Old Myers chuckled and then turned it into a cough.
“He wasn’t exactly a prince of good fellows,” said Banner.
“Let’s hear the damn story anyway,” said Heinz. “I don’t care if Segal’s heart was as black as a hunk of charcoal, I like yarns where working stiffs put one over on management.”
“He did that.” Banner nodded at Myers. “You might be able to tell this better than I can.”
The old cartoonist gave a negative shake of his head. “Nope. You’re obviously a much better raconteur than me.”
“Is there going to be violence, bloodshed, and foul deeds?” inquired Zarley with another bounce on his chair.
Banner finished his drink and signaled our waiter to bring another. “Sort of,” he said. “At least there were some sneaky doings and…a girl died.”
“Tell us,” said Zarley impatiently.
* * * *
I was going to say that Hollywood was different in those days (began Banner), but I suppose it was really just about like it is now. Spiritually, anyway. The air was much better and a lot of the buildings from the twenties and thirties were still standing. The apartment house I was living in was just barely standing, though, a three story structure the color of peanut brittle, on a little tree-lined street off Hollywood Boulevard. Well, tree-lined if you take into account two terminally ill palm trees and something that blossomed with goofy yellow flowers every autumn. My suite, which was what my ancient landlady insisted on calling all the cubicles, was on the top floor in the rear. Most of the cracks in its plaster were inadequately hidden by a thin coat of peach-colored calcimine, and the bed was one of those that folded in and out of the wall, usually. From my bathroom window I could often see potential movie starlets sunbathing on a second story roof across the way.
Lon Destry Productions hadn’t moved out to Burbank yet. We worked in a huge sort of shed at the back of Destry’s animation studio facilities over on Gower in the heart of Hollywood. It was a real movie sort of studio, with imitation stone walls around it, the exact same shade as my suite walls, and huge wrought iron gates presided over by a uniformed guard named, so help me, Pop. I was impressed with myself all over again every time I drove my prewar Plymouth coupe through those gates and gave Pop one of my best Errol Flynn smiles.
Ben Segal was about ten years older than me and six inches shorter. An energetic little guy already going bald. He’d grown up in Yonkers or some such outpost of civilization, but in Hollywood he wore polo shirts and fawn-colored slacks and, when he had a hangover, which was often, dark glasses. Segal moved fast, like a cartoon cat after a mouse, and he usually talked like a speeded up sound track.
While the rest of the studio was turning out the animated cartoons and the occasional feature, we labored away in our big shed doing the artwork for the half dozen or so comic books Westmoreland Publishing printed every month. Television still wasn’t much of a threat then, and Lucky Duck and Bix Bunnyrabbit were selling a half million copies per issue. All of you know me for the excellent and totally serious draftsmanship I put into my Dr. Judge’s Family strip, but in those bygone days I was a pretty feeble cartoonist. I managed to turn out the stuff, though, and I worked cheap. That last was always important to Lon Destry. They had me doing backgrounds for the comic book pages. If Maxie Mouse came running out of his house chased by Klaude Kat, I drew the house, the picket fence, the shrubs. After some six or so months in the Destry sweatshop, I graduated to a four page feature of my own. About a couple of zany—that was Destry’s favorite word—lambs. What the hell were their names?
* * * *
Myers said, “That must’ve been Wild Woolly & Jelly Roll Mutton.”
“Right.” Banner paused to sip his martini. “How could I have forgotten.” He frowned at the old man. “You know, Mac, I’ve been trying to remember you. I’m sure I saw you around the Destry lot, but I don’t recall your working on the comic book assembly line.”
“I moved in after you left,” Myers answered. “Before that I’d been an in-betweener on the Lucky Duck animated shorts. Comic books, though, had always been what I really wanted to do.”
Banner nodded. “Some days I can’t even remember the names of all my former wives, so—”
“Get on with the tale,” prompted Zarley. “You promised murder, gore, and a pretty girl.”
“Not a murder, a death.”
“I’ll settle for that,” said Zarley.
* * * *
She was an actress (resumed Banner). Most of you probably remember her, if not for her movies then because of her suicide. It was a front page story because Carol Cinders was a very pretty girl and because there were rumors she’d been involved with someone very important in the movie industry. Scandal wasn’t quite the same then; it was, as we all remember, a time when suspicions weren’t so public. So nobody came out and suggested what had driven this terrific-looking blond actress to take her life.
I’d met her about six months before she died. Destry was making a full length movie, mixing live action and animation. Carol Cinders had the lead and even did a tango with Lucky. When to Duck it was called and, don’t ask me why, it actually won three or four Oscars.
Carol was dead and gone by that time.
Here I was, twenty-four or so, and, despite the fact I’d grown up in Connecticut and was a handsome devil, I was still something of a rube. The first time Lon Destry and some of his publicity people brought Carol over to tour our shed, I must’ve looked like a cartoon wolf. Eyeballs popping, tongue unrolling like a red carpet, shoes curling up at the toes, and smoke tooting out of my ears. But Carol really was a beautiful woman, and she had…well, a certain class.
I suppose I had what we used to call a crush on her. For some reason, she liked to drop in on our sweatshop while she was working on When to Duck. She’d spend some time with Ben Segal in his private office, but she’d also hang around and watch us. We had about six or eight guys working in the big room, all at drawing boards grinding out funny stuff for the Destry comic books.
I can still remember her leaning over my board and asking me about what Jelly Roll Mutton, or whoever it was, was up to. All the women I’ve known since…well, none of them was ever quite like her.
Of course I barely managed to say more than a few words to Carol Cinders. I wasn’t as sophisticated and glib then, and besides, she was a star. Not a major star maybe, but by that time she’d had top billing in something like two dozen movies. Everything from Cave Woman and Skyrocket Steele Conquers the Universe to Belle of the Confederacy and The Big Doublecross. Remember the black satin dress she wore in that one?
I never had a date with her. And it’s just as well I never asked. Because Carol was pretty heavily involved with Lon Destry himself.
Now, Destry had been in the animation business since 1935. He wasn’t quite as big as Disney or Warners, but he was growing every year. He and his cousin, Elmore Destry, had a great knack for merchandizing, and by the time I was with the studio, Destry Productions was grossing several million a year.
They were also, unfortunately, spending it. Mostly on new equipment and experimental feature films. Destry had in mind an ambitious new animated feature. As I recall it was going to have something to do with Wagner and Valkyries. He was very anxious about money and that was supposedly why he’d married his second wife about a year earlier. Her name was Bittsy, and her family owned upwards of ninety-six furniture stores on the west coast. She had quite a bit of dough in her own name, too. Destry was a rumpled guy in his late forties and not quite as charming as Maxie Mouse, but he had a way with women. Bittsy actually adored him.
She loved him in a possessive way, a jealous way. Had she ever learned that Destry was fooling around with a stunning blond motion picture actress, she’d have packed up and left him. He’d have lost her financial support and all the furniture