Hollywood is an All Volunteer Army by Steven Paul Leiva

homicide.”
    â€œDo you think Mike is right? Do you think Sara Hutton had something to do with it?”
    â€œI don’t know, but it’s an intriguing enough possibility that we should look into it.”
    â€œSo what’s Mike going to pay with? Day old copies of the trades?”
    â€œYou don’t think we’ll gather information about one, maybe more individuals that will prove useful in the future? Obviously dark deeds have been done here.”
    â€œTrue—and I’m not opposed to showing Mike some consideration, but, Fixxer, on occasion you get obsessed—”
    â€œI am not obsessed. I’m intrigued.”
    â€œThat may be worse.”
    â€œNonetheless....”
    â€œNonetheless, I called the Captain. He said he would have information for us in the morning.”
    â€œGood. Well, I think I’ll go into the library, crack open the data bank and catch up on the biography of Sara Hutton.
    ~ * ~
    Sara Hutton was the only child of a clown. Hamilton “Ham” Hutton, known professionally as Hammy the Clown, started just after the early days of television at a little station in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It was just an afternoon children’s show, but Ham put his all into it, innovating out of joy as much as necessity due to the low budget. He was happy putting on the costume and make-up and wig and prancing and talking in a strange voice caused by constricted vocal cords. He was happy creating weird characters in puppets, drawings, and full-body costumes. He was happy creating a world and writing dialog for these characters, giving them outrageous, funny, energetic life. He became a local sensation, and might well have remained local if it hadn’t been for the Williamstown Theater Festival, that summer event that brings the royalty of New York theater out every year to perform for six weeks or so. Often they had children in tow. The children found the show. Talked of nothing but Hammy, wanted to meet him. The parents, being good parents, had it arranged, met Hammy, saw the show, were charmed. Hammy became the talk. Network people taking a summer break to see some plays heard of him. Soon he had a network show. He was placed in the early evening because a savvy programmer saw how all the sophisticated theater folk responded to him. Hammy was a hit. He was successful. He was “In” and before he could become “Out” he was saved forever by the good fortune of having the “In” stretched into “Institution,” and he became part of the fabric of contemporary America. Thus he was rewarded with riches.
    Sara Hutton grew up in a fifteenth floor apartment on Central Park West overlooking the park and in a huge house in the Hollywood Hills overlooking the city. She had puppets and other strange creatures for siblings, and she probably wasn’t her dad’s favorite. After all, as far as he was concerned, she was only a co-creation. She went to private girls schools because her mother did not want her to face the unfair competition of boys. She excelled academically. She was her class president. She had her pick of Ivy League colleges and she picked Yale. She graduated with honors, decided not to pursue a higher degree, returned to Los Angeles and got a job in the mailroom of William Morris, her father’s agency. Everything was ascendant from there. She moved from the mailroom to working a desk for that moment’s hot agent, to becoming an agent for a few years, to moving over to Paramount as a junior development executive. At Paramount she easily moved up the ladder of larger offices, until she was a Senior Vice President with nowhere to go, as the President and Chairman of Paramount were firmly planted, well regarded, and, worse, good at their jobs. Then the once fabulous Olympic Pictures, now not much more than a shell and owned by a bank, came calling. They needed a new president. They weren’t going to get an