The Man In The Seventh Row by Brian Pendreigh Read Free Book Online

policeman of a young Terence Stamp as Billy Budd, when he has killed the dreadful Claggart. The policeman looks into the blue eyes of this stranger and says nothing.
    The man from the seventh row looks at the policeman.
    'The name's Batty,' he says at last. 'Roy Batty.'
    The policeman turns away.
    'I can't help you,' he says, shaking his head. 'There's nothing I can do.'
    His voice suddenly hardens again. 'Go on, get going.'
    The man turns and the policeman watches him leave.

7

    On Hollywood Boulevard, among the fast-food joints and souvenir shops, stands an ancient temple with a green sloping pagoda roof like a fancy, exotic hat, and bright red pillars and canopy. Stone dogs or lions or some hybrid of the two bare their teeth at the pilgrims who come here with bowed heads to pay homage to their gods. The pilgrims gather in small groups and pose, smiling, to record the moment for friends back home in Japan or Germany or Italy. They press their hands into marks made by Bogart in the cement before they were born. Though he is dead now he has left his gospel on celluloid and his handprints in concrete, just like Christ left his gospel in a book and his image in a shroud. But there is a lot more certainty about Bogart. He said he stuck his neck out for no one, but he always did in the end. The tourists climb back onto their bus.
    Anna Fisher walks across the cement blocks bearing Bogart's hand and foot prints and the message 'Sid may you never die till I kill you'.
    'The Chinese Theatre was built by Sid Grauman in 1927,' says an enthusiastic young guide in matching yellow short-sleeved shirt, shorts and baseball cap. 'It was built in the style of a Chinese pagoda,' he tells a huddle of Japanese, young and mainly female.
    The guide came to Los Angeles to get into the movies and he has made it, for half a dozen video cameras capture his every gesture. He addresses them in turn, offering each a few words and a smile as big and white as Tom Cruise's.
    'Actress Norma Talmadge visited the construction site and accidentally trod in the wet cement, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks Senior followed her example at the premiere of King of Kings and the greatest stars still come here to record their footprints and handprints in the sidewalk for your enjoyment.' He pauses to allow his audience to digest the enormity of what they are hearing and prepare themselves for the possibility of further dramatic revelations.
    'And in that year, 1927 AD , not only did the Chinese Theatre open, but the very first talkie was released.'
    'Aaah, Aaahl Jolson,' murmur the group, with much nodding of wise oriental heads.
    'And things would never be the same again,' adds the guide.
    It was also the year in which Stalin expelled Trotsky from the Communist Party, thinks Anna, who teaches 20th Century European history at UCLA . It was the year Hitler addressed his followers in Nuremberg, while Jolson told his to wait a minute, they ain't heard nothin' yet. The young man in the yellow outfit was right; things were never the same again. The movies lasted longer than the 1,000-year Reich and today German tourists come to measure their hands against those of Bogart and buy maps purporting to guide them to the homes of today's stars a few miles away in Beverly Hills.
    'There were lots of glamorous premieres here,' says the guide. 'Thousands would turn up just to catch a glimpse of the stars. Has anyone seen the Gene Kelly musical Singin' in the Rain ?'
    There is much nodding of heads.
    'That begins with a premiere at the Chinese Theatre in 1927,' says the guide. 'But in the story they decide to go off and remake the film with sound.'
    Anna passes the tourists and enters the shade of the temple, as ancient as anything in these parts, old and yet not old, tangible and yet not real. It is not Grauman's Chinese Theatre anymore, but Mann's Chinese Theatre, part of a chain. They took Sid's name off the cinema, but they cannot take his name out of the concrete.
    Anna