When he was making movies, this translated in his mind to the following: you could not have culture unless it had an explicit, quality moral. “Love conquers all,” for instance, or “Obey your elders.” But not both together. It was best not to confuse the audience. He spent the most productive fifteen minutes of his life sorting through photographs of his stable of actors and assigning single adjectives to each one of them. Geraldine Farrar, for instance was “glamorous.” Rachel Bryer was “adorable.” Butch Cliff “rugged.” Alan Germaine “sophisticated.” He was startled to see that in his frenzy to hire the best, he had both a Simone St. James and a Simone St. Michel. He fired the latter and declared the former “unique.”

All publicity and interviews from then on hinged on these single qualities’ being repeated, so that there was no mistake. His films reflected his belief that what America most wanted was equally clear-cut: three and a half reels of sorrows, resolved by five minutes of happiness.

His success led him to believe he was correct in all decisions, which caused him to snap facts and other people’s opinions like twigs. He felt his employees were his family, a curse that his actual family would wish on no one. That the actors—his children—would have a party without supervision struck him as a terrible idea, so, two days beforehand, a cavalcade of trucks had pulled up in the driveway. In their beds were dead trees. Most of them were coastal oaks, whose corpses were gnarled and mighty, and they carried with them the winter atmosphere of giants struck down in their prime.

A crew of fifteen men set to work planting them around the house and along the beach. Anchoring them into sand was difficult work, involving buried concrete beams and leather straps for balance. But Goldwyn deemed the work necessary, for, just as an actor’s appeal had to be simplified, and culture needed a moral, and a movie’s emotional twists needed to be set by the stopwatch, a party needed a purpose. And there wasn’t going to be a party at his house unless it made all present better people. This party was going to be about something.

5

The house was Cape Cod clapboard, shaped like the letter “F,” its horizontal strokes flanking a large patio that opened onto the beach. It was set back from the road by a good thirty feet, and the meandering driveway was already an ersatz parking lot, with roadsters and sedans and even a pair of motorcycles angled along the pavers.

Sutherland parked, and his guests disembarked, and there was some stretching and joking about the difference in weather, curiosity about who had arrived already, and then steps were taken toward the party. Except by Chaplin.

“I’ll be there in a moment,” he said.