Dream Factories and Radio Pictures (11 page)

* * *

And so it was that Mantan Brown found himself in the production of
The Medicine Cabinet of Dr. Killpatient
.

* * *

Mantan was on the set, watching them paint scenery.

Slavo was rehearsing Lafayette Monroe and Arkady Jackson, who’d come in that morning. They were still in their street clothes. Monroe must have been seven feet three inches tall.

“Here we go,” said Slavo, “try these.” What he’d given Lafayette were two halves of Ping-Pong balls with black dots drawn on them. The giant placed them over his eyes.

“Man, man,” said Arkady.

Slavo was back ten feet, holding both arms and hands out, one inverted, forming a square with his thumbs and index fingers.

“Perfect!” he said. “Mantan?”

“Yes, Mr. Slavo?”

“Let’s try the scene where you back around the corner and bump into him.”

“Okay,” said Brown.

They ran through it. Mantan backed into Lafayette, did a freeze, reached back, turned, did a double take, and was gone.

Arkady was rolling on the floor. The Ping-Pong balls popped off Lafayette’s face as he exploded with laughter.

“Okay,” said Slavo, catching his breath. “Okay. This time, Lafayette, just as he touches you, turn your head down a little and toward him. Slowly, but just so
you’re
looking at him when he’s looking at you.”

“I can’t see a thing, Mr. Slavo.”

“There’ll be holes in the pupils when we do it. And remember, a line of smoke’s going to come up from the floor where Mr. Brown
was
when we get finished with the film.”

“I’m afraid I’ll bust out laughing,” said Lafayette.

“Just think about money,” said Slavo. “Let’s go through it one more time. Only this time, Mantan . . .”

“Yes, sir?”

“This time, Mantan, bug your eyes out a little bit more.”

The hair stood up on his neck.

“Yes sir, Mr. Slavo.”

* * *

The circles under Slavo’s eyes seemed to have darkened as the day wore on.

“I would have liked to have gone out to the West Coast with everyone else,” he said, as they took a break during the run-throughs. “Then I realized this was a wide-open field, the race pictures. I make exactly the movies I want. They go out to 600 theaters in the North, and 850 in the South. They make money. Some go into state’s rights distribution. I’m happy. Guys like Mr. Meister are happy—” He looked up to the catwalk overhead where Meister usually watched from, “The people who see the films are happy.”

He put another cigarette in his holder. “I live like I want,” he said. Then, “Let’s get back to work, people.”

* * *

“You tell her in this scene,” said Slavo, “that as long as you’re heeled, she has nothing to fear from the somnam—from what Lorenzo refers to as the Sleepy Guy.”

He handed Mantan a slim straight razor.

Mantan looked at him. Pauline looked back and forth between them.

“Yes, Mr. Brown?” asked Slavo.

“Well, Mr. Slavo,” he said. “This film’s going out to every Negro theater in the U.S. of A., isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you’ll have everybody laughing
at
it, but not
with
it.”

“What do you mean?”

“This is the kind of razor cadets use to trim their mustaches before they go down to the dockyards to wait for the newest batch of Irish women for the sporting houses.”

“Well, that’s the incongruity, Mr. Brown.”

“Willie? Willie?”

The workman appeared. “Willie, get $2.50 from Mr. Meister, and run down to the drugstore and get a Double Duck Number 2 for me to use.”

“What the hell?” asked Meister, who’d been watching. “A tree’s a tree. A rock’s a rock. A razor’s a razor. Use that one.”

“It won’t be right, Mr. Meister. Mainly, it won’t be as funny as it
can
be.”

“It’s a tiny razor,” said Meister. “It’s funny, if you
think
it can defend both of you.”

Slavo watched and waited.

“Have you seen the films of Mr. Mack Sennett?” asked Brown.

“Who hasn’t? But he can’t get work now either,” said Meister.

“I mean his earlier stuff. Kops. Custard. Women in bathing suits.”

“Of course.”

“Well, Mr. Sennett once said, if you bend it, it’s funny. If you break it, it isn’t.”

“Now a darkie is telling me about the Aristophanic roots of comedy!” said Meister, throwing up his hands. “What about this theory of Sennett’s?”

“If I use the little razor,” said Mantan, “it breaks.”

Meister looked at him a moment, then reached in his pocket and pulled three big greenbacks off a roll and handed them to Willie. Willie left.

“I want to see this,” said Meister. He crossed his arms. “Good thing you’re not getting paid by the hour.”

Willie was back in five minutes with a rectangular box. Inside was a cold stainless steel thing, mother-of-pearl handled with a gold thumb-stop, half the size of a meat cleaver. It could have been used to dry-shave the mane off one of Mack Sennett’s lions in fifteen seconds flat.

“Let’s see you bend
that!
” said Meister.

They rehearsed the scene, Mantan and Pauline. When Brown flourished the razor, opening it with a quick look, a shift of his eyes each way, three guys who’d stopped painting scenery to watch fell down in the corner. Meister left.

Slavo said, “For the next scene . . .”

* * *

It was easy to see Slavo wasn’t getting whatever it was that was keeping him going.

The first morning of filming was a nightmare. Slavo was irritable. They shot sequentially for the most part (with a couple of major scenes held back for the next day). All the takes with the extras at the carnival were done early that morning, and some of them let go, with enough remaining to cover the inserts with the principals.

The set itself was disorienting. The painted shadows and reflections were so convincing Mantan found himself squinting when moving away from a painted wall because he expected bright light to be in his eyes there. There was no real light on the set except that which came in from the old overhead glass roof of the studio, and a few arc lights used for fill.

The walls were painted at odd angles; the merry-go-round was only two feet tall, with people standing around it. The Ferris wheel was an ellipsoid of neon, with one car with people (two Negro midgets) in it, the others diminishingly smaller, then larger around the circumference. The tents looked like something out of a Jamaica ginger extract-addict’s nightmare.

Then they filmed the scene of Dr. Killpatient at his sideshow, opening his giant medicine cabinet. The front was a mirror, like in a hotel bathroom. There was a crowd of extras standing in front of it, but what was reflected was a distant, windswept mountain (and in Alabama, too). Mantan watched them do the scene. As the cabinet opened, the mountain disappeared; the image revealed was of Mantan, Pauline, Lorenzo, and the extras.

“How’d you do that, Mr. Slavo?” asked one of the extras.

“Fort Lee magic,” said Meister from his position on the catwalk above.

* * *

At last the morning was over. As they broke for lunch they heard loud voices coming from Meister’s office. They all went to the drugstore across the street.

“I hear it’s snow,” said Arkady.

“Jake.”

“Morphine.”

“He’s kicking the gong around,” said another extra.

One guy who had read a lot of books said, “He’s got a surfeit of the twentieth century.”

“Whatever, this film’s gonna scare the bejeezus out of Georgia, funny or not.”

Mantan said nothing. He chewed at his sandwich slowly and drank his cup of coffee, looking out the window toward the cold façade of the studio. It looked just like any other warehouse building.

* * *

Slavo was a different man when they returned. He moved very slowly, taking his time setting things up.

“Okay . . . let’s . . . do this right. And all the extras can go home early. Lafayette,” he said to the black giant, who was putting in his Ping-Pong ball eyes, “carry . . . Pauline across to left. Out of sight around the pyramid. Then, extras. Come on, jump around a lot. Shake your torches. Then off left. Simple. Easy. Places. Camera. Action! That’s right, that’s right. Keep moving, Lafe, slow but steady. Kick some more, Pauline. Good. Now. Show some disgust, people. You’re indignant. He’s got your choir soloist from the A.M.E. church. That’s it. Take—”

“Stop it! Stop the camera thing. Cut!” yelled Meister from the catwalk.

“What?!” yelled Slavo.

“You there!
You!
” yelled Meister. “Are you blind?”

An extra wearing sunglasses pointed to himself. “Me?”

“If you ain’t blind, what’re you doing with sunglasses on? It’s night!”

“How the hell would anybody know?” asked the extra, looking around at the painted square moon in the sky. “This is the most fucked-up thing I ever been involved with in all my life.”

“You can say that again,” said someone else.

“You,” said Meister to the first extra. “You’re fired. Get out. You only get paid through lunch.” He climbed down as the man started to leave, throwing his torch with the papier-mâché flames on the floor. “Give me your hat,” said Meister. He took it from the man. He jammed it on his head and walked over with the rest of the extras, who had moved back off-camera. “I’ll do the damn scene myself.”

Slavo doubled up with laughter in his chair.

“What? What is it?” asked Meister.

“If . . . if they’re going to notice a guy . . . with sunglasses,” laughed Slavo, “they’re . . . damn sure gonna notice a white man!”

Meister stood fuming.

“Here go,” said Mantan, walking over to the producer. He took the hat from him, pulled it down over his eyes, took off his coat. He got in the middle of the extras and picked up an unused pitchfork. “Nobody’ll notice one more darkie,” he said.

“Let’s do it, then,” said Slavo. “Pauline? Lafayette?”

“Meister,” said a voice behind them. Three white guys in dark suits and shirts stood there. How long they had been watching no one knew. “Meister, let’s go talk,” said one of them.

You could hear loud noises through the walls of Meister’s office. Meister came out in the middle of a take, calling for Slavo.

“Goddamnit to hell!” said Slavo. “Cut!” He charged into Meister’s office. There was more yelling. Then it was quiet. Then only Meister was heard.

Lafayette Monroe took up most of the floor, sprawled out, drinking water from a quart jug. He wore a black body suit, and had one of the Ping-Pong balls out of his eye socket. Arkady had on his doctor’s costume—frock coat, hair like a screech owl, big round glasses, gloves with dark lines drawn on the backs of them. A big wobbly crooked cane rested across his knees.

Pauline fanned herself with the hem of her long white nightgown.

“I smell trouble,” said Lorenzo. “Big trouble.”

The guys with the dark suits came out and went past them without a look.

Meister came out. He took his usual place, clambering up the ladder to the walkway above the set. He leaned on a light railing, saying nothing.

After a while, a shaken-looking Marcel Slavo came out.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “Let’s finish this scene, then set up the next one. By that time, there’ll be another gentleman here to finish up today, and to direct you tomorrow. I am off this film after the next scene . . . so let’s make this take a good one, okay?”

They finished the chase setup, and the pursuit. Slavo came and shook their hands, and hugged Pauline. “Thank you all,” he said, and walked out the door.

Ten minutes later another guy came in, taking off his coat. He looked up at Meister, at the actors, and said, “Another coon pitcher, huh? Gimme five minutes with the script.” He went into Meister’s office.

Five minutes later he was out again. “What a load of hooey,” he said. “Okay,” he said to Mantan and the other actors, “Who’s who?”

* * *

When they were through the next afternoon, Meister peeled bills off a roll, gave each of the principals an extra five dollars, and said, “Keep in touch.”

* * *

Mantan took his friend Freemore up to the place they told him Marcel Slavo lived.

They knocked three times before there was a muffled answer.

“Oh, Mr. Brown,” said Slavo, as he opened the door. “Who’s this?”

“This is Joe Freemore. We’re just heading out on the ‘chitlin circuit’ again.”

“Well, I can’t do anything for you,” said Slavo. “I’m through. Haven’t you heard? I’m all washed up.”

“We wanted to show you our act.”

“Why me?”

“Because you’re an impartial audience,” said Mantan.

Slavo went back in, sat in a chair at the table. Mantan saw that along with bootleg liquor bottles and ashtrays full of Fatima and Spud butts, the two razors from the movie lay on the table. Slavo followed his gaze.

“Souvenirs,” he said. “Something to remind me of all my work. I remember what you said, Mr. Brown. It has been a great lesson to me.”

“Comfortable, Mr. Slavo?” asked Freemore.

“Okay. Rollick me.”

“Empty stage,” said Mantan. “Joe and I meet.”

“Why, hello!” said Joe.

“Golly, hi,” said Mantan, pumping his hand. “I ain’t seen you since—”

“—it was longer ago than that. You had just—”

“—that’s right. And I hadn’t been married for more than—”

“—seemed a lot longer than that. Say, did you hear about—”

“—you don’t say! Why, I saw her not more than—”

“—it’s the truth! And the cops say she looked—”

“—that bad, huh? Who’d have thought it of her? Why she used to look—”

“—speaking of her, did you hear that her husband—”

“—what? How could he have done that? He always—”

“—yeah, but not this time. I tell you he—”

“—that’s impossible! Why, they told me he’d—”

“—that long, huh? Well, got to go. Give my best to—”

“—I sure will. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

They turned to Slavo.

“They’ll love it down in Mississippi,” he said.

* * *

It was two weeks later, and the South Carolina weather was the crummiest, said the locals, in half a century. It had been raining—a steady, continuous, monotonous thrumming—for three days.