512
DORIS LESSING
of overalls and a cloth cap into anstocratic elegancies.
It
was about
ten in the morning. The scene to be shot was the moment of the
gentleman's failure with the lady - her lack of refinement and
probably unwashed condition were responsible, the script suggested.
Usually half a morning would have done for such a test. But for the
whole of that day, hour after hour after hour, the studio with its
armies of hands, lighting experts, camera crews, makeup women,
watched the mad director with the marvellous politeness of their most
necessary discipline, while
he
watched the handsome hero attempt
and fail, attempt and fail, and attempt and fail and fail, again and
again, to have the beautiful and scornful girl. The great expanse of
the harshly-lit studio, the small area of especially-focused lights, the
fourposter bed, and at least three hundred people standing about, if
they were not actually assisting, forced to watch while the lusty young
man who for weeks and weeks had been lighttheartedly romping his
way through at least a dozen women in one film, was reduced to
public impotence. Again and again. And again.
When it was all over, but not until five minutes before the trade
union rules made it inevitable that the camera crews must go home
to tea and their wives, the mad director said, addressing the by now
exhausted young man: \Vell, that'll do I think. But actually, love, I
do think that X (another actor) could probably be better in this
particular role. You are too earthy darling, let's face
it.
He's more
subtle.
Or the famous screen actress, American, well known for her
fastidiousness about what she plays. Much dreaded is that moment
when, surrounded by lawyers, agents, a husband and protectors of
all kinds, she hands back a script with: "As it stands, it really is not
for me - if we may suggest some changes - ?"
What then, is for her? She has played, for some decades now,
women in every kind of desperate situation, ex-jailbirds, betrayed
lovers, doomed invalids, sorrowing mothers. But what can be the
common denominator which would cause her to say: Yes, this is for
me? I once knew a man who worked, on a very humble level, in
films she was starring in. What was she like? I wanted to know. It
was offered that she was businesslike, adamant in her choices of co–
stars, would not be photographed without the exact density of a piece
of gauze being specified by lawyers, in triplicate, for certain revealing
shots; that she could never be shot in such a way that her nose, not
