Chimps and tramps and thieves

I've done a lot of poor things in my life. Walking out on Lottie and
the kids. Letting my brother take the rap for stealing that car;
although I sent him parcels and letters I never heard from him again.
The time I hit Jim Henderson square in the face when he caught me in
bed with his wife, the week after I'd gotten engaged to his
sister.

But if I had to add it all up, and I suspect that one day I might have
to, the one thing in my life I'd be most ashamed of, was my decision to
blackmail a monkey.

This was in '43. I'd got myself a job down on the Lot, Carnegie-Souss
Productions. Not the biggest of film companies, but then I wasn't the
greatest of employees. I'd stolen from most every boss I'd ever worked
for, even some that had nothing worth stealing. The drinking wasn't a
huge selling-point for me either, even though at that time I was mostly
dry, I still started the day with a minature Wild Turkey and a handful
of roasted nuts, just to stop the shakes.

What I was doing mostly on the Lot, was taking post here and there.
We'd get a ton of post in, the amount depending on which stars were
shooting there. Why, when we had Justin Winter here for a month, he'd
get a good two or three hundred letters a day. Some of them were pretty
wild too. I kept the wild ones back for myself, read them in my cheap
apartment to kill time between the working day ending and knowing that
I could get up and drink that minature. They were the longest hours of
my life, and those besotted women helped them go by just a little
easier. I'd pretend I was Justin Winter and conduct an imaginary
conversation and seduction scene. One lady, I even wrote back to, but
it never really amounted to much.

It was always best to take fan mail to actors who hardly got any. One
guy, Marlo Filks, he usually played one of the heavies in mob films,
had a nose broke so many places it twisted up like a goddamn
helter-skelter. He only got one letter the whole time I was on the Lot,
and boy did his eyes light up. He looked like Christmas Day. He pumped
my hand and slapped me on the back so hard I bit my tongue.

There was only one person on the Lot I never delivered post for, and
that was the monkey, Gatsby. He was a chimp, one that Carnegie-Souss
had hired to play the chimp side-kick in our series of Tarzan
imitations, "Jack of the Wild". In my opinion, he was a terrible actor,
even for a chimp. The previous one had died and Gatsby had replaced
him. He just didn't seem to have the same vigour, he didn't caper and
when he was called upon to warn Jack of danger, he chattered without
the required urgency. There was one bit in the film I saw where he was
good and that was when he was required to look sad when Jack had been
wounded by a spear. That, he did as well as any actor I ever saw. But
he couldn't pass for a chimp on film. He did it as poorly as a boy in a
costume. Shame for him, because his acting options were pretty much
limited to that.

But I'm no director and he stayed on the Lot, ever since we made that
Jack of the Wild film. He stayed permanent, even though we weren't due
to be shooting another Jack of the Wild for a few months (if ever). I
guess the Studio Heads didn't want to risk losing the only trained
chimp they had for the role, even if he did stink.

Gatsby got post alright, but I wasn't allowed to open it. It all had to
go direct to Edgar Souss, who would take it down to Gatsby's trailer,
often with a couple of Cuban cigars. I saw Gatsby around, from time to
time. He was damn dignified for an ape. He would always raise a hand,
showing me his smooth black palms and give me a smile. Treated me
better than most of the stars did. I never told him that I thought he
was a lousy actor, because I liked him.

Anyway, one day, thin Mr Edgar Souss wasn't around. He'd flown down to
Argentina, to check out some woman who was remarked upon as being the
next big thing, if only she could learn how to speak English. I got the
usual heap of post, including one for Gatsby.

Well, I opened it up. Don't know if I was curious, or just in a
contrary mood, but I opened it up. It was a movie script. I knew damn
well what they looked like, hack writers sent in thirty a week to
Souss, some to actors directly, "Would you take a look at this, the
part of Henry, the bank robber who is stealing to fund an orphanage
would be just perfect for you..."

Who'd send a script to a chimp ?

I'll tell you who. Bob Cummins, the guy who wrote eighty per cent of
the films we shot, that's who. And the note he paperclipped so
carefully to the front of the script said, "Gatsby, this script of mine
needs a little attention. You did such wonders with 'Roses and
Bullets', that I know you can do this. It's the scene with the
kidnapper that I'm struggling with. See what you can do. Bob. "

The chimp wasn't on the Lot for acting at all. He was a scripter, a
goddamn writer. This film company was getting a chimp to write its
movies - and Bob Cummins had walked up bold as you like and scooped an
armful of awards for 'Roses and Bullets'.

There had to be some money in this for me somewhere along the
line.

I stuck this letter in my desk drawer, intending to think it over some
more. I was pretty sure that I could borrow a camera from a guy who'd
turned up drunk on the Lot the other week and I'd sobered up with thick
black coffee, saving him from getting fired. With the camera, I could
take a photograph of the letter, keep it as evidence.

It would have been as easy, I suppose, to send the blackmail letter I
finally composed to Edgar Souss - after all, it would be scandal for
the studio, or even to Bob Cummins, who would have been ruined if it
came out that his best work had been written by a monkey. But as I've
said, I'm a contrary fellow and something appealed to me about sending
the letter to Gatsby himself. If he was able to polish up a script, he
could read my letter.

As I sent it, I went off into a fit of chuckles that only a good swig
of whiskey could finish, I'd had a picture in my mind of the chimp
opening the letter and saying mournfully, "But they only pay me
peanuts!"

If the monkey didn't pay up, I'd go for Bob Cummins next. Although
maybe he didn't even know that Gatsby was a chimp, maybe he thought he
was a staff writer, who was willing to let Bob get credit for his work
in exchange for some money.

What I'd told Gatsby is that he was to get the money, stick it in a
brown paper grocery bag and hide it under Varla Bombe's trailer. Varla
wasn't filming at that time, though she kept her trailer, because she
was the love interest in nearly all our films.

It was as I was pulling this grocery bag out of the dirt under the
trailer that two security guards pulled me out by my ankles. I'm
ashamed to say that while I was kicking my legs and trying to get
loose, most of my attention was fixed on trying to grab the grocery
bag. I guess the monkey ratted me out, because Edgar Souss was standing
by the guards when they hoisted me up onto my feet, me still clinging
to a paper bag.

He told me to keep my mouth shut for twenty minutes if I wanted to come
out of this with anything. I was willing to do as he said. I had the
feeling that the goons were more than happy to slap me about some more,
if he had only said the word.

We went along, him and I, to his office. The goons waited outside,
cracking their knuckles in a way that was supposed to frighten me.
Inside the office, Gatsby was there, with his hands, or were they paws,
over his face. The fur along the top of his head was all ruffled and
pulled out of shape. When I came in, he looked at me. Monkeys' eyes are
always the saddest things you've ever seen, but this was far worse.
This was all that sadness mixed up with something more. I would have
sworn there was a soul in there too.

Souss told me that he should fire me on the spot, said he'd got a mind
to, but it was the monkey had talked him out of it. Turned out that
Gatsby knew I'd had a drink problem in the past and had some sympathy
for me. I didn't understand this at all, but I wasn't being asked to
understand, just to shut up and wait for what was going to happen to
me.

It was true that the chimp had been writing scripts for movies and damn
good ones too. Every decent movie the Lot had produced in the past
year, the chimp had written something, a piece that lifted the film and
made it worthwhile. This was no hack, this was a writer with talent and
heart.

Souss told me that I wasn't going to believe it and that was exactly
why he was able to tell me, because nobody else would believe it
either. He told me that the Studio had paid a lot of money to F Scott
Fitzgerald before his death, on the understanding that they would
benefit after his death. Fitzgerald had worked in the movies, but the
drinking had gotten too much. He'd burned out and couldn't be relied
upon. But looking at his work, it was easy to tell that if he could
have gotten off the sauce, he could have worked magic again.

We paid a great deal, said Souss, to some very interesting scientists,
who performed us a little operation. What we got, was a chimp who has
Fitzgerald's brain. All that writing ability, but we can control him,
keep him away from the drink.

Souss was right, I didn't believe it. But I didn't much care,
especially when he went on to tell me that being stuck away in a
trailer was making it hard for Gatsby to write; that he needed some
company.

So this is how I managed to not only keep my job, but get a promotion
to Gatsby's assistant. And how we became close friends, right up until
that argument after the bank job we pulled (which was always intended,
right up to the point where I pulled the gun, to be purely research for
a script); but that's a different story altogether.