Cheat and Charmer Read Free Page A

instruments, and Dinah and Jake, after the requisite farewells, were sprung into the night. The parking valet, a blond kid with a crew cut, brought them their dark green Cadillac and, stifling a yawn, held the door open for Dinah as Jake slipped him a buck. Moments later, the Laskers were wending their way down the serpentine streets of Pacific Palisades and soon came to a gentle stop at Capri and Sunset, where the traffic light glowed red. Showing no fatigue and whistling contentedly and vaguely off-key, Jake reached over to stroke the back of Dinah’s neck. “Lovely evening, darling, wasn’t it?”
    “Mmm,” she murmured. Her hands clutched her purse.
    “That was a helluva speech he made. Actually, I was kind of embarrassed. If I believed everything he said I’d be the biggest schmuck in America.”
    She opened the purse but took out only a cigarette. “I think he meant it.”
    “Honestly?”
    “Yeah, honestly.”
    Just after dinner, looking, with his bow tie and slightly rounded shoulders, exactly like a college president, Engel had gone over to the microphone and tapped it with the bandleader’s baton. “Ladies and gentlemen, friends and members of the Marathon family and this great industry ofours,” he began. “Tonight we celebrate, just among ourselves, without reporters, photographers, and sculptured ice swans, the achievements of a man who has made Marathon Pictures synonymous with quality entertainment. In picture after picture, Jake Lasker has touched the hearts of real people. My friends, Jake Lasker knows how to make America laugh. Jake Lasker keeps alive the one thing without which no democracy can survive. I am speaking of
irreverence
: the ridiculing of authority, the poke in the ribs at pretension and folly, scoundrels and fools—and the rest of my relatives. But seriously, friends, in America today humor and democracy go hand in hand. If we forget that, then we forget ourselves, and that’s when the windbags, the fanatics, and the pious frauds take over. I won’t name names. We all know who they are. They’re dangerous. Very dangerous. Well, let
Cousin Jonnycake
tell ’em a thing or two. What else was this country built on but the native shrewdness of country bumpkins like Cousin Jonnycake, or the guts and persistence of greenhorns like my father? Like millions of others, Lionel Engel landed in this country at the age of sixteen with two bucks in his pocket and not a single word of English. And where did he end up? With a major studio, his own table at Hillcrest, and a corned beef sandwich created in his name!
    “So just think about it, friends: where would we be without the little guy, the guy who outsmarts the city slickers? That’s what makes
Cousin Jonnycake
the American classic it is. You could send that picture all over the world and say to millions of people, ‘Now,
that’s
America.’
    “So—” He picked up a glass of champagne from a tray held at shoulder height by a Negro butler in livery and white gloves. “Here’s to you, Jake Lasker—to you and your wonderful wife, Dinah, and your wonderful kids—and your example to all of us that Hollywood’s a place where wholesome family life goes hand in hand with first-class family entertainment. And here’s to many more wonderful years and classic pictures we know you’re gonna make right on the back lot of Marathon, because I’m gonna hold you to every last word of your deal! You belong here, and we’re for you one thousand percent.”
    “You mean that’s my cut of the gross?” Jake piped up. “I can live with that!”
    Now, recalling the laughter and applause, Dinah gnawed the inside of her cheek and sighed.
    “Tired, sweetheart?” he asked.
    She sighed again.
    “Are you okay, darling?” He took his eyes off the road and scrutinized her face. “You looked a little pale tonight. You don’t think you’re preggers, do you?”
    They were at the stop where the UCLA campus torqued away from Sunset. To the left he