edge of the
water.
"What's your work/' the negro asked Stahr.
*1 work for the pictures."
"Oh." After a moment he added, Tf never go to movies."
"Why not?" asked Stahr sharply.
"There's no profit I never let my children go"
Stahr watched him, and Kathleen watched Stahr pro-
tectively.
"Some of them are good," she said, against a wave of spray;
but he did not hear her. She felt she could contradict him and
said it again, and this time he looked at her indifferently.
"Are the Rosicracian brotherhood against pictures?** asked
Stahr.
"Seems as if they don't know what they are for. One week
they for one thing and next week for another.'*
Only the little fish were certain. Half an hour had gone, and
still they came. The negro's two pails were full, and finally he
went off over the beach toward the road, unaware that he
had rocked an industry.
Stahr and Kathleen walked back to the house, and she
thought how to drive his momentary blues away,
"Poor old Sambo," she said.
"What?"
"Don't you call them poor old Sambo?**
"We don't call them anything especially* After a moment,
he said,, ""They have of own/*
THE LAST TYCOON
In the house she drew on her shoes and stockings before the
heater.
"I like California better/* she said deliberately. "I think I was
a bit sex-starved/'
"That wasn't quite all, was it?*
""You know it wasn't/'
It's nice to be near you/'
She gave a little sigh as she stood up ? so small that he did not
notice it.
"I don't want to lose you now/* he said. "I don't know what
you think of me or whether you think of me at all As you've
probably guessed, my heart's in the grave" He hesitated,
wondering if this was quite true, "but you're the most at-
tractive woman I've met since I don't know when. I can't stop
looking at you. 1 don't know now exactly the color of your
eyes, but they make me sorry for everyone in the world "
"Stop it, stop itr she cried laughing. "You'll have me look-
ing in the mirror for weeks. My eyes aren't any color they're
just eyes to see with, and I'm just as ordinary as I can be. I
have nice teeth for an English girl "
*Tou have beautiful teeth/'
"but I couldn't hold a candle to these girls I see here "
*Y0t* stop it," he said. "What I said is true, and I'm a cautious
She stood motionless a moment thinking. She looked at
him, then she looked back into herself, then at him again then
she gave up her thought
"We must go/* she said*
Now they were different people as they started back. Four
times they had driven along the shore road today, each time a
different pair. Curiosity, sadness and desire were behind them
now; this was a true returning to themselves and all their past
and future and the encroaching presence of tomorrow. He
asked her to sit close in the car, and she did, but they did not
seem dose, because for that you have to seem to be growing
closer. Nothing stands still. It was oa his tongue to ask her to
THE LAST TYCOON 113
come to the house he rented and sleep there tonight but he
felt that it would make him sound lonely. As the car climbed
the hill to her house, Kathleen looked for something behind
the seat cushion.
"What have you lost?"
"It might have fallen out/* she said s feeling through her
purse in the darkness.
"What was it?"
"An envelope."
"Was it important?"
"No."
But when they got to her house and Stahr fumed on the
dashboard light, she helped take the cushions out and look
again.
"It doesn't matter," she said, as they walked to the door.
'What's your address where you really live?"
"Just Bel-air, There's no number."
"Where is Bel-air?"
"It's a sort of development, near Santa Monica. But you'd
better call me at the studio."
"All right. * . good night, Mr. Stahr."
"Mister Stahr,** he repeated, astonished.
She corrected herself gently.
"Well, then, good night, Stahr. Is that better?"
He felt as though he had been pushed away a little.
"As you like," he said. He refused to let the aloofness com-
municate itself. He kept looking at her and moved Ms head
from side to side in her own gesture, saying without words:
"You know what's happened to me." She sighed. Then she
came into Ms arms and for a moment was his again com-
pletely. Before anything could change, Stahr whispered good
night and turned away and went to his car.
Winding down the hill, he listened inside himself as if some-
thing by an unknown composer, powerful and strange and
strong, was about to be played for the first time. The theme
would be stated presently, but because the composer was al-
ways he not it m the away,
114 THE LAST TYCOON
It would come in some such guise as the auto horns from the
technicolor boulevards below, or be barely audible, a tattoo
on the muffled drum of the moon. He strained to hear it, know-
ing only that music was beginning, new music that he liked
and did not understand. It was hard to react to what one could
entirely compass this was new and confusing, nothing one
could shut off in the middle and supply the rest from an old
score.
Also, and persistently, and bound up with the other, there
was the negro on the sand. He was waiting at home for Stahr,
with his pails of silver Bsh, and he would be waiting at the
studio in the morning. He had said that he did not allow Ms
children to listen to Stahr's story. He was prejudiced and
wrong, and he must be shown somehow, some way. A picture,
many pictures, a decade of pictures, must be made to show
him he was wrong. Since he had spoken, Stahr had thrown
four pictures out of his plans one that was going into pro-
duction this week. They were borderline pictures in point of
interest, but at least he submitted the borderline pictures to
the negro and found them trash. And he put back on his list
a difficult picture that he had tossed to the wolves, to Brady
and Marcus and the rest, to get Ms way on something elsa He
rescued it for the negro man.
When he drove up to Ms door, the porch lights went on, and
his Philippine came down the steps to put away the car. In the
library, Stahr found a list of phone calls:
"La Borwitz
Marcus
Harlow
Reinmund
Fairbanks
Brady
Colman
Skouras
Fleishacker," etc.
THE LAST TYCOON 115
The Philippine came into the room with a letter.
This fell out of the car," he said.
Thanks/' said Stahr. "I was looking for it."
"Will you be running a picture tonight, Mr. Stahr?"
"No, thanks-you can go to bed."
The letter, to his surprise, was addressed to Monroe Stahr,
Esq. He started to open it then it occurred to him that she
had wanted to recapture it, and possibly to withdraw it If
she had had a phone, he would have called her for permission
before opening it. He held it for a moment. It had been written
before they met it was odd to think that whatever it said was
now invalidated; it possessed the interest of a souvenir by
representing a mood that was gone.
Still he did not like to read it without asking her. He put
it down beside a pile of scripts and sat down with the top
script in his lap. He was proud of resisting his first impulse to
open the letter. It seemed to prove that he was not losing Ms
head/* He had never lost his head about Minna, even in the
beginning it had been the most appropriate and regal match
imaginable. She had loved him always and just before she
died, all unwilling and surprised, his tenderness had burst
and surged forward and he had been in love with her. In
love with Minna and death together with the world in which
she looked so alone that he wanted to go with her there.
But "falling for dames*" had never been an obsession his
brother had gone to pieces over a dame, or rather over dame
after dame after dame. But Stahr, in his younger days, had
them once and never more than once like one drink. He had
quite another sort of adventure reserved for his mind some-
thing better than a series of emotional sprees. Like x*any bril-
liant men, he had grown up dead cold. Beginning at about
twelve, probably, with the total refection common to those of
extraordinary mental powers, the "See here: this is all wrong
a mess all a lie and a sham/' he swept it all away, every-
thing, as men of his type do; and then instead of being a
son-of-a-bitch as most of them are, he looked around at the
Il6 THE LAST TYCOON
barrenness that was left and said to himself, "This will never
do," And so he had learned tolerance, kindness, forbearance,
and even affection like lessons.
The Philippine boy brought in a carafe of water and bowls
of nuts and fruit, and said good night. Stahr opened the first
script and began to read.
He read for three hours stopping from time to time, edit-
ing without a pencil. Sometimes he looked up, warm from
some vague happy thought that was not in the script, and it
took him a minute each time to remember what it was. Then
he knew it was Kathleen, and he looked at the letter it was
nice to have a letter.
It was three o'clock when a vein began to bump in the
back of his hand, signalling that it was time to quit. Kathleen
was really far away now with the waning night the different
aspects of her telescoped into the memory of a single thrilling
stranger, bound to him only by a few slender hours. It seemed
perfectly all right to open the letter.
'"Dear Mr. Stahr.
"In half an hour I will be keeping my date with you. When
we say goodbye I will hand you this letter. It is to tell you that
I am to be married soon and that I won't be able to see you
after today.
"I should have told you last night but it didn't seem to con-
cern you. And it would seem silly to spend this beautiful after-
noon telling you about it and watching your interest fade. Let
it fade all at oncenow. I will have told you enough to con-
vince you that I am Nobody's Prize Potato. (I have just learned
that expression from my hostess of last night, who called and
stayed an hour. She seems to believe that everyone is Nobody's
Prize Potato except you. I think I am supposed to tell you she
thinks this, so give her a job if you can. )
"I am very flattered that anyone who sees so many lovely
women I can't finish this sentence but you know what I mean.
And I will be late if I don't go to meet you right now.
"With All Good Wishes
"KATHLEEN MOOBE."
THE LAST TYCOON 117
Stahr's first feeling was like fear; Ms first thought was that
the letter was invalidated she had even tried to retrieve it
But then he remembered "Mister Stahr" just at the end, and
that she had asked him his address she had probably already
written another letter which would also say goodbye. Illogi-
cally he was shocked by the letter's indifference to what had
happened later. He read it again, realizing that it foresaw noth-
ing. Yet in front of the house she had decided to let it stand,
belittling everything that had happened, curving her mind
away from the fact that there had been no other man in her
consciousness that afternoon. But he could not even believe
this now, and the whole adventure began to peel away even
as he recapitulated it searchingly to himself. The car, the hill,
the hat, the music, the letter itself, blew off like the scraps of
tar paper from the rubble of his house. And Kathleen departed,
packing up her remembered gestures, her softly moving head,
her sturdy eager body, her bare feet in the wet swirling sand.
The skies paled and faded the wind and rain turned dreary,
washing the silver fish back to sea. It was only one more day,
and nothing was left except the pile of scripts upon the table.
He went upstairs. Minna died again on the first landing, and
he forgot her lingeringly and miserably again, step by step to
the top. The empty floor stretched around him the doors with
no one sleeping behind. In his room, Stahr took off his tie, un-
tied his shoes and sat on the side of his bed. It was all closed
out, except for something that he could not remember; then he
remembered: her car was still down in the parking lot of the
hotel. He set his dock to give him six hours* sleep.
This is Cecilia taking up the story. I think it would be most
interesting to follow my own movements at this point, as this
is a time in my life that I am ashamed of. What people are
ashamed of usually makes a good story.
When I sent Wylie over to Martha Dodd's table, he had no
success in finding out who the girl was, but it had suddenly
become my chief interest in life. Also, I guessedcorrectly
Il8 THE LAST TYCOON
that it would be Martha Dodd's. To have had at your table a
girl who is admired by royalty, who may be tagged for a coro-
net in our little feudal systemand not even know her name!
I had only a speaking acquaintance with Martha, and it
would be too obvious to approach her directly, but I went out
to the studio Monday and dropped in on Jane Meloney.
Jane Meloney was quite a friend of mine. I thought of her
rather as a child thinks of a family dependent. I knew she
was a writer, but I grew up thinking that writer and secretary
were the same, except that a writer usually smelled of cocktails
and came more often to meals. They were spoken of the same
way when they were not around except for a species called
playwrights, who came from the East. These were treated with
respect if they did not stay long if they did, they sank with
the others into the white collar class.
Jane's office was in the "old writers* building." There was
one on every lot, a row of iron maidens left over from silent
days and still resounding with the dull moans of cloistered
hacks and bums. There was the story of the new producer who
had gone down the line one day and then reported excitedly
to the head office.
"Who are those men?'*
"They're supposed to be writers."
"I thought so. Well, I watched them for ten minutes and
there were two of them that didn't write a line."
Jane was at her typewriter, about to break off for lunch. I
told her frankly that I had a rival.
"If s a dark horse,*' I said. "I can't even find out her name."
"Oh," said Jane. "Well, maybe I know something about that
I heard something from somebody."
The somebody, of course, was her nephew, Ned Sollinger,
Stahr's office boy. He had been her pride and hope. She had
sent him through New York University, where he played on
the football team. Then in his first year at medical school, after
a girl turned him down, he dissected out the least publicized
section of a lady corpse and sent it to the girl. Don't ask me
THE LAST TYCOON IK)
why? In disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, he had begun
life at the bottom again, and was still there.
"What do you know?" I asked,
"It was the night of the earthquake. She fell into the lake on
the back lot, and he dove in and saved her life. Someone else
told me it was his balcony she jumped off of and broke her
arm.**
"Who was she?"
"Well, that's funny, too- 1 *
Her phone rang, and I waited restlessly during a long con-
versation she had with Joe Reinmund. He seemed to be try-
ing to find out over the phone how good she was or whether
she had ever written any pictures at all* And she was reputed
to have been on the set the day Griffith invented the dose-up!
While he talked she groaned silently, writhed, made faces
into the receiver, held it all in her lap so that the voice reached
her faintly and kept up a side chatter to me,
"What is he doing-killing time between appointments?
. . . He's asked me every one of these questions ten times . . .
Thaf sail on a memorandum I sent him.". .
And into the phone:
"If this goes up to Monroe, it won t be my doing. I want to
go right through to the end."
She shut her eyes in agony again.
"Now he's casting it ... he s casting the minor characters
. . . he's going to have Buddy Ebsen. ... My God, he just
hasn't anything to do ... now he's on Walter Davenport he
means Donald Crisp . . . he's got a big casting directory open
in his lap and I can hear him turn the pages . . . he's a big
important man this morning, a second Stahr, and for Christ
sake I've got two scenes to do before lunch."
Reinmund quit finally or was interrupted at his end. A
waiter came in from the commissary with Jane's luncheon and
a Coca-Cola for me I wasn't lunching that summer. Jane wrote
down one sentence on her typewriter before she ate. It inter-
ested me the way she wrote. One day I was there when she
12O THE LAST TYCOON
and a young man had just lifted a story out of The Saturday
Evening Po^-changing the characters and all. Then they be-
gan to write it, making each line answer the line before it, and
of course it sounded just like people do in life when they're
straining to be anythingfunny or gentle or brave. I always
wanted to see that one on the screen, but I missed it some-
how.
I found her as lovable as a cheap old toy. She made three
thousand a week, and her husbands all drank and beat her
nearly to death. But today I had an axe to grind.
"You don't know her name?" I persisted.
"Oh" said Jane, "that. Well, he kept calling her up after-
wards, and he told Katy Doolan it was the wrong name, after
all."
"I think he found her," I said. "Do you know Martha Dodd?"
"Hasn't that little girl had a tough break, thoughl* she ex-
claimed with ready theatrical sympathy.
"Could you possibly invite her to lunch tomorrow?"
"Oh, I think she gets enough to eat all right. There's a Mexi-
can'*
I explained that my motives were not charitable, Jane
agreed to cooperate. She called Martha Dodd.
We had lunch next day at the Bev Brown Derby, a languid
restaurant, patronized for its food by clients who always look
as if they'd like to lie down. There is some animation at lunch,
where the women put on a show for the first five minutes
after they eat, but we were a tepid threesome. I should have
come right out with my curiosity. Martha Dodd was an agri-
cultural girl, who had never quite understood what had hap-
pened to her and had nothing to show for it except a
washed-out look about the eyes. She still believed that the
life she had tasted was reality and this wvas only a long waiting.
"I had a beautiful place in 1928," she told us, "--thirty acres,
with a miniature golf course and a pool and a gorgeous view.
All spring I was up to my ass in daisies."
THE LAST TYCOON
I ended by asking her to come over and meet Father. This
was pure penance for having had "a mixed motive" and being
ashamed of it One doesn't mix motives in Hollywood it is
confusing. Everybody understands, and the dimate wears you
down. A mixed motive is conspicuous waste.
Jane left us at the studio gate, disgusted by my cowardice.
Martha had worked up inside to a pitch about her career not
a very high pitch, because of seven years of neglect, but a
sort of nervous acquiescence, and I was going to speak
strongly to Father. They never did anything for people like
Martha, who had made them so much money at one time.
They let them slip away into misery eked out with extra work-
it would have been kinder to ship them out of town. And
Father was being so proud of me this summer. I had to keep
him from telling everybody just how I had been brought up
so as to produce such a perfect jewel. And Bennington oh,
what an exclusive dear God, my heart. I assured him there
was the usual proportion of natural-bom skivvies and biddies
tastefully concealed by throw-overs from sex Fifth Avenue;
but Father had worked himself up to practically an alumnus.
"You've had everything," he used to say happily. Everything
included roughly the two years in Florence, where I managed
against heavy odds to be the only virgin in school, and the
courtesy debut in Boston, Massachusetts, I was a veritable
flower of the fine old cost-and-gross aristocracy.
So I knew he would do something for Martha Dodd, and as
we went into his office, I had great dreams of doing something
for Johnny Swanson, the cowboy, too, and Evelyn Brent, and
all sorts of discarded flowers. Father was a charming and sym-
pathetic man except for that time I had seen him unex-
pectedly in New York and there was something touching
about his being my father. After all, he was my father he
would do anything in the world for me.
Only Rosemary Schmiel was in the outer office, and she was
on Birdy Peters* phone. She waved for me to sit down, but I
was full of my plans and, telling Martha to take it easy, I
122 THE LAST TYCOON
pressed the clicker under Rosemarys desk and went toward
the opened door.
"Your father's in conference," Rosemary called. "Not in con-
ference, but I ought to "
By this time I was through the door and a little vestibule
and another door, and caught Father in his shirtsleeves, very
sweaty and trying to open a window. It was a hot day, but I
hadn't realized it was that hot, and thought he was ill.
"No, I'm all right,* he said. "What is it?"
I told him. I told him the whole theory of people like Martha
Dodd, walking up and down his office. How could he use them
and guarantee them regular employment? He seemed to take
me up excitedly and kept nodding and agreeing, and I felt
closer to him than I had for a long time. I came close and
kissed him on his cheek. He was trembling and his shirt was
soaked through.
"You're not well," I said, "or you're in some sort of stew.**
"No, I'm not at all."
"What is it?"
"Oh, it's Monroe,* he said. "That goddam little Vine Street
Jesus! He's in my hair night and day!"
"What's happened?" I asked, very much cooler.
"Oh, he sits like a little goddam priest or rabbi and says
what hell do and he won't do. I can't tell you now I'm half
crazy. Why don't you go along?"
"I won't have you like this."
"Go along, I tell you!" I sniffed, but he never drank
"Go and brush your hair," I said. "I want you to see Martha
Dodd."
"In here! I'd never get rid of her."
"Out there then. Go wash up first Put on another shirt"
With an exaggerated gesture of despair, he went into the
little bathroom adjoining. It was hot in the office as if it had
been dosed for hours, and maybe that was making him sick,
so I opened two more windows.
THE LAST TYCOON 123
"You go along," Father called from behind the dosed door
of the bathroom. "Ill be there presently."
"Be awfully nice to her," I said. "No charity. 3 *
As if it were Martha speaking for herself, a long low moan
came from somewhere in the room. I was startledthen trans-
fixed, as it came again, not from the bathroom where Father
was, not from outside, but from a closet in the wall across
from me. How I was brave enough I don't know, but I ran
across to it and opened it, and Father's secretary, Birdy Peters,
tumbled out stark naked-just like a corpse in the movies. With
her came a gust of stifling, stuffy air. She flopped sideways on
the floor, with the one hand still clutching some dothes, and
lay on the floor bathed in sweat just as Father came in from
the bathroom. I could feel him standing behind me, and with-
out turning I knew exactly how he looked, for I had surprised
him before.
"Cover her up," I said, covering her up myself with a rug
from the couch. "Cover her upT
I left the office. Rosemary Schmiel saw my face as I came
out and responded with a terrified expression. I never saw her
again or Birdy Peters either. As Martha and I went out,
Martha asked: "What's the matter, dear?** and when I didn't
say anything: "You did your best. Probably it was the wrong
time. Ill tell you what 111 do. I'll take you to see a very nice
English girl. Did you see the girl that Stahr danced with at
our table the other night?"
So at the price of a little immersion in the family drains I
had what I wanted.
I don't remember much about our call. She wasn't at home
was one reason. The screen door of her house was unlocked,
and Martha went in calling "Kathleen" with bright familiarity.
The room we saw was bare and formal as a hotel; there were
flowers about, but they did not look like sent flowers. Also,
Martha found a note on the table, which said: TLeave the
dress. Have gone looking for a job. Will drop by tomorrow."
124 THE ^AST TYCOON
Martha read it twice but it didn't seem to be for Stahr, and
we waited five minutes. People's houses are very still when
they are gone. Not that I expect them to be jumping around,
but I leave the observation for what it's worth. Very still. Prim
almost, with just a fly holding down the place and paying no
attention to you, and the comer of a curtain blowing.
"I wonder what kind of a job/* said Martha. "Last Sunday
she went somewhere with Stahr."
But I was no longer interested. It seemed awful to be here
producer's blood, I thought in horror. And in quick panic I
pulled her out into the placid sunshine. It was no use I felt
just black and awful. I had always been proud of my body I
had a way of thinking of it as geometric which made every-
thing it did seem all right. And there was probably not any
kind of place, including churches and offices and shrines where
people had not embraced but no one had ever stuffed me
naked into a hole in the wall in the middle of a business day.
"If y 011 W ere in a drug-store/* said Stahr, "having a pre-
scription filled *
"You mean a chemist's?" Boxley asked.
*lf you were in a chemist's," conceded Stahr, "and you
were getting a prescription for some member of your family
who was very sick *
* Very ill?" queried Boxley.
"Very ill. Then whatever caught your attention through the
window, whatever distracted you and held you would prob-
ably be material for pictures."
"A murder outside the window, you mean."
"There you go," said Stahr, smiling. *lt might be a spider
working on the pane."
"Of course I see."
Tm afraid you don't, Mr. Boxley. You see it for your me-
dium, but not for ours. You keep the spiders for yourself and
you try to pin the murders on us,"
"I might as well lave s " said Bodey. Tm no good to you.
THE LAST TYCOON 125
I've been here three weeks and I've accomplished nothing. I
make suggestions, but no one writes them down,"
"I want you to stay. Something in you doesn't like pictures,
doesn't like telling a story this way "
"It's such a damned bother," exploded Boxley. "You can't let
yourself go "
He checked himself. He knew that Stahr, the helmsman,
was finding time for him in the middle of a constant stiff blow
that they were talking in the always creaking rigging of a
ship sailing in great awkward tacks along an open sea. Or
else it seemed at times they were in a huge quarry where
even the newly-cut marble bore the tracery of old pediments,
half-obliterated inscriptions of the past.
"I keep wishing you could start over/* Boxley said. "It's this
mass production."
"That's the condition,'* said Stahr. "There's always some
lousy condition. We're making a life of Rubens suppose I
asked you to do portraits of rich dopes like Bill Brady and me
and Gary Cooper and Marcus when you wanted to paint
Jesus Christ! Wouldn't you feel you had a condition? Our con-
dition is that we have to take people's own favorite folklore
and dress it up and give it back to them. Anything beyond that
is sugar. So won't you give us some sugar, Mr. Boxley?"
Boxley knew he could sit with Wylie White tonight at the
Troc raging at Stahr., but he had been reading Lord Charn-
wood and he recognized that Stahr like Lincoln was a leader
carrying on a long war on many fronts; almost single-handed
he had moved pictures sharply forward through a decade, to
a point where the content of the "A productions" was wider
and richer than that of the stage. Stahr was an artist only, as
Mr. Lincoln was a general, perforce and as a layman.
"Come down to La Borwitz* office with me," said Stahr.
"They sure need some sugar there/*
In La Borwitz* office, two writers, a shorthand secretary
and a hushed supervisor, sat in a tense smoky stalemate,
where Stahr had left them three hours before. He looked at
126 THE LAST TYCOON
the faces one after another and found nothing. La Borwitz
spoke with awed reverence for his defeat
"We've just got too many characters, Monroe.**
Stahr snorted affably.
That's the principal idea of the picture.**
He took some change out of his pocket, looked up at the
suspended light and tossed up half a dollar, which clanked into
the bowl He looked at the coins in his hands and selected a
quarter.
La Borwitz watched miserably; he knew this was a favorite
idea of Stahr's and he saw the sands running out. At the mo-
ment everyone's back was toward him. Suddenly he brought
up his hands from their placid position under the desk and
threw them high in the air, so high that they seemed to leave
his wristand then he caught them neatly as they were de-
scending. After that he felt better. He was in control.
One of the writers had taken out some coins, also, and pres-
ently rules were defined. "You have to toss your coin through
the chains without hitting them. Whatever falls into the light is
the kitty.**
They played for half an hour all except Boxley, who sat
aside and dug into the script, and the secretary, who kept tally.
She calculated the cost of the four men's time, arriving at a
figure of sixteen hundred dollars. At the end, La Borwitz was
winner by $5.50, and a janitor brought in a step-ladder to take
the money out of the light
Boxley spoke up suddenly.
Tou have the stuffings of a turkey here," he said.
"What!"
"It's not pictures/*
They looked at him in astonishment. Stahr concealed a
smile.
"So we've got a real picture man here!" exclaimed La Bor-
witz.
"A lot of beautiful speeches,** said Boxley boldly, "but no
situations. After all, you know it's not going to be a novel And
THE LAST TYCOON
it's too long. I can't exactly describe how I feel, but it's not
quite right. And it leaves me cold/'
He was giving them back what had been handed him for
three weeks. Stahr turned away, watching the others out of the
corner of his eye.
"We don't need less characters,'* said Boxley. "We need
more. As I see it, that's the idea."
"That's the idea," said the writers.
"Yes that's the idea," said La Borwitz.
Boxley was inspired by the attention he had created.
"Let each character see himself in the other's place," he said
"The policeman is about to arrest the thief when he sees that
the thief actually has his face. I mean, show it that way. You
could almost call the thing Put Yourself in My Place."
Suddenly they were at work again taking up this new
theme in turn like hepcats in a swing band and going to town
with it They might throw it out again tomorrow, but life had
come back for a moment. Pitching the coins had done it as
much as Boxley. Stahr had recreated the proper atmosphere
never consenting to be a driver of the driven, but feeling like
and acting like and even sometimes looking like a small boy
getting up a show.
He left them, touching Boxley on the shoulder in passinga
deliberate accolade he didn't want them to gang up on him
and break his spirit in an hour.
Doctor Baer was waiting in his inner office. With him was a
colored man with a portable cardiograph like a huge suitcase.
Stahr called it the lie detector. Stahr stripped to the waist,
and the weekly examination began.
"How've you been feeling?"
"Oh-the usual," said Stahr.
"Been hard at it? Getting any sleep?"
"No about five hours. If I go to bed early, I just lie there."
"Take the sleeping pills."
"The yellow one gives me a hangover."
128 LAST TYCOON
"Take two red then."
That's a nightmare."
Take one of each the yellow first/'
"All right-Ill try, How've you
"Say I care of myself, Monroe, 1 save myself."
The you do you're up all sometimes. 1 "
Then I sleep all next day/"
After ten minutes, Baer said:
*Seems O.K. The blood pressure's up five points.**
"Good," said Stahr, That's good, isn't It?"
"That's good. Ill develop the cardiographs tonight When
are you coming away with me?"
*Oh 9 some time/* Stahr lightly, "in about six weeks
tMngsTl ease up."
Baer looked at Mm with a genuine liking that had grown
over three years.
*Tou got better in tMrfy-tkree when you laid up," he said.
'"Even for three weeks***
T[ will again.**
No he wouldn't, Baer thought. With Minna's help he had
enforced a few short rests years ago and lately he had hinted
around, trying to find who Stahr considered his closest
friends. Who could take Mm away and keep him away? It
would almost surely be useless. He was due to die very soon
now. Within six months one could say definitely. What was the
use of developing the cardiograms? You couldn't persuade a
man like Stahr to stop and lie down and look at the sky for six
months. He would much rather die. He said differently, but
what It added up to was the definite urge toward total ex-
haustion that he had ran Into before. Fatigue was a drug as
well as a poison, and Stahr apparently derived some rare al-
most physical pleasure from working lightheaded with weari-
ness. It was a perversion of the life force he had seen before,
but he had almost stopped trying to interfere with It. He had
cured a man or $o-~a hollow triumph of killing and preserving
THE LAST TYCOON
"You hold your own/' he said.
They exchanged a glance. Did Stahr know? Probably. But
he did not know whenhe did not know how soon now.
"If I hold my own, I can't ask more/' said Stahr.
The colored man had finished packing the apparatus.
"Next week some time?"
"O.K., Bfll* said Stahr. "Goodbye."
As the door closed, Stahr switched open the dictograph.
Miss Doolan's voice came through immediately.
"Do you know a Miss Kathleen Moore?"
"What do you mean?" he asked startled.
"A Miss Kathleen Moore is on the line. She said you asked
her to call."
"Well, my God!" he exclaimed. He was swept with indignant
rapture. It had been five days this would never do at all.
"She son now?"
"Yes."
"Well, all right then."
In a moment he heard the voice up close to him*
"Are you married?" he asked, low and surly.
"No, not yet."
His memory blocked out her face and fom -as he sat down,
she seemed to lean down to his desk, keeping level with his
eyes.
"Whafs on your mind?" he asked in the same surly voice. It
was hard to talk that way.
"You did find the letter?" she asked.
"Yes. It turned up that night."
"That's what I want to speak to you about,"
He found an attitude at length he was outraged.
"What is there to talk about?" he demanded.
"I tried to write you another letter, but it wouldn't write."
"I know that, too/*
There was a pause.
"Oh, cheer up!" she said surprisingly. "This doesn't sound
like you. It is Stahr, isn't it? That very nice Mr. Stahr?"
130 THE LAST TYCOON
"I feel a little outraged," he said almost pompously. "I don t
see the use of this. I had at least a pleasant memory of you.'*
"I don't believe it's you," she said, "Next thing you'll wish me
luck" Suddenly she laughed: "Is this what you planned to say?
I know how awhjl it gets when you plan to say anything **
"I never expected to hear from you again/* he said with dig-
nity; but it was no use, she laughed again a woman's laugh
that is like a child's, just one syllable, a crow and a cry of de-
light
"Do you know how you make me feel?" she demanded,
"like a day in London during a caterpillar plague when a hot
furry thing dropped in my mouth."
Tm sorry.**
"Oh, please wake up,** she begged. "I want to see you. I can't
explain things on the phone. It was no fun for me either, you
understand.**
*Tm very busy. Hiere*s a sneak preview In Glendale to-
night"
"Is that an invitation?**
"George Boxley, the English writer, is going with me.** He
surprised himself. "Do you want to come along?**
"How could we talk?**
She considered. "Why don't you call for me afterwards,** she
suggested. "We could ride around.**
Miss Doolan on the huge dictograph was trying to cut in on
the line with a shooting director the only interruption ever
permitted. He flipped the button and called "Wait" impa-
tiently into the machine.
"About eleven?" Kathleen was saying confidentially.
The idea of "riding around** seemed so unwise that if he
could have thought of the words to refuse her he would have
spoken them, but he did not want to be the caterpillar. Sud-
denly he had no attitude left except the sense that the day, at
least, was complete. He had an evening a beginning, a middle
and an end
THE LAST TYCOON 13!
He rapped on the screen door, heard her call from inside,
and stood waiting where the level fell away. From below
came the whir of a lawn mower a man was cutting his grass
at midnight. The moon was so bright that Stahr could see him
plainly, a hundred feet off and down, as he stopped and rested
on the handle before pushing it back across his garden. There
was a midsummer restlessness abroad early August with im-
prudent loves and impulsive crimes. With little more to ex-
pect from summer, one tried anxiously to live in the present
or, if there was no present, to invent one.
She came at last. She was all different and delighted. She
wore a suit with a skirt that she kept hitching up as they
walked down to the car with a brave, gay, stimulating, reckless
air of "Tighten up your belt, baby. Let's get going." Stahr had
brought his limousine with the chauffeur, and the intimacy of
the four walls whisking them along a new curve in the dark
took away any strangeness at once. In its way, the little trip
they made was one of the best times he had ever had in his
life. It was certainly one of the times when, if he knew he
was going to die, it was not tonight
She told him her story. She sat beside him cool and gleaming
for a while, spinning on excitedly, carrying him to far places
with her, meeting and knowing the people she had known.
The story was vague at first. This Man" was the one she had
loved and lived with. "This American" was the one who had
rescued her when she was sinking into a quicksand.
"Who is he the American?"
Oh, names what did they matter? No one important
like Stahr, not rich. He had lived in London and now they
would live out here. She was going to be a good wife, a real
person. He was getting a divorce not just on account of her-
but that was the delay.
"But the first man?" asked Stahr. "How did you get into
that?"
Oh, that was a blessing at first. From sixteen to twenty-one
the thing was to eat. The day her stepmother presented her at
132 THE LAST TYCOON
Court they had one shilling to eat with so as not to feel faint
Sixpence apiece, but the stepmother watched while she ate.
After a few months the stepmother died, and she would have
sold out for that shilling but she was too weak to go into the
streets. London can be harsh oh, quite.
Was there nobody?
There were friends in Ireland who sent butter. There was a
soup kitchen. There was a visit to an uncle, who made ad-
vances to her when she had a full stomach, and she held out
and got fifty pounds out of him for not telling his wife.
"Couldn't you work?" Stahr asked.
"I worked. I sold cars. Once I sold a car."
"But couldn't you get a regular job?'*
"It's hard it's different. There was a feeling that people
like me forced other people out of jobs. A woman struck me
when I tried to get a job as chambermaid in a hotel.**
"But you were presented at Court? 9 *
"That was my stepmother who did thaton an off chance.
I was nobody. My father was shot by the Black-and-Tans in
twenty-two when I was a child. He wrote a book called Last
Blessing. Did you ever read it?**
T don't read.**
"I wish you'd buy it for the movies. It's a good little book. I
still get a royalty from it ten shillings a year.**
Then she met "The Man** and they travelled the world
around. She had been to all the places that Stahr made movies
of, and lived in cities whose name he had never heard. Then
The Man went to seed, drinking and sleeping with the house-
maids and trying to force her off on his friends. They all tried
to make her stick with him. They said she had saved him
and should cleave to him longer now, indefinitely, to the end.
It was her duty. They brought enormous pressure to bear. But
she had met The American, and so finally she ran away.
Tou should have run away before.**
"Well, you see, it was difficult** She hesitated, and plunged.
"You see, I ran away from a
THE LAST TYCOON 133
His moralities somehow collapsedshe had managed to top
him. A confusion of thoughts raced through his head-one of
them a faint old credo that all royalty was diseased.
"It wasn't the King of England,** she said. "My fang was out
of a job as he used to say. There are lots of kings in London."
She laughed then added almost defiantly, "He was very at-
tractive until he began drinking and raising hell. 9 *
"What was he king of ?*
She told him and Stahr visualized the face out of old news-
reels.
"He was a very learned man/* she said. "He could have
taught all sorts of subjects. But he wasn't much like a king.
Not nearly as much as you. None of them were.**
This time Stahr laughed.
"You know what I mean. They all felt old-fashioned. Most of
them tried so hard to keep up with things. They were always
advised to keep up with things. One was a syndicalist, for in-
stance. And one used to carry around a couple of clippings
about a tennis tournament when he was in the semi-finals. I
saw those clippings a dozen times."
They rode through Griffith Park and out past the dark
studios of Burbank, past the airports, and along the way to
Pasadena past the neon signs of roadside cabarets. Up in his
head he wanted her, but it was late and just the ride was an
overwhelming joy. They held hands and once she came close
into his arms saying, "Oh, you're so nice. I do like to be with
you.* But her mind was divided this was not his night as the
Sunday afternoon had been his. She was absorbed in herself,
stung into excitement by telling of her own adventures; he
could not help wondering if he was getting the story she had
saved up for The American.
"How long have you known The American?** he asked.
"Oh, I knew him for several months, We used to meet. We
understand each other. He used to say, It looks like a cinch
from now on/**
"Then why did you caB me up?*
THE LAST TYCOON
She hesitated.
*1 wanted to see you once more. Then, toohe was sup-
posed to arrive today, but last night he wired that he'd be
another week I wanted to talk to a friend after all, you are
my friend."
He wanted her very much now, but one part of his mind was
cold and kept saying; She wants to see if Fm in love with her,
if I want to many her. Then she'd consider whether or not to
throw this man over. She won't consider it till I've committed
myself.
"Are you in love with The American?" he asked.
"Oh, yes. It's absolutely arranged. He saved my life and my
reason. He's moving half-way around the world for me. I in-
sisted on that."
"But are you in love with him?"
"Oh, yes. I'm in love with him"
The "Oh, yes'* told him she was not told him to speak for
himself that she would see. He took her in his arms and
kissed her deliberately on the mouth and held her for a long
time. It was so warm.
"Not tonight," she whispered.
"All right."
They passed over suicide bridge with the high new wire.
"I know what it is,** she said, "but how stupid. English people
don't loll themselves when they don't get what they want."
They turned around in the driveway of a hotel and started
back. It was a dark night with no moon. The wave of desire
had passed and neither spoke for awhile. Her talk of kings
had carried him oddly back in flashes to the pearly White Way
of Main Street in Erie, Pennsylvania, when he was fifteen.
There was a restaurant with lobsters in the window and green
weeds and bright lights on a shell cavern, and beyond behind
a red curtain the terribly strange brooding mystery of people
and violin music. That was just before he left for New York.
This girl reminded him of the fresh iced fish and lobsters in
THE LAST TYCOON 135
the window. She was Beautiful Doll. Minna had never been
Beautiful Doll.
They looked at each other and her eyes asked, "Shall I
marry The American?" He did not answer. After awhile he
said:
"Let's go somewhere for the week-end."
She considered.
"Are you talking about tomorrow?**
Tm afraid I am.'*
"Well, I'll tell you tomorrow," she said.
"Tell me tonight. I'd be afraid *
"find a note in the car?" she laughed. "No there's no note
in the car. You know almost everything now/*
"Almost everything."
"Yes almost. A few little things.**
He would have to know what they were. She would tell
him tomorrow. He doubted he wanted to doubt if there had
been a maze of philandering: a fixation had held her to The
Man, the king, firmly and long. Three years of a highly anom-
alous position one foot in the palace and one in the back-
ground. "You had to laugh a lot," she said. "I learned to laugh
a lot"
"He could have married you like Mrs. Simpson,* Stahr
said in protest.
"Oh, he was married. And he wasn't a romantic.** She
stopped herself.
"Am IP*
"Yes,** she said unwillingly, as if she were laying down a
trump. "Part of you is. You're three or four different men but
each of them out in the open. Like all Americans.**
"Don't start trusting Americans too implicitly,** he said smil-
ing. "They may be out in the open, but they change very fast"
She looked concerned.
"Do theyr
"Very fast and all at once,** he said, "and nothing ever
changes them back.*
136 THE LAST TYCOON
"You frighten me. I always had a great sense of security with
Americans/*
She seemed suddenly so alone that he took her hand.
"Where will we go tomorrow?" he said. "Maybe up in the
mountains. I've got everything to do tomorrow, but I won't
do any of it. We can start at four and get there by afternoon."*
*Tm not sure. I seem to be a little mixed up. This doesn't
seem to be quite the girl who came out to California for a new
life."
He could have said it then, said, "It is a new life," for he
knew it was, he knew he could not let her go now; but some-
thing else said to sleep on it as an adult, no romantic. And not
to tell her till tomorrow. Still she was looking at him, her eyes
wandering from his forehead to his chin and back again, and
then up and down once more, with that odd slowly-waving
motion of her head.
... It is your chance, Stahr. Better take it now. This is your
girl. She can save you, she can worry you back to life. She will
take looking after and you will grow strong to do it. But take
her now tell her and take her away. Neither of you knows it,
but far away over the night The American has changed his
plans. At this moment his train is speeding through Albuquer-
que; the schedule is accurate. The engineer is on time. In the
morning he will be here.
. . . The chauffeur turned up the hill to Kathleen's house. It
seemed warm even in darknesswherever he had been near
here was by way of being an enchanted place for Stahr: this
limousine, the rising house at the beach, the very distances
they had already covered together over the sprawled city.
The hill they climbed now gave forth a sort of glow, a sus-
tained sound that struck his soul alert with delight.
As he said goodbye he felt again that it was impossible to
leave her, even for a few hours, There were only ten years be-
tween them, but he felt that madness about it akin to the love
of an aging man for a young girl. It was a deep and desperate
time-need, a dock ticking with his heart, and it urged him,
THE LAST TYCOON 137
against the whole logic of his life, to walk past her into the
house now and say, "This is forever.**
Kathleen waited, irresolute herself pink and silver frost
waiting to melt with spring. She was a European, humble in
the face of power, but there was a fierce self-respect that would
only let her go so far. She had no illusions about the considera-
tions that swayed princes.
"We'll go to the mountains tomorrow," said Stahr. Many
thousands of people depended on his balanced judgment
you can suddenly blunt a quality you have lived by for twenty
years.
He was very busy the next morning, Saturday. At two
o'clock, when he came from luncheon, there was a stack of
telegrams a company ship was lost in the Arctic; a star was in
disgrace; a writer was suing for one million dollars. Jews were
dead miserably beyond the sea. The last telegram stared up at
him:
I was married at noon today. Goodbye; and on a sticker at-
tached, Send your answer by Western Union Telegram.
CHAPTER 8
I KNEW NOTHING about any of this. I went up to Lake Louise,
and when I came back didn't go near the studio. I think I
would have started East in mid-August If Stain hadn't called
me up one day at home.
a l want you to arrange something, Cecilia I want to meet a
Communist Party member."
'Which one?" I asked, somewhat startled.
"Any one."
"Haven't you got plenty out there?"
a l mean one of their organizers from New York."
The summer before I had been all politics I could prob-
ably have arranged a meeting with Harry Bridges. But my boy
had been killed in an auto accident after I went back to col-
lege, and I was out of touch with such things. I had heard
there was a man from The New Masses around somewhere.
"Will you promise him immunity?" I asked, joking.
"Oh, yes/' Stahr answered seriously. "I won't hurt him. Get
one that can talk tell him to bring one of his books along."
He spoke as if lie wanted to meet a member of the **I am"
cult
"Do you want a blonde or a brunette?"
"Oh, get a man," he said hastily.
Hearing Stahr's voice cheered me up since I had barged
in on Father it had all seemed a paddling about in thin spittle.
Stahr changed everything about it changed the angle from
which I saw it, changed the very air.
THE LAST TYCOON 139
"I don't think your father ought to know," he said. "Can we
pretend the man is a Bulgarian musician or something?"
"Oh, they don't dress up any more," I said
It was harder to arrange than I thoughtStahr's negotia-
tions with the Writers 5 Guild, which had continued over a
year, were approaching a dead end. Perhaps they were afraid
of being corrupted, and I was asked what Stahr's "proposition**
was. Afterwards Stahr told me that he prepared for the meet-
ing by running off the Russian Revolutionary films that he had
in his film library at home. He also ran off Doctor Caligari and
Salvator Dalfs Le Chien Andalou, possibly suspecting that
they had a bearing on the matter. He had been startled by the
Russian films back in the twenties, and on Wylie White's sug-
gestion he had had the script department get him up a two-
page "treatment" of the Communist Manifesto.
But his mind was closed on the subject. He was a rationalist
who did his own reasoning without benefit of books and he
had just managed to climb out of a thousand years of Jewry
into the late eighteenth century. He could not bear to see it
melt awayhe cherished the parvenu's passionate loyalty to
an imaginary past.
The meeting took place in what I called the "processed
leather room"it was one of six done for us by a decorator
from Sloane's years ago, and the term stuck in my head. It
was the most decorator's room: an angora wool carpet the
color of dawn, the most delicate grey imaginable you hardly
dared walk on it; and the silver panelling and leather tables
and creamy pictures and slim fragilities looked so easy to
stain that we could not breathe hard in there, though it was
wonderful to look into from the door when the windows were
open and the curtains whimpered querulously against the
breeze. It was a lineal descendant of the old American parlor
that used to be closed except on Sunday. But it was exactly the
room for the occasion, and I hoped that whatever happened
would give it character and make it henceforth part of our
house.
THE LAST TYCOON
Stahr arrived first. He was white and nervous and troubled
except for his voice, which was always quiet and full of con-
sideration. There was a brave personal quality in the way he
would meet you he would walk right up to you and put aside
something that was in the way, and grow to know you all over
as if he couldn't help himself. I kissed him for some reason, and
took him into the processed leather room.
"When do you go back to college?" he asked.
We had been over this fascinating ground before.
'Would you like me if I were a little shorter?*' I asked, "I
could wear low heels and plaster down my hair."
"Let's have dinner tonight,** he suggested. "People will think
I'm your father but I don't mind."
"I love old men," I assured him. "Unless the man has a
crutch, I feel it's just a boy and girl affair."
"Have you had many of those?"
"Enough."
"People fall in and out of love all the time, don't they?"
"Every three years or so, Fanny Brice says. I just read it in
the paper."
"I wonder how they manage it," he said. "I know it's true
because I see them. But they look so convinced every time.
And then suddenly they don't look convinced. But they get
convinced all over."
"YouVe been making too many movies."
"I wonder if they're as convinced the second time or the
third time or the fourth time," he persisted.
"More each time," I said. "Most of all the kst time."
He thought this over and seemed to agree.
"I suppose so. Most of all the last time."
I didn't like the way he said this, and I suddenly saw that
under the surface he was miserable.
"It's a great nuisance," he said. "Itll be better when ifs over."
"Wait a mmute! Perhaps pictures are in the wrong hands."
Brimmer, the Party Member, was announced, and going to
THE LAST TYCOON
meet him I slid over to the door on one of those gossamer
throw-nigs and practically into his arms*
He was a nice-looking man, this Brimmer a little on the or-
der of Spencer Tracy, but with a stronger face and a wider
range of reactions written up in it. I couldn't help thinking as
he and Stahr smiled and shook hands and squared off, that
they were two of the most alert men I had ever seen. They
were very conscious of each other immediatelyboth as po-
lite to me as you please, but with a softening of the ends of
their sentences when they turned in my direction.
"What are you people trying to do?"" demanded Stahr.
"You've got my young men all upset**
"That keeps them awake, doesn't it?" said Brimmer,
"First we let half a dozen Russians study the plant," said
Stahr. "As a model plant, you understand. And then you try to
break up the unity that makes it a model plant."
"The unity?" Brimmer repeated. "Do you mean what's
known as The Company Spirit?"
"Oh, not that," said Stahr, impatiently. "It seems to be me
you're after. Last week a writer came into my office a drunk
a man who's been floating around for years just two steps
out of the bughouse and began telling me my business."*
Brimmer smiled.
"You don't look to me like a man who could be told his
business, Mr. Stahr. 1 *
They would both have tea. When I came back, Stahr was
telling a story about the Warner Brothers and Brimmer was
laughing with him.
"I'll tell you another one," Stahr said. "Balanchine the Rus-
sian Dancer had them mixed up with the Ritz Brothers. He
didn't know which ones he was training and which ones he
was working for. He used to go around saying, *I cannot train
these Warner Brothers to dance/"
It looked like a quiet afternoon. Brimmer asked him why
the producers didn't back the anti-Nazi League.
"Because of you people," said Stahr. "It's your way of getting
THE LAST TYCOON
at the writers. In the long view you're wasting your time.
Writers are children even in normal times they can't keep
their minds on their work."
"They're the farmers in this business/* said Brimmer pleas-
antly. They grow the grain but they're not in at the feast.
Their feeling toward the producer is like the farmers' resent-
ment of the city fellow."
I was wondering about Stahr's girl whether it was all over
between them. Later, when I heard the whole thing from
Kathleen, standing in the rain in a wretched road called Gold-
wyn Avenue, I figured out that this must have been a week
after she sent him the telegram. She couldn't help the tele-
gram. The man got off the train unexpectedly and walked
her to the registry office without a flicker of doubt that this was
what she wanted. It was eight in the morning, and Kathleen
was in such a daze that she was chiefly concerned about how
to get the telegram to Stahr. In theory you could stop and say,
"Listen, I forgot to tell you but I met a man.** But this track
had been laid down so thoroughly, with such confidence,
such struggle, such relief, that when it came along, suddenly
cutting across the other, she found herself on it like a car on a
closed switch. He watched her write the telegram, looking di-
rectly at it across the table, and she hoped he couldn't read
upside down. . . .
When my mind came back into the room, they had de-
stroyed the poor writers-Brimmer had gone so far as to admit
they were "unstable."
"They are not equipped for authority," said Stahr. "There
is no substitute for will. Sometimes you have to fake will when
you don't feel it at all."
*Tve had that experience."
"You have to say, It's got to be like this no other way*
even if you're not sure. A dozen times a week that happens to
me. Situations where there is no real reason for anything. You
pretend there is."
THE LAST TYCOON 143
"All leaders have felt that," said Brimmer. "Labor leaders,
and certainly military leaders."
"So Tve had to take an attitude in this Guild matter. It looks
to me like a try for power, and all I am going to give the writ-
ers is money."
"You give some of them very little money. Thirty dollars a
week."
"Who gets that?" asked Stahr, surprised.
"The ones that are commodities and easy to replace.**
"Not on my lot," said Stahr.
"Oh, yes," said Brimmer. "Two men in your shorts depart-
ment get thirty dollars a week."
"Who?"
"Man named Ransome man named O'Brien."
Stahr and I smiled together.
"Those are not writers," said Stahr. "Those are cousins of
Cecilia s father "
"There are some in other studios," said Brimmer.
Stahr took his teaspoon and poured himself some medicine
from a little bottle,
"What's a fink?" he asked suddenly.
"A fink? That's a strikebreaker or a company tec.**
"I thought so," said Stahr. "I've got a fifteen hundred dollar
writer that every time he walks through the commissary keeps
saying Tinkl* behind other writers* chairs. If he didn't scare
hell out of them, it'd be funny."
Brimmer laughed.
Td like to see that," he said.
"You wouldn't like to spend a day with me over there?" sug-
gested Stahr,
Brimmer laughed with genuine amusement
"No, Mr. Stahr. But I don't doubt but that Td be impressed.
I've heard you're one of the hardest working and most efficient
men in the entire West It'd be a privilege to watch you, but
I'm afraid 1*11 have to deny myself."
Stahr looked at me.
144 THE LAST TYCOON
"I like your friend/* he said "He's crazy, but I like him." He
looked closely at Brimmer: "Born on this side?"
"Oh, yes. Several generations,"
"Many of them like you?"
*My father was a Baptist minister,"
T[ mean are many of them Reds. Td like to meet this big
Jew that tried to blow over the Ford factory. What's his
name"
"Frankensteen? 9 *
"That* s the man. I guess some of you believe in it."
"Quite a few," said Brimmer dryly.
"Not you," said Stahr.
A shade of annoyance floated across Brimmer's face.
"Oh, yes," he said
"Oh, no," said Stahr. "Maybe you did once."
Brimmer shrugged his shoulders,
"Perhaps the boot's on the other foot," he said. "At the bot-
tom of your heart, Mr. Stahr, you know I'm right"
"No," said Stahr, "I think it's a bunch of tripe."
"you think to yourself, He's right/ but you think the system
will last out your time."
"You don't really think you're going to overthrow the govern-
ment.
"No, Mr. Stahr. But we think perhaps you are."
They were nicking at each other little pricking strokes like
men do sometimes. Women do it, too; but it is a joined battle
then with no quarter. But it is not pleasant to watch men
do it, because you never know what's next. Certainly it wasn't
improving the tonal associations of the room for me, and I
moved them out the French window into our golden-yellow
California garden,
It was midsummer, but fresh water from the gasping
sprinklers made the lawn glitter like spring. I could see Brim-
mer look at it with a sigh in his glance a way they have. He
opened up big outside-inches taller than I thought and
broad-shouldered He reminded me a little of Superman when
THE LAST TYCOON 145
he takes off his spectacles. I thought he was as attractive as
men can be who don't really care about women as such. We
played a round robin game of ping-pong, and he handled his
bat well. I heard Father come into the house singing that
damn Little Girl, You've Had a Eusy Day, and then breaking
off, as if he remembered we weren't speaking any more. It was
half past six my car was standing in the- drive, and I suggested
we go down to the Trocadero for dinner.
Brimmer had that look that Father O'Ney had that time in
New York when he turned his collar around and went with
father and me to the Russian Ballet. He hadn't quite ought to
be here. When Bernie, the photographer, who was waiting
there for some big game or other, came up to our table, he
looked trapped Stahr made Bernie go away, and I would like
to have had the picture.
Then, to my astonishment, Stahr had three cocktails, one
after the other.
"Now I know you've been disappointed in love," I said.
"What makes you think that, Cecilia?"
"Cocktails."
"Oh, I never drink, Cecilia. I get dyspepsia IVe never been
tight"
I counted them: "two three"
"I didn't realize. I couldn't taste them. I thought there was
something the matter."
A silly glassy look darted into his eye then passed away.
"This is my first drink in a week," said Brimmer. "I did my
drinking in the Navy."
The look was back in Stahr's eye he winked fatuously at
me and said:
"This soap-box son-of-a-bitch has been working on the
Navy."
Brimmer didn't know quite how to take this. Evidently he
decided to include it with the evening, for he smiled faintly,
and I saw Stahr was smiling, too. I was relieved when I saw
it was safely in the great American tradition, and I tried to
146 THE LAST TYCOON
take hold of the conversation, but Stahr seemed suddenly all
right
"Here's my typical experience," he said very succinctly and
clearly to Brimmer. The best director in Hollywood a man I
never interfere with has some streak in him that wants to slip
a pansy into every picture, or something on that order. Some-
thing offensive. He stamps it in deep like a watermark so I
can't get it out. Every time he does it the Legion of Decency
moves a step forward, and something has to be sacrificed out of
some honest film.'*
Typical organization trouble," agreed Brimmer,
Typical," said Stahr. "It's an endless battle. So now this
director tells me it's all right because he's got a Director's Guild
and I can't oppress the poor. That's how you add to my
troubles."
"It's a little remote from us," said Brimmer smiling. "I don't
think we'd make much headway with the directors."
The directors used to be my pals," said Stahr proudly.
It was like Edward the Seventh's boast that he had moved
in the best society in Europe,
"But some of them have never forgiven me," he continued,
"for bringing out stage directors when sound came in. It put
them on their toes and made them learn their jobs all over,
but they never did really forgive me. That time we imported
a whole new hogshead full of writers, and I thought they were
great fellows till they all went red."
Gary Cooper came in and sat down in a corner with a bunch
of men who breathed whenever he did and looked as if they
lived off him and weren't budging, A woman across the room
looked around and turned out to be Carole Lombard I was
glad that Brimmer was at least getting an eyeful.
Stahr ordered a whiskey and soda and, almost immediately,
another. He ate nothing but a few spoonfuls of soup and he
said all the awful things about everybody being lazy so-and-
so's and none of it mattered to him because he had lots of
0nev~4t was the kind of talk you heard whenever Father and
THE LAST TYCOON 147
his friends were together. I think Stahr realized that it sounded
pretty ugly outside of the proper company maybe he had
never heard how it sounded before. Anyhow he shut up and
drank off a cup of black coffee. I loved him, and what he said
didn't change that, but I hated Brimmer to carry off this im-
pression. I wanted him to see Stahr as a sort of technological
virtuoso, and here Stahr had been playing the wicked over-
seer to a point he would have called trash if he had watched
it on the screen.
"I'm a production man," he said, as if to modify his previous
attitude. "I like writers I think I understand them. I don't
want to kick anybody out if they do their work."
"We don't want you to," said Brimmer pleasantly. "We'd
like to take you over as a going concern."
Stahr nodded grimly.
"I'd like to put you in a roomful of my partners. They've
all got a dozen reasons for having Fitts run you fellows out
of town."*
**We appreciate your protection," said Brimmer with a cer-
tain irony. "Frankly we do find you difficult, Mr. Stahr pre-
cisely because you are a paternalistic employer and your
influence is very great*
Stahr was only half listening.
"I never thought," he said, "that I had more brains than a
writer has. But I always thought that his brains belonged to
me because I knew how to use them. Like the Romans
I've heard that they never invented things but they knew what
to do with them. Do you see? I don't say it's right But it's the
way I've always felt since I was a boy."
This interested Brimmer the first thing that had interested
him for an hour.
"You know yourself very well, Mr. Stahr," he said.
I think he wanted to get away. He had been curious to see
what kind of man Stahr was, and now he thought he knew.
Still hoping things would be different, I rashly urged him to
148 THE LAST TYCOON
ride home with us, but when Stahr stopped by the bar for
another drink I knew I'd made a mistake.
It was a gentle, harmless, motionless evening with a lot of
Saturday cars. Stahr's hand lay along the back of the seat
touching my hair. Suddenly I wished it had been about ten
years ago I would have been nine. Brimmer about eighteen
and working his way through some mid-western college, and
Stahr twenty-five, just having inherited the world and full of
confidence and joy. We would both have looked up to Stahr
so, without question. And here we were in an adult conflict,
to which there was no peaceable solution, complicated now
with exhaustion and drink.
We turned in at our drive, and I drove around to the garden
again.
*1 must go along now, 9 * said Brimmer. Tve got to meet some
people/*
"No, stay,** said Stahr. *I never have said what I wanted.
Well play ping-pong and have another drink, and then we'll
tear into each other."
Brimmer hesitated. Stahr turned on the floodlight and
picked up his ping-pong bat, and I went into the house for
some whiskey I wouldn't have dared disobey him.
When I came back, they were not playing, but Stahr was
batting a whole box of new balls across to Brimmer, who
turned them aside. When I arrived, he quit and took the bot-
tle and retired to a chair just out of the floodlight, watching in
dark dangerous majesty. He was pale he was so transparent
that you could almost watch the alcohol mingle with the poison
of his exhaustion.
"Time to relax on Saturday night," he said.
"You're not relaxing," I said.
He was carrying on a losing battle with his instinct toward
schizophrenia.
Tm going to beat up Brimmer,'* he announced after a mo-
ment. *Tm going to handle this thing personally."
"Can't you pay somebody to do it?" asked Brimmer.
THE LAST TYCOON 149
I signalled him to keep quiet.
"I do my own dirty work," said Stalir. "I'm going to beat
hell out of you and put you on a train.**
He got up and came forward, and I put my arms around
him, gripping him.
"Please stop this!" I said. "Oh, you're being so bad."
"This fellow has an influence over you/' he said darkly. "Over
all you young people. You don't know what you're doing.**
"Please go home," I said to Brimmer.
Stahr's suit was made of slippery cloth and suddenly he
slipped away from me and went for Brimmer. Brimmer re-
treated backward around the table. There was an odd ex-
pression in his face, and afterwards I thought it looked as if he
were saying, "Is this aU? This frail half -sick person holding up
the whole thing,"
Then Stahr came close, his hands going up. It seemed to me
that Brimmer held him off with his left arm a minute, and then
I looked away I couldn't bear to watch.
When I looked back, Stahr was out of sight below the level
of the table, and Brimmer was looking down at him,
"Please go home," I said to Brimmer.
"All right." He stood looking down at Stahr as I came
around the table. "I always wanted to hit ten million dol-
lars, but I didn't know it would be like this."
Stahr lay motionless.
"Please go," I said.
"I'm sorry. Can I help "
"No. Please go. I understand."
He looked again, a little awed at the depths of Stahr's re-
pose, which he had created in a split second. Then he went
quickly away over the grass, and I knelt down and shook Stahr.
After a moment he came awake with a terrific convulsion
and bounced up on his feet
"Where is he?" he shouted.
"Who?" I asked innocently.
150 THE LAST TYCOON
"That American. Why In hell did you have to many him,
you damn fool?"
"Monroe he's gone, I didn't marry anybody."*
I pushed him down in a chair.
"He's been gone half an hour," I lied.
The ping-pong balls lay around in the grass like a constella-
tion of stars. I turned on a sprinkler and came back with a wet
handkerchief, but there was no mark on Stahr he must have
been hit in the side of the head. He went off behind some
trees and was sick, and I heard him kicking up some earth over
it After that he seemed all right, but he wouldn't go into the
house till I got him some mouthwash, so I took back the
whiskey bottle and got a mouthwash bottle. His wretched
essay at getting drunk was over. I've been out with college
freshmen, but for sheer ineptitude and absence of the Bacchic
spirit it unquestionably took the cake. Every bad thing hap-
pened to him, but that was all.
We went in the house; the cook said Father and Mr. Marcus
and Fleishacker were on the veranda, so we stayed in the
"processed leather room." We both sat down in a couple of
places and seemed to slide off, and finally I sat on a fur rug
and Stahr on a footstool beside me.
"Did I hit him?" he asked.
"Oh, yes," I said. "Quite badly."
"I don't believe it." After a minute he added: "I didn't want
to hurt him. I just wanted to chase him out. I guess he got
scared and hit me."
If this was his interpretation of what had happened, it was
all right with me.
"Do you hold it against him?"
"Oh, no," he said. "I was drunk." He looked around. "I've
never been in here before who did this room? somebody
from the studio?"
"Somebody from New York."
"Well, Til have to get you out of here," he said in his old
THE LAST TYCOON
pleasant way. "How would you like to go out to Doug Fair-
banks' ranch and spend the night?* 9 he asked me. TL know he'd
love to have you.**
That's how the two weeks started that he and I went around
together. It only took one of them for Louella to have us
married.
The manuscript stops at this point. The following synopsis of
the rest of the story has been put together from Fitzgeralfs
notes and outlines and from the reports of persons with whom
he discussed his work:
Soon after his interview with Brimmer, Stahr makes a trip
East. A wage-cut has been threatened in the studio, and Stahr
has gone to talk to the stockholders presumably with the idea
of inducing them to retrench in some other way. He and Brady
have long been working at cross-purposes, and the struggle
between them for the control of the company is rapidly coming
to a climax. We do not know about the results of this trip from
the business point of view, but, whether or not on a business
errand, Stahr for the first time visits Washington with the in-
tention of seeing the city; and it is to be presumed that the
author had meant to return here to the motif introduced in
the first chapter with the visit of the Hollywood people to the
home of Andrew Jackson and their failure to gain admittance
or even to see the place clearly: the relation of the moving-
picture industry to the American ideals and tradition. It is mid-
summer; Washington is stifling; Stahr comes down with
summer grippe and goes around the city in a daze of fever and
heat. He never succeeds in becoming acquainted with it as
he had hoped to.
152 THE LAST TYCOON
When he recovers and gets back to Hollywood, he finds that
Brady has taken advantage of his absence to put through a fifty
percent pay-cut. Brady had called a meeting of writers and
told them in a tearful speech that he and the other executives
would take a cut themselves if the writers would consent to
take one. If they would agree, it would not be necessary to re-
duce the salaries of the stenographers and the other low-paid
employees. The writers had accepted this arrangement, but
had then been double-crossed by Brady, who had proceeded
to slash the stenographers just the same. Stahr is revolted by
this; and he and Brady have a violent falling-out Stahr,
though opposed to the unions, believing that any enterprising
office-boy can make his way to the top as he has done, is an
old-fashioned paternalistic employer, who likes to feel that the
people who work for him are contented, and that he and they
are on friendly terms. On the other hand, he quarrels also with
Wylie White, who he finds has become truculently hostile to
him, in spite of the fact that Stahr was not personally respon-
sible for the pay-cut. Stahr has been patient in the past with
White's drinking and his practical jokes, and he is hurt that the
writer should not feel toward him the same kind of personal
loyaltywhich is the only solidarity that Stahr understands in
the field of business relations. "The Reds see him now as a
conservative Wall Street as a Red/* But he finds himself driven
by the logic of the situation to fall in with the idea which has
been proposed and is heartily approved by Brady, of setting
up a company union.
As for his own position in the studio, he had in Washington
already thought of quitting; but, intimately involved in the
struggle, ill, unhappy and embittered though he is, it is diffi-
cult for him to surrender to Brady. In the meantime, he has
been going around with Cecilia. The girl in a conversation with
her father about the attentions Stahr has apparently been pay-
ing her, has carelessly let Brady know that Stahr is in love with
someone else. Brady finds out about Kathleen, whom Stahr has
beoci seeing agakt, and attempts to blackmail Stabr, Stahr in
THE LAST TYCOON 153
disgust with the Bradys abruptly drops Cecilia. He on his side
has known for years having learned it by way of Ms wife's
trained nursethat Brady had had a hand in the death of the
husband of a woman with whom he (Brady) had been in
love. The two men threaten one another with no really con-
clusive evidence on either side.
But Brady has an instrument ready to his hand. The man
whom Kathleen has married whose name is W. Bronson
Smith is a technician working in the studios, who has been
taking an active part in his union. It is impossible to tell pre-
cisely how Scott Fitzgerald imagined the labor situation in
Hollywood for the purposes of his story. At the time of which
he is writing, the various kinds of technicians had already
been organized in the International Alliance of Theatrical
Stage Employees; and it is obvious that he intended to exploit
the element of racketeering and gangsterism revealed in this
organization by the case of William BiofE. Brady was to go to
Kathleen's husband and play upon his jealousy of his wife.
We do not know what Fitzgerald intended that these two
should try to do to Stahr. Robinson, the cutter (see the notes
on this character), was originally to have undertaken to mur-
der him; but it seems more probable from the author's outline
that Stahr was to be caught in some trap which would supply
Kathleen's husband with grounds for bringing a suit against
Stahr for alienation of his wife's affection. In Fitzgerald's out-
line below, the theme of Chapter VIII is indicated by the
words, "The suit and the price/' This is evidently partly ex-
plained by the following note of material which Fitzgerald in-
tended to make use of, though it is impossible to tell how it was
to be modified to meet the demands of the story: "One of
the brothers is accused by an employee of seducing his
wife. Sued for alienation. They try to settle it out of court, but
the man bringing suit is a labor leader and won't be bought
Neither will he divorce his wife. He considers rougher meas-
ures. His price is that shall go away for a year. *s
instinct is to stay and fight it, but the other brothers get to a
154 THE ^ AST TYCOON
doctor and pronounce death sentence on him and retire him.
He tries to get the girl to go with him, but is afraid of the Mann
Act. She is to follow him and theyll go abroad.**
In any case, Stahr is to be saved by the intervention of the
camera man, Pete Zavras, whom he has befriended at the be-
ginning of the story, when Zavras had lost his standing with
the studios.
In the meantime, Stahr is now seriously ill. He and Kathleen
have been "taking breathless chances/* They have succeeded
in having "one last fling," which has taken place during an
overpowering heat wave in the early part of September. But
their meetings have proved unsatisfactory. The author has
indicated in an early sketch that Kathleen was to "come of
very humble parents'* her father was to have been the captain
of a Newfoundland fishing smack; and in another place he
says that Stahr has found it difficult to accept her as a perma-
nent part of his life because she is "poor, unfortunate, and
tagged with a middle-class exterior which doesn't fit in with
the grandeur Stahr demands of Me.** It is possible that the
labor conflict in which her husband has become involved was
intended to alienate her and Stahr. Stahr is now being pushed
into the past by Brady and by the unions alike. The split
between the controllers of the movie industry, on the one
hand, and the various groups of employees, on the other, is
widening and leaving no place for real individualists of busi-
ness like Stahr, whose successes are personal achievements and
whose career has always been invested with a certain personal
glamor. He has held himself directly responsible to everyone
with whom he has worked; he has even wanted to beat up his
enemies himself. In Hollywood he is "the last tycoon."
Stahr has not been afraid, as we have seen in the conference
in Chapter III, to risk money on unpopular films which would
afford him some artistic satisfaction. He has had a craftsman's
interest in the pictures, and it has been natural for him to want
to make them better. But he has been lying low" since the
wage-cut and has ceased to make pictures altogether, There
THE LAST TYCOON 155
was to have been a second series of scenes showing him at a
story conference, at the rushes and on the sets, which was to
have contrasted with the similar series in Chapters III and
IV, and to have shown the change that has taken place in
his attitude and status.
He must, however, stand up to Brady, who he knows will
stop at nothing. He evidently fears Brady will murder him,
for he now decides to resort to Brady's own methods and get
his partner murdered. For this he apparently goes straight to
the gangsters. It is not clear how the murder is to be accom-
plished; but in order to be away at the time, Stahr arranges a
trip to New York. He sees Kathleen for the last time at the
airport, and also meets Cecilia, who is going back to college
on a different plane. On the plane he has a reaction of dis-
gust against the course he has taken; he realizes that he has
let himself be degraded to the same plane of brutality as
Brady. He decides to call off the murder and intends to wire
orders as soon as the plane descends at the next airport. But
the plane has an accident and crashes before they reach the
next stop. Stahr is killed, and the murder goes through. The
ominous suicide of Schwartz in the opening chapter of the
story is thus balanced by the death of Stahr. In the note that
Schwartz had sent him, he had been trying to warn him against
Brady, who had long wanted to get Stahr out of the company.
Stahr's funeral, which was to have been described in detail,
is an orgy of Hollywood servility and hypocrisy. Everybody is
weeping copiously or conspicuously stifling emotion with an
eye on the right people. Cecilia imagines Stahr present and
can hear him saying "Trashl" The old cowboy actor, Johnny
Swanson, who has been mentioned at the beginning of Chap-
ter II and for whom in his forlorn situation Cecilia has later
had the idea of trying to do something at the time of her visit
to her father's office, has been invited to the funeral by mis-
takethrough the confusion of his name with someone else's,
and asked to officiate as pall-bearer along with the most inti-
158 THE LAST TYCOON
mate and important of the dead producer's friends, Johnny
goes through with the ceremony, rather dazed; and then finds
out, to his astonishment, that his fortunes have been gloriously
restored From this time on, he is deluged with offers of jobs.
In the meantime, a final glimpse of Fleishacker, the ambi-
tious company lawyer, a man totally without conscience or
creative brains, was to have shown him as prefiguring the imme-
diate future of the moving-picture business. There was also to
have been a passage toward the end between Fleishacker and
Cecilia, in which the former, who has been to New York Uni-
versity and who was perhaps to have tried to marry Cecilia,
was to have attempted a conversation with her on an "intel-
lectual** plane.
Cecilia, on the rebound from Stahr, has had an affair with
a man she does not loveprobably Wylie White, who has
been after her from the first and who represents the opposition
to Stahr. As a result of the death of Stahr and the murder of
her father, she now breaks down completely. She develops
tuberculosis, and we were to learn for the first time at the end
that she has been putting together her story in a tuberculosis
sanitarium. ( See the first of the fragments under Cecilia. )
We were to have had a final picture of Kathleen standing
outside the studio. She has presumably separated from her hus-
band as a result of the plot against Stahr. It had been one of
her chief attractions for Stahr that she did not belong to the
Hollywood world; and now she knows that she is never to be
part of it. She is always to remain on the outside of thingsa
situation which also has its tragedy.
NOTES
CHAPTER I
The author has written at the top of his last draft of the first
chapter, as given here:
Rewrite from mood. Has become stilted with rewriting.
Don't look [at previous draft]. Rewrite from mood.
Page 20. Fitzgeraltfs first sketch for the end of the chapter
perhaps conveys his idea more completely than he had suc-
ceeded in doing in this draft:
This will be based on a conversation that I had with
the first time I was alone with him in 1927, the day that he
said a thing about railroads. As near as I can remember what
he said was this:
We sat in the old commissary at and he said, "Scottie,
supposing there's got to be a road through a mountain a rail-
road, and two or three surveyors and people come to you and
you believe some of them and some of them you don't believe,
but all in all, there seem to be half a dozen possible roads
through those mountains, each one of which, so far as you can
determine, is as good as the other. Now suppose you happen to
be the top man, there's a point where you don't exercise the
faculty of judgment in the ordinary way, but simply the faculty
of arbitrary decision. You say, *WeE, I think we will put
the road there,* and you trace it with your finger and you know
Ig8 THE LAST TYCOON
in your secret heart, and no one else knows, that you have no
reason for putting the road there rather than in several
other different courses, but you're the only person that
knows that you don't know why you're doing it and youVe got
to stick to that and you've got to pretend that you know and
that you did it for specific reasons, even though you're utterly
assailed by doubts at times as to the wisdom of your decision,
because all these other possible decisions keep echoing in
your ear. But when you're planning a new enterprise on a
grand scale, the people under you mustn't ever know or guess
that you're in any doubt, because they've all got to have some-
thing to look up to and they mustn't ever dream that you're
in doubt about any decision. Those things keep occurring."
At that point, some other people came into the commis-
sary and sat down, and the first thing I knew there was a group
of four and the intimacy of the conversation was broken, but
I was very much impressed by the shrewdness of what he
saidsomething more than shrewdness by the largeness of
what he thought and how he reached it at the age of twenty-
six, which he was then.
So I think that this kst episode will be when Stahr goes up
and sits with the pilot up in front and rides beside the pilot,
and the pilot recognizes in Stahr someone who in his own field
must be just as sure, just as determined, just as courageous
as he himself is. Very few words are exchanged between
Stahr and the pilot in fact, it is an ppisode that we may see
entirely through the eyes of Cecilia peeping in, of the steward-
ess reporting to Cecilia what she saw peeping through the
cockpit, or Schwartz still trying to get to Stahr before they
get to Los Angeles. It is quite possible that we may not be
alone with Stahr through this entire episode down to the
very end, but at the very end I want to go into that strong
feeling that I had in that undeveloped note about the motor
shutting off and the plane settling down to earth and the lights
of Los Angeles, and for a minute there, I want to give an all-
THE LAST TYCOON 159
fireworks illumination of the intense passion in Stahr's soul, his
love of life, his love for the great thing that he's built out
here, his, perhaps not exactly, satisfaction, hut his feeling cer-
tainly of coming home to an empire of his own an empire he
has made.
I want to contrast this sharply with the feeling of those who
have merely gypped another person's empire away from them
like the four great railroad kings of the coast ... or the feeling
that would have. He's not interested in it because he
owns it. He's interested in it as an artist because he has made
it, and mixed up with his great feeling of triumph and happi-
ness there must inevitably be a feeling of sadness with all acts
of couragea feeling that it is to some extent a finished thing,
and doubt as to the next step as to how far he can go.
After the plane comes down, it may be best to finish the
chapter with that fireworks repeat my own fear when I
landed in Los Angeles with the feeling of new worlds to con-
quer in 1937 transferred to Stahr, or it may be best to end with
a cacophony of a rival
CHAPTER II
Page 24. Fitzgerald had written Only fair opposite the para-
graph which begins, "Hobby*!! take care of everything when
he comes," Stahr assured Father. This was to have been the
first appearance of a character who was to play an important
role, and the author wanted presumably, at this casual intro-
duction, to give a sharper impression of him. His notes on
Robinson will be found below among the preliminary sketches
for the characters*
CHAPTER III
This chapter had not been cut and organized to the authors
complete satisfaction. It is given here as it stands in the manu-
script, with only a few changes to make it self-consistent.
l6o THE LAST TYCOON
In the manuscript, the passage on page 46 reads as follows:
Probably the attack was planned, for Popolos, the Greek,
took up the matter in a sort of double talk that reminded
Prince Agge of Mike Van Dyke, except that it tried to be and
succeeded in being clear instead of confusing.
The author had written a scene with which he was dissatis-
fied, in which the Prince had encountered Mike Van Dyke,
the old gag-man; but the double talk of Mike Van Dyke was
intended to figure in some other place. The passages that deal
with it follow;
"Hello, Mike/* said Monroe. He introduced him to the visi-
tor: "Prince Agge, this is Mr. Van Dyke. YouVe laughed at his
stuff many times. He's the best gag-man in pictures.**
"In the world," said the saucer-eyed man gravely, "the
funniest man in the world. How are you, Prince? . . .*
Immediately the Prince found himself engaged in conversa-
tion with Mike Van Dyke. He answered politely without quite
getting the gist of his words. Something about the commis-
sary, where Mr. Van Dyke thought he had seen the Prince
trying to order what sounded like "twisted fish and a cat's
handlebar,'* though the Prince was certain he misunderstood.
He tried to explain that he had not been to the commissary,
but by this time they were so far into the subject that he
thought the quickest way was to admit that he had, and
merely parry Mr. Van Dyke's mistaken statements as to what he
had done there. Mr. Van Dyke was not so much insistent as
convinced, and he seemed to talk very fast. . . .
The Prince was introduced to Mr. Spurgeon and to Mr. and
Mrs. Tarleton, but he was now so involved in the conversation
with Mr. Van Dyke that he heard himself stammering, "I'm
glad to meet me," because he was explaining to Van Dyke that
he had not seen Technigarbo in Gretaeolor* Again he had mis-
understood. Was his name Albert Edward Butch Arthur Agge
THE LAST TYCOON l6l
David, Prince of Denmark? "That's my cousin," he almost said,
Ms head reeling.
Stahr's voice, clear and reassuring, brought him back to re-
ality.
"That's enough, Mike.-That was 'double-talkY* he ex-
plained to Prince Agge. "Ifs considered funny here in the
lower brackets. Do it slow, Mike.*'
Mike demonstrated politely.
*In an income at the gate this morning* He pointed at
Stahr."~ordidhe?"
Baffled, the Dane bit again.
"What? Did he what?" Then he smiled: "I see. It is like your
Gertrude Stein."
CHAPTER IV
Fitzgerald has the following note on the episode with the
director at the beginning of this chapter:
What is missing in Ridingwood scene is passion and imagina-
tion, etc. What an extraordinary thing that it should all have
been there for Ridingwood and then not there.
CHAPTER V
Page 97. After the words, And so he had learned tolerance,
kindness, forbearance, and even affection like lessons, the au-
thor has written for his own guidance: (Now the idea
about young and generous ).
Note following the section that ends on page 98:
This may not be terse and clear enough here. Or perhaps
I mean strong enough. It may be the place for the doctor's
verdict I would like to leave him on a stronger nota
162 THE LAST TYCOON
Two OUTLINES
The following letter and outline throw some light on the
course of the story and show how it developed and changed
pom the author's first conception of it.
A letter written by Fitzgerald* September 29, 1939, explain-
ing his original plans for the novel to his publisher and to the
editor of a magazine in which he hoped to serialize it:
The story occurs during four or five months in the year 1935.
It is told by Cecilia, the daughter of a producer named
Bradogue in Hollywood. Cecilia is a pretty, modem girl,
neither good nor bad, tremendously human. Her father is also
an important character. A shrewd man, a gentile, and a scoun-
drel of the lowest variety. A self-made man, he has brought
up Cecilia to be a princess, sent her East to college, made of
her rather a snob, though, in the course of the story, her charac-
ter evolves away from this. That is, she was twenty when the
events that she tells occurred, but she is twenty-five When she
tells about the events, and of course many of them appear to
her in a different light
Cecilia is the narrator because I think I know exactly how
such a person would react to my story. She is of the movies
but not in them. She probably was born the day The Birth of
a Nation was previewed and Rudolf Valentino came to her
fifth birthday party. So she is, all at once, intelligent, cynical,
but understanding and kindly toward the people, great or
small, who are of Hollywood.
She focuses our attention upon two principal characters-
Milton Stahr and Thalia, the girl he loves.
In the beginning of the book I want to pour out my whole
impression of this man Stahr as he is seen during an airplane
trip from New York to the coastof course, through Cecilia's
eyes. She has been hopelessly in love with him for a long time.
THE LAST TYCOON 163
She is never going to win anything more from him than an
affectionate regard, even that tainted by his dislike of her
father.
Stahr is overworked and deathly tired, ruling with a radi-
ance that is almost moribund in its phosphorescence. He has
been warned that his health is undermined, but, being afraid
of nothing, the warning is unheeded. He has had every-
thing in life except the privilege of giving himself unselfishly
to another human being. This he finds on the night of a
semi-serious earthquake (like in 1935) a few days after the
opening of the story.
It has been a very full day even for Stahr the burst water
mains, which cover the whole ground space of the lot to the
depth of several feet, seem to release something in him. Called
over to the outer lot to supervise the salvation of the electrical
plant (for he has a finger in every pie of the vast bakery), he
finds two women stranded on the roof of a property farmhouse
and goes to their rescue.
Thalia Taylor is a twenty-six-year-old widow, and my pres-
ent conception of her should make her the most glamorous
and sympathetic of my heroines. Glamorous in a new way,
because I am in secret agreement with the public in detesting
the type of feminine arrogance that has been pushed into
prominence in the case of , etc. People simply do not sym-
pathize deeply with those who have had all the breaks, and I
am going to dower this girl, like Rosalba in Thackeray's Rose
and the Ring, with "a little misfortune." She and the woman
with her (to whom she is serving as companion) have come
secretly on the lot through the other woman's curiosity. They
have been caught there when the catastrophe occurred.
Now we have a love affair between Stahr and Thalia, an
immediate, dynamic, unusual, physical love affair and I will
write it so that you can publish it. At the same time I will send
you a copy of how it will appear in book form somewhat
stronger in tone.
This love affair is the meat of the book-though I am going
164 THE LAST TYCOON
to treat it, remember, as it comes through to Cecilia. That is to
say by making Cecilia, at the moment of her telling the story,
an intelligent and observant woman, I shall grant myself the
privilege, as Conrad did, of letting her imagine the actions
of the characters. Thus, I hope to get the verisimilitude of a
first person narrative, combined with a Godlike knowledge of
all events that happen to my characters.
Two events beside the love affair bulk large in the inter-
mediary chapters. There is a definite plot on the part of
Bradogue, Cecilia's father, to get Stahr out of the company.
He has even actually and factually considered having him
murdered. Bradogue is the monopolist at his worst Stahr,
in spite of the inevitable conservatism of the self-made man,
is a paternalistic employer. Success came to him young, at
twenty-three, and left certain idealisms of his youth unscarred.
Moreover, he is a worker. Figuratively he takes off his coat and
pitches in, while Bradogue is not interested in the making of
pictures save as it will benefit his bank account.
The second incident is how young Cecilia herself, in her
desperate love for Stahr, throws herself at his head. In her re-
action at his indifference, she gives herself to a man whom
she does not love. This episode is not absolutely necessary to
the serial. It could be tempered, but it might be best to elimi-
nate it altogether.
Back to the main theme: Stahr cannot bring himself to
marry Thalia. It simply doesn't seem part of his life. He doesn't
realize that she has become necessary to him. Previously his
name has been associated with this or that well-known actress
or society personality, and Thalia is poor, unfortunate, and
tagged with a middle-class exterior which doesn't fit in with
the grandeur Stahr demands of life. When she realizes this
she leaves him temporarily, leaves him not because he has no
legal intentions toward her but because of the hurt of it, the
remainder of a vanity from which she had considered herself
free.
Stahr is now plunged directly into the fight to keep control
THE LAST TYCOON
of the company. His health breaks down very suddenly while
he is on a trip to New York to see the stockholders. He almost
dies in New York and comes back to find that Bradogue has
seized upon his absence to take steps which Stahr considers
unthinkable. He plunges back into work again to straighten
things out.
Now, realizing how much he needs Thalia, things are
patched up between them. For a day or two they are ideally
happy. They are going to marry, but he must make one more
trip East to clinch the victory which he has conciliated in the.
affairs of the company.
Now occurs the final episode which should give the novel
its quality and its unusualness. Do you remember about 1933
when a transport plane was wrecked on a mountain-side in the
Southwest, and a Senator was killed? The thing that struck me
about it was that the country people riled the bodies of the
dead. That is just what happens to this plane which is bearing
Stahr from Hollywood. The angle is that of three children
who, on a Sunday picnic, are the first to discover the wreck-
age. Among those killed in the accident besides Stahr are two
other characters we have met (I have not been able to go into
the minor characters in this short summary. ) Of the three chil-
dren, two boys and a girl, who find the bodies, one boy rifles
Stahr's possessions; another, the body of a ruined ex-producer;
and the girl, those of a moving picture actress. The possessions
which the children find, symbolically determine their attitude
toward their act of theft. The possessions of the moving pic-
ture actress tend the young girl to a selfish possessiveness;
those of the unsuccessful producer sway one of the boys to-
ward an irresolute attitude; while the boy who finds Stah/s
briefcase is the one who, after a week, saves and redeems all
three by going to a local judge and making full confession.
The story swings once more back to Hollywood for its finala
During the story Thalia has never once been inside a studio.
After Stahr's death as she stands in front of the great plant
which he created, she realizes now that she never will. She
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knows only that he loved her and that he was a great man
and that he died for what he believed in, . . .
There's nothing that worries me in the novel, nothing that
seems uncertain. Unlike Tender is the Night, it is not the
story of deterioration it is not depressing and not morbid in
spite of the tragic ending. If one book could ever be Tike"
another, I should say it is more Tike" The Great Gatsby than
any other of my books. But I hope it will be entirely different
I hope it will be something new, arouse new emotions, per-
haps even a new way of looking at certain phenomena. I have
set it safely in a period of five years ago to obtain detach-
ment, but now that Europe is tumbling about our ears this also
seems to be for the best It is an escape into a lavish, romantic
past that perhaps will not come again into our time.
CECILIA
The first of the following fragments was originally written to
stand as an introduction to the story; but Fitzgerald decided
to discard it because he was afraid it would make the opening
too depressing. The picture of Cecilia in the tuberculosis sani-
tarium was 9 however, to appear at the end of the book.
We two men were fascinated by that young face. A few
months ago, we had made a short trip to the canyons of the
Colorado as if for a last gape at Me; now back at the hospital
this girl's face in the sunset, and with the fever, seemed to
share some of the primordial rose tints of that "natural
wonder."
"Go on tell us," we said. "We don't know about such
things."
She started to cough, changed her mind as one can.
1 don't mind telling you. But why should our friends, the
asthmas, have to hear?"
They're going," we assured her.
We three waited, our heads leant back on our chairs, while a
THE LAST TYCOON l8g
nurse marshalled a flustered little group that must have heard
the remark and edged them toward the sanitarium. The
nurse cast a reproachful glance back at Cecilia as if she wanted
to return and slap her but the glance changed its mind and
the nurse hurried in after her flock.
"They're gone. Now tell us. 9 *
Cecilia stared up at the brilliant Arizona sky. She regarded
it the blue air, which to us had once stood for hope in the
morning not with regret but rather with the cocksure con-
fusion of those the depression caught in mid-adolescence.
Now she was twenty-five.
"Anything you want to know," she promised. "I don't owe
them any loyalty. Oh, they fly over and see me sometimes,
but what do I care I'm ruined."
"We're all ruined," I said mildly.
She sat up, the Aztec figures of her dress emerging from the
Navajo pattern of her blanket The dress was thin gone native
for the sun country and I remembered the round shining
knobs of another girl's shoulders at another time and place,
but here we must all stay in the shadow,
"You shouldn't talk like that," she assured me. Tm ruined,
but you're just two good guys who happened to get a bug.**
"You don't grant us any history," we objected with senescent
irony. "Nobody over forty is allowed a history."
"I didn't mean that. I mean you'll get well"
"In case we don't, tell us the story. You still hear this stuff
about him. What was he: Christ in Industry? I know boys who
worked on the Coast and hated his guts. Were you crazy about
him? Loosen up, Cecilia. Something for a jaded palate! Think
of the hospital dinner we'll face in half an hour."
Cecilia's glance suspected, then rejected our existence not
our right to live, but our right to any important feeling of loss
or passion or hope or high excitement. She started to talk,
waited for a tickle to subside in her throat
"He never looked at me," she said indignantly, "and I won't
talk about him when you're in this mood."
THE LAST TYCOON
She tihrew off the blanket and stood up, her center-parted
hair falling from her wan temples, ripples from a brown dam.
She was high-breasted and emaciated, still perfectly the young
woman of her time. Superiority was implicit in her heel taps
as she walked through the open door into the corridor of the
buildingour only road to wonderland. Apparently Cecilia be-
lieved in nothing at present, but it seemed she had once
known another road, passed by it a long time ago,
We were sure, nevertheless, that some time she would tell us
about it and so she did. What follows is our imperfect version
of her story.
This is Cecilia taking up the story. I should probably explain
why I spent so much of the summer hanging around the
studio. Well, for one thing, I was too big to keep out now and
I knew how to do it without bothering people. Secondly, I had
had a difference with Wylie White about who had the say
about my body, so there was a man named X whom I didn't
intend to marry who was playing the man who almost got the
girl in three pictures at once and had to be on the lot. And
thirdly, most important, I had nothing else to do. (Fourth,
with description of Hollywood boys. )
[CedUa and Kathleen]
She wore a little summer number from Saks, about $18.98,
and a pink and blue hat that had been stepped on on one side.
Her nails were pale pink, almost natural, and her hair you
couldn't be absolutely sure of. She was polite and rather over-
whelmed. X spent some time trying to convey who I was, but
kept bumping against the flat fact that Kathleen Moore had
never heard of my father.
Tve been looking for a job," she said.
"What kind of a job?"
Tve been going through the advertisements. What is a
swamiP*
THE LAST TYCOON 171
X explained it was very interesting.
"He was the most encouraging," Kathleen said. "But Im
afraid it wouldn't do-that filthy towel about his head."
Father used to have great scraps with the Jews over Jewish
and Irish tricks. The Jews claimed he always oversold his
points. Father thought he was just right. For instance, [his]
weeping trick.
STAHR
Stahr's day would begin often enough right in the studio.
Since his wife's death, he frequently slept there; his suite con-
tained a bath and dressing-room, and his divan made a bed.
With the immense distances of Los Angeles Countythree
hours a day in an automobile is not exceptional this was a
great saving of time.
Never wanted his name on pictures "I don't want my name
on the screen because credit is something that should be given
to others. If you are in a position to give credit to yourself,
then you do not need it."
I want to tell also of his great failing of surrounding himself
with men who were very far below him. However, this may
have been because of a sureness about his health, because he
felt in his 2o's that he himself was able to keep a direct eye on
everything, and, therefore, would have been hindered rather
than helped by men who were positive-minded supervisors.
His relation with directors, his importance in that he brought
interference with their work to a minimum, and while he
made enemies and this is important up to his arrival the di-
rector had been King Pin in pictures since Griffith made The
Birth of a Nation. Now, therefore, some of the directors re-
sented the fact that he reduced their position from one of
172 THE LAST TYCOON
complete king to being simply one element in a combine. His
Interest in the lot itself is important, his utter democracy, his
popularity with the rank and file of the studio.
However, this is not really thinking out Stahr from the be-
ginning. I must go back into his childhood and remember that
remark of his mother: "We always knew that Monroe would
be all right." . . . Remember also that he was a fighter even
though he was a small man certainly not more than *$'6W,
weighing very little (which is one reason he always liked to
see people sitting down), and remember when the man tried
to get fresh with his wife at Venice how he lost his temper
and got into a fight. . . . He must have been a scrapper from
early boyhood, probably a neighborhood scrapper. Remem-
ber also how popular he was with men from the beginning in
a free and easy way, that is to say, as a man that liked to sit
around with his feet up and smoke and "be one of the boys.**
He was essentially more of a man's man than a ladies* man.
There was never anything priggish or superior in his casual
conversation that makes men uneasy in the company of other
men. He used to run sometimes with a rather fast crowd of
directors many of them heavy drinkers, though he wasn't one
himself. And they accepted him as one of themselves in a "hale
fellow, well met 9 * spirit that is: in spite of the growing aus-
terity which overwork forced on him in later years, Stahr
never had any touch of the prig or the siss about him, and I
think this was real and not an overlay. To that extent he was
Napoleonic and actually liked combat which leads me back
to the supposition that probably he was a scrapper as a boy
and had always been that way. If, after he came into full
power, he sometimes resorted to subterfuge to have his way,
that was the result of his position rather than anything in his
nature. I think, by nature, he was very direct, frank, challeng-
ing. Try to analyze what his probable boyhood was from the
above.
This chapter must not develop into merely a piece of char-
acter analysis. Each statement that I make about him must
THE LAST TYCOON 173
contain at the end of every few hundred words some pointed
anecdote or story to keep it alive. I do not want it to have the
ring of an analysis. I want it to have as much drama through-
out as the story of old Laemmle himself on the telephone.
Stahr knew he had a working knowledge of technics, but
because he had been head man for so long and so many ap-
prentices had grown up during his sway, more knowledge was
attributed to him than he possessed. He accepted this as the
easiest way and was an adept though cautious bluffer. In the
dubbing-room, which was for sound what the cutting-room
was for sight, he worked by ear alone and was often lost amid
the chorus of ever newer terms and slang. So on the stops. He
watched the new processes of faking animated backgrounds,
moving pictures taken against the background of other moving
pictures, with a secret child's approval. He could have under-
stood easily enough often he preferred not to, to preserve a
sensual acceptance when he saw the scene unfold in the
rushes. There were smart young men about Reinmund was
one who phrased their remarks to convey the impression that
they understood everything about pictures. Not Stahr. When
he interfered, it was always from his own point of view, not
from theirs. Thus his function was different from that of Griffith
in the early days, who had been all things to every finished
frame of film.
It is doubtful if any of these head men read through a sin-
gle work of the imagination in a year. And Stahr, who had no
time whatever to read and must depend on synopses, began to
doubt that any of his supervisors read more than what was
ordered; he doubted that his casting people (note for a char-
acter here) covered the range he would have wanted them
to. A show played a year and a half in San Franciscothe
specialty in it was discovered only after it reached Los An-
geles, where young teats drew a tired sabled audience, and
the specialty was in a boom market within a week. And had
176 THE LAST TYCOON
She thought of electric fans In little restaurants with lob-
sters on ice in the windows, and of pearly signs glittering and
revolving against the obscure, urban sky, the hot, dark sky.
And pervading everything, a terribly strange, brooding mys-
tery of roof tops and empty apartments, of white dresses in
the paths of parks, and fingers for stars and faces instead of
moons, and people with strange people scarcely knowing one
another's names.
Bright unused beauty still plagued her in the mirror.
[Kathleen and her husband?]
He found her in the cabin, just standing, thinking. He was
afraid of her when she thought, knowing that in the part of
her most removed from him, there was taking place a tireless
ratiocination, the synthesis of which has always a calm sense
of the injustice and unsatisfactions of life. He knew the [?]
with which her mind worked, but he was always surprised
that it brought forth in the end protests that were purely
abstract, and in which he figured only as an element as driven
and succorless as herself, This made him more afraid than if
she said, *It was your fault," as she frequently didfor by it
she seemed to lift the situation and its interpretation out of
his grasp. In that region his mind was more feminine than
hershe felt ligjit, and off his balance and a little like the
Dickens character who accused his wife of praying against
him,
STAHR AND KATHLEEN
Object: I wanted a seduction very Californian, yet new-
very Hollywood, say. If he has no illusion, he has at least great
pity and excitement, friendliness, stimulus, f ascinatioiL
Where will the warmth come from in this? Why does he
think she's warm? Warmer than the voice in Farewell to Arms,
THE LAST TYCOON 177
My girls were all so warm and full of promise. What can I
do to make it honest and different?
The sea at night. Como. St-Pol (used in Tender). Why are
French romances cold and sad an fond? why was Wells
warm?
General Mood. Shaken by the flare-up, they go back, she
still thinking she can withdraw. She could not bear to think.
It was tonight. It is a murky, rainy dusk, a dreary day (change
former time to sunset). They left the hotel a little more than
three hours ago, but it seemed a long time. Get them there
quickly. Odd effect of the place like a set. The mood should
be two people free. He has an overwhelming urge toward
the girl, who promises to give life back to him though he has
no idea yet of marriage she is the heart of hope and fresh-
ness. He seduces her because she is slipping away she lets
herself be seduced because of overwhelming admiration (the
phone call). Once settled, it is sensual, breathless, immediate,
then gentle and tender for awhile.
She was very ready and it was right. It would have been
good any time, but for the first time it was much more than
he had hoped or expected. Not like very young people, but
wise and fond and chokingly sweet, as it had been with
Minna when sometimes they had gone for many days. He was
away for a hundred miles for a visit to himself, but he did not
let her see.
This girl had a life it was very seldom he met anyone whose
life did not depend in some way on him or hope to depend
on him.
ROBINSON
These passages about Robinson all relate to an earlier plan
for the story. The author had discarded his original idea of
178 THE LAST TYCOON
having Kathleen have a love affair with Robinson, but the
latter was perhaps still to figure as the agent selected by Brady
to put Stahr out of the way. Kathleen is here called Thalia.
I would like this episode to give a picture of the work of
a cutter, camera man or second unit director in the making
of such a thing as Winter Carnival, accenting the speed with
which Robinson works, his reactions, why he is what he is
instead of being the very high-salaried man which his technical
abilities entitle him to be, I might as well use some of the Dart-
mouth atmosphere, snow, etc., being careful not to impinge
at all on any material that Walter Wanger may be using in
Winter Carnival or that I may have ever suggested as material
to him.
I could begin the chapter through Cecilia's eyes, who is a
guest at the carnival, skip quickly to Robinson and have them
perhaps meet at a telegraph desk where she sees him sending
a wire to Thalia. Rut by this time and through the material
I choose photographing backgrounds for the snow picture
I should not only develop the character of Robinson as he
is, but leave a loophole showing the possibility of his being
later corrupted In a very short transition or montage, I bring
the whole party West on the Chief. Cecilia, perhaps with
friends of her own, coaxes the producer who has been in
charge (ineffectual producer) and Robinson.
The man chosen tentatively to put Stahr out of the way is
Robinson the cutter. Must develop Robinson character so that
this is possible that is, Robinson now has three aspects. His
top possibility as a sort of Sergeant character as planned.
His relation with the world, which is conventional and rather
stereotyped and trite; and this new element, in which it
would be possible for him to be so corrupted by circumstances
as to be drawn into such a matter and used by Bradogue. To
do this it is practically necessary that there must be from the
beginning some flaw in Robinson in spite of his courage, his
resourcefulness, his technical expertaess and tiie Sergeant
THE LAST TYCOON
-- virtues I intend to give him. Some secret flaw perhaps
something sexual. It might be possible, but if I do that, then
he could have had no relation with Thalia, who certainly
would not have accepted a bad lover. Perhaps he would have
some flaw, not sexual not unmanlyin any case have no
special idea at present, and this must be invented. In any case,
his having loved Thalia would make him a very natural tool
for Bradogue to use in playing on his natural jealousy of Stahr.
[Thalia] has been having an affair intermittently, of which
she is half ashamed, with the character whom I have called
Robinson, the cutter, who is in his (and this is very important)
professional life an extraordinarily interesting and subtle
character on the idea of Sergeant in the army or that
cutter at United Artists whom I so admired or any other person
of the type of trouble shooter or film technician and I want
to contrast this sharply with his utter conventionality and
acceptance of banalities in the face of what might be called
the cultural urban world. Women can twist him around their
little finger. He might be able to unravel the most twisted
skein of wires in a blinding snowstorm on top of a sixty-foot
telephone pole in the dark with no more tools than an imper-
fect pair of pliers made out of the nails of his boots, but faced
with the situation which the most ignorant and useless person
would handle with urbanity he would seem helpless and
gawky so much so as to give the impression of being a Bab-
bitt or of being a stupid, gawky, inept fellow.
This contrast at some point in the story is recognized by
Stahr, who must at all points, when possible, be pointed up
as a man who sees below the surface into reality.
Her attitude towards this man has been that even in the
niceties of love-making she has had to be his master, and his
deep gratitude to her is allied to his love for her, though
throughout the story he always feels that she is inevitably the
superior person. Stahr at some point points it out to her that
this is nonsense and I want to show here something different
l8o THE LAST TYCOON
in men's and women's points of view: particularly that women
are prone to cling to an advantage or rather have less human-
generosity in points of character than men have, or do I mean
a less wide point of view?
Stahr nodded and walked along at the head of his gang.
Robinson, who was almost beside him, but a little behind,
was a hard-jawed technician supposed to be the best cutter
in Hollywood. I didn't come in contact with that class, but I
know Robinson was such a good cutter that often he had been
asked to direct a picture. He had tried once, back in the silent
days, and it was a failure. Never, never would a man like
Jack Robinson want to steer a venture, if I know what Fm
talking about. From the time he was called from his job on
top of telephone posts in Michigan thunderstorms to the intri-
cate task of trying, as a sergeant, to establish tangible liaison
with the artillery in his infantry division. At that point when
he found that an uneducated trouble-shooter was worth a
dozen hit-or-miss shavetails, called "signal officers, 3 * he had
lost faith in his superiors and never afterward wanted to be
anything except a liaison between what was commanded
from above and what could be done below.
There was something warm about him that Stahr liked.
Often he would edge up to Stahr, sensing the truth or falsity
in some story but in practice his advice faded to, "Oh, what
the hell what do these s know? All right. Go on. Where
do we run these wires? Sure, it's a great idea.**
CRASH OF THE PLANE
Fitzgerald had sketched in some detail the episode of the
children finding the fatten plane, which is mentioned in the
letter to his publisher. He had at one point decided to discard
this, as he thought that the account of Stahr's funeral would
make a better epilogue; but a note evidently written at a later
time shows that he was rtiU considering it.
THE LAST TYCOON i8l
It is important that I begin this chapter with a delicate
transition, because I am not going to describe the fall of the
plane, but simply give a last picture of Stahr as the plane takes
off, and describe very briefly in the airport the people who
are on board. The plane, therefore, has left for New York, and
when the reader turns to Chapter X, I must be sure that he
isn't confused by the sudden change of scene and situation.
Here I can make the best transition by an opening paragraph
in which I tell the reader that Cecilia's story ends here and
that what is now told was a situation discovered by the writer
himself and pieced together from what he learned in a small
town in Oklahoma, from a municipal judge. That the inci-
dents occurred one month after the plane fell and plunged
Stahr and all its occupants into a white darkness. Tell how
the snow hid the wreck and that in spite of searching parties
the plane was considered lost, and then will resume the nar-
rativethat a curtain first went up during an early thaw the
following March. (I have to go over all the chapters and get
the time element to shape up so that Stahr's second trip to
New York, the one on which he is killed, takes place when
the first snow has fallen on the Rockies. I want this plane to
be like that plane that was lost for fully two months before
they found the plane and the survivors.) Consider carefully
whether if possible by some technical trick it might not be
advisable to conceal from the reader that the plane fell until
the moment when the children find it The problem is that
the reader must not turn to Chapter X and be confused, but,
on the other hand, the dramatic effect, even if the reader felt
lost for a few minutes, might be more effective if he did not
find at the beginning of the chapter that the plane fell. In
fact, almost certainly that is the way to handle it, and I must
find a method of handling it in that fashion. There must be
an intervening paragraph to begin Chapter X which will reas-
sure the reader that he is following the same story, but it can
be evasive and confine itself to leading the reader astray
thinking that the paragraph is merely to explain that Cecilia
THE LAST TYCOON
is not telling this next part of the story without telling the
reader that the plane ran into a mountain top and disappeared
from human knowledge for several months.
When I have given the reader some sense of the transition
and prepared him for a change in scene and situation, break
the narrative with a space or so and begin the following story.
That a group of children are starting off on a hike. That there
is an early spring thaw in this mountain state. Pick out of the
group of children, three whom we will call Jim, Frances, and
Dan. That atmosphere is that particular atmosphere of Okla-
homa when the long winter breaks. The atmosphere must be
an all-cold climate where the winter breaks very suddenly with
almost a violencethe snow seems to part as if very unwill-
ingly in great convulsive movements like the break-up of an
ice floe. There's a bright sun. The three children get separated
from the teacher or scoutmaster or whoever is in charge of the
expedition, and the girl, Frances, comes upon a part of the
engine and fly-wheel of a broken airplane. She has no idea
what it is. She is rather puzzled by it and at the moment is
engaged rather in a flirtation with both Jim and Dan. However,
she is an intelligent child of thirteen or fourteen and while
she doesn't identify it as part of an airplane, she knows it is
an odd piece of machinery to be found in the mountains. First
she thinks it is the remains of some particular mining machin-
ery. She calls Dan and then Jim, and they forget whatever
small juvenile intrigue they were embarking on in their dis-
covery of other debris from the fall of the plane. Their first
general instinct is to call the other members of the party,
because Jim, who is the smartest of the children (both the
boys* ages about fifteen), recognizes that it is a fallen plane
though he doesn't connect it with the plane that disappeared
the previous November when Frances comes upon a purse
and an open travelling case which belonged to the actress.
It contains the things that to her represent undreamt of lux-
uries. In it there's a jewel box. It has been unharmed it has
fallen through the branches of a tree. There are flasks of per-
THE LAST TYCOON 183
fume that would never appear in the town where she lives,
perhaps a negligee or anything I can think of that an actress
might be carrying which was absolutely the last word in film
elegance. She is utterly fascinated.
Simultaneously Jim has found Stahr's briefcase a briefcase
is what he has always wanted, and Stahr's briefcase is an excel-
lent piece of leather and some other travelling appurtenances
of Stahr's. Things that are notably possessions of wealthy men.
I have no special ideas at present, but think what a very
wealthy, well-equipped man might be liable to have with him
on such an expedition and then Dan makes the suggestion of
**Why do we have to tell about this? We can all come up here
later, and there is probably a lot more of this stuff here, and
there's probably money and everythingthese people are
dead, they will nev&r need it againthen we can say about the
plane or let other people find it. Nobody will know we have
been up here."
Dan bears, in some form of speech, a faint resemblance to
Bradogue. This must be subtly done and not look too much
like a parable or moral lesson, still the impression must be
conveyed, but be careful to convey it once and not rub it in.
If the reader misses it, let it go don't repeat Show Frances
as malleable and amoral in the situation, but show a definite
doubt on Jim's part, even from the first, as to whether this
is fair dealing even towards the dead. Close this episode with
the children rejoining the party.
Several weeks later the children have now made several
trips to the mountain and have rifled the place of everything
that is of any value. Dan is especially proud of his find, which
includes some rather disreputable possessions of Ronciman.
Frances is worried and definitely afraid and tending to side
with Jim, who is now in an absolutely wretched mood about
the whole affair. He knows that searching parties have been
on a neighboring mountain that the plane has been traced
and that with the fuE flowering of spring the secret will come
out and that each trip up he f eels that the danger is more and
184 THE LAST TYCOON
more. However, let that be Frances' feeling, because Jim has,
by this time, read the contents of Stahr's briefcase and late
at night, taking it from the woodshed where he has concealed
it, has gotten an admiration for the man. Naturally, by the
time of this episode all three children are aware of what
plane it was and who was in it and whose possessions they
have.
One day also they have found the bodies, though I do not
want to go into this scene in any gruesome manner, of the six
or seven victims still half concealed by the snow. In any case,
something in one of Stahr's letters that Jim reads late at night
decides him to go to Judge and tell the whole story,
which he does against the threats of Dan, who is bigger than he
is and could lick him physically. We leave the children there
with the idea that they are in good hands, that they are not
going to be punished, that they have made full restoration,
and the fact that, after all, they could plead in court that they
did not know anything more about the situation than "finders
keepers." There will be no punishment of any kind for any of
the three children. Give the impression that Jim is all right-
that Frances is faintly corrupted and may possibly go off in a
year or so in search of adventure and may turn into anything
from a gold digger to a prostitute, and that Dan has been com-
pletely corrupted and will spend the rest of his life looking
for a chance to get something for nothing.
I cannot be too careful not to rub this in or give it the sub-
stance or feeling of a moral tale. I should [show] very point-
edly that Jim is all right and end perhaps with Frances and
let the readers hope that Frances is going to be all right and
then take that hope away by showing the last glimpse of
Frances with that lingering conviction that luxury is over the
next valley, therefore giving a bitter and acrid finish to the
incident to take away any possible sentimental and moral stuff
that may have crept into it. Certainly end the incident with
Frances.
THE LAST TYCOON l8$
Effect on children idea persists. Plane might fall in suburb
of Los Angeles. He thinks it was bills,, but it's right there
a desolation he helped to create.
HOLLYWOOD, ETC.
It is impossible to tell you anything of Stahr's day except
at the risk of being dull. People in the East pretend to be inter-
ested in how pictures are made, but if you actually tell them
anything, you find they are only Interested in Colbert's clothes
or Gable's private life. They never see the ventriloquist for
the doll. Even the intellectuals, who ought to know better,
like to hear about the pretensions, extravagances and vulgar-
itiestell them pictures have a private grammar, like politics
or automobile production or society, and watch the blank look
come into their faces.
I could try, for instance, to make you understand what Stahr
meant by his peculiar use of the word "nice," something like
what Saint-Simon meant by la politesse, and you would classify
what I had said as a lecture on taste.
The Warner Brothers narrative writing and the Metro dra-
matic, packed cut back and forth writing from Stahr.
[Stahr and "Prince Agge]
"Come on; we'll go get some lunch." Casually he added:
TBroaca is the best man in Hollywood except Lubitsch and
Vidor. But he's getting old and it makes him cross. He doesn't
see that a director isn't everything in pictures now. That comes
from the days when they shot off the cuff.*
The cuff?"
They started out the door. Stahr laughed.
**The director was supposed to have the plot on his cufE
There wasn't any script Writers were all called gag-men
usually reporters and aU souses. They stood behind the di-
l86 THE LAST TYCOON
rector and made suggestions, and if he liked it and it fitted
with what was on his cuff, he staged it and took his footage."
The situation on the big lot was that every producer, di-
rector and scenarist there could adduce proof that he was a
money-maker. With the initial distrust of the industry by busi-
ness, with the weeding out of better men from the needs of
speed, with the emphasis as in a mining camp on the lower
virtues; then with the growing complication of technique and
the elusiveness it created it could fairly be said of all and by
all of those who remained that they had made money despite
the fact that not a third of the producers or one-twentieth of
the writers could have earned their living in the East There
was not one of these men, no matter how low-grade or incom-
petent a fellow, who could not claim to have participated
largely in success. This made difficulty in dealing with them.
Remember my summing-up in Crazy Sunday don't give the
impression that these are bad people.
Actress introduced so slowly, so close, so real that you
believe in her. Somehow she's first sitting next to you, not an
actress but with all the qualifications, loud and dissonant in
your ear. Then she is one, but don't let it drift away in detailed
description of her career. Keep her close. Never just use her
name. Always begin with a mannerism.
The Beard. Monty Woolley's beard. 50 peddle the muff.
Family supported by beard. It hasn't worked for seven weeks.
It was wonderful in Hurricane. It got a poor deal Wednesday.
For a gag going to cut it off work I lose. How much prestige,
amour propre. Damage to ego. $30,000. Fake beard cut off.
Tillie Losch worried about what "exotic" meant
THE LAST TYCOON l8/
He was so new as a scenarist that when the agent came in,
he thought he wanted him to write something for the paper,
[This refers to the habit of the Hollywood trade papers of
shaking down newcomers for ads under threat of giving them
bad publicity or none.]
Man [from Hollywood trade paper] advising me not to read
the book
Character of X, poor producer.
saying afterwards that he died with silent pictures.
We need a new formula.
The cleverly expressed opposite of any generally accepted
idea is worth a fortune to somebody.
Joke about "Shoot it both ways."
"We could tap out something," she said as a colored maid
says, "I'll rinse out your stockings," to minimize the work.
Great masses of wires on floor can hear everyone through
dictophone.
Her ash-blond hair seemed weather-proof save for a tiny cur-
tain of a bang that was evidently permitted, even expected,
to stir a little in a mild wind. She had an unmistakable aura
about her person of being carefully planned. Under minute
scallops that were scarcely brows, her eyes, etc. Her teeth
were so white against the tan, her lips so red, that in combina-
tion with the blue of her eyes, the effect was momentarily
startling as startling as if the lips had been green and the
pupils white.
She feared the black cone hanging from the metal arm,
l88 THE LAST TYCOON
shrilling and shrilling across the sunny room. It stopped for a
minute, replaced by her heartbeats; then began again.
Hollywood child. The little hard face of a successful street-
walker on a jumping-jack's body, the clear cultured whine of
the voice*
Most of us could be photographed from the day of our birth
to the day of our death and the film shown, without producing
any emotion except boredom and disgust. It would all just
look like monkeys scratching. How do you feel about your
friends' home movies about their baby or their trip? Isn't it a
godawful bore?
A football team on a blazing hot July day. Two hot teams
mousing around at $500 a day. Actors, extras and a camera
crew. High in the empty stadium, Stahr and his girl.
There was, for example, a man who in all seriousness asked
him this favor: Stahr was to say, "Hello, Tim," and slap him
on the back in front of the commissary one morning. Stahr
had the man's record traced, and then slapped him on the
back. The man ascended into Heaven.
Almost literally, for he was taken into one of the best agen-
cieswhich is what George Gershwin referred to when he
said, "It's nice work if you can get it" He sits there today, with
a picture of his wife and children on the wall, and has his
nails manicured at the Beverly Hills Hotel. His life is one long
happy dream.
Stahr remembered how they had used the three freaks
back in 1927. X was being bothered by a really appalling
woman. The day before the case came to trial, he sent a
THE LAST TYCOON" l80
dwarf and [two other freaks] to her with messages. His
counsel opened by stating that the woman was crazy. On the
stand she told about her visitors the jury shook their heads,
winked at each other and acquitted.
Cecilia's uncle is an idiot like *s brother.
"the rugged individualism of Tommy Manville, Barbara
Hutton and Woolie Donahue." Never forgiven Wylie for slip-
ping it into his speech when he was supporting Landon.
There is a place for a hint somewhere of a big agent, to
complete the picture.
A tall round-shouldered young man with a beaked nose and
soft brown eyes in a sensitive face.
The awful reverberating thunder of his absence.
[Airplane Trip]
My blue dream of being in a basket like a kite held by a
rope against the wind.
It's fun to stretch and see the blue heavens spreading once
more, spreading azure thighs for adventure.
Girl like a record with a blank on the other side.
There are no second acts in American lives.
Tragedy of these men was that nothing in their lives had
really bitten deep at all.
Bald Hemingway characters.
wily plagiarist
H 23
1QO THE LAST TYCOON
exigent overlordship
not one survived the castration
Don't wake the Tarkington ghosts.
ACTION IS CHARACTER.
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