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For the black ice number, the choreographer
writes his dance on Sonja Henie, marks
where she will commit to one final spin,
picking her toe to stop, smiling directly
to the camera. The trick: how to keep
the movement slow, so as not to slice
into the black ice, dyed with ink, spitting
onto her outfit, which must be white,
and her hair, which must be blonde.
And for this year, 1940, late fall, Idaho
is Hollywood, two years after Averell Harriman
has opened the resort—and also in
production, it’s A Woman’s Face, and
Joan Crawford walks through an exterior
shot. Through this early winter snow
she leaves the doctor’s office, her scar
erased by surgery: the woman with the
cold heart becomes the beautiful woman
with the cold heart, a monster, declares
Melvyn Douglas, the surgeon in love with
his work. It’s Gary Cooper visiting Hemingway
for goose hunting, and they will return later
in the season, when the Nicholas Brothers
and Glenn Miller and Dorothy Dandridge
have arrived, although Hemingway will say
how the only Negress artist remains Josephine
Baker, and Coop will tell Hemingway
there he goes again, all full of Paris. Hemingway
will get the last word, that Paris and war
gave Gary Cooper his greatest role.
For the movie stars, nothing but to stroll
the Sun Valley Inn, loiter by the outdoor
ice rink at night, as the director of photography
reads his light meter against the black ice,
what Zanuck had ordered specifically for this movie.
Henie’s a tired franchise already, but still on
contract. “Make the ice look like a floor,
something that Rogers and Astaire would glide
over.” But he budgets $7000 for the scene, enough
for two days of shooting, and nothing more.
For the final take, it’s Henie in her last available
outfit, the other costumes stained
from the falls, the ink beading in its freezing,
and she cries to her director, it’s “grooty,”
meaning “gritty” or “grouty,” but he has
seen this panic before, and Zanuck has warned him,
too, of Henie in particular, all
excuses and ermine, and so it’s Henie,
and she’s on her final spin, crisp
through and through, the spin tightening,
and before she cleats the ice, everyone
can see the centrifuged run of ink
lip her skirt, see the two days
in the tank, and she sees it, too, still
in her spinning, but why not keep the spinning,
with all these lights, all these people?
And she owes them everything, waiting
through war and Depression and boredom,
she owes them some Olympian razz-a-ma-tazz,
something that will make someone in
the audience gasp oh. What’s a goddess for?
Who cares if it’s Zanuck’s show? His lousy dime?
Why not deliver the real goods this time?
Hit it, Sonja! Hit it!
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Sleep and you have
astronomy,
or maybe her Silvermoon Café,
where you cannot find your brother,
the twelve-step pornographer,
or your brother,
the de-barred embezzler,
or your brother,
the post-Victorian oboist.
Sleep and you have astronomy,
or maybe her Silvermoon Café,
where you cannot find your sister,
the shop-lifting enabler,
or your sister,
the special educationist stripper,
or your sister,
the merchant marine chemist.
Sleep and you have astronomy,
or maybe her Silvermoon Café,
where someone else has snapshot
three women laughing, beneath
the shack’s sign, a crescent moon
and star. You could believe
the women are swamp mermaids,
and there’s no need saying
voluptuous mermaids at that.
Of course, with mermaids
in any poem, you have to think
of T.S. Eliot’s mermaids not singing
to him, but who would be surprised
at that? And would you not hear
the laughter, too, rising to the ceiling
of your sleep, firing nebulae, star
matter, and gravity? Whose laughter,
then? And what is that you do
when you sleep and wrong the world?
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