We were in my bungalow at the Garden of Allah, pretty much the only place in L.A. that would accept coloreds — that is, outside of the dark neighborhoods — and for the moment I was confused. Here was this little German twerp wearing clothes that had been out of date in America when they were new, along with bottle-bottom green-tinted spectacles I suspected were pure window glass — you could see his pale eyes through them without distortion. Maybe five-foot-five-inches, probably with elevator shoes, von Blum was of a peculiarly translucent peach complexion, a squashed-in nose, his strawberry hair buzz-cut in a style that would not be popular in America until after the war, and on his left cheek a scar, about an inch-and-a-half long. Aside from that he looked like anyone else who was part European intellectual and, with a head too big for his body, part newt. “You know, Mr. von Blum, we American niggers don’t like to be referred to as such. One of those things. Try colored.”
“As in the French flag?” he asked.
Because Fritz so far had not so much as cracked the rumor of a smile — now the only clue was the sensation that little lights had been lit behind his eyes — I did not get it. “What?”
“Le tricolore?”
Abruptly I caught on and despite myself, let loose a laugh. Most people in Hollywood would not have called it the tri-color, because to do that one had to speak French, or be familiar with something other than the daily truths the American Communist Party was force-feeding the entire film community, including me. And of course it was a political joke. People did not make political jokes in Hollywood in 1939. Anything political was as serious as our films were not. “You’re a funny guy, Mr. von Blum.”
“Doctor, if you must.”
“You want me to call you doctor?”
“Preferable to mister, but if you don’t mind Fritz will do. I did not intend insult. For me, Negro, black, colored, Congolese, darkie, kaffir, African-American — they are all the same. In German, nigger is not a bad word, merely a description. Maybe that too has changed. I come from a world where there is only one race, of which I am not part, by official decree. So it is hardly possible I carry in me ill-feeling against another. I meant no harm, I assure you.”
“Well, just for the record, we don’t call it the National Association for the Advancement of Niggers. I know you’re new here.”
“I love California.”
“The climate?”
“As well, there are no brown shirts marching in the streets, and that I can work in film, movies as you say, for a number of years now not a possibility in Germany. Ubi bene, ibi patria.”
“Come again?”
“Where it is good, there is one’s country. Please tell me about this film. Mr. Shelupsky is paying me, so we should commence our labors. We will enjoy working together, no?”
“I don’t know that anyone enjoys working for EZ.”
“Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.”
“Over my head.”
“An idiom?”
“An idiom. Means: I don’t comprehend.”
“Not a problem, Larry. Soon you will be speaking Latin like Augustus. Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit. Perhaps even this will one day be pleasant to look back upon.”
III
What Mr. Shelupsky was paying Fritz was $100 a week, slave wages by Hollywood standards but more than respectable at a time when high-school teachers made that much in a month. Still, Fritz wasn’t a high-school teacher but a screenwriter with credits from Berlin to Vienna. Beyond the kind of ethical twinge that never lived long in Hollywood, I felt the strange form of guilt that inspires not one’s conscience but one’s fear: if EZ could do this to von Blum, he could do it to von Bellringer. It was something like the fear that would be attributed to thoughtful but passive Christians in Germany: Today they come for the Saturday people, tomorrow they will come for the Sunday people. Worse, after working with Fritz for only three hours, it was clear he was the pro and I the amateur. I had made eleven films for EZ at Racetrack, but they were hardly art, unless writing snappy dialogue for Buck Brown, our reigning western star, could be considered cowboy verse. Fritz had collaborated on The Blue Angel, had been a contract writer for UFA, working with F.W. Murnau, G.W. Pabst and another Fritz — Lang. He was an old drinking buddy of Billy Wilder, who many years later told me at a party that he had learned a basic lesson from Fritz: “An actor enters through a door, you’ve got nothing — an actor enters through a window, you’ve got a situation.” Fritz and Marlene Dietrich used to do cocaine together. On top of that, the man had written five novels (most Hollywood writers had never read that many), and in his spare time had been a columnist — a cultural columnist, no less, until the Nazis took over — for Die Welt, which in its pre-Hitler heyday made our L.A. papers look like the Ozark Bugle. So I was less concerned with my partner’s skills than with the bigger picture: In the interstice between Fritz’s leaving and my walking to Schwab’s, just across Crescent Heights Boulevard, for a pack of Luckies, I had a chance to reflect on the risk I was taking. EZ Shelupsky did not tolerate losses.
If my idea failed for a new direction at Racetrack, EZ would boot me so far off the lot I’d never again see so much as a hundred bucks a week. I was an educated Negro with expensive tastes in clothes, whiskey, residence and men. Where was I to go if EZ tossed me out? The white studios were unlikely to hire me. What was I supposed to do, work for a living? The WPA had just dumped three-quarters of a million men off government payrolls. As we used to say in the Party, “On a clear day in Hollywood you can see the class struggle.”
These trepidations occupied my mind as I let myself back into the bungalow to find a stranger sitting on my green leather sofa behind what had been a locked door.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Bellringer,” the stranger said.
Even seated he was clearly of good size, maybe six-foot-four-inches, with an athletic heft to his shoulders. His tan shoes were shined to perfection, and suitably large, as was the hat on the sofa next to him, a putty-colored fedora with a thin band of light-blue silk that picked up his eyes, which were kind, though whether by nature or intent I could not tell. His jaw was square, his mouth soft, almost permanently puckered, but his nose was aggressive, like a fighter’s. His hair was brushed straight back and shiny black. No Easterner, his deep even tan was years in the making. I tried to put all this together, including the charcoal suit, a soft fabric, maybe cashmere, fashionably single-breasted and top-stitched, that must have cost a mint. John Garfield meets Cary Grant meets John Wayne? I couldn’t peg him. Could he be a cop? Instantly I catalogued what was in my bungalow and felt the fear of the occasional pot-smoker, then instantly relaxed. In that suit, if this was a cop I was Mae West.
“Do I know you?”
“Allen Sloane.” Getting up off the couch, the man was bigger, broader. He seemed to fill the room. His hand reached around mine like a ratchet. “Please excuse my coming in this way. The nice people in the lobby let me in. Told them I was your cousin.”
“You’re white.”
“Some people don’t look at these things.”