Pat Hobby found it difficult in the case of an actor on a set during the shooting of a moving picture. It was about the stiffest chore he had ever undertaken but he was doing it to save his car. To a sordidly commercial glance the jalopy would not have seemed worth saving but, because of Hollywood’s great distances, it was an indispensable tool of the writer’s trade.
‘The finance company —’ explained Pat, but Gyp McCarthy interrupted.
‘I got some business in this next take. You want me to blow up on it?’
‘I only need twenty,’ persisted Pat. ‘I can’t get jobs if I have to hang around my bedroom.’
‘You’d save money that way — you don’t get jobs anymore.’
This was cruelly correct. But working or not Pat liked to pass his days in or near a studio. He had reached a dolorous and precarious forty-nine with nothing else to do.
‘I got a rewrite job promised for next week,’ he lied.
‘Oh, nuts to you,’ said Gyp. ‘You better get off the set before Hilliard sees you.’
Pat glanced nervously toward the group by the camera — then he played his trump card.
‘Once —’ he said,’— once I paid for you to have a baby.’
‘Sure you did!’ said Gyp wrathfully. ‘That was sixteen years ago. And where is it now — it’s in jail for running over an old lady without a licence.’
‘Well I paid for it,’ said Pat. ‘Two hundred smackers.’
‘That’s nothing to what it cost me. Would I be stunting at my age if I had dough to lend? Would I be working at all?’
From somewhere in the darkness an assistant director issued an order:
‘Ready to go!’
Pat spoke quickly.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Five bucks.’
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The Homes of the Stars Esquire (August 1940)
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