The Prince of Beverly Hills Read Free Page B

please?”
    Rick followed her through another, smaller reception room, where two secretaries worked at desks, and into a large, sunny office furnished in dark mahogany furniture and paneling, with a conference table at one end and a group of sofas at the other. Eddie Harris was seated at his desk, his feet up, talking on the telephone. He waved Rick to a chair, and the assistant left them. A moment later, Harris hung up the phone.
    “How you doing?”
    “I’m fine, thanks.”
    “Get any sleep last night?”
    “Nearly enough.”
    Harris laughed, something he seemed to do easily. “What do you know about Centurion Studios?” he asked.
    “You’re the new kid on the block, and you’re growing fast,” Rick replied. “That’s about it.” He read Variety once in a while.
    “That’s it in a nutshell,” Harris said. “Sol Weinman and I were at MGM, until a couple of years ago. Sol had his own unit, and I was his production manager. When Irving Thalberg died, Sol didn’t want to work directly for Louis B. Mayer, so he rounded up some investors, including me, and with some of their money and a lot of his wife’s, he bought this property, which had been a poverty-row studio with a lot of real estate. He got it at Depression prices. It originally had two soundstages. We’ve built another two, and there are two more under construction. We’re already making two pictures a month, and by this time next year we expect to be making one a week. We’re hot, and the whole town knows it. Being new, we’ve had to borrow a lot of stars for productions, which puts our costs up, but we’re building a stable, and since we stole Clete Barrow from Metro, it’s getting easier. What Clark Gable is to Metro, Clete Barrow is to us.”
    “Sounds wonderful,” Rick said.
    “It is. Now, enough about us, let’s talk about you.” Harris opened a manila file folder on his desk and consulted the contents. “You know what I found out about you that really surprised me?”
    Uh-oh, Rick thought.
    “You and I were born sixteen miles apart.”
    Rick relaxed. “Where were you born?”
    “In Greenville, Georgia, right near Delano, where you were born.”
    “Well, we left there when I was a kid and came out here, so, apart from a couple of visits to my grandparents there, my only claim to Delano is my birth certificate. What happened to your Southern accent?”
    “It comes back when I’ve had a couple of bourbons. You know who else is from Greenville?”
    “Nope.”
    “Y. Frank Freeman, who’s head of production over at Paramount. Frank and I grew up together, came out here together, but we were too close to work together, if you know what I mean.”
    “I can see how that could be tough in business,” Rick said. He had no idea what he was talking about.
    “How did you come to be born in Georgia?” Harris asked.
    “My old man is from Minnesota, but he was a barnstorming pilot in the old days, and he met my mother when he blew through Meriwether County. It was a whirlwind courtship, and I’m the result. My mother and I stayed on for a while in Delano while he barnstormed and saved his money, then he joined the Lafayette Escadrille during the first war and flew over there for two years. When he came back, he moved us out here. He was planning a solo flight across the Atlantic, but his friend Lindbergh beat him to it.”
    “Your folks still alive?”
    “My mother died when I was ten. Dad has an FBO over at Clover Field in Santa Monica.”
    “What’s an FBO?”
    “Fixed Base Operation, as opposed to barnstorming. He has two airplanes—a Beech Staggerwing and a Lockheed Electra—for air taxi work, and he gives flying lessons and maintains a few airplanes for private owners.”
    “What’s the FBO called?”
    “Barron Flying Service.”
    Harris made a note of it. “Maybe I can throw some business his way.”
    “He’d like that, and you’d like him.”
    “You fly, too, it says here.” Harris consulted his folder