AGENT OF INFLUENCE
12 October, 1938.
The leaves were turning on the plane trees that lined the boulevards, women brought out their scarves, and Jules Deschelles held a luncheon in a little bistro, Mere this or Chez that, near the Luxembourg gardens. Twelve settings, gleaming white and silver, were laid out on the big table on the second floor, where some of the cast and technicians who were to make Apres la Guerre would dine together. For Stahl, the event brought a measure of relief, but also some anxiety.
Relief came in the introduction of the female romantic lead, Justine Piro, a veteran actress of the Parisian stage and film world, not quite a star of the first rank but a good name on a marquee, who would play the Hungarian adventuress, down on her luck and stranded in Damascus. When they were introduced, Stahl took her hand and brush-kissed her on both cheeks, then they took a good, long look at each other. Can we succeed together? Justine Piro — accented on the last syllable in the French pronunciation — was dark, hair and eyes, dressed simply, and not a beauty in midday restaurant light. But Stahl suspected that on screen she would be stunning, a mysterious transformation wrought, in certain individuals, by photography — ‘the camera loves her’ a common saying in the movie business. Nobody could really explain how this worked, but work it did. Stahl also met the soundman, the set-lighting man, and the crucially important character-lighting man, whose job was to emphasize and refine facial expression and physical presence. He could make you a better actor by moving a light one inch. Stahl thought Renate Steiner might attend, but Deschelles explained that she was out at the Joinville studios, working on another movie. The musical composer who would score the film had not yet been hired.
Anxiety came with the arrival of the second lead, the one-named character actor known as Pasquin. Single- named male actors, like Fernandel and Raimu, typically had the adjective ‘beloved’ permanently stuck to them in print, and so it was with the beloved Pasquin. He was, however, in his professional reputation, not much loved at all. ‘Feared’ said it better. Pasquin was enormous, enormously fat, with three chins and a cherub’s round cheeks, above which tiny, jet-black eyes glittered with malice. Pasquin had a ferocious temper, and he drank: a volatile combination.
Pasquin was, like Fernandel and Raimu, a southerner, and early in his career had played in movies set in Provence and Marseille. In one of them, Alphonse Gets Married, the production’s director, famously hard to please, called for take after take of a certain shot — action at Alphonse’s elaborate wedding feast — and by the nineteenth take, the character played by Pasquin revealed a new and unexpected dimension. The placid and philosophical village baker now scowled and hissed his line, ‘What if she doesn’t want to?’ This was meant to be spoken in a whining voice by a helpless and befuddled man. But not now. The way Pasquin delivered the line it now meant that ‘if she didn’t want to’, he would tear her head off and throw it through the window. ‘Cut!’ said the director. At take twenty-five, a half-crocked Pasquin lost his famous temper and took it out on the feast. As he swore and shrieked, hams and chickens flew through the air, the bride was showered with olives, the director struck in the face by a hurled artichoke, and soupe au pistou spattered the ceiling and the camera.
In Apres la Guerre, Pasquin would play the earthy sergeant to Stahl’s melancholy warrior Colonel Vadic, and Stahl liked the casting well enough, though how the sergeant retained his girth in a Turkish prison camp might require some ingenuity by the screenplay writers. When Pasquin arrived at the bistro — late, his breath reeking of wine — he squeezed Stahl’s hand in a vicelike grip and muttered, ‘So now Hollywood comes to France.’ Stahl just smiled — I hope you don’t expect me to answer that. Pasquin was trouble, but he was exceptionally popular. With a strong director… Stahl told himself hopefully, then turned away to talk to the set-lighting man.
And there would in fact be a strong director. As the cheese plate went around the table, Deschelles announced, like the cat that got the cream, that he had signed Jean Avila to direct the film. Stahl’s outward response was properly impressed and appreciative but he immediately understood this was either a brilliant choice or a catastrophe. Everybody knew the name Jean Avila: twenty-five years old, with two masterpieces to his credit, the first suppressed by the French government, the second recut, and ruined, by film distributors. He came from a violently political family, his father, a famous Spanish anarchist, strangled in a French prison in 1917. Avila himself followed his father’s politics, but his genius was, for anyone who’d contrived to see either of the films, beyond question. In Stahl’s view, Deschelles had shown himself, and surely Paramount, to have serious ambitions for this movie.
Stahl left the restaurant — after yet one more delicious lunch barely tasted, a professional commonplace — with Justine Piro, and they walked for a time in the early-autumn afternoon and talked amiably. She said she liked his work, and he sensed she might actually mean it. He enquired about her life, she told him she was married to a physician and had two girls, eight and eleven. They got on well together — at least in the daily world, what might happen on a movie set God only knew — and in time she took the Metro back to the Sixteenth Arrondissement. As Stahl crossed the Seine, he was happier and more excited with every step. Maybe Apres la Guerre had a chance to be a good film, maybe even very good. So the message waiting for him at the Claridge didn’t bother him all that much. Not at first, anyhow.
Stahl read the message in the lobby. 12.25. Mme Brun at the American embassy telephoned, please call her back at Concorde 92 47. His reaction developed slowly, so he was still a film star as he got on the elevator, but by the time he reached his rooms he was an emigre, and called immediately. ‘Ah yes, Monsieur Stahl,’ Mme Brun said. There was a pause, as though she had to consult a list to see what they might want with this Monsieur Stahl. Apparently, she found it. Could he be so kind as to visit the embassy, when convenient? Mr J. J. Wilkinson, the Second Secretary, wished to speak with him. Stahl said that he could. And would it, she wondered, a note of oh dear in her voice, possibly be convenient tomorrow morning, at 11.15? It would. Mr Wilkinson’s office was in the chancery building, by the Hotel Crillon — he knew where that was? Yes, he did. Mme Brun’s version of thank you and goodbye, now that she had what she wanted, was effusive, and genteel.
Stahl, moments earlier, had been his most optimistic and confident self, but the prospect of the meeting made fast work of that. What could they want? Was there some sort of problem? Sternly, he told himself to cut it out. This was most likely no more than a courtesy call. But it didn’t feel like a courtesy call, it was as though he’d been summoned. No, no, he was Fredric Stahl, a well-known and respected performer, and need have no fear of any government. But another instinct, an older, deeper instinct, told him just how wrong he was about that.
In a quiet grey suit and the plainest tie he owned, he took a taxi to the Avenue Gabriel, just off the Place de la Concorde, and arrived well before the time of the meeting. He was expected — an official escorted him to the top floor of the chancery, where he waited in a chair outside J. J. Wilkinson’s office. A minute before noon, the door opened and the Second Secretary waved him inside.
It was a large, comfortable office with a window on the courtyard, a bookcase with numbered volumes on one wall, an official portrait — an oil painting — of President Roosevelt on the wall above the leather desk chair, the desk bearing stacks of paper, reports, memoranda, correspondence. J. J. Wilkinson, in shirtsleeves and loosened tie, his jacket over the back of the chair, was all smiles and affability. He was about fifty, Stahl guessed, with the thickening body of a former athlete and a heavy, boyish face. He might be cast as a guest at one of Jay Gatsby’s parties, scotch in hand, flirting with a debutante. Was he, perhaps, an Ivy League alumnus, making his way easily through a familiar world? Maybe. In the corner, a squash racquet leaned against the wall. Wilkinson indicated the chair across from his desk and said, ‘Thanks for dropping by, Mr Stahl, sorry about the short notice but this wretched business with the Czechs has kept us from our normal routine.’ He glanced at a page of handwritten notes and said, ‘Anyhow, as a resident alien of the US you’re supposed to check in with us when you arrive in Paris. Not everybody does that, of course, and we don’t really mind, but this visit will take care of it.’
‘Thank you,’ Stahl said.
‘So, yes, ah, you’ve been a resident alien for eight years. Any thought of taking US citizenship?’
‘I intend to. I’ve been meaning to go to the class, fill out the forms… but I’ve been in one movie, then right away another…’
‘You surely have, and very successfully. I’ve seen you, of course, but I never remember movie names.’ His tone was apologetic. ‘Only that I enjoyed them. And with American movies you see in Paris, it’s always someone else’s voice, speaking French, which, frankly, bothers the hell out of me. The last time I saw John Wayne, and he said, “ Maintenant regardez, Slim”, it tickled me so bad my wife poked me in the ribs.’ He grinned at the memory. ‘Anyway, what do you think of Paris, these days?’
