IX
“Ginger ...” Agnes began lightly, “when did you first realize that Sally Hastings was perhaps ... well, a bitcommon?”
“Agnes, it wasBitsywho knew it first,” exclaimed Ginger Horton with perfect candor.
“The dog?” asked Grand.
“Whatcanyou mean by that, Ginger?” Agnes wanted to know, dubious herself, yet casting her nephew a quick and cutting look to show where her allegiance lay even so.
“She didn’t really love our Bitsy, Agnes,” said Gingernarrowly, “... and Bitsycouldn’thave cared less I assure you!”
*****
Grand’s work in cinema management and film editing had apparently not diminished his strong feeling for dramatic theatre, so that with the cultural ascension of television drama, he was all the more keen to get, as he put it, “back on the boards.”
“There’s no biz like show biz,” he liked to quip to the other troupers, “... oh, we have our ups and downs, heck yes—but I wouldn’t trade one whiff of grease paint on opening night, by gosh, for all the darn châteaux of France!”
Thus did he enter the field, not nominally of course, but in effect. There was at this time a rather successful drama hour on Sunday evening. “Our Town Playhouse” it was called and was devoted to serious fare; at least the viewers were told it was serious fare—truth to tell though, it was by any civilized standard, the crassest sort of sham, cant, and weak-kneed pornography imaginable. Grand set about to interfere with it.
His arrival was fairly propitious; the production in dress rehearsal at that moment was calledAll Our Yesterdays, a drama which, according to the sponsors,was to be, concerning certain emotions and viewpoints, more or lessdefinitive.
Beginning with this production, Grand made it a point that he or his representative contact the hero or heroine of each play, while it was still in rehearsal, and reach some sort of understanding about final production. A million was generally sufficient.
The arrangement between Grand and the leading actress ofAll Our Yesterdayswas simplicity itself. During final production, that is to say, the Sunday-night nation-wide presentation of the play, and at the top of her big end-of-the-second-act scene, the heroine suddenly turned away from the other players, approached the camera, and addressed the viewers, point-blank:
“Anyone who would allow this slobbering pomp and drivel in his home has less sense and taste than the beasts of the field!”
Then she pranced off the set.
Half the remaining actors turned to stare after her in amazement, while the others sat frozen in their last attitudes. There was a frenzy of muffled whispers coming from off-stage:
“What the hell!”
“Cue! Cue!”
“Fade it! For Christ’s sake, fade it!”
Then there was a bit of commotion before it wasactually faded—one of the supporting actors had been trained in Russian methods and thought he could improvise the rest of the play, about twelve minutes, so there were one or two odd lines spoken by him in this attempt before the scene jerkily faded to blackness. A short documentary film about tarpon fishing was put on to fill out the balance of the hour.
The only explanation was that the actress had been struck by insanity; but even so, front-office temper ran high.
On the following Sunday, the production,Tomorrow’s Light, took an unexpected turn while the leading actor, in the role of an amiable old physician, was in the midst of an emergency operation. His brow was knit in concern and high purpose, as the young nurse opposite watched his face intently for a sign.
“Dr. Lawrence,” she said, “do you ... do you think you can save Dr. Chester’s son?”
Without relaxing his features, the doctor smiled, a bit grimly it seemed, before raising his serious brown eyes to her own.
“I’m afraid it isn’t a question of savinghim, Miss Nurse—I only wish it were—it’s a question of saving my dinner.”
The nurse evidenced a questioning look, just concealing the panic beneath it (for he had missed hiscue!), so, laying aside his instruments, he continued, as in explanation:
“Yes, you see, I really think if I speak one more line of this drivel I’ll lose my dinner.” He nodded gravely at the table, “... vomit right into that incision I’ve made.” He slowly drew off his rubber gloves, regarding the astonished nurse as he did so with mild indignation.
“Perhaps that would beyouridea of a pleasant Sunday evening, Miss Nurse,” he said reproachfully. “Sorry, itisn’tmine!” And he turned and strode off the set.
The third time something like this happened, the producer and sponsor were very nearly out of their minds. Of course they suspected that a rival company was tampering with the productions, bribing the actors and so on. Security measures were taken. Directors were fired right and left. Rehearsals were held behind locked doors, and there was an attempt to keep the actors under constant surveillance, but ... Grand always seemed to get in there somehow, with the old convincer.
In the aftermath, some of the actors paid the breach-of-contract fine of twenty-five or fifty thousand; others pleaded temporary insanity; still others gained a lot of publicity by taking a philosophic stand, saying that it was true, they had been overcomewith nausea at that drivel, and that they themselves were too sensitive and serious for it, had too much integrity, moral fiber, etc. With a million behind them, none seemed to lack adequate defense arrangements. Those who were kicked out of their union usually became producers.
Meanwhile the show went on. People started tuning in to see what new outrage would happen; it even appeared to have a sort of elusive comic appeal. It became the talk of the industry; the rating soared—but somehow it looked bad. Finally the producer and the sponsor of the show were put on the carpet before Mr. Harlan, the tall and distinguished head of the network.
“Listen,” he said to the sponsor as he paced the office, “we want your business, Mr. Levet, don’t get me wrong—but if you guys can’t control that show of yours ... well, I meangoddamnit, what’s going on over there?” He turned to the producer now, who was a personal friend of his: “For Christ’s sake, Max, can’t you get together ashow, and put it on the way it’s supposed to be without any somersaults? ... isthatso hard to do?... I meanwecan’t have this sort of thing going on,youknow that, Max, wesimply cannot have....”
“Listen, Al,” said the producer, a short fat man who rose up and down on his toes, smiling, as hespoke, “we got the highest Trendex in the books right now.”
“Max, goddamn it, I’d have the FCC down on my neck in another week—youcan’t schedule one kind of hour—have something go haywire every time and fill out with something else.... I mean what thehellyou got over there ...twoshows orone, for Christ’s sake!”
“We got the top Trendex in the biz, Al.”
“There are some goddamn things that are against the law, Max, and that kind of stuff you had going out last week, that ‘I pity the moron whose life is so empty he would look at this,’ and that kind of crapcannot go out over the air! Don’t you understand that? It’s notme, Max, you know that. I wouldn’t give a goddamn if you had a ... amuleup there throwing it to some hot broad, I only wish we could, for Christ’s sake—but thereis a question of lawful procedureand....”
“How about if it’s ‘healthy satire of the media,’ Al?”
“... and—what?”
“We got the top of the book, Al.”
“Wait a minute....”
“We got it, Al.”
“Wait a minute, Max, I’m thinking, for Christ’s sake ... ‘healthy satire of the media’....It’san angle,it’san angle. Jones might buy it ... Jones atthe FCC ... if I could get to him first ... he’s stupid enough to buy it. Okay, it’s an angle, Max—that’s all I can say right now ... it’s an angle.”
The critics for the most part, after lambasting the first couple of shows as “terrific boners,” sat tight for a while, just to see which way the wind was going to blow, so to speak—then, with the rating at sky-rocket level, they began to suggest that the show might be worth a peek.
“An off-beat sleeper,” one of them said, “don’t miss it.”
“Newcomedy,” said a second, “a sophisticated take-off on the sentimental.”
And another: “Here’s humor at its highest.”
Almost all agreed in the end that it was healthy satire.
After interfering with six or seven shows, Grand grew restive.
“I’m pulling out,” he said to himself, “it may have been good money after bad all along.”
It was just as well perhaps, because at the point when the producer and sponsor became aware of what was responsible for their vast audience, they began consciously trying to choose and shape each drama towards that moment of anomaly which had made the show famous. And somehow this seemed to spoil it. At any rate it very soon degenerated—backto the same old tripe. And of course it was soon back to the old rating as well—which, as in the early, pre-Grand days, was all right, but nothing, really, to be too proud of.