for fionnuala
CONTENTS
Part I: A STAR IS BORN
BARBARA STANWYCK Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Part II: ALL RIGHT, MR DEMILLE, I’M READY FOR MY CLOSE-UP
VERONICA LAKE Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Part III: IMMORTALITY BECKONS
LANA TURNER Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Part IV: DON’T YOU KNOW WHO I AM?
GENE TIERNEY Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Part V: WALK OF FAME
GLORIA SWANSON Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
FINALE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Part I
A STAR IS BORN
BARBARA STANWYCK
July 16, 1907 – January 20, 1990
aka Phyllis Dietrichson aka The Lady Eve
Inducted: February 8, 1960
Star address: 1751, Vine Street
Orphaned at four. Screen debut at nineteen
Heavy smoker, husky voice
Three Emmys, a Golden Globe, four Oscar nominations
Real name: Ruby Stevens
‘Just be truthful – and if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.’
1
Some day you’re going to be a star. Your name is going to be written in bright and dancing lights. Mark my words, daddy said, people will see your face and smile. Speak memorable lines from the movies you appear in. A legend in your time, that’s what you will be, daddy said, and I was happy to hear him say it.
At that hour it was just the two of us, we had just finished watching the late-night movie together, and daddy was keen to hear my thoughts. I wasn’t slow giving him my verdicts. Sunset Boulevard. Best movie ever. When I grow up I’m going to be Norma Desmond. The Big Sleep. Don’t ask me what was going on but I loved it. The Postman Always Rings Twice. Great story but no way would I end up in a jam like that. In a Lonely Place. Gloria Grahame – so good.
I lost count of how many movies daddy and me watched. Mother and Jennifer and everyone else on the street were in bed, and I only wanted to watch them with him. And with the lights out. That way no one could interrupt us with stupid questions like what’s with the mysterious woman or why is that fellow so obsessed, or could they switch the channel because they were fed up. I never got fed up. Damsels-in-distress movies with moody strangers who came to the rescue. Dark and grainy and hard-to-figure-out-what-was-happening movies with men that were all the time looking for something, women that were too good to be true, and storylines that would bring them fleetingly together before they were ripped apart from each other forever. Film noirs, daddy called those ones. They Live by Night. Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye. The Asphalt Jungle. Laura. I loved watching that one because I thought it had been named after me. It’s the other way around, daddy said when I asked him, and then offered me that half-smile of his that he saved for whenever I said something clever. Until the night of the accident, I used to watch films with daddy all the time. He knew everything about them. All the actors, and who made the film, and when the film was made. That film is older than me and you put together, he’d say. He knew all the lines and loved rewatching his favourites. I was convinced he must have seen all the movies ever made.
‘What are we watching tonight?’ I’d ask him.
‘To Have and Have Not,’ he said, patting the cushion and beckoning me onto the sofa beside him while checking the guide to make sure. ‘Bogart and Bacall are in this one. Wait until you see this pair go. It’s nearly as good as The Maltese Falcon.’
‘Bogart is in that one too,’ I said, remembering.
‘The stuff that dreams are made of,’ daddy said, and I figured that must be another movie line.
I wasn’t long getting my own set-pieces going. Daddy sat on the sofa and watched my performances, applauded when I finished and called out for more. At first I did lots of damsels in distress and wet-faced maidens falling in love with the last man they should be looking at, but I quickly tired of these drippy characters and moved on to the tough-talking ladies. These quickly became my favourites. They were daddy’s favourites too. And the two of us would sit up together and watch as many as we could. I Wake Up Screaming. The Lady from Shanghai. Fallen Angel. All About Eve. ‘Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night,’ I squeaked, puckering my lips and gripping the edge of the sofa. And daddy laughed so much he nearly choked on his drink.
Daddy let me stay up later and later, and watch whatever was on. I saw Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake in everything they were in together. ‘Every man has seen you, somewhere,’ Alan tells Veronica. ‘The trick is to find you.’ Veronica smiled her coy smile and later I tried to do my hair in the peekaboo style she wore. I watched Barbara Stanwyck run rings around Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity. You’re not smarter, Walter, you’re just a little taller. Lana Turner did the same to John Garfield. Lauren Bacall gave Bogart as good as she got. And Gloria Swanson gives William Holden a lot more than he bargained for. Watch out, here comes Jane Greer, daddy said one night. She is going to stop Robert Mitchum dead in his tracks and believe me when I say it, if she can stop Mitchum she can stop any man.
I could never wait to do my newest productions for him. Encore! Encore! he bellowed every time I did my finish-up bow and curtsy, and daddy was the last person I was going to disappoint, and so I did my little acts all over again. Start to finish. Tweaking them here and there, for extra effect. And he was off. Stardom. Shining lights. My name along the Walk of Fame. He asked me did I know what the Walk of Fame was and I shook my head and he smiled and cleared his throat and told me all about the famous boulevard in Hollywood and the two and a half thousand stars along it, every one of them named after someone from the world of movies. It goes on for over a mile and everyone you can think of is there. Marilyn Monroe is there. And Marlene Dietrich. Joan Crawford. She’s there. And so is Bette Davis. And Greta Garbo, the greatest of them all. And when the time comes, you’ll be next. They are going to put your name on a star for everyone to see. And do you know what that means? he asked, and again I shook my head. Immortality, daddy said, with a quiver in his voice. That’s what it means.
Then he hauled me outside the front door of our house, not stopping until we had crossed the road, passed the boathouse and were standing side by side in the chill of night on Nimmo’s Pier. Look, he said, hunkering down beside me and pointing to the blurry lights along the pier. Can you see it? Hollywood. Starry lights. The Walk of Fame. Just you wait, Laura. One day it will be your turn, he said. Then he stretched out his arm and, with the penknife fetched out of his pocket, he scratched into the pier wall the words A STAR IS BORN.
I wasn’t going to disagree with him. And I could see it. Could see myself up there, on the silver screen, effortlessly jousting with my co-stars, moving with serene calm through my scenes, gliding with slick abandon into my close-up. Come opening night, I saw myself taking to the red carpet. The snap-happy photographers. The screaming fans. The journalists shoving their mics in my face, eager for my words. Come award season, I heard my name called out at every
prize-giving in the land. At parties, I was an extraordinary person. Brilliant and illuminating. Wherever I went everybody wanted a piece of me. They couldn’t wait to announce my name.
From an early age that was me, then.
Laura Cassidy: The movie world’s leading light. Star of the silver screen.
Isn’t that right, Laura?
Yes it is, Laura. Indeed it is.
2
So far, things haven’t panned out as daddy and me had foreseen. My name hasn’t even left the ground, let alone appeared in shining lights. Adulation and fame have offered themselves as little more than a woebegone squawk. There is still time, though. That’s what I tell myself every day when I wake up, ready and eager to offer myself to the waiting world. After all, I am not long past my twenty-fifth birthday, a mere child according to one or two of mother’s friends. Remember what daddy said, I remind myself when it all threatens to get away from me, the world is a place of possibilities. A place containing moments set aside just for you.
There are several small reasons, and one or two big reasons, that have delayed my progress. Among the small reasons has been the lack of parts befitting someone of my talents, hold-ups with the construction of the new theatre, and the outgoing director in our town. His name is Mitchell, but for some time now I have been referring to him as the Imbecile. The Imbecile who wouldn’t know how to direct traffic. The Imbecile who seems to have a huge amount of trouble recognizing genuine talent when it is standing in front of him. The Imbecile who would only know an actress if she wiggled her ripe rump in his face and said her name was Zsa Zsa Gabor. The big reasons I try not to think about.
Because sometimes – and by sometimes I mean all the time – I think it is the little things (Mitchell the Imbecile is a good example) that cause all the trouble. It is not heart attacks or machetes or remote control bombs that zap the life out of a person. It’s the way people look at you and laugh, think they are always a step ahead. That’s what I told them during my brief stint in St Jude’s when invited to share something with the group. So many people, so few bullets. That’s something else I said, and they laughed. The scourge of the street, mother calls me when I am in this kind of mood. I am not the scourge of the street, I am fast to reply. I am the most dangerous person in the country.
Dear brain, please shut up. That’s what I really ought to be telling myself. If nothing else it might do my acting career some good. Get me on the path to stardom before I reach my use-by date, am put out to pasture once and for all time. Hey, Laura, I tell myself when I sense a little impudence kicking in, last time I checked, Rome wasn’t built in a day. And, hey again: better late than dead. That is another of the little pieces of philosophy that keeps me going. That, and the fact that Mitchell the Imbecile – unable to harness my talents – has moved to the other side of the country.
I’m skimming through this week’s Advertiser from my perch on the boathouse rooftop, taking turns at dragging on my cigarette and hissing at a posse of terrorists (tourists is far too kind a word for this nuisance species) snapping shots of the harbour and Spanish Arch, when I alight on this interesting piece of information. It is included in a pull-out feature detailing what makes our little city the most get-here-this-instant little city in the world. Oh yes. The city I live in is going places. Anybody who’s anybody wants to be here right now. Especially right now. It’s all happening. Dance, film, spectacle. Festivals for everything from the harp to the harmonica. Our very own television station. A famous all-the-way-round-the-world boat race wants to finish up in our ancient harbour. Whatever it is you are after, look no further. This is what I am reading. This is what the bigwig people in the know are saying. Most interestingly of all, as far as I am concerned, at long last the new theatre is more or less finished and a hotshot director from out of town is taking over.
Hotshot’s name is Stephen Fallow. He has ideas. And already he’s talking to the Advertiser about them. About how he intends to shake things up at Khaos Theatre. About the new faces he intends to introduce. About the productions – groundbreaking and innovative – he has in mind to put on. I can’t say too much at this early stage, he is quick to add. Then he lets slip that the first production under his stewardship is going to be a reprisal of a famous Tennessee Williams play from the 1940s – in honour of its seventieth anniversary. We’re going all out on this one, he adds for good measure. We’ll be inviting actors in to audition for the lead roles. And that’s all he can say for now. Fine by me. Hotshot doesn’t have to say another word. Already I think I know what the play is. Already I’m fairly certain of the part I have in mind to go for. Already I know that this is the chance I have been waiting for. There is no doubt about it: I am in the right place at the right time – just like the Advertiser says.
I am going to have to talk to Fleming about this. Fleming is my leading man, something I decided back when we first got together. He’s no Brando, or, for that matter, Bogart, but when it comes to the theatre and movies Fleming is the only one around here who has something to say that I want to listen to. He has his own ideas too, mostly television stuff, and I try to tell him he needs to think bigger. But Laura, he says, widening his eyes, television is where it’s at these days. Blah-blah-blah is what I say to that.
My phone chimes and here he is, I’m guessing, my man Fleming. He has probably seen the Advertiser too and wants to hook up. Mull over the play. Discuss how best to play the part with my name on it. I can practically hear him urge me on. Get this part, Laura. Get this part and you can kiss a long goodbye to all your worries. No more mother on your case about sorting out your life. No more talk of St Jude’s. No more doctors and useless pills. Get this part, Laura, and your daddy will be so proud.
I’ve guessed wrong, though. It’s not Fleming. It’s mother, texting to let me know that my one and only darling sister has safely arrived.
Jennifer.
The I’m-going-to-singlehandedly-rescue-the-world member of our family.
3
I haven’t spoken a single word to Jennifer since thanking her – via Skype – for the part she played in landing me inside St Jude’s eighteen nearly nineteen months ago, and still reckon I would like to be presented with her head on a plate. I could see it on a silver platter in front of me. The long eyelashes. The perfect nose. Those exquisitely symmetrical lips. The oh-so-severed-neatly neck nesting in a bed of treacly blood and green-leaf garnish.
All of it good enough to eat.
And so she has finally arrived. The prodigal daughter. Returned home after all this time to be greeted on our doorstep as though she is the greatest thing since Cleopatra and mother has been waiting for this moment all her life. And with a brand-new family member in tow. Mother and me had heard all about him, seen a photo or two, watched his toothy antics over Skype, and now here he was in the flesh. Four years old, and counting, if my sums were right. Juan, he is called.
It was all of one week ago that mother had chosen to let me in on the secret that Jennifer was coming home in the first place. As though mother had woken up last Monday morning and decided that her current daughter was no longer sufficient and that the additional daughter, the one with the bit of pep in her stride, the one with good hair and all-round easy-on-the-eye features, was required, and urgently at that. And hey presto, here she is.
Jennifer. My I-really-can’t-believe-I-am-almost-thirty go-everywhere save-everyone older sister. Offering a little bit back to the world, to quote a line from an early postcard she sent us from somewhere in the bowels of Bolivia. A picture of five fat women dressed in black ponchos, bowler hats atop their wrinkled noggins. ‘Which one is Jennifer?’ I asked mother at the time, and received a scowl that would have instantly curdled milk. I didn’t care where she was or what she was doing. Never asked for any updates on the little bits she was offering back to the world, but any time a postcard came dropping through our letterbox mother was onto it like a starving wasp on jam. Feeding for the rest of the day, weeks and months to come,
off the four or five itty-bit sentences Jennifer had scribbled. Hello from the highest train station in the world. The air is so thin they have us chewing coca leaves. Greetings from the Atacama Desert. It hasn’t rained here for four hundred years. Happy New Year from the floating island on Lake Titicaca. Patagonia says hi. And of course the entire street had to be made quickly aware of Jennifer’s current whereabouts, her latest intrepid adventure, the noble work she was doing in the slums of Brazil or the jungles of Paraguay. Every word on the postcard pouring out of mother as though she had spent the night before cramming for an exam and had to squeeze out every single utterance before she started to forget.
‘How many postcards do you reckon Jennifer has sent?’ I asked mother.
‘Oh, I have no idea.’
‘Take a guess.’
‘I told you I don’t know.’
‘Six postcards. That’s how many. Six postcards in as many years.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ mother said, and straightaway started into the email she had received from Jennifer, announcing her imminent return.
Sometime over a week ago that email must have arrived. Along with a photograph – of Jennifer’s ever-smiling self, seated with her boy at a table outside a clapped-out coffee shop, about to pull on the straw sticking out of the tall glass. A wiggly arrow was pointing to the glass, along with a bubble caption that said, Iced coffee! More fawning, then, as mother enlarged the photograph on the screen, placed the laptop on the kitchen table and sat staring at it for about half the morning. Then she was talking again. Asking me did I realize how long it was since Jennifer had last been home. Six years! Think of it, mother went on, as though it was a span of time impossible to fathom, an eternity. Then, her voice hushing, mother picked up the laptop and raised it high. As though Jennifer was someone to look up to, a beacon for people who had lost their way, a goddess from beyond the beyond lording over mortal earth. And all the time I was staring at the computer screen and thinking: a pity you didn’t float away with that island on Lake Titicaca.
Laura Cassidy’s Walk of Fame Page 1
