 |
 |
    |
|
|
|
| [Parsons and Cohn meet.] | |
| COHN: | You look disappointed. No news for you is good news for me. |
| PARSONS: | Now, be nice. Everyone else is these days. Nice and quiet. Are you going to let her film two women kissing? |
| COHN: | What you saw today was nothing but a little womanly comraderie. |
| PARSONS: | What I saw was a well-oiled deviant machine. |
| COHN: | [sighs] Here we go. |
| PARSONS: | This whole town moves like a well-oiled machine. But I prefer to peek underneath the axle, see what the road brought home. Might be a flower from the ditch, might be a dead cat. Flowers make good back pages, but dead cats pay the bills. |
| COHN: | And make a swell lunch. |
| PARSONS: | Smart aleck! Are you going to fire Dorothy? I have a two o’clock deadline, and I need a fat, dead cat. |
| COHN: | Damn dirty work. |
| PARSONS: | You’re getting soft where you sit. I declare – the nerve of that woman! I detest career women, they jar the natural order of life. |
| COHN: | You got a career. |
| PARSONS: | I understand my place. I am not an adventuress. |
| COHN: | Sweetheart, how long we all known each other? Thirty years? I knew Dorothy when we was all kids. To be honest with you, I never thought she’d make it past editing. Boy, could she edit – like cutting paper dolls. Then Paramount signs her to direct. I figure it’s a stunt, like girls trying to swim the English Channel. So I’m wrong. A dozen pictures later I’m still wrong. You gotta respect that. |
| PARSONS: | A dozen movies and not one of them worth a damn to watch. |
| COHN: | Aw, let it go. Your problem is you don’t like women as smart as you. |
| PARSONS: | Women like Dorothy give other women dangerous ideas. She frightens people. |
| COHN: | And you I suppose make little children feel safe at night. |
| PARSONS: | [pause] I have played by the rules all of my life. I have made my sacrifices and looked the other way to obey those rules and I have been handsomely rewarded. But the rules are not written by women. Who the hell is Dorothy Arzner to set herself above the rest of us? |
| COHN: | Rules is rules, true, and you’ve put your time in – but now you’re so high up in the tower you forget people ain’t really midgets. |
| PARSONS: | Are you going to make Dorothy bend? |
| COHN: | Dorothy will do as she’s told. |
| PARSONS: | Why do you protect Dorothy at my expense? Directors come and go, but I am eternal. You forget who your friends are. [Parsons begins to exit] |
| COHN: | [nervous] I forget nothing. It’s my curse. You are my friend, Dorothy is my friend. Don’t ask for me to choose. |
| PARSONS: | When I started in this business, I used to think honest people with honest jobs treated each other better. But I was wrong. Everybody talks. Americans have erased the animal urge for self-preservation, but something’s missing. What is it? Information: the last American appetite. |
| COHN: | [squeezes her] Not quite. Come home with me tonight. |
| PARSONS: | Angel cake, you insult my journalistic integrity. Which home? |
| COHN: | It’s nice and quiet up in the hills. |
| PARSONS: | Hmm, closer to heaven. Come pick me up later, after you speak to Dorothy. I’d prefer to watch fireworks from a distance. Treat me nice, and my typewriter is very co-operative. |
| COHN: | Like a well-oiled machine. |
| [Arzner and Oberon, in a back room.] | |
| ARZNER: | You look so good with Rose. Perfect composition. Beautiful. |
| OBERON: | I don’t suppose you noticed all the screaming? |
| ARZNER: | I don’t notice much when you’re around. |
| OBERON: | Remind me not to cross the street with you. |
| ARZNER: | Do you like Rose? Do you think she’s pretty? |
| OBERON: | You cast her. |
| ARZNER: | No, I mean, in real life. |
| OBERON: | There’s a first … Rose is a lovely girl. You know that. |
| ARZNER: | What else is she? |
| OBERON: | A Republican? Really, Dorothy, I don’t understand the question. |
| ARZNER: | What else is she to you? |
| OBERON: | An actress. |
| ARZNER: | You two, you look so perfect together. You radiate. |
| OBERON: | [kissing Arzner] Don’t be jealous of your own creation. You’ll go mad. |
| ARZNER: | [pulls away] What did I create? |
| OBERON: | A scene, Dorothy, a momentary episode. A fiction. 720 tiny little frames. It will all pass by in a lightning blink – remember? |
| ARZNER: | [kissing Oberon] I’m sorry. Sometimes I get so confused. |
| OBERON: | Then close your eyes. [attempts to kiss Arzner] |
| ARZNER: | [ignoring Oberon’s kiss] I’ll see you on the set. |
| [Cohn and Lindstrom meet in a hallway.] | |
| COHN: | Oh, it’s you. |
| LINDSTROM: | That’s what everyone says to me. |
| COHN: | What a mess, huh? |
| LINDSTROM: | Funny, that’s the second thing everybody always says. |
| COHN: | Listen, I gotta ask – does it bother you when Dorothy says to do what she wants you to do? |
| LINDSTROM: | It’s called directing, sir. |
| COHN: | No, no. I mean, this kiss business. |
| LINDSTROM: | Oh. Sure, a little. It feels sorta dirty. But most of the parts I get feel sorta dirty anyway. |
| COHN: | Honey, listen – what is your name again? |
| LINDSTROM: | Rose. Rose, Rose, Rose: I’m the girl nobody knows. |
| COHN: | Sure, Rose. ok, honey, listen – it occurs to me maybe you and me got related problems. |
| LINDSTROM: | I was brought up to be helpful, Mr. Cohn. |
| COHN: | I seen you with Oberon, she throws you looks you could pour on waffles. |
| LINDSTROM: | Tell me what you want, Mr. Cohn. |
| COHN: | My dilemma is, I give Dorothy the heave from this picture, I don’t look so good. You see, I stuck up for her with the money people. You know what they’re like, million-dollar houses and dime-store brains – they get scared easy. I can’t stand for somebody to say I told you so. |
| LINDSTROM: | I want better parts. |
| COHN: | Say again? |
| LINDSTROM: | First I want to do a Tarzan picture, so folks can see my figure. Then I want to die in a picture, slowly, so folks will see me act. Then I want to play a girl gone bad, a whore type – it increases my award potential. |
| COHN: | [holds Lindstrom’s face] You got good bones. Good for close-ups. [grabs her by the waist] Oberon don’t always listen so good. |
| LINDSTROM: | I should do a musical after the whore part. So the public doesn’t get the wrong idea. I’ve got a voice like a church bell. |
| COHN: | You got a deal. Now, go sing for it. |
| [Lindstrom and Oberon by a makeup table, Oberon is staring at her own reflection.] | |
| LINDSTROM: | You look all in. Is it your time? |
| OBERON: | [distracted] Time? |
| LINDSTROM: | I can hardly think at all during my days. It’s the only time a girl is left to herself. I make a lot of demands, usually confused. |
| OBERON: | May I suggest you’ve discovered the title of your autobiography – ‘Usually Confused’. Can you leave me alone for a while? |
| LINDSTROM: | I get terrible muddled. It helps to get good and drunk. Clears my head. |
| OBERON: | If you started walking right now, how long do you suppose it would take you to go to hell? |
| LINDSTROM: | Jeez, you’re awful mean. |
| OBERON: | It happens when your career turns to shit. Just wait. |
| LINDSTROM: | Dorothy’s got you under a spell. I seen it before, with lotsa girls. You’re just her blank slate. Better run before you get erased. |
| OBERON: | Why must you constantly speak in metaphor? It’s like talking to a socialist. |
| LINDSTROM: | You’re not her first. |
| OBERON: | If you don’t shut up – |
| LINDSTROM: | She’ll wreck your life. She can’t help it. But I can. |
| OBERON: | So, be helpful. [takes Lindstrom in a rough kiss] |
| [Parsons enters.] | |
| PARSONS: | Between us gals, you two are swaddling a dark secret. I’ll get to it, I always do. I need merely close my eyes and think dreadful, black thoughts and something unmentionable always comes to me. |
| LINDSTROM: | There’s no story here for you. I learned once in school about people like you – conquistadors. They went in ships to the edge of the world, and the first thing at the end of the ocean was always a sea monster – nobody saw a chorus of angels or a marble palace, or anything beautiful or good. Just the same old monsters. Guarding the door to nothing. Kinda sad, huh? [wanders off] |
| PARSONS: | Well! I am certain I do not know what all that is supposed to mean! But let us maintain the nautical allusions – Merle Oberon, you are bobbing in some very high waves. Fortunately, you intrigue me. May I safely propose, meaning no offense, that you have never been an American star? Why is it so many fine English actors fail to land securely on Hollywood soil? |
 | |
| OBERON: | We can act. |
| PARSONS: | [laughs] True, true. And irrelevant. Publicity, blossom, publicity is the answer. Think of me as a lighthouse, shining your path to the front page. The headline is up to you. |
| OBERON: | I’m tired of swimming. |
| PARSONS: | We all swim together here, Miss Oberon. One little storm on the beach, and all our pretty houses get blown away. You and Arzner are disrupting the tides. Cut Dorothy off, bring that woman to heel, and I will make you a real star – an American star. Save yourself, the water’s rising. |
| OBERON: | Women and children and traitors first, is it? |
| PARSONS: | [laughs] Child! That only happens in the movies. Do you want to be courageous or play courageous? |
| OBERON: | [pauses, considers] How big a star? |
| PARSONS: | Take my hand, and we’ll eclipse the sun. |
| OBERON: | I love America. |
| PARSONS: | Prove it. [holds out her hand, Oberon reluctantly shakes it] |
| END |