CAMERA, WOMAN
A play in two parts
R.M. Vaughan
copyright © R.M Vaughan, 2000
photographs copyright © Guntar Kravis, 2000
Published with the assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council
CANADIAN CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Vaughan, R.M. (Richard Murray), 1965-
Camera, woman
ISBN 1-55245-055-4
This epub edition published in 2010. Electronic ISBN 978 1 77056 022 2.
1. Arzner, Dorothy, 1900-1979 – Drama. I. Title.
PS8593.A94C35 2000 C812’.54 C00-932540-9
PR199.3.V389C35 2000
for Franco Boni
Characters
DOROTHY ARZNER – early 40s, black hair, costumed in men’s clothing, educated American accent.
MERLE OBERON – early 20s, English actress, delicate features.
HARRY COHN – late 50s, Jewish, costumed in expensive suits.
LOUELLA PARSONS – early 50s, Midwestern accent, overdressed in florid costumes.
ROSE LINDSTROM – mid 30s, blonde, costumed in loud dresses.
PAM COOK – late 20s, costumed in 1970s feminist/hippie clothes.
Apart from the Prologue and Coda, the play is set in a multi-roomed Hollywood studio/sound stage in 1943. All action, imagined and real, takes place on the sound stage. Klieg lights, boom microphones, backdrops, and old set pieces litter the playing area.
The play’s internal time is a single 24-hour period, perhaps a Wednesday.
Prologue
[Arzner sits at a table with a desk microphone before her. She is visibly in her late 40s, wearing a cardigan and a modest skirt, in contrast to her younger appearance later in the play. She is slightly stooped, with a beaten look. A voice-over announces her, followed by a lively ‘theme music’ jingle and a red light signalling that she is speaking ‘On Air’. The voice-over is spoken by a male announcer with a clear, 1950s slick commercial style.]
VOICE-OVER: Westinghouse Radio Theatre and the new 1955 Cadillac Convertible – the automobile built for the future – proudly present You Were Meant To Be a Star, with your host, Hollywood motion picture director Miss Dorothy Arzner.
ARZNER: Good evening. Tonight’s first letter is from a Miss Jane Gilbert of Pentachuta, Connecticut. [reads letter]
‘Dear Miss Arzner, I am a college senior majoring in Library Science. I have been “pinned” to a senior boy in the pre-Medicine program for the last 17 months. We met on Valentine’s Day – don’t that beat all? He is tall and strong and kind and I’m positive he’ll make a fine doctor some day. My problem is, when we both graduate next semester, he plans to attend a medical school in another state. I’m afraid his affections will wander. How do I get him to propose to me before it’s too late?
P.S. If I may ask a personal question, why did you retire from your glamorous job as a top Hollywood director? It sounds just dreamy to me!’
In answer to your first question, Miss Gilbert, allow me to remind you that a woman is always at her most alluring when she recognizes a single, fundamental truth – all women are performers. During my career in motion pictures I made this my motto; and I continue to do so today, even in the more relaxed circumstances of radio broadcasting.
To be a woman is to be perpetually on stage. The saddest women today are those young ladies who forget to keep themselves quote ‘camera ready’ unquote. They are the lonely women one sees in bus shelters and all-night drugstores, drinking hopeful cup after hopeful cup of coffee and wondering why no one is paying them the slightest attention. Such women have forgotten their lines, their cues and their costumes. This simply will not do. My successful career as a provider of popular entertainments is entirely attributable to my ability to say without hesitation that I never once ‘forgot my lines’, so to speak.
My advice, Miss Gilbert, will be blunt. If you want your young doctor-to-be to become your husband-to-be, your path is clear – use every womanly tool at your disposal to shake him out of his complacency. My suspicion is that you have become old hat, more a buddy than a betrothed. A new dress, new shoes, a fresh hairstyle and a little powder are worth the price of a diamond ring on your finger. [pause]
In response to your second question, Miss Gilbert, the true reason I retired from Hollywood may forever remain a private matter, and I’d rather it did.
[Red ‘On Air’ light goes off. Arzner listens in growing darkness as Merle Oberon appears in a flickering light behind Arzner – Oberon’s face is framed in a square of light, as if she were a projected film image. Oberon is a dazzling vision, accompanied by swelling, romantic movie music. Oberon speaks in a projected, acting voice, delivering lines from a melodramatic film. Arzner remains seated with her back to the vision of Oberon, only hearing what the audience sees.]
OBERON: Who wants love? Who wants love? Who wants love? Love is a plaster pony ride at the circus. You spin and spin till you get so full of circles you forget your own name.
ARZNER: I spin and spin … I wrote that line. Say it again.
OBERON: When the ponies cut to a grind, there you are – face a mess and stuck on some purple nag with green hair and a wild smile. Waiting. Waiting for some man to come along and help you down. You don’t need his help. He knows it, you know it, but it’s too late for logic.
ARZNER: My god, you hold the light. No line of your face is wasted. Merle Oberon, you were always good at stealing a scene. Of course, I taught you how. My god, you were so beautiful I sometimes forgot my own name. I wasted hours on your close-ups.
OBERON: I’m a husk, I’m a piece of arithmetic you’ve forgotten to calculate, forgot to figure. That’s what love is, forgetting the details. You have to be a little bit blind and a whole lot dizzy. Who wants love? – sounds like influenza.
ARZNER: You can afford to be callous, Merle – the whole world still wants to touch you.
OBERON: You can touch me, pal. I’m only gold.
ARZNER: I still want to touch you.
VOICE-OVER: [unheard by Arzner] She’s talking to herself again. Crazy old bulldog. She never ‘forgets her lines’ ’cause she never shuts the hell up. OK, here we go. [to Arzner] Miss Arzner, we’re back in six seconds. Six, five, four, three …
[Oberon vanishes,
