Fly Me to the Moon and its witty premise relied on the audience finding Professor Bleeker endearing and exasperating, brilliant and myopic. Jonathan was perfect. The terrific delivery that I had witnessed on-set that day carried perfectly onto film. He might never play Hamlet, but he had a flair for this kind of comedic timing, like the younger Cary Grant. Maisie started out plain, but as the film continued she became beautiful by virtue of being smart, and being in love. But Denise was never plain, always a stunning beauty, and when Maisie spouted phrases like oscilloscopic lenses and gamma refractions, when complex equations configuring light years passed through her lush, pouting lips, Denise looked like an angel, but she sounded like a chimp. The comic effect was unintended. Would the audience believe that Maisie was smart enough to hoodwink her astrophysicist boss? Or that, given her extraordinary beauty, she would need to hoodwink him? The rest of the cast, including Barbara Marsh, was fine, but the story, as with any picture like this, fell squarely on the shoulders of the two leads, just like Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night. I winced to watch the scene where the shoeshine boy did his jive dance for Professor Bleeker.

During the picture Gordon smoked continually. Midway through, the director, Phil Tobin, came in and took a seat at the back, as did someone else I didn’t recognize, the editor perhaps. When it was over and the lights came up, the editor (if that’s who it was) left. Phil and Gordon and Irene looked at me expectantly.

“Jonathan was brilliant,” I offered.

“Yeah, I was surprised,” Phil conceded. “And he and Denise have good on-screen chemistry.”

They have more than that, I thought to myself, though clearly I said nothing of the sort.

“The pacing is fine,” I went on, “the sets are imaginative, and the dialogue is lively. Whatever else is wrong with the picture, it’s not Charlie’s script. Why am I here?” No one replied. “Leon’s the boss. He’s seen this footage ten thousand times. What does he think?”

Phil and Gordon exchanged uneasy glances. Gordon cleared his throat and called up to the booth. “You can go home now, Steve. Thanks.” The projectionist’s light went out, and Gordon turned to me. “Leon says there are little weaknesses that only need to be adjusted. That’s his word. ‘Adjusted.’ Leon says it is up to me and Phil and the editor to adjust. Leon says he did his part. Denise did her part. It’s on us.”

“The music might make a difference,” I said.

“Who’s our latest composer?” asked Phil.