Remake

“Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” I said to the comp and poured myself some of the bourbon I’d bought for Giant. Howard Keel rode into town, married Jane Powell, and they started up into the mountains in his wagon. I could ff over this whole section — Howard was hardly likely to pull out a jug and offer Jane a swig, but I let it run at regular speed while she twittered on to Howard about her hopes and plans. Which were going to be smashed as soon as she found out she was supposed to cook and clean for his six mangy brothers. Howard giddyapped the make-believe horses and looked uncomfortable.

“That’s right, Howard. Don’t tell her,” I said. “She won’t listen to you anyway. She’s got to find out for herself.”

They arrived at the cabin. I’d expected at least one of the brothers to have a corncob pipe, but they didn’t. There was some roughhousing, another song, and then a long stretch of pure wholesomeness till the barnraising.

I poured myself another bourbon and leaned forward, watching for homespun dissipation. Jane Powell handed pies and cakes out of the wagon, and a straw-covered jug I’d have to turn into a pot of beans or something, and they went into the barnraising number Alis had asked for the night I met her. “Ff to end of music,” I said, and then, “Wait,” which wasn’t a command, and they continued galloping through the dance, finished, and started in on raising the barn in record time.

“Stop,” I said. “Back at 96,” I said, and rew’d to the beginning of the dance. “Forward realtime,” I said, and there she was. Alis. In a pink gingham dress and white stockings, with her backlit hair pulled back into a bun.

“Freeze,” I said.

It’s the booze, I thought. Ray Milland in Lost Weekend, seeing pink elephants. Or some effect of the klieg, a delayed flash or something, superimposing Alis’s face over the dancers like it had been over the figures of Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell dancing on the polished floor.

And how often was this going to happen? Every time somebody went into a dance routine? Every time a face or a hair ribbon or a flaring skirt reminded me of that first flash? Deboozing Mayer’s movies was bad enough. I didn’t think I could take it if I had to look at Alis, too.

I turned the screen off and then on again, like I was trying to debug a program, but she was still there.

I watched the dance again, looking at her face carefully, and then triple-timed to the scene where the brides get kidnapped. The dancer, her light brown hair covered by a bonnet, looked like Alis but not like her. I triple-timed to the next dance number, the girls doing ballet steps in their pantaloons and white stockings this time, no bonnets, but whatever it was, her hair or the music or the flare of her skirt, had passed, and she was just a girl who looked like Alis. A girl, who, unlike Alis, had gotten to dance in the movies.

I ff’d through the rest of the movie, but there weren’t any more dance numbers and no sign of Alis, and this was all Another Lesson, Andrew, in not mixing bourbon with Rio Bravo tequila.

“Beginning credits,” I said, and went back and wiped the bottle in the boardinghouse scene and then triple-timed to the barnraising again to turn the jug into a pan of corn bread, and then thought I’d better watch the rest of the scene to make sure the jug wasn’t visible in any of the other shots.

“Print and send,” I said, “and forward realtime.”

And there she was again. Dancing in the movies.

MOVIE CLICHE #15: The Hangover. (Usually follows #14: The Party.) Headache, jumping at loud noises, flinching at daylight.

SEE: The Thin Man, The Tender Trap, After the Thin Man, McLintock!, Another Thin Man, The Philadelphia Story, Song of the Thin Man.

I accessed Heada, no visual. “Do you know of anything that can sober me up?”

“Fast or painless?”

“Fast.”

“Ridigaine,” she said promptly. “What’s up?”

“Nothing’s up,” I said. “Mayer’s bugging me to work harder on his movies, and I decided the AS’s are slowing me down. Do you have any?”

“I’ll have to ask around,” she said. “I’ll get some and bring it over.”

That’s not necessary, I wanted to say, which would only make her more suspicious. “Thanks,” I said.

While I was waiting for her I called up the credits. They weren’t much help. There were seven brides, after all, and the only ones I knew were Jane Powell and Ruta Lee, who’d been in every B-picture made in the seventies. Dorcas was Julie Newmeyer, who’d later changed her name to Julie Newmar. When I went back and looked at the barnraising scene again, it was obvious which one she was.