Read Online Loren D. Estleman - Valentino 03 - Alive! by Loren D. Estleman - Free Book Online
Authors: Loren D. Estleman
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Nothing unique there either.”
“William Henry Pratt”—Broadhead used the actor’s birth name—“was the son of a British civil servant and an East Indian woman: a half-caste. In Victorian society, that was the bottom rung of the ladder, with no hope of ascending ever. Then there were seven older brothers to bully him, mentally and physically. The abuse continued into adulthood, driving him into exile in Canada, then to the U.S. in search of work. He left at least three marriages in the dust before he was forty-five. Does any of this strike you as familiar?”
“It’s the plot of Frankenstein —the Monster’s part, anyway, roughly. It’s no wonder he identified so well with a cobbled-up creature, alone and despised.” Valentino had noted the swarthiness of the gaunt actor’s features, which became more pronounced as his hair whitened. He’d assumed it was because of the California sun, shining down on him beside his swimming pool; stories had circulated of his eccentricity, basking beside it in a swimsuit and top hat, of all things. “How do you know this?”
“How does a popular-culture historian know anything? I got it from the horse’s mouth.”
“You knew Karloff?”
“I made my first dollar in this town—and precious little more—working as a studio messenger. I delivered pages of Bogdonavich’s screenplay to him when he was filming Targets, the last year of his life. Age confides in youth, as I am doing now. He knew the end was near. He was confined to a wheelchair, except when he gathered the strength and courage to stand before the camera. Crippling arthritis was the culprit, abetted not a little by three unsuccessful spinal surgeries to correct the miseries brought on by that sadist James Whale. Did you know he forced Karloff to carry Colin Clive up the hill to that windmill in Frankenstein dozens of times? That experience made him an early activist on behalf of the Screen Actors Guild. A man will tell things to a complete stranger he would never share with his own flesh and blood.”
Their meals came. Valentino took one look at his burger, an obscene lump of cooked flesh covered with blood-red sauce, and knew he would never bring himself to take a bite. He couldn’t erase the picture of Craig Hunter beaten to a pulp. He found the bitter taste of the beer more palatable. Was this how alcoholics were born? He couldn’t ask Craig.
Broadhead, the healed-over cynic, poured ketchup on his sandwich and helped himself to it with apparent gusto. “All this is public knowledge now. Oscar Wilde said the posthumous biography brings a new horror to death. You’ve been preoccupied with your experiment in resurrectionist architecture, or you’d be aware of more recent discoveries in the history of our quaint industry. The ghouls who call themselves scholars would send George Romero screaming into the night.”
“I first saw Frankenstein on my family’s old black-and-white TV set, in my bedroom after they replaced it with a color television in the living room. I was sitting up in my bed with Pepi, my Chihuahua-terrier, curled up in my lap. Every time I’ve seen it since, I’ve felt that same cuddly warmth. I’ll miss that next time, thanks to you.”
“Don’t. Karloff wouldn’t appreciate your tears, nor would he feel he deserved them. His last marriage was a long and happy one, and it produced a well-adjusted daughter, who supplements her income talking about her father on DVD extras.”
“What was he like?”
Broadhead put down his burger and wiped his mouth with his napkin. “I keep forgetting you’re a sprockethead first and a scholar second. He was extremely gracious, in an Old World way you don’t find anymore, even in polite Europeans. His conversation grew tedious when he talked about his American family, which he did often; but he had that wonderful warm baritone and that marvelous lisp.
“His famous gentle sense of humor was solidly based on irony,” he went on.
“William Henry Pratt”—Broadhead used the actor’s birth name—“was the son of a British civil servant and an East Indian woman: a half-caste. In Victorian society, that was the bottom rung of the ladder, with no hope of ascending ever. Then there were seven older brothers to bully him, mentally and physically. The abuse continued into adulthood, driving him into exile in Canada, then to the U.S. in search of work. He left at least three marriages in the dust before he was forty-five. Does any of this strike you as familiar?”
“It’s the plot of Frankenstein —the Monster’s part, anyway, roughly. It’s no wonder he identified so well with a cobbled-up creature, alone and despised.” Valentino had noted the swarthiness of the gaunt actor’s features, which became more pronounced as his hair whitened. He’d assumed it was because of the California sun, shining down on him beside his swimming pool; stories had circulated of his eccentricity, basking beside it in a swimsuit and top hat, of all things. “How do you know this?”
“How does a popular-culture historian know anything? I got it from the horse’s mouth.”
“You knew Karloff?”
“I made my first dollar in this town—and precious little more—working as a studio messenger. I delivered pages of Bogdonavich’s screenplay to him when he was filming Targets, the last year of his life. Age confides in youth, as I am doing now. He knew the end was near. He was confined to a wheelchair, except when he gathered the strength and courage to stand before the camera. Crippling arthritis was the culprit, abetted not a little by three unsuccessful spinal surgeries to correct the miseries brought on by that sadist James Whale. Did you know he forced Karloff to carry Colin Clive up the hill to that windmill in Frankenstein dozens of times? That experience made him an early activist on behalf of the Screen Actors Guild. A man will tell things to a complete stranger he would never share with his own flesh and blood.”
Their meals came. Valentino took one look at his burger, an obscene lump of cooked flesh covered with blood-red sauce, and knew he would never bring himself to take a bite. He couldn’t erase the picture of Craig Hunter beaten to a pulp. He found the bitter taste of the beer more palatable. Was this how alcoholics were born? He couldn’t ask Craig.
Broadhead, the healed-over cynic, poured ketchup on his sandwich and helped himself to it with apparent gusto. “All this is public knowledge now. Oscar Wilde said the posthumous biography brings a new horror to death. You’ve been preoccupied with your experiment in resurrectionist architecture, or you’d be aware of more recent discoveries in the history of our quaint industry. The ghouls who call themselves scholars would send George Romero screaming into the night.”
“I first saw Frankenstein on my family’s old black-and-white TV set, in my bedroom after they replaced it with a color television in the living room. I was sitting up in my bed with Pepi, my Chihuahua-terrier, curled up in my lap. Every time I’ve seen it since, I’ve felt that same cuddly warmth. I’ll miss that next time, thanks to you.”
“Don’t. Karloff wouldn’t appreciate your tears, nor would he feel he deserved them. His last marriage was a long and happy one, and it produced a well-adjusted daughter, who supplements her income talking about her father on DVD extras.”
“What was he like?”
Broadhead put down his burger and wiped his mouth with his napkin. “I keep forgetting you’re a sprockethead first and a scholar second. He was extremely gracious, in an Old World way you don’t find anymore, even in polite Europeans. His conversation grew tedious when he talked about his American family, which he did often; but he had that wonderful warm baritone and that marvelous lisp.
“His famous gentle sense of humor was solidly based on irony,” he went on.
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