Posted on Saturday, 19 August 2000
An avid Jane Austen fan, award winning director and screenwriter Billy Wilder has just completed reading Pride and Prejudice for the fifth time. In a dream he meets up with many of the characters from the novel and some of his own creation and combines the two genres with comical conclusions.
Scene One: Rosings Park, Poolside, at the de Bourgh palazzo
Scene one opens on a body floating lifelessly in a pool face down, surrounded by police. "The poor dope - he always wanted to please her. Well in the end, he got to clean her pool."
My story, which I flatter myself, could be the story of any Joe, so please let it afford you no uneasiness. I feel it my duty to promote and establish myself. I am, Joe Collins, sir, and until most recently, an unemployed screenwriter, but now gratefully due to the beneficence of the infamous and stellar Norma de Bourgh, late of the silver screen and world renown, I am a dutifully attendant to her every need. Late I say, for my gracious patroness has been grievously lacking from that establishment for these past 20 years. But that has not diminished her status, at least in her estimation.
When we first made our acquaintance, by the inestimable coincidence of my automobile succumbing to mechanical repairs and my knocking at her palatial manse on Sunset Boulevard, Rosings Park, in need of a telephone, I thought that I was quite mistaken in her esteemed identity and I asked her if she was indeed "the" Norma de Bourgh who used to be capacious in pictures? She replied, "My dear young man, I am capacious, it is the pictures that got trifling."
Scene Two: Rosings Park, the parlor, of the de Bourgh palazzo
In the course of the execution of my many duties governed by Miss de Bourgh, for that is what she prefers to be called, I brought to her attention a most serious and engaging correspondence from her nephew, Joe Darcy, yes I flatter myself, we share the same name, late of Pemberley Chicago, who by the by, is a most talented musician, but is away on the premise of a devised holiday in Miami Florida, revealed that because of the entirely unpropitious behavior by some Spats Colombo gentleman, who has it in mind that her nephew and his gentleman friend Jerry Bingley, were guests at an unnatural affair on St Valentines day, held in a garage no less, where guns were fired, and it is my understanding, and I sorry if this distresses you, people died! In brief, they are on the lamb.
This is all most distressing to Miss de Bourgh, coupled with the fact that she believes me unfaithful in my attentions to our writing endeavors of the screenplay 'Salome', for her glorious comeback to the screen. I must confess it has been quite vexing to write for a "silent picture". She insists that "we" as in she, and her compatriots, did not need dialogue. "We" had faces. This has put quite a damper on our success, coupled with the fact that she is very jealous of my lady friend, Miss Betty Lucas. But alas, in consolation, she does tango most agreeably.
Scene Three: Rosings Park, Miss de Bourgh's boudoir, the de Bourgh palazzo
Further correspondence from her dear nephew has revealed their matriculation into a new band, whose blonde lead female singer commodes the latest next to nothing fashions, complains of always getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop, and has taken them under her wing. They are curious if Miss de Bourgh could send them, in care of the hotel, the trunk of dress-up clothes in the attic containing his aunts old screen costumes that Darcy played with on his visits as a child? It seems that Darcy and Bingley, to expedite their departure from Chicago, accepted the only job available to musicians leaving town on one days notice with an all girl band, requiring them to be likewise gendered. Let me suffice it to say, they are in need of a female wardrobe.
The discomposure of spirits afforded by Miss Norma de Bourgh could not be easily overcome. No argument could be presented on my part, to alleviate the misfortune and discomfort felt by her. Not even my foolproof caveat suggestion of, "the death of her nephew would have been a blessing in comparison to this", could cheer her. And when there has no more to be lamented, Miss de Bourgh sent me away, on the pretext of an errand to buy gin, and on my return, I found the palazzo surrounded and engulfed by a mob of various professions. Miss de Bourgh, after alerting the press, the police and medical staff, had attempted suicide!
Being attentive to all things, my arrival and quick summation of the scene soon put the palazzo back in order but Miss de Bourgh, who while laying disheveled, despondent and prostrate on her swan bed, was giving the performance of her life. She was seriously displeased and put the blame of her recent life miseries entirely on me, Joe Collins. I had driven her to madness and it could not be bourne. My negligent regard of her wishes in response to her nephew's needs and my unfaithful attentions and lack of solicitous servitude had thwarted her screen comeback. I had almost been successful in killing the world's greatest star. Well, that was just too unbearable to afford and I replied, "Oh wake up Norma, you'd be killing yourself to an empty house. The audience left twenty years ago." Whereby, pulling out a gun from under her pillow, she shot me, ending our employment and requiring my removal to the pool, under the pretext of my drowning while cleaning it. Bullet wholes not withstanding
Scene Four: Rosings Park, Poolside at the de Bourgh palazzo
Well, this is where you came in, back at that pool again, the one I always wanted to clean. It's dawn now and they must have photographed me a thousand times, but I hope with Miss de Bourgh's approval. Then, they got a couple of pruning hooks from the garden and fished me out... ever so gently. Funny, how gentle people get with you once you're dead. The press has arrived and it's all been arranged, but not by my most attentive doing I mind you, for Norma to be commoded away. It is her final scene, her last hurrah. At the top of the stairs, she is ready and calls out to the camera crew below, "And I promise you I'll never desert you again because after 'Salome' we'll make another picture and another picture. You see, this is my life! It always will be! Nothing else! Just us, the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark!...All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up.
P.S. A picture postcard arrived today from Florida from Darcy, it reads; Happy to relay joyous news all around. Spats Colombo apprehended by police. I am engaged to a most attractive and accomplished young lady, Miss "Sugar" Kane Bennet. Bingley is to marry an older gentleman of good fortune, Osgood Fielding III, of which the particulars are yet to be worked out between them. But, as seeing there is no objection to his gender on either part, I see no further delay.
Yours Truly, Joe Darcy
P.S. It is very hot here, but some like it so.