STAR POWER

Hollywood - 1996

Irene Roman's name was written in the stars. She had a face that took Hollywood by storm in the fifties. She was queen of the wide screen for over two decades, but her best acting wasn't done in front of the cameras.

Irene's house sat on the highest hill along Mulholland Drive in the lush Santa Monica Mountains of Los Angeles. She had an uninterrupted 360 view of Beverly Hills and beyond. She was one of the first people in the city to see the sun rise in the morning and one of the last to watch it set in the evening. When the lights flickered on at dusk, the hills and lowlands beneath her retreat began to sparkle and glimmer as though she lived in another galaxy.

Elaine Barton, author, novice screenwriter and tourist in this rarified neighborhood, stood on Irene's west balcony facing the ocean watching the distant whitecaps twinkle all the way to the horizon. She remembered many a 'red eye' flight out of Los Angeles when she thought the city looked like an enormous black velvet cloak covered with a million diamonds, rubies and emeralds. This was the same view but her feet were still on the ground.

Elaine was walking alone on the balcony that encircled Irene's gorgeous house. There was a bit of a breeze and she could swear she smelled the ocean from these heights. A small party was going on inside, the eighth she had attended since the filming of her spy novel began four months earlier. Irene Roman was one of many famous faces featured in the mini-series. She had taken Elaine under her wing when the picture deal was signed and had given most of the parties. Irene seemed to live for parties as well as the camera.

Forty-eight years old, her professional writing career was getting a late start, but she was published and getting some notoriety. At five-foot-seven, five-nine in heels, she was noticed, too. She towered over most actors in Hollywood, even the men. That unwanted distinction made her feel awkward in their size 5 petite presence. But for the time being, she felt like she belonged.

She kept her hair golden blonde. Mother Nature had other ideas but Elaine consulted Mother Clairol every six weeks and foiled Ms Nature. She usually wore it swept up with curls down the back. She liked clothes, pretty ones, and stylishly classic. Lately her favorite thing was long narrow black skirts covered with a garden of flowers and black tops that enhanced her well-developed cleavage. Flat chests were for boys. She also had quite a few pieces of quality jewelry that she liked to wear.

And the shoes. She loved ankle straps or open toed high heels with perky leather bows or polka dots. That night she wore a black skirt with tiny roses and a gorgeous black silk halter-top and a huge sapphire pendant. She was the only one at the party even wearing high heels, much less straps. She had been feeling a little Amazonian so she took a stroll.

The French doors were open to the library. Elaine stepped into the softly lit room and studied the books on the wooden shelves. She had seen small town public libraries with fewer editions than this. Irene had a wonderful collection. She pulled a Jack London volume out of its spot and started to thumb through it. The pages were still tight. Nobody had read that particular copy. She smiled to herself. There's a lot of show in Hollywood....and a lot of sham. Oh, well.

She slipped the book back in its slot and glanced at the art objects vying for space with the leather bound books. There were things from every corner of the world. Elaine's father had been in the Air Force so her family had their share of souvenirs from exotic places, too. It looked like Irene had been to many of the same spots her father and mother had been even after her dad retired from the Air Force in 1966. Her parents had taken a number of cruises. Irene had made movies all over the world and must have done a lot of serious shopping in similar ports-of-call.

There was one wall near the multi-panned bay window fitted with a large over-stuffed sofa that caught her eye. Ah, the trophy wall. Elaine had met a few movie stars since she moved to California and most of them had a wall or two of photographs of themselves with other luminaries. It was always fascinating to see who she recognized. Some of these Hollywood people knew practically everybody.

She remembered being in Ginger Rogers' lovely Beverly Hills home with that great stone fireplace and looking at her collection. The history of Hollywood was literally hanging on those walls. Miss Rogers's life was basically the story of the beginning of Hollywood's golden years.

Elaine studied Irene's pictures. Miss Roman came on the scene a little later than Miss Rogers, but her trophies were impressive. Most of the presidents were present. There was Cecil B. DeMille, Louis B. Mayer and she thought she recognized Samuel Goldwyn. There was Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Charles Boyer, William Holden, Henry Fonda, Burton and Taylor, Fisher and Taylor, Hilton and Taylor.

Irene had her share of husbands, too. There was a picture of Ray Russell, her first.

Russell's star was just starting to ascend at the end of the forties. He was tapped as the next Tyrone Power. He was tall, dark and handsome with that tragic, classical look that melted the screen and captured the hearts the female audience.

He met Irene on the set of her first movie. He was the second male lead; she was playing the ingénue who ruins the life of the male lead. The gossip columnists had a field day with the budding romance and the movie was a bigger hit than was projected because of the affair between the two hottest properties in Hollywood.

They married before the premier, honeymooned in Acapulco, threw ashtrays in Malibu and divorced in Tijuana. Barely two years elapsed from beginning to end. Ray Russell's career never went anywhere after Tijuana. He turned to booze and B-movies, then television and died at the ripe old age of twenty-nine in Florence. Not Italy. Florence, California. Right between the garden spots of Inglewood and South Gate. He was buried under his real name: Fred Raymond, Nobody.

Elaine always thought Ray Russell was melancholy personified. He played slightly tragic characters with much pathos. Perhaps he was born too late. He would have been a wonderful silent film star, especially the eyes, so filled with pain. His last few movies became almost cult films because of his plaintive performances.

Who else was on the wall? Irene had her share of lovers and husbands. Elaine couldn't quite remember what the current total was, but Irene must have a fortune in old engagement rings stashed away in case her career hit bottom.

There was Michael Walsh, her manager for a while, and her third or fourth husband for a little less time. He was the one who got her into the epic films during the fifties and sixties. She played queen, consort or mistress to the most famous men in history....on the silver screen.

Her current, and perpetually errant, husband was a good five years her junior, a Broadway actor gone Hollywood with a reputation that read like a rap sheet. He spent half his time in New York and the other in California either protesting something or making a controversial movie, but he was seldom seen in Irene's presence. He supposedly had a place of his own in Malibu. They had been married since the early eighties but the trade papers never mentioned them together in the same article.

More pictures. Charity events, premiers, location shots, the Academy Awards. One picture way up the wall caught Elaine's eye. Irene was standing next to several handsome men. They were always handsome men. One was Charlton Heston and the other.... Elaine strained to get a closer look. There was a face she recognized. It wasn't from the silver screen. She saw that face on a boat sailing back from a yacht that was sunk at sea when she and Robert Mackenzie, a CIA spymaker, were on a mission. That guy was handsome all right, and Russian. She was looking at a picture of Vasily Karpov, a Russian spy.

What was Vasily Karpov's picture doing on Irene Roman's wall?

There was a French telephone on the Louis XIV writing desk near the bay window. Elaine had an uncontrollable urge to make a phone call. It was local. The person she wanted to talk to had been in town for several months doing some research. She hesitated for about twenty seconds, and then dialed the number.

"Mac? This is Elaine. I'm over at Irene Roman's."

"Another star-studded soirée?" asked Robert Mackenzie.

"Yeah," she said with a hint of ennui.

"You don't sound very impressed."

"Gee, Mac, this is the eighth party I've been to."

"And you're bored already?"

"I was bored after the second one. Talk about being a little fish in a big pond. Writers are obviously a dime a dozen around here. Everybody has a book or movie they want to sell. Irene introduces me to somebody, they gush, then the first chance they get me alone, they want my agent's phone number."

"Hollywood," he commiserated. "Is that why you called?"

"Oh, no. I did have a reason. I was looking at the photographs on Irene's wall, and guess who I saw?"

There was a brief silence then a slight stammer," Ah, I give up."

"Vasily Karpov. Isn't that interesting?"

There was more silence. This time Elaine picked up on it.

"Mac? Mac, am I telling you something you already know?"

"I bet if you look a little closer you might recognize someone else on that wall."

"You?"

"Yep."

"I'm calling from a phone in her house. Is that a problem?"

"No. Anybody listening will probably recognize my voice."

"She has your picture?" she questioned again, stunned.

"Three frames over near the middle of that top row."

"You've seen it?"

"Once....or twice."

"I guess you know her 'socially'? Isn't that the term you used for the Catholic Cardinal you know?"

"He's a Bishop, actually. But I know Irene a little better than I know His Excellency."

Elaine dragged the phone and its long cord to an overstuffed chair and pushed it closer to the wall. She stepped up to get a look at the center photo. Balancing precariously on her tiptoes she saw a much younger Robert Mackenzie with his arm around Irene Roman. The background was foreign. He must have met her out of the country. Elaine stared at the picture.

"Mac? Do you know who she looks like in that pic...."

She stopped suddenly. She had a horrible feeling she was walking on someone's grave.

Mac was silent, but for another reason. He knew exactly who Irene looked like in that old picture. If he knew then what he knew now, he would have been strangling her.

"Yes, Elaine, I know. She looks like Monika."

After she hung up Elaine continued staring at the picture.

Robert Mackenzie was a young flyer during World War II. His plane was shot down over Bremen, Germany, and a tall, blond Aryan resistance fighter named Günter Beyer rescued him. Günter had a beautiful Gypsy wife with auburn hair, porcelain complexion and silver-blue eyes - Monika.

Mac fell in love with her the first time he saw her face. She was tending to him after the plane crash. Her cool hands made his head spin and the fact she was married to Günter broke his heart. It was a war romance - quite one sided. He heard a million similar stories from the soldiers he met. Sometimes two or three tragic tales from the same Romeo. They got over it; he'd get over it. All the young soldiers did, or they died in combat with the memory of their girl the last conscious thought in their mind.

Monika saved his life a few times. It was war. There was a lot of that heroic stuff going around. He saved a few lives himself. He went back to the States with a trunk full of war stories and fond memories of that auburn haired woman.

Of course, there was the time she got into bed with him when he was burning up with fever. Her body warmth and a glass of Schnapps helped break the fiery grip on his brain. That was the way they did it in the old country. Happens every day. It would be just another story. Fifty years later he was still thinking of her.

Maybe if he hadn't respected Günter so much, he would have done something else. Maybe if his parents had raised him with lower standards it would have turned out differently. And then of course, there was Monika.

When he awoke from the fever induced stupor in her bed he felt obliged to do the right thing and make an honest woman of her. She laughed. Not at him, well, maybe a little. He was young, younger than she was, and she was taken by his youth and charm, but not enough to run off to America with him. She told him she had gotten in the bed to break his fever, nothing more.

That was mostly true, but her Gypsy intuition saw something in the young man that was special. There was a road in front of him that went on forever. There were stumbling blocks and impediments along the way, but always a bright horizon. Monika would smile whenever she thought of Mac as a young man, so earnest, so intense, so in love. She thought about him the day she died.

Elaine had written about Mac's experiences in Germany during the war in her first spy novel. One of the studios bought the film rights and she was given the opportunity to write the first draft of the screenplay. She had been wined and dined by the studio brass before the contract was signed. Once her first draft for the twelve-hour mini-series was completed and a second writer was brought in to 'punch it up,' the invitations dried up. The other writer basically lent his more impressive name to the credits. He would get co-credit for the screenplay.

The actress playing the young Monika was quite lovely. Her German accent was flawless and she had what Elaine imagined Monika had in her younger years, a fire that smoldered deep inside. She refrained from telling Mac too much about the filming because she thought it might be hard for him to think back on the woman Elaine knew he had loved all his life.

They were filming one of the scenes over the next couple of evenings on the back lot of the studio. Irene Roman and several of the actors in her living room were in the movie, but most of them played the characters in more recent times. Irene played Monika Beyer in her later years. Elaine was surprised how much they looked alike when both were in their thirties. Both had dark hair and were the same height and build. Irene's eyes were brown but she would wear blue contacts during the filming. Elaine had seen Monika two years before she was killed and when she first saw Irene in costume with the contacts and a wig styled like Monika wore her hair, she was stunned how much they looked alike. And the casting director went only by description. As far as Hollywood was concerned, the movie was fiction.

But now Elaine was looking at a picture of Mac and Irene Roman some thirty years earlier. She thought the only connection between the two was that Irene had been suckered by a fraudulent charity scam that Mac and Elaine had busted a year earlier. Irene helped pull off a sting on the founder of the racket.

"Mac has a lot of explaining to do," she said out loud to the pictures on the wall.

"What did you say?" asked a voice behind her.

Elaine turned and stifled a gasp. She almost lost her balance teetering there on the over-stuffed chair in her heels. The young man standing behind her reached out his hands to steady her and helped her to the floor.

He was wearing a vintage WWII flying outfit with a white silk scarf tucked under the worn leather flight jacket. The jodhpurs were snug around the knees while the calf portion was stuck into a pair of lace-up boots. He hadn't pulled on the leather helmet and goggles still clutched in his hand. She could see his sandy hair cut in precise military fashion and the blue eyes. She knew he was wearing contact lenses to lighten his dark baby blues to almost steel gray, but for a moment she believed what she wanted to believe. It was Robert Mackenzie, Lieutenant Robert Mackenzie, U.S. Air Corps, off on a mission over Germany, 1943.

"I'm heading to the studio. You still want to go with me?" he asked.

Jason Leonard was a pretty good young actor from New York who just finished a role on Broadway when he was asked to read for the part of the young Robert Mackenzie. Elaine had nothing to do with his selection, either, but the first time she saw him in costume her heart did that little flip-flop it always did when she saw Mac. God, he looked so much like Mac when he was young. She had seen pictures. The casting director hadn't but Elaine had written a pretty thorough description and the wise lady picked the right face with enough talent behind it to carry off Mac's early years.

"Haven't they started shooting?" Elaine asked.

"Not without me," said Jason. "I was told to be there at seven."

Elaine looked at the clock on the desk. It was after eight. He noticed, too. He looked at his watch, an old military style chrome monstrosity, and tapped it with his fingers.

"I don't think this thing's working. I might not be if we don't bail. The limo's waiting. No wonder the driver was giving me a dirty look."

They left without saying good night to anyone. In the back of the studio car Elaine studied Jason's face in the dome light. She had a great desire just to look at him. Not because he was a movie star. Actually, this was his first film. And she had never seen him on the stage. He was also twenty years younger, and married. But, boy, did he look like Mac.

Jason was using the car phone to call the set and make his excuses. Since he was doing more listening than talking, the director must not have been interested in anything but his handsome face getting on camera. He quietly hung up.

"I take it, he wasn't pleased," she said.

"He said something about 'New York prick'. Does that have any significance?"

"Only in Hollywood."

"You're not from California, are you?" he asked.

"I've lived here half my life, but I haven't gone native."

"How do you stand it? The smog, the muggings, the murders, the earthquakes."

"It's just like New York."

"No, it isn't. We don't have the earthquakes."

His sense of humor was like Mac's. Even the voice was deep and heading toward baritone. She gave a sigh. Hollywood and make believe. How easily you could get caught up in the fantasy.

"Do you want something to drink?" he asked, looking at the crystal decanters lined up in the walnut gallery next to his seat.

"I had enough at Irene's," she answered.

"You're champagne, aren't you? Somebody said that was all they ever saw you drink."

"Yeah, it's sort of a hobby."

"My wife's a dancer. She can't touch the stuff. One glass puts ten pounds on her. She has to keep to a strict diet. I guess you're lucky. You can drink all you want. And you're a writer. Don't they always drink?"

The bubble burst.

Ah, Hollywood. Illusion is the only thing. Reality sucks.

Jason the Handsome, Jason the Actor, Jason the Brain-Dead, talked the rest of the way to the studio. She caught the limo driver's eye once in the mirror. He rolled his dark brown orbs at the start of another Broadway opening night epic.

They were waiting for a red light to change when Jason actually asked a question that didn't center on himself.

"How much of the script is true? Somebody said it's based on fact."

"Was that the same person who said I drank a lot?"

That stumped him. She carried on.

"There's always a lot of truth in anything that's well written. Just like telling a joke. There's got to be some truth in it to make it funny."

"Well, I was really impressed with your book. I read it twice."

Redemption.

She put him back on her list. She'd try catching him on Broadway when he did another play. Fickle Hollywood.

He reached into the breast pocket of the leather jacket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

"Smoke?" he offered.

"Don't happen to," Elaine said.

She was surprised he dared light up in cause-conscious Hollywood. Serial killers are held in higher esteem than cigarette smokers. Hell, cigarettes aren't illegal but you'd be blacklisted if you lit up a Lucky in public. Her next thought: it was a 'joint' or whatever they currently called marijuana. Hollywood would canonize you if you went to jail for snorting cocaine, but she didn't particularly want to make her reputation sitting in the slammer as a secondhand drug user.

It even smelled funny. She didn't want to breath in any of the smoke. She couldn't hold her breath until they got to the studio so she tried taking in short little gulps.

"Are you okay? I'll put it out if the smoke bothers you."

She finally took a deep breath and got a whiff of its fragrant smoke.

"What kind of cigarette is that?" she asked.

"Clove. I've got a cousin who sells them to the studios. He makes a fortune."

"He sells phony cigarettes to the studios?"

"Yeah, sure," said Jason, his East Coast roots starting to bristle. "You don't t'ink dis bunch a bums would smoke real cigarettes, do ya? You know, in da movies it's only da bad guys who smoke. And dey smoke deez." He blew a little smoke in Elaine's direction. "You'd get crucified if anybody caught you with a real butt in Hollywood. Now, in New Yawk, it's different. They don't give a damn what ya smoke. But here, it's dees. They're not bad. It's like smoking a Christmas cookie, but... hell, it's Hollywood."

The crew was milling around like witnesses to a scheduled execution as the limo drove up. Jason jumped out of the car and ran over to the director.

"Why the hell are you wearing the flyer costume?" yelled the director. "We're shooting the cabaret scene tonight. Jesus, can't we get anything right? It'll be another twenty minutes, people."

It took twenty minutes for the costume change and another fifteen for the lighting director to stop fiddling with the lights. He insisted on being the prima donna on the set and only he could be last, no matter how much the director yelled.

Jason didn't have to stand there getting measured for distance and color and texture and shadow. They hired a man with the same bone structure and coloring to stand-in during the tedious adjustments, but Jason had to wait there, in the dark, listening to the lighting director yell at the other man like it was his fault there had been a delay. Everybody knew the tirade was being directed at the young New York actor even though the words were bouncing off the poor stand-in who was fortunately wearing the right costume.

Finally the director yelled for Jason to take his place that he did quietly and quickly. A few more minutes went by while more corrections were made. A lamp had burned out up the street and it had to be replaced. Another light down an alley was at the wrong angle and it had to be adjusted several times before it looked right through the lens.

The flashbacks in the movie were being shot in black and white. There was to be a great deal of contrast in the shot. Artificial moonlight made the angles around doorways and windows crisp and distinct. Horizontals and verticals were razor sharp. A handful of bare light bulbs reflected off wet cobblestones on the street like the simulated multi-faceted shot from a fly's eye. A vintage automobile, circa 1939, stood silently at the curb, its windows fogged.

The past is either very clear or lost in a fog of remembrance.

"Are you ready, people? Quiet on the set. This is a picture."

THE ODD MAN Revised 12/6/95

FADE IN

Scene 147: EXTERIOR ON BERLIN STREET - NIGHT - Circa 1943

Camera slowly PANS dark street from left as vehicle PULLS OUT of alley and HEADS DOWN street. Its headlights FLASH on and glare off the camera lens at just the right time. When the picture clears the car is opposite the other vintage vehicle parked along the curb. The car PASSES BY and the driver side window of the parked car ROLLS DOWN. ROBERT 'MAC' MACKENZIE peers after the retreating vehicle. The rear window ROLLS DOWN and MONIKA looks out. Over MAC's shoulder GÜNTER tries to get a look down the street. He is pushing MAC out of the way to the point it becomes annoying. MAC gets right in his face and speaks.

Would you mind looking out your own window?