PEACE IN TECHNICOLOR
Rodell, Fred
Peace In Technicolor By FRED RODELL GATHER round, you Freudians, you readers of reveries, you decoders of dreams, you explorers of the Ego, you intrepid investigators of the idiosyncracies of the...
...This bone they presented ceremoniously to Franklin, still perched in his high-chair...
...The lollipop had obviously been licked on before and there were a few bites out of the edges but Franklin grabbed it and grinned...
...The show was apparently a private pre-view of a forthcoming musical production...
...There were a couple more actors and we were thinking to ourselves, my Id and I,—How about the heroine...
...Why, I like them so much I'd give them the shirt off my back...
...Peace In Technicolor By FRED RODELL GATHER round, you Freudians, you readers of reveries, you decoders of dreams, you explorers of the Ego, you intrepid investigators of the idiosyncracies of the Id...
...t Then The Fadeout Well, the slide must have stuck because there it stayed for a whole minute .with F.D.R...
...Big Ed opened his mouth as if to say something, put his foot in it, and hopped athletically off the stage...
...he was standing in a puddle of oil...
...I don't suppose you've heard of the Freedom sisters...
...turned around with a look too black for technicolor and bit his cigarette holder in two...
...sat in a canvas chair, his grin still slightly redolent of the Cheshire Cat, giving orders through his teeth...
...What the caption said was "War to End All War...
...He had a long school-teacher's pointer in his hand and he was lecturing away as each sterioptican slide was thrown on the screen...
...you know how it is in dreams...
...was still there...
...didn't like this one much better...
...Whole Plot's Corny' We turned around, Iddy and I, to see who was talking and when we turned back, the stage was gone and the audience was gone but F.D.R...
...Cut out Poland," said the pipe...
...Flash—and there was a stage in front of F.D.R., complete with footlights, and he was casting a show in a manner never known to Hollywood—but it was still Hollywood...
...They're fine fellows...
...O.K., Archie," he said...
...A Hollywood waiter appeared from nowhere, bearing a huge juicy steak on a tray...
...It must have been about here that Felix Frankfurter stuck his head around the wings and pulled a white rabbit out of his hat...
...yelling his head off, and then it jerked out, and on slid another old bird, wearing a pince-nez, dressed about like 1918, and carrying an enormous brand-new lollipop with a tag on it...
...Sign Ed up for the lead," said F.D.R...
...he bellowed...
...People walked across the stage...
...was saying, "I've truckled all the way from here to Yalta and back—just so I could put on this super-Quollosal, super-Teherrific, super-Y'all-time-high Sand Francisco scenario and I sure do hope you good folks, you old friends, you fine fellows, are gonna like it...
...F.D.R...
...They had once said "League of Nations" but "League of" had been crossed out and "United" written in instead...
...Slides Across The Screen Both producers leaped from their couches, grabbed the steak, and began chewing at it ravenously from opposite sides...
...I sure do...
...We've been saving something to keep you quiet...
...The steak was shaped exactly like the map of Europe...
...Quebec was quollosal...
...I've got a dream to tell you...
...F.D.R...
...maybe it said so on his chair...
...That voice was so soothing that old Id and I were just dozing off when F.D.R yelled sharply: "Where did that slide come from ? Take it out...
...Steel on the back...
...All around him bowed and fluttered little men with press-cards in their hats and with faces that looked like mice and also like Walter Winchell—or was it Walter Lippmann...
...All right, all right," said the cigar...
...Been building them up for years...
...We knew what the tag said...
...They had come on a hard bone right in the center of the steak—say about where the Bavarian mountains would be on a map of Europe...
...on the front and U.S...
...was again running the show...
...Don't ask me what a cartel looks like...
...No sir...
...began to shrink...
...Right up front was F.D.R., doing his best to please...
...Cut out the part about India," said the cigar...
...You wouldn't say No to me, would you Joe—not an old diplomat like you ?" "No," said Joe, exiting softly...
...Teheran was teherrific...
...He got the job of juvenile anyway...
...And don't you go believing any of this gossip-column talk about my two partners in this enterprise...
...That racial stuff is too controversial, too hot...
...The sweater read Y.M.C.A...
...He stopped crying, smiled, sniffed at the bone, stuck it in his pocket, and started to bawl again...
...After that, things moved faster...
...Publicity, publicity, publicity...
...had been saying Yessir and tearing big hand-fuls of pages out of the script as fast as he could but at the last remark he burst into tears...
...when a voice from behind us shouted, "How about the heroine...
...Yalta will be y'all-time high...
...We can write 'em on a card and hold 'em up for him to read...
...They were all chirping, "Yessir, yessir, Mr...
...They're my friends, my friends...
...It was a huge, gaunt, homely face, full of kindness and compassion and sadness...
...Since I saw you last," F.D.R...
...My Id and I were wondering what would happen when they came together in the middle and just then, both stopped eating and licked their chops...
...As he did so, his arm- chair turned into a high-chair, his cigarette-holder into a pacifier, and there he sat in short pants and long curls...
...Then onto the screen flashed a picture about 3 times as big as the others...
...There was a babble of comment from an audience that had just showed up: "Big Kd can't even remember his lines...
...It seemed quite fitting that the movie projector was really a magic lantern...
...A kid called Nelson in a Buster Brown collar started to make a speech in phonograph-record Spanish until he looked down and turned crimson...
...You can be the sound effects and off-stage noises...
...Who cares...
...Lolling on luxurious couches on both sides of him were the two Producers—a fat little man with a cigar in one hand and a brandy-and-soda in the other, and a stocky little man sucking a pipe through his bushy moustache...
...He looked behind him and- he seemed to shiver a little...
...was grinning and dropping cigarette ashes...
...It had a tag attached to its handle...
...The caption said simply "With Malice Toward None—" There was a sudden silence and the face on the screen grew bigger and bigger and simultaneously F.D.R...
...We looked up and there was a picture of a harmless-looking old duffer carrying an umbrella, and underneath was the caption "Peace In Our Time...
...The old duffer had a ghostly quality about him and there was just a suggestion of a sardonic smile about his lips...
...Its name wasn't announced, but it had a theme song that went: "We'll throw sand in your eyes when you come to Sand Fran* cisco in the Spring...
...Sorry," said the voice from behind...
...Occasionally they stopped for a second to snarl at each other and when they snarled they turned briefly into a bear and a lion—and then back again...
...At least it looked like Hollywood to an Id that has never been there...
...Never get by the Bank of England—I mean the Hays Office...
...He seemed to be the Director...
...Gotta fill that character part," said F.D.R...
...That was where I woke up...
...F.D.R...
...Somebody named Will drove across the stage in a cartel, with Jesse Jones on the running-board, and got signed up as the heavy...
...The rabbit had an old Pulitzer Prize hanging from his neck on a blue ribbon and he scurried around the stage in left-wise circles, reciting poetry...
...It began with a big black blur and the blur became a tree and up in the tree grinned the grin of the disembodied Cheshire Cat (strictly Tenniel) and then the Cat was suddenly smoking a cigarette in a holder and the grin belonged to You Know Who and there we were, I and my Id, in Hollywood...
...I just got the idea you were re-casting...
...Everybody laughed, including F.D.R...
...Will In A Cartel First came a big healthy fellow, handsome like the hero of a whiskey ad, with prematurely white hair and a turtle-neck sweater...
...And have...
...Whaddya think we're producing in this business ? Travelogues 1" "Wnile plot's corny," said the pipe...
...He was trying to point and to grin at the same time but the pointer wouldn't reach and the grin looked sickly and he kept getting smaller and smaller and smaller...
...Boss...
...I don't understand about dreams...
...As he walked, the scrap-iron turned into a 2-man submarine...
...We've got four heroines...
...Or better yet, cut it up...
...F.D.R...
...F.D.R...
...Heroine...
...On the way, he bumped into a tall sedate mustachioed gent who thereupon stooped and brushed off his striped pants...
...It was clear he was no longer the boss...
...Striped Pants was dragging a couple of chunks of scrap-iron on a string...
...At this point a mosquito with a face like Harry Hopkins buzzed briefly in F.D.R.'s ear...
...As Franklin went happily to work on the lollipop, the conference room, Producers and all, fuzzed into a fancy fade-out, the lollipop was suddenly a cigarette holder, and F.D.R...
...He was sitting in an ultra-modern easy chair in what we took to be a Hollywood conference room and he was reading a script called The Atlantic Charter, or Winny and Me, At Sea...
...And he pulled an enormous lollipop out of his inside pocket...
...Cut out Greece," said the cigar...
...The audience was made up of movie eritics dreasedl like Senators and Congressmen and th« auditoriumi looked strangely like the House of Representatives hi the Capitol...
...From where we floated, my Id and I, we could just barely read the words on the tag...
Vol. 9 • March 1945 • No. 13
