“Doing what? What could he do?”
Sally closed her eyes and smiled. “Believe it or not, Jack, the stupid son of a bitch is a not-bad comedy writer. He wrote all our old routines, plus a lot of routines for other people. He’s not a bum. He really isn’t”.
“Are you telling me you want him to write for you?”
“We’ve got worse guys.”
“To be perfectly frank with you, Sally, four years ago he looked like a shabby bum.”
“I’ll be just as frank, Jack. If you had to live on what he’s had to live on, you’d look like a shabby bum, too. When I married him, in 1938, Len was a good-lookin’ guy and a sharp dresser. He made a hundred a week. So did I. In those days plenty of people were working for twenty a week.”
“What about his girlfriend, the one who stripped with her leg in a cast?”
“Gone to the slammer. Ten to twenty for possession of heroin. His letter says he doubts he’ll ever see her again.”
“And you want him for a writer. Seriously?”
“Give him a chance, Jack.”
“Well, let’s see what he can do.”
The show was built during the spring and summer, for fall broadcast. Leonard submitted a script to the producer, and the producer hired him—whether because Sally had promoted him or because the script was good, Jack would never know. He let production people handle production.
Three
JOHN GRADUATED FROM ANNAPOLIS IN JUNE AND WAS COMmissioned an ensign in the United States Navy. His application to be admitted to flight training was approved, and he was given two months’ leave before he was to report to Pensacola.
Kimberly did not come to Annapolis for his graduation. But his seventy-three-year-old grandfather did. Harrison Wolcott told John that Edith, John’s grandmother, had become too frail to travel but sent her congratulations and highest regards.
Jack and Anne were there, as were Curt and Betsy Frederick and Cap and Naomi Durenberger.
And of course Joni came. She had always been tall and leggy and busty. The training she had received at the modeling agency had given her new self-confidence and grace. The new ensigns abandoned their families for the privilege of being introduced to her. John confided to her that he had shown clippings of her ad layouts to some of his friends. The ads had became collector’s items among the midshipmen. The early ones, in which she had modeled bras, were especially prized and kept under lock and key.
John spent his leave in Connecticut. He went into the city every week and stayed for two or three days with Joni in the Manhattan place. They slept together.
They were in bed, in fact, when Joni received a telephone call from a young man who reminded her that John had introduced them on graduation day. His name was Frank Neville, and he was calling to ask if Joni would allow him to take her to dinner or maybe to a play, or both.
She was holding the phone a little distance away from her ear, to let John listen in. She looked at him, grimaced, and shrugged. John nodded vigorously.
When she had agreed to the date and hung up the telephone, John said, “Frank is a good guy, and I mean a very good guy. To have a date with him— Well, Joni, as much as I love you, we both understand for sure that we can’t . . . You know what we can’t do. You’ve got to see guys.”
“Then you have to see girls,” she said defiantly.
John nodded. “Yes. I suppose I do.”
Four
THE MOST VALUABLE ARTWORKS AND FURNITURE FROM THE Manhattan townhouse were moved out to the new house in Greenwich. That house became the new Lear family showplace.
Jack never said so to Anne—or to anyone else—but he was determined that the Greenwich house should exceed in every respect the house on Louisburg Square. Even though it was new, he didn’t want the house to look as if it had just been built. He had insisted that every old tree should be preserved and that the construction crews should work around them. New plantings were not of raw young shrubbery but of mature shrubs bought from all over the area. His architect’s staff had visited sites fifty miles around, looking for old lumber and especially for old bricks. Bemused farmers accepted surprisingly high prices for their old brick walks that ran between farmhouse and gate or farmhouse and barn. The worn and sometimes slimy bricks were hauled to Greenwich and laid to form new walks and the patio behind the greenhouse conservatory. The floor of the library was meticulously assembled from oak that had formed the hayloft floor of a barn built in the 1770s.
The electrical circuits and plumbing, hidden inside the walls, were absolutely modem. The house was centrally air-conditioned, which was almost unheard of in Connecticut.
Jack had insisted that the architects find him a duplicate of the marble-enclosed shower he had enjoyed in Boston. They could not, but they employed people who could build one. Jack had his choice of marble and chose white with black streaks. The showerhead was as big around as a sunflower. Plumbers drilled nickel-plated pipe to make the needle shower. The bidet swung out from the wall, just like the one in Boston. Even Anne had never seen a shower like it before and declared it a “Yankee extravagance.” She loved it. When they were at home together, they never showered alone.
They built a swimming pool, but downhill from the house, at the edge of the woods, lay a small natural lake. They did not touch it, except to arrange filtration of the water and to plant cattails and water lilies. Anne swam in the lake; she preferred it to the pool. When she was satisfied about her privacy, she swam nude at dawn in midsummer.
In late July, Joni came to Jack with a request. “Daddy, could Frank and I use the shower?”
Jack reached for her hands and took both of them in his. “The two of you are that close?”
She nodded.
He smiled and told her yes, any time. He wrote to John, who was now at Pensacola, that Joni seemed to be in love. He had no idea what kind of impact that news would have on John.
Five
WHEN CAP DURENBERGER ASKED JACK IF HE COULD HAVE A private conversation with him, Jack told him to come to the townhouse that September evening. Both of them had begun to wonder just how much notice was paid to who talked to whom in the office.
Joni had replaced some of the furnishings and decorative pieces that had been taken to Greenwich, and the place now looked very different. Joni’s prints were bright and cheerful, but they were nothing like the original Boucher and the Dürer that had once hung in the living room.
Joni was out of town, modeling. The only household help she had was a cleaning woman who came in once a week, so Jack and Cap had complete privacy tonight.
Jack poured drinks from the bar, which Joni kept stocked.
Cap sipped, then leaned back in his overstuffed chair and closed his eyes. “Shit’s in the fan, boss,” he said. “One way, anyhow.”
“What is it?”
“Sally Allen.”
“What’s with Sally?” Jack asked, concerned.
“She’s pregnant.”
A week later Jack and Cap met with Sally in Kansas City.
“So I’m knocked up,” she said. “I’m a woman. I’m entitled. We’ll do the Monica Dale special before it begins to show.”
“Can I ask who’s the daddy?”
She smiled at Jack. “Len, of course. Who’d you suppose? Hey! He’s not the shabby bum you remember. Now that he’s got a respectable job, he—”
“I understand he writes good comedy,” said Jack. “But this is something else. So, okay, we get the special on the air. What about the rest of the season?”
“Len has written a sketch about my being pregnant.”
“Unmarried and pregnant?”
“The script doesn’t say.”
“But that’s the whole point! If the scripts don’t say it, the news people will. Look, we just went through the battle over The Moon Is Blue—”
“Yeah! What a horrible film! It dared to use the word ‘pregnant.’ It dared to—”
Cap interrupted. “The Legion of Decency—”
“Legion of Crap!” she yelled angrily. “Fuck the Legion of Decency!”
“We can’t—”
“Wanta bet? Everywhere that film plays it makes big money! Big goddamned money! The audiences don’t give a shit about—”
“Wait a minute,” Jack interrupted. “How will you do energetic dance routines?”
“Very simple, Jack. I say I’m pregnant. I tell ’em I can’t dance like an idiot right now. So here’s a kinescope of a dance routine I did last year. Or, better yet, here’s the new young dancer, so-and-so. I can still sing. I can deliver funny lines. The movie studios have notified me they’re canceling my contracts, under the so-called morals clause. And you can do the same. In which case I’ll take my pregnant body to Europe and appear before audiences who don’t give a shit about the Legion of Decency.”
Sally clapped her hands over her face and began to cry.
Jack stared at her for a moment, then at Cap. “Okay,” he said decisively. “Okay. We’ll do it your way. Tell Len to write a line into the special, announcing that you’re pregnant.”
She drew her hands down her face, streaking her tears. “It’s already written,” she said. “Goes like this: Monica says to me, ‘Hey, Sally, I hear you’re gonna have a baby.’ I rub my belly with both hands and say, ‘Feels that way.’ Then she says, ‘Uh, can I ask the pregnant question?’ And I say, ‘Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.’ That’s also what I say to the reporters.”
Six
“I THINK YOU’LL AGREE—I THINK YOU HAVE TO AGREE— that we were entitled to be told,” Dick Painter said at a meeting of the board of directors. “Lear Communications is not your private fief anymore. We should consult on major decisions.”
“I am chief executive officer of this corporation and am entitled to make decisions,” Jack said coldly. “I wouldn’t refinance the company without consultation and action by the board. But decisions about the content of a program are within my executive purview. I made the decision, and the decision was carried out. Besides, if we’d consulted, we wouldn’t have done it. Committees—and I don’t care what kind of committees they are—are not noted for courage.”
“You did take one hell of a risk,” Douglas Humphrey observed.
“I don’t think so. This is 1954, gentlemen, not 1934. Audienees are sophisticated today. They’re sick of the tired old pap that passes for television comedy and drama. I saw a film the other day. It’s called On the Waterfront, with Marlon Brando. There’s a scene where Brando tells a priest, played by Karl Maiden, to go to hell. In those words. ‘Go to hell.’ So how does the priest react? He doesn’t go cow-eyed and wring his hands like ‘Father’ Bing Crosby. He clenches his fist and slugs Brando. Have any of you looked at the ratings for The Sally Allen Show since she announced she’s pregnant?”
“It could have come out the other way,” said the Chicago banker Joseph Freeman. “And may yet. Some powerful people are shocked and offended.”
“And what are these powerful people going to do?” Jack asked.
“Catholics in Columbus, Ohio, have been ordered not to watch our station for the next six months, under pain of sin,” said Ray l’Enfant.
“So? Are they not watching us? Look at the numbers.”
“We’ve lost some sponsors—”
“And picked up others.”
“The question is,” said Painter, “will this board of directors have any influence on programming decisions?”
“The answer is no.”
TWENTY - SEVEN
One
1955
JONI WAS NOT INTIMIDATED BY THE BIG PHOTO STUDIO SHE was working in today. She had been photographed here before and had confidence in the photographer, Clinton Batchelder. Anyway, her agent, Muriel Hubbel, was with her. They had discussed the project at length and decided it was worth a try. The magazine was disinclined to use photographs of professional models—or so it said—but Joni was so conspicuously unspoiled and youthful that the publisher might make an exception.
The project had been initiated by Batchelder. Playboy, he had explained to Joni and Muriel, was a new magazine, but it had a rapidly growing circulation and received an immense amount of attention. Its Playmate of the Month photo spread could send a model’s career soaring. Besides, the magazine paid generous fees to both model and photographer.
Robin Rodman, the president of the Rodman-Hubbel Modeling Agency, had issues of Playboy in his office. After looking over the centerfolds in those issues, he and Muriel and Joni had agreed they were professional and tastefully done. The final decision was Joni’s, and she agreed to be photographed in a set of pictures that would be submitted to Playboy.
The studio was cavernous. The room was so large, and the ceiling so high, that Batchelder said he flew his radio-controlled model helicopter around inside it, though no one Joni had talked to had ever seen him do it. The expanse of empty space made it possible for the photographer to move cameras, lights, props, and models around without interference.
There was no dressing room, not even a screen behind which models could undress, and many did so because Batchelder shot a good deal of lingerie advertising. He photographed nudes occasionally but not often. When he did, they were only for photography shows, where in fact some of his nudes had won prizes. He had some kind of connection with a Manhattan ballet school, and almost all of his nudes were young ballerinas. Joni’s admiration for his ballerina prints was another reason why she had agreed to this session.
Clinton Batchelder was about forty-five years old, not memorably handsome but not unattractive, either. Joni knew him to be a very businesslike photographer, brusque in manner and abrupt in his movements when he was working. He was wearing a white shirt with a yellow necktie and tan slacks. He smoked a pipe, which he would put aside when the shoot began.
“Well, Joni, all set?”
Joni smiled weakly. “I guess,” she murmured.
“How ‘bout a Scotch to settle your nerves.”
Joni glanced at Muriel, who nodded and said, “One for me, too.”
“We’ll all have a Scotch,” said Batchelder. His liquor bottles sat among the bottles of chemicals in his darkroom, and he took ice and soda from the darkroom refrigerator. They sat in three wooden chairs behind the lights and toasted each other.
Joni drank about half of her Scotch, then said, “Well, I guess I better, huh?”
Batchelder nodded. “You can finish your drink afterward.”
Joni nodded. She drew a breath and reached behind her back to unzip her white knit dress. She stood up, pulled it over her head, and folded it on the chair. She was wearing a half-slip and a bra, and she took those off. She unhooked her stockings from her garter belt and pulled them off. She unfastened the garter belt and dropped it on the chair.
She was wearing sheer white bikini-style panties that exposed her hips and bottom, though not her pubic area because they had an opaque panel in front. “Clint . . . Since Playboy doesn’t show the lower part, I was wondering if I could keep the panties on.”
He smiled faintly. “I’d very much rather you didn’t,” he said soberly. “It’s true that we won’t submit pictures that show your down-below hair, but we probably will want to submit some that show your bare bottom.”
Joni nodded and pulled off the panties.
“You know Laurie,” said Batchelder.
Laurie was the body-makeup girl who now approached Joni and would smear parts of her with greasepaint to give her an even skin tone all over, hiding the pale stripes left by her swimsuits. Laurie would also cover the red marks made by the elastic in Joni’s clothes. Joni had been made up by Laurie before, when modeling bikini panties or appearing, as she occasionally did, with arms folded over bare breasts.
Laurie also gave her hair a final brushing. It hung around her shoulders, smooth and glossy.
While Laurie worked, Joni finished her drink. Batchelder took her glass and poured her some more Scotch.
“We’ll work with
the neutral background first,” Batchelder said. He pulled a sheet of light-gray paper down from a roller that hung on one wall of the studio. “Just step over there and let us see what you think might be effective poses.”
Joni handed her glass to Muriel and walked out in front of the gray background. Batchelder’s two lighting men switched on powerful lights.
Suddenly the situation struck Joni. She was standing in front of the photographer and his assistant, her agent, the makeup girl, and two lighting technicians. She was naked. Six clothed people were staring at her. Her mouth dried up. For an instant she felt as if she might lose her balance.
She stared down at herself. It had seemed so cute to trim her dark pubic hair and not allow a thick bush to grow over her crotch. Now the piercing lights exhibited her pudenda and even outlined the dark stripe of her cleft.
Batchelder’s assistant began to shoot pictures with a Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera.
“How do you want to pose, Joni?” Batchelder asked.
She recovered a little and raised her hands to clasp them behind her head.
“I love it,” said Batchelder, “but that’s a little too bold for the magazine. Let’s turn to your left. Turn . . . a little more. Now bring your hands down. Now look back over your shoulder. Hey!”
He went to the big camera, hooded himself with the black cloth, and studied the image she was making on the ground glass. He began to order changes in the lighting. They spent three-quarters of an hour shooting pictures that would show the profile of Joni’s left breast and all of her backside while she looked over her shoulder with various expressions that Batchelder suggested.
They sipped at a new round of drinks. Laurie patted Joni with Kleenex, to remove the sweat from her skin.
In the pictures they agreed to submit to Playboy, Joni was sitting on an antique wire chair, the kind that had been common in soda fountains in past decades. The neutral background had been turned dark maroon by floodlights, which dramatized the outline of her brightly lighted body. She was completely naked, but her right heel rested on one of the wire rungs of the chair, raising her right leg high enough to cover her pubic area. She clasped her hands behind her neck and lifted her chin. Her eyes were turned up and to the right. She smiled. Her lips were parted, showing her teeth. She looked young and fresh, proud and joyful—and maybe a little defiant. Even so, something subtle in her expression also revealed that she was more than a little embarrassed.
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