Hollywood and Levine Read Free Page A

that my career is on the rocks.”
    â€œWhat’s the long of it?”
    â€œThe long of it is that I don’t know why.”
    â€œAll right, let me try and get a handle on this,” I said. “‘On the rocks’ means you’re not getting work?”
    â€œIt is very complicated, Jack. It’s hints, rumors, feelings that I get. Plus actual tangible trouble that I’m having with Warners.”
    â€œWhat kind of trouble?”
    â€œContract trouble.” Adrian put one of those foreign butts in his mouth and lit up. I offered him a Lucky.
    â€œFor the love of God, Walter, those things smell like yak shit. Take a good old American Lucky.”
    Adrian smiled and crushed out his cigarette, accepting one of mine. I lit us both up.
    â€œThis contract trouble,” the writer continued, plumes of smoke curling from his nostrils, “is very unusual, Jack. I’ve been on the Warners payroll since 1938 and it’s the first time we’ve run into any problem.”
    â€œThey don’t want to renew?”
    He shook his head abruptly, either to shut off my line of questioning or to mute the conversation until the waiter, who was setting down our two bowls of barley soup, had departed. When he was out of earshot, Adrian leaned forward and whispered.
    â€œThey are giving us money problems.”
    â€œAnd ‘us’ means you and who else?”
    â€œMy agent, Larry Goldmark.” Adrian spooned some soup into his mouth, managing to drool a bit on his chin. “The bare facts are this: my current contract runs out on April 6 and we’ve been renegotiating since December. I was getting twenty-five hundred a week and we asked thirty-five.” He looked down into the floating barley, suddenly embarrassed by the gross amounts of money he was talking about.
    â€œSeems fair enough to me,” I said. “The way prices are shooting up, how do they expect a fella to live on twenty-five hundred a week?”
    Adrian did not find my remark amusing. T had not expected him to.
    â€œDon’t bust my nuts, Jack,” he said coldly. The writer’s moods were as wildly unpredictable as an infant’s. “You can’t possibly understand the role of money out there.”
    â€œI understand the role of money everywhere, Walter. It buys things: slacks, automobiles, legs of lamb, sex, fillets of fish, people.”
    â€œNo, Jack,” he continued, determined to beat his point through my head. “In the movie industry, money is a symbolic gauge of your standing. It measures you and determines your social and professional standing. Exactly and to the dime. Listen, I know the numbers are obscene, wildly out of line. In a world where people live and die in the streets, where children in the capitals of Europe go hungry, where Southern sharecroppers work from dawn to dusk for miserable, grotesque wages, that people should earn a quarter of a million dollars a year to write romance and trash is disgusting. In a decent society, in a society of equals, this wouldn’t happen. I know all that, Jack.”
    Adrian had raised his voice and was punctuating his words by beating his spoon on the table. A platinum blond at the next table and her companion, a fat man with a green cigar in his face, peered at us while pretending to look down at their menus.
    â€œYou took the words out of my mouth, Walter,” I told him. “Now why don’t you slow down and tell me precisely what the problem is. I’ll try and keep my bon mots at a minimum.”
    The writer slumped back in his seat and idly ran his spoon through his soup, making little waves in the bowl.
    â€œYou see, Jack,” he said in an educational tone, “the studios use dollar amounts to pin labels on people: Big Star, Declining Star, Featured Player. Major Writer, Slipping Writer, Hack. It is very conscious and very, very cruel.”
    â€œAnd you think you’re