Girl of My Dreams by Peter Davis Page A

constructing his own world. It just takes him a little longer. Six days becomes twelve weeks or so.” Instead of imitating his former hero, Nils used the magic of the screen itself—cross-cutting, montage, close-ups, fade-ins, dissolves, special effects—to make people howl, to scare and amuse and reassure them, to make them weep over the salvation of an orphan or the redemption of a scapegrace. He began making pictures in the last days of the silents and managed a seamless transition to talkies.
    After a successful adaptation of a hit play, Nils fumbled and made a few attempts at what he intended as intellectual pictures. An explorer goes to Tibet and finds his journey is philosophical rather than geographical. The dictator of a small country begins with ideals and is corrupted by power and privilege until his son, home from college in America, literally does not recognize his grossly bloated, bemedalled and brutal father. This was a decent moment but the picture itself, which Nils made for Jubilee, was a failure, stumbling over its own pretensions to political significance and moralizing. Louella Parsons, among others, brought Nils back to earth: “One of the brightest boys in our constellation of directors,” she wrote, “likes to go around town proclaiming that if pictures can talk they might as well say something. Fine and dandy, but he should remember the ringing declaration from the founding fathers of filmdom—if you want to send a message, take it to Western Union.” That was a message Nils heeded. A long time later Mossy told me had planted the item by calling Parsons himself. True or not, from then on Nils made entertainments.
    When Nils finished disclosing his path into pictures to his fellow directors, Largo Buchalter, who hated to have anyone else hold forth, could only say, “Well la-di-da.” Nils realized Buchalter was about to start a new story about himself, belittling others. “I think,” Nils concluded slowly as he looked Buchalter in the eye, “that what meant the most for me in terms of freedom was to be famous and rich and still so young.” The bully braggart in the director’s cluster had suddenly been outbullied and outbragged. Nils wasn’t quite through. “Frank,” he said to Capra, “will you give me back my four of clubs?” He went around the circle naming the card each director had picked earlier. When he finished, Nils handed the deck to Largo Buchalter and told him to keep it. “Just in case you think it’s marked.” To me, Nils was virtuous glamour.
    A royal moment. The prince of melody descended the stairs. Dapper, double breasted in blue serge, dark hair lightly brilliantined. Teet Beale was at last intimidated—no ta-ra-ra-booms for this guy, any lyric would fall dead at his feet. Beale humbly bowed and said, “It’s an honor to have you here, Mr. Berlin.” Irving Berlin nodded with a wisp of a smile and went to greet Palmyra. “Mr. Berlin,” she said, “I wish I were your sister in song, but I’m only your fourth cousin at least twice removed.” “Music is music, my dear,” said Irving Berlin, “and I’m happy to have you anywhere in the family.”
    Blinded by my betters, I was wondering why Mossy was a phantom at his own party when suddenly I was slammed on the back. It was not Mossy, who did not do such things. Seaton Hackley, Mossy’s henchman who played his part in Joey Jouet’s final hours, was praising the Doll’s House work I turned in that afternoon, which felt like the previous century. “A humdinger script,” he called it, forgetting it was only a treatment. He must have received it from Gershon Lidowitz already—Littlewits himself—and shoveled it up to Mossy, from whom he may have detected a passing blink of approval. “Love the way you solved the third act. Always had a soft spot for Torvald myself.