The Perils of Caroline : An Excerpt From Vidal’s Latest
CAROLINE LAY TIED to the railroad track, the hot sun in her face while in her ears the ominous sound of an approaching steam engine. A high male voice called out, “Look frightened.”
“I am frightened.”
“Don’t talk. Look more to the left.”
“But, Chief, she’s got too much shadow on her face. You can’t see the eyes.”
“Look straight ahead.” The slow-moving steam engine was now within a yard of her. She could see it out of the corner of her right eye. A stone pressed into her back, just below the left shoulder blade. She wanted to scream.
“Scream,” shouted William Randolph Hearst; and Caroline obliged. As she filled the air with terrified exhalation, a man on horseback rode up to the railroad engine and leapt into the engine room, where he pulled a cord, releasing a quantity of ill-smelling steam from the engine’s smokestack. As the train ground to a halt, he ran toward Caroline and knelt beside her.
“Cut!” said the Chief. “Stay right where you are, Mrs. Sanford.”
“I have no choice,” said Caroline. The sweaty young man--a cowboy belonging to Hearst’s ranch--smiled down at her reassuringly. “It won’t take a minute, ma’am,” he said. “He’s got to change the camera so he can get a real close look at me untying you.”
Hearst was now standing over her, his vast bulk mercifully blocking the sun. “That was swell. Really,” he said. “Joe’s rolling up the camera now. It won’t take a minute. I never knew you were such a pro.”
“Neither,” said Caroline, “did I.”
“Actually, there’s nothing easier than movies,” said Millicent Hearst. “Either you look nice on the screen or you don’t. If you do, they’ll love you. If you don’t, you can act your butt off and nothing’s going to happen.”
Mr. and Mrs. Hearst gazed down on Caroline, observing the social amenities with a flow of talk.
“Actually if Millicent weren’t so old, I could make a star out of her.” Hearst was his usual kindly, tactless self.
“We’re ready,” said the cameraman.
“All right. Let’s get started.” The Hearsts withdrew. The cowboy and Caroline waited, patiently, to be told what to do. As they did, Caroline admired, yet again, Hearst’s instinct, which had now drawn him to the most exciting of all the games that their country had yet devised. He had plunged into movie making, both amateur like this film and professional like the Hearst-produced “The Perils of Pauline.” Now in summer residence at San Simeon, the Chief was amusing himself with a feature-length film in which he had gallantly starred his house guest, Caroline. Once Caroline had accepted the Wilson Administration’s assignment to investigate the propaganda possibilities of Hollywood, she had started her embassy by paying a call on her old friend Hearst, who disapproved of the war in general and Wilson in particular. An hour later, Caroline, no longer Lady Belinda, was freed from her track by the cowboy and seated with the Chief in his principal sitting room, with its rough-hewn beams and unfinished pine walls on which were hung perhaps the largest collection of false old masters that any American millionaire had ever accumulated.
Hearst stood over a round table on which was placed what looked to be a wedding cake covered in velvet. He removed the covering to reveal the model of a castle. “This is it,” he said. “What I’m going to build up here.”
“It is,” Caroline was guarded, “like nothing else.”
“Nothing else in California, anyway. Can’t wait to get started.” For more than 20 years, Hearst’s majordomo had appeared at the same hour with Coca-Cola in a silver-embossed mug for the Chief, and now sherry for Caroline.
“So they want you to organize the movie business.” Hearst sat in a throne opposite Caroline. “Stories about Huns raping Belgian nuns?”
“Surely your papers have told us all that we want to hear on that subject.” Caroline was smooth, relaxed by sherry. “I thought, perhaps, Huns raped by Belgian nuns, to encourage women to resist the beast.”
“I always said,” Hearst did not even smile, “that you were the newspaperman, not your half-brother Blaise.”
“Well, I did buy the Tribune, and I made it popular by copying faithfully your Journal.”
“No. You’ve got a better paper. Better town--Washington. I’m thinking. . . .” Hearst stared at a Mantegna whose wooden frame sported wormholes only down one side, plainly, there had been no time for the forger to drill them in the rest of the frame. “I think movies are the answer.”
“To what?”
“The world.” Hearst’s glaring eagle eyes were fixed on Caroline. “I always thought it was going to be the press. But the beauty of of movies is they don’t talk. Everyone in China watches my ‘Perils of Pauline,’ but they can’t read any of my papers there.”
Twenty sat down to dinner in a long timbered room hung with Aubusson tapestries. On the table huge crystal girandoles alternated with bottles of tomato ketchup and Worcestershire sauce. Caroline sat on the Chief’s right in deference to her high place as a fellow publisher. After dinner, Hearst showed a western hit of his own making. The hero was Hearst, the heroine was Millicent, who sat next to Caroline complaining bitterly about her appearance. “I look like a Pekingese. It’s awful seeing yourself like this.”
As the applause ended, Hearst stood up and gave a mock bow, and said, “I wrote the title cards, too. Couldn’t be easier. Just like picture captions.” He looked at Caroline. “Now we’ll see something that’s still in the works.” The lights went out. The screen suddenly filled with a picture of Hearst’s train-of-all-work coming to a halt. Caroline recognized the sweaty cowboy with whom she had worked that day.
There was a murmur in the tent as a slender woman got off the train. She was received by the cowboy, hat in hand. The camera was now very close on the woman’s face: a widow’s peak and a cleft chin emphasized the symmetry of her face; high cheekbones made flattering shadows below large eyes. Slowly, the woman smiled. There was a sigh from the audience.
“I don’t believe it.” And Caroline did not. A title card said, “Welcome to Dodge City, Lady Belinda.”
Adapted by permission from “Hollywood: A Novel of America in the 1920s” by Gore Vidal (Random House). Copyright 1990 Gore Vidal.