Chapter Twenty-Three #2
“All right—places,” Sharpe said, and hopped from the stage to go behind the center camera and its open black lens flaps.
The machinery of production flurried, the boom microphone swinging above her, Bill fitting a filter over one of his lights, and PAs in newsboy caps arranging the last sandbags on the camera legs to keep them steady.
The two dozen white faces made Mazelle think, Look at all these white folks working and feeding their families off me, the same thought she’d had since she was a child.
But these days she felt a wave of longing: If only these were Negroes, or at least a precious few.
Even Oscar Micheaux’s race films employed mostly white crews he cobbled together, since Negroes weren’t allowed in the unions and had few ways to learn the trade.
Crew members stirred, turning around in a mini commotion.
Lorenzo was on the set because they were running late, a sign of trouble.
The silence grew so thick that Sharpe turned around too, sensing Lorenzo’s presence.
Sharpe ran his fingers nervously across his shiny scalp.
The shoot was running way long, and he would hear about it later.
“Quiet on the set,” Sharpe said.
The slate clacked as the clapper loader recited the scene number. From the wings, Lorenzo tipped his hat at Mazelle. Don’t fuck it up.
Mazelle flopped down into her pose, pretending to sleep at the kitchen table while one hand languidly stirred the mixing bowl. The consistency of the white slop inside was more like paint than batter, so she mimicked a slight drag on the spoon. Someone giggled at the sight gag.
“And… action!” Sharpe said.
Exaggerated footsteps as Carl and Nancy approached Mazelle, a walk that seemed endless. Were they ever going to say their damn lines?
“Why, Mazy—the guests will be here any moment!” Nancy said, feigning dismay.
“Lazy Mazy, you get up this instant!” Carl said, almost on top of Nancy’s line. (But it was late, so Sharpe let it go.)
The rest was instinct and illusion. The table falling over.
The bowl flying into the air to appear like the table had thrown it free.
Guiding the bowl to land precisely on top of her head as she stumbled to the floor, spilling the cold goo across her face.
The orchestrated accident had so many moving parts, but Mazelle’s skill was to make it look both fluid and surprising, following Chaplin’s advice on transforming mundane chaos into comedy.
Carl and Nancy made the usual sounds of disapproval as they ran to their marks to stare down at her.
The goo stung her eyes, but Mazelle fought her impulse to wipe it away.
She contorted her face as if she were about to cry and used the darky voice Millie Sharpe had taught her so many years before, speaking directly to the crane camera above her for a close-up.
“I’se sorry, mistuh and missus, but I’se so tired I dreamed I smelled them biscuits cookin’! ”
Mazelle felt the crew stirring behind the lights, trying hard not to laugh.
“Oh, Mazy!” Carl and Nancy said in unison. As if scolding a toddler.
“You got it?” Sharpe called out to his camera operators. “Do we need to go again?”
If these fools missed that take, I’m going to—
“And… cut!” Sharpe said. He sounded delighted. Lorenzo might be wondering why they were shooting overtime, but at least he had witnessed them wrap for the day.
The withheld laughter broke out, amplified with applause.
Mazelle stood and curtsied, but she didn’t mistake their pleasure for true admiration.
Half of them were only glad to finally go home, and the other half treated her like a trained pony.
When the laughter gained a second wave, Mazelle felt annoyed.
Where was her goddamn towel? She must look ridiculous in whiteface.
She was here to put on a show for the cameras, not the crew.
“Here, Mrs. Washington.” Lucille, the wardrobe assistant, pressed a towel into her hand.
Mazelle wiped her face until she felt sure much of the goo was gone, then she wrapped the towel around her head in a turban style to hide her hair, which must be a fright. Only a long shower would clean up this mess.
“You’re funnier than the Three Stooges,” Lucille said, lingering.
The Three Stooges were especially annoying, given that they used stand-ins for their most physical stunts, coasting to stardom on facial expressions and repetitive gags.
She’d grown up seeing better acts scraping by on pennies on the Chitlin’ Circuit, most of them probably living in obscure poverty by now.
Damn right she was funnier. But at least Lucille was sincere.
“Thank you,” Mazelle said, and smiled.
She kept that smile pasted on, rushing to move from the stage back to her dressing room, carefully stepping over cables and excusing herself past the lingering crew and their laughter that had gone on far too long.
She angled herself to avoid Lorenzo, but he crossed the room to intercept her.
“Come to my office once you’ve changed,” he said.
Mazelle didn’t slow, forcing him to match her pace. She should have been home hours ago. “Can it wait?”
“You won’t want this to wait.”
She looked back at him to try to gauge his sincerity, or if he just wanted to throw back a few drinks and gossip about stars because she could keep a secret.
When he found her on set late, he’d started treating her like an occasional confidante.
“You looked terrific up there,” he said.
“Truly fucking terrific—as always. Come talk to me.”
They had reached the narrow hallway, out of earshot of Sharpe and the staring crew, although she could feel Sharpe’s eyes watching her through the wall. “You think tossing me a compliment makes me forget I’m tired? And my back hurts like hell, Jerry.”
Lorenzo’s smile never wavered. Any other actor would jump to meet with the studio head, but he looked bemused when she said things to him that no one else would dare, even Sharpe.
Hell—especially Sharpe. Considering that he had built his studio around her since his start in the business, she figured she could talk to him any way she damn well pleased.
She had reinvented her relationship with Lorenzo once she started working for him again, deliberately calling him “Jerry,” although he was still “Mr. Lorenzo” in her head.
Besides, it kept the crew in line if they thought she had the boss wrapped around her finger. She could share his power.
“I’ll give you ten minutes,” she said. “Just please don’t waste my time.”
Lorenzo laughed. “You’re a piece of work with that mouth of yours. When have I ever?”
“Do you really want me to answer that?”
He looked over his shoulder and grinned as he walked away, shaking his finger at her.
After she showered and rinsed out her hair, Mazelle traded her maid’s costume for her thirty-five-dollar Enka rayon designer dress from Saks that draped over her like cool satin.
She didn’t have time to tame her damp hair, so she covered her head in a matching scarf.
Then she threw on her fox-fur wrap and walked quickly in the flat shoes she kept in her dressing room, not the heels she wore for her daily entrance.
She could have called for a golf cart, but she preferred her own company, waving past security guards who had learned to recognize her.
Lorenzo’s office was close enough for the brisk walk she needed to soothe her irritation at him.
What the hell did he want at this hour? She hoped he hadn’t been drinking.
When he’d put away a few drinks, he lost track of time.
Back in the old days, Lorenzo had been the ruler of a kingdom in her eyes, although he had just owned a dusty lot with a couple of warehouses mortgaged to the hilt.
Lorenzo Studios looked more like a true palace these days.
The studio sign glittered over the front gate to half a dozen soundstages, one street with saloons for Westerns, another mimicking modern New York City alongside it, another fashioned after Old London.
Lorenzo recently had told her that he thought his career was finished after he lost his Li’l Gumshoes catalog in that suspicious fire—and to this day, he blamed Hal Roach for destroying his empire of children’s reels.
Our Gang would live forever after MGM bought it, but no one would remember Li’l Gumshoes.
“Farewell to a pale imitation,” Roach had said in an infamous interview.
Mother was still angry about Lorenzo’s unfair business practices she believed had stunted Mazelle’s earlier career, especially his prohibitions against making other pictures with Scout.
Mother would never let that go to her dying day.
And on the set of Cabin in the Sky, Richard had the thrill of playing with Ellington’s orchestra for an all-Negro cast, but Lorenzo hadn’t allowed Mazelle to audition for Lily, the part that had gone to Butterfly McQueen.
He said the only maid she should play was Lazy Mazy, no matter how much Mazelle argued that a more dramatic part in a high-profile MGM picture, even as Ethel Waters’s maid, would give her career a boost.
Jesus, Mazelle, you’re a star! You can’t get lost in an ensemble like that, come on. His most devastating directives always came wrapped in praises. Screaming at him had only won her a sore throat and that bemused grin, like the cat who ate the canary—and she was the canary.
But Lazy Mazy was a financial godsend, so Mazelle tried to swallow the anger she’d felt since Cabin opened in April and was such a hit for MGM, while she was stuck in such an insipid role.
Lorenzo’s pitch for Lazy Mazy had been simple: Since Reaper was temporarily stalled, she could star in her own “franchise,” which Lorenzo presented to Mazelle and her parents in his new lavish studio office.