Dream Factories and Radio Pictures (29 page)

Major Spacer in the 21st Century

June 1950

“L
OOK,” SAID BILL,
“I’ll see if I can go down and do a deposition this Thursday or Friday. Get ahold of Zachary Glass, see if he can fill in as . . . what’s his name . . . ?”

“Lt. Marrs,” said Sam Shorts.

“ . . . Lt. Marrs. We’ll move that part of the story up. I’ll record my lines. We can put it up over the spacephone, and Marrs and Neptuna can have the dialogue during the pursuit near the Moon we were gonna do week after next . . .”

“Yeah, sure!” said Sam. “We can have you over the phone, and them talking back and forth while his ship’s closing in on hers, and your voice—yeah, that’ll work fine.”

“But you’ll have to rewrite the science part I was gonna do, and give it yourself, as Cadet Sam. Man, it’s just too bad there’s no way to record this stuff ahead of time.”

“Phil said they’re working on it at the Bing Crosby Labs, trying to get some kind of tape to take a visual image; they can do it but they gotta shoot eight feet of tape a second by the recording head. It takes a mile of tape to do a ten-minute show,” said Sam.

“And we can’t do it on film, kids hate that.”

“Funny,” said Sam Shorts. “They pay fifteen cents for Gene Autry on film every Saturday afternoon, but they won’t sit still for it on television . . .”

Philip walked in. “Morgan wants to see you about the Congress thing.”

“Of course,” said Bill.

“Run-through in . . .” Phil looked at his watch, and the studio clock “ . . . eleven minutes. Seen Elizabeth?”

“Of course not,” said Bill, on the way down the hall in his spacesuit, with his helmet under his arm.

* * *

That night, in his apartment, Bill typed on a script.

MAJOR SPACER: LOOKS LIKE SOMEONE LEFT IN A HURRY.

Bill looked up.
Super Circus
was on. Two of the clowns, Nicky and Scampy, squirted seltzer in ringmaster Claude Kirchner’s face.

He never got to watch
Big Top
, the other circus show. It was on opposite his show.

* * *

Next morning, a young guy with glasses slouched out of a drugstore.

“Well, hey Bill!” he said.

“Jimmy!” said Bill, stopping, shifting his cheap cardboard portfolio to his other arm. He shook hands.

“Hey, I talked to Zooey,” said Jimmy. “You in trouble with the Feds?”

“Not that I know of. I think they’re bringing in everybody in the city with a kid’s TV show.”

He and Jimmy had been in a flop play together early in the year, before Bill started the show.

“How’s it going otherwise?” asked Jimmy.

“It’s about to kill all of us. We’ll see if we make twenty weeks, much less a year. We’re only four to five days ahead on the script. You available?”

“I’ll have to look,” said Jimmy. “I got two
Lamps Unto My Feet
next month, three-day rehearsals each, I think. I’m reading a couple plays, but that’ll take a month before anybody gets off their butt. Let me know’f you need someone quick some afternoon. If I can, I’ll jump in.”

“Sure thing. And on top of everything else, looks like we’ll have to move for next week; network’s coming in and taking our space; trade-out with CBS. I’ll be
real
damn glad when this Station Freeze is over, and there’s more than ten damn places in this city that can do a network feed.”

“I hear that could take a couple more years,” said Jimmy, in his quiet Indiana voice.

“Yeah, well . . . hey, don’t
be such
a stranger. Come on with me, I gotta get these over to the mimeograph room; we can talk on the way.”

“Nah, nah,” said Jimmy. “I, you know, gotta meet some people. I’m late already. See ya ’round, Bill.”

“Well, okay.”

Jimmy turned around thirty feet away. “Don’t let the Feds get your jock strap in a knot!” he said, waved, and walked away.

People stared at both of them.

Damn, thought Bill. I don’t get to see anyone anymore; I don’t have a life except for the show. This is killing me. I’m still young.

* * *

“And what the hell are we supposed to do in this grange hall?” asked Bill.

“It’s only a week,” said Morgan. “Sure, it’s seen better days, the Ziegfeld Roof, but they got a camera ramp so Harry and Fred can actually move in and out on a shot; you can play up and back, not just sideways like a crab, like usual.”

Bill looked at the long wooden platform built out into what used to be the center aisle when it was a theater.

“Phil says he can shoot here . . .”

“Phil can do a show in a bathtub, he’s so good, and Harry and Fred can work in a teacup, they’re so good. That doesn’t mean they
have
to,” said Bill.

A stagehand walked in and raised the curtain while they stood there.

“Who’s
that
?” asked Bill.

“Well, this is a rehearsal hall,” said Morgan. “We’re lucky to get it on such short notice.”

When the curtain was full up there were the usual chalk marks on the stage boards, and scene flats lined up and stacked in twenty cradles at the rear of the stage.

“We’ll be using that corner there,” said Morgan, pointing. “Bring our sets in, wheel ’em, roll ’em in and out—ship, command center, planet surface.”

Some of the flats for the other show looked familiar.

“The other group rehearses 10:00–2:00. They
all
gotta be out by 2:15. We rehearse, do the run-through at 5:30, do the show at 6:30.”

Another stagehand came in with the outline of the tail end of a gigantic cow and put it into the scene cradle.

“What the hell are they rehearsing?” asked Bill.

“Oh. It’s a musical based on the paintings of Grant Wood, you know, the Iowa artist?”

“You mean the
Washington and the Cherry Tree
, the
DAR
guy?”

“Yeah, him.”

“
That’ll
be a hit,” said Bill. “What’s it called?”

“I think they’re calling it
In Tall Corn
. Well, what do you think?”

“I think it’s a terrible idea. I can see the closing notices now.”

“No, no. I mean the place. For the show,” said Morgan.

Bill looked around. “Do I have any choice in the matter?”

“Of course not,” said Morgan. “
Everything
else in town that’s wired up is taken. I just wanted you to see it before you were dumped in it.”

“Dumped is right,” said Bill. He was looking at the camera ramp. It was the only saving grace. Maybe something could be done with it. . . .

“Harry and Fred seen it?”

“No, Phil’s word is good enough for them. And, like you said, they can shoot in a coffee cup . . .”

Bill sighed. “Okay. Let’s call a Sunday rehearsal day, this Sunday, do two blockings and rehearsals, do the run-through of Monday’s show, let everybody get used to the place. Then they can come back just for the show Monday. Me and Sam’ll see if we can do something in the scripts. Phil got the specs?”

“You
know
he has,” said Morgan.

“Well, I guess one barn’s as good as another,” said Bill.

And as he said it, three stagehands brought on a barn and a silo and a windmill.

* * *

Even with both window fans on, it was hot as hell in the apartment. Bill slammed the carriage over on the Remington Noiseless Portable and hit the margin set and typed:

MAJOR SPACER: CAREFUL. SOMETIMES THE SURFACE OF MARS CAN LOOK AS ORDINARY AS A DESERT IN ARIZONA.

He got up and went to the kitchen table, picked up the bottle of Old Harper, poured some in a coffee cup and knocked it back.

There.
That was better.

On TV, Haystacks Calhoun and Duke Kehanamuka were both working over Gorgeous George, while Gorilla Monsoon argued with the referee, whose back was to the action. Every time one of them twisted George’s arm or leg, the announcer, Dennis James, snapped a chicken bone next to the mike.

* * *

“Look at this,” said Morgan, the next morning.

It was a handwritten note.

I know your show is full of commies. My brother-in-law told me you have commie actors. Thank God for people like Senator McCarthy who will run you rats out of this land of Liberty and Freedom.

Signed,
A Real American

“Put it in the circular file,” said Bill.

“I’ll keep it,” said Morgan. “Who are they talking about?”

“You tell me. I’m not old enough to be a communist.”

“Could it be true?” asked Morgan.

“Don’t tell me you’re listening to all that crap, too?”

“There’s been a couple of newsletters coming around, with names of people on it. I know some of them; they give money to the NAACP and ACLU. Otherwise they live in big houses and drive big cars and order their servants around like Daddy Warbucks. But then, I don’t know
all
the names on the lists.”

“Is anybody
we
ever hired on any of the lists?”

“Not as such,” said Morgan.

“Well, then?”

“Well, then,” said Morgan, and picked up a production schedule. “Well, then, nothing, I guess, Bill.”

“Good,” said Bill. He picked up the letter from Morgan’s desk, wadded it into a ball, and drop-kicked it into the wastebasket.

* * *

The hungover Montgomery Clift reeled by on his way to the Friday performance of the disaster of a play he was in. Bill waved, but Clift didn’t notice; his eyes were fixed on some far distant promontory fifty miles up the Hudson, if they were working at all. Clift had been one intense, conflicted, messed-up individual when Bill had first met him.
Then
he had gone off to Hollywood and discovered sex and booze and drugs and brought them with him back to Broadway.

Ahead of Bill was the hotel where the congressmen and lawyers waited.

* * *

Counsel (Mr. Eclept): Now that you have taken the oath, give your full name and age for the record.

S: Major William Spacer. I’m twenty-one years old.

E: No, sir. Not your stage name.

S: Major William Spacer. That’s my real name.

Congressman Beenz: You mean Major Spacer isn’t just the show name?

S: Well, sir, it is and it isn’t . . . Most people just think we gave me a promotion over Captain Video.

Congressman Rice: How was it you were named Major?

S: You would have had to have asked my parents that; unfortunately they’re deceased. I have an aunt in Kansas who might be able to shed some light . . .

* * *

S: That’s not the way it’s done, Congressman.

B: You mean you just can’t fly out to the Big Dipper, once you’re in space?

S: Well, you can, but they’re . . . they’re light years apart. They . . . they appear to us as The Big Dipper because we’re looking at them from Earth.

R: I’m not sure I understand, either.

S: It . . . it’s like that place in . . . Vermont, New Hampshire, one of those. North of here, anyway. You come around that turn in Rt 9A or whatever, and there’s Abraham Lincoln, the head, the hair, the beard. It’s so real you stop. Then you drive down the road a couple hundred yards, and the beard’s a plum thicket on a meadow, and the hair’s pine trees on a hill, and the nose is on one mountain, but the rest of the face is on another. It only looks like Lincoln from that one spot in the road. That’s why the Big Dipper looks that way from Earth.

B: I do not know how we got off on this . . .

S: I’m trying to answer your questions here, sir.

E: Perhaps we should get to the substantive matters here . . .

* * *

S: All I’ve noticed, counsel, is that all the people who turn up as witnesses and accusers at these things seem to have names out of old W. C. Fields’ movies, names like R. Waldo Chubb and F. Clement Bozo.

E: I believe you’re referring to Mr. Clubb and Mr. Bozell?

S: I’m busy, Mr. Eclept; I only get to glance at newspapers. I’m concerned with the future, not what’s happening right this minute.

B: So are we, young man. That’s why we’re trying to root out any communist influence in the broadcast industry, so there won’t be any in the future.

R: We can’t stress that too forcefully.

S: Well, I can’t think of a single communist space pirate we’ve ever portrayed on the show. It takes place in the 21st Century, Congressman. So I guess we share the same future. Besides, last time I looked, piracy was a capitalist invention. . . .

* * *

S: That’s why we never have stories set further than Mars or Venus, Congressman. Most of the show takes place in near-space, or on the Moon. We try to keep the science accurate. That’s why there’s always a segment with me or Sam—that’s Samuel J. Shorts, the other writer on the show—by the way, he’s called “Uncle Sam” Spacer—telling kids about the future, and what it’ll be like to grow up in the wonderful years of the 21st Century.

B: If we don’t blow ourselves up first.

R: You mean if some foreign power doesn’t try to blow us up first.

S: Well, we’ve talked about the peaceful uses of atomic energy. Food preservation. Atomic-powered airplanes and cars. Nuclear fusion as a source of energy too cheap to meter.

E: Is it true you broadcast a show about a world government?

S: Not in the science segment, that I recall.

E: No. I mean the story, the entertainment part.

S: We’ve been on the air three months, that’s nearly sixty shows. Let me think . . .

E: A source has told us there’s a world government on the show.

S: Oh. It’s a worlds’ government, counsel. It’s the United States of Space. We assume there won’t be just one state on Mars, or the Moon, or Venus, and that they’ll have to come to the central government to settle their disputes. We have that on the Moon.

R: They have to go to the Moon to settle a dispute between Mars and the United States?

S: No, no. That would be like France suing Wisconsin. . . .

* * *

B: “ . . . and other red channels.” And that’s a direct quote.

S: Congressman, I created the show; I act in it; I write either half the scripts, or one-half of each script, whichever way it works out that week. I do this five days a week, supposedly for fifty weeks a year—we’ll see if I make it that long. I’ve given the day-to-day operations, all the merchandising negotiations to my partner, James B. Morgan. We have a small cast with only a few recurring characters, and except for the occasional Martian bad guy, or Lunar owl-hoot, they’re all known to me. I never ask anybody about their politics or religion. All I want to know is whether they can memorize lines quick, and act in a tight set, under time pressure, live, with a camera stuck in their ear. The only thing red we have anything to do with is Mars. And it isn’t channels; it’s canals. . . .