I lowered my eyes. “I’m not asking you to mislead anyone. I would just hope that you would exercise discretion. You know how the public is these days; they take little things and make far too much of them.”
David looked down at his own hands now, observing his shaking fingers as if they belonged to someone else. “You don’t have to worry, Jun. It was a difficult time for all of us. But if you’re concerned about anybody making too much of things, maybe you should go speak with some of the others from the old days.”
“I’ve thought of that,” I said. “But I don’t know where to start.”
He curled one hand into a loose fist and brought it to his chin, as if pressing it there would stimulate a thought. “All the studio men are gone, at least the ones you would have worked with—your directors and all the execs.”
I nodded. “There really aren’t too many of us left.”
“I don’t know if this would help,” he said, “but Owen Hopkins is still alive. He was quoted in a piece in the Times about the old District Attorney, Crittendon, and all the corruption in his office.”
I remembered Detective Hopkins. He was a young man himself in the brief time I knew him, a steady, earnest sort who seemed out of place amongst the coarse, hardened older men he worked with. The more I thought about his role in the events of that time, the more I realized that Rosenberg’s suggestion made sense.
“And,” he said cautiously, “you should also talk to Nora. Lord only knows where she is now, but it can’t hurt to cover that base.”
I did not reply to his suggestion immediately, glancing instead at a pair of squirrels who were chattering at each other on the lawn. Then finally I said, “Your advice is always useful, David. I knew I was doing the right thing by coming to see you.”
Rosenberg placed one hand on top of the other, as if trying to hold it still. “It’s a shame you still have to worry about this. Some things should stay forgotten.”
I laughed softly and changed the subject, directing my old friend’s attention to a trio of new buildings that were going up near the 405 freeway. We talked of old times and of how the city had changed, and when David’s breathing grew heavy and he paused longer before speaking, I took my leave of him and drove back down the hill.
This evening, as I sit here attempting to read, my mind keeps wandering back to my visit with David. It startled me to see him in such ill health, and I wonder if I looked as old to him as he had looked to me. When we were young, it seemed like aging only happened to other, less fortunate people; we worked and lived and stayed up all night as if we were immune to the claims of time. David went on, in the ’30s and ’40s, to become a mid-level executive, but he never rose to the heights one might have predicted for such a pleasant and talented man. Perhaps his ambition was held in check by his careful and scrupulous nature; perhaps, like so many of us, he’d been suited to a simpler time. He was a good man, and he’d always been friendly to me, and all in all I’d been happy to see him. But my vivid recollections of him in his youth made his current condition even more troubling. He had spent his whole life in the service of pictures. And like so many of us, he’d simply been forgotten.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It seemed like David Rosenberg was always there during my most important moments at Perennial. He was at the studio, for example, the day I met Nora Niles. He was also there on the night I met the man who would shape the rest of my career, the British director Ashley Bennett Tyler.
I met Tyler at a party at the Ship Café, which was, in the spring and summer of 1917, extremely popular with the Hollywood set. Unlike the formal Alexandria or the staid Tiffany Hotel, the Ship was a place where people let loose. It extended like a pier from the edge of the beach and reached out over the water. The design, feel, and fixtures were so authentic that on that one occasion, when I’d had too much to drink, I was convinced that we were floating out to sea. The large, inviting dance floor was always crowded, and the country’s most popular bands would play on the stage. Waiters in black suits and white gloves glided through the crowd, balancing trays full of drinks. The air was thick with cigar smoke and the anxiety of picture people all attempting to secure their next deals. When stars were at the Ship—and they almost always were—they would often take the stage for impromptu performances; I remember one night when the comedian Tuggy Figgins instigated a shoe-throwing contest, for which the men— and some ladies—stood up on stage and aimed their shoes across the room at a bucket of punch. Everyone at the Ship seemed to know each other, or knew someone who knew someone else; the place was so exclusive that it often felt like you needed to show your credits to get inside.
That evening’s party had been thrown by the studio on Tyler’s behalf, in celebration of his latest picture, The New Frontier, which had just premiered that night at the Egyptian. Although Tyler had already made half a dozen films, our paths had not yet crossed, and I was curious to meet the British director who suddenly had the whole town talking. I had recently seen two or three of his films, which were markedly different from what was already becoming standard picture fare. Instead of silly romantic plots or slapstick comedies,
