The Girl in White Gloves

by Kerri Maher

  It was hot and everyone was soothing insect bites or upset tummies, mistrusting certain foods or not taking their cocktails with ice unless the poor waiter could guarantee the water had been triple boiled. Frank started drinking too much beer because he didn’t have enough to do, and Ava was getting annoyed that he wanted to be with her all the time she wasn’t on set. “I need some time to myself, you know?” she said to Grace in the ladies’ room of the hotel, where she was meticulously applying cherry red lipstick to her full lips, and adjusting her wide neckline for maximum effect. Grace touched up her own coral lipstick, then smoothed down her lace pencil skirt, and reflected jadedly that these parallel colors and fashions said it all about the differences between them—on-screen and off.

  On one of the first nights of 1953, Grace and Clark were the only ones left at their table, the rubble of another dinner strewn over the white tablecloth. Clark was smoking one of his cigars, and the mulchy-clovey scent perfumed the air around them.

  “How are you faring, Kelly?” he asked, looking not at her two seats down the table but at the curl of white smoke he’d blown into the night.

  “I’m doing well. Thank you.” She paused, suddenly feeling a butterfly flit against the walls of her stomach. It wouldn’t do to reveal to Clark Gable that she still had to pinch herself some mornings to remind herself that she wasn’t dreaming, that she really was where she was, in the company she was in. “I’m enjoying the picture and everyone in it, and I learn something new every day. Did you know that elephants can recognize themselves in a mirror, and they avoid eating the leaves of certain trees because they don’t like the ants that live there?”

  Clark sniffed and bobbed his back. “Your enthusiasm is wonderful to behold, Kelly.”

  He sounded so . . . It wasn’t patronizing exactly. It was more nostalgic.

  “What about you, Clark? Are you enjoying yourself?” she asked.

  “I prefer the company to the picture,” he said, looking over at her with a bittersweet half smile. “You remember, I’ve already done this movie. More than twenty years ago. You know you’re a dinosaur when you start doing the same movie a second time around. And they have to make you look younger by picking girls the same age they were the first time around.”

  “I think it shows your staying power,” Grace disagreed. “And isn’t it a compliment to think that men everywhere who are your age wish they could be you?”

  Clark laughed, and looked up at the sky. “Oh, but they don’t. Not really. I’m a fantasy, same as you. The ladies want to be with me, and the gentlemen want to be me. But only for the two hours it takes to watch the picture. In the end, they’re happy to go home to their spouses and meat loaf.”

  Grace raised an eyebrow. “Do you mean you’d like to go home to meat loaf?”

  “Maybe,” he said. Then, with a laugh that was clearly at himself, he said, “Don’t listen to me, Kelly. I’m just an old rambler.”

  Feeling emboldened by their sudden intimacy, Grace asked, “What kind of fantasy do you think I am?”

  “That’s easy. You’re the untouchable society girl. Too beautiful to actually go after, but men will think the most vile things about you in their private moments.”

  “I thought they were happy with meat loaf?”

  “You got me, Kelly. Yes, they are. But when they get unhappy with it, they can dial up their fantasy of icy Grace Kelly and what they could do to defrost you.”

  “Defrost me? How terrible. Is that really how I come across?”

  “It’s a good thing, Kelly. Not many girls can do what you do. Vivien could, but her version was more hot-blooded, like she could scald you if you got too close.” He said this with such admiration Grace ached to understand why.

  “Do you think I could ever play a part like the one Ava’s playing?”

  “See now, you’re not asking the right question. You should be asking why you’d even want to bother. You’re the untouchable, the prize. Why be the girl next door?”

  “The challenge,” she said in earnest. “I want to be a versatile actress.”

  At this, Clark really had a good laugh, and Grace felt twelve years old, stupid.

  “We all have our limitations,” he said. “And someday you’ll realize that what you’ve got isn’t worth trading.” He took a long drag on his cigar. They sat in silence for a few minutes, Grace feeling frustrated that she couldn’t figure out anything to say that wouldn’t make her appear even younger and more naïve.

  When he finished his cigar, he stubbed it out with hearty satisfaction and turned to her to say, “Time for bed.”

  His eyes lingered on her for just a moment too long, and Grace felt her skin, every inch of it, flame up. What would it be like to feel those shoulders moving above hers? Feeling suddenly beautiful, wanted, powerful, she returned his gaze with what she hoped was sufficient invitation. An on-set romance with Clark Gable? What girl would turn that down?

  But he stood up with a yawn, put his large, warm hand on her shoulder, and said, “Good night, Kelly.” Then, without looking at her again, he headed to his room, leaving Grace to wonder what on earth had just happened between them.

  * * *

  Clark was more distant after that, as if their moment of solitude and closeness—which he made sure never happened again—had flipped some sort of switch inside him. He was rigorously avuncular after that, giving unsolicited advice, patting her on the shoulder or hair, taking advantage of opportunities to tease her. She made sure to tease him right back, but it was exhausting. And if she was being honest, it was also discouraging. She’d hardly seen a future for herself and the movie star, but the idea of a fling, the possibility of tousled sheets as the sun rose over the savannah, had been so alluring and validating that Grace felt she was actually grieving the end of an affair that had never even begun. Your imagination will get you into trouble someday, her father had once told her. Get my heart broken is more like it, thought Grace, as she flew with the cast and crew from Nairobi to London to complete shooting.

  By drizzly mid-March, she was back in New York, and for the first time, she wasn’t thrilled about that. Settling back into her routine of lessons with Sandy, television dramas, Broadway auditions—and their inevitable stinging rejections—and rotting memories of Don and Gene, not to mention other crushes and dates that had gone nowhere, made Grace feel blue. She found herself craving the thrilling ride of the past few months: being swept off her feet by a Hollywood dream of John Ford, Clark Gable, and Africa, complete with MGM wanting her badly enough to modify their precious contract just to nab her before another studio could.

  She kept herself afloat with fantasies of Mogambo’s premiere in the fall, when she’d be reunited with the cast. In the meantime, she kept telling herself to stop wishing Jay would call with a great new script. Because why would he? He was surely too busy for his difficult client who kept saying no to Hollywood for a chance to audition for New York directors who wouldn’t even have her. Plus, he was getting married. Another wedding, Grace thought with an irritation she knew was unbecoming, so she never uttered a word of it to anyone. Adding insult to injury was the fact that the girl Jay was marrying—Judy Balaban, whose father, Barney, was president of Paramount Pictures—was three years younger than Grace. For Pete’s sake. Was she destined to be a spinster as well as a failed Broadway actress?

  Grace was not usually prone to self-pity, but in the early spring of fifty-three, she’d take long walks through Central Park, willing the pink and white blossoms and green leaves to hurry up and unfurl from their branches, asking herself, Why not me? What’s wrong with me?

  Why can’t you be more like Peggy? came the unbidden answer in her father’s voice. Occasionally she heard it in Clark Gable’s voice, which was so absurd, she made herself laugh. The question itself was absurd—more so now than it had been when she was a child and it seemed plausible, if not irrefutably true. Ba
ck then, her older sister was gorgeous, the belle of every ball, the star of every play and sporting team she joined. Her dresser was a jumble of trophies and ribbons that their father would pick up from time to time, then sit holding on Peggy’s bed, for the excuse of reminiscing about how proud he’d been of his Ba when she’d won this race or that award for service at school.

  Now, though, Grace asked herself, What’s Peggy today? A Philadelphia society wife and mother of darling twins, Meg and Mary, who was so busy playing tennis and ferrying the girls around to their activities and lessons, then entertaining George’s colleagues and their country club friends, she hardly even had time to write her own sister. And, Grace told herself, Peggy hadn’t just returned from Africa.

  And yet . . .

  Why should she still be jealous of her sister?

  The grass only looks greener, Grace. Cut it out.

  So she soldiered on, attending Jay’s wedding and discovering that she adored Judy, a loud and joyful blonde who was hilarious, and hilariously pragmatic, about “the industry” she’d grown up in. Because she’d known famous people since before she’d understood they were famous, she wasn’t fazed when Montgomery Clift or Lucille Ball stopped by expecting tea and sympathy, or something stronger. To her, they were just people. If Jay wasn’t so clearly smitten with her, Grace could see the practical, mercenary appeal of marrying such a well-trained friend to the stars, but Jay looked at Judy with such a dopey expression in his eyes that Grace knew he’d found the real thing.

  Grace appreciated that Judy was a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker who loved nothing more than cocktails at the Plaza, where she kept watch for Kay Thompson, or catching a Wednesday matinee of the latest show on Broadway. “I hope Jay doesn’t move me to the Left Coast,” she’d told Grace the first time they met. “I don’t think I could bear to leave the Bemelmans Bar. Anytime I was sad, I’d say to my mother, let’s go talk to Madeline, and she’d take me to the Carlyle, even though of course Madeline isn’t anywhere in the murals—but it looks like she could make an appearance at any moment! Anyway, Mother would have a martini, and I’d have a hot chocolate that the bartender swore was the very same chocolate Madeline herself drank in Paris. I sometimes still order the hot chocolate. After my martini, of course,” she laughed, and Grace laughed along with her, as the Carlyle was one of her favorite spots as well, for much the same reason: the murals by Ludwig Bemelmans were so like the pictures in her favorite children’s book, that Grace couldn’t help thinking of mischievous little Madeline, who liked to walk out of line and make trouble for Miss Clavel. Sitting among Bemelmans’s whimsical drawings, Grace never felt alone or lonely.

  They quickly began calling each other Judybird and Graciebird, and their new friendship was a bright spot that season, as the city slowly, finally blossomed into spring. By May, the cherry trees had flowered along Riverside Park, and Grace was just in from a windy walk along the island’s western promenade, feeling that fresh, new things were possible, when the phone rang.

  “Graciebird?”

  “Hello, Jaybird. How are you this fine spring day?”

  Jay laughed. “Nice to hear you so cheerful.”

  “Well, I’m shaking pink petals out of my hair, and my agent’s just called with good news, I hope, so I’ve decided to put on my happy face.”

  “I do have good news, as it happens. You know of Alfred Hitchcock, right?”

  Grace’s pulse quickened. “I know his work, of course. I loved Notorious. Anyone who loves Ingrid Bergman as I do also knows the director who used her so artfully.”

  “Well, he’s asked for you to do a screen test for his next movie, an adaptation of the play Dial M For Murder. MGM would have to loan you to Warner Brothers to do it, but I don’t think that will be a problem. Hitchcock saw your old Taxi test and seems to think you could be his next Ingrid.”

  “No,” she said breathlessly, her legs suddenly gelatinous.

  “Yes. You are quite like her, you know. You’re both—”

  “If you say ‘icy blondes,’ I’ll kill you, Jaybird.”

  “I was going to say nothing of the sort. I was going to say ‘high-class blond dames.’”

  Grace laughed, even though she wasn’t sure how much better that was. “When do I leave?”

  Chapter 13

  Grace met Alfred Hitchcock for the first time in one of the many nondescript buildings on the Warner Bros. sprawling studio lot in June. She had heard he was odd, though no one had ever been able to quite describe how he was odd, except that he was pudgy and had a dirty sense of humor—and neither of those traits were odd unto themselves—so she wasn’t sure what to expect. Not wanting to trip or do something else to embarrass herself, Grace wore her glasses with her teal blue Dior day dress, so the first thing Mr. Hitchcock said to her in his peculiar twangy English accent was “No one told me you wore glasses.”

  She immediately took them off, and everything behind him blurred. “I don’t have to wear them,” she said apologetically.

  He frowned appraisingly, then said, “You’ve read the script?”

  “Oh, yes, and I saw the play last year. It was marvelous.”

  “Indeed,” he said, turning his back on her. His chubby hands were clasped behind his wide back, and his gray hair was clipped so short, he didn’t even need pomade. She could tell from his neatly pressed brown wool trousers and old-fashioned waistcoat over a bespoke shirt that he was fastidious about his appearance. She wondered how that jibed with what she’d also heard about him, that he was a man of appetites.

  He walked onto the sparsely decorated set, which looked like someone’s living room before they’d acquired enough furniture, and he looked up at the large cameras set upon cranes and tripods, then complained, “They want me to shoot it in Three-D. As if I am a monster matinee maker.” He sniffed.

  “Which you are clearly not,” Grace assured him. “The studios do ask for strange things from their best talents. I suppose they want to sell more tickets to keep us making movies.”

  “That is rather an optimistic view from an actress who resisted signing her own studio contract.”

  He knows about that? Somehow, though, Grace already had the sense that Alfred Hitchcock knew every detail about all the people in his orbit. Nothing would escape him. Remember that, Grace. Demurring, she replied, “Perhaps. But in the end I decided it was the lesser of the evils.”

  “Hmm,” he mumbled noncommittally. “And you are comfortable with the scene in which you will be murdered?”

  There was the faintest hint of lasciviousness in his voice. She was glad he wasn’t looking at her as he said it, though. She wondered if disorienting her was part of this test. “Well, I don’t actually get murdered, though, do I?” she replied.

  He turned and faced her, smiling, his small teeth bared between his lush lips. “No, Miss Kelly, you do not. But the scene is grotesque, and I plan to shoot it in all its barbarity. People will talk about the way I direct it.”

  Grace’s skin immediately erupted in goose bumps. She’d never have imagined that such a short, squat man with such soft, round features could so much resemble a wolf. And yet she wasn’t afraid. She was drawn in, deeply curious about the inner workings of this director who’d so brilliantly commanded the best talents of the past twenty years. Ingrid, of course, but also Cary Grant, Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, and Marlene Dietrich. If she got this part, she’d star alongside Ray Milland and Robert Cummings.

  “If you’re trying to scare me, Mr. Hitchcock,” she replied, straightening her back, “I’m afraid that doing my job—which is to say, rising to the challenge of difficult scripts and scenes—will not frighten me in the least.”

  Clearly surprised at her boldness, Hitchcock raised his eyebrows and nodded his head with . . . was that appreciation? “Then let’s begin. Ray!” Then, turning to look her directly in the eyes, he said, “And please, call me Hitch.”


  She was grateful that he didn’t ask her do the screen test with the murder scene he’d just described. In the partially furnished apartment set, he asked her and Ray Milland to do the opening scene. Then he asked her to read the phone scene when she is surreptitiously talking to her lover. Robert Cummings wasn’t there to read it with her, so she had to say his lines in her head at a pace that seemed correct before making her replies.

  Second to the paradoxes of the director, the biggest surprise of the day was the electric current that sparked between her and Ray Milland the moment they shook hands. He had black hair and long, sharp features, and he carried his tall frame with an elegant ease. In his gray flannels and crisp white shirtsleeves, he was the picture of the debonair Englishman, with the perfect baritone voice and accent to boot. He was two decades older than Grace, but he hardly looked it, as he’d taken good care of himself. It was also plain to Grace that Hitchcock saw the attraction, too—he gave them an unmistakable knowing look, the sort you give a child you’ve caught stealing a cookie to say, I won’t tell. Unfortunately, Ray was married, Grace reminded herself. For quite some time, in fact, to a woman named Muriel Weber. Theirs was one of the few long marriages in the industry, and she had no intention of toying with that.

  She just wished she didn’t catch him looking at her so appreciatively. His gaze warmed her arms and neck and that telltale place below her navel, the core of her that was never wrong when it told her she wanted someone and he wanted her, too. She found herself pushing away thoughts of him the whole plane ride back to New York.

  When she returned to Hollywood at the end of July to begin filming, it was clear he’d been thinking about her as well. Only three days of torturous attraction on set went by before he invited her for a drink and told her that he and Muriel had “an arrangement.”