The Devil May Dance by Tapper, Jake (the reading list .TXT) 📕

soundstage; it was quiet except for some minor stirring of the birds. “Too skinny still, but we will continue to get some curves on that road.” Some of the assistant directors and crew members laughed; Hitchcock looked at them, soaking in their approval. “Blondes do make the best victims, do they not?” he asked. “They’re like virgin snow showing off the bloody footprints.” Guffaws erupted from the crew. A slight wrinkle in the middle of Hedren’s forehead was the only indication of her discomfort, though she maintained a placid smile.

“Is everything meeting with your approval, Mr. Ridge?” the director asked a man near the cage.

“All good, sir,” said a man with horn-rimmed glasses.

“That’s the guy with the American Humane Association,” whispered LeGrue. “He looks out for the birds.”

“Who looks out for Tippi?” Margaret whispered back.

Hitchcock approached his director’s chair and Margaret wondered if he was going to try to sit on it, which seemed like a risky venture. He did not. Margaret watched as the director stared at Hedren, eyeballing her as if she were a juicy steak. He licked his lips, which gave Margaret the shivers.

“Places, everyone,” the director said.

A chubby male assistant stepped in front of the camera with the clapboard and slammed it down. The three prop men in the cage grabbed ravens, one in each rubber-gloved hand. An assistant director began shouting out the familiar orders as lights blazed, and through a bullhorn, someone called, “Action.”

Hedren slowly opened the door to the attic and looked up at the hole in the roof as she walked in. She gasped and lifted her flashlight as the three prop men began throwing live birds at her. First a raven flew at Hedren; it turned away at the last second. It was followed by a seagull that was propelled into her hair before it could get its bearings and flap away. The stagehands pummeled Hedren with one bird after another. After each bird flew off, whether it had hit the actress or not, it continued circling around the attic in a frenzy, a tornado of feathers filling the room. Hedren was gasping, crying out; Margaret couldn’t tell what was acting and what was real and she didn’t know if Hedren could either. Margaret looked at LeGrue, who was as still as an oak, her eyes on what the prop men were doing, seemingly professional and focused on the task at hand because to contemplate anything beyond that would be its own sort of psychological horror.

Even later that day, on the set of Manchurian Candidate, watching Charlie trudge up the hill to light Sinatra’s cigarette, Hedren was all Margaret could think about.

After Hitchcock yelled, “Cut,” it was clear that she’d been largely uninjured, though she was hyperventilating. Cary Grant—visiting from a nearby soundstage—declared her the bravest lady he’d ever met.

“I don’t know if that’s the word for it,” Hedren had replied. And indeed, to Margaret, Hedren’s plight was all about sheer survival.

The survival of his marriage, meanwhile, was all Charlie could think about as he climbed the hill. Should he tell Margaret about the photograph of him and Lola? Surely she would believe him when he told her he’d immediately gotten out of the hot tub. He was an honorable man and had never strayed in sixteen years of marriage. He expected that she would be more likely to focus on his recklessness and stupidity. She already knew that they were in a world where he didn’t belong, and now he was a murder suspect. Yes, he would have to tell her.

Reaching the top of the hill in Franklin Canyon, Charlie withdrew the lighter he’d had since the war, one he’d taken from a dead Jerry. He gently tossed it underhand to Sinatra, who caught it and lit his cigarette in one graceful motion, as if they’d rehearsed the move several times.

“Boyo, I’ll tell ya, this is one of the weirdest flicks I’ve ever been a part of,” Sinatra said.

“It’s going to be great,” said Charlie.

“You really think so?” Sinatra asked.

“I do,” said Charlie. “I think it’s going to be important. It’s a compelling thriller, but it’s also subversive.”

“Go on,” Sinatra said.

“So in the movie, the crusade against Communists is secretly led by Communists,” Charlie explained. “Those who doubt the conspiracy are killed by the conspirators. Medals of Honor are awarded under the least honorable circumstances imaginable. It’s all a brilliant metaphor for the Cold War.”

Sinatra took a drag from his cigarette and stared thoughtfully across the canyon before he turned to Charlie with a wry smile.

“Kinda like Joe Kennedy asking me to enlist made guys to help his son win and then after he does, Bobby goes after those same guys,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Charlie. “Kinda like that.”

Sinatra took one last drag then snuffed out the butt of his Winston under his army boot. “Do we look authentic to you, soldier?” he asked.

“Uniforms are too clean,” Charlie observed.

“Yeah, no one stays clean in war, do they, Charlie?” Sinatra said with a knowing glance. He took another cigarette out of the pack. In the distance, car horns blared, then stopped as quickly as they’d begun. A soft breeze provided the waiting actors with a brief moment of balm.

“So who do you think did it, Charlie?” Sinatra asked. He was squinting and as serious as a surgeon. He put a cigarette in his mouth as if it were a lollipop and Charlie dutifully lit it for him. “Lola,” he added.

“I don’t know, Frank,” he said. “Someone who wanted to destroy me, is all I know. I’ve had folks try to pull similar schemes on me in the past, but that was blackmail.”

“This wasn’t that, kid.”

“I know. They obviously wanted me to be found with her in the car.”

“When was the last time you’d opened the trunk before that?”

“No idea,” Charlie said. “You don’t know anyone who’s mad at me, do you, Frank?”

Sinatra didn’t answer right away, and Charlie wondered if he was trying to decide whether to be offended. Just then, Frankenheimer