Continuing adventures in the gutter of Hollywood’s Golden Era, Episode 18
∞
Hollywood, 1956:
You have to take inspiration from wherever you can get it, and right now Sergei is getting it from Jude Kauffman. As it turns out, there isn’t any need to worry about Mister Kauffman, his boss at Harvey’s Wash-a-teria. The boss says: I got a broad view of things, Sergei. The boss says: I’m only happy if Missus Kauffman is happy, Sergei. The boss says, if you want to get on in laundromat, and you look like you want to get on, Sergei, then you got to get on with the people in laundromat. So Jude rents a small apartment on Sweetzer, right next door to Harvey’s, above the pharmacy, and when Jude wants it, Sergei gets right on with it. He admits to himself this isn’t how he imagined things turning out. The Kauffmans are a whole lot stranger than he imagined, and laundromat won’t ever be the same again. But life’s not so bad.
Jude bought him his very own Underwood Golden-Touch Portable when the pharmacist’s son got back from Tangier, all skinny and pale and wanting his typewriter back from Sergei to get down some poems he’d written on the road about Arab boys and green-eyed men and opium. Jude isn’t very much interested in hearing what Sergei’s written, but she encourages him in other ways, by checking his progress, by calling him ‘my little Russian writer-boy’. Right now she’s making him type naked in the apartment while she watches. He isn’t getting much done. This isn’t how Sergei writes.
Tired of the slow tap… tap… tap… of his one-fingered Golden-Touch protest, Jude picks up a newspaper. The naked writer idea isn’t really working for either of them. To make clear her new-found disinterest in the game, she reads out an article on the front page about the Russian Secret Service. “Do you work for the K.G.B. my love? I bet you do. My little Russian spy.”
“I’m Estonian.” Tap… tap…
Sergei is thinking. Get inspiration where you can.
Down at Poverty Row, Dorothy is polishing the door handles with a pink cloth when Sergei arrives. He doesn’t have an appointment but he’s got a new script under his arm. Dorothy is comfortingly stern. She makes him wait while disapprovingly disappearing into the scruffy office of producer Mal K. Chive. Five minutes later, Sergei is in with Mal. He’s run the pitch through with Jude several times, and he is not going to be run out of the producer’s office for want of words. This is the one, he can feel it. Timely, racey, action packed. Prepare yourself, Mal K. Chive. Sergei Matrossov has arrived.
“It’s timely, it’s racey, it’s action packed!” says Sergei, slipstreaming through the pitch with ease and enthusiasm. Mal is nodding encouragingly.
“Washington, DC, modern day. A young heroine named -”
Mal spits his cigar out demonstratively. “Wait wait wait. Let’s rewind a bit, kid. Did you say K.G.B. back there? As in Russian? As in secret? As in service?”
“Well, um -”
“As in communist?” (Mal makes an ill-co-ordinated sign of the cross and looks to heaven after he says the word communist).
“I did say that, yes, but -”
Mal silences him with a wave of his hand and comes round the desk to manfully ease the confused screenwriter to the door. He moves him into the main reception where Dorothy appears to be staring, ashen-faced, at the telephone. Mal keeps shepherding Sergei toward the stairs and the exit. All the time he is muttering under his breath:
“Christ almighty kid you’re gonna bring Senator McCarthy himself round here any time soon you keep talking like that. What the hell are you thinking? You even heard of House goddam Un-American? Best you go home and burn that damn script and none of us will ever mention it again, see? I don’t want to be the worst goddam producer in Hollywood and blacklisted. Be a good citizen and keep that commie bullshit outta my office, you hear me kid? Christ!”
He lets Sergei handle the stairs alone, in stunned silence, but as Sergei reaches the door at the bottom, Mal calls down from the top as loud as can be, “Now it’s nice to see ya, and thanks for popping by, but we’ll not be needing any pastries this week, Mister Baker. We’ll call you when we run short!”
For the full index of B-Movie stories, click here
