Chapter 6
Next morning at seven-thirty, I showed up again at Louis Lynx' studio in the Bronx, Mr. Lynx was up and ready. And how he was ready! He wasn't wearing anything but a towel when he let me in, and from the way that towel hung I could tell he was ready for me.
"Get stripped kid," he told me, whipping off his towel.
"But Mr. Lynx," I said, "my lines!"
"Your lines are just great, kid," he said, reaching for me and unzipping my dress. And the next thing I knew he was swarming all over my naked body.
Well!
Well, he was the producer, so I let him swarm. And I swarmed back. For twenty minutes we swarmed together on the casting couch.
Then, while he lay gasping and smiling, I said: "Shouldn't I be learning my lines?"
"Right," he gasped. "Absolutely right. Here: this is the polished script Dagobert left with me last night. Skim through it."
I skimmed through it, real fast. They teach speed reading at Denaquid High School, and I'd gotten a C-plus in the course.
What a strange script! The title was JUNGLE JEZABEL, and it was set in a tropical forest. This man from Brooklyn tromps into the jungle looking for the Queen of Sheba's gold mine. With six shapely native girls as porters.
Only he comes down with a fever, and gets chills.
So the shapely native girls do their best to warm him up. The script didn't make it clear just how; it just said: Shots 25 through 40, the native girls get busy all over him in different ways.
This helps him a bit, but not much. After he's tromped a few more miles through the jungle he gets feverish again, and this time he begins to imagine things. Like lions and monkeys and hyenas and pythons and zebras and such. Only all the lions and monkeys and hyenas and pythons and zebras he sees have sexy, girl-type shapes.
"How d'ya like that bit, kid?" said Mr. Lynx, peering over my shoulder while I read. "A dream sequence, you dig? Is that Art or is that Art? Cinematic dreams in living color. Eerie music, ripple dissolves, superimposures-the works."
"Gosh," I said, "movie making is sure technical."
"Naw," said Mr. Lynx, "it's easy-for a genius like me. Ripple dissolves? I make a print shooting through a little glass tank with a couple inches of water in it. Get the water sloshing around, and wham, you got ripples. Looks great on film. Eeerie music? I got a tape of eerie music. From old horror movies on TV, phonograph albums played extra slow, stuff like that. Dream sequences are easy, for a cinematic genius."
"Who plays the Queen of Sheba?" I asked, reading on in the script.
"You, baby," said Mr. Lynx. "You, sprayed with gold make-up. On the screen we use subtitles-get that: subtitles; is that Art or is that Art?-to explain you're two thousand years old, and keep yourself young by drinking a secret exlixir."
"I play a girl two thousand years old?" I said, not feeling too happy.
"Right. But you look real young. And act pretty frisky-also experienced. Naturally you're experienced: you've been playing sex games for twenty centuries. A real challenge to a top-notch actress, kid. You feel equal to the challenge?"
"Oh, yes!"
"Fine. Reach me that spray can, baby. I'll spray you gold."
And he did.
While he sprayed, people began arriving, and right away we started shooting scenes. It was wild, believe me!
The guy who played the hero was a real young, real dumb guy-but built. He looked like a professional weight-lifter, which was what he'd been before he became a famous movie actor, he told me. In the movie he was naked except for a loincloth, and the loincloth was small and close-fitting. He was a pretty muscular guy all over.
Me, I wore a silver fig leaf-which Mr. Lynx said would contrast nicely with the gold tint my flesh had been colored-when Mr. Lynx was shooting me from the front. When he was shooting from the rear I didn't wear anything. The fig leaf was scratchy, so I didn't wear it any more than I had to.
The scenes we shot that morning were of me, the Queen of Sheba, doing my best to excite and influence the hero. And what fun scenes they were! I got to wriggle and squirm and do a sexy dance, and then slither all over the ex-weight-lifter!
What we did wasn't very exciting, on account of the hero had that loincloth on and I usually my silver fig leaf, but it was fun.
The whole movie was shot in this big loft Mr. Lynx called his studio. One end of it was draped with green plastic vines and fake tree branches, and he had artificial turf on the floor. Also some papier mache stones which were supposed to represent the ruins of the Queen of Sheba's Temple.
It looked real cheap and phony to me, but Mr. Lynx said it would photograph just great.
At noon we broke for lunch and Mr. Lynx sent out for sandwiches, which we all had to pay for, and we rested for half an hour and ate.
In the afternoon he shot the rest of the movie, during the first part of which I just stood around and watched--and itched, under my gold spray-job.
It sure was a fast way of making a movie, and I said so to Mr. Lynx.
"Right, kid," he said. "I am fast. But that don't mean I sacrifice quality, not a bit. All this guff about movies taking a long time to make-bull! I want an hour of edited film in the can. Okay, I got all day to shoot film, evening for retakes. So I can make a movie in a day."
He went on to explain that movies which weren't Artistic-by which I guess he meant movies where the girls wore clothes-had extra problems, like dialogue to memorize. But in nudie movies, he said, dialogue wasn't important. Like, the audience didn't come to hear the girls on the screen. And I guess he had a point.
Anyway, he was sure casual about dialogue. Like, in one scene I was supposed to crawl out of this cave and look around for a man. Then I see the hero and exclaim and all.
After I'd wriggled backward into the papeir mache cave, I said, "What do I say, Mr. Lynx?"
He scratched his chin. "Dagobert, what should she say?"
Dagobert, his famous screen writer, was a thin, sad-looking man with bad teeth. Dagobert scratched his chin--what there was of it.
"Let's see," he mused. "Queen of Sheba. Hmm. I guess she should say something like, "A man! I have waited eons for a man! When will a man find me in my lonely jungle retreat, and awaken my slumbering sensuality with a kiss?"
"Yeah," said Mr. Lynx. "Say something like that, kid."
So I said something like that, while crawling out of the cave, standing up, stretching so as to make my breasts stand out, and then peering around for a man.
Mr. Lynx yelled cut, and said I'd done just fine.
I wasn't so sure. "I know I have the instincts of a great actress, Mr. Lynx," I said. "But I haven't had any practice-or training. I don't think I sounded too good."
"Kid," said Mr. Lynx, "you sounded like chalk scraping on a blackboard. But don't worry. I'll club in a good sexy voice later. The important thing is, you said the right lines, so your lip movements will sync."
And he explained that most of the girls he gave speaking roles to had lousy voices, but it was okay because he knew an old radio actress.
"She's a drunk," he explained, "and an old hag. But her voice is just great-sexy as you could ask for. And she can do all kinds of voices. I give her five bucks an hour for dubbing. Keeps her happy and in booze. A satisfactory arrangement for all parties."
I nodded. Mr. Lynx was sure smart. I suppose you might think my feelings were hurt because he said my voice was bad, but I didn't let it worry me. The important thing was, I was now a movie star. Once I got rich I could take voice lessons.
That was before lunch, that scene. But like I started to tell you, in the afternoon eight more girls arrived, took off their clothes and got sprayed with brown paint. They were the sexy native porters. After they put on tiny loincloths, Mr. Lynx had them march back and forth through his fake jungle. He was sure a perfectionist: he made them walk around for hours, until their hips swayed just right and their breasts bounced as much as possible with each step.
He had them holding boxes and bales over their heads like they were real porters, which helped their breasts a lot, of course. All of them had big bosoms, I noticed.
"That's a trademark of my films," Mr. Lynx explained to me. "Lots of nudie movies have a jew girls with big boobs, but in my movies every girl has a colossal chest."
After he'd shot all the scenes that included the girl porters, he paid them and they took showers and went home. Then he shot a lot of close-ups: of me, of the hero, and of me and the hero together-but mostly of me. Real close close-ups, too! He had me so close to the camera it was almost touching me!
"It makes for Art, kid," he explained. "And it's legal, too. If a girl's bare breasts are legal at all, they're legal when they fill the whole screen."
I went all tingly inside, thinking that my breasts would soon fill the screens of movie houses all over the nation.
After we'd spent about an hour shooting close-ups of my breasts and thighs and buttocks, Mr. Lynx said it was time to shoot the animal scenes: where the hero has fever and imagines the jungle full of sexy animals.
I asked Mr. Lynx who was going to play the parts of the animals.
"You are, kid," he said. "All of 'em."
Well, naturally I was thrilled. I mean, what a challenge to my acting ability, playing the parts of a lot of different beasts of the jungle-and in my very first movie! All the same, I wondered why he hadn't used some of the busty girls who'd been native porters.
"Money, kid," he said. "Those broads work by the hour, and even though they ain't union, the dough they ask is murder. Also," he added real quick, "you got a better shape than any of them."
"Thank you," I said, pleased to hear that he agreed with my private opinion. "But don't I get paid by the hour?"
"Uh-no, kid. You being the star and all, you work for a generous lump sum: fifty bucks. Plus-get this-a percentage of the profits!"
I gasped. Only big stars got percentages of the movies they made. Sometimes they made millions, I'd heard.
"Yeah, kid," Mr. Lynx continued, "it's right in the contract I'm gonna have you sign. You get twenty-five per cent of the net profits. That is, after production and distribution costs have been deducted, plus salaries and, uh, other expenses. I ask you, is that a great deal or is that a great deal?"
"Yeah," I said, but privately I wasn't so sure all of a sudden. I had a nasty feeling that I was going to end up with fifty dollars-period. Still, since Mr. Lynx had given me my Big Break, I couldn't complain. Lots of big stars made peanuts from their first film. And how many girls got to be stars right away, the way I had? Very few, according to the fan magazines I'd read.
The animal scenes were fun. First Mr. Lynx had me put on a cloth leopard's head. It had ears and whiskers and looked just keen. Then he had me take off my silver fig leaf and put on a tiny black satin G-string, and he got a can of white paint and sprayed me all over.
"Are you sure," I asked, "that I won't get poisoned from having paint sprayed all over me?"
"Sure I'm sure," he said. "The chances of you suffering a toxic allergic attack are one in, uh-well, very slight. How do you feel, kid? Any nausea, dizziness or symptoms of toxic reaction?"
"I feel great," I said.
"Right." He reached out a pudgy finger, poked me in the breast. "Ah! The paint's dry already. Now to make a leopard out of you." And he did. With a can of black spray paint. What he did was spray spots and strips on me, and real expertly, too. Inside of five minutes I was all painted, and when I looked in a mirror I just gasped, I looked so great.
Just exactly like a leopard-only with a girl's shape, of course. At least below the neck.
Even Mr. Lynx seemed pleased, and he was a real perfectionist. "Dagobert," he said, addressing his famous screen writer, "some time next week knock me out a script called uh, Cult of the Sex-Starved Leopard Girl."
"Roger," said Dagobert.
Me, I just shivered with happiness. Already Mr. Lynx was planning to star me in a new epic.
Meanwhile, Mr. Lynx was putting the finishing touches on my costume-or make-up, rather. What he did was take a bottle of nail polish and paint my nipples and aureoles bright red.
"Nothing like a little crimson on the nipples to make a naked girl look erotic," he said while painting me. Looking in the mirror, I couldn't help but agree: I did look erotic. I mean, if I'd been a boy looking at me as a girl, I'd have sure turned myself on, if you know what I mean. Dagobert sure looked turned on. I mean he was like drooling!
I shot a glance at the hero of the film, my costar. He was yawning. Strange.
Then Mr. Lynx put on a record called Music to Strip By, and told me to do a sexy leopard dance, which I did. I sort of improvised-slithering and swaying my hips and wriggling so my breasts jiggled all over-while Mr. Lynx circled me with his camera, which he had on a little platform on wheels.
He kept making useful suggestions, like, "Shake those boobs again, baby; now stamp those feet hard so's your fanny will shake; now throw me a big bump; now a few grinds...." and so on.
He had me dancing for what seemed hours, but it was fun. I kept sneaking looks at the hero, to see if I was tuning him on. I haven't said much about my co-star so far, other than that he was big and muscular, mainly on account of until then I'd been too excited and nervous about my acting to pay him much attention. Now, though, I could study him especially as I was doing most of my sexy dancing right in front of him.
When he was being photographed with me he sure looked excited-panting and rolling his eyes and licking his lips a lot. But when Mr. Lynx was taking very close close-ups of my leopard-spotted backside or breasts, and the hero wasn't in the picture, he just looked bored. Maybe even a little disgusted, of all things.
Well. I mean something like that would make any girl wonder! I began to doubt that he was as virile as I'd assumed from his build. It wasn't just his looking bored and a bit disgusted while I did an erotic dance right in front of him-there'd been other things, too. Like the way he giggled instead of laughing. And the trouble Mr. Lynx had had with his walk-he'd had kind of a tendency to mince and swing his hips.
Could it be he was just a bit effeminate?
Meanwhile, I went on doing my sexy leopard dance, and then slithered around and all over the hero (whose name was Tony Jeeves, by the way). After ten minutes or so Mr. Lynx said he had enough leopard footage and it was time for me to be an erotic dream hyena.
So I stood still while he took off my leopard-head covering and put on a hyena head. Then he began to spray brown paint on me. I asked him if it wouldn't be better to take the leopard paint off first, but he said no: taking off the paint would take too long.
When he had me painted and I'd dried he had me do a sexy hyena dance-which was pretty much like the leopard dance, to tell the truth.
Then I did a sexy lion dance, with yellow-brown paint, and then a sexy python dance, with mottled paint. Finally he had me do a sexy monkey dance. Know how he made me look like a sexy monkey? He sprayed some kind of glue all over me, and then dumped on a whole carton of black fox fur-just the fur, not the hides. I guess he must have shaved a bunch of old coats. The fur stuck to me, of course, and after he'd put a monkey mask on me and painted my hippies red again (he hadn't put any glue on my nipples, so there was no fur there,) I did the monkey dance.
Truth to tell, it wasn't one of my more erotic dances. For one thing, I had so much paint and glue on me by that time I could hardly wriggle. For another, all that paint and glue and fur made me awfully hot, like I had a fever of a hundred and five or something!
Mr. Lynx kept circling me with his camera, yelling for me to dance faster and sexier. "It's for the sake of Art, kid!" he yelled. "The show must go on! Dance, baby, dance! This is your Big Chance! Shake those boobs; roll that fanny; stamp them feet; now wriggle all over" And so forth.
I did as good as I could, then I just collapsed.
"Okay," said Mr. Lynx, wiping sweat from his brow. "Good enough." He glanced at his watch, frowned, then turned to Dagobert and Tony Jeeves. "One last shot, boys. Give a hand, huh? We tie her between four posts-I mean trees."
Dagobert frowned. "But there's no scene like that in the screen play. I don't see...."
"Don't argue" said Mr. Lynx, stepping on Dagobert's toe-by accident, I thought at the time. Meanwhile Mr. Lynx was tying lengths of rope to my wrists and my ankles. If I hadn't been so hot and exhausted, I'd have stopped to wonder what kind of scene he was going to shoot and what it had to do with the picture. But I was too bushed to care.
Pretty soon Mr. Lynx had the ropes from my wrists tied to two posts about three feet off the ground. Then he gave one of the ankle ropes to Tony while he and Dagobert took the other.
"All together boys, pull!" he yelled. And they jerked on the ropes. Me, I had my feet jerked out from under me, and landed with an awful thud on my backside.
"Gently!" yelled Mr. Lynx. "Now pull harder!" And before I could say "Put me down!" they had my legs tied to two other posts. And there I was, suspended from four posts three feet off the ground-and completely helpless.
"Hey!" I gasped. "This hurts!"
"Kid," said Mr. Lynx, shaking his head sadly, "I'm afraid you ain't felt nothin' yet. But it's for your own good. That paint is real tough to remove. There's only one way to do it fast." And as I watched, he sloshed turpentine into three pails, handed Dagobert and Tony each a pail and a big scrubbing brush.
"Scrub hearty, boys," he said cheerfully. "Otherwise she'll croak for sure. That paint's been on half an hour too long as it is."
"Right," said Tony, licking his lips. He grinned, kind of sadistically, sloshed some turpentine over my breasts, and began to scrub them as hard as he could with the stiff brush.
Me, I let out an awful yell. "Stop!" I screamed, "You're killing me! I can't stand it. I-glubf"
The reason I said glub-as you've no doubt guessed--was that Mr. Lynx had shoved a rag in my mouth. It tasted of turpentine. "Kid," he said cheerfully, while he scrubbed my stomach and Dagobert scrubbed my thighs and Tony scrubbed my breasts (harder than he needed to), "don't think I don't appreciate what you are undergoing-with a smile-the tortures of the damned. But it's for your own good, kid. That paint is dangerous, and we got to get it off real quick or we'll have the bother of disposing of your corpse. If we didn't have you hog-tied, you'd wriggle and struggle in horrible agony, making our task impossibly difficult. Scrub faster, boys. She doesn't look so good."
I didn't feel so good, either. I'd never felt such pain in my whole life! I felt like I was being rubbed raw all over, which I just about was. And Tony wasn't even trying to be gentle. In fact-though I don't like to speak ill of anybody-I think he was more interested in giving me a hard time than in getting the paint, glue and fur off me. At least, even after he'd gotten the stuff off my breasts he kept on scrubbing at them like he was trying to scrub them right off me. Finally Mr. Lynx noticed, and told him to scrub another part of me.
Me, I struggled and wriggled as much as I could, which wasn't much, and thought about how it sure is true that girls have to suffer a lot to gain fame on the silver screen.
Finally, what seemed like days later, they had all the paint and glue and fur off me. I raised my head it took real effort-and looked down at myself. I wasn't bleeding, but I was sure bright pink all over.
"Shall we let her down now?" asked Dagobert.
"In just a moment," said Mr. Lynx, reaching for his camera. "I'll just take a few hundred feet of film first. Never can tell when I might be able to use a few scenes of a naked girl all pink and all trussed up as if for sacrificial purposes."
And he began to take shots of me from different angles, meanwhile talking cheerfully about how he made his films so quick ahd on such low budgets. According to him, he always used lots of dream sequences in his pictures-scenes where the hero dreamed about girls he'd made it with or would like to make it with. And for these sequences he used footage he'd shot for previous films but hadn't used.
"No-waste Lynx, they call me," he said proudly, pushing his camera in for a close shot of my pink left breast. "Any footage on my cutting room floor gets used in my next picture, or the one after that."
"Ub glub!" I said, not really interested in the secrets of low-cost nudie film making-not right then, at least.
Finally he decided he had enough footage of me all pink and naked and stretched out off the ground, so after first thoughtfully placing a cushion under my backside, he and Dagobert cut the rops. And I landed with a thud on the floor.
I bad completed my first starring role.