'Terry? Terry?' called the dog's trainer. 'Dog's shy,' he explained to Vidor.
'Where's the dog?' called Vidor, annoyed.
'Here, dog,' whispered the Kid. Only Millie seemed to hear her. 'Up'n the bed.'
It sounded like Missouri. Or Kansas. Darned if the dog didn't come too, right up on the bed out of nowhere. You are a country girl, aren't you, honey, thought Millie. They couldn't have found somebody better for this part in a million years. A country girl who got picked up, spun around and dropped into Hollywood and Technicolor.
Vidor sat Blandwick down and pulled her shoulders into the frame. Cameraman kept shaking his head.
Ten minutes, maybe twenty. Hours of waiting. It was amazing how these actors could sit and wait and wait and then just launch themselves into it. Mind you, that's why they were paid. To be able to say lines like they believed them. The Kid started singing again.
Finally Vidor said, 'Okay, let's go. Dorothy, your last lines from 'Anyway, Toto, we're home.' '
The camera whirred, Vidor pointed, the Kid said her line, and it was wrong.
On the word 'home,' her face crumpled up and she started to cry. Not modulated. Ugly, wet, snotty.
'No, no, no, no, no,' said Vidor, waving at the cameraman to stop.
Vidor stepped forward and spoke loud enough for most of them to hear. 'Uh, Dorothy. That's probably a bit too sad. Remember, she's home, she's happy, everybody she loves is back with her in one place. She's probably never been as happy, and probably never will be as happy again. So what we want to see is joy. Joy like we've never seen it. This has got to be the happiest part of the whole picture.'
The Kid smiled and smiled and nodded yes and darned if she wasn't still crying. Anything to please, thought Millie, rolling the gum in her mouth.
They tried again, and this time, the Kid sputtered and burst into tears with a kind of spurting sound. Vidor cut the air with his hand.
She went too far, sometimes, the Kid. When she first saw Lahr in his makeup, she went hysterical. They couldn't stop her laughing. She had to hide behind the set and say over and over 'I must not laugh, I must not laugh,' and then she came out and started laughing all over again. Finally Fleming slapped her right across the chops. That stopped her laughing all right.
Vidor scratched his brow with his thumb, thinking. Then he walked up to the bed and leaned over it and spoke low and soft, like a daddy to his little girl. 'Frances,' he said.
The Kid turned to him, startled. 'Frances, just pretend you've gone to sleep, and you wake up back in your own house, just like it used to be when you were little with your mommy and your daddy and your sisters. All there, all home. Just close your eyes.'
He stepped back quietly. The Kid stroked the dog. It licked her arm.
'Now open them,' said Vidor.
She did.
'And you're home,' said Vidor.
The lights came up fierce, and so did the Kid. Suddenly she smiled, and the smile cut through the one wall of the set that faced her and the camera and the lights.
There was silence. They all waited in silence, and King motioned tor the whirring of the camera to keep going. The Kid kept staring. Was she going to say anything?
She told Toto they were home. Home, like she couldn't believe it, it was so wonderful to be back.
And this was her own room, and they were all there together, everyone she loved, and she wasn't going to go away, ever again. Oh yes you are, thought Millie. Life takes you away. Don't believe that down-on-the-farm shit, kid. 'And, oh Aunty Em? There's no place like home!'
It was strange. Everyone stayed silent for a while. Somebody coughed, like they were saying: Can we move now? People went back to work.
There was one thing that Millie could tell people about her job that was true, and that was that the good actors, the ones who could actually act, were really nice, nice inside. Oh, sure they acted up; they were childish; they were like little kids. There was something childish about each one of them.
'Ray, Bert, Jack,' said King Vidor, and they came in a parade, dressed as farmhands. Lahr who couldn't sleep from fear. Bolger who wanted to go to college. Jack who showed them how to say their lines like children-rumor was he wanted to start a charitable foundation. He was the one who wanted a heart. Yup, thought Millie.
All these people working together on something, sometimes it all comes together. Looks like maybe this picture is. That business with the coat. The Professor is wearing L. Frank Baum's coat. If Judy Garland really is a nice country kid, then maybe the coat is real too.
And the Kid was beaming, still smiling, in the lights, where home would continue to be. The only place it would be, in the center of attention.
Santa Monica, California-January 1953
The parking lot looked empty. Ethel swung her car around, looking at the space she was aiming at, and nearly hit an old Ford. She slammed on the brakes, reversed, wrenching the steering wheel around, slammed into forward, straightening the car, and roared back neatly into the space. Her heart was thumping. Late. Late again, darn it, she was never late, and suddenly twice in one week. Why am I always late for everything, she admonished herself. Then she looked at her watch.
It said six forty-five.
