“You said it,” someone piped up.
Goldwyn glowered in the direction of the voice.
“Shhhh!” he hissed.
“Okay,” said McCarey. “We move in—slow and easy—on one couple. Two girls. You never
saw
such beauties. And one of them, the one who’s leading, is
really
class. It ought to be somebody like, well, I’m not sure because you all know as well as I know that the one hard thing to find out here is real class. See, it isn’t enough for her to be stunning. She has to be beautifully spoken. This is for the contrast we’re going to need later on. Maybe somebody English? I don’t know. Maybe there isn’t
anybody
. Maybe this whole idea stinks. Wait a minute! I’ll tell you who could do it.
Merle Oberon
! Yeah. She could do it. I don’t know if she’s available, or if you could get her. But
she
could do it.” He sat up suddenly. “Hey, would that be bad? Gary Cooper and Merle Oberon. Oh, by the way, did I tell you the title? No? Get this. Gary Cooper and Merle Oberon in—” He paused significantly. “—
The Cowboy and the Lady
.”
I looked over at Goldwyn. His finger came down from his nose. He gulped. He blinked. He grinned suddenly then changed it to a scowl, fearful that the grin might cost him extra money.
Still, he could not keep himself from saying, ever so softly, “
The Cowboy and the
Lady
. Mm-hm.”
I could see him tasting it, and the taste was clearly delicious.
McCarey, an experienced fisherman, knew when his catch was well and truly hooked. He was on his feet now, over-gesticulating and laughing it up. Full speed ahead. Throttle open.
His method was to recite routines, not necessarily in dramatic or chronological order. Some of them could be visualized and were, indeed, entertaining. Others were unclear. All were finally punctuated by McCarey shouting, “They’ll piss! I tell you, they’ll
piss
!”
Ten minutes into it, I was having trouble following the story. Ten minutes later, I began to see the reason for this: there
was
no story. There were jokes, double meanings, comic situations, and character descriptions. No more. But so infectious was McCarey’s spellbinding and so entertaining his delivery that he was getting respectable laughs.
He knew the importance of rhythm in creating laughter. Most laughter is generated by surprise, usually arising from a break in rhythm.
No one in the room understood his verbal shorthand. He was making sounds, punctuating lines with a snap of his fingers, a punched palm, or a line garbled in laughter, followed by—“They’ll
piss
!”
“Now!” he said tantalizingly. “Now comes the funniest scene in the picture. Where he takes her through the whole house, see? That isn’t even
built
yet. There’s
nothing
there. Just a few pegs in the ground with strings on them. Right? They go through it. And in the kitchen part they’re behaving like they’re in a kitchen. And then the hall, the living room—and all the time you know he’s leading her, or trying to lead her, to the bedroom. And
she
does, too, see? But remember, there’s no bedroom. There’s no bed. There’s nothing. Grass. Pegs and string. But I tell you, now this is the most sensational scene in the picture, I mean of the comic ones—not the terrific romantic ones or the sex or the action—the comedy here is him trying to lead her across this one string where the bedroom is going to be, and of course finally he does and the
way
he does it, with the pieces of business and sight gags and one-liners and double meanings—even a few
triple
meanings—I mean is
hilarious
! They’ll piss!”
He sat down and laughed. We joined him. He had told us virtually nothing but it seemed a
funny
nothing.
He continued. There were descriptions of a rodeo, of two people looking for each other and just missing several times. The lady, awkward in the cowboy’s world. The cowboy doing comic stuff back East in her world.
“So they’re in this elegant restaurant—see?—like The Colony? And they’ve just ordered, and at the next table—see?—people are having, are about to have, crepes suzette.” (What’s this now?) “So the classy headwaiter is working on them and he pours all the brandy and gunk all over the stuff and of course he
lights
it.” (Could I believe my ears? Was the great McCarey actually going to pull out that old chestnut of the country bumpkin extinguishing the crepes suzette? My God, I had seen it in a silent picture with Charles Ray when I was ten. No, of course not. He probably has a switch on it.)
McCarey went on. “So the flames shoot up and the headwaiter’s working there at his little table. Gary gloms it, stands up, hollers, ‘Don’t panic, folks! Keep your seats!’ And he picks up a big pitcher of ice water, pours it
all over
the crepes suzette and puts out the fire! They’ll piss, I tell you!”
He went on. On and on, leading finally to an expected and conventional, but satisfactory, ending. Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl.
He was holding to the rules of the game. If you have Gary Cooper and Merle Oberon in a picture, the audience knows from the beginning they are going to wind up together. No surprise there. The surprise must be in
how
they wind up together.
“Well, that’s about it,” he said. “It’s just the bare outline. I don’t want to take up too much of your time. Actually, I left out most of the best stuff. Some of it’s a little hard to tell and also the faces in this room today don’t look too honest to me, so I don’t mind giving away a few little samples. But I don’t want to hand over the whole tutti-frutti.” (Laugh.)
“Leo,” said Goldwyn, grandly, “you’ve got a fine story there. Very good characters, good parts for stars. I’m going to tell you, frankly, I think it needs work—a little work, not much, in the construction.”
“Don’t worry about the construction, Sam,” said McCarey. “I never made a picture yet that fell off the screen. Oh, hell. That’s the trouble with telling an outline. Why I didn’t want to do it. People forget it’s an outline, and start to criticize it as though they’ve heard the whole thing. You haven’t
heard
the whole thing. I was only trying to give you a feel of the kind of picture I think you ought to make. Maybe it was a mistake.”
Goldwyn was cowed for a moment and said, “No, no, Leo, I realize that. Only a feel. I was just commenting on my impressions.”
“Well,” said McCarey confidently. “Let me know.” He walked to the door, turned and added, “By Friday, huh?”
He left abruptly.
There was a long pause. No one seemed anxious to be the first to comment. Finally.
“Well, gentlemen,” said Goldwyn. “What are your views?”
The mumbles began.
“Lots of funny stuff in there.”
“Yes.”
“Needs work.”
“Yuh.”
“Is it written yet? Could we see some of this in writing?”
“Yeah.”
“Will he work with the writer?”
“
The Cowboy and the Lady
,” said Goldwyn.
“Yuh.”
“Would
The Lady and the Cowboy
be better?” asked an eager beaver.
“No, no,” said Goldwyn. “F’Chrissake,
The Cowboy and the Lady
. Jesus Christ, what’s a matter with you? In the first place if we get Gary Cooper and Merle Oberon in
The Cowboy and the Lady
, that’s how it has to go. Because that’s how the
billing
goes. You think Cooper’s going to let us call a picture
The Lady and the Cowboy
with him second? I mean his character second in the title? What’s a matter with you?”
“Just a thought,” said the contrite blunderer.
Goldwyn found it difficult to calm down.
“The man
always
comes first. He’s supposed to. In any title or anything. Like you get a letter. What does it say? It says ‘Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Goldwyn.’ Right?”
“Of course,” I said. “And every speaker always begins a speech by saying ‘Gentlemen and ladies.’ Right?”
Goldwyn looked at me. “Didn’t I tell you,” he said, “I want you to spend more time in the cutting rooms? What the hell’re you doing here anyway?”
“You sent for me,” I said.
“Well,” said Goldwyn, “that only proves
I
can make a mistake, too. I want to tell you something, Talboig. Frankly. I’m getting goddamn sick and tired of your wisecracks. If you want to make wisecracks, go sit in the round table in New York in the Algonquin with all those other wisecracks, f’Chrissake. Don’t bring them around here and waste my time.”
We looked at each other through a fog of hostility. “I think
The Cowboy and the Lady
is a terrific title,” I said, “especially on a picture with Gary Cooper and Merle Oberon.”
“I agree with you,” he said. He turned to the others in the room. “Well, gentlemen,” he said. “Now that Talboig likes it, we can go forward.”
He was still laughing as the last member of the staff left the meeting.
The next morning, Goldwyn called us in, one by one, and asked each of us to tell him the story of
The Cowboy and the Lady
as we understood it. By the time he had heard it nine times from nine different men, he had a firm notion of what was there.
Goldwyn bought the story from McCarey the following day for $50,000.
That night, I ran into McCarey at the Vendôme and congratulated him.
“Yeah,” he said, “but now the trouble is, I’ve got to write it down, or get somebody to write it down, and I can’t remember what the hell I said. “Can
you
?”
“Some of it.”
“How would you like to write it down? I’ll give you five hundred.”
“I’m not a writer.”
“So what? Neither am I. And what’s the difference if you’re
not
a writer? Goldwyn isn’t a
reader
. No kiddin’. I mean it. Would you want to tell me some of what you remember? Because swear to God I only remember a few flashes.”
One afternoon, about two weeks later, a story meeting on
The Cowboy and the Lady
took place in Goldwyn’s office in a somber atmosphere.
McCarey’s agent had delivered a twenty-five-page outline that morning, and had picked up the check. The outline was disappointing and hardly worth the $2000 a page (double spaced) it had cost. Needs work, was the consensus. The meeting had been called to discuss possible screenwriters.
Goldwyn was the cheeriest one in the room.
“Listen,” he said. “Nobody kill yourself. I’ve started in with f’Chrissake less than this and come up with some great pictures. Let’s not forget, we got here a great premise here. A fine springboard. McCarey’s great, but he’s lazy. This is just an outline—a treatment, that’s all.” He looked at me. “
You
like it, don’t you, Talboig?”
“When he told it, yes. It was quite entertaining, but this treatment needs a treatment.” It was out before I could stop it.
Goldwyn looked at me. I feared that my career was over, that my life at the Goldwyn Studios had ended before it had actually begun. He was still looking at me and I could think of nothing to do but to look back. There must have been remorse in my eyes. His were flaming with anger, but all at once, tears welled up in them.
He shook his head, gently, and said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.”
The first team of writers assigned to
The Cowboy and the Lady
was Anita Loos and John Emerson.
A few days after they had begun, the staff was hastily summoned to Goldwyn’s office for the shortest staff meeting I can remember.
We assembled and Goldwyn said, “I want to report something to you, gentlemen. For the record. I just now had Leo McCarey on the telephone. I asked him. If he would like to work with Loos and Emerson on the script. And then direct the picture. And do you know what he said to me? I’m going to
tell
you what he said to me. He said, ‘What makes you think I would want to spend my valuable time on a piece of crap like
The
Cowboy and the Lady
?’ That’s all, gentlemen.”
We filed out.
There was more to come. Goldwyn, with considerable fanfare, announced his forthcoming production. He had Gary Cooper and Merle Oberon come in and make a set of portrait stills which were sent, with a well-written press release by Jock Lawrence, to motion-picture editors everywhere. His most important director, William Wyler, had tentatively agreed to accept the assignment, adding weight and importance to the announcement.
Two days later, a registered letter from the Paramount Pictures legal department was delivered to Mr. Goldwyn. It informed him that Paramount owned the title,
The
Cowboy and the Lady
, not merely by virtue of registration with the Motion Picture Producers Association, but because Paramount had acquired, long ago, from the estate of Charles Frohman, the rights to several Clyde Fitch plays, one of which was titled
The
Cowboy and the Lady
, copyright 1915.
Goldwyn was shattered. It seemed increasingly clear that what he had mainly acquired from McCarey was the title. Now he found he did not even own that.
He phoned McCarey and had a row with him on the telephone. McCarey claimed he had never heard of the Clyde Fitch play, which was probably true. After all, none of us had.
Goldwyn yelled, “Now I’m going to have to
buy
the goddamn title from
Paramount
! What if they try to stick me for the whole property? Maybe they
will
.”
“What’s wrong with that?” asked McCarey. “It’s probably better than
mine
.”
“I’m going to let you know what it costs me, Leo, and I expect you to reimburse me for the amount.”
“Yeah,” said McCarey. “Just don’t hang by your left testicle till my check arrives.”
Goldwyn called a staff meeting to announce this exchange, as well.
The next day, another meeting. Another announcement. This one in the form of a question from Mr. Goldwyn.
“Gentlemen. I asked Paramount what they wanted for the title and what do you think those dirty bastards had the nerve to ask?”
“Ten thousand,” guessed someone.
“Twenty,” said someone else.
“Don’t tell me twenty-five?” asked another.