he: A Novel Page 9

  Mae takes the money, and Mae vanishes.

  For a time.

  49

  At the Oceana Apartments, he experiences a familiar sting of guilt at the memory of Mae, at how easily he cast her aside. The pattern has commenced: the cheating, and the desire for the other, but also the mirroring.

  He and Babe; Mae and Madelyn.

  Like Babe, he first takes an older woman to his bed.

  Like Babe, he cuts her loose for a younger one.

  Like Babe, he believes that money will ensure her disappearance.

  Like Babe, he is wrong.

  50

  So Mae is gone, but Joe Rock is still present. Hal Roach may be tight as a stretched drum, but Hal Roach is straight. Joe Rock is swindling his distributors by budgeting for a month’s filming, shooting in just over a week, and pocketing the difference. Joe Rock has to be screwed into his office chair.

  But the pictures he makes with Joe Rock are getting better –

  Navy Blue Days

  The Sleuth

  Dr Pyckle and Mr Pryde

  Half A Man

  – even as he counts down the shooting days to freedom. He is still recycling old gags, but he is also creating new ones. He is evolving.

  And Hal Roach is monitoring his progress. He will not have to go crawling to Hal Roach once he has tired of Joe Rock.

  Because Hal Roach will want him back.

  51

  He remains aware of Babe Hardy, but only as a figure in the distance, a brief acquaintance now sundered.

  Just as he is aware of Larry Semon.

  Just as he is aware of Buster Keaton.

  Just as he is aware of Harold Lloyd.

  Just as he is aware of Chaplin.

  Babe is a pro. Everybody says so.

  Babe remains faithful to Myrtle, and faithful to Larry Semon. Babe is a practical man, and neither Myrtle nor Larry Semon place undue demands upon him. But Babe also likes Larry Semon, and Larry Semon likes Babe, although possibly not for the same reasons. Babe is no threat to Larry Semon, and has no wish to be, which helps to fan the flames of Larry Semon’s fondness for him. In turn, Larry Semon gives Babe regular work, with plenty of time for Babe to improve his swing on the golf course.

  But Larry Semon is trapped in a death spiral, and this is slowly becoming apparent to Babe. Larry Semon is a good gagman, and knows slapstick. But Larry Semon is tiring of shorts and wants to move into features. Larry Semon sees what Chaplin is creating, and what Harold Lloyd is creating, and wishes to create pictures in their likeness. Larry Semon desires not only to be a star, but also to be recognized as an artist.

  Larry Semon envies Harold Lloyd.

  Larry Semon envies Chaplin.

  The two-reel pictures are over, Larry Semon tells Babe. People want more. Look at Lloyd. Look at Chaplin.

  And Babe nods his understanding. Babe will support Larry Semon in his efforts to emulate his peers, but privately, alone on the golf course, this is what Babe believes:

  Larry Semon already takes too long to make a two-reel picture. Vitagraph has cut its ties with him. Even the arrangement by which Larry Semon is allowed to make shorts on Vitagraph’s lot as long as Larry Semon covers his own expenses has become uneconomical.

  Larry Semon is struggling.

  Then the Truart Film Corporation signs Larry Semon for a six-feature deal worth more than $3 million over three years. Babe and Larry Semon celebrate with a round of golf, and dinner after. Larry Semon travels to New York to sign his name to the contract with a gold pen filled with gold ink, all while wearing a gold suit. Parties are given in Larry Semon’s honor, and Larry Semon is placed in the back of an automobile and driven through Times Square.

  But Babe worries. Larry Semon cannot deliver six features in three years. Larry Semon cannot deliver six features in six years. Larry Semon may not be able to deliver six features in the rest of his lifetime, not even if Larry Semon lives to be a hundred.

  The Truart deal, signed with a gold pen in gold ink by a man wearing a gold suit, comes to nothing because Larry Semon has reckoned without Vitagraph. Vitagraph may be weary of its former star, but if Truart is willing to pay Larry Semon $3 million, then maybe Vitagraph should look again at its paperwork. Vitagraph does, and finds that Larry Semon owes the studio more pictures. Truart tears up the contract. Larry Semon is in trouble, and if Larry Semon is in trouble, so, too, is Babe.

  But Chadwick Pictures Corporation, headed by I.E. Chadwick, believes in Larry Semon. It believes in Larry Semon almost as much as Larry Semon does.

  Larry Semon plows his time and his efforts – along with much of his own money, and I.E. Chadwick’s money also – into The Wizard of Oz.

  Directed by Larry Semon.

  Produced by Larry Semon.

  Written by Larry Semon.

  Starring Larry Semon.

  Larry Semon even marries his co-star, Dorothy Dwan.

  And Babe is by his side throughout, because Babe is loyal. Babe watches the chaos and beauty unfold together, and sees Larry Semon’s reach exceed his grasp. The deadline for a Christmas release is missed.

  Because Larry Semon believes in the myth of Larry Semon. Larry Semon believes in his ability to be like Harold Lloyd, to be like Buster Keaton.

  To be like Chaplin.

  But while Harold Lloyd may take extreme pains to put his pictures together, driving crews crazy in the process, and testing the patience of Hal Roach, Harold Lloyd can still produce six features in a year.

  Buster Keaton can produce four.

  And Chaplin is Chaplin.

  Chaplin – the master – is making a picture called The Gold Rush, but has been plagued by misfortune and his own ambition. Thousands of feet of film shot on location at Truckee have been discarded as unusable, and Chaplin is now in the process of recreating the Klondike on a studio lot.

  Chaplin is also said to be having trouble in his private life. (But when is Chaplin not, for Chaplin tries to fuck any young woman who makes the error of standing still for too long.) Chaplin has been fucking an actress named Lita Grey. Lita Grey is fifteen years old. Chaplin first meets Lita Grey when she is eight, and gives her a part in The Kid when she is just twelve.

  Chaplin should be in jail.

  But Chaplin is Chaplin.

  Larry Semon does not care who Chaplin is fucking. Larry Semon just wants to make pictures like Chaplin’s, like Harold Lloyd’s, like Buster Keaton’s. But these men have a vision, and Larry Semon does not. All Larry Semon can do is extend his slapstick gags over a longer screen time, and that simply will not suffice.

  The Wizard of Oz dies a death. The Chadwick Pictures Corporation goes bankrupt. Even Vitagraph, now without a star, collapses.

  Larry Semon, who, in 1915, earns thirty-five dollars a week as a cartoonist; who, a decade later, buys a gold suit in which to sign a contract worth a million dollars a year; who teaches Babe Hardy to play golf; who is generous to his co-stars as long as they acknowledge their position in the hierarchy; whose greatest fault is a craving to be better than his talent allows; is broke within two years, and dead within three. Larry Semon, who sees his father die poor, and stinking of fish guts, in turn dies poor in a sanatorium, weakened by pneumonia and tuberculosis, his mind broken.

  And Babe Hardy, now without a mentor, finds a new home.

  With Hal Roach.

  52

  He watches The Wizard of Oz and feels sorry for Larry Semon, and sorry for Babe. He commiserates with Babe when they meet on the lot. Babe is working with Charley Parrott, Jimmy Parrott’s brother, the one who does not have epilepsy, does not drink to excess, and is not addicted to diet pills.

  Babe shrugs.

  – What can you do?

  He sees The Gold Rush, and feels sorry for himself. This, he thinks, is greatness. He wishes he could tell Chaplin in person, but Chaplin now orbits in a higher realm.

  Artistically, at least.

  Chaplin’s recent marriage to Lita Grey is already collapsing, and it is sa
id that Chaplin is now fucking Georgia Hale, who replaced Lita Grey as the lead in The Gold Rush when Lita Grey’s pregnancy could no longer be disguised. Chaplin is fucking Georgia Hale while Charlie, Jr, his second child – his third, if one counts the boy, Norman, who lives for only three days – is still wet from Lita Grey’s womb. The arithmetic on Charlie, Jr’s birth is complex. The boy is born on May 5th, 1925. Lita Grey turns seventeen on April 15th. The age of consent in California is eighteen, but Chaplin marries Lita Grey in Mexico when she is sixteen, mostly to avoid going to jail, and only after Chaplin fails to bully her into having an abortion.

  Meanwhile, Chaplin is also fucking Mary Pickford.

  These details of Chaplin’s life are disturbing.

  In order to laugh at Chaplin, one must try to forget them.

  53

  But who is he to excoriate Chaplin, a mortal before his god? Who is he to question Chaplin’s ways?

  He did not know Chaplin’s poverty.

  He did not bequeath a mother to the lunatic asylum, a small boy leading a disturbed woman by the hand to the gates of Cane Hill, there to be consigned to the aphotic regions of its wards, the aspect of its buildings being inimical to daylight.

  He did not endure the orphanage, or the streets.

  He did not suffer want.

  Perhaps this is why Chaplin’s ambition so exceeds his own: because Chaplin must scale such heights as to render the depths concealed, and thereby obliterate memory.

  Perhaps this is why Chaplin’s appetites are so ravenous: because Chaplin starved in tenements where even the rats went hungry, and was mothered by a mind in decay.

  Perhaps this is why Chaplin’s need is so great: because Chaplin survived on so little for so long.

  And perhaps this is why Chaplin despoils young girls in his bed: because Chaplin had no childhood of his own, and so is driven to consume the childhood of others in reprisal.

  Such pain, such pain.

  54

  So Mae has been erased from this new version of his life under construction, just as Madelyn has been erased from Babe’s. He does not miss Mae, but the touch of her lingers. He feels it upon him, even with Lois. Mae has been part of his life for too long to be banished so easily. He tries to avoid Franklin Avenue, where he lived with Mae for years. It helps that it is so far north, away from Lois’s apartment.

  A little.

  It helps a little.

  He is astray, dislocated. Mae has left him with a name that is not his own, and now he cannot escape it. He has no character on the screen, and a manufactured identity away from it. All is pretense, but we must be careful what we pretend to be, because that is what we must become.

  This he understands.

  All is pretense.

  And all is character.

  The Audience does not flock to see Chaplin or Buster Keaton because of the gags alone. The Audience does not thrive solely on repetition but also on character, and it is the character that cannot change.

  This he understands.

  If the character cannot change, then the character’s fate is fixed. The character cannot escape the actions of fate, because the character cannot escape himself. The character cannot learn, because to learn is to be altered.

  This he understands.

  But it is no way for a man to abide in real life.

  Yet Chaplin, who sleeps with young girls, must be the Little Tramp, and nothing in his life that might cause the Audience to believe otherwise can be permitted to come to light.

  Yet Buster Keaton, who is a drunk and a womanizer, must be Great Stone Face, and nothing that might cause the Audience to believe otherwise can be permitted to come to light.

  He does not have his own character, not yet, but he will. It is emerging slowly. He senses it. Once he has identified it, the process will begin. It will become fixed in him, and he in it. He will not be able to escape it, even should he wish to do so, because in it will lie his hopes of success.

  All is character, but character is pretense.

  And his character already has a name.

  His character has his name, a nomenclature assumed that now cannot be abjured.

  This he understands.

  55

  He struggles to liberate himself from Joe Rock, because his contract with Joe Rock has more clauses than Shakespeare. Warren Doane, Hal Roach’s business manager, goes through the contract twice and then has to lie down for an hour.

  He is shackled to Joe Rock as an actor, but not in any other regard. As long as he does not act, he owes Joe Rock nothing. Meanwhile Warren Doane, now recovered, begins work on the contractual knots. So while Warren Doane negotiates, and Joe Rock stonewalls, he writes and directs for Hal Roach. They pair him with Jimmy Finlayson.

  Did you kill Mae? Jimmy Finlayson asks.

  – No, I didn’t kill her.

  – They say you put her on a boat to Australia.

  – That isn’t true either.

  – I hope it’s not. If it were, I’d have asked you to put Emily on board with her. Then we could have sunk it.

  He works alongside Jimmy Parrott, who is still taking diet pills and still having fits. Charley Parrott, Jimmy Parrott’s brother, is moving on from helming Our Gang pictures to become a comic in his own right. Harold Lloyd has departed from the lot, gone to seek his independence, and Hal Roach must keep the studio’s momentum going. Hal Roach is not averse to elevating Charley Parrott, so Charley Parrott is now Charley Chase, and is making two-reel pictures. Charley Chase worked with Chaplin and Roscoe Arbuckle. Charley Chase worked with Mack Sennett. Charley Chase is smart and sophisticated. Charley Chase understands that character is all.

  He regards Charley Chase closely, because Charley Chase is struggling to handle the pressure. Charley Chase drinks. They all drink, although he drinks less now that Mae is no longer around, but it does not impede the progress of their work. This may be the only way that Charley Chase can continue to function, with the aid of brandy and champagne – well, brandy, champagne, and the set of hand-carved meerschaum pipes that Charley Chase utilizes solely for the purpose of smoking marijuana behind the shooting stages.

  When Charley Chase is not filming, or drunk, or high, Charley Chase fucks petite blondes while BeBe, his wife, raises their daughters to be good girls. Charley Chase reads his daughters stories at night. Charley Chase is not a bad guy. Even BeBe knows this, which is why she pretends not to notice the blondes. She wishes her husband would not cast them in his pictures, though. It makes them harder to ignore if she has to view them magnified on a screen before her.

  Leo McCarey is often present too, sitting in the director’s chair. Leo McCarey and Hal Roach are close, but Leo McCarey and Charley Chase are closer still. In the evenings, over bootleg hooch, Leo McCarey and Charley Chase compose popular songs together.

  If he regards Charley Chase closely, he regards Leo McCarey with even greater care, because Leo McCarey is the best director on the Hal Roach lot. Leo McCarey and Charley Chase are one organism, so it is difficult to tell where the work of Leo McCarey ends and the work of Charley Chase begins. Leo McCarey is a rock. Charley Chase has the ideas, and the technical acumen to bring them to the screen, but Leo McCarey anchors the pictures. Also, Leo McCarey does not fuck petite blondes, nor does he smoke marijuana from meerschaum pipes. On the other hand, if there is a cable, Leo McCarey will trip over it, and if there is a bottle, Leo McCarey will break it. Leo McCarey is the only man he knows who has fallen down an elevator shaft and survived. Leo McCarey is the only man he knows who has fallen down an elevator shaft, period. Jimmy Finlayson says Leo McCarey is still alive only because God isn’t trying hard enough. Jimmy Finlayson says this is proof that God is a Catholic.

  So he waits for Joe Rock to concede defeat, and he writes, and he directs. He is no Charley Chase, no Leo McCarey, but like Charley Chase, he can act, and when required, he can demonstrate to his stars what he wishes them to do. He directs Mabel Normand, Madcap Mabel. He directs Clyde Cook, the Aust
ralian Inja Rubber Idiot, whose name he once read on music hall bills back in England. Clyde Cook can take falls like Buster Keaton. Clyde Cook’s bones bend, but do not break.

  And he directs Babe.

  56

  It is early 1926. He attends a preview of Charley Chase’s new picture, Mighty Like A Moose. Hal Roach is present, and Charley Chase, and Len Powers, the cameraman, and Beanie Walker, the writer, although much of the script is borrowed from Max Linder, who is dead and cannot complain. Max Linder marries a woman half his age, and then convinces her to commit suicide with him in Paris on October 31st, 1925. Max Linder and his bride take Veronal and inject morphine before cutting their wrists. As a result, Jimmy Finlayson remarks that Max Linder is so dead they ought to bury him three times. The New York Times describes Max Linder’s passing as a ‘death compact with his lovely wife’, as though she were personally known to the newspaper and her loss is therefore more acutely felt by it; or because she was lovely while Max Linder was not, which might well be true. Max Linder was a great comedian but, in the end, a poor husband.

  Aside from Hal Roach, and Len Powers, and Beanie Walker, and Charley Chase, and Leo McCarey, and him, the theater is loaded with family members and crew. Charley Chase holds a hand counter. So does Beanie Walker.

  The picture starts. Charley Chase is a husband who decides to alter his appearance with plastic surgery. Vivien Oakland is his wife, who does the same. They meet, not recognizing each other. They flirt. They go to a party. The party is raided. Charley realizes that his amorous companion is, in fact, his wife, and stages a fight between the two versions of himself to teach her a lesson, but she spots the ruse. Charley gets it in spades. The End.

  Mighty Like A Moose is twenty-four minutes long. Charley Chase wants sixty laughs in those twenty-four minutes, but will settle for fifty. Using his hand counter, Charley Chase estimates that the picture already contains more than fifty laughs. So does Beanie Walker, which causes everyone to wonder if there might not be sixty laughs in the picture after all. They work this out over dinner – Leo McCarey, Hal Roach, Charley Chase, Beanie Walker, Len Powers, the ghost of Max Linder, and he. Remove a minute from the picture, they decide, and the laughs will go up. They will reshoot. Not much, but enough.