Текст книги "Little Golden America"

Автор книги: Евгений Петров

Соавторы: Илья Ильф
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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

It was already dark when we walked back to Williams's house. Behind us walked Mr. Adams, arm in arm with Becky; and sighing, he muttered:

"No, no, gentlemen, it would be foolish to think that there are few remarkable people in America."

We passed the evening at the home of a certain Carmel architect where the local intellectuals gathered to spend an evening.

In a quite large Spanish hall, with wooden beams under the ceiling, a lot of people assembled. The host, as little as a doll, shaven, with long artistic hair, was respectfully offering to those who had gathered cooling drinks with syrups. His daughter walked up to the grand piano with a look of determination and sonorously played several pieces. Everyone listened with extreme attention. It reminded us of the dumb scene in Inspector-General. The guests stopped in the same positions as when the music found them, some with glass raised to the lips, others with their body bent in course of conversation, still others holding a plate on which lay the skimpy pastry. Only one little fellow, whose shoulders were equal in breadth to his height, did not evince sufficient delicacy. He was telling something out loud. His ears, overgrown with flesh and flattened, betrayed the boxer in him. Mr. Adams led us to him. He was presented to us as a former champion of the world, a Mr. Sharkey, a wealthy man (three million dollars), who had forsaken his affairs and was resting at Carmel among the radical intellectuals, with whom he keenly sympathized.

Mr. Sharkey joyfully stared out of his palish little eyes, and at once let us feel his muscles. All the guests had already felt Mr. Sharkey's muscles, but still he could not rest and was constantly bending his short and mighty arms.

"Let's have a drink," Mr. Sharkey said suddenly.

With these words he led away with him about fifteen people who were the guests of the architect, including his musical daughter and us, with the Williamses and the Adamses.

The champion of the world had a fine little house, the windows of which directly faced the Pacific Ocean, which rolled its moon-illuminated waves right up to it. Sharkey opened a closet from which appeared rums, gins, various sorts of whisky, and even a Greek mastika, that is, everything that was the very strongest ever prepared by the world's alcohol distilleries.

Having made some hellish mixtures and distributed the glasses among the guests, Mr. Sharkey opened his pale eyes wider than ever and began to lie at a great rate.

In the first place, he declared that he was convinced of the innocence of Bruno Hauptmann, the murderer of Lindbergh's baby, and he could even appear as a witness in this case, if he were not afraid to expose his connection with bootleggers.

Then he told us how once, while in command of a three-masted schooner, he got down to the South Pole, how the schooner was caught by ice and how the crew wanted to kill him, but he alone suppressed the mutiny of the whole crew and safely steered the ship into warm latitudes, This was too colourful, too corsairlike a tale, to refrain from having one more drink to celebrate the occasion.

Then Mr. Sharkey informed us that he admired radical intellectuals, and that in America it was necessary to make a revolution as soon as possible. Therefore, he led us into his bedroom and showed us three daughters sleeping in their three little beds. Here he told us quite romantic tale of how his wife had run away from him with his own butler, how he ran after her, caught up with her and, revolver in hand, compelled the treacherous butler to marry the woman he had seduced. He taught his little girls to march, regarding that as proper upbringing.

In short, Mr. Sharkey did not let his guests be bored for a single minute.

He led his guests into the gymnasium, took off his shirt, and naked to the waist, began to raise himself on the parallel bars. In conclusion, he put on his boxing gloves and challenged any and all comers to a friendly bout.

In Mr. Adams's eyes lit that little spark, that glint which we had seen before, when he had sat down in the electric chair and had sung spiritual hymns with the Molokans. That man had to try everything.

Someone put leather gloves on his hands, and, with a boyish whoop, he flung himself headlong at the champion of the world. The retired champion began to hop all around Mr. Adams, shielding himself in make-believe fear. Both fat men hopped around and whooped hysterically with laughter. In the end Mr. Adams fell on a bench and began to rub his slightly injured shoulder. Then the guests drank another glass and went home.

In the morning, after bidding farewell to Lincoln Steffens, we departed for Hollywood.

Half a year later we received a letter from our friend, Mr. Adams. The envelope was full of newspaper clippings, and we learned much news about Carmel. Rhys Williams finished his book about the Soviet Union but now, with the publication of the project of the new constitution, he again resumed his work in order to enter into the book the necessary additions.

The kind Mr. Sharkey, as naive as a child, captain of a schooner and bootlegger, champion of the world, Sharkey proved to be a police agent connected with a fascistic ex-soldier's organization, and besides that—an old provocateur who at one time had betrayed Big Bill Haywood, the famous leader of the Industrial Workers of the World. And he was not at all Mr. Sharkey. He was also Captain Boxy, alias Berge, alias Forester. At the time of the war, when he betrayed Bill Haywood in Chicago, he was the famous Chicago racketeer who bore the name "Captain X."

And a month later we read in the papers that in the city of Carmel, the state of California, in the seventieth year of his life, the writer Lincoln Steffens died.

And so it was not fated for him to die in the land of socialism.

He died from paralysis of the heart—at his typewriter. On the paper which stuck out of it was an unfinished article about the Spanish events. The last words of that article were the following:

"We Americans must remember that we shall have to wage a similar battle against the Fascists."

35 Four Standard Types

IT IS TERRIBLE to say it right out, but Hollywood, whose fame has gone around the world hundreds of times, Hollywood, about which in the last twenty years more books have been written than in two hundred years about Shakespeare, the great Hollywood, on whose firmament stars rise and fall a million times faster than astronomers have told us about it, Hollywood, of whom dream hundreds of thousands of girls in all ends of the terrestrial globe—this Hollywood is dull, hellishly dull. And if a yawn continues several seconds in any small American town, here it stretches into a full minute. And there are times when one simply cannot muster enough strength to close his mouth. There you sit, your eyes squinting with boredom, your mouth wide open, like a trapped lion.

Hollywood is a correctly planned, excellently paved, and finely lighted J city in which live three hundred thousand people. All these three hundred thousand either work in the motion-picture industry or serve those who work in it. The entire city is occupied with one business—it makes pictures, or, as they say in Hollywood, it "shoots" pictures. The noise of the photographing apparatus is much like the noise of a machine-gun, and it is from that resemblance the term "shoot" is derived. All this honourable community "shoots" in one year nearly eight hundred pictures—like all other figures in America, a grandiose figure.

The first stroll through Hollywood streets was sheer torment for us. Strange! Most of the passers-by seemed familiar. We could not rid ourselves of the thought that we had met these people somewhere, that we were acquainted with them, and that we knew something about them. But where we had seen them and what we knew about them—you could kill us, but we could not remember!

"Look, look!" we cried to each other. " Why, this one here, with the light hat and fashionable narrow ribbon, surely we have seen him somewhere. It is impossible to forget those impudent eyes! Where, then, did we meet him ?"

But after the man with the impudent eyes came hundreds of others– old men who looked like composers but who whistled falsely the fashionable song " Cheek to Cheek" from the picture Top Hat, and old men who looked like bankers but who dressed like small bank depositors, and young men in the most ordinary leather jackets who reminded us of gangsters. Only the girls were, on the whole, all of one face and that face tormented us, was unpleasantly familiar, just as equally familiar were the physiognomies of young men with gangster features and of respectable old men who were either bankers or composers or God only knows what. Finally, it became unendurable. It was only when we realized that we had seen all these people in motion pictures, that all of them were actors or dumb performers, of the second– and third-rate people. They were not so famous that we could remember their faces and names, but at the same time in our memory was embedded a dim recollection of them.

Where had we seen this handsome fellow with the Mexican sideburns? It may have been in a picture called Be Mine Alone, or maybe it was in the musical Meet Me at Midnight.

Drug-stores in Hollywood are sumptuous. Nickel-plated and glassed, provided with a well-trained personnel in white jackets with chevrons, these establishments have attained such operating perfection that they remind one rather of the machine rooms of electrical stations. This impression was aided by the hissing of taps, the light thunder of little motors that whip malted milk, and the metallic taste of sandwiches.

Over the city shone a strong Christmas sun. Solid black shadows fell on the asphalt ground. There is something unpleasant about the climate of Hollywood. There is nothing sunny in the sun. It resembles a hot moon, although it warms very strongly. In the air one senses constantly a kind of sickish dryness, while the odour of worked-over petrol which permeates the city is unendurable.

We passed under the street lamps on which were placed artificial cardboard firs with electric candles. This decoration was made by the merchants on the occasion of the approaching Christmas. Christmas in America is a great and bright holiday of commerce which has no connection whatever-with religion. It is a grandiose clearance sale of all the old merchandise, so that, with all our lack of love for God, we cannot indict Him for participating in this unsavoury business.

But before telling about God, about trade, and Hollywood life, we must say a few things, first of all, about American motion pictures. It is an important and interesting subject.

We, Moscow theatre patrons, are somewhat spoiled by American cinematography. That which reaches Moscow and is shown to a small number of cinema specialists at nightly previews is almost always the best that Hollywood creates.

Moscow has seen the pictures of Lewis Milestone, King Vidor, Reuben Mamoulian, and John Ford: cinematographic Moscow has seen the best pictures of the best directors. Moscow theatre audiences have admired the little pigs, the penguins, and the Disney mouse, and were delighted with the masterpieces of Chaplin. These directors, with the exception of Chaplin who releases one picture in several years, make five, eight, ten pictures a year. But, as we already know, Americans "shoot" eight hundred pictures a year. Of course, we naturally suspected that the remaining seven hundred and ninety pictures were not anything to write home about. But we had seen only good pictures and we had only heard about the bad ones. All the more depressing, therefore, was the impression American cinematography left with us after we became acquainted with it in its own native land.

In New York we went to motion-picture theatres almost every evening. On the way to California, stopping in large and small towns, we visited motion-picture theatres not almost every evening, but simply every evening. Usually two feature pictures are shown during one performance, in addition to a short comedy, an animated cartoon, and several newsreels, all taken by different motion-picture companies. Thus, we must have seen more than a hundred feature pictures alone.

All these pictures are below the level of human dignity. It seems to us that it is degrading for a human being to look at such pictures. They are designed for birds' brains, for slow-thinking human cattle of camel-like lack of fastidiousness. A camel can do without water for a week, and a certain kind of American motion-picture spectator can look at senseless pictures for twenty years on end. Every evening we would enter a motion-picture theatre with a vestige of hope and departed with the feeling of having eaten in all its details the famous lunch No. 2, of which we were duly sick and tired. However, the spectators, the most ordinary American garage mechanics, salesgirls, storekeepers, liked these pictures. At first we wondered about it, later we were worried about it, and then we began to understand how it all came about.

Those eight or ten pictures which are nevertheless good we never managed to see even once throughout the three months of visiting motion-picture theatres. Good pictures were shown to us in Hollywood by the directors themselves, who selected several out of hundreds of films made in the course of several years.

There are four main standard types of pictures: musical comedy, historical drama, a film of bandit life, and a film featuring some famous opera singer. Each of these standard types has only one plot, which is varied endlessly and tiringly. American spectators see one and the same thing year in and year out. They have become so accustomed to it that if they were presented with a picture that had a new plot they would undoubtedly burst into tears, like the child from whom his favourite toy had been taken, though it was old and broken.

The plot of a musical comedy consists of a poor but beautiful girl becoming the star of a variety show. On the way she falls in love with the director of the variety show (a handsome young man). The plot is, after all, not so simple. The point is that the director is in the clutches of another dancer, also beautiful and long-legged, but with a disgusting character. Thus, a measure of drama or conflict is indicated. There are, of course, also other variants. Instead of the poor girl, a poor young man, a kind of ugly duckling, becomes a star. He performs with his comrades; together all of them constitute a jazz band. It happens also that the stars are at the same time both the young girl and the young man. Naturally, they love each other. However, their love takes only one-fifth of the picture, the other four-fifths being devoted to the variety show. In the course of an hour and a half bare legs flash by and the gay theme of the song which is compulsory on such occasions is heard. When a lot of money is spent on a film, then the best legs in the world are shown to the spectators. When the film is cheaper, the legs are a little worse, not so long and not so beautiful. That has nothing to do with the plot. In either case, the plot has not yet startled anyone with the sheer complexity of its inventiveness. The plot is unravelled like a tap-dance number. The public dotes on tap-dance plays. They are box-office successes.

In historical drama the events are of various kinds, depending on who is the principal character of the drama. They are divided into two categories : ancient Greek or Roman, and the more contemporary Musketeer plays. When the cock-o'-the-walk in the picture is Julius Caesar or, let us say, Numa Pompilius, then Greek or Roman fibre-made accoutrements are brought out into the light of day, and the young men whom we saw on the streets of Hollywood "hack" each other frantically with wooden poleaxes and swords. When the main acting person is Catherine the Second or Marie Antoinette or some long lanky Englishwoman of royal blood, then that is already in the Musketeer category—that is, there will be waving of hats and sweeping of floors with ostrich feathers, countless duelling without any particular warrant for it, pursuits and hunts on fat-rumped little racing horses, also a grandiose platonic and boresome connection between the young impoverished nobleman and the empress or queen, accompanied with strictly timed kisses (the Hollywood censorship permits only kisses of a definite film length). The plot of such a play is whatever God sends. If God sends nothing, the play goes on without a plot. The plot is not important. Important are duels, executions, feasts, and battles.

In films of bandit life, the heroes from beginning to end shoot out of automatic pistols and machine-guns, portable and stationary. There are frequent pursuits in automobiles. The machines never fail to swerve off the road as they turn a corner, which constitutes the chief artistic detail of the picture. Such films require a large cast. Scores of actors are eliminated from the list of characters at the very beginning of the play. They are killed by other dramatic personage. It is said that these films resemble life itself very much except for one thing: real gangsters who raid banks and abduct the children of millionaires have never even ventured to dream of profits as large as those garnered from films of their life.

Finally, there is the film with the participation of an operatic singer. Here, you must understand there is no reason whatever for embarrassment. Who would ever think of expecting an operatic singer to act like the elder Coquelin! The singer does not know how to act and does not wish to act. He wants to sing. And that legitimate desire must be satisfied, especially since the spectators themselves want the famous singer to sing as much as possible. Thus, here, too, the plot is of no moment. Usually, a story somewhat like this is unfolded: A poor young man (you'd want him, of course, to be handsome, but here you have to lake into consideration the appearance of the singer—a bit of a paunch, pouches under the eyes, short legs) is studying singing but has no success. Why he has no success it is impossible to understand, because at the beginning of his training he sings just as remarkably as at the zenith of his fame. But then appears a young and beautiful Maecenas who brings the singer out. At once he lands in Metropolitan Opera, and has a colossal, incredible, dizzying, miraculous, and supernatural success, the kind of success which even Chaliapin did not dream of at the zenith of his career. There is only one variant of this: the success may be attained not by a man singer but by a woman singer, but then, in accordance with Shakespeare's laws of the drama, the role of the Maecenas is played no longer by a woman but by a wealthy and attractive man. Both variations are accepted by the public with equal joy. But the main thing is popular arias, which are rendered as the action proceeds. It is best that the arias be from Pagliacci, La Boheme, or Rigoletto. That's what the public likes.

In all the four standard types unity of style is preserved. No matter what the Hollywood actress plays, whether it is the sweetheart of a Crusader, the bride of a Huguenot or a contemporary American girl, her coiffure is always in the very latest fashion. Horizontal permanency lies equally on I the Huguenot and on the medieval head. In that Hollywood refuses to compromise. One may yield to history on any other point—if you insist on poleaxes or halberds or anything else like that, you shall have your poleaxes or halberds and the like. But curls must be arranged as called for in the current year. That's what the public likes. The Middle Ages are numerous, so it does not pay to change the coiffure for their sake. But, of course, if it should change during the current year, then it will be necessary to rearrange the hair according to the fashion of that year.

All the historical dramas portray against a variety of backgrounds one and the same frigid American love. At times against the background of conquering the Holy Sepulchre, at times against the background of the burning of Rome by Nero, at times against the background of cardboard Scandinavian castles.

Besides the main standard types, there are several secondary ones, as, for example, pictures with child prodigies. That is all a matter of chance. It is necessary to find a talented child. At the moment there happens to be such a gifted child, the little girl Shirley Temple. There is only one children's plot—the child brings happiness to the grown-ups. So, the five– or six-year-old girl is forced to be photographed in several pictures in order to bring happiness to her parents, who with their daughter earn as much as if she were an oil well that suddenly began to spout.

Besides, occasionally there are pictures of working-class life. In that case, it is some utterly vile Fascist concoction. In a little town of the South, where the trees rustle idyllically and the street lamps shine peacefully, we saw a picture called Riffraff. In it was portrayed a worker who went against his boss and the boss's company union. The impudent worker became a tramp. He fell quite low. Later he returned to his boss, a giddy and prodigal son. He confessed the errors of his ways and was accepted with open arms.

The cultured American does not recognize his native motion pictures as an art. More than that, he will tell you that the American motion picture is a moral epidemic, no less harmful and dangerous than scarlet fever or the plague. All the superior attainments of American culture– schools, universities, literature, the theatre—all of it has been hurt and stunned by motion pictures. If you believe him, one may be a fine and clever boy, study well in school, pass through his university course brilliantly—yet after several years of regular attendance at motion-picture theatres turn into an idiot.

We felt all of this even on the road to Hollywood.

When we returned to our hotel after our first stroll (we stayed by strange coincidence on Hollywood Boulevard, in Hotel Hollywood, located in the city of Hollywood—one surely could not think of anything more Hollywoody), we stopped at the window of a pet shop. Here, in a litter of finely cut newspaper, ugly and kindly puppies were playing. They rushed at the window, barked, embraced each other, and in general gave themselves over to their little canine joys. In another show window, in a cage, sat a tiny monkey with an even tinier newborn monkey in its arms. The mother was slightly bigger than a cat, while the baby was quite microscopic, pink, naked, evoking pity. Mamma tenderly licked her child, fed it, stroked its head, did not take her eyes off it. She paid no attention whatever to the spectators. Here was the epitome of motherhood.

Nevertheless, never in our life had we seen a more vicious caricature of mother love. All of it very much resembled what people do, but at the same time, for some inexplicable reason it was so unpleasant that the large crowd which gathered at the show window did not utter a single word. On the faces of all were peculiar, embarrassed smiles.

It was an effort for us to turn away from the monkey show window.

Then we acknowledged to each other that, looking at the monkey with the child, we thought of the American motion picture. It looks like real art even as monkey love for its offspring looks like human love for children. It looks like it, yet at the same time it is unendurably disgusting.

36 The God of Potboilers

THE WINDOWS of our room looked out on Hollywood Boulevard. At one corner of the street crossing was a drug-store, on another was a bank. Beyond the bank loomed a new building. The entire facade of that building was covered with the electric letters: "Max Factor."

Many years ago Max Factor, a young man in torn trousers, came from the south of Russia to America. Without much ado, Max Factor began to make theatrical make-up and perfumery. Before long, all the forty-eight united states noticed that the production of Mr. Factor began to conquer the market. Money flowed to Max from all sides. At present Max is incredibly wealthy and likes to regale his visitors with the enchanting story of his life. And if the visitor happens to be from Yelizavetgrad, Nikolayev, or Kherson, then he may be sure that the happy host will make him take as a souvenir a large jar of face cream or a set of artificial eyelashes which have the best recommendation of Marlene Dietrich or Marion Davies. Not long ago Factor celebrated some kind of anniversary —it was either in honour of the twenty years of his fruitful activity on the make-up front or an annual celebration of his successful landing on American soil. The invitations for that celebration were the most complex and the richest constructions of vellum paper, splendid and shining cardboard, high-grade cellophane, and steel springs. They were thick albums, the pretentious text of which announced to the addressee that they have the honour to invite him and that he has the honour to be invited. But at the fast moment the hospitable Factor was evidently doubtful whether he would be understood. Therefore, on the cover he printed in large letters,: "Invitation."

Under our windows for eighteen hours out of the twenty-four, young newsboys were shouting. One in particular was distinguished, a fellow with a loud and penetrating voice. Never in the world can anyone with such a voice go astray. It undoubtedly belonged to a coming millionaire. Once we even put our heads out the window to take a look at this young marvel. The young marvel was hatless. He wore a Hollywood leather jacket and "everlasting" canvas trousers. Selling the papers, the marvel bellowed so that one preferred to die rather than listen to these terrible sounds. We wished he would earn his million as soon as possible and calm down. But two days later this respected boy and all of his companions, newsvendors, roared louder than ever. Some famous cinema actress was found dead in her automobile, and her mysterious death was a sensation for four or five days. The Hearst Examiner devoted itself solely to that.

However, more frightful than the desperate vendors of newspapers proved to be a timid woman who stood opposite our windows. She wore the uniform of the Salvation Army, a black hood with wide ribbons tied under her chin, and a black satin, loose overall. Early in the morning she placed at the corner a wooden tripod stand from which on an iron chain hung a bucket covered with a grate, and she began to ring a bell. She was collecting for a Christmas tree for the poor. The contributions had to be dropped into this home-made bucket. But the heartless Holly-woodites, preoccupied with their potboiling, paid no attention to thill woman in the hood and did not donate any money. She did not annoy the passers-by, did not ask them to contribute their widows' mites, did not sing religious songs. She acted with more persuasive means—she rang her little bell, slowly, calmly, uninterruptedly, endlessly. She had I short intermission only in order to go off and eat. At times we wanted to run out of the hotel and give this person all our savings if it would only terminate the ringing of the bell, which was driving us crazy. But we were deterred only by the thought that the woman, overjoyed with the success of collecting donations, would then come to our corner earlier than ever and depart later than before.

Of all the advertising methods we had seen, of all the ways of pressing things upon people, of reminding them, and of persuading them, this little bell seemed to us the most convincing and the surest of all. And really: why beg, argue, or persuade ? None of it is necessary. All that it is necessary to do is to ring the bell—ring for a day, for a week, for a year– ring until the burgess, debilitated, tormented by the ringing, reduced to hallucinations, yields his last remaining ten cents.

A few days later we felt easier. We began to examine the motion-picture studios. What we call cinema factory bears in America the name of studio. We would leave the hotel early and return late. We almost did not hear the ringing of the bell. But in its place a new problem appeared. Each time we returned and took the key at the counter, the clerk of the hotel would hand to us our mail for the day as well as messages of those who had telephoned us. And each time among the familiar names of friends and acquaintances appeared the following notation: "Captain Ivanov telephoned Mr. Ilf and Mr. Petrov." This continued for several days. Captain Ivanov kept telephoning right along. Later his messages became more detailed. "Captain Ivanov telephoned and left the message that he would like to see you." " Captain Ivanov telephoned again and asked that you set the day and hour when you can meet him." In a word, the captain displayed considerable activity. We were completely at a loss to guess who this Captain Ivanov might be and what he wanted of us. We ourselves became interested in him, asked the motion-picture people about him, but no one could explain anything sensible to us. The last note announced that the tireless captain had telephoned again, that he was very sorry that he could not find us in and that he hoped that we would telephone him when we had the time. From the attached address, it was evident that Ivanov lived in the same hotel with us. Then we sensed at once that we could not avoid meeting the energetic captain.

For several days we toured the studios. Of course, we did not attempt to penetrate the technical aspect of the matter, but the technique here is self-evident: it compels you to look upon it. Just as in all American enterprises that we had seen (except the Ford conveyors, where fever reigns), in the Hollywood studios people work, not in too great a hurry, but with assurance and skill. There is no agitation, no hair standing on end, no torments of creation, no perspiring inspiration, no screams and hysterics. All American work is reminiscent a little of a circus show– sure motions, everything calculated, a curt exclamation or order, and the act is done.