The early-February morning over Los Angeles was filled with gray clouds, casting a damp chill over the backlot of Paramount Pictures.
This was just days after a staggering 1974 blizzard blanketed Southern California mountains, a cold, February brought winter weather so intense that snow was even reported to have fallen near the Hollywood sign, snarling traffic on Interstate 5.
Duke Hauser, wearing a dark wool trench coat with the collar turned up against the coastal breeze, walked down the narrow alleyway between Stage Four and Stage Five with Lynda coming behind him.
Trailing behind them, maintaining vigilance, was Russell.
Russell was currently holding a folded morning edition of the Los Angeles Times in his hand, waiting for the correct moment to deliver the daily newspaper.
For Duke, Russell's constant presence was simply the unavoidable cost of doing massive business in a fractured and violent era.
Lynda abruptly stopped walking, tightly wrapping her arms around her slender frame, she turned to face Duke, "Every single time I want to driveto grab a cup of coffee, there is a black sedan trailing me. Russell and his men constantly stand near me, watching every single person who even attempts to speak to me."
"I completely understand that you are an incredibly important, highly visible public figure now, but this level of paranoia is destroying any sense of everyday freedom."
Duke stopped and looked directly at her. He deeply hated seeing her so visibly distressed, but he entirely refused to compromise on matters of physical safety.
"It is not paranoia, Lynda, i told you" Duke replied softly, "We live in a highly volatile reality. The death threats we have been receiving at the main studio gates are real."
"The radical domestic terror groups, specifically the Weather Underground, are active and desperately looking for high-profile, wealthy targets to make their violent publicized political statements."
"I do not enjoy being behind these security measures any more than you do, but I will absolutely never apologize for taking every single necessary precaution to ensure that we are protected."
Lynda let out a frustrated sigh, shaking her head as the breeze whipped her long hair across her face. "First, you built those massive iron gates around Owlwoods. Now we have twenty-four-hour armed patrols constantly walk the grounds."
"The world isnt That dangerous."
Before Duke could formulate a soothing response, Russell stepped forward. The bodyguard completely ignored the awkward domestic tension.
Russell extended his arm, handing the folded morning newspaper over to Duke. Duke took the damp paper, snapping it open with a flick of his wrists.
A bold black headline completely dominated the upper half of the front page.
"TERROR IN THE NIGHT! Heiress Patty Hearst kidnapped by Masked Madmen!"
The detailed sensationalized article detailed the story that Patty Hearst, the wealthy, young heiress had been kidnapped just a day prior by a heavily armed domestic terrorist group from her California apartment.
Lynda, actively leaning over his chest, reading the headline and the subsequent opening paragraphs of the article.
"What an incredibly tragic bizarre situation," Lynda murmured thoughtfully. "But we as people have to at least partially try to understand the underlying societal rage that drives these specific radical groups."
"The SLA is fighting against corporate interest and oppression. We must disagree with their tactics, but their fundamental, underlying grievances regarding the inequality in this country aren't entirely wrong."
Duke's head snapped up from the newspaper, and stared at her for a long moment.
"You are defending them?" Duke asked. "You are standing directly in the middle of a multi-million-dollar movie studio, protected by armed guards, and you are actively expressing political sympathy for a group of armed, unstable domestic terrorists?"
"This is the exact same privileged, naive crowd that spit directly on working-class soldiers returning home from the war," Duke stated.
"It is the exact toxic performative political ideology that created Hanoi Jane. It is the Weathermen bombing the Pentagon just to make a headline. The House Un-American Activities Committee certainly went after Hollywood a generation ago for the wrong reasons, but they were not wrong that there is a deep ideological rot festering in this town."
"It is entirely filled with wealthy people who constantly attack the fundamental structures of America while loudly claiming tolove the oppressed, yet they absolutely never propose a single, realistic, workable societal reform."
Lynda crossed her arms tightly, she was trying hard not to sound overly aggressive or lose her temper.
"Perhaps the current political system simply cannot be reformed from the inside, Duke," she argued, her voice filled with idealistic conviction.
"Perhaps the corruption of the corporate class is too deeply entrenched to simply be voted away in a rigged election. In the face of such oppression and destructive foreign wars, violence is the only language that the entrenched power structures understand and respond to."
Duke simply shook his head slowly, "Non-sensical random violence produces absolutely nothing but pointless tragedy," Duke countered, completely dismantling her romanticized view of revolution with cold, hard logic.
"Targeted strategic violence executed with completely achievable political objectives? That is a genuine revolution. But that is absolutely not what the SLA or the Weather Underground are actively doing."
"They loudly claim they want to end capitalism and violently overthrow the United States government by randomly killing a few people and robbing local banks."
"That is absolutely not a realistically achievable goal in any universe. It is purely violent, self-indulgent political theater designed entirely by and for privileged, bored college students who have never actually been genuinely poor a single day in their entire lives."
Lynda, feeling frustrated by his dismissal of the visible anti-war movement that her and his entire age peer group supported, went for a simpler emotional defense.
"At the very least, they are actively trying to do something to change a flawed world, Duke," she stated firmly, deeply believing in the righteousness of simply taking radical action against a stagnant conservative establishment.
"They aren't just sitting comfortably in expensive mansions, quietly disscusing movie slates while the rest of the country burns to the ground."
Duke's expression remained unaffected by her words regarding his wealth.
"Yeah," Duke finally replied. "They are actively doing something. Something completely unbelievably stupid. And innocent people are paying the ultimate price for their selfish theatrical political vanity."
"Let us deeply analyze this righteous revolution you are currently so vaguely defending," Duke began.
"Let us start directly with the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion in 1970, where a secret Weather Underground bomb-making factory exploded killing three of their own misguided members."
"Later that exact same year, they successfully bombed the NYPD police headquarters in lower Manhattan."
"Then, moving to the Midwest, we have the Sterling Hall bombing at the University of Wisconsin. They detonated a truck bomb to protest the military, and in the process, they murdered a completely innocent physics researcher who simply happened to be working late in his lab to support his family."
Lynda remained completely silent, her eyes widening slightly as Duke recited political facts. "In 1971, the Weather Underground placed a explosive device directly inside the Capitol building," Duke continued.
"In 1972, the so-called Black Liberation Army ambushed and executed two entirely innocent NYPD officers who were simply responding to a fake emergency call in Harlem. Or you want to speak about when they raided a San Francisco police station in, resulting in a civilian being injusred and a cop killed. And there have been multiple coordinated ambushes of standard cops across the nation over the last four years."
"And the list of pointless theatrical violence goes on and on," Duke stated.
"The Weather Underground bombed the Pentagon. They bombed the headquarters of ITT. And just recently, last year this exact same Symbionese Liberation Army that you are defending, assassinated Dr. Marcus Foster. An entirely peaceful public school superintendent in Oakland. They shot a civilian educator to death simply because they disagreed with his administrative policies."
"These people are fundamentally not political revolutionaries, Lynda," Duke stated, his voice completely filled with certainty. "They are violent, deranged murderers who cynically use good idealistic words to excuse their absolutely terrible acts."
"The people who actually die in the explosions and the ambushes are almost always working-class cops, late-night janitors, or struggling graduate students. They are killing the same innocent working-class people they fraudulently claim they are fighting to liberate."
Lynda had her head turned to a side, not wanting to continue the talk, and not even listening to Duke after a moment.
"You are thinking exactly like an rich, out-of-touch corporate guy now, Duke," Lynda accused, "You never even publicly speak out against the ongoing war."
Duke didn't react with anger to her personal words.
"Before all of this... Hollywood success," Duke said, "I used to live in a tiny rundown apartment in Echo Park in 1966, where the monthly rent was cheap because the neighborhood was fully ethnic with sicilians. It's not my place to speak out against the war either."
"Your younger brother is my exact same age, Lynda, yet he managed to avoid getting drafted into the military. I unfortunately did not."
"It is easy for you and your privileged friends to stand at a Hollywood party and say 'do not support our boys' when that radical political stance does not personally cost you a single thing."
"If you genuinely want to work to change the flawed political system, that is entirely fine by me, but executing violence against innocent American citizens isn't something heroic."
Lynda's eyes glistened with tears she was trying to fight back. She hadn't actively intended to start an ideological fight on the middle of the studio lot.
She simply wanted to share her widely accepted Hollywood political opinion.
Without saying another word, Lynda turned around, and headed toward the car waiting near the main studio gates.
"I'm going to Arizona," she yelled at him before entering the car.
Duke was a little confused as he also made no attempt to stop her from leaving. He didn't know if this meant they have broken up, "This is our third serious fight, what couple doesn't fight at least 3 times?"
Duke turned to look at Russell, the bodyguard who shrugged and said "You can't win a political debate with a woman. You just go along the ride until someone suggests getting food."
___
Duke threw himself completely into the daily operations of Paramount production slate, after he went home and found Lynda had really left for Arizona.
He even begun to not even bother to return to Owlwood estate. He simply chose to sleep directly inside his executive office after connecting a second room to it and putting a bed in there.
During this period of time, Lynda and Duke talked on the phone for moments in which both wouldnt mention the argument.
Duke was still confused over why she was so mad about the whole thing, "Don't everyone hate terrorist?"
He spend his day on screaming matches over the telephone with the Roman Polanski, fighting over the ending edit for the upcoming Chinatown, checking scripts, reading DC comics, and writing ideas about the characters.
By early morning of February 19, Duke instructed his driver to take him toward the campus of the University of Southern California(USC).
He headed directly toward a medical school lecture hall that had been taken over by a Paramount film crew.
It was the first official day of principal photography on the ambitious Mel Brooks comedy picture, Young Frankenstein.
Duke was officially attending as the man who would be playing The Monster.
The medical lecture hall had been transformed into a 19th academic setting.
Thick electrical cables snaked across the floor, dodging the rapid footsteps of dozens of busy crew members adjusting huge bright studio lighting fixtures.
Duke stood entirely apart from the flow of activity, keeping his hands shoved into the pockets of his trousers, observing the crew madness
The perceptive Mel Brooks was the first person on the set to notice Duke standing in the shadows.
Brooks immediately broke entirely away from his discussion with the cinematographer, marching over and loudly clapping Duke entirely on his shoulder.
"You look like a miserable man, Duke what happened? Paramount got investigated by the IRS?" Brooks announced loudly, his voice echoing across the set.
A second later, the gentle Gene Wilder joined them, offering a understanding smile.
"Duke. You are physically here on the very first day... thats weird" Wilder said softly, staring at Duke expression. "That you're here means a great deal to all of us, unless you came with bad news..."
Duke and they started talking about the production and how he was here to get familiar with the crew and plot, when eccentric comedic genius Marty Feldman slowly shuffled into their immediate circle.
Feldman was dressed in his filthy peasant costume, sporting a ridiculous foam rubber prosthetic hump strapped to the right side of his back.
Without uttering a single word, Feldman proceeded to slowly walk in a circle around Duke's circle while people werent paying attention to him.
When Feldman came back into Duke's line of sight, the artificial hump was suddenly positioned on the complete opposite side of his back, now to the left.
Feldman looked directly up at Duke with his bulging eyes and offered a casual, unbothered shrug.
"Unexpected medical side effects," Feldman stated completely deadpan. Duke involuntarily softly smiled while trying not to.
The production continued as Duke just saw them recording the introduction scene for the movie.
After Brooks finally yelled "cut" on a successful take, ending the production day, the director pulled Duke aside, away from the busy crowd.
"You need a distraction from whatever dark cloud is following you, Duke," Brooks stated firmly, his tone serious underneath the comedy. "You do not need to constantly work, you need to meet a woman.You like jewish women?"
Duke raised a skeptical eyebrow, preparing to shut the suggestion down. "Mel, I have someone, i am absolutely not-" Duke started to protest, this was the 3 or 4 time somebody had tried to set him up with Barbara Streissand.
"Not entirely romantically, you dimwit." Brooks interrupted quickly with a grin. "Strictly for the benefit of this movie! Let's meet your new co-stars."
Brooks cheerfull led him across the soundstage, directly toward a young woman with blonde hair.
She was fully dressed in y restrictive 19th century dress, drinking cheap coffee from a entirely out-of-place styrofoam cup.
It was Teri Garr, officially cast in the comedic role of Inga, the beautiful, eccentric laboratory assistant.
She flashed an smile and extended her small hand. "You are the famous Connor Hauser," Garr stated cheerfully. "The man who gave Mel all this money to make a ridiculous monster movie."
___
Had problems yesterday but will publish today, this is the first one
Apparently Lynda Carter decided to publicly not support even her sister for election for campaign for the Arizona House of Representatives
I dont think I will make Duke get married at any point, too risky