“Bye-bye, Rick.”
Rick hung up and walked over to Eddie Harris’s office.
“Got a minute?”
“Sure. You want a drink?” Eddie got up and went to his bar.
“Yeah, some of that bourbon of yours.”
Eddie poured two drinks, handed Rick one and sat down.
“I just had a phone call from Jed Crawford at the extras union, followed closely by a call from Mickey Cohen.”
Eddie’s eyebrows went up. “Yeah?”
Rick gave him the substance and detail of each conversation.
“That’s exactly what I would have said, Rick,” Eddie said, “except maybe more profanely.”
“You think we’re going to have trouble?”
“Yeah, I do. Cohen made his demands and was rebuffed; he’s not the kind of guy who will take that lying down.”
“Should I start going around armed?”
“I don’t think you’ll get shot at, but I think it’s a good time to go on location in Wyoming. Cohen will wait until we need forty extras for an expensive scene, then he’ll make his move.”
“What will we do then?”
“I’ll brief the lawyers tomorrow and have them draw up a lawsuit. I won’t even make a phone call; the minute they’re in breach of contract I’ll have them served, and Cohen, too, and I’ll call the trades and the columnists personally. I think I can arrange for the FBI to have a chat with Cohen, too. We’ll have our extras the next day. Until then I think it would be a good idea to have a backup scene ready to shoot, if we should have extras problems.”
“Okay, Eddie.”
“You make movies, kiddo; I’ll do what I do.”
For a moment, Rick thought this might be a good time to mention the Communist Party card with Glenna’s name on it, but he didn’t.
16
After a day’s delay for weather, Rick loaded Glenna and the girls, their nurse, Rosie, and Sidney and Alice Brooks and Vance Calder onto the DC–3, along with another pilot, who would return the airplane to Santa Monica. Their flight was a little bumpier than the last one, but they landed midafternoon in Jackson, where Manny White and a small army bus were waiting for them.
“What’s with the bus?” Rick asked, while their considerable luggage was being unloaded.
“I bought it,” Manny said. “It cost nine hundred bucks. I bought six Jeeps, too, for two hundred apiece. And something else I’ll show you when we get to the ranch. I’m telling you, this war surplus thing is a location manager’s dream.”
When they arrived at the ranch, the place had been transformed; it looked more like a small army base than a working ranch, with neat rows of barracks and former military vehicles scattered about. Parked next to one of the barracks was a Caterpillar bulldozer, painted olive drab.
“What the hell is that for?” Rick asked, pointing at the machine.
“For keeping the ranch roads in good shape,” Manny explained. “We had some rain last week, and they needed work, if we’re going to truck equipment and cast around. It was twelve hundred dollars, and it had six hours of use on the meter. The bus has thirteen hundred miles on it.”
“What are we going to do with all this stuff when we’re done?”
“Sell it or move it back to L.A., if there’s something we can use there.”
“Okay, Manny, whatever you say, as long as we’re on budget.”
“We’re under budget.”
“Now tell me what the problems are.”
“Well, we’ve had an unavoidable delay on the phone lines, but the good news is we have our own Western Union service. Our cable address is BCREEK.”
“When do we get the phones?”
“At least a week, maybe ten days. I’ve been over and over this with them, and it really is the best they can do. They’re in the middle of installing new equipment at the central office. Our lines have all been run out here, and the phones installed; they just don’t work yet.”
“Send an explanatory wire to Eddie Harris,” Rick said.
Rick greeted Mac and Ellie Cooper, then moved his family into the ranch house. He gave Vance the same room he had used before, and soon they were comfortably settled.
At dinner, Mac, the normally terse rancher, was particularly ebullient. “Rick, this movie business is a hoot; it’s like hosting an invading army.”
“That’s a good description, Mac,” Rick replied. “I’ll ask our people to hold down the looting and pillaging.”
Mac laughed uproariously. “When you get a minute, I want to show you the house Ellie and I have designed for ourselves. We poured the footings the last couple of days.”
“It’s a pity you don’t need any piles driven,” Rick said. “Vance would be your man for that. His former career.”
“I can pour footings, too,” Vance said, “but I warn you, I get two bucks an hour.”
“Is that what Rick’s paying you?” Mac asked.
“I wish,” Rick said.
Sid Brooks stayed for three days, doing some polishing on the script, then returned to L.A. with the airplane, while his wife, Alice, stayed on.
“I’m grateful to you for letting Alice stay, Rick,” he said. “She’s extremely nervous about the HUAC hearings, and it’s better to have her up here and out of it. I’ll be back, if you want me, when I return from Washington.”
“I’d love to have you back, Sid,” Rick said.
“That’s good to know; the writer isn’t usually welcome on the set.”
“That’s because you’re all such royal pains in the ass,” Rick explained. “Where’s Basil?” he asked. The director of photography was not at dinner.
“He lit out of here late this afternoon,” Mac said. “Something about taking pictures of the thunderstorms over the mountains.”
They were having drinks after dinner when Basil turned up, dirty but happy. “I got some gorgeous stuff,” he said to Rick. “We had a sunset with thunder and lightning, and I got a lovely shot of Vance’s double riding in from the direction of the mountains and watering his horse in the river.”
“I have a double?” Vance asked.
“Of course,” Basil replied. “He’ll stand in for you when we’re lighting; we don’t want you sweating through your makeup under those hot lights. You’ve got a stunt double, too.”
“I don’t wear makeup, and I don’t think there are any stunts in the script I can’t handle myself,” Vance said.
“Vance,” Rick said, “we can’t afford to have you hurt while we’re making this picture. Also, our insurers don’t like it when you start falling off horses and jumping off cliffs.”
Vance shrugged.
After dinner, Manny White showed up with a telegram for Rick.
GOOD LUCK ON YOUR SHOOT. PHONE ME WHEN YOU CAN. WE NEED TO TALK. EDDIE.
17
Leo Goldman hit the ground running. Before sunset on his first day in Jackson Hole he had selected the smaller of two Airstream trailers, earmarking the larger one for Rick Barron. He had unpacked his clothes and his briefcase and moved into the trailer, which had a water and septic hookup and a gas bottle outside to run the stove. He had wandered the barracks, introducing himself to and ingratiating himself with everybody he ran into, cast and crew. By the time Rick arrived on location, everybody was accustomed to reporting to Leo.
Leo had anticipated every problem and had his fingers on every button. He had mapped the way to every location, and, if necessary, he could unhook his trailer from the utilities, hitch it to his Jeep and tow it anywhere the cameras went. Leo had learned the ropes, beginning in the mail room, during six years at Metro Goldwyn Mayer, the grandest of the studios, and he had absorbed both its organizational brilliance and its many excesses. He knew how to get a movie made, as long as he didn’t have to write, photograph or direct it, and he knew how to use the machinery of a studio to his own advantage.