From where we stood I looked up to see Denise and Jonathan dancing, her bright blonde clarity beautifully highlighting his slick dark hair and fine features. She might be older than Jonathan, but they would look gorgeous together on film. On the strength of the champagne and the warm summer night, everyone here with a stake in Fly Me to the Moon was full of high hopes and high spirits. As was a certain writer in Riverside, no doubt. I pictured Max sitting on the back porch, smiling, watching his wife’s tomato plants gleam in the moonlight.

•   •   •

But when actual filming started, in truth, an unhappy miasma surrounded Fly Me to the Moon. And it did not dissipate. The thirty-six-day shoot (requiring no locations, and thus, no vagaries of weather or transport to contend with) ought to have popped right along, but the production was plagued. Stalled with unending technical problems, gaffes in scheduling and budgeting, an electrical failure, a collapsed set with an injury to one of the carpenters, and a couple of days when Jonathan was late (and hungover). Each, all of these instances drove up costs and shortened tempers. Often in the evenings Jonathan came out to Malibu to rail and moan, a font of irate gossip. He told us the filming was like the fighting at Guadalcanal, and when Terrence asked how he had any idea what Guadalcanal was like, Jonathan said he’d seen the movie.

For all the accidents and incidents, the root of the picture’s troubles lay with Leon. For over thirty years Leon had led Empire Pictures like a general, giving orders from behind a desk. But for this film he was leading the troops on the ground. He was on-set daily, and he did not bother finessing his decisions to smooth feelings or soothe egos. No one dared argue with him as he insisted on the best of everything for Denise, the perfect lighting, the luminous close-ups, the good lines. Every night Leon would look at what had been shot during the day; if he didn’t like it (and invariably he did not) it would have to be re-shot. Moreover, much of it had to be rewritten, driving Charlie Frye to desperation.

Charlie called me nearly every day, sometimes twice a day, at work, at home. I was the only person to whom he could confide, since I alone knew his secret. Leon had totally shattered his confidence, pointing to a scene, describing the changes he wanted, and demanding rewrites, some to be done overnight, some in a matter of hours. I’d seen Max Leslie do rewrites on-set while everyone else was taking a smoke break, but Charlie froze up.

“I can’t do it, Roxanne! It’s like trying to take a shit in front of him!”

“Where are you now?” I took the phone to my office window and stood there watching laundry flap on the line.