The Girl in White Gloves

by Kerri Maher

  When the audience roared its approval, the dream dissolved, and suddenly she was very present and hearing everything at full volume. The applause hurt her ears. People in the audience were standing and whistling. She held the hands of her castmates on her left and right, lifting their clasped fists into the air. As she stood and waited for the director to come out and take a bow, she squinted into the audience and couldn’t find her parents anywhere. Everything was a fuzzy silver-and-black blur. Still, she felt the applause vibrate up her legs and all through her chest, and she smiled so hard, her cheeks ached.

  In her dressing room after, her family crowded around her. “You were terrific!” exclaimed Lizanne, and Kell even said, “I’m impressed, Gracie. Nice job.” Her mother gave her a tight hug perfumed with Chanel No. 5, and said in her ear, “Beautiful, just beautiful,” before holding her at arm’s length and saying for everyone to hear, “Who’d have imagined little Grace Kelly of East Falls would find her way to Broadway!”

  Her father said, quoting the Times, much to Grace’s surprise, “Charming, pliable Grace Kelly. Not that anyone back home reads the New York papers.” Her heart gave an angry spasm in silent protest, but she did not reply.

  Raymond Massey passed by the open door to her room, and stopped when he saw all the people. “Grace! I’m hurt,” he said jestingly, his hand clutching his heart. “You didn’t invite me to your party?” Grateful for the distraction, Grace said breathlessly, “Raymond! This is my family, up from Philadelphia.” And she introduced them all around.

  When he and her father shook hands, her follow actor said jovially, “Jack! I haven’t seen you in ages. I didn’t know Grace was your Kelly. How the hell are you?”

  Grace’s eyes widened as she asked, “You two know each other?”

  “Army golf tournament after the war. Of course your father beat us all,” Raymond replied with knowing good humor. Then, directly to Jack, he said, “You must be so proud of young Grace here.”

  “I’m proud of all my children, Raymond. Did you hear Kell won his second Henley this summer?”

  Raymond raised his eyebrows in surprise as Grace and Lizanne exchanged indulgent Well, what’re you going to do? Daddy’s just being Daddy expressions. Her mother smiled as if to echo I’m so proud of all my children. Behind the stiff stays of her corset, Grace felt her father’s slight as a dagger’s jab in her stomach. I have a long way to go. This thought was both maddening and comforting at the same time, a slip back into childhood, into a world without the confusing and often conflicting sentiments of men like Asmir or Don, or fellow players like Faye and Raymond. At home, she’d mastered the rules and known how to behave to get what she wanted—within reason, of course, always within reason and decorum, the dual tyrants of the world that had made her.

  Chapter 6

  1951

  She was beginning to feel like a complete fraud. In fact, she was tempted to call her theater agent, Edith Van Cleve, and demand, “Why do you bother with me? You represent Marlon Brando, for heaven’s sake, and I haven’t managed to get a part worth a damn since nineteen forty-nine!” Instead, she said something like it to Sally Parrish, a fellow model and friend from the Barbizon, and now her new roommate on Sixty-Sixth Street.

  “What are you talking about, Grace? You work all the time!” Her friend handed her a cold soda. It was a stiflingly hot Saturday in late May, the kind that filled the air with the scent of garbage and made anything you wore stick to your back all day long. All their windows were open and fans were whirring, but still the perspiration trickled down her limbs.

  “Oh, television work, sure. But that’s hardly theater,” said Grace.

  “But it’s not nothing, either. And there was the movie, too, don’t forget.”

  Filming 14 Hours for two whirlwind days in sunny Hollywood when she would have otherwise been shivering on the streets of late-fall New York, then going to the film’s premiere in a new Christian Dior dress, had been fun. But she was tired of everyone trotting it out as some sort of proof of her success. It was a bit part, and it hadn’t exactly gone anywhere. Anyway, for a star to rise in Hollywood, you had to sign a contract with one of the studios, and then they owned you. How could she keep the door open for New York theater if she became a slave to Hollywood?

  “You make more, and work longer hours, than anyone I know, including most of the doctors and lawyers,” Sally went on. “It’ll happen, Gracie. You just need to relax. A watched pot and all that.”

  Grace sipped the cool, fizzy soda and felt it crackle down her throat.

  She felt sorry for herself; that was all there was to it. And since she hated self-pity, she was angry at herself on top of it.

  It had been almost two years since The Father, and she hadn’t gotten any other Broadway parts. Oh, the summer stock companies she joined July after July were wonderful, like becoming part of a big, raucous family for a few glorious and sultry weeks. In fact, she was off to another one in Denver, at the well-regarded Elitch Theater, very soon.

  But in New York, Edith sent her to all sorts of auditions, and she even got a few callbacks, but never the part. Always the bridesmaid . . . Every time, she’d learn her lines and dress carefully to go to the theater to deliver them, hope beating a drum in her chest. Then she’d be cautiously happy for a day or two, while she knitted and read novels in her apartment, leaving only to take a long walk in the park and collect a few groceries early in the morning, since she didn’t want to miss the call. Then she’d find out the part had gone to someone else, and she’d try to soothe herself with a night out on the town. The champagne and flirtation made her feel better temporarily, but she’d always wake the next morning feeling as heavy as the bed she was lying on. After the first dozen rejections, Grace took to just staying in bed for a day, her hair stringy and her limbs mushy.

  There were always reasons—“notes,” Edith called them—though Grace couldn’t do anything about most of them because they were more related to who she was than how she acted. Too pretty. Too quiet. Too cold. Too tall. Not curvy enough. Not experienced enough. Not old enough. Or her favorite, “She’s a great actress, but she’s just not right for this part.” What was she supposed to do with that?

  Utterly useless.

  Had she peaked too soon? And what a peak: some summer stock and one short Broadway run. It was more like a foothill than a mountain.

  Meanwhile, offers for television work poured in. She knew she should be happier about this, as it paid very well and the live dramas were even a bit like theater. The players rehearsed on a stage, the sets and costumes were always well designed, and they acted out the drama in one long take, interrupted by a few commercial breaks. There were no do-overs as in the advertisements she was also hired for, or as there were in the one movie she’d done. As in the theater, there was a do-or-die mentality among the TV actors: they had one shot to get it right, to use their voices and bodies to reach out and touch the hearts of the thousands of viewers watching them on their screens that night.

  The thought of those viewers, a far bigger audience than could fit in even the largest theater, was some solace. But the paltry applause of the cameramen, wardrobe and makeup stylists, and other workers around the set when the director shouted, “And that’s a wrap!” just wasn’t the same. And—she’d admit this snobbery only to herself—there was something cheap and Cracker Jacks about television dramas, especially because of the commercials for detergents and toothpastes that interrupted the shows, a few of which she was even in! She wondered what viewers thought about watching her in costume as a princess, or a thirties housewife, or a Tudor courtesan, only to see her hawking the latest dish soap in a frilly apron at the break—if television viewers even noticed such details! No, much as they had in common, television just wasn’t the theater; it could never have the same gravitas, the same lineage of Aristophanes, Shakespeare, and even Noël Coward.

  Peggy and Lizanne w
ere very sweet, and watched all the programs she appeared in, and in kind, sisterly fashion, they always called the next day to tell her how much they liked the show and Grace’s performance in it. Uncle George caught most of them and also called with his congratulations. She had the impression her mother was watching most of them, for she always had something to say when they spoke on the phone: “That was such a sad story you were in the other night, Gracie. I don’t know how you do it without getting depressed.” Or: “I wasn’t sure if it was our television or you, but I could barely hear you last night. Maybe you should speak up a bit?” And once in a while, she’d drop a precious gem of a compliment into Grace’s ear: “I loved the program last night, Gracie. And you looked absolutely beautiful.”

  Once, Grace made the mistake of asking her father if he’d seen any of the shows she’d been in, and he said, distractedly, “The only thing I turn on that damn machine for is baseball.” A Broadway play her father couldn’t ignore. He had to show up at some point, if only not to look like a jerk to his cronies.

  Ironically, though, it was her father who put her onto the idea that gave her the most hope. She was down in East Falls for a short visit before going to Denver, and he was grousing at dinner about losing a contract for a building to another firm with better connections on the hallowed Main Line.

  Connections, Grace thought. Maybe it wasn’t an accident that she’d won her best part when she’d just finished with the Academy, when her name was freshly off their graduate rolls and on the tips of her well-connected teachers’ tongues. Maybe I need more lessons . . . and connections.

  Apart from the thought that a well-known teacher could open new doors for her, she quite liked the idea of being a student again. Surely there was more to learn, and maybe a mentor could help her decode Edith’s notes and make them into meaningful instructions to follow.

  Luckily, New York had many choices. Lee Strasberg was making quite a splash with his Group Theater, though Grace didn’t think she could abide his so-called method. She’d heard that Strasberg and his colleagues Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford entreated their students to tap into their own reservoirs of pain and suffering to play afflicted characters. With the exception of playing Tracy Lord in Philadelphia Story at the Academy—which, after all, was a comedy, and not some soul-searching tragedy—acting had always felt like an escape from her own pains, not an excuse to indulge them. And look where the method seemed to be getting poor Marilyn Monroe, that absurdly talented stunner who, Grace had heard, could barely show up to work. But there were other teachers, splinters from the Group Theater, like Stella Adler and Sanford Meisner, who might be better suited to her.

  She had just enough time in New York before going to Denver to secure a spot somewhere for fall, but she’d have to move quickly. Washing the night’s sticky, nervous film off her skin with a cool shower, she slipped into a linen dress and took the subway to the Academy, where she knocked on Don’s office door. Slowly and unexpectedly, after seeing each other at this party and that club around town, the two of them had found their way to friendship after the end of their romance. Grace had the sense that Don would have fallen right back into the sack if she said the word—he regarded all her other dates with jealous eyes—but she’d made it clear that their relationship was now strictly platonic. For the past few months, he’d been going out with Judy, an eccentric and gorgeous young sculptor who lived in SoHo and whom Grace enjoyed seeing when they all went out.

  “Well, isn’t this a nice surprise?” He beamed when he opened his door and saw her standing there.

  “I need some advice about finding a new teacher.”

  They went to a pastry shop around the corner and ordered Danish and coffee, and Grace told Don that she felt she needed more instruction.

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  “Not you, Don. I’ve learned all I can from you,” she said lightly, a tease.

  “You haven’t,” he said firmly, “but I agree you need someone else.”

  She felt stung by his affirmation that she needed more training, but then—this was Don, and . . . well, she did need help.

  “Don’t say Strasberg,” said Grace.

  Holding up his hands, palms to her, he said, “Give me some credit for knowing you better than that.”

  She broke into a huge grin. This was exactly why she’d come to him. Even better, he added, “I was actually just having a conversation with Artie and Greg about this very subject.” Arthur Miller and Gregory Peck, Grace had to assume. She’d read in her alumni bulletin that both men had come to the Academy recently to teach short workshops.

  And off they went on a conversation about the relative merits of Strasberg’s, Adler’s, and Meisner’s schools of acting, comparing them to Uta Hagen’s ideas, which had largely been the foundation of the Academy’s courses. In the end, Don said he’d call Sanford Meisner and put in a good word, and Grace floated onto the bustling sidewalk, feeling like life had meaning and purpose again.

  * * *

  With Sandy Meisner’s tutorials to look forward to in the fall, for he’d accepted her into his atelier on Don’s recommendation, Grace allowed herself to marinate in the blue skies of Denver by day and the hotbed of talent in the Elitch Theater every night. In the first week, she became involved with fellow player Gene Lyons. Almost as soon as they met, he said to her, “Who’d’ve thought two kids from Pennsylvania would be headlining summer stock at the Elitch out west, eh?”

  Their shared mid-Atlantic childhood—he from Pittsburgh and she from East Falls—made him feel like home right away. Blond and tan from long hikes in the mountains, Gene was rough around the edges even when he was trying valiantly to fit in with a more genteel crowd, and like her father, he had a chip on his shoulders about not belonging in that crowd. Grace was aware that her fine nose, meticulously refined posture, and corrected voice allowed her to blend into the most rarefied circles; people were always surprised to discover she was one of those Kellys, and if they didn’t know her family, they were shocked to discover she was Catholic, and of Irish descent; she rarely mentioned that in fact her mother’s family was from Germany, since she hardly remembered it herself, so thoroughly had Margaret Majer become Margaret Kelly. Being with Gene tapped into some vein she hadn’t realized ran through her, and she began to revel in her outsider status.

  “The arts might be full of certain kinds of outcasts, but they form their own mafia, the intelligentsia,” Gene said derisively. “What about us folks from meat-and-potatoes America? We’ll show them, Grace.”

  Had her father said this, Grace would have wanted to throw her own potato at him. But after all the rejections in New York, she found Gene’s attitude viscerally appealing. Yes, she thought, let’s show them. And anyway, she understood that what Gene meant was not that he wanted to beat the intelligentsia, but rather to be treated as an equal by them—which was all she’d ever wanted herself.

  Gene was the exact opposite of Asmir and the other wealthy men who courted her in the city, but he was also so completely unlike Don and the other actors she’d known that she gave up her no-actors vow to be with him. In bed, he was thrillingly red-blooded, with no airs. His kisses were long and deep, and he kept his eyes closed except to look at her body as his hands roamed appreciatively over her small breasts and slim thighs. With corsets and hourglass figures all the rage, Grace was always nervous about her naked body, that free of the padding and cinching of her carefully selected wardrobe, her lack of curves would be disappointing to a man. But Gene groaned with pleasure at the sight and feel of her. He handled her a little roughly and wasn’t afraid to use his teeth, as if he knew she wasn’t a china doll; he knew she could take it, wanted it, that somewhere in her was the femme fatale she’d never be cast as. It was exhilarating to play that role in bed with him.

  They had to keep it on the q.t. because he was still married, though he was awaiting an annulment. The secrecy made
him simultaneously more safe and more dangerous. Safe because she wouldn’t have to deal with the inevitable questions from theater gossips about their relationship, and dangerous because of the risk of being caught, and because of what a future with him would mean. She wasn’t eager to repeat the anguish of her affair with Don and her family; even though Gene was at least Catholic, she knew she would have to fess up to the fact that he’d been married before.

  One lazy Friday morning, as she was sleeping off a particularly late night with the company, Edith woke Grace with a phone call. “Edith,” Grace said groggily, looking at her clock and seeing it wasn’t even eight, “it’s two hours earlier out here.”

  “I didn’t want to run the risk of you going out for the day and missing you. I’ve got Jay Kanter on the line, and he has an important opportunity for you. Hear him out.” Though Grace had only spoken to Jay Kanter once before, very briefly before she did 14 Hours, she knew that Edith and Jay each represented Marlon Brando for theater and film, respectively.

  Her interest piqued, Grace sat up in bed and patted her sheets down around her legs, relieved that Gene was sleeping off the party at his own place.

  “Grace?” said Jay, eagerly and effusively. She’d forgotten how impossibly young he sounded, so much younger than no-nonsense Edith, who talked to Grace more like a thrice-married aunt who knew exactly what Grace needed to hear and never pussyfooted around. Brando had signed with this boy? She supposed the other actor’s and her own theater agent’s faith in Jay merited him some time, so she tried to listen carefully, though it was challenging before she’d had any coffee and still felt exhausted from the drinking and singing and dancing of the night before.