Youngblood hawke, p.96
Youngblood Hawke, page 96
"Well, fella, listen." Hoag slipped his arm into Hawke's elbow, an old mannerism of his when talking about money. "Art, you got no case. I swear to God you haven't. Ask Gus Adam on the level if you have! Urban Webber is dead against settling for one red cent but old Glenn there is getting a little nervous and that's what's working for us. Me, I'm delighted that there's this excuse to get some dough out of the company's treasury for you, boy. Why, the miserable sumbitches, they've shut off the water on me too. That's the only reason I can't handle Newt's mortgage, Art. I need capital right now but bad, and their treasury's loaded, and I can't get a quarter from them, not even at fifteen percent I can't. And me a member of the board! I'm goddamn sore and by the Christ nothing would please me more than to hand you fifty grand of theirs on a silver platter, Art. I swear I think Glenn would go for fifty right this minute. Maybe not tomorrow, but right this minute I swear I think I could swing it."
"Nothing doing, Scott. Sorry." He attempted to free his arm.
But Hoag only hugged him closer. "Art, this is the psychological moment, so help me God. Glenn is nervous enough today to do it, you can have a check this afternoon. Tomorrow may be too late. Fifty thousand, Art." He brought his face close to Hawke's. "I don't think there'll be a cent of tax to pay the way we can work it out."
Scotty's breath was foul. His clinging touch disgusted Hawke. "Forget it, Scott," he said, and shook his arm to free himself. But in his revulsion, he shook Hoag off much too hard. Scotty staggered away from him, tripped on the top step, tried to regain his balance, and began a toppling, staggering fall down the flight of stone stairs in the sunshine, crying, "Hey! Hey!" His flailing gestures reminded Hawke in a flash of the dirty drunkard who had pounded on Jeanne's door bawling for a whore, and whom he had thrown down the staircase. Scotty managed to stay on his feet, with wilder downward staggers, until he was halfway to the bottom of the steps, then he fell and tumbled and rolled until he landed on the lawn in a sprawled, dazed sitting posture.
The whittlers stopped whittling and talking. They stared. Hawke came down the steps, his heavy shoes thumping loud. Scott sat where he was, looking up at the huge approaching bewhiskered man, apparently not sure whether he might not be in for a beating. He was smiling, in a strange way that showed his upper gums.
Hawke stopped and looked down at him for a moment, at the grinning bald man in the green sport jacket sprawled on the grass. "It was an accident, Scott. I'm sorry," he said. The look of sudden relief on the man's face was comical. Hawke walked off to join his mother and the lawyer.
"What was all that?" Adam said.
"Scotty wanted to talk about a settlement."
The lawyer said drily, "I gather you declined."
Scotty had picked himself up and was dusting himself off, while the other Hawke Brothers officers came down the stairs and clustered around him.
Mrs. Hawke said, "How much did he offer you?"
"Fifty thousand dollars," Hawke said. "Tax free."
Adam pulled down his mouth and widened his eyes, showing that he was impressed.
"Umph!" said Mrs. Hawke, tossing her head. "Chicken feed."
Part Seven
1953
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
1
THERE was a telegram from Ferdie Lax at Mrs. Hawke's house:
HAVE VERY EXCITING PROPOSITION INVOLVING JABLOCK FEYDAL JOCK MAAS. ARRIVING LEXINGTON SIX-THIRTY PLANE TONIGHT. MUST ATTEND IMPORTANT MEETING TOMORROW NEW YORK NINE AM. PLEASE MEET ME CAMPBELL HOUSE LEXINGTON SO I CAN GO BACK ELEVEN PM PLANE. REGARDS LAX.
Hawke showed the telegram to Adam. "Well!" the lawyer said. "That's my plane at eleven o'clock. Maybe I can get to know Mr. Lax a little better."
Ferdie Lax had hired a suite in the Lexington hotel, just for their meeting, and had ordered up a dinner for two, which he immediately changed to a dinner for three when Hawke appeared with his lawyer, around six in the evening. He made the expected jokes about Hawke's beard. The little agent looked sleek, fat, and extremely married; the first thing he did was to show Hawke and Adam a dozen colored photographs of his firstborn son, who seemed to be carrying on the parrot strain in full purity. The wife appeared in some of the pictures. For the life of him, Hawke thought, he could not have picked her out of a line of the tall brunettes Lax had squired down the years; love was a wonderful thing.
When Ferdie broached the subject of his visit, over the shrimp cocktails, Hawke at first could not believe what he was hearing. According to the agent, there was a sudden wild wave of excitement in Broadway and Hollywood over a forgotten early scrawl of his, a farce called The Lady from Letchworth. This was one of the seven plays he had written at sea during the war, a crazy antic in which he had imagined his mother striking it rich in her coal gamblings and attempting to enter New York society. It had been a cold-blooded exercise, a deliberate imitation of The Bourgeois Gentleman, and it had convinced him that the writing of farce was not one of his gifts. Shortly after the Alms for Oblivion novel had turned into a success Lax had read over all Hawke's early writings, and had had a burst of enthusiasm for The Lady from Letchworth, which had evaporated when two Broadway producers had turned the play down. Since then the single existing copy had been moldering in Lax's files.
Lax now said that upon receiving Hawke's call a week ago he had tried hard to find him a screenplay job. Hawke's name was as revered in Hollywood as ever—it was amazing how the flop of Evelyn Biggers had failed to tarnish it—but high-paying jobs for original screenplays were becoming non-existent. The present big-money stampede in Hollywood was for books and plays. Lax had bethought himself of The Lady from Letchworth, because of an event that was the talk of Hollywood and Broadway.
The partnership of Georges Feydal and Pierce Carmian, after several successful productions, had just blown up with a world-shaking blast, in the course of preparing for a new show starring Irene Perry. Feydal was now suing Carmian; Carmian was suing Feydal; they were both being sued by a theatre booking agency; they had come to blows and rolled on the floor in the bar of Number One, and Feydal, having the better of the weights, had rolled on Carmian's arm and broken it in two places. This splendid quarrel had greatly brightened a dismal spring in the New York theatre world.
Carmian owned the rights to the play they were producing. Irene Perry sided with Feydal in the dispute, but she wanted above all to do another national tour like her successful one with Alms for Oblivion, and Feydal's sole chance of getting her away from Carmian—which he had publicly vowed to do—lay in finding another play for her in a hurry. Lax had pulled The Lady from Letchworth out of the files and had kept three stenographers up one entire night typing copies. Feydal had now read the play and was delirious over it. Irene Perry loved it and was especially pleased that the play was by Youngblood Hawke. Travis Jablock had read it. Once it opened out of town he would make a pre-production movie deal, with a seventy-five-thousand-dollar down payment. Feydal had taken on Jock Maas as a managing partner to replace Carmian, since Maas happened to be free; and they were even willing to hand over to Hawke their producer's share of the down payment and recoup it later, so sure were they that the play would be a smash hit!
But the greatest haste was imperative. Irene Perry wanted to open not later than the first week of July in Philadelphia, where a summer subscription festival of the performing arts was being planned. Irene Perry's new show led the list of possible main attractions. The subscriptions meant three guaranteed weeks of full houses in a huge auditorium.
This tumble of news dizzied Hawke. He had been quite out of the world for the better part of a year. He had missed the story in the New York Times, if there had been one, of the break-up of Feydal and Carmian. Had anybody but Ferdie Lax been telling him these things he would have been extremely suspicious. But Lax, of all the strange people Hawke had encountered in his Sinbad career through the American publishing and entertainment fields, had proven to be perhaps the most reliable, under his fantastic surface. He had never lied to Hawke. He had gotten him great amounts of money. He had made one or two bad deals, but his performance in sum had been excellent. Hawke saw that Gus Adam listened to Lax with respectful attention.
The fatigued harried author tried to keep down the gladness surging in him as Lax talked. Why, if this were true—if there were nothing more to it than this—he was home at last. There wasn't even any work to do, the play was all written! The grim deadline of the second mortgage installment could be met without bonding himself to Hollywood. After that the completion of Boone County would take off the pressure and probably solve all his problems. To be rescued like this, almost in the last extremity, by one of his early forgotten playscripts! It was like finding seventy-five thousand dollars in the pockets of an old suit.
He said abruptly to Adam, "Gus, what do you think of all this?" They had finished the dinner during Lax's long harangue, and were sitting in armchairs drinking coffee.
Adam said, "Well! This is quite a business you're in. If one can call it a business. It makes my head spin sometimes. What about this old play of yours? Do you think it has possibilities?"
"Christ, Gus, I don't know. It was funny enough as I remember it, but good lord, I was just learning how to write, and I knew nothing of New York. The thing's a wild vaudeville."
"I tell you it's sidesplitting," Lax said, "and if you remember, I've always thought so. The important thing is, Irene thinks so. And Travis."
Adam got up and paced the room. "Let's remember, Arthur, that the inducement here, the goal, is that seventy-five thousand dollars from the movies. You'd do it because you need that money right now. Anything the play itself earned would be a windfall."
"That's right."
"You'd get into rehearsals and rewriting. That would interfere with the finishing of your book. It's not like Alms for Oblivion, where Feydal had a huge novel to draw new scenes from . . ." Adam screwed his face up. "It's risky and nebulous. I wish we could sound out this movie man and see how strong his interest actually is."
"Travis Jablock? Nothing easier," Lax said, going to the telephone. He put the call in to Hollywood, and got Jablock almost at once. "Trav? Ferdie," he said. "I'm in Lexington, Kentucky, Trav. I'm sitting here with one of the world's great authors, our mutual friend Youngblood Hawke. He's grown a beard a foot long. Doing the Shaw bit. Now he wants to talk to you about The Lady from Letchworth. Trav, Hawke's lawyer is here, a very able gentleman from New York named Gus Adam, and I'm putting him on our extension, okay?"
He handed the telephone to Hawke and motioned Adam to the bedroom extension. Jablock exchanged pleasantries with Hawke in his curt piping voice, calling him "Youngblood" as most Hollywood people did. He said he was dying to read Hawke's new novel the moment he finished it. The word all over Hollywood was that it was a vast masterpiece.
Hawke said, "Travis, you've read this old farce of mine, The Lady from Letchworth?"
"Sure, very funny and charming little script. Not at all what people expect from Youngblood Hawke, but that's an exciting switch."
"You're interested in it for a picture?"
"Definitely, once you get the production on. With Georges Feydal, Irene Perry, and the Youngblood Hawke name, I don't think you can miss."
The lawyer said, "Adam speaking. You understand that Arthur is preoccupied with completing this new novel. A play production would seriously break into his schedule."
"Well, Youngblood's always been a bear for work. I'm sure he'll breeze through rehearsals and keep writing his book too."
"I don't think he should take it on unless he has a tangible inducement," Adam said. "Ferdie Lax spoke of a first payment of seventy-five thousand against an escalator arrangement tied to the run of the play."
"Yes, that's what we've talked about."
"If you'll pay the seventy-five thousand dollars at this point I'll advise Arthur to go ahead. Otherwise I'll be against it."
"No can do, Mr. Adam," Jablock said gaily. "I'd like nothing better, but I have the bank to answer to. All the banks who do movie financing these days are insisting on what they call guaranteed acceptance. They'll go for it as soon as we have the first out-of-town notices in hand, especially with Youngblood's name, but until then I can't move. Sorry."
Hawke said, "You do think the play'll work, Travis?"
"Why shouldn't it? Terribly funny little script. I fell out of bed laughing. You're a versatile bastard, Youngblood."
Adam tried to argue further with Jablock. The movie producer said over and over that he liked the play, and would buy it now on his own responsibility for say, thirty thousand dollars; but that an old unproduced farce—even by an author as eminent as Hawke—simply could not command the kind of deal Lax was asking for. Once any kind of public acceptance was proved, the whole picture would change.
"You know what it is?" Hawke said to Lax, as he hung up, "I can't bring myself to believe that that play is really worth anything. Why, I haven't even read it in six or seven years. I don't remember the names of the characters."
The little agent said, "Well, maybe the next thing is for you to talk to Feydal. You trust his judgment, don't you?"
"As much as anybody's."
Lax glanced at his watch. "The hours Georges keeps, he may be just getting up. He's in New York. Let's try him."
Feydal's rich, magnificent voice was shaking with laughter, as though he were in the middle of reading the play, when Lax handed Hawke the telephone. "My dear fellow, it's wonderful. Is there anything you can't do? It's supremely funny and deeply touching, and it says something. You can't help saying something in all your work, even in the light things, the soties, can you?"
"Georges, I wrote the bloody thing when I was a kid in the Seabees."
"Dear Hawke, I know that, and it's by no means Oedipus Rex, though I wouldn't be surprised if you come up with that next, but it's unspeakably funny, and it will work. Irene is insane about it. You will let me have this wildly funny little play, won't you? I want it. Now I'm sitting up to my chin in a hot bath, talking to you, and I have a horrid fear I'm going to electrocute myself and I'll never get to do that play."
"I'll call you tomorrow, Georges, or Ferdie Lax will."
"Lovely."
Hawke said wonderingly to the agent, "I'll be goddamned. I think you've pulled the rabbit out of the hat, Ferdie, so help me."
"You're the man behind the curtain who slipped the rabbit into the hat," the agent said. "I just remembered it was there."
"I'm going to think about this overnight," Hawke said. "But there's something you've got to do for me right away."
2
The next day around noon a messenger boy arrived at a little house outside Los Angeles bearing a thick large envelope from the Ferdinand Lax Agency, marked with the quill pen and antique ink pot which was Ferdie's heraldic device for an agency that traded in writers and their works.
Jeanne Fry was sitting in a yard in a lounge chair watching Jim play with her mother's cat under an orange tree. She wore a brief yellow sun suit, and the warm up-and-down glance of the pimpled messenger endorsed her own notion that she was looking good again. She drew the script out of the envelope.
THE LADY FROM LETCHWORTH
A Farce Comedy by
Youngblood Hawke.
Until last night she had been unaware of the existence of this play. Hawke had once mentioned to her the seven plays he had written during the war, calling them worthless exercises which had served merely to prove to him that he had better try fiction instead. She opened the play to the first page, after a glance at Jim. He lay on his stomach, in the shade, making grabs at the cat's tail. The cat, a fat tabby, was pretending Jim was a kitten, and teasing him with swift flips of the tail out of his reach.
Her mother found her in a fit of laughter when she came to offer her lunch. Jeanne declined to eat, and asked her mother to feed Jim and put him to bed for a nap. Dropping the script on the grass about an hour later, Jeanne sat in the sun, smoking and pondering. Then she went inside and telephoned Hawke in Hovey. He had told her he would wait for her call in his mother's house.
He sounded less strained than he had the night before. His voice in that conversation had alarmed her with its weary sags and strident bursts of words.
"Arthur, it certainly is funny," she said. "I've been laughing like a fool. Mrs. Caudill was sort of an early sketch of Aunt Bertha, wasn't she?"
"I guess so, though I didn't know it then. What do you think, Jeanne?"
"Well, Broadway has always baffled me, dear. The plot and the characters are quite shallow, you must know that."
"Of course I do. I'm wondering how much that matters."
Jeanne said, "The play is a curiosity, really. The value of it is in the light it sheds on your books, the faint traces of your later ideas. Even if you can't produce it I think we ought to publish it some day, maybe a volume of those early pieces."
"That's another question. The immediate question is, Jeanne, do you think I should go ahead with Maas and Feydal?"
"What does Gus say?"
"Well, like both of us, Gus finds the theatre a puzzling place. He hasn't read the play but he says it wouldn't help if he did."
"Arthur, this play can't increase your reputation. You have to face that fact. But who knows? It's hilarious. Maybe it's just the thing for Broadway."
Hawke said, "I have to come to a decision today."
"Wow! They're not giving you much time."
"No. This thing's blown up like a cyclone. It'll blow away just that fast if I don't decide to ride it. Irene Perry's got to jump one way or the other by tomorrow. She's ready to do my play."
Jeanne took a resolve and spoke. "Well, for what my opinion's worth, you shouldn't do it. Not unless you're in the direst financial straits. It's bound to be a distraction. If you think it's the only way out there's no choice, really. I do think it could make money. On your finances, Gus is the one to talk to."
